Fragments

Our household is sick, and I am foggy-brained tonight.  So here are many little fragments without a theme.  New pictures start here.  Or just scroll down for the quotes.

Wishes
Ronan has discovered the joy of wishing wells, and he likes to tell us what he wished for.  I particularly enjoy the multiple scales at which wishes operate.  For example earlier this month he wished on two coins: "My wishes are that everyone in the universe was nice.  And that water was as green as a turtle."  
More recently he used his coins to say "I wish I had a house that could move anywhere," and "I wish I could turn a brick into a plant when I say yo-ho".  Come to think of it, I want that house too!  Not that universal niceness and the ability to change matter wouldn't be cool too.

Homonyms
Last month Ronan asked what a homonym was and we proceeded to come up with a few examples for him.  He thought this was a pretty fun game and has been thinking up homonyms ever since.  Sometimes they'll come out of nowhere, and sometimes he'll hear a word and pipe up that it is a homonym (often a homophone technically, but the kid can't spell yet so he's allowed to mix those up).  Many of the words he comes up with are actually related at some level he doesn't yet know about, so it's fun to see how he thinks (car) horn and (animal) horn are homonyms with no common origin.  How would he know?!

Righteous
If the word of last month was thoughtful, this month it is righteous.  Ronan is really mellow and easygoing until he perceives that he has been wronged.  The problem is that it is all too easy to cross a 4-year old. Nobody likes to be interrupted, right?  Well for Ronan this includes the time period before he was about to start speaking but you didn't know it.  More than once he has stomped off in tears because I spoke when he was just about to.  He likes clear rules and fairness, in part it seems because it helps him to define moral right and wrongs.  There aren't so many shades of gray at 4!

Mean
This black-and-white world makes learning about carnivory interesting.  T. rex was MEAN and saber toothed tigers were MEAN, but what about a cat eating a mouse?  Or a bird eating an insect?  Ronan isn't vegetarian, but he eats meat infrequently enough that he is still a little vague about whether the meat beef and the animal cow are the same.  He's a little surprised he ate rabbit.  The same goes for materials.  He doesn't quite grasp that leather is skin, and I have a feeling it's going to rock his world when he does.  You mean soylent green is people??

Nicknames
The cats at our apartment are not, strictly speaking, supposed to be here.  There is plenty of precedent for that here, but it's not a burden I care to share with a kid.  First because he shouldn't have to keep a secret, and second because god-help-you if you think a four year old can be trusted to keep a secret.  

After a few of his announcements in public areas about the c***s, something had to be done.  I started calling them dragons as a game.  When a mom/kid duo enter the building saying "be careful not to let the dragons out", it sounds like the fun sort of pretend it is.  Ronan liked that game for about two weeks, and we appear to be getting another week or two of mileage out of calling them gryphons, although he has almost no idea what that is.  

The unanticipated side effect is that he has started calling the cats just about anything except their names.  For example Gandalf is often referred to as "B'snuggle", contracted from big-snuggle.  Most popular are "Problem 1" and "Problem 2", adapted from Dr. Seuss' Thing 1 and Thing 2 of course.  This one has turned out to be a lot of fun, as we talk about how we could have worse problems, or how we're stuck with a particularly hairy problem, or how there is a problem on the table.

Pretending
I frankly don't understand how pretending works at this age.  Ronan understands pretending quite well, and it apparently works for him.  What I hear a lot is "I want you to pretend that you don't know X is about to happen, and then you'll be really surprised."  He often tells us three or four times to make sure we really know what our part to play is, and then wants the surprised reaction to look really authentic.  Did I mention you should never ever need a four-year-old to keep a secret?  There is no longer such a thing as a surprise birthday cake…  Good thing pretend surprise is apparently just as good.

Personality (again)
I'm pretty sure I'm a broken record on this topic, but it's amazing to me how much you can know about who a person is at such a young age.  The specifics may be yet to come but the character is already there.  I foresee an older Ro who will, for example, berate bad drivers, work hard if (and only if) he believes in the goal, and have great difficulty interrupting his projects.  Hopefully he will get better at interrupting himself to pee though!  Strangely I foresee a time where I'm going to have to unknow some of who he is.  It's odd to know more about someone else than they do.  I remember when I was growing up how important it was to me that people believed I could change, and that I wasn't necessarily judgeable by prior behavior.  I was probably not all that right about that, but there will likely come a time when Ronan wants me to believe the same of him.

Happenings

This month we celebrated two birthdays, tried our hand at sleepover babysitting (!!), had a very special dinner, and enjoyed both sets of grandparents company at the same time.  Ronan made his first visit to a National Park, and co-made his first clay pot in the car on the ride home. We are terribly sad about the loss of my brother-in-law's father, who was a wonderful and spirited man we all enjoyed spending time with, and we are cherishing all the family we have in our lives. 

