It seems like forever since our last family bike ride. After a year and a half, Mika has outgrown her beloved pink 12” bike – the one she used to master riding without training wheels. Luckily we’re in a building with kids of all ages and she got a 16” loaner from our downstairs neighbors’ boy (the fact that he is a 7-year old, ultra cool kid makes his bike all the more attractive to her). Her pink bike has been passed on to the first of 3 little girls who are in line to borrow it – all within our circle of friends!
Today’s 3.35 mile (5.39 km) ride around Prospect Park was mostly Mika and Sung leading the way, and me with sleeping Tobin trailing behind. After our early dinner in Park Slope, the wind picked up considerably and Tobin and i had to bundle up on our ride back home (Mika and Sung were able to fit their bikes into our car). All are set for a good night’s sleep!
Friday after school, Olivia stopped by for a play date. The girls let Tobin tag along for most of the time and little Theo took pointers on how to participate.
We’re all guilty of showing (mostly) picture perfect moments on our blogs, but every parent knows there are other sides to family life as well.
Moments after recording the adorable birthday songs for 할아버지, i let the kids romp around our big bed while preparing their bath and getting their room ready for the night. Tobin had skipped his nap (…) and Mika was pretty tired as well, so the nearly unavoidable “fight over nothing” broke loose. I waited a moment to give them a chance to work it out, then tried to defuse the situation … but they had already moved on to the next level (deaf to constructive advice or raised voice). Short of having to pull them apart, i decided to capture the moment and use it later for educational purposes. And much later for blackmail.
And yes, our kids are still adorable – almost all of the time.
We hope you have a great Birthday and wish you all the best for a healthy, happy, and prosperous year! As you can see, Mika made a birthday cake for you and put it on our big dining table (with many legs). On top are approximately as many candles as you are old (her guess) and she built two chairs so you can sit down at the table. Both kids also sang the birthday song for you many times, and here are two select versions: sweet and wild/giggly.
Mika and her friend Tommaso begged me to put nail polish on their hands at our play date. After getting permission of his parents, i went ahead and applied the design they had come up with … a pattern of fuchsia and sparkly blue. The kids were quite pleased with the results and i was impressed that they willingly sat still while their nails were drying to perfection.
Mondays are tough days for Tobin to take a nap – we’re shuttling back and forth between German school in Prospect Heights (for him in the morning, and again for Mika in the afternoon) and Mika’s regular school pickup. The timing just doesn’t work and once we’re back home at 5:30 pm, there are only two options: either he has a royal meltdown before dinner time, or his sister is in a great mood and pampers him like one of her dolls. Today was his lucky day – this is what i walked into after it was suspiciously quiet in the kids’ room for 20+ minutes…
Mika’s German reading and writing class follows a similar path as her public school reading and writing education – albeit slower, since they’re meeting only one hour per week. After learning the German pronunciation of vowels and the Umlaute (ä, ö, ü), the kids moved on to inventive spelling (sounding out words) and are now learning their first Sichtworte (sight words*). Yesterday’s exercise was a self portrait with description of their eye color, hair color, and their favorite thing to do. They also made Mother’s Day related crafts, just like Tobin did in his morning (preschool) group. In Mika’s class are also Lily, an old friend from Choo Choo Train, and a couple of kids from her current school.
Tobin is getting so comfortable at Wortspiele, that he starts playing immediately when we come to pick up Mika after class…
* most commonly used words they learn how to spell correctly
Monday morning, we got a little treat at Mika’s school: it was grade K’s music share performance. Only 3 out of the 6 Kindergarten classes fit comfortably on stage at the big auditorium, so this is only half her grade you’re looking at…
Mika’s class has started to get reading assignments at home: they get to borrow two books per week from the classroom library and have to keep a log on how many times they’ve read each book aloud. This is where a little brother comes in handy: Tobin never tires listening to her reading! The video is from her very first assignment two weeks ago, and she’s been making quantum leaps since. She has also started bringing home books especially for Tobin – the latest batch has one about an orange bulldozer…
Mika did indeed recover completely after only 3 days of the knock-out stomach virus. Today, the whole family made a dash to IKEA to bring home a few more items for the kids’ study corner: a simple desk just happens to fit exactly in the open space, and we’ll be able to use two of the junior sized chairs side by side. The back wall got 3 white metal boards to display the latest drawings, and the green leaves made room for Mika’s garland light. Hooray to Sung, who was the driving force behind this project.
This morning, Mika woke up to our block being turned into a movie/photo set for a Banana Republic commercial. They’re going to work all day right between our house and Henry’s house and we have front row seats on our fire escape. Mika loved sitting outside in the perfectly warm Spring breeze, and even Luna ventured out a few steps to see what we’re up to. Between this welcome distraction and the first light snacks staying down, Mika finally got a little bit of her energy back (although she just fell asleep on the couch for a mid-day nap).
Two kids double the fun … but sometimes they double other things as well: just when we thought we all got away unharmed by Tobin’s (week long!) stomach bug, Mika woke up this morning feeling sickly and soon progressing into the same symptoms that Tobin had 10 days ago on Sunday. Except she doesn’t have the same fever yet. Wish us luck that this round passes rather quickly…
