Pure Poetry

Roel just finished dictating a "poem" to me. Each time he added a line, he wanted Sheila to read the entire poem from the beginning. Without further ado:

Mouse in a House
Goat in a Boat
Lamb in a Ham
Butterfly in a Why
Kangaroo in a Moo
Table not stable
Swing in Ping (the duck)
Computer in a Tootuter
Rocketship in a Toot
Light in a Toot
Pumpkin in a Toot
Pocket in a Toot
Peepee Poopoo Toot
--Roel

I thought it was a masterpiece after the first 6 lines (ending in "Table not stable"), but he insisted on going on. You can see where he wanted to take the poem. In fact, many discussions with Roel these days end up going in that direction. Bathroom humor is one of his favorite topics. Towards the end, each time he added a line, and each time Sheila read the new one, his level of delight and self-satisfaction noticeably rose.

Introductions

I guess we should actually introduce the kids. We have two, Roel and Susanna. Here's Roel:


Roel is 4 and a half and in his second year of pre-school. (I originally put "4.5", but that just looks funny.) One of his favorite activities is cooking. He's definitely a product of the Bay Area -- he's a total foodie. I remember a couple of years ago, we were back on the East coast visiting family (the Hickeys -- also foodies, BTW). They had set out some hors d'oeuvres, including crackers and smoked salmon. Roel took a look, and asked for some capers. Capers! I didn't know what capers were until I was an adult. When he grows up, he wants his own restaurant called "Roel's Kitchen". They serve sushi and pancakes, among other things. His other career aspirations include firefighter and being in a parade.

Speaking of food, this is our lovely daughter Susanna. She is 6 months old, and loves to eat. She just started solid food.


We've given her rice cereal and pears, which she loves, and green beans, which she, umm, does not love. At her last ped visit, she was 50th percentile in height and head, and 75th percentile in weight. So she's calmed down a bit from her prior visit, when she was 90th in weight. She's a great eater, and clearly mama has some primo stuff flowing from her bosom. We think Susanna is going to be a great singer. Her voice is clear, with a pleasant tone, and it really projects. She definitely lets us know when she's upset. But like Roel was at her age, she is a very chill baby. We're very lucky to have two relatively mellow kids.

With all of this food talk, it seems appropriate that this posting is on Thanksgiving day. Oh, and here's the entire family:

7:45 a.m.: "Momma, let's pretend we're bunny anteaters...

...and we eat berries and our noses aren't that long but we pick up ants with our tails and put them outside our house."

7:51 a.m.: "Did you know gigantasauruses can run faster than you've ever seen?"

7: 52 a.m.: "Momma, Susanna is licking the floor!"

All on my first cup of coffee. Cheers!

Yes, our kids are wonderful and all, but what the heck were you doing starting a blog at 4 in the morning?

Great idea! I'm on board. I have no idea what a gif or web 2.0 means.

For us, for our kids

This is our intial foray into the blogosphere. Why? Well, I recently rediscovered our wedding website:
http://members.aol.com/sheilafro/
This is *sooooo* far before Web 2.0, it might be something like Web 0.5. Remember animated gifs? I mean, it’s hosted on AOL, for crying out loud! But, it was fun working on it, and we now have this great archive of a very special time in our lives. Now that we're parents, we're even more aware of how life just whizzes by. So I really want to start documenting this -- my memory, afterall, isn't quite what it used to be.

So the modern way of doing this seems to blogs. We'll see how it goes. The most important thing is to just get started, I think. With two young kids, each day has its fair share of suprising, touching, frustrating, poignant (I find it hard to use that word seriously), and Kodak moments. Let's start capturing them!