Here are the November highlights:
- Kids spend the night at their cousins’ house
- Everyone gets together for Thanksgiving
- Luke gets a new haircut
- The kids go “mountain bike riding” in local mountains
- Mom and dad compete in Muddy Buddy 2009
Lilah
Everyone once in a while, I have one of those moments where I become aware of just how much more advanced our kids are than we were in our childhood. This month, the realization came when I saw Lilah working on a document in Microsoft Word. I asked Lilah what she was working on and she responded, “My Christmas list for Santa.” As I got closer to her, I realized that she was using Word to format a list that she had already hand written on a piece of paper. I couldn’t even remember writing a Christmas list by hand and here was Lilah doing it on the computer.
Not only did she write a list, she also included a small preamble addressed to Santa. Here is the intro:
Dear Santa,
Santa, this wish list will be showing what I want for Christmas. Remember if it’s to much don’t give me all of it, but of course you can give me other gifts.
Merry Christmas!!!Now I present you my Wish List
I love the sophistication of the intro, especially how she lets Santa know that he doesn’t have to get her everything if it’s “too much.” And then, my favorite, the formal yet dramatic close, “Now I present you my Wish List.” Here is a link to the full Christmas list in PDF format, a real gem for the archives.
I got another glimpse into how Lilah thinks when I had two accidents during a mountain biking expedition with the kids. The first accident involved the car. It happened when I backed into a parking spot off the PCH highway — I maneuvered the car a little too far back and ended up scraping a jagged boulder, which took a substantial amount of paint off my bumper.
Once I got over the frustration of that episode, we got our bikes together and took off on the trail. We were having a great time and I wanted to capture some of the fun on camera so I road up ahead of the kids, pulled over to the side of the road, got off my bike and prepared to take a photo. As Lilah pulled into my viewfinder I felt the bike (which I leaned up against my leg) begin to slip. I wanted to get the photo so I just let the bike slide down my leg and fall to the dirt. Bad move. On the way down, the bike’s chain ring gouged my leg big time, leaving three long bloody strips. There was a lot of blood, which grossed Lilah out, so I wrapped up the injury with a sock. To make matters worse, the picture I gave up my leg for came out a little blurry.
After we got back to the car, Lilah had a moment of insight. She asked me if I thought my accident was “karma.” I asked her what she meant by that. “Well, you did something bad to the car, so something bad happened to you,” she responded. Wow, now that’s deep.
Luke
Luke is looking forward to Christmas and has ideas of his own. My favorite was when he began reciting his Christmas list and telling me he wanted a DS, a new bike, a Wii, etc. When I told him that his list sounded like a little too much, he said that’s why he was asking now because “it’s free.” The “it’s free” comment came up for a second time a day or so later so I decided to set some more realistic expectations for Luke. I told him that he was right only if he was asking for one gift, but if he was asking for multiple gifts, then parents have to help Santa out with half the cost and that there’s no guarantee that he will get everything on his list. That seemed to have done the trick for now ;-).
This month, Luke also decided to forego our usual buzz cut haircut. He insisted that he wanted his hair to be longer so this is the haircut he ended up with. He seemed happy being able to make this decision and I think he also like his new hairdo.
Luke’s cousin Sebastian got a kick out of the specificity behind Luke’s Christmas wish list. Instead of saying he wanted a new bike, Luke said he wanted a new 24-inch mountain bike. This was something he remembered from our visit to the bike store. The guy at the bike store said it’s probably okay to get him a bigger bike so he can grow into it but I don’t think we’re going to go that big. I mean, we tested the theory out the other day by sitting him on top of a 24-inch high bike and his feet barely touched the floor. There was also no way he could support the weight of the bike with his tiny frame. I told Luke he needs to eat a little more so he can get taller and gain a little more muscle to help him handle the bike. Fortunately, he agreed.
Anyway, that’s all for now. It’s definitely a very busy month right now as I’m sure it is for all of you. The Christmas cards are beginning to roll in. We really enjoy receiving these as it’s always fun to see how we are all changing and growing (for the better, right?). Happy holidays everyone!
