Living the Happily Ever After

Kosh and I commute together on the bus.  The commute involves about a mile of walking. When I sprained my ankle I moved Kosh from the ergo to an umbrella stroller for the walking.  Lately we've been incouraging Kosh to walk, and yesterday Kosh decided he didn't need the stroller. So he walked the whole thing.  He did not enjoy all of it.  Near the end of the section from the bus stop to daycare he really wanted to be carried, and I wasn't a firm no on this, but I managed to encourage him to make it the rest of the way. This mostly involved reminding him of his standing incentive for walking, and encouraging him to view a raised curb as balance beam. I was thrilled that he walked the whole thing, but what I'm really grateful for is that periodically, when it wasn't required to cross the road, he'd just reach up and take my hand, and I just loved walking hand in hand with him.

I know it's been a while, but hey a long post : )

My baby boy is growing up. He'll be 3 end of February.
( Pictures behind cut )



I started noticing this Friday.

At the bus stop another bus waiter was impressed with his articulation and the way I didn't speak down to him, and it made me think that I suspect that in the past I have considered my vocabulary and tried to use one that I thought he could follow, and I haven't been doing that, and he's usually able to understand if he wants to.

We got home, and he'd talked about wanting to play, so I dropped him off in the living room with his train table and favorite toys, and went to take care of some things.  I came back after about 10 minutes, and he'd taken a 12-14 (it's the engine of a train puzzle he's earning the whole puzzle's 48 pieces, but I think it's bigger than the tender, or caboose, the passenger car looks about the same size) large piece jigsaw puzzle off the shelf opened the box, and almost completed the puzzle.

First, it was only a short while ago when leaving him alone in the living room would not have been a thing, honestly more because he wouldn't put up with it than anything else! So, nice to know he's okay playing by himself!!

But really I was impressed with the puzzle.  He still asks for help if I'm there, but he can do it, and that's exciting.

Saturday we went to a buddy of his birthday and in a group of mostly older kids he had a blast.

Then Sunday I took him outside for some post nap running around.  It was close to evening because his nap started late, but he wanted to drive his car (Flintstones stile) to the park.  I love that we have parks in walking distance, but when I say that I mean my walking distance, and he picked the second closest park to home (0.4 miles per Google) I figured that he'd make it a block or two and decide he wanted to be carried and we'd turn around, which would get him some good exercise, and I could pull him in the car.
Not a bit of it.  He did switch to walking rather than driving a block and a half in, but he got all the way there.  When we got to where we could see the park he took off running, and would have been running around at the park for a good deal longer except that with the late start I limited him to a little over 10 min.  He even made a block on the way home before I started towing him.  This means we can start working on walking as part of the commute!  I'm excited about this, and so far he sounds excited about it, but we're not starting until this afternoon.  The morning's too rushed until we have a feel for speed of walking involved.

Bodies are weird

I've been working on doing a little more exercise, and have been tentatively pleased which is to say I seem to have more energy, and my speed seems to be getting better on my lunch time 2k with Zombies, Run!.
However, this does not seem to be having any kind of shrinking effect on my belly.  Not my actual goal, but I thought it might happen.  I was wearing a shirt that I wear all the time Sunday, and it was significantly more snug than I expected. Ah well today's shirt is doing fine.

Almond butter amazing and easy
In case you're wondering this discovery was made Sunday afternoon well after the shirt discovery.
I was get set up to pre-make the weeks lunches, and discovered we were almost out of peanut butter.  Back when peanuts were expected to go up in price Groblek stocked up, and even though that was years ago, and I'm aware that we've run through that supply I still expect there to be an unlimited supply in the garage.  In looking to see if there was a jar I'd missed I noticed a large quantity of raw almonds (Groblek's family grows for Blue Diamond, so almonds are frequently in supply at home).  I suggested almond butter and Groblek looked it up.  Instructions are: put almonds in the food processor and process for 20-30 min (faster if almonds are roasted).  So I threw a bunch of almonds in the oven, and then in the food processor.  (8 cups was a little much for our processor, but after a break to cool down it worked fine.) This produced one large and one small mason jar full of almond butter.

It is sooooo tasty! Sandwiches are better too.

So a while ago there was an article about a mom who took her little boy to Walmart with a pink head band on.  Details here:
http://www.carbonated.tv/lifestyle/how-a-pink-headband-at-walmart-led-to-a-moms-harrowing-experience

What the man in the story did was horrendous! He should not have done that!

One of the ideas I got from reading the article and people's comments though is the idea that one should never touch an unknown child. Without thinking I found myself going along with it until yesterday I read this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/10/18/specials/kingsolver-hers.html

This description of the situation in Spain seems excellent.  I've personally dealt with relatively little of the negative description of American reaction to children, but I have noticed the lack of interactions by many.

I think that culturally we have a tendency to say this one situation came up where this behavior was problematic no on should ever do this behavior.  I know I've fallen into this trap.  I hope that if the walmart incident had happened in a culture more like that described in Spain even if someone had behaved like the man in the story someone else would have stepped up to defend the child.

As part of our lifestyle, and our parenting practice we have developed several villages that Kosh benefits from.  We've actively chosen and thought about our connections to church, Pryanksters, and biological family, but one that I originally didn't consider was our bus commute.

On the bus many riders don't interact with me or Kosh, and it's possible that some or many of them are silently unhappy that Kosh is along, but none have complained or displayed this that I've noticed.

However there are several that have positive interactions with Kosh, and me, but really Kosh is the driving factor.

This collection of bus buddies includes several drivers, and several regulars.

One of them was Liz.  Liz was always friendly greeting many people as they got on the bus, and checking in on how people were doing.  She had a lot of fun interactions with Kosh.  She always sat in the seat closest to the door, because she walked with a cane.  Frequently Kosh wanted that seat, and so we took one nearby, and they'd play the mine game.  She read to him on a couple of occasions, and was generally friendly and interactive.  She was an example of a great way to interact with other people's children.

Some months ago she stopped riding the bus.  We heard that she had caught shingles.  So we looked forward to her return, but yesterday I heard that she had passed away.  She is missed, and Kosh and I are lucky to have known her.

So for Father's Day, and because Groblek is taking Kosh off for a week with the grandparents, I took primary Kosh duty all weekend.  It was a generally good weekend.  We had fun at the train museum Saturday (Groblek had fun at the museum too, but missed the train ride).  This was the first time since Kosh learned about the train tables that he's pushed for looking at the big trains.

Incidentally with our membership we can bring in 2 guests.  Let us know if you want to go.

He napped hard!

Sunday we biked over to Dos to take Groblek out for Father's day.  We were thwarted in our attempts to go for desert, and raided the home ice cream supply instead.

By now the guys have probably already headed up towards Occidental, by way of train town.

So far for me that means that I was sans toddler on the morning commute.

I figured that was a great opportunity to get some extra exercise in.  So I pulled up Zombie run, and took a brisk walk to the far bus stop in Davis, and got off in the second stop in Sac, and walked from there.  This was 2.15 mi. in 37 minutes 12 seconds.  Great way to start the morning.  I'm planning on continuing this all week, although I hope to leave a little earlier in the morning.

At this point I want to work on increasing my speed.  To that end I'm activating zombie chases.  These activate, and I have to go faster than my average speed for a given amount of time.  I'm much happier with this speeding me up rather than speeding up for fear of missing my bus.

So far I've Zombie walked every workday since May 20th, and I'm really enjoying it.  I'm about half way through season 1.  Once I run out of episodes I will happily pay for the season pass to get the new ones.