Chiang Mai

We're in Chiang Mai, having just finished the conference and seeing my old colleagues. Leo's been having a hard time with the jetlag, sleeping at 3pm and waking at 3am. It's been hard for me to remember my Thai. But the food has been wonderful. My stomach has not been so happy with the raw fermented crab, but I'm hoping it gets used to the local bugs again! It's nice to be back. It's been nearly 10 years since I've been back and I still love it here.

Leo and Paul have been sightseeing while I'm at the conference. Here's some pix of their explorations. Leo learned to bow and wai to the Thais and started writing Thai script. We're hoping to take him to see the elephants tomorrow.

monsters!

Leo and Claudia broke out the new make-up kit (after Halloween special). They did the make-up themselves in front of the mirror. Freaked me out when I got home. The white hair stuff comes with the kit.

Yawn!

We saw the cousins for dinner. Leo was the only kid eating beets. I was so proud. Last night at dinner I told him that I'd take him anywhere to eat and that someday we'd eat silkworm cocoons and fried bees and raw crab and all kinds of yummy things. He rolled his eyes at me and feigned a yawn and patted his open mouth. I guess he's 6 going on 16. I was expecting teenage disdain at some point, just didn't think it'd happen so young.

Leo Video 2010-2011

Every year for Pop-pop's birthday, I make a video. This year, it just wasn't getting finished, between travels to the east coast, Europe and Hawaii and everywhere else. This is the long version - a shorter version will follow at some point in the not too distant future for those who can't sit through 11 minutes of watching someone else's kid.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

If you can't see it, you can go to:

http://youtu.be/uSYD3heyMPU

Leo's trip to the farm with the girls

Leo went to visit a friend's farm with his "girlfriend", Foster, and her sister Grayson, and two other friends. They had a blast, holding rabbits and visiting the goats and other animals. Foster and Grayson's mom is a saint for taking 5 kids an hour south to do the trip.

Leo and Foster

The goats

Leo and the girls

Leo reads "Benny and Penny"

Porpor and Poppop helped Leo get his dream gift - a video camera spy watch. He spent the day trying out a zillion features and spying on us with video action that seems to work just as well in the dark as in daylight. It's a cool device. Anyway, for bedtime, instead of me reading him a book as usual, he read me "Benny and Penny", a cartoon book. He's practicing reading it as he will be reading it aloud for his class in a week.

If you can't see this clip, go to

http://youtu.be/IlKFBBYctTI

School Play - shadow puppets

Leo had his first school play yesterday. It was awesome. Just shows what a great teacher he has. Mr. Neiman made a school bus out of cardboard and the kids decorated it. They each made shadow puppets of Magic School Bus or Dr. Seuss characters. They each had lines and recorded their lines. They could just read them off the script. So when the shadow puppet play happens, they move the puppets around but don't say anything because they just play the recording from behind the screen.

Brilliant! It eliminates stage fright and the possibility of a kid forgetting their lines. This was the fourth performance, I think. They had done it a few times for the different grades at school to watch. Apparently the third or fourth graders were somewhat critical of them. Hopefully it was helpful criticism.

Anyway, Leo was "Thing 2" like from the Cat in the Hat. He has one long line at 7:33 into the play (in case you can't sit through it all!).

Negative numbers

At night, Leo and I cuddle in bed and talk about the day and then he goes to sleep. Tonight he told me that he knew what one minus six was. I said, "What?" He said, "negative five". I thought maybe someone had told him that so I said, "That's pretty good. What's one minus two?" He said, "negative one". I told him that was pretty cool that he could figure out negative numbers. He said he didn't really understand them and were they like a mirror? Yep, I said, just like a mirror.

Amersfoort and the bell tower in the Netherlands

I had a couple day stopover in the Netherlands to visit my friend Ernst and his 5 year old son, Ruben. Ernst teaches at Utrecht University and works in industrial energy efficiency. He taught me the first stuff I ever knew about power plants, nearly 20 years ago.

