Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Back After Hiatus
Its interesting, I know its been a “few days” since my last posting and then, when I actually go out to the blog to update it, I realize that a lot more time has passed than I thought. Here are some highlights from the past few weeks:
I attended Ryan’s funeral in Northern Virginia. For those not keeping up-to-date, Ryan was the 5-year old son of one of my friends who recently died of cancer. As you can imagine, the funeral was extremely difficult. If you’ve never seen a child-sized casket consider yourself lucky, it’s absolutely heartrending. Greg and his wife Lori are coping as best they can. Fortunately, I think they have a very good support network to help them. There other younger son, Evan, has a life-long gift from his older brother: his middle name is Anakin, after Ryan’s favorite movie(s), Star Wars. Closing thought, when you’re done reading this blog entry, go find your family and give them a big hug, tell them that you love them, and then do the same thing everyday for the rest of your life.
The pool closed this past weekend for the season and swim lessons are behind us for another year. Pierce is a real fish and has left his water wings by the side of the pool permanently. It’s amazing to watch him swim. His two strokes are the dog paddle and a weird form of underwater breaststroke. Nora and I are both very proud of his swimming ability. Anna is also doing well in the water, but will still take another summer of seasoning before we’ll consider her proficient. She’s grown so much this summer that her favorite “strawberry” bathing suit no longer fits. She is not all that crazy about the replacements.
Pierce started school last week. He’s going full days (instead of half days like last year), 5 days a week. He doesn’t appear to have lost any momentum over the summer and fell back in the groove with no problems. He’s very excited that he gets to take a lunch box to school. He picked it out himself; it’s a blue, car-shaped cooler bag.
Anna’s personality is really starting to crystallize. She’s got to be the most independent-minded almost 3-year old I’ve ever met. Pretty darn stubborn too. Nora and I love just listening to her talk. She’s extremely articulate, but doesn’t always have much to say. One of her favorite activities is to dress up in her last year’s Halloween costume, Magenta (from Blue’s Clues). She likes it twice as much if Pierce will wear his Blues costume too. She’s also a massive Sesame Street junky. She has a plethora of characters from the show with her favorite being Big Bird.
Pierce started soccer this past week. His first practice was Sunday afternoon. Amazingly, he seems to have a lot of natural talent (I don’t know where that came from). He’s playing in a micro league, so the field and nets are smaller. Each kid gets their own soccer ball and the first half-hour of the practice focuses on basic drills/skills with the second half a scrimmage. My favorite part of last week’s practice was when the kids were working on their “dribbling”. The coach yelled go and all the kids started kicking their respective balls around the field. Except Pierce, he starts dribbling full tilt (quite well too). After about 5 minutes the coach yells stop and tells the kids to come on in. Of course, Pierce is now about 8 soccer fields away…
During the scrimmage portion of the practice it became apparent that some of these kids have been playing soccer for a while. They were quite good. Pierce started off pretty strong and had one down field run that was exceptional (of course he ran right past the goal and on to the next field, then the next field, …). But after awhile he seemed to lose interest. He would just stand there, not even facing in the general direction of the action. Of course, Nora and I one be yelling from the sidelines for him to go get the ball and he would re-engage for a little while, but then he’d stop again.
On the way home from practice I asked him about that. His response:
“Well Dad, you know when I’ve been running around for awhile I sometimes get tired.”
-Eric (Dad)
I attended Ryan’s funeral in Northern Virginia. For those not keeping up-to-date, Ryan was the 5-year old son of one of my friends who recently died of cancer. As you can imagine, the funeral was extremely difficult. If you’ve never seen a child-sized casket consider yourself lucky, it’s absolutely heartrending. Greg and his wife Lori are coping as best they can. Fortunately, I think they have a very good support network to help them. There other younger son, Evan, has a life-long gift from his older brother: his middle name is Anakin, after Ryan’s favorite movie(s), Star Wars. Closing thought, when you’re done reading this blog entry, go find your family and give them a big hug, tell them that you love them, and then do the same thing everyday for the rest of your life.
The pool closed this past weekend for the season and swim lessons are behind us for another year. Pierce is a real fish and has left his water wings by the side of the pool permanently. It’s amazing to watch him swim. His two strokes are the dog paddle and a weird form of underwater breaststroke. Nora and I are both very proud of his swimming ability. Anna is also doing well in the water, but will still take another summer of seasoning before we’ll consider her proficient. She’s grown so much this summer that her favorite “strawberry” bathing suit no longer fits. She is not all that crazy about the replacements.
Pierce started school last week. He’s going full days (instead of half days like last year), 5 days a week. He doesn’t appear to have lost any momentum over the summer and fell back in the groove with no problems. He’s very excited that he gets to take a lunch box to school. He picked it out himself; it’s a blue, car-shaped cooler bag.
Anna’s personality is really starting to crystallize. She’s got to be the most independent-minded almost 3-year old I’ve ever met. Pretty darn stubborn too. Nora and I love just listening to her talk. She’s extremely articulate, but doesn’t always have much to say. One of her favorite activities is to dress up in her last year’s Halloween costume, Magenta (from Blue’s Clues). She likes it twice as much if Pierce will wear his Blues costume too. She’s also a massive Sesame Street junky. She has a plethora of characters from the show with her favorite being Big Bird.
Pierce started soccer this past week. His first practice was Sunday afternoon. Amazingly, he seems to have a lot of natural talent (I don’t know where that came from). He’s playing in a micro league, so the field and nets are smaller. Each kid gets their own soccer ball and the first half-hour of the practice focuses on basic drills/skills with the second half a scrimmage. My favorite part of last week’s practice was when the kids were working on their “dribbling”. The coach yelled go and all the kids started kicking their respective balls around the field. Except Pierce, he starts dribbling full tilt (quite well too). After about 5 minutes the coach yells stop and tells the kids to come on in. Of course, Pierce is now about 8 soccer fields away…
During the scrimmage portion of the practice it became apparent that some of these kids have been playing soccer for a while. They were quite good. Pierce started off pretty strong and had one down field run that was exceptional (of course he ran right past the goal and on to the next field, then the next field, …). But after awhile he seemed to lose interest. He would just stand there, not even facing in the general direction of the action. Of course, Nora and I one be yelling from the sidelines for him to go get the ball and he would re-engage for a little while, but then he’d stop again.
On the way home from practice I asked him about that. His response:
“Well Dad, you know when I’ve been running around for awhile I sometimes get tired.”
-Eric (Dad)
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