Dave and Cathy's Family Blog

Here are the August highlights:

• Lilah gets her pet mice
• Luke plays flag football
• Lilah wins Roller blades at her orthodontist’s annual party at the park
• I race my third triathlon of the season and finish a respectable 17th out of 117 people in my age group
• Kids start school — Lilah is now in fourth grade and Luke is a first grader
• Kids pose for ninth-year and sixth-year portraits

Luke

August was flag football month for Luke. He’s been wanting to play for a long time and really relished the opportunity to get on the field and try something new. He wasn’t the most talented kid on the team but he was definitely the speediest and improved as the season went on. Well, kind of. He was great at defense in his first game but did not get a chance to carry the ball so I had to have “a chat” with the coach about giving Luke some more touches…lol…In the next game, Luke ran about half the length of the field before getting knocked to the ground (on accident), but he was fine and was also happy about how far he got with his run.

The next two games he seemed to lose a little interest and focus. For example, he would do things like not join the huddle or throw the ball when he was supposed to run it. So this gave me an opportunity to work on some of the mechanics of the game with Luke after practice. I can’t really flat out coach Luke at this age though, because if I start telling him what he should do, he just gets all upset and tells me that he knows everything already. The best way to coach Luke is to turn drills like passing and running into a game we can play in our own backyard (with me doing the color commentary and saying things like Luke catches the ball, he scores). In any case, by the last game of the season (there were five games total), Luke showed he had the hang of things again by running pretty much the entire length of the field to score a touchdown. It figures that would be the one game I missed. Oh well, Cathy was there to see it and told me all about it (and so did Luke).

We also finally painted Luke’s room a neutral gray. Of course, that wasn’t as straightforward as it sounds. I remember coming home from lunch to see that Cathy was about half way done with the project. The paint job looked good, but it sort of looked purple. Begrudgingly, Cathy agreed and decided she would have to paint the room all over again. The good news is that the paint job is now complete and the room looks good. All that remains now is to add sculptures? stickers? picture frames? to the walls. That decision is still pending but we’re getting there.

Lilah

Lilah had a great month. She finally got her mice, which she named Kisses and Julia, she won some roller blades at her orthodontist’s annual picnic at the park, and she joined the Barracuda swim team at the Y. The biggest event and change in our household by far is the addition of the mice. Lilah and Luke can spend hours at a time playing with the mice. They love to watch them eat, sleep, run on their wheel, and climb around in their cages like monkeys. Everything they do seems to elicit laughter or an “oh my god.”

The kids also spend plenty of time building contraptions for their mice to play in. The latest is what I call the mouse jungle gym, which is essentially a combination of plastic piping connected together in all different directions, surrounded by a mini wire fence. Luke will also get out his Legos and build miniature houses for the mice to explore. Both Luke and Like simply adore the mice and like to carry them around the house. And the mice definitely have their own personalities — Kisses is the more outgoing one who likes to climb onto your hand, whereas Julia is a bit more standoffish, refusing to walk directly onto your hand (although she can be tricked onto your hand by using a cardboard tube).

Lilah also proved that our hunch about her swimming aptitude was correct. I have heard from both Lilah’s coaches about what a natural little swimmer she is. One of her coaches said Lilah has the best butterfly technique he has seen in a child her age, and the other coach mentioned Lilah also has a great breast stroke kick. More importantly, however, it seems that Lilah enjoys being on the team and relishes the competition.

That’s all for now…much more next month, including pictures of trip to Sweden…