He lives in this planned community of some 15,000-20,000 folks. It's all funky architecture, tons of awesome bike paths, ring roads that make driving unpleasant and inconvenient, and schools and health facilities in the center of the community. The bike paths are great - bikes are separated from pedestrians as well as cars. You can ride side by side. No hills. It's completely pleasant and easy and the nicest way to get around. Even when you're as short as I am, and riding a bike made for someone 6 ft plus.

These houses are famous for their architecture:

We happened to be in Amersfoort on the last day they had the Onze Lieve Vrouwe tower open for tours. This is the second highest tower in the Netherlands and the x-y origin for Dutch maps, and it has a wonderful carillon. Ruben and I got to try our hand at carillon - you make a fist and hit the keys. Each key rings a different bell.

We got to climb the very narrow, dark, spiral staircase to the top and watch a carillon performance. If you can't see the video below, go to http://youtu.be/8APM4W6o4Es

P.S. Forgot to include this in the Denmark posting, but this was smallest thing I saw in Denmark - the bed. It was so small, I had to be careful not to fall off. That's my laptop on top for scale.

Headless Leo Haunted the Neighborhood Last Night

Denmark and Big Foot

This was the coolest thing I saw in Denmark: Big Foot!

I thought it was a giant Burning Man sculpture ready to be torched on the main plaza in Aarhus.

These are huge planks of lumber. Couldn't read the sign so I'm not sure what it was, but clearly a temporary art installation. Two days later, when I brought my colleagues to see it, it was gone!

Waterfall also in the main plaza:

Cathedral in the main plaza:

I counted myself very lucky to see an offshore wind farm from the train - at least 7 turbines off the coast near Middlefahrt.

As you'll notice from this sign, the Danish are very understated. This would never sell beer in the US. Probably the best beer in town. We're not sure though. Denmark is probably the best country between Germany and Sweden, too.

More Danish art. Tons of bikes, of course and this town was a little hilly.


I really wanted to buy some Lego's for Leo. I went to the big Lego store. Lego's cost twice as much in Denmark as they do in the US. This mural is made completely out of Lego's.

More art - big welded steel over brick with kids climbing it like a jungle gym. You'd never do this in the US.

Occupy Copenhagen was occupying one of the plazas in Copenhagen. It was pretty small, but at night they played techno music and had a nice light show about poverty, water, energy and the environment.

Lightning Jets Soccer Team

Paul's 50th Skating Birthday Bash

We had Paul's 50th birthday bash at Skate City's Adult Night. It was great fun, even if they did treat Paul like a little kid, announcing his birthday on the skate floor and singing happy birthday to him, with a decorated table and placemats that announced his birthday.

Lots of friends joined on the floor, including many of us who haven't skated since we were in middle school.

Bill and Andi:

Scott making his way towards cake:

Rob, Mari and Caroline watching the skaters making their moves:

Kevin and Jennifer (coconut flour lemon filled cake not shown here):

K-rock and Dawn taking a break from their fancy moves on the floor:


Xana, Paul and Jim:

Caroline, Paul and Mike:

Kirsten and Mike:

Lisa and Jason:

Wendy and Ross were wonderful to give Paul a gift of having Leo over for a sleepover so we could party late, which we did. And Leo got new roller skates! Free skates came with the birthday party package and just in time too, because Leo has been using Paul's skates to skate around the house and he's going to break an ankle doing so because they don't fit.

Overscheduled!

I've been driving Leo nuts for a couple days, probably the same way I drive Paul nuts. Yesterday, after school, we had a quick early supper, then the Bear Creek School Carnival which was a fundraiser event that his friends were attending. Then we met his friends for a quick pizza and headed to Mari's (Thank you Mari! It's been a hard two weeks with Paul gone) where Leo was having a sleepover.