Quotes
"Mom, I forget what a fricative is" 

"Most of the time I don't share, except in special emergencies I do."  

"This is the yummiest thing I've ever looked at"

"Let me know if you see any dinosaurs so I can save the cats.  Cuz I'm a paleontologist.  And a superhero."

Sleepover

[leafing through book of common pets]
"We could maybe get a bunny…
We could maybe get a naked mole rat."

M: Nothing is faster than Superman!  Right?
R: Well, nothing is faster than light.

R: Why is water heavy?
D: Well it has a lot of stuff in a small space.  We call that dense.
R: Oh, so it’s kind of like neutronium 

R: Dad, do you know why inside your head your brains are wet?
D: No, why?
R: Because that's part of how they don't catch on fire!

Trio

Scoping out a burrow

Sweetness

Trees or antennae?

We just had our first parent-teacher conference in California.  Not too surprisingly the teachers are struck by Ronan's language, logic, and self-regulation.  We're struck by those things too. But lately I've been most struck by Ronan's thoughtfulness and sweetness.  

Often if I do something nice (and simple) for Ronan, I'll get surprised by something like "thank you for blowing on my soup for me".  He also regularly tells us how much he loves us, and thanks us for cooking "such delicious food." Saturday we had french toast for breakfast, avocado/cheese sandwiches for lunch, and spinach/lentil soup for dinner.  I got compliments on all three!  He acts more like a polite houseguest than I ever have (although he naturally has a few special weak spots in the willingly-going-to-bed and using-the-bathroom departments).  

Blue skies in Colorado

Recently Ronan figured out that you can print things that get typed on computers, so he asked D to print a page that says "R and D love A".  I told him I loved it and it made me happy, so he invited me to put it up somewhere in the house that I could always see it, so that I would be happy whenever I walked by.  Now I can quite literally go to my happy place.    This morning Ronan asked if he could have a happy place, so I have a feeling some post-holiday valentine making is in our future.


Nerds rule:
Pushing boundaries is a favorite past-time lately, ensuring that we constantly dance the dance of being firm, flexible, providing advance notice, and generally paying far too much attention to the exact phrasing of what we promised.  I'm told the lawyering only increases from here on out.  

I'm getting pretty good at sticking to bedtime routines and schedules but Ronan has stumbled on my Achilles heel.  After the books are over he will ask deep science questions in a ploy to engage for just a little longer.  Could you refuse a kid who said "mom, can you explain those cells in the brain to me again?"  "What do you mean by firing in the brain?"  

Events since last month:

Visit to Google

Colorado friends

The big news is that we moved (locally) to the main place we are staying here. Have I mentioned lately that we are tired of moving?  We got set up relatively swiftly and are about as settled in now as it makes sense to be.  I also gave a talk at Davis and took a glass blowing class with my dad. Ro and I spent 4 days in Colorado during a school break, returning a few days ago.  As a family we took day trips to friends in the south bay, to visit Google, and to the Santa Cruz mountains.  We started reading our first chapter book… Pippi Longstocking of course!

Quotes:

"We're more than friends.  We're a family!"

"To make cars colors do they have a giant anodizer, or do they just paint them?"

[After eating a grocery sample] "The cheese is too hot but the Mac 'n is not!"

[Just after lights out] "Can you tell me more about how brains work?"

Ahoy matey!

The happy place has evolved!

More pictures at the bottom of the album here.

December and January

2 months have passed and we went from shoveling snow on the East Coast to wearing sunscreen at the beach on the West Coast.  California is having a very unusual winter, to be sure.  Ronan misses home and his friends, but is being a trooper about the whole transition (and gets to do many fun things here as well).  For strangely juxtaposed sledding and beach-going pictures from the last month, go here.

Ro strikes me as very adult for four, but still missing large gaps of information about the world we live in.  It's a little like entertaining an alien new to planet earth and explaining how plants grow, how your nose is connected to your mouth, and why objects have colors (at a toddler level). This is great fun!  Ro is getting very interested in time and planning.  How long will we be in California, how many seconds was that, what will we do tomorrow after school?  His new school gets out at 3pm so I also have a lot more time with him to talk about time.

His language continues to amaze me.  Today on the ride home he asked me what "prosecute" means.  The other day it was "preposterous".  I also recently got: "what is the soul" and "what does apocalypse mean?" (he listens carefully to radio lyrics!)

