A horse and an ostrich

 Each foot fall lands deliberately yet softly, breaking the silence of the cool night air, then quickly retreating into the muffled shadows of the dark as I make my way casually down the street. Any noises are quickly absorbed into the background. Everything sounds different at night to me. It is peaceful and tranquil. I consider myself a morning or daytime person, yet, when I find myself outside at night, alone, I wonder why I don't do this more often.

  The fog has returned to its nightly routing of rolling into the valley, only to retreat to the coast by mid day. It lends an eire glow to the darkness and makes the air feel even stiller yet. A pair of owls have taken up residence around our house, and it was their calls to one another, that lured me on a 4:00am walk around the block on a Saturday morning. "Hoo…hoohoo," came the call from a neighbors tree, followed by an answer from my tree, "Hoo...hoohoo." The rest of the neighborhood is oblivious to the early morning ensemble I am enjoying.
  4:00am on a Saturday. Yes I was up and on my way to work. My reason was two-fold. First to get caught up on work that I fell behind on when I took a day off to let Melanie go to North Carolina on her own, and second, I promised Apollo that I would be back home in time to take him to his Soccer game. A promise that I will not break even if it means going to work on a Saturday before the sun comes up.
  It is the time that I spend with Apollo and Orion that I relish. It rejuvenates me when I spend my days with them and now that Apollo is in school, we have a fairly regimented routine during the week, that cuts into our "special time" as Apollo calls it.

   I have some amazing conversations with Apollo during our special time. It is funny the things that you learn when you take the time to listen. Apollo noticed a horse ridding school on the way to soccer practice one evening and it started a dialogue about riding horses, why it is so costly, and how horses need a lot of space to live in. I really did not give a whole lot more thought to our conversation until Saturday morning on the way to Apollo's soccer game. We passed the now vacant horse arena, and Apollo started in,  "Dada, I know why you went to work on a Saturday," he said, "It's so you can make more money so I can learn to ride a horse."
I chuckled for a moment and then explained, "That is not exactly why I went to work today, but like I told you before, we will go horse back riding when you are a little older."
"Well dada," he replied, "we need to buy a house with a lot of land so I can have a horse. I have always wanted a horse and an ostrich you know."

I was rather amused about how sure he was with his statement. A horse and an ostrich. I guess chickens are old news at this point.
  Apollo reached a huge milestone with soccer this week. He crossed over into the fun zone. After a great practice and the encouragement and cheering on of his coach, Apollo gained a new level of confidence and excitement for the game. The switch happened when Apollo repeatedly kicked the ball in the air and right in the face of the goal keeper. It was such a proud moment for me watching him reel in excitement. Next Apollo tried his hand as the goalie and overall did a good job, but it was his level of excitement and energy that he brought, that was so great to see. In fact, he was so enthusiastic about it that he played goalie the entire first half of the game on Saturday, and I don't think he quit moving for more than a moment. He is still a bit timid and not very aggressive, but the difference is night and day.

  In the midst of helping Apollo be the best he can be, he turned the tables on me. I have been put on notice that I am "silly". Apollo told me that none of the other parents are silly and that I am acting silly because "you think you were born that way, but you weren't." Once again, I was amused by his statements, however, Apollo was not. He was pretty serious about it. This is just great; we have already reached the point where I am that annoying dad, I initially thought. I began to inquire of Apollo why I was "silly" to him and why his friends parents are not. He could not really get his point across until finally he said, "The other grown ups act like the brothers," referring to his older brothers, Ian and Aden. Alas, I understood what Apollo was talking about, so, I put a scowl on my face, acted like everything was serious, a burden, and stripped away any traces of caring or interest from my face. Apollo agreed that this is how grown ups are supposed to act, but then, 20 minutes into my role-play, he had a complete reversal; "Dada! I want you to stop acting like that. If you don't be silly again, I'm not going to stay in love with you!"
  Apollo conceded that I was probably born silly after all, and he did not want me to be like the other grown ups, at least not yet. Since then, Apollo has called me out for being silly with my voice. It turns out that he could discern a very slight change in my voice where I became ever so slightly sarcastic or patronizing. It was so subtle that I wasn't even conscious of this until Apollo pointed it out. I had to tell him that he was absolutely right and that at the time I was being "patronizing" which was way worse than silly. Now he just tells me, "Dada, your not acting normal!" This kid is going to keep me on my toes.

