New York to Santa Fe

The boys traveled well, I think they're experienced travelers and old enough not to be quite the handful.

Andres slept on the Dallas leg and William slept on the Albuquerque leg. I didn't give Andres his Dramamine because they wouldn't eat in Dallas. There was a bit of a dust up because I won a game of Uno. Andres had a bit of a snit for a while. And refused second attempts to eat. So I didn't give him the Dramamine. So of course in the turbulance into Albuquerque he chucked, and then after we landed, the complementary diet coke was coming out his nose, and then later in the drive to Santa Fe he hurled some more. But instead of going out when we came, we played some soccer, and tossed the football around that I bought in Dallas (people told Andres that he had a good arm), and William went grocery shopping with Glamma. Glamma wants to teach the boys cooking, and generally go more into food. They got to roast their hotdogs on the grill.

William tried swordfish, and went back for seconds, at Whole Foods.

They didn't watch any TV yesterday.

dreams

William had a dream that letters and numbers were mixed up in the alphabet.

Andres said he kicked the soccer ball up to heaven. Above the clouds. It's real dad. We watch movies and Andres says after like 45 minutes, "that's not real." Andres has had some difficulties distinguishing fiction and subjectivity from real and objective at times.

So I had a great weekend with the boys. Last time ice skating until September. Now they're taking swimming lessons. No Sunday school till September too. No soccer, but Andres likes to kick the soccer ball around, and William does sometimes too.

We look forward to a week in Santa Fe coming up.

beautiful boy

So I've been reluctant to write here because I don't really want to look at my separation with Diana, but I think this is a nice story.

I had a stressful evening with the boys. Picked them up (they were not dropped off as usual, I feel like I'm traveling a lot to get to them).

Wrangled them to a pizza place. They wanted McDonalds. I know pizza is not much more healthy than McDonalds, but I think it is. They got a can of soda and then William said, "say something mean to me." I wouldn't do it. Andres did. He crushed his can. Then he was ripping it apart. "Be careful, it's easy to cut yourself with the cans edge." Of course Andres cut himself later, and was crying pitifully.

At home we struggled to do homework. Diana laid into me when I didn't notice all the homework, so I spent the whole evening doing homework, which seems wrong for a first grader. William cut himself working on a project. He did quite well. So as usual, time got away from me, and I'm so afraid of Diana's anger, and she gets angry when I'm late, so we were rushing back to their place. I was a bit frazzled.

William said to me, "Daddy, I had a good time with you tonight." And all my criticism of the night, the problems faded away. It's about being together. He just melted my heart, my anxieties, my worries. I love him so much. He's a good boy.

I've been reading Learning from the Heart by Daniel Gottlieb, and it's really touching. His advice is to chill about our expectations about our children, to understand how some of our projects are just mental confusion. I look at pictures of the boys a lot, I don't feel like I spend enough time with them. We have to accept things and just roll with things.

Thank you to Will for The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which we read together recently and I quite enjoyed.

Looking forward to going apple picking with aunt Di the weekend after this one, and Halloween.

Bedbug ordeal

Supposedly bedbug free, we're back home. Andres doesn't like pizza any more, he's sick I think. He wants to eat at Grandma's house. I thank Abuela for letting us stay at her place so long. Hopefully we'll sleep in our own beds tonight for the first time in about 3 weeks. I think I adjusted well after the initial shock. My heart goes out to others who have suffered the blight of bedbugs.

I was looking at the photos I have on Flickr last night on my new Droid. Next post will be a photo and you can click the Flickr link there if you'd like to look at the oldish photos (177 of them--you pay after 200 photos).

1,117th post

On my other blogs I hit 500 and 200 entries, but this blog has been more popular because it's updates about the boys.

So what's new? We've been enduring a bedbugs crisis by the kindness of my mother-in-law. She's letting us stay at her place. So there's some chaos in the world, you can't shield it from your children. Bedbugs are not about cleanliness, or class or anything. They're just a really bug bummer. Had to put everything into bags, essentially almost move out of our house, and then stay out for 2 weeks. They squirted stuff into our light sockets and really did a thorough job.

William seems to be becoming a reader. He asks to spell things. He reads books to me. Of course he did not know "Musk Oxen", but he knew every other word in a book he read to me the other day. I've been reading the Flat Stanley series to them, which are becoming some of my favorite children's books.

Andres is a cute boy who got his shortest haircut. He is ruled more by jealousy than some kids, and can be quite cruel sometimes. He's also very cuddly and snugly. He's learning to write and read some without even trying, just watching his brother. He's different temperamentally than his brother and 18 months younger. He seems to have a different head and face, and body type.

I sing Puff The Magic Dragon to them when I put them to bed, among other things, and that song is really for adults about the impermanence of childhood. The window of childhood closes fast. I'm glad I'm done with school for the moment, and can really enjoy the boys. I lament that I have a night job 3 times a week, and miss out on 3 evenings.

Anywho, a quick update, while I'm at the computer. I hope everyone is well.

the merriment

The boys have been watching some Spiderman shows from 1967, the year I was born. William's obsessions and interest went from Thomas to dinosaurs to Spiderman and superheroes.

William uses the phrase, "oh the merriment!" He got it from Spongebob.

I've heard the phrases, "I want to watch Calliou," and, "I want ice cream," about 30 times today from Andres. He's a persistent little bugger sometimes.

I was really proud that Andres accepted his brother winning a game he really likes, Brown Bear - Panda Bear, what do you see, which is based on a story by Eric Carl. He's really into puzzles, especially his Lighting McQueen puzzle Zane and Bridget gave him for Valentine's Day, and a Veggie Tales puzzle that their mommy bought them.

I'm not blogging so much because work and school are draining me. The boys have had the week off from school. They slept over at Josephine's and Aida and Natasia's to get out of our house and mix it up. We enjoyed Sebastian's birthday party last week. Josephine gave the boys some old costumes. Along with old clothes throughout the years and other cast offs that we really appreciate.

Update

Thank you to Abuela for cooking and Diana for cleaning for our 20 people early Thanksgiving party. Thanks to everyone who came. We had a lovely time with family early because we're out of town on Thanksgiving.

William got 3 shots and blood taken. Andres has blood taken. They went to the doctor and when Diana got home she said, "you owe me one." The boys had some presents. They were crying a lot with the shots.

A new nickname for Andres is "Gomez" from The Addams Family. You can check out some of his kissing here. Diana called Andres that because he kisses a lot.

They fixed the concrete sidewalks around our house lately.