This morning I picked them all up at 7:45 to get breakfast and then go to soccer. After 3 bad practices/games in a row, Leo actually stayed the whole time and played and kicked the ball a few times too. He said he had fun. Then we had a quick lunch and I had to drag him to the mountain bike clinic. It was Leo's first dirt riding. The new Valmont Bike Park has super huge jumps and tricks for great bikers as well as beginner trails and features. We did the clinic and Leo had a blast. He didn't want to leave. He did fall a few times and leave some blood on the trail. At one point, I got lost and we ended up on the intermediate trails and he rode a twisty steep bridge feature and sort of fell off the bike although not off the bridge, thankfully.

We get home in time for a quick shower to get the blood off and make dinner for the neighbors who have just had their second kid and the husband is out of town. Again, I thought he had fun - he loves little kids.

But there was a LOT of whining, fighting and even the first really nasty teenage comment - "I told you a MILLION times I want pizza!" I let him know in no uncertain terms that I'm not going to take attitude from him. Tonight, he finally found the words to explain that he never wanted to do any of this stuff, that he only wanted to play Legos, that he was tired, that he was really scared of the twisty bridge and he nearly fell off the bridge.

So, I've promised him a down day tomorrow. Nothing is planned. We can build Legos all day. I hope it goes better!

1st grade smile

Books

Leo's teacher is really into writing books. I think the whole school is actually. It's their way of teaching kids to express creativity with a who-cares-if-you-can't-spell attitude.

In class, Leo made a book of "Contin" or counting and it says "one M&M, two bananas," etc. He loved it and read it to his girlfriend Foster in the Kindergarten playground. Last weekend was Foster's and her sister's birthday, so Leo made up two very elaborate book/cards for them. Foster's was a counting book with "one M&M", etc on each page and pictures of the M&M's and all. When he got to 10, he started making jokes, like "Even if you line up all the balls, there are still only 10 of them" or "Even if you put them in a triangle, there are still only 10 balls", etc. I think it was based on the "Even if you line up all your boogers neatly, they are still dirty" line from "The Holes in Your Nose". For Foster's sister, he made a 'lift the flap' book called "Where are My Toys". A little kid is looking for her toys and looks under the bed and behind the shelves and finally finds the toys somewhere. There are little flaps that you lift and under them it says "no toys here" or "here they are". I think this was based on a board book that we had when Leo was like 2 years old called "Where's Spot?" Anyway, great fun, and I wish I had copies of them to paste in a scrapbook! But I'm sure Foster and Grayson are really appreciative!

Second Soccer Game

Leo's second soccer game went a lot better. He actually got to play a bunch this time which was good. He was pretty hot and melty before even getting on the field, however, which made my cheerleading job pretty hard. The coach has all the kids rotating positions so they learn how to play everything. If you can't see the video above, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSfcGp8sd2s

He got to play goalie, which he has been wanting to do forever. He even got the sticky goalie gloves. No goals on him and no saves either, but he got to do a lot of kicks to teammates when the ball went out of bounds. It's a good role for him because he's a very slow kicker and very deliberate and has good aim. I kept yelling at him that he could use his hands. I think he kept forgetting that. He stuck really close to the goal the whole time.

The second clip is Leo playing defense. He might have even kicked the ball once, I think, although he spent a lot of time just watching and sort of jumping up and down in excitement. At the end of the clip he gets tired and it's just so funny to watch. I don't have it here, but at one point, the goalie is going to kick the ball and every kid is watching this except Leo who is turned the other way!

I don't have any clips of him playing offense but he ran the whole length of the field like a banshee playing offense. He seemed to think he was playing both offense and defense. He tried really hard.

We came home and he immediately wanted to practice in the backyard, so I think that's a good sign.

Experimentation

Leo loves experiments. As I write, he's mixing glue and hot cocoa powder and who knows what else in a cup on the dinner table. I can't wait to clean up.

Last night we went to a community dinner, which was great fun, and Leo overhead Lily's mom talking about avoiding foods high in sodium. Leo perked up, "sodium?" He has a fascination with sodium ever since I told him about the Great Sodium Drop in college where we dropped sodium in the Charles River and watched it burn. I explained, "no, not elemental sodium, just sodium chloride". He's like, "oh, salt". Lily's mom said, "maybe you can play with some dry ice?" Leo said, "and maybe some liquid hydrogen?"

