Micronaxx

May I interest you in a refreshing, ice-cold Lego on this warm day? 🙂

Finny enjoys an ice cream-induced “brain freeze”:

Henry attends the Preschool of Rock:

Hans & Franz, The Next Generation:

Oh, hello there. 🙂

Yesterday morning certainly started off with a bang…and by that I mean Finny slamming his head into the edge of the car door as we were leaving for school. I had opened the car doors so all the boys had to do was come down the back steps, walk into the car, and buckle themselves in. Finny came bounding down the stairs, and ran for the car – not realizing the open door was pointed right at him. He ran straight into the edge of the door and then crumpled to the ground shrieking and gushing blood.

I was standing on the other side of the car when it happened, ran over to him, and picked him up. He was holding his forehead and his face was covered in blood. I shouted at John to grab some towels, and mopped Finny off enough to see the big, deep cut on his forehead. We jumped into action – all piling in the car with me pressing a giant wad of paper towels onto Finny’s head. John got behind the wheel and drove us to the urgent care clinic just down the street (thank God!), while I tried to calm my panicked, crying, hyperventilating child (while his poor little brother looked on…). He dropped us off and we made our way into the clinic. John then proceeded to take Henry to school so he wouldn’t have to witness all the chaos.

The crying and moaning and shrieking continued as I tried to fill out the required paperwork at the clinic. Thank God for the mom who was waiting there with her sick 6 year-old son. She came over and continued to press the towels to Finny’s head while I filled out the seemingly endless paperwork on the clipboard. She took the clipboard back, and we were soon ushered into the exam room. I managed to keep Finny calm by just talking and talking and talking to him about whatever I could think of. As long as I was talking, he was ok. I explained everything the nurse and doctors were doing while he got his vitals taken and they examined the cut. Luckily, it was just shallow enough to avoid stitches (Finny worriedly asking “Will they put my head under a sewing machine?!”).

John reappeared with the Leomarans just as the doctor was about to patch Finny up. Finny squeezed them (and Dad-o’s hand) tight while the doctor cleaned up the wound, squeezed the edges together, and put Dermabond (superglue for skin!) on it. Within a couple minutes, the glue was dry, he had a fresh bandaid on his head, and we were ready to go. The little boy and his mom who helped us out in the waiting room peeked in to see how Finny was doing, and I gave the mom a GIANT hug, thanking her for her help.

We went home and I kept an eye on my boy just to make sure he didn’t show any signs of a concussion. We watched a movie and went to the grocery store and car wash, and I kept wondering why we were getting all these strange, empathetic looks from people around us. I mean, Finny just had a bandaid on, it’s not like his entire head was wrapped in gauze! It was only as we were standing in line at the grocery checkout that I realized we both still had our bloody clothes on! No wonder we were getting weird looks!

After a long afternoon nap, Finny seemed to be feeling much better, despite the big knot on his head. I think the only thing that’s really damaged is his vanity…he was very emphatic that he did not want to go back to school because he didn’t want Magdalena to see him with the bandaid on his head! And he didn’t want to go out for sushi and have the sushi ladies asking about what happened, either. I told him he could disguise it with a hat, and he’d be fine. We did go out for sushi, and he’ll be seeing Magdalena and his other amigos at school tomorrow.

Why hello there, Henry. 🙂

Will there come a time when the sight of any construction activity doesn’t hold our boys in its total thrall? Yeah, and much sooner than we’d like, I’m sure. For now, though, they remain transfixed by things like our neighbors Long & Suzanne getting a new lawn put in. It provided a whole weekend’s worth of entertainment, as you can glimpse below:

This past Sunday, the four of us headed out to Santa Cruz to experience something called “Al Smith Day” at the Swanton Pacific Ranch. Our acquaintance from the San Jose History Park, Motorman Erik, hipped us to this special event. Once a year, the Swanton Pacific Railroad, which runs through the ranch (both owned by Cal Poly University), is opened to the public for train rides, tours, live music, and BBQ. As soon as Erik told us about it, we knew we couldn’t pass it up. (Turns out Al Smith is the Cal Poly alum who gave the ranch to the school & created the railroad.)

