Language Lab

....So what do you do when there is no afternoon class, no language lab and your head so full of Portuguese think it might burst like a pinata (do they have pinatas in Brazil?)...you call it a day and go home early.

This is the part in the post where pictures serve better than words. The reader can't fully appreciate the events of the day without pictures.

Pete has mastered the art of eating rice cereal. In truth, he was a born natural, and it was one of my favorite parenting duties. Unlike the philosophical mind games and brain-bending stratega needed to sway the inswayable will of a two year-old --the task of feeding Pete rice cereal has a finite and tangible goal, empty the bowl into his mouth. You know you're done when all the rice cereal is gone and in his belly and he is kicking contendedly, and you can derive the same sense of parenting satisfaction as you do when you bathe Sam, get him dressed or convince him to eat his peas without the deal-making and lobbying that sometimes gives me a headache.

Now, I say pictures are needed here to appreciate the following fact....Elise taught Pete how to make zerburts (sp? the art of sticking out your tongue and going thplbllt!!!) the same week he started eating rice cereal. Picture a pale mushy spray covering his cheeks, nose, bib, chair, my chest, shirt, hands and, yes, sometimes, even glasses.

Pete insisted I lay down with him for 45 minutes. He was very convincing. When Sam woke from his nap, he insisted on a cookie. He was acting like he was in withdrawal, stumbling and swaying around the house repeating one word over and over, "Cooks.....cooks......cookieeees!" I'm easy. Sometimes, too easy. So, we all went out to get our little cookie monster his fix.

Even I admit our apartment can sometimes be claustrophobic. It's free, so I don't complain, but we all fair better in the great outdoors. That afternoon was no exception. Thoughts clear under a perfectly blue Washingtonian sky.

Boa tarde!

The denouement of our outing was soccer in the courtyard. In retrospect, a bad idea in Crocs. Sam skinned his knee (again :( )and the rest of the evening was spent in serious convalescence. He deserved it. And afternoon cartoons were therapeutic to all. Elise made wonderful eggplant parm. I cracked open a beer. We found House Hunters, and the international version seems more relevant than ever. And was good and right with the world.

...Now if only Pete wouldn't wake up twice a night and Sam slept in past 5:45.....what can you do? I complain, but I think I would miss Sam sitting on the kitchen counter drinking his milk from a straw while I made his breakfast and my lunch and Elise coffee and watch the towering crane swing slowly across the violet, warming sky and the sun paint the apartment buildings around us a pale shade of......nevermind. Next time, I'll just a take a picture.