Getting Old

I'm not sure whether it's Vivian and Evan going to school or Jen reintroducing me to my workout after a two month break but I am napping a lot. I found this photo in my phone the other day. Vivian later admitted to having crept up and taken it while I was napping on the couch.

Meanwhile Jo is getting into the swing of things. Here are her notes from her proposed itinerary for a trip to places that are disappearing. The Taj Mahal shows up though we've been there twice because "Evan was so young he doesn't remember". I propose we take Vivian and Evan out of school for a year, get ourselves a Spanish speaking travel companion, and go for it. We'd be happy to meet up with friends and family at different places. It'll give Jo something to do while I nap.

Random Drivel

Crazy refuses to not lay in the newly planted grasses in the front yard that we are desperately trying to keep alive in Austin's scorching summer heat. Jo has resorted to putting tiny twigs in the ground so they stick out like sharpened stakes to discourage her but so far this strategy isn't working. Crazy is now spending all her outdoor time in the grasses.

Meanwhile I found an email with this subject line in my mailbox. "Putin Forewarns: Obama Will Not Finish His Second Term Church Leaders Secretly Preparing Treacherous Takeover Of The U.S.". I wasn't curious enough to open it. In hindsight, Crazy destroying the grass won't seem like a big deal, at least not in the world according to Vlad.

Now that school is in full swing Vivian and Evan steal playtime with Ava, Eleanor and Theodor when they can. Homework is already a sore topic. The Mandarin teacher is a hard ass and she wants the kids to practice 10 minutes of Mandarin each day. Vivian doesn't mind that. It's reading Spanish that she hates. And Evan is getting completely exhausted by this Kindergarten thing. He falls asleep on most days in the car on the 10 minute ride back from school, naps for an hour or more, and still gets to bed and crashes when it is his bed time.

We are getting used to school schedules slowly. I am not dropping or picking the kids up as much as I do because Jo seems to have a meeting or a need to see someone at school after drop-off or before pick-up often. She is on the parent association board and is no fun to talk to after these meetings. At home laundry has taken over our lives and if our fair decorator could see how we have redone the living room in shabby laundry style, she'd have a conniption. 

Today I turned on the radio just as I pulled into the driveway. Terry Gross was chatting with Louis C. K., who said "The biggest gift about becoming a father is knowing that you are the second most important person in the world". When I see Vivian or Evan being selfish or petty about something, I get impatient. But then I figure I'd better not hold my breath. It's going to be a while before each of them come to the point in their lives when she or he isn't the most important person in the world.

Day Trip

Last Saturday after the visit to the Thinkery to see Google's self driving cars we drove on to Katy for Hailey's birthday party. I managed to avoid Chuck-e-Cheese's for most of the duration of the party and hid out in the Starbuck's next door but eventually but did go over and meet the kids there. Evan and I played a shooter game. We were escaping pirates and had to shoot our way through giant crab and piranha attacks. Fun. Then we took our "annual professional photos". As you can see, the photo booth at Chuck-e's had a hard time adjusting to the difference between Jo and my almost identical skin tones. Evan and Vivian's photo turned out much better.

Back at the Petrino's, Patrick and I watched the season opener for Montana while Laura and Jo chatted and Vivian got dressed in Hailey's dress-up dresses and the kids played. Then we overstuffed ourselves with Patricia's most amazing roast beef and dumplings, had a rare cup of coffee, and drove back to Austin while Vivian and Evan gently snored in the back seat.

Self Driving Cars

Google has brought it's fleet to self driving cars to Austin to expose their algorithms to some friendly Texas driving. And the good folks from Google at the Thinkery one recent Saturday morning were more than eager to explain the wonders of the self-driving car to the kids.  But then a Thinkery person brought out a dollar bubble maker and the kids were instantly disinterested in the billion dollars of research that the self driving car represented.

Afterwards we walked across the street from the Thinkery to the park (dodging cars in the crosswalk that wouldn't stop, and wishing for self driving cars) where the kids played. Then they posed for a photo by Nessy in front of the park - you can see that Evan has his photo-posing face on.