text from cole

On Thursday, Cole asked Mary to send this text to my phone:

"Dear Dad, I love you. I love you so much that you can hear the butterflies flapping in the woods. love Cole."*

That just about makes him the sweetest boy on the planet and my wife the most thoughtful person in my life for sending it.

On a completely unrelated note, I just read this quote:

'Parents are not interested in justice, they are interested in quiet.' -Bill Cosby

Sage words Mr. Cosby. I just realized that, as a parent, I have been neglecting one of the most inspirational philosophical giants of our time when it comes to parenting. My goal for the weekend is to seek out more quotes from Bill and maybe even download a few of his parenting monologues.



*the text was actually written in phone english (i luv u...) but I translated because it seemed to be detracting from the intent.

Meow?

It is not uncommon for our kids to chase each other around the house acting like puppies, cats or lions. Yesterday morning, I witnessed Cora pointing to one of her dolls on the floor and telling Cole: "look. food!" and they both crawled over to the doll and bent their heads down pretending to gobble doll entrails. These are learned responses, so I blame/praise myself for somehow imparting this on them.

But that is not what I am trying to get across in this post because----

--wait, I have to share this. I just heard Mary exclaim: "No! yucky! We do not put noodles between our toes!"

As I was saying. Pretending to be an animal is not abnormal and we even encourage it. The kids and I are often howling or roaring depending on the time of day. What I do find interesting is Cora's recent use of the word 'Meow'. Lately, this has become her word of choice for expressing herself.

'Meee-yow' - I love you.
'Myow?' - I just spilled my drink on the floor. What do we do about this?
'Meow!' - Your request is noted and denied.
'Meyow.' Thank you. I am very happy about the chocolate you have just handed me.
'Meow.' - Yes. I will happily accept your piggy back ride offer.
'Myowwww?' - Can I sit on your lap?

The list goes on, but I have run out of ways to spell the various ways of inflection she places on her pronunciation of the word.

As with most things that Cora stymies me with, I take the "If you can't beat them, join them." approach. I think most conversations can be reduced to a simple: Meow. Try it. You won't be disappointed.

C is for cupcake, that's good enough for me.

A few weeks ago, I was surfing the web, minding my own business, and I came upon cookie monster cupcakes. I showed them to Mary and Cole and that sealed the deal. We had our concept for Cole's birthday cake. Normally, we pride ourselves in coming up with cake ideas, but when you come across something this good, you have to use it.

The more ambitious cake decorator would use a star or wavy tipped piping bag and pipe 'fur' onto the top of each cupcake, but we were being pragmatic. First, the effort:benefit ratio seemed disproportionate. Second, there was a good chance that by the time we handed out the cupcakes, the warmth of the day would ruin the effect. But that doesn't matter because I think Mary's version reduces the cookie monster to his essential elements and succeeds in almost Warhol-like fashion.

Back to the point of this post: Cole turned 5 on the 17th of August.


We had a party at Rocks Riverside park again and enjoyed an afternoon in beautiful weather.

Interestingly, his favorite present he received was a set of knee, elbow and wrist pads. They were intended to keep him from losing too much skin at the skate board park, but he has adapted them to be part of his super hero uniform.

And why not? He now catapults himself from the couch and lands on his hands and knees with relatively little pain. He effortlessly glides across the tile kitchen floor without a bump or bruise. I don't know if his new found trust in safety equipment is healthy or permission to push the envelope even further. We can only keep giving him milk to strengthen his bones and hope for the best because I don't foresee him backing off.


Cole is consumed with creating and making things. He is happy to share his plans with us and enlists us to help him in his creations. However, if we try to come up with reasons why we don't have the materials to make whatever it is that he is trying to build, he will keep grilling us:
-Why don't we just by a big block of Styrofoam and some fiberglass to make a surf board?
-Why don't we use the scraps of wood in the back yard to build a new house?
-You need to find me some wheels so I can make a car that I can ride down a hill really fast.
-Let's make some snow today. I want to slide down a big snow hill. We are going to need really strong boxes to make the hill.

And then there are the times when he has asked us to do something, we have replied with some lame excuse as to why we weren't able to do it and he went ahead and did it at school just to prove to us that we have no vision.

Exhibits A & B:

surf board and guitar (It is hard to appreciate, but the guitar has rubber bands around the box which he twangs.)

Exhibit C:

matchbox car ramp

Exhibit D:

hang glider

And I can't find the photo of him and the parachute he made, but I think you get the point. I also regret not documenting the tow truck Mary had to stuff in the car one afternoon when she picked him up from school.

Where do we go from here? Our resources and tools are currently limited to cardboard, packing tape and yarn. He would rather use titanium, carbon fiber and ceramics as his media of choice. Maybe we should start saving up for a lathe, plasma cutter and a welding machine for his sixth birthday.

two more

I am going to be a little indulgent and post these photos from Sunday. They didn't seem to fit in with the birthday photos.

Cole went to a classmate's birthday party which was hosted by Batman and Robin. Cora and I weren't invited, so we hopped a bus to the Cultural Centre (it is double cultural if you spell it that way).

I am still not a big fan of socialism, but I will admit to reaping the benefits when it comes to civic architecture. Across the river from the central business district of Brisbane, the city planners placed a number of beautiful buildings within close proximity to a large bus station and it is all beautifully landscaped and linked together with South Bank (which, as previously blogged about, is one of my favorite places in this city).

There are too many buildings to list, but the three that top my list are:
-The Gallery of Modern Art
-The Queensland State Library
-The Queensland Art Gallery
The theme being that they are all free and I dig the space they each create.

It was just Cora and me. I do well one-on-one with the kids. With both of them together, I feel like a sheep dog nudging them both in the general direction that we are trying to go. With just one, I can keep tactile track of him/her with a gentle hold of the hand and let my mind and eyes wander.

I find that the attention span of a child in an art museum is equal to one minute for each year the child has been alive. After that, it is just an exercise in keeping them from touching the art. From a different perspective, the building size and detailing are of a monumental scale and they themselves become art. The quality of light in the main room of The Queensland Art Gallery is, in my opinion, an experience in itself. So, Cora running around the corridors is interacting with art on a different scale and I like giving her that experience.

Architecture, of all the arts, is the one which acts the most slowly, but the most surely on the soul. -Ernest Dimnet