Tonight I got the annual physics at MIT magazine which basically talks about how great the research at MIT is and begs for money. I said, "hey Leo, you'll like this, it's all about physics experiments." He opened it up to a section on kids touring Junior Lab, which is the junior level yearlong death physics class. You spend an entire year recreating all the classic physics experiments of the last 200 years. It's death, because it's way too much work - it's really hard to get those experiments to work right and you have to write them all up in gory detail. Anyway, I said, "This is Junior Lab where you get to spend a whole year doing nothing but physics experiments." Leo said, "YAY! I can't wait to take Junior Lab!"

It's great fun creating a warped child.

Lemonade stand

Leo's best friend's mom organized an amazing lemonade stand for the kids today. They live at a perfect corner for this. Tons of people on bikes, foot, skates and cars stopped to have lemonade.

In addition to lemonade, the kids handed out free cookies and Leo made his free samples. Ever since Hawaii's farmer's markets, Leo has been in love with the idea of free samples. He makes them up at home and wrote 'Free samples' on his chalkboard and has been begging us to let him do a lemonade stand. Some of his free samples have consisted of bread dipped in green sugar water - you can imagine how eager we were to set up a stand for this. Having a whole lot of kids is a lot more compelling to potential customers than just one so we had 11 kids out here. Leo's free samples today consisted of black olives stuffed with parmesan cheese - he set up on this cooler (he's in red)

We had other classmates stop by and join the party. Nancy made big batches of pina coladas which helped the parents deal with the heat.

The kids did great. They got really good at pouring the lemonade and serving the customers. Making change was hard for them but they got a lot of tips which eliminated having to make change. You'd think 11 kids was too many to run a stand, but it all worked great. They all got turns doing different part of the sale and a bunch of kids eventually took over Leo's olive stuffing effort.

They pulled in some $35 in less than two hours. We ran out of lemonade which was fine since they all wanted to play anyway.

First soccer game

Today was a really full day for us. Leo had his first soccer game. He didn't get to play too much - one quarter playing defense when his team's offense happened to be really good. He didn't really seem to care all that much and was more interested in eating the snacks. But he said he enjoyed it.

Reading!

This summer I tried to read with Leo. It was like pulling teeth. He'd read a few words and get tired. It was so frustrating. Even stuff that I knew he could read, he would just be too tired to try. I was worried that a lack of perseverance would not do him well in life.

Well, I guess I was bit vocal about it, or maybe it was when Paul told Leo last week that I was worried about his lack of reading, but this week Leo is reading! He brings short books home every day and is reading them easily. The books are categorized by level of difficulty and he actually picked a hard book to bring home today. He said he picked it out because it was challenging and he'd probably need all week to read it. Being a huge bookworm myself, I'm just so psyched he's becoming a reader!

More than life itself

I told Leo in a fit of maternal frenzy, "I love you more than life itself!"

He thought about it and smiled and said, "Well, since I came from life, then it's a tie!"

Independence!

Thanks to Paul, Leo is finally becoming independent! We can now tell him to take a shower and he will strip, turn on the water, wash his hair and body, dry off and get dressed! It's amazing! To me, at least, the coddler, who secretly wants to rock him to sleep.

First day of First grade!

School started today in Boulder! It was Leo's first day of first grade. Here he is standing in line to go in. His new teacher is a guy, Mr. Nieman. We're all excited because Mr. Nieman likes robots and science. Leo rode his bike to school for the first time (last year he was on a third wheel trailer bike) after spending the weekend practicing. Apparently there are no Legos in first grade. But they get to check out two books from the library at a time which is nice. It all went fine and Leo's best friend Claudia is in his class which is great. He still seems to be playing mostly with girls - after school he was running around the playground, trailed by a pack of girls. All in all, we are all very hopeful about the new school year!