  Orion has a fascination right now with a radio controlled monster truck. He loves all trucks and tractors and also trains, especially Thomas and friends, but his monster truck is the favorite. He knows how to charge the battery for the truck and will bring it to me to put in the truck for him. Apollo's thing was race cars at this age, but Orion is all about big trucks and vehicles that connect, like trains or cars and trucks with trailers. I find it amusing because I was never really much of a car guy. Where the boys differ is that Orion also loves balls of all sorts, and never passes up the opportunity to kick a soccer ball around with Apollo and I. Orion will bring me a ball regularly and engage me in some sort of ball sport. Apollo likes balls, but they are not in his top 5 toys to play with when given a choice.
  One of the choices that Melanie and I made when we decided to have children is that Melanie would stay home with them at least until they were in school. We have made endless sacrifices to achieve this, but nothing is more valuable to me than having my wife home with our children. It has been five and one half years since Melanie left the workplace and besides all the obvious benefits of having a stay-at-home mom, we are now reaping the benefits of Melanie being able to volunteer one day per week in Apollo's class. The best part about this is that Orion gets to come too. He gets to act like one of the big kids and gets to participate in all the classroom activities with his brother. The added bonus is the exposure to spanish. He picks up a few words here and there, and always likes to parrot everything Apollo says; English or Spanish.

  As it is often my duty to put the boys to bed, our routine usually involves a couple of stories followed by song time. Apollo relishes a good story and loves to listen while Orion, on the other hand, likes to climb around and act wild, returning every few seconds to point at a picture and say, "Dada, whats that?" It is the song time that peaks Orion's interest. Somehow, Jingle Bells has become his favorite song. I really think that he likes the alternate verse about batman smells and the joker got away, the best. Needless to say, I usually have to sing this song four or five times per night. The benefit of song time to me is to hear Apollo and Orion break out in random songs together singing songs they learned at bedtime. This happened in the car the other day. Melanie was with us and she told me that Orion does not like her singing and will not let her sing…at all. I told her that she was nuts and agreed to try an experiment. Orion asked me to sing Jingle Bells, so I started and Apollo and Orion Joined in followed by Melanie. No sooner than Melanie started in, Orion screamed out, "MAMA, NO! Stop! …No Sing Mama!"
When I stopped laughing I encouraged Melanie to try again; the result was the same. I admit that I tease Melanie about her singing, but I will have to say that it is not bad enough for a 2-year-old to dislike. Maybe he feels singing is a man thing.
   Singing is one of the things the boys will cooperate on but the rest of the time, Apollo sure knows how to push Orion's buttons. Two things are guaranteed to get Orion fired up; "Orion, I'm gonna get your (insert any word here; monster truck, mama, dada, etc)" Apollo will taunt him in his teasing voice.
"Noooo! Miiiiiiiiine!!" Orion will yell and come running from the opposite side of the yard or house and will be ready for a fight.

The other way he likes to get Orion fired up is by telling him in the same teasing voice; "My Dada!"(or mama, or yiayia) Orion is instantly on the defensive and the end result is two boys piled on top of me, hugging me while trying to push the other out of the way.
First Apollo chimes in,"My Dada!" Then Orion, "NO, Its MY Dada!"
This dada is all smiles.


