birthday circle: a saga

Not only is this the last week of school but, tomorrow, it is finally my turn for a birthday circle. I am the last of the year. The birthday circles started out fairly lowkey and we would celebrate our friends with treats of fruit kebabs, juice popsicles, or popcorn but somewhere along the way, one-upmanship (amongst the children, not the parents) kicked in. I was going to bring the best treat ever: pink cakepops from Starbucks. This had been my plan for months. and months. and months. 

And then my best friend, the girl I am going to marry, ruined everything (by her mother's admission). They baked/brought giant, and I mean GIANT, cookies with chocolate chips and M&Ms. They were fantastic. We all loved them and we are still talking about it! Then the birthday circle rules were promptly and drastically rewritten. 

There went my cakepop plan. We then decided to order our cakepops from Whole Foods (made without refined sugar and, sadly, not pink) but they don't make them anymore. We visited three different Whole Foods stores and some other fancy bakeries trying to settle on a birthday treat. In the end, my mom made peanut butter cookies not rolled in sugar and with chocolate shavings instead of chips. They are precisely uniform in size with most of the chocolate intentionally hidden at the bottom of the cookie. 

And then there was the book. It is tradition to donate a book to my school in honor of your child's birthday. Combine the rigid guidelines about what reading materials are allowed in the Montessori classroom with my mom's fussiness about grammar, language, and punctuation and you will know that choosing the book was not an easy task. It took countless hours to select one about insects. It's not hardcover but I hope that will be fine. 

And then there were the photos. I have to show my friends photos from each of my years. This is what I chose.

reading dog

On Friday afternoon, I spent so many hours at the library that I was still there when Joe E the reading dog arrived. At 2:00, I asked the librarian if the dog was coming that day (and if she wanted to go on vacation with me to swim with the dolphins - which, for a boy like me, is almost as exciting as being at the library). 3:30. So we made the big commitment to wait. and wait. and wait. Then I asked my mom every single minute that passed if the dog was there yet. Luckily, he arrived at 3:28.

Meeting the dog had been on my list of things to do for months but my schedule is often so full with picnics, lunch dates, or bike riding that the timing was just never quite right.

While the reading dog program is generally for children who read below level, I read way above level (remember, I am only 4!) but I am still a beginner. Joe E listened patiently as I read a book. Maybe he was a bit sleepy. He let me cuddle with him and he was so soft and freshly bathed. Because I get tired when I read aloud and I had the dog and his owner all to myself, I picked out book after book to have read to me once I finished my story.

I even told Joe E my favorite joke:
What do dogs eat for dessert?
pupcakes

foreman

After attending a party to celebrate the conclusion of another successful eight-week session of soccer, I stopped by my new campus to see how nicely things are unfolding. The construction of my new campus is a huge undertaking and there is no one better than a Montessori student to serve as a construction foreman. I only meant to stay five minutes but I was put to work, fed some pizza, compelled to share with the school's founder/director my brilliant ideas about strategies for transporting the classroom materials, and then asked to move tons of rocks. By hand. And, seriously, I mean tons.

I cannot even begin to tell you how spectacular my new campus is going to be. It sits on 12 mostly undeveloped acres and much of the focus is on the expansive natural playscapes and the nature education program. There are walking trails, wildflower meadows, a dry creek bed, and it's almost as if they were thinking of my perfect world when every minute detail of this campus was planned (and left unplanned). Our weekly assemblies will be enjoyed outdoors under the huge canopy of a Live Oak.

See this mountain of dirt behind me? Not only did I help secure this slide using stumps but I also got to take the inaugural run. best slide ever.

I'll be going back later in the week to do some painting and to check on the progress of my workers.

my bike

In recent months, I have put countless miles on my bike, participated in a bike Roadeo, and I have grown to be almost six feet tall. (Maybe not.) But I am definitely long overdue for a new bike. After school yesterday, my mom took me to the bike shop to get fitted properly and to do some test drives. 

I tested each bike in the store, including every color of every model that was available in my size - because color and graphics matter, you know. Each test drive was an ordeal. Pull it out of the display, adjust the seat and training wheels, walk the bike outside to the dedicated test drive space, ride for an hour, discuss the merits of each bike, walk the bike back inside, return it to the display, and start the process over. Not only was it fun, but it was a great way to kill a few hours. I even got some lessons about bike maintenance.

I was devastated to leave empty handed. While this Trek bike, with its flowery pink ribbons and XOXOXOXOXO treads, was the cutest thing I have ever seen in my life, I may have to opt for something a bit more suitable for trail riding; this would be a sweet bike if I lived near a pastry shop and could ride over, with a bouquet in the basket, to get some macarons and a chai. I have now decided on the exact bike I want.

