Ian

Fall soccer season has started, and there's something new for William and Matthew.

Matthew has started soccer for the first time. He's in the baying-pack level, the introduction to soccer where all the kids run wildly after the ball in one big clump, kicking randomly and falling down every third step. Matthew actually doesn't do that so much; he runs around, at high speed, well outside the scrum, and occasionally kicks the ball when it squirts away. I'm not quite sure why he does this -- whether he has an advanced understanding of the game (which is possible, since he's been watching William's games and practices for three years) and he's waiting for a pass that will never, ever come; or whether he's figured out on his own that someone should stay between the ball and the goal, which he was doing quite effectively; or whether he just doesn't want to get into the kicking, seething sphere of action. At any rate, he had a grand time and is looking forward to his next game.

William has moved on from the rec-league to the travel team. For the first few grades, soccer is basically recreational. The kids try to win, but it's not particularly intense. After that, there's the option of a more competitive league, called the "travel" league because they travel to away games. This league has try-outs and takes the games more seriously. William tried out this summer and made the second team, and we decided to give it a try. Right now the rec leagues are still pretty well populated, but in the next few grades the rec leagues kind of die out, as anyone who's actually interested in soccer moves into the travel teams and the rest just drop out. Practices are more frequent and more intense, and the games actually call most of the adult rules. William's team lost their first game, playing respectably but not as well as they're capable of.

Matthew starts first grade today. He is a little nervous, and eating breakfast this morning he finally explained why. "I think she might ask me who the sixth president is," he explained, "And i don't know!"

William constructed a cardboard box, carefully stuffed with pillows, and had Matthew push him down the stairs in it; envisioning himself tobogganing dramatically down them, and glissading triumphantly to a smooth stop at the bottom. He did not envisage himself flipping out, landing on his face ("All my weight was on my nose!"), banging his arm, and scraping his shoulder.

"What have you learned from this?" I inquired.

"Next time," he said thoughtfully, "Matthew will go in the box."

William and I were discussing shoplifting prevention devices (he had asked what those things we walked through as we left the store, are). He pointed out that some stores use people and others use machines, and what was the difference? Well, I said, people are more flexible, but machines don't get distracted, so the stores mostly use a combination of both.

"Like Darth Vader!" he pointed out.

"Yes, Darth Vader would be really good at preventing shoplifting," I agreed.

(Deep voice) "I find your lack of a receipt ... disturbing."

Matthew comes running into my office.
"I'm just getting a piece of string from your office, Dad!'
"What are you going to do with the piece of string?"
"I'm just making a flying skunk."
"Oh ... do we need a flying skunk?"
(In a "Duh" tone of voice) "Yes."
"Oh ... I didn't know. OK, well, thank you then."

William: The Greeks were really smart people in the old days ... they made robot ducks.
Me: ??
William: Yeah, robot ducks that went into the mountains to get water.
Me: ... are you maybe thinking of the Roman aqueducts?
William: Yeah, that's it.

I feel tingly all over.

William: Look, there's water drops all over my water bottle.
Me: Yeah, do you know what that's called?
William: Um ... condensation? [Explains how it works]
Me: So what's the opposite of condensation?
William: Noitasnednoc!

I just noticed that I missed my 5-year anniversary on LJ, which was nearly 2 weeks ago. First blog post here was May 31, 2004.

I didn't really think I'd last five posts, to be honest.

We've had a busy few days. Friday was the last day of school for both William and Matthew, and it was also Matthew's official Graduation Day (from kindergarten, of course). Last year, Matthew refused to wear the robes for the pre-K graduation, or to participate in the parade, but this year he was all over it. The class took turns marching up and announcing their favorite things about kindergarten (Matthew: "My favorite part of kindergarten was hugging the teachers, so! much!" -- which didn't quite match up to Eric's "Nature walk - we saw a dead skunk!"). Then they sang a song, forgetting almost all the words, but dancing with enthusiasm. Then received their diplomas, and had cake and punch, and ran wildly up and down the corridors.

