hana-and-lindsay

july has been a month of many milestones . . . toilet trained . . . big girl bed . . . and now, big girl bike! this transition was initiated by daddy, who decided that his bike trailer transport invention was great, but that ava's skuut was just pointless. (skuuts are bicycles without pedals, and are supposed to be great for teaching bike balance skills. neither ava, nor john was much of a fan though.)

ava got the hang of her bike (with training wheels!) instantly, in all respects but one . . . braking! unusually, ava's trike actually has a brake. it's sort of a gear-shift like hand brake on the right hand side of her bike. john's spent alot of time coaching her on "controlling her speed" and she is truly impressive at taking her trike both up and down the smaller hills in our neighborhood. it's going to take her a little while to get the hang of the standard bicycle back-pedal brake though.

to properly accommodate our current skill set, corey and i took team big girl bike out for a ride on the completely flat path that circumnavigates the clarendon reservoir. everyone did three laps in good spirts and we only suffered one cyclist-cyclist collision.

to cool off from all that sweeping, hana, lindsay and ava jumped into our backyard pool. first, they enjoyed a few rounds of "squirt the mommies". then there was some internal disagreement about the amount of splashing that was appropriate, so eventually we wound up with hana in the pool splashing her little heart out, while lindsay and ava played the part of the giggling and clapping audience.

full gallery of pics here

ah, the pool party tradition continues. this week brought our first spring heat wave., so i headed over to target to invest in this years $9.99 pool (actually, i bought two, in case this one springs a leak). believe it or not, in our hillacious neighborhood our small, always-shaded back garden is actually considered generous, and we're one of few families we know with room for a kiddie pool.

today, hana and lindsay came over to enjoy the peak of the heat wave - 90 F air temp and probably about 90 F pool water too, as ava won't go in unless it's bath temperature. much watermelon was eaten by all and lindsay and ava played a nice game of tickle the kitty.

i can only assume that the dozens of quirky features of golden gate park are rivaled only by central park in new york. since i've only experienced one of the two, i haven't the foggiest clue who has more quirks . . . but gosh . . . we seem to have quite a few. a few of my favorites are lindy in the park, the model boats at spreckels lake and the roller dancing. this latter activity takes place at a flat, paved and specially surfaced area of the park, designed especially for this purpose.

earlyish this morning (much too early for the afternoon roller types) corey suggested we borrow this spot to give the twins some practice on their brand new (first) bikes. ava brought her trike along, and they all had a great time. surprisingly a) ava could go just as fast on her trike and b) everybody wanted to ride the trike (toddlers are the ultimate, and constant example of "the grass is always greener . . ." psychology.)

this may not look like a remarkable picture, but if you'd been present, you would recognize it for the miraculous moment that it is.

this is a picture of hana and ava feeding the ducks. hana has a large bag of cheerios, and ava has a small, empty plastic bag.

yeah, so? ah, but you see, this is a picture of hana and ava discussing the fact that ava is out of cheerios, agreeing that hana will give ava some cheerios and then verbally deciding when ava has enough in her bag.

wow.

we're having an (unwelcome) break from the winter rains, and the sun is shining down. corey and i thought it would be a good opportunity to take the munchkins down to the beach. thankfully we weren't completely delusional about what sort of conditions we might encounter, and dressed them up in rubber boots and jackets. still - it was a little windier than we were expecting.

the girls were total troopers though - they hung on to their hoods and their wagons and plowed forward into the onshore gale - nimbly dodging our attempt to fly a kite that kept dive bombing to the ground. after a nice ramble around the beach, inevitably the twins wound up soaked and corey thought perhaps we'd best pack up the shivering children and take them home. i didn't quite have the heart to say "no - no - don't you understand . . . i can't stop taking pictures now, the light's just starting to get nice!."