Easter bunny

As soon as I woke up very early yesterday morning, I was so intent on checking my calendar to see if it really was Easter that I completely overlooked what the Easter bunny delivered. He left me a basket overflowing with peanut butter cups, a creme egg, a Hello Kitty activity book, a swim toy, and, my favorite: a large box of wildflower seeds with 100 square feet of coverage!

I spent most of the day cleaning, making more messes, cleaning, eating nothing but too many carbs and sweets, and being overexcited about my friend Lisa coming for dinner. I did settle in for a while in the afternoon just long enough to sow my wildflower seeds. Next spring, my yard will be spectacular.

I am told that dinner was delicious, though I didn't eat anything except one bite of sweet potatoes. I have recently decided that I don't even like quiche anymore. What?

We finished the evening by playing Canadian version of Trivial Pursuit. Suddenly, I know everything about Saskatchewan and VIA Rail and the Trans-Canada Highway (aka Route Transcanadienne) and that Vancouver used to be called Granville and that there is a Harrods in the Toronto airport. Who knew Canada was so exciting? As a youngster, I thought it was nothing more that just a "different store with boats in it."

But, sadly, this morning I had my Trivial Pursuit privileges revoked for an entire week because I intentionally broke the lid and I threw the cards all over the living room. I was just mad that we had to pause to eat breakfast.

still spring

While we've seen some hot days already, the miserable temperatures seem to be arriving a bit later than usual. I haven't been keeping careful track but I do believe our hottest day this year has been 88. not bad. I am never bothered by the weather, no matter how blazing hot or freezing cold. The afternoons have been perfect for playing in the yard and making horses out of logs. My sport of the week is badminton.

I have a new favorite park that has an expansive playground and a one-mile paved loop around it. My mom has been keeping my bike in her trunk and we often stop there on the way home from school. I ride while she walks/runs. We go at least once around the loop. sometimes twice. or more.

One day last week, I met my friend at the park after he finished school. We climbed trees, rode his scooters, and played. Atop the tree, we had a conversation about how high we will climb once we are 10. Yesterday my mom surprised me with my very own scooter and I rode it at the park for two, maybe three, hours.

The wildflowers are in full bloom right now. That has made my long commute to school more interesting, maybe even exciting. A million thanks are owed to Lady Bird. 

Sitting in a patch of bluebonnets in my favorite park wasn't a bad way to end the week. 

spring break

Today is the last day of spring break. Maybe it went better than I or anyone had expected. Sometimes a boy like me needs school or other highly structured activities to keep content.

On the very first day of spring break, my mom and I visited a friend's ranch to survey the environmental destruction of a nearby development. As sad as that is, I do love to see heavy equipment working. There, I met someone who used to operate gantry cranes in Saudi Arabia; unprompted, he confirmed what my mom tells me frequently: I need to have top-notch math and physics skills. We've been working on that whenever I need breaks from reading and spelling lessons. 

On prior visits to the ranch, there was nothing but thousands upon thousands of acres of trees to look at from the hilltop. Now we see nothing but rooftops and roads. It used to be so quiet that you could hear all of the cows and bulls and goats - most of which seem to have been moved on. Nevertheless, we enjoyed a nice stroll through the ranch and found some fossils and a deer skull. In this photo, I am standing in what should be a flowing river but the drought is still suffocating Texas.  

I took my first canoe trip. As you can see, I did all of the difficult work of paddling while my dad enjoyed a leisurely ride and took some photos of how great I am.

No school break would be complete without a trip to the Blanton. My dad has been taking me there since I was a newborn baby. It's a good place to practice being quiet and following rules. I only got lectured once by the security guard for sitting on something in the gallery that looked like a bench. If it looks like a bench . . .

We had the excitement of my mom's birthday waiting for us at the end of the week. She is often shocked, maybe even horrified, that black forest cakes simply cannot be found in bakeries here. (Those Americans don't know what they are missing!) My dad took the initiative to hunt down a black forest cake recipe and he and I baked the best cake in the world. (I didn't even realize that he knew you could get recipes from the internet nevermind that he could bake a cake from scratch. I will definitely put him to work as my helper again.) You probably cannot tell how massive this is but the serving platter is 16x16 and the cake is four layers. And it may be the richest cake ever with all of that whipped cream. oh my.

And then there is the sheer joy of having so much time around home without worrying about the hours-long commute to/from school or having to do anything or go anywhere really. I found a worm that kept me occupied for hours. I looked at some bugs and leaves in my creature peeper. I fixed up my yard and my columbine is healthy and only days away from blooming. The best part of this spring break is that the obnoxiously hot weather hasn't set in quite yet. Some days were even cool enough for me to wear pants.

The alarm clock is set for 5:00am tomorrow.