Don't tall me bonito

The Skuut is dead, long live the sprint frog. Seamus’s beloved Skuut bit the dust last week. Out for our usual morning constitutional, I heard the left front strut splinter just as Seamus came off the curb onto Porter Rd. There was nothing particularly violent about this last curb vault—it was just the cumulative stress of months of vigorous riding that finally revealed the true characteristics of a cheap Shanghai knockoff masquerading as a sturdy Scandinavian steed. No matter: within minutes I was googling away, looking for the least expensive replacement, which turned out to be the spring frog, as pictured. Luckily, the frog, and not the princess, came in at the lowest bid. He has in the past claimed to like green.



The new mount is quicker and higher-strung than the old, but Seamus tamed her in an afternoon.


And once again, the future is boundless.

Oi Sim Sim Sim, Oi Não Não Não

We were graced with a visit from Uncle Sean, Aunt Minou and Dexter last week, a quick stop on their way to North Carolina. Dexter regaled us with a Haydn theme, while I played with the scale model of the Capitol that Aunt Minou and Uncle Sean had bestowed upon Booker for his birthday. Everything seemed briefly civilized.


Then Booker had a moment to show off his keyboard skills, hunting and pecking Lightning McQueen in an endless youtube search. His kinpudr taym, as he renders it, is sacred.


The next day was Booker’s birthday party, once again at Wheaton Regional Park. Seamus, tilting headlong against the towering silver maples, emerged miraculously unscathed.


Mary’s cakes, a perfection of confection, of course.


Booker no doubt wishing for Mack, the big semi from Cars. For the first time, we have become the pawns of the evil empire’s merchandising strategies. We are bombarded daily with requests from both boys for more Cars paraphernalia. The flurry of birthday gifts, including more of the expensive little vehicles than any reasonable adult would imagine to exist, assuaged this pressure only briefly.

Y., Booker’s capoeira instructor, captivated the baixinhos, and soon had them all singing “Oi sim sim sim, Oi não não não,” the most basic capoeira corrido.


Throwing a capoeira party and inviting only your friends who have never before played capoeira turns out to be a great way to pass for a martial arts prodigy.

Just Press Random Buttons

This past weekend was the annual adventure in the Poconos, formerly known to Booker as the Coconuts, now occasionally known to Henry as the Pinocchios. We grabbed Booker directly from Field Day at Rosemary Hills, where he had spent the morning testing his skills in activities such as catching a scarf fluttering in the breeze and throwing a hula hoop over an inverted chair leg, which the attending volunteer parents repeatedly advised were not a competition, but just for fun. Then they adjourned to the grassy shade, according to Booker, for milk and vanilla wipers. What happened to tug of war? In Montgomery County, not only are all the children above average, they are all winners. Only during school hours, of course—in the semi-professional world of after-school sports, competition is cutthroat and hence strenuously avoided by the Bookman.



After a long slog in the Honda V, as Seamus calls it, we descended into the golden valley of Woodloch Springs and its acres of identical condos nestled amongst fairways, bunkers, and tick-friendly rough. As tradition dictates, the centerpiece of the weekend was the birthday celebration—Booker and Dexter, the two children with the closest birthdays, dispatched the candles.



Seamus looked on with the glazed visage of one who has taken too many dunkings in the frog pool. He promptly devoured all the frosting on his slice, leaving untouched the delivery mechanism of the cake itself. Energized again, he cavorted until 10:30, surfacing occasionally from the scrum to demand at the top of his lungs yemonade and wayameyon. If these requests were not delivered, he vowed, “I will hit you and call you dummy!” Let it not be said the boy does not make good on his threats.

He was happiest in the frog pool, only occasionally frustrated by the inability of other youngsters to remove themselves from the base of the giant plastic frog-tongue slide before he came crashing down upon their necks. The nearby indoor beaver pool, with its three water cannons offering maximum opportunity for hectic crossfire, was equally thrilling. Booker held his own in both environs as well, earning cherished praise from Dexter for his grace under pressure while manning cannon number two, fighting off blackguard pirates like Charlie and Henry. The ever-mystifying game of catch was more of a challenge, as Aunt Minou’s unerring vision reveals: as the disc approaches, Seamus prepares his hands, eye on the target, while Booker holds his arms wide in what might be considered the purely aspirational approach to the game, steadfastly watching the location from which the disc was launched.


