Thanksgiving

Despite the fact that Carlos hates NY, we had a really fun thanksgiving weekend there. That said, we did get a classic welcome to NY by getting sideswipped by a taxi about 100 feet after getting through the Lincoln tunnel.  The taxi cut us off and Carlos went after him. A police happened to be close to where his passengers were being dropped so our midnight arrival turned into 1am as the cops processed the incident. The kids all woke up and were so excited about the whole thing they didn't go back to sleep until 2am....

working up a thanksgiving appetite

Thanksgiving day was full of preparations and enjoying the beautiful weather.  With 8 little kids running around it was tough for everyone to sit down at once, but we all enjoyed the meal in rounds. On Friday we went to the big apple circus. Sofia was scared to death and made me stand in the back for much of the time, but overall it was a lot of fun and the kids loved it. Fortunately it's mostly acrobatics instead of animal abuse...

The kids idolize Tio Charlie so they wanted to spend sometime with him alone. We dropped them off and enjoyed a surprisingly quiet brunch with highschool friends.  While the kids adore Tio Charlie they were pretty judgmental of his apartment: "this is SO small," "do you have another house?" "this isn't fancy and the stairway smells!"  Sofia especially loves Tio Charlie - on the car ride home she was fast asleep and started screaming "WHERE IS TIO CHARLIE?????"

On Sunday we went to my aunt Phyllis' mom memorial service. It was a very nice service and so wonderful to see much of the family. Charlie was the only one of my kids who sat through the service and he seemed to think about it a lot because on the car ride home he wanted to talk about it. He also wanted to understand how everyone in the family is connected to us and what it means to be part of the "family" - cousins, aunts, aunts' moms, etc.

Legoland discovery center was close by so we took the kids for one final round of fun before heading home.


The best part of the weekend was seeing how much fun the kids had together. They played every iteration of spy games they could think of. They even gave each other spy tests. I'm going to try and infiltrate to break their code and spy on them next time.

Pretty fun time.

Warm Fall Weather

It has been a busy but fun fall.  We had beautiful weather for Halloween and enjoyed a walk through the neighborhood starting in NE and down crazy East Capitol. I love Halloween and a beautiful weather amplifies the community fun. Charlie was a vampire with slicked back hair. He had no need for fake teeth because he has no front teeth so a natural fang look.  Diego was Darth Vader though he didn't like wearing his mask. Sofia was a lion with face paint that stayed on for 30 seconds before she smeared it all over. I tried to be Medusa with rubber snakes crawling around my head, but I mainly got blank stares. Carlos was a skeleton that scared all of us.

We couldn't figure out why Sofia didn't want to participate in trick-or-treating until all of a sudden I felt her convulsing in my arms and in the middle of an extremely crowded sidewalk of kids she puked. For good or for bad, my reaction was to catch it in my hand so as not to spoil the poor kids passing by. I managed to get most it and run her to a nearby tree.  30 seconds later she was back to her normal feisty self marching up to doors yelling "trick-or-treat-I-want-canny!"  She and I headed home early to clean up and give out candy. We sat on the front stoop and anytime she'd see someone anywhere on the block she'd yell at them "hey nino, come get canny!"

Sofia certainly is a force within our family. She still screams and hits us when we annoy her, when she is tired or hungry or basically anytime someone tells her "no." Sometimes I talk her off the ledge; other times I put her in her room and walk away to take a deep breath. But we all (well maybe not Diego) adore her. She tries to be one of the big kids - following the pre-k kids around and doing whatever Charlie and Diego do. The boys like to sleep without a shirt so she insists on only wearing pajama bottoms too. Then again any reason to get naked continues to be a good reason in her book - even on the school playground.

Diego's teacher adores him, but I worry about him. Learning to read has been much more challenging for him than Charlie which is a good reminder that there is not set formula for them learning. Diego is an amazing builder, but building letters into words doesn't click. Sight words like "she" get recited back as "her". I know he'll read just fine eventually, but I get worried about how hard it is for him in the meantime. I think he knows he should be further along which breaks my heart. I don't want him to be anxious in kindergarten!  Charlie on the other hand is having a great academic year and likes his his teacher, Ms Farkas. The other day he read for 85 minutes straight (yes, he times himself).  Getting him to do anything sitting down for 85 minutes (other than maybe watch a movie) is nearly impossible.

Recent big news is that we closed on 1/2 a house! Nathan and Soogy own the other 1/2.  Carlos' sheer will power and persistence got this into reach and then Nathan and Soogy got us across the finish line. Nathan and family came down to see the place last weekend and we took advantage of the nice weather to bike around town. We went down the mall and across to Arlington National Cemetery. The kids got to see Big Bill's grave and then we biked up to explore the new property.


  It's going to be a fun project, but lots of work. Week 1 demo took care of most of the top two floors.  Look at this mess!

 I had a work meeting in Seville, Spain which was amazing. It was my first time to Spain and I really loved it - except the food...too much meat and fried food. But the wine and weather were great and the meeting was productive so that was a success. The only down side was that getting there and back took forever so it was a lot of work for Sandra, Carlos and my mom.

