Today marked the long awaited, three month belated return of the food vendors to the Red Hook ballfields. Despite the current heat wave, Eugenie joined us for a first sampling. So far, the quality of the food doesn’t live up to past season’s memories, but it’s still well worth the trip. Poor Tobin couldn’t enjoy any of the goods yet and tried to sample the grass instead.

I continue to watch Mika’s drawing abilities develop while trying to stay as hands-off as possible. It’s just really interesting to me how she expresses her visuals without too much of an outside influence … yet.

However, lately she has started to pick up all kinds of visual symbols at lightning speed: suns are yellow balls with rays, cats look like Luna, flowers have certain shapes and green stems, and rainbows are adult-recognizable in shape and colors (see pictures above). The letters are her own spelling of the song title “You Are My Flower”. She is very proud of her new skills (and so are we), but all these drawings are matter-of-fact.

That’s why i love the days when she still comes up with her own, semi-abstract shapes and connects them to wild storylines. Below, left: Mouse pulling a bag with a piece of coal in it to fire up train engine. Below, right: large, pink sail boat (center), circled by 2 pink seagulls and a pink cloud, on blue sea.

“Dude, it’s good to have you back. Really.”

Although this borders on advertising, it was a life saver that Mika and i could wear our new, waterproof sandals to the playground today. The parents had created a lake-size puddle by covering the main sprinkler drain … a perfect place to cool off in the afternoon.

5 1/2 months after Tobin’s Baek-Il celebration, we visited Baltimore again … with a crawling, sitting, and teething little person instead of the tiny baby. Tobin instantly reconnected with his great-grandmother and the rest of the family. Mika enjoyed splashing in the garden with her grandparents and occasionally showing the little energizer bunny who’s the boss big kid.

… every now and then Mika makes sure her noggin gets sole attention.

Yelling “No! Only MY head!”, she kept crawling between Tobin and the camera. All day long. Here’s the cutest of many ‘outtakes’, where they look more alike than in real life.

Another perfect day in Garrison. This time, the ‘von Changs’ teamed up with the Litt-Coles to visit the (extended) ArandaLee family. The rain clouds backed off just in time so we could enjoy our potluck BBQ and the kids could paint the rock. Well, not just the kids … everybody painted the rock! (A special thanks goes to Santiago’s baby brother, who decided to wait another couple of days until his actual due date!)

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This afternoon at the playground, Tobin wasn’t leaving his blanket in any coordinated way. Following his late afternoon ‘power nap’ however, he suddenly started … CRAWLING! Within minutes he picked up serious speed and seems ready to give ‘Independence Day’ a whole new meaning. All his hard work finally paid off. Time to baby proof the house…

A month after discovering full color for her pictures, Mika finally put her outline drawings together with color fillings. As you can see, there’s a whole new world to be discovered … like a flock of rainbow-colored airplanes to visit Omi and Opa in Germany!

Although Tobin is still not crawling forward, he has mastered many related exercises – crawling backwards, hopping into frog pose, etc. He’s also been sitting unsupported for a week now (no leaning on hands, see pictures above), but today he actually sat himself up entirely without help. Twice. Nobody saw how he did it. We put him down on his tummy, turned our backs, and … he would just sit there and smile at us.

Another note (to the pictures): this past Thursday we went to Pier 1 at Brooklyn Bridge Park to have a first glimpse at the Olafur Eliasson waterfall installations. From this angle, it didn’t look as magical as we had hoped, but it’s still a great idea. The visual experience will no doubt be better from the river, so we’re planning to board a water taxi soon.

It seems like yesterday that Mika had her first day of school, but today our big girl was already graduating from the first year of Choo Choo Train! Then again, if you compare how much she’s grown in all aspects of her life … and how much Tobin has grown (from bump to 8-month-old brother), it’s been a long time!

The kids proudly wore their brand new graduation t-shirts and marched in to ‘Pomp and Circumstance‘. They performed a play that they had written by themselves, sang several songs, danced, and received their diploma at the end of the ceremony. Afterwards, all families gathered in the garden for graduation BBQ. The weather threatened to rain on the outdoor plans, but a bit of summer drizzle couldn’t stop us from having a wonderful time.

UPDATE: Check out their yearbook to see all the little rascals and what they’d like to be when they grow up…