Mid November Miscellany

School bus adventures

This week I have a few pictures for you (including a bunch that are very quintessentially autumn), followed by a video!  Aside from Remembrance (ie, Veteran's) Day on Tuesday, the week mostly just flew by in a very normal sort of way.  There was, however, a fun event - our next door neighbour turned 5, and invited us over to celebrate.  Not only was there a birthday party, there was also a large pile of leaves to play in - a somewhat mandatory part of fall that I have purposely been avoiding.  The problem with piles of leaves around these parts is that they might very well be home to those awful, eternally lurking ticks.  But when greeted by a ridiculously large and awesome pile of leaves next door, I couldn't help but let them play to their heart's content.  We just made sure to do a thorough tick check after heading home.

So. Much. Fun.

Blurry leaf throw!

Juniper has a go at the pile

Linden naturally gets the big trucks involved

Another highlight next door - some pretty sweet climbing trees

Saturday marked a first for Juniper - she participated in a track meet! It consisted of two events: a "long" run (ie, 3/4 of the way around the high school gym), and a sprint. They separated the boys and the girls, and had four kids in each heat - one from each of the four elementary schools in the area. When they called the kindergarteners down to the floor, Juniper (decked out in a t-shirt that was, naturally, 4 sizes too big for her), enthusiastically ran to meet her fellow Mullen Hall-ers, and proceeded to somehow trip and go sprawling, ending up in a spectacular face plant.  This did not seem to phase her, but it was a rather ominous start. (*note: at that moment, Clark unnecessarily leaned in and whispered "wow, she really is a lot like you, isn't she?") Ahem.

Anyway, the long and short of it was that Juniper came 4th out of 4 in both of her races.  Naturally, however, she was given two ribbons (which she is shown proudly displaying below).  When I asked her how she felt about the whole thing afterward, she sighed and said, "well - I was the last one both times.  I would have really like to have been the one who broke through the toilet paper" (they were using a large roll of toilet paper strung between two volunteers as the finish line tape).  "So why do you think you weren't able to run through first?" I queried. "Were you out of breath?  Did your legs hurt?" Juniper gave me a look, and replied "mom - didn't you see me when I first went out to the gym floor?  I was afraid I was going to trip again!" Fair enough.

Huge shirt; participatory ribbons

 And finally, this week marked one more milestone - Linden has finally mostly mastered his new pedal bike! About a month and a half ago, Clark (who has been volunteering at the Falmouth Bike lab -- a community bike repair shop), decided that Linden was so comfortable bombing around on his strider bike that it was time to move up to pedals. I was not convinced - 3 seemed a bit young to me for Linden to start riding a real bike. But Clark was undeterred, and Frankenstein-ed together a perfectly-sized bike from a bunch of different junker bikes and parts at the bike lab (Linden actually went in and "helped" him one day, which is ridiculously cute in and of itself).  Anyway, it took a few tries for Linden to get used to the pedals (mostly making sure his feet didn't go backwards, which would send him to a screeching halt, of course), and he is still having trouble getting started on his own. But once he's started, he can motor! I included a little clip in the movie. I have to say, the balance bikes have really impressed me - they meant a relatively seamless transition to pedals for both kids, with nary a training wheel ever involved in the process!

Hard-core biker dude

I will leave you, as promised, with a little video of some random day-to-day stuff.  I have included a couple of clips from one of the many (many, many) "shows" that happen around here; the aforementioned clip of Linden biking around; and a little snippet of Linden playing (and singing) "Twinkle Twinkle".  I included this not because it is a beautifully haunting piece to listen to, but rather because it kind of blows me away, for two reasons.  The first is that Linden taught HIMSELF how to play the first phrase, after watching and listening to Juniper (I showed him the rest). The second is how he is able to hear when he makes mistakes and then corrects himself.  These are both signs of a pretty advanced ear for a 3-year-old. I am excited to see how this manifests as he gets older!