paulo

on january 9th, 2010 ava and paulo launched their future soccer careers.

now, paulo comes from solid, brazilian, soccer-playing stock, so we were all pretty optimistic about his performance on the field. ava... not so much. although there are many athletic endeavors that john and i enjoy, we both discovered our athletic sides later in lives. also, ball sports... or for that matter... team sports? yeah - we're really not very gifted. in fact, it would be fair to say that i am, in fact, notoriously ungifted. (cue ye old story about cailin sitting down in the grass and picking flowers in left field of a baseball game.)

to try and save ava from a similar fate, many advised getting her started on some sort of ball sport and an impressionable young age. soccer is a popular one in san francisco, so, here we are.

although i had very low expectations for ava's introduction to soccer, i have to say, she far exceeded my wildest dreams. knock me over with a feather ... she just ran out there and ... played soccer. i'm certainly not saying that she looked like the next . but she did it. she kicked when they said kick, kept track of which ball was her ball, stopped when they said stop, and mostly remembered the rules of the game.

i'll be damned .. . maybe she's not exactly like her mommy after all!

way back when when mommy was a girl, getting your first bike was a big deal, and i'm quite sure i never set foot on a trike again. ava, however, got her first bike so young that she didn't really have the same sense of momentous occasion. the positive aspect of this, is that she's quite happy to ride either vehicle.

today we took our trike to the playground with paulo, and stopped to cheer on the runners in the san francisco marathon. i'm not familiar with the exact course, but we were clearly somewhere near the beginning as all the runners were in a good mood and waved and thanked their little spectators for their clapping.

having a toddler makes you suddenly fascinated by the old gender : nature vs nurture debate. it's pretty entertaining watching your previously genderless baby suddenly morph into a pigtail-obsessed fairy cat princess.

ava started expressing her gender around the same times as her first words and her first steps. right around twelve months ava suddenly became obsessed with feeding ducky, and putting diapers on ducky, and tucking ducky in to bed. as a result, i came down pretty firmly on the side of "nature".

regardless of how they got there, ava and paulo are definitely becoming a little girl and a little boy. this morning, i took them to the arboretum and we were hanging around by the fountain. for entertainment, we had one ball, and a few cars. both kids were fascinated by the ball, and were doing pretty good at taking turns playing with it.

on paulo's turns with the ball, he placed the ball on the side of the fountain, took a stick, and batted the ball into the fountain. splash! okay - fair enough - perfectly reasonable thing to do with a ball and a stick.

and on ava's turn, she would pick up the ball, place it in her coat, wrap it up snugly and say "night night ball".

martin luther king day marked the conclusion of the longest stretch of beautiful weather in the bay area that i can remember. while the midwest froze solid, we basked in 13 straight days of blue skies, blazing sun and near-perfect surf. by the end john said "you know - there aren't even that many people at the beach anymore. i think they're all tired."

unsurprisingly, the wonderful weather motivated everyone we knew to suggest a park expedition of some sort. ava got to see every little buddy she has - some of them twice. we went for a stroll at the tea garden with delilah, pushed carina on the swings, blew bubbles with paulo, painted with the twins and met half her school at the playground.

when ava and i arrive for a scheduled visit or pick-up at paulo's house, paulo's mom always sends him to answer and open the door. their glass door is covered with a shade, and a visit always begins with a little face peeking from behind the shade and then jumping up and down excitedly when he sees ava.

for uninteresting, logistical reasons, when i arrived to pick up paulo's for today's zoo trip, i didn't actually have ava with me yet. i rang the doorbell. the little face appeared. the little eyes scanned around desperately at my knee level. the little face went away, the shade fell back into place. then a little voice said from behind the door "mommy, mommy! i can't see anybody there!". then there was a short pause. the curtain remained shut. then the little brain caught up with the little voice and the little voice said "oh, wait, i see cailin!". and then he let me in.

once ava arrived we headed out for a lovely trip to the zoo. paulo seemed to have a holistic enjoyment of the zoo. the lions and tigers were a big hit, and of course the train and carousel too. ava, on the other hand, was obsesed with a) holding paulo's hand and b) the statues of animals placed throughout the park. paulo and i finally gave up and abandoned ava and grandma to ava's infatuation with this brass elephant for a good half an hour.

today we went with paulo and his mom to the discovery museum for their annual gingerbread house workshop. irritatingly, both flavia and i forgot our cameras - so this after-the-fact picture of ava's creation will have to do.

each family is given a gingerbread house "kit" - comprised of the appropriately shaped gingerbread pieces, a big bag of very sticky frosting and (most importantly) a big bag of candy! both ava and paulo's exposure to candy has been pretty limited, so their reactions were pretty funny. they both recognized the mini candy canes as "food" and licked those up in about 3 seconds flat. after that, ava turned her attention to decorating, and paulo moved on to jelly beans (which, presumably, he recognizes from easter.) ava never figured out that the rest of it was edible, but kept licking her fingers - presumably wondering "why is this 'glue' so sweet?"

this year has brought ava many new friends, but in her heart there remains a very special place for paulo, her very first friend.

and . . . i really hope that we still know paulo when he's in college, 'cause i suspect that his own parents are much too soft-hearted to properly take advantage of all the great blackmail material i've been accumulating.

grandma and paulo joined us for a trip to the discovery museum today. having grandma along to manage ava, meant that i had a free hand (sometimes even two!) to snap some pictures of my favorite little boy.

ava started preschool on september 2nd, and so far, she's been doing great. by far the saddest side effect of this next step in her evolution is that she no longer gets to see paulo everyday! ava misses him, and i do too, so i've taken to showing up at his doorstep and demanding that his parents hand him over for a playdate (alright, alright, i do call them about 10 minutes beforehand).

hanging out with ava and paulo is getting really fun. they now understand the concept of an "activity" and can actually work together for brief periods of time. our last playdate was action packed. we had the educational period (letter puzzles), the arts and craft period (painting, followed by puff ball and glitter glueing), a brief rendition of the old "crash in the beanbag favorite" followed by dinner, a bath and "a movie".

many, many things cracked me up during their "date". a few remain in my mind. first, they insisted that we clean up between puzzles and crafts. second, paulo glued his glittery bits to the page by spreading out a bunch of glue and then dumping the entire container on to the paper (this has never occurred to ava, who loves the repetition of doing them one by one). third, paulo has alot more enthusiasm for transitions than ava. there was a brief pause between dinner and desert, during which ava wandered off to play in the living room. when desert was announced, paulo got the message immediately . . . realized ava was not with the program . . . and started running back and forth between ava and the table "ava! ava! desert's ready! ava get up! ava desert! ava! ava!"

more bath pics