First Sleepover

We hosted our first sleepover last weekend. We had two of Charlie's friends come over and all four of them (including Diego) slept in the upstairs room.  Arts and crafts didn't last too long, but we had bought a trunk full of nerf guns on craigslist and that was more their speed.  Of course we had pizza, movie and popcorn as well. It was interesting hearing them work out what movie to watch.  "Star Wars!" "too scary!" "Home!" "too baby!"...."I know: Princess Bride!" "YESSSSSS!!!!"  I loved it! I didn't love how late the stayed up.  We put the mattress on the floor next to another air mattress so they could all sleep next to each other.  Around 9:30 I turned off the lights, around 10 I went back up to check on them and tell them to be quiet, around 10:30 I really told them to be quiet, by 11 I was sure everyone was asleep and at 11:30 I went back to check on them before going to bed only to hear 2 little voices! It turns out Kaivon and Charlie were pretend sleeping when I had come up at 11 and were happily whispering the night away.  I sat there until they fell asleep (which took about 30 seconds once they shut up).  At 6:30am I started hearing jumping upstairs. They were up!!!! How is that possible? I brought pancakes AND waffles upstairs and they were happy....

Fall Season

Sofia and I already seem to have a complex relationship so I can't imagine how it will be as she gets older. I adore her and admire her so much and yet she can make me frustrated beyond belief. She is refusing her nap so by late afternoon she is a total wreck. I mean epic. The other day at Charlie's baseball practice she was battling another little sister for the girl's toy stroller. When I tried to intercede (which btw always makes things worse) she dropped to the dirt screaming and started rolling around - dirt going everywhere, covering her hair and her whole body.  For awhile I let her be, but it soon became clear she had no intention of stopping the charade. By the time she quieted down I had a literal dirt ball on my hands with 30 minutes left in practice and no where to hide.  Sofia is a tough girl and a tired Sofia is nearly impossible.  On the other hand she is so charming and sweet and way more self sufficient than the boys - even at age 2.  She picks out her clothes, dresses herself, uses the bathroom (and half the toilet paper roll) by herself and now she takes a shower and washes her hair by herself (granted she sometimes uses soap instead of shampoo on her hair).

Diego likes kindergarten, but misses Ms Sadowsky and Ms Marandin a lot. Almost every day he goes by their room to say hello. One day he left me on the blacktop to go back into school to find them and when he came back out he told me that he had invited them to come over the following Monday for sushi. Sure enough they both came over for sushi. Diego couldn't have been happier, but Sofia was the one to latch on so tightly to Ms Sadowsky.  Kindergarten is a big transition from Pre-k 4 so I'm happy that Diego is taking it in stride, but he certainly isn't as quick to take up reading as Charlie did so I think it'll be a tough year.  Charlie seems to be enjoying Ms Farkas' class which is a relief. He still only has 2-3 friends in his class but that's better than last year.  After school I usually only get a few grunts about the day, but at bedtime I get more detail.  Charlie has no front teeth...it is a funny look:

Fall weekends have been full of fun activities including soccer and baseball games (little league and Nats game), tennis class, bike rides, rock (more like sculpture) climbing....

Reunion with the yoga babies!

Labor Day Olympics 2015

For Labor Day we made the annual trek to Cleveland this weekend for the Labor Day Olympics. We always make the logistics of getting there harder than they should be, but this year was especially tough. I had a work trip to Mexico the week before so I spent 4.5 hours in a plane, 1.5 hours getting through immigration, got home at 5:30pm, packed up our stuff and we set out for a 6 hour drive at 8pm.  Carlos was on the tennis courts at 9:30am the next day. Despite the rough start the whole weekend ended up a lot of fun and I think it was the first year the kids were really into the competition.
Charlie was sizing up his competition in swimming and running. Unfortunately for him he was in the age group of the son of legendary Rip Esselstyn so he placed 2nd in both sports - but that was good enough for a ribbon so no tears!  Charlie's most impressive performance was in the three-legged race with cousin Eli. They were an amazing duo. He and big Charlie also did a stellar job at the egg toss.   

Diego won his ribbons in a variety of ways....not all of them related to his own victories, but avoiding tears is priority #1.  One blue ribbon was well earned in a collaborative cousin vegetable sculpture competition entry which depicted the Pepper Ridge Community and which took up half the table.  I loved that early on in the weekend they went foraging for items and ideas for a joint sculpture.  It didn't even seem to cross their minds to do individual sculptures.

Another well earned ribbon came from Diego's fishing performance.  Somehow he always catches a fish - whether we are off the dock by Nats park or at this (well-stocked) pond.  He also had a sweet softball performance as third baseman.


Sofia wouldn't do any races, but she made her presence felt in other ways. She insisted on taking off her bathing suit and swimming naked constantly, lying to everyone about her age ("I Fofia; I five") and following nice females around calling them 'mom' (I'm mommy - I think she sees other women as some one else's mom so that's their title).

Despite a grueling ride home in which they didn't sleep for the first 5 (of 6) hours, they woke up happy and were still enthusiastic after school.  I used to say we need a Pepper Ridge West Coast, but now I'm thinking Pepper Ridge East Coast 2nd home version....