Good Sport

Doing volleys at the last tennis lesson at Grand View Lodge.  Joe's got pretty good hand-eye coordination so he popped most balls over the net.  The last lesson was the first time Birdie was game so her experience was a little different!

As you know, Fans, Joe has been spending the bulk of his summer at one camp or another, the first of which was the Y's Summer Sports Sampler.  There, he sampled soccer, basketball, baseball, and floor hockey and capped each day with a swim.  He was praised for trying everything with gusto and his sportsmanship, but his counselors also noted that on every day except the day on which they played baseball, Joe didn't have much interest in playing when it was game time.  Julie asked Joe what was up with that, and Joe matter-of-factly replied, "Everyone wants to take my ball away." Julie laughed, but also thought, "Of course.  Of course!"  Keeping the ball away from the other team, or getting the ball for your own team is, of course, the point of soccer, basketball, and all kinds of other sports.  Our Hero understands that and doesn't object to the point itself.  But being in the middle of a scrum of a bunch of people running and otherwise moving is decidedly not for him, at least right now.  (Baseball is the one exception in the sports that Joe sampled so of course, he liked that best of the four and did actually participate in the game.)  He likes golf and--we now realize--tennis for the same reason.  That is, they aren't played in a big swirl of people all jockeying for the ball.  The realization was like the bat, connecting with the ball, and hearing that satisfying crack.

Good Times, Good Friends

Originally posted Thursday, July 24, 2014.  Mysteriously re-posted out-of-order by Blogger gremlins when a font correction made.

Longtime Fans may recall our friends Sanne and Todd, who up and moved with their daughters, Elsa and Anja*, to Seattle about four years ago after a stopover in Utah. We have not stopped missing them since they left. Happily, Todd's family gathers in Wisconsin once a year, so we see him and his ladies once a year at least. Today was that day.  We rented canoes at Lake Calhoun and paddled around the chain of lakes, and hit the St. Louis Park pool. Such good times, such good friends.

*It's true: they are a sister duo with almost the exact same names as the sisters in the best movie ever, if you are preschool or elementary school age. Elsa is even older, too, in this duo!)

In Other Words

In other Birdie news, we can report that she is firmly in that moment where you can hear the connections her mind is making through the funny language missteps she makes. A recent example came when Clara was relaying her order of pasta with alfredo sauce to a server when we were out at Grand View Lodge. (The bambini have started trying to order for themselves if we're in a relatively calm place.) Clara asked for her pasta "al fresco," and bless the server's heart, she took it right in stride.

The other thing Birdie will often say these days is to do with carbonated beverages. She will sometimes have a sip of two of sparkling water or something with sparkling water in it. She deems such drinks "spicy."

Using Her Words

Grand View Lodge had a wooden crate of communal sand toys that the bambini used most every day we were there. One day, Joe had gotten Clara a water gun--a pistol, if you will--from which Clara wandered too far at a moment when it was spied by a boy slightly older than Joe. He naturally scooped it up, reminding Our Birdie of the vulnerability of, in particular, shared toys and the rough justice that often characterizes the negotiations of childhood. Oh but Brigade, you should have seen her. Her voice may have been shaking, but she used it to tell the boy that her brother Joe had gotten that for her, she was using it, and could he please give it back. The boy tossed out the old finders keepers line, to Clara, and then to his mother who had by now intervened. His mother was having none of that and so the boy pitched the gun at Birdie who scooped it back up and kept it near from then on. The assist from the boy's mom was key. Without it, the gun surely would not have been returned. Still, we were proud of Our Birdie trying to set things to right with her words.

Grand View Lodge

Fans, we are back from a week at Grand View Lodge on Gull Lake near Brainard, Minnesota, which indeed had a grand view, and where we had a grand time.  We swam every day, went on a pontoon boat cruise (all of us), played tennis (all of us), played golf (Ted and Joe), went horseback riding (Ted and Julie--we galloped even!), chased after chipmunks (one was christened Jumpy) (Joe and Clara), and went to the lovely spa (Julie).  As we say, it was grand.