Montana De Oro State Park

Theron's favorite part of the day was walking on the rocks.

Here's Theron teasing the waves then running away.

Theron took our picture.

Lethargy Sets In

We are really relaxing now. We can barely move.
Not Theron, though, he is all fired up.

Vacation!

I don't have any pictures to put up today, but surely tomorrow. We're housesitting for family friends who have a house overlooking the ocean. They also have 3 little boys with a cool room and toys and so many shared interests with Theron. He has found himself in a a sort of parallel universe - the same and different superhero toys. An identical Spiderman costume and mask only he says this Spiderman costume itches under the arms. All his life Theron has either been in the same room with us or right next to us. Here he is in the boy's room, up and down a small flight of stairs and around the corner from us. We did a practice run the first night to make sure he knew where to come look for us. It went fine but we both agree we like him a little closer.

We're trying to make ourselves relax. Today was mostly spent getting situated. Doing a little shopping. One of the goldfish died (actually we think he was killed) (we didn't do it). Okay, I should explain, - the other fish were nibbling his fins and when we found him he was vertical. He wasn't actually dead yet, so I guess we did kill him. I'm sorry, Joan, we didn't find him until it was too late.

Okay, time to relax!

Batman's Birthday

Batman and Spiderman were together again Saturday for Batman's birthday.

There was an inflatable jumping room (I don't know what they're called) and a couple of older boys that were really great villians to our tiny superheros.

And this is the picture Theron took of his friend, who subsequently got in trouble for making the mud you see featured in the photo. Behind him you can see the water bottle he used to help him dig up the garden. Needless to say this little friend is Theron's usual partner in crime at school.

Theron's favorite part of the day was attacking the older boys in the jumpy thing. My favorite part of the day was that Theron was not the worst behaved child at the party.

Theron's been reading on his own A LOT. Before school, if he gets dressed in time, he gets to watch a little tv. Last week I actually found him on his bed reading. Out of our 3 bedtime books he now reads one all by himself.

Post Halloween

As I mentioned, Theron is in Christmas mode, but I wanted to add a few more pictures of his exciting day. Here are some of him with Batman before the fight.

Still in love. Looking at ants.

And after. Sitting as far apart as two members of the Justice League can be.

Pre-election

We are so tired this week and we have more or less decided that answering the phone in the evenings is pointless until next Wednesday. We're already starting to lose it with these poor people making $6 an hour. Ashley is right now going through the propositions and trying to make decisions. We both took the quiz on NPR to help you decide who to vote for for Govenor and we both had Angelides #1 tied with the Peace and Freedom candidate, Arnold last. Which is good because I was afraid I might actually agree with that guy.

Anyway, we are returning to normal after the build up to Halloween. The decorations come down tomorrow and I'm sure that will be a relief to the mailman because the box is pretty well webbed up and even I have trouble getting the mail out. Theron is taking it well. He's a well trained consumer and has started to make his Christmas requests.

Recently Ashley introduced Theron to the joy of having his hair washed in the shower. Usually I do it during his bath and we have this complicated routine where he holds a washcloth over his face while I dump huge cups of water over his backward leaning head. We agree before hand how many rinses we will do that day. Anyway, Ashley had such great success last week with the shower that we tried it again with less stellar results. The good news is that he asked to try it again this weekend, so we are moving in the right direction.

Last week we finished Trumpet of the Swan and now we are reading A Cricket in Times Square. Currently Theron gets 3 books before bed and he's been wanting to read along with the easier ones. He's actually a very good reader, but we take turns reading to keep the pace up. Tonight he gave me his Superman coloring book with no words in it and asked me to read it as a story. So I tried to make it sound like his other coloring books, and then after he had saved Lois Lane twice for no apparent reason I told him how Superman had to put his suit in the washing machine because the neck was all dirty and then it shrunk so he had to be Clark Kent for awhile. Next was a picture of Jimmy Olsen with his arm around Clark and I said, "And Jimmy said, Gee, Superman, your hair smells really good, you must have done 5 rinses in the bathtub" and Theron cracked up so hard no sound was coming out and we had to take a little break. He has the most infectious laugh and he has the best sense of humor. Then he went tucked in all his many stuffed animals- he calls them his friends, or kids - and they all went to sleep, excited that tomorrow is the weekend.