The train & tracks are small-scale, like what you’d expect in a mine. They have both steam and diesel engines at work, and have built a really cute little yellow train station where you board. Cal Poly’s got a very active group of train enthusiasts who refurbish engines, and maintain the cars, roundhouse, and sheds. These guys range in age from 13 to late 80’s. They were all happy to talk our ears off about the various engines, track machinery, and assorted gear. Needless to say, the boys were fascinated. We spent lots of time in the round house checking things out (including a tiny ore car!) before heading out on the actual train ride.

Finn and Henry had a blast playing “conductor” and “snack man” in our little enclosed car during the ride. After the ride, we watched some guys from the Cal Poly logging program chop wood with various sharp implements. We also toured some parked full-scale cabooses, listened to the live bluegrass music, and enjoyed our BBQ in the beautiful sunshine. It was a great day, and we were thrilled to get in on the secret! Here’s a little gallery of our train-tastic adventure.

Saturday unfortunately marked the guys’ last swim lessons with their instructors at the San Jose State Aquatic Center. We signed up for a 4-week session, and were hoping to sign up again, but it sounds like the pool will be closed this summer for repairs.

You’ll see from the pictures that Finny has been making great strides on learning what to do with his legs and arms, putting his head underwater, doing some assisted floating, and generally enjoying himself in the pool. I think he’s going to be quite the little fish!

And our Henry has made strides in his own way…meaning that once he actually gets in the pool, he usually has a good time. It’s the getting in that takes forever and meets with a lot of resistance. He is incredibly slow to warm up to getting into the pool – he hems and haws and stalls to no end, and he usually needs a lot of cajoling from us and/or his super-nice instructor Kiyomi.

This week we showed up 20 minutes early to get Henry warmed up and in the water so we didn’t have to waste a bunch of his lesson time doing it. I sat with him on the edge of the pool, we stuck our feet in, we stood on the step, we splashed around a little, and I even got him to step down so most of his legs were in the water by the time Kiyomi came over. I figured he was ready to go, so when she came, I left to go use the ladies’ room. When I came out of the bathroom, I witnessed a hilarious low-speed chase, with Henry trying to outwalk Kiyomi around the edge of the pool, and Kiyomi trying to catch him and convince him to get back into the water. Henry kept looking over his shoulder and sped up a bit, heading for my lounge chair. He tried to hide behind it, then decided he would drag the chair behind him in an effort to convince us he would be happy just sitting in the chair near the pool. I laughed and redirected him back towards Kiyomi, who got him back into the pool in short order, where he proceeded to have a great time during his lesson.

Here’s the gallery of the guys in action.

Here’s wishing a very happy fifth birthday to our pal Cyrus Wiggin! (And yes, Cyrus, Dad-O is wondering whether he can come over and play with the cool Iron Man Lego we got you. ;-))

I’m pleased to announce that the Finnster officially takes after his parents, and particularly his old man, in really liking to snap photos! I came across one of my old iPhones, and he now loves snapping shots of random things (e.g. an extreme close-up of unsuspecting Henry; bikini-clad mannequins at the mall). The only downside is that, like me, he now brings walks to an abrupt halt, pausing out of the blue to line up a shot. Hoisted by my own petard! 🙂

I’ll try to share some Finnyfotos soon. Meanwhile, here you can see him showing Henry around Dad-O’s big cam. As my friend Scott Valentine captioned it, “And the peanut butter goes riiiight here…”!

I asked Henry to quote me his hourly rate. “Sixty bucks!” he replied. In fairness, it’s not every 3-year-old who can confidently manhandle a length of fence like that. 😉

Oh my—it seems that a looen & owl have invaded our kitchen!

Recently the lads had an epic 7-hour outing to Happy Hollow with Yvonne, returning happy, tired, and crusty-faced thanks to a face painter. Henry really got into playing his part: “Dad-O, he was ‘hoo-ing’ for, like, an hour!” reported a slightly exasperated Finn. The boys even rocked their new look to the mall & Lego Store that evening. Boy was it tough explaining that we had to wash faces before bedtime…

Here’s a little gallery featuring our Beasts of the Northern Not-So-Wild. 🙂