There was so much to do that Seamus was only occasionally frustrated that he could not entirely keep up with the big boys. Looking around at the toddler-safe environs of the frog pool and discovering that his brother and cousins had moved on to more sophisticated pleasures, he ran after them to the lakeside beach. At a gallop he took the stairs to the giant slide that plunges directly into the lake, chasing vainly after the gang, only to be restrained by the loving hand of Uncle Sean and delivered in a stiff pose of reluctant compliance to the parental scold.

Back at the ranch the separation was more technological than physical. Robert, Charlie and Dexter slayed villains on their DSs. Henry, skilled beyond his years in electronic wizardry, provided the solution to Dexter’s frozen screen—and many of life’s difficulties—surveying the problem, scrunching his features and pronouncing, “Just press random buttons.” Success.

The climactic moment of the weekend, at least for Seamus and me, came not long afterwards. Robert came running to the top of the stairs, fighting against his nature to muster a countenance of grave urgency, shouting, “Something really bad is happening! Seamus is caught in the sofa-bed.”

Somehow, while the other five boys romped above him, he had crawled under the sofa-bed and wormed himself inextricably into its farthest confines. Robert, of course, was the only one to hear his plaintive cries. When I arrived and peered inside the evil machine, Seamus was doing an uncanny impression of Chris Elliott’s guy under the bleachers routine, prying unsuccessfully at the springs. Once we rousted the other ruffians we were able to extract him unscathed and no doubt unedified.



All boys managed to subsist on a diet mostly of cheez-its, hot-dogs and cake. On Saturday, Booker had his first slushy, described longingly by him as “that thing that my cousins have,” and then on Sunday had his second. Lucky boy. For the short term, that is probably most memorable for him. Once that novelty wears off, I hope he’ll remember the more enduring sensations of the gathering speed, the cold plunge into the dark waters, and the exhilaration of that first breath.



Should he somehow forget, the contributions of Aunt Minou, this week’s brilliant guest photographer, will be there to remind him, and all the rest of us.

I Don’t Like Fiction

Kindergarten draws to a close not a moment too soon for Mrs. B. As you can see from the photo, she is due any week now, and will soon have her own switch her focus from twenty-five petulant, demanding creatures to one. We were lucky to get through the school year before the blessed event—without Mrs. B’s loving encouragement, kindergarten might have been a disaster, but with her it was wonderful. Booker has grown considerably under her tutelage—he can read a little, add a little, tell stories a little. The greatest change is that he now understands that his is not the only perspective on the world, and the range of experiences that realization makes possible—humor, empathy, more strategic manipulation of his parents and his little brother—is now available to him.


He has grown in other ways, of course: as you can see, he is now six feet tall and climbing. He towers over his peers in the violin group, swaying gently like a skyscraper in heavy winds as they fiddle furiously beneath him.


He still insistently carves his own path through the standards of the Suzuki songbook, always always always starting up when everyone else starts correctly down, and building successive variations from that initial divergence. But it is less noticeable now, maybe because we are halfway napping through the recital, like most of the other parents.

Probably the most significant achievement here is that standing in front of a fitfully dozing crowd and struggling through “Go Tell Aunt Rhody” is no longer an agonizing experience for Booker.



He checks it off his list, collects his cookie, and moves on. What more can one ask?

Booker has also begun to separate the world of reality and invention. We were watching Angus Lost a few weeks ago—the tale of a curious Scot terrier who escapes his yard and has a rousting adventure about town—when Booker asked, “Is this fiction?” Well, kid, generally when the pet dog talks to the goat, its fiction, but I’ll let you make the call.

Not long afterwards, he determined his preference, telling Mary at storytime, “I don’t like fiction. I like non-fiction.”

That excludes the world of toy cars, of course. But that is another story.