Ronan is obsessed with dragons and pirates.  This is a typical 4 thing, but I probably didn't help things by showing him the old 70s swedish overdubbed version of Pippi in the South Seas.  Now we all sing songs from that film.  He does make an oddly polite pirate, though:

Ro: Ahoy matey.  It's the treasure apple!  Let's sneak up on it like chicken hawks.

Ro: Is it washed?

A: Aye aye

Ro: Did ya put it there recently?

A: Aye aye

Ro: Arrr.

He also scored a handmade (awesome) costume of his favorite movie viking character (Stoick the Vast…yes that's how they spell it).

Chocolate, strawberries, and vikings

Ronan is both very talkative and very shy sometimes, but he can't stand a wrong thing being said and must correct you.  That means a sure fire way to get him to tell you something is to play dumb or say something false.  Turns out the same thing works with my classes…after a night of very little sleep I taught class rather unclearly and got an amazing level of participation of students asking questions to make sure they understood.  Hmmm…interesting.

Events and happenings: moving, our temporary apartment, Christmas and New Years, rambling at marinas, boarding a boat, the exploratorium, discovery museum, Tennessee Valley beach, interhovse dinners, lots of family time.

Ro Quotes

R: The fire is nominal, dad!

R: Mom, you put me down in slobbery snow!

R: That's really preposterous.  You're being preposterous.

A: I’m putting this ice cube in my glass.

R: Are you putting it in there to keep your booze cold?

[in the bath]

R: Don't tickle my squeck!  It slides me over when you do that.  You do need to piggle all of my body, except not my hair or my face.  Pickle my hands!

[at the intersection of being four and a budding nerd…also in the bath]

R: I have googolplex butts

A: yeah, well you still have to wash them

R: Mom, imagine you are the kid and I'm the grownup and I say that we have to go out and you just want to stay home.  

[jeez louise, talk about theory of mind turned against us!]

R: Look at all the fish.  That's a school of fish.  [Sees big one]  That one's the teacher fish!

Four years

Making (and tasting) psychedelic birthday cake

Big birthday bash

Ronan is four!  He's wanted to be four for months, and his day finally came.  We threw our first party with the whole class invited, held in a big campus room because our house is a tornado of sorting what gets stored (out of the way of our renter) and what gets moved to California when we leave.  It was a pretty good party, and the dry ice colored soap bubbles weren't flawless but were fun.  

Events and happenings
Halloween was a big hit this year.  Ro went trick or treating for real this time, and going with buddies in a Halloween-spirity neighborhood was a big part of the fun.  Three little kids saying trick-or-treat is pretty much the cutest.  This month we also got a visit from L&P and C&A, packed and packed, and enjoyed some beautiful late Fall weather.

Humor
Humor is clearly pretty mysterious to kids.  Most jokes (except physical ones) are completely over their heads, so it's particularly interesting to see what they think a joke is.  Ronan's first pass at this was to say something, and then take it back and say he was only joking.  This backfired the day he told me his seatbelt wasn't on (while we were driving) and I had to find a way to pull over on a crowded street, only to find when I got back to his carseat that it was fully buckled.  He hasn't tried that one again!  His newest iteration at humor is nonsense.  From this evening:

"Do you know what is very funny?  I have a joke for you.

Oh dread, the baker took my ted.

Here's another funny joke: Oh chud, the baker took my grunt!

I know another one too!  When the baker ate a rabbit, a flashlight came out of a dinosaur.

And this is pretty funny.  When a cat went out its cat flap, it started to rain in the house!"

I admit, he did get us to laugh!

Phases

So everyone knows THAT kids go through phases.  I even expected the "why" phase, and I was reassured that the sudden fear of death of two months ago was pretty age typical too.  But a superhero phase?  I'm pretty sure that wasn't covered in Erikson!  All the boys at school are big into superheroes right now, and being strong, and being the good guys (or sometimes the bad guys).  Ronan has never seen a superhero show or book, but he still play acts spiderman, superman, and wonder woman on a regular basis.  

Look how I can fly!

Superhero cape, wristlets, belt!

This fascination with power and heroism has been stoked by watching "How to train your dragon" as a family a few weeks ago.  For days all he wanted to do was to have me play "Toothless" while he played "Hiccup" and gave instructions in his deep powerful voice.

He is fascinated by dragons and vikings, but somewhere along the way he got it into his head that viking helmets are "head thorns" and the term stuck.  Naturally we got him his own pair of head thorns for his birthday.

Pictures:
The end of the 3.5 year album and the start of a year 4 one!

Quotes:

Mom, I want you to make up a story that's true.

Nate, do you wanna come down to the basement and see all the sharp tools and play with them?