  

Fall and fútbol season

The sound of wind gusting through the trees, wine bottle lanterns clanging softly as they sway to and fro from the patio cover, and the warm air as it rushes through the screen on the patio bedroom door, passing like a wave over my body starting on my shines and finishing at the top of my head; every hair tingling my skin in its wake. It is fall in Sonoma county and some of the best weather of the year. I have two tired boys passed out next to me, one on either side, their bodies motionless, chests rising and falling softly with each slow and slumbering breath. It is these fleeting moments that I wish I could bottle every sensation, emotion, and feeling and save it just to savor it on demand. I would label the bottle, "Perfection." It is these moments that I realize nothing else in this world matters, but this perfect moment. These two boys of mine, my Alpha and Omega, are all that I need to make my life complete.
 

I realized that this night is the first in two years, two months, and four days of life for Orion, to be without his mom. We sent Melanie off to North Carolina to meet her newest nephew, Sebastian Ko, so it is just us boys left to our own device for the next few days. Orion is a major mama's boy and will often refuse to fall to sleep unless his mom is in the room, and if she does not come, it can be several hours of battling sleep before he admits defeat and lets exhaustion take him. This was a real point of concern for me once he realized his mom was gone. Orion has absolutely amazed me with his level of comprehension. We have been telling him that his mom would be gone for three days, however, I did not really expect Orion to understand that. Orion woke up the next morning, looked at me and said, "Dada. Mama gone three days." and that was that. We called her on the phone once and latter spoke to her on Skype at bed time. He kissed his moms face on the computer screen, said "BYE!" while waving to her and has been content ever since.

  It has become abundantly apparent that Apollo is shy and timid. He has been that way most of his life, but we had hoped it would start to fade away by now. He is just so aware and self conscious and really thinks about things too much. I do not want to change who he is, yet I want to break him out of his shell a bit. School has been helpful, however he will require a more concerted amount of effort to achieve this. Soccer seemed like a logical starting place, so I signed him up. Apollo has never been ball crazy like Orion is, and I have often tried to get him interested by trying to play catch with him or kick. Both with very limited success. Apollo takes instruction much better from others than he does from his mom and I, so I am banking on coaches and teachers to help push him over the hump. What I hoped Apollo would gain the most is the ability to let go a little bit and enjoy himself in a group or team environment. Plus the fact that the two favorite games at his school are fútbol and zombies, learning to play soccer will turn out to be very beneficial. 
  We are three weeks in to his short 6 week soccer season, and although I am enjoying every second of it, Apollo is still undecided. He has fun most of the time, but I have to confess that his mind wanders a lot and I catch him daydreaming about other things. Although he has made his way into the cluster of kids during the soccer games, and actually has kicked the ball a few times, he will also watch the ball go right by him.  It takes a lot of self control for me to just let go and not micro-coach every thing he does on the field. I want to keep it fun for him, so I have been coming up with creative ways to teach him how to play soccer on days that he does not have practice or a game. I feel the lessons he will learn in sports will be invaluable and I plan on signing him up for several sports every year. The thing is that once he gets the hang of something, he tends to excel at it, for example, riding a bike. I am not sure if he will ever be super aggressive, but he can sure kick the heck out of the ball when he tries.

  Orion's language ability is expanding daily. It is interesting watching how he learns to speak. He will repeat anything Apollo says, and will say it perfectly. I call it the parrot effect. Yet, once he learns the word and uses it on his own, he does not pronounce as clearly. Eventually, the sounds form correctly and the words begin to be intelligible. As I stated before, his comprehension is off the chart. He hears and understands everything. He will hear us talking about something as mundane as needing a towel. He will disappear down the hall and return a moment later with a towel.
We have had a fog machine in our backyard for a few days and the boys have been playing with it daily. I had to take the jug of "fog juice" and stash it in a closet. Today, the machine ran out of juice. Apollo opened up the the reservoir and said, "Its empty Orion. We need more juice." Orion ran in the house, down the hall, into our bedroom, and into the closet. Moments later he came running back outside carrying a gallon jug of fog juice. "Apollo!" he yells, "Juice!"
  My favorite moment of the week came during one of our daily wrestling/tickling matches. I had Orion in absolute hysterics. "Dada," Apollo said while laughing himself, "You made Orion over laugh."