Next year Matthew moves into first grade, in the same school as his brother.

So that was Friday, which was also Amy's birthday, and I still owe her a good time for that. Our original plan was to head off to Grand River for Sunday and do touristy things as part of her present, but that fell through because of a graduation party thrown by one of Matthew's classmates. (At the last minute, we also had some neighbors come over for an ad hoc dinner and play time with kids.)

Saturday was William's piano recital, which went pretty well. And Monday, if it doesn't rain, William has a baseball game.

William's second baseball game wasn't as exciting as his first. He didn't get to pitch, and he walked three times in four at-bats without seeing one hittable pitch. In his other at-bat, he swung at three pitches over his head -- he claimed the umpire had called one like that a strike, so he had to swing, which may have some truth in it; but mostly he wanted to get a hit. He did come around to score in a close play, colliding with the catcher with a foot to spare, and he made a couple of nice plays at first base. He was a little down at the end of the game for about three seconds (he really wanted to pitch), before simultaneously realizing that (1) they had won the game, 12-5, and (2) there were juice boxes and snacks being handed out, and cheering up again.

William's first scheduled baseball game, last Wednesday, was rained out, so tonight was the first game of the year in his new (kid-pitch) league.

The good: A ringing bases-loaded triple lined into deep center, the hardest-hit ball of the game for either team. Two innings pitched, with 3 Ks.

The less good: He didn't run hard on a pop-up to second base, in the first inning; he would have been safe when the 1B dropped the throw, but instead there was enough time to recover it and force him out. He hesitated too long when playing 3rd, missing a likely out. But it's the first game, and they're still figuring this stuff out.

Overall, he had a great time. He drew a walk and I think maybe he grounded out as well (I was playing catch with Matthew on and off and missed some of the game). The team as a whole hit reasonably well (and drew a number of walks, and had two HBPs, which I see will be a common event in this league), and they fielded surprisingly well. Pitching was about what I'd expected -- with generous umpiring, a few kids struck out, a fair number walked, and there were enough good pitches for some decent hitting. William's two innings pitching (I don't know if it's a formal rule, but they all pitched two innings each) were good -- he throws strikes and for this league he throws hard ("Throwin' FIRE!", I heard his coach mutter after one of William's pitches). Throwing strikes does mean giving up some hits, though -- I don't think anyone in this league can throw hard enough to get past the older kids who are better hitters. He gave up one walk, and maybe only one well-hit ball. I think he might have given up a pair of runs, all in his second inning pitched, when he was tiring a little. At the end of the game, though, he was pleased with his pitching, and justifiably so. Our team won, something like 7-4.

Next game Wednesday, if it's not rained out.

We're transitioning between two of the major kid-related seasons: Soccer season, and baseball season.

William played his final spring soccer game last weekend; they lost, so they didn't go an entire fall/spring season undefeated, but they had a good time and overall did really well. We finished off on Monday with the annual parent/kid soccer match, which we (parents) finally won, 3-2. This year the parents mostly tried, but the six of us included basically two people who are more or less in shape, with the others, like me, dashing up and down energetically for a few minutes and then bending over with our hands on our knees and wheezing for the same amount of time. After the game there was a quick pizza party on the sidelines, and then off to the second season, because William had baseball practice immediately after.

This was actually his 3rd baseball practice, so we're starting to get a handle on the kids on the team. William's now moved up from machine-pitch to kid-pitch. I had been really wondering what to expect from this -- are there any kids in this age group who can actually throw two strikes in an inning? But on Monday, the coach had a half-dozen volunteers pitching, and to my surprise and relief there are at least four kids (including William) who can actually fairly consistently throw strikes. So at least we won't be walking the park.

