So many special days. My sister is now 21! What? I am now married 8 years! What?! I'm about to be 37. Yeah.... at least I was fully prepared and anticipating my birthday coming. The others, while obvious, are still strange. And all days with these kids are special days when I look.
One of my favorite recent kid related events was watching my kids run in the yard while each held an airplane and made their own motor noises. I love this kind of thing. I bought the airplanes on Friday. I had felt particularly financially strapped in September and on pay day just felt like splurging. So, Tami had a work related event to attend so I picked up the kids after work and took them to Tony Roma's for dinner to splurge. We sat near a huge animal.
My son asked what it was and I told him that I didn't know. "What do you think it is?" I asked. "A reindeer!" he said. "Oh, you think so?" I said. But in my head I was thinking something like, "silly cute kid, of course it's way too big to be a reindeer, it's not a reindeer, but you're so cute in thinking so because that's the only similar animal you know from watching the Polar Express movie 5 bigillion times." Wisdom in fatherhood barely masked folly. Keeping my mouth shut was the wisdom part. When the server came back I asked her what the animal was. "It's a caribou" she answered. WHAT!?! "Enzo, you are right! It's a caribou- a reindeer!!!!" Ha!!!!!!! I must have mentioned how cool he was to know that it was a reindeer 5 times during dinner. I think I was trying to make up for the comments in my head as if I had thought them aloud. But he didn't hardly care because he was probably thinking "what's up with Papi bringing that up again? Yeah, it's a reindeer.....obvious!"
Still chuckling to myself about the reindeer, and not done throwing money around, I took the kids to a toy store. This is only the 2nd time I have ever taken these kids to a toy store and they are 3 and 2 years old... so clearly this was a special day.... for me. Enzo chose a toy airplane and Ana a toy truck car hauler that would hold four hotwheels. I chose an airplane for myself because I had already told them they could pick one thing and Ana picked the truck but I just admitted to myself and realized that tomorrow I would splurge again... and we needed another plane. So, I told them I was choosing an airplane for my one toy and that Ana could hold it for me and that they could both take turns playing with it because I like to share.
Saturday, Tami, Me, my mom, and the kids went to the theater. The kids saw their first movie in the theater. We watched the new Disney movie Planes and they had their toy planes with them. Very cool. Ana stayed focused for an hour and started to get a little restless for the last half hour. Enzo stayed nearly mesmerized the whole movie. Yes, mesmerized, as in sitting on the edge of seat for over half of an hour before even appearing to notice anything other than the screen when he got a snack. Yes, I think they liked the theater experience. And, I enjoyed the movie, too. I'm glad mom, Tami and I were able to enjoy the kid's adventure.
Speaking of movies, we have added Toy Story to our approved movies at home. We are now up to four (Polar Express, Cars, Winnie the Pooh, and Toy Story). They never choose Winnie the Pooh for some reason so we cycle through three movies when we do let them watch a movie. It still amazes me that we are watching The Polar Express, a Christmas movie, in the Fall. Thank goodness we get a little variety now with these other movies. The side effect of Toy Story? My son now stands on the couch, puts his arms out and then forward, yells out something like "To Infinity and Beyond!", closes his eyes as Buzz Light Year did, carefully squints open his eyes to aim himself, and then jumps across to another couch. Awesome. He does this repeatedly once he starts.
A little more about Enzo these days. His favorite made up word is Chickabombom. It's an evolving word from a long time ago. It started months back, maybe over a year ago, as a test-his-parents word I think. He would say it like it was a forbidden word. In fact, I think early iterations were chickabombompuchilala-poopoo-peepee! Somehow, and with delicacy, we have been helping him to shape appropriate word choices for appropriate places and chickabombom seems to have lost most of it's testing and become an acceptable funny word. Like calling someone "silly" in a playful way, he can now call someone or something chickabombom without any meanness or say he is going to go to chickabombom, for example, instead of saying school where he is actually going to. Funny kid.
I started reading Dune again. Great book. I usually don't read for myself in front of my kids because I get zoned out in my own world. But I did sit in the family room and read recently. I figured they may as well see me reading books and know adults read for themselves too, not just to kids. Well, they see Tami do work and homework often but not me reading for my own pleasure. Besides, Dune is a great read so I wanted to keep reading. After a while, Enzo says he wants to know the words so I read him a bit. He says he wants to read a book too and he ran off. Seconds later he comes running back with a huge book from my shelf and starts flipping through it. Excellent!
Here are some pictures of when we went to the Roaring Camp Railroad recently. Super cool! I am already looking forward to going back.
My beautiful Ana.
After the trains were done for the day, and with me still watching, I let Enzo run on the tracks. He was excited because he wanted to to run all the way to a turn we could see up ahead. He was very excited to turn on the track like a train.