This is grades 3 and 4, so again William is about the youngest on the team and there are going to be several kids with more experience than him -- so it'll be good for him. He looks as if he's comfortably in the upper middle of the pack, hitting, fielding, and throwing pretty well. Should be a fun season.

William's school (and other schools in the area) have a tradition of a week-long Big Lesson, once a school year, where they intensively study a particular subject; it's also the jumping-off point for many smaller lessons through the year. William's school does the Big Zoo Lesson. For a week, every day they come into school, drop off their stuff, and get taken to the local zoo , where they spend the entire day. Small groups of kids are assigned an animal to observe for an hour a day. They're given several detailed zoo tours. When the zoo vets are operating, they can stand outside the operating room and watch through the glass. They're introduced to the various zoo ambassadors - the tame Eagle Owl, the porcupine, the binturong. When a keeper has some spare time, they go and chat with the kids. The kids are asked to figure out adaptations, evolution (though not under that name, I think), ecology, geography, and history through their animals. They make enrichment items for the meerkats. And so on.

It's a terrific idea, and as far as I can see it works pretty well. The obvious issue is that the teachers need lots of help for the week. You can't have two teachers shepherding 50 eight-year-olds for 6 hours a day in a zoo, let alone once the kids are split up into a dozen groups to observe their particular animal. So they get lots of parent volunteers helping out. Amy was there earlier this week, and I came by this morning (observation hour!).

William's group was observing the Amur tiger, which at least today prowled around the cage some. As they were keen to tell me, tigers sleep 16-18 hours a day, so they've been watching a lot of sleeping fur this week. Still, even after a week of observation, they did pretty well. We talked about adaptations (eyes, ears, stripes). I asked them what they heard when the tiger prowled past them and they were only briefly puzzled before realizing that "Nothing" was an adaptation too. We talked about the eyes and the sleeping until they realized that tigers are nocturnal, and I asked them, if they were in Siberia, at night, and a tiger was walking up behind them, what they thought they would hear ("Nothing!" they said, with a delicious shiver). We listened to the lion roaring next door and wondered what it would be like to listen to that if we were camping in a tent in the African plain ("I would be FREAKED OUT!") Dom and Rezo found a huge feather, and we looked at the barbules and talked about velcro and how to tell if it was a wing or a tail feather, and what bird it might have come from.

It was fun. I hope the kids enjoyed it as much as I did.

William played his third soccer game of the spring today. (The spring soccer season is short -- there are just two more games -- so it doesn't interfere too much with baseball season, coming up shortly.) He's on the same team as last fall, which you may recall was an unstoppable juggernaut. They're undefeated this spring, too, but looked mortal in the first couple games, as they'd lost a lot of the teamwork that made them so powerful last fall. There was almost no practice time, so it's understandable. Today they looked like they were getting the teamwork back, and won 3-1, with the three of the team's four top guns (William, Zach, and Nathan) all scoring goals.

The field was a mudbath. It didn't look so bad at first but a corner was almost underwater, and there were lots of powerful kicks that ended with the ball decelerating in a spray of water. Gage, who played in the game before us, had thoughtfully cleared away much of the mud by sliding on his back through it and taking it home with him, but WIlliam has been told he needs to strip as soon as he enters the house and have a shower. He is currently outside shooting hoops in the hope that I'll forget my unreasonable demands, but that's not going to happen.

"There is two chocolates"

Got the USDA grant application submitted yesterday, the due date, a few hours before deadline. I had the work all done a week ahead of time, but some of the paperwork from collaborators and so on took its sweet time about trickling in, so it ended up getting closer than I like.

( Boring work stuff )

( William )

( Matthew )

Having got rid of the worst of the work for now, I think I'll take a little time off, so we've pencilled in a trip to Toronto next week. Details are still unclear, though it will likely be me and the boys, without Amy, like last year.

"Daddy, how old is the sun?"
"About 5 billion years, Matthew."
"Is that older than you?"

"You know why robins have red tummies? Because they ate too many worms."