[On the topic of fish sticks]
You know, it turns out that these are *quite* yummy.

D [re Ro]: We are dealing with an intransigence.
R: You mean an imPOOPigence!


A: We’re going to a really cool place!
R: Oooh, is it a science museum?

R:  I know something you don’t know.
D:  Sure, I bet you know a lot of things I don’t know.  You’re learning so much all the time!  Do you want to teach me something that I don’t know?
R:  Yes.  Rain is a solvent for soap.
D:  Wow!  I hadn’t thought about it before, but I think you must be right.  How did you know that!?
R:  I figured it out with my detective brain!

Fall!

Ah, Fall!  There is a fire in the woodstove, our house smells like homemade applesauce, and leaves are on the ground everywhere.  We have been to one farm or another almost every weekend since late summer berry picking.  Add one Fall Festival, visits to the CSA and the community garden, and a trip to CT.  We're managing to squeeze the most out of the leaves before they go!  I feel like we must be getting the hang of this place because we now have favorite apples.  Early season: honeycrisp, midseason: macoun, late season: mutsu/crispin.  Not that we have sampled every variety but I've certainly tried more apples this year than ever before.  And it's true that the ones at the grocery store don't come close.

This frame is part of the sculpture tour at our favorite farm

This month has been smoother sailing than many in the past (and we can only imagine many to come).  When the thunder clouds do roll over Ronan it is often so dramatic it is almost comic.  The corners of his mouth literally turn down, he turns away, and runs off to his room (not infrequently putting himself down for a nap in the process).  He has also begun to employ a theatrical cry designed in part to show us exactly how uncool he thinks the situation has become.  The funny thing is that I vaguely remember occasionally exaggerating a cry as a kid for just that reason.  Obviously I had no idea how easy it is to spot.

Ronan has, for some time now, drawn elaborate squiggles and called them specific things.  "This is a dump truck flying down the hill to a pond."  Earlier this month he drew the first squiggles recognizable to adults.  As an official studier of rodents, I couldn't be more proud of my son's first representational drawing.  I'm not sure whether he thinks of it as a rodent or not, but that's what I see (aerial view).   The second was dubbed a horse.  Since then I've only seen squiggles (many of them in glitter paint) and he is starting to tackle the letter R.

Ronan's first representational drawings

This month we had a great visit from Grandma/Grossvater and another from Tata/Boo.  Why people don't visit us in February is a mystery to me but Lolo/Popo are visiting next weekend!  I'm starting to wonder if we need better guest towels and also if all our friends have strange nicknames.  I appear to be mostly nickname-proof at thirty-whatever.  

Ro has either inherited our night-owlishness or been forced into it, but a blissful side effect is that that boy can sleep until 8:30am.  Some days we wake him up!  Many days he'll toddle into our room and climb in bed for a cuddle.  This will be more endearing when he no longer smells like pee-soaked pullups, but I love it anyway.  Often the cat gets roped into the cuddle and fortunately Gandalf has grown into the perfect kid-cat (perfect grownup-cat too).  Other days we get woken up by a serenade of some very fast ukelele strumming.  Once, Ro hopped into bed and held the flexible, clip-on book nightlight above his head while asserting that he was an anglerfish who lived in the deep deep ocean [and a fairly convincing one].  This morning was a bit alarming though...he came in and announced he'd been hard at work making sawdust in the office!  Since he likes to saw a log we have in the basement I was relieved to find that he was making it by sharpening pencils, and not by trying to make his way through the legs of the desk.

Yesterday was a busy day between a morning halloween party, a midday lab field trip, and evening plans to see our favorite local band at our favorite local cafe.  Since we napped first we got there a bit late, only to learn they were too crowded to seat us.  Fortunately Ro had a plan: "We could just make Mac 'n Cheese and put on a CD of Kitchen Party in our home."  And friends, that is exactly what we did.

Quotes:

R: How big is my heart?

D: It's about the size of your fist

R: Oh, so it's the same size as my bladder when it has pee in it!

R: May I be excused?  Because I want to move my ladder and see if this switch turns on these lights.  Because you never know!

R: Do you know what?  I never want to vacuum mama up 'cuz she's my bestest friend.

R: Mom, we're best friends, right?

A: Right!
R: Mom, do you know why I'm hugging you?
A: Because you love me?
R: No, it's because I'm a little bit chilly.

[Ro sees a little yellow flag on a wire that is marking a buried sewer line]

R: Oh, is someone going voleing here?

A: Actually sometimes people use those flags to mark things besides burrows! 

R: I am nice to all the living creatures.  

R: [To Tata] Let's go upstairs and read books and spoon!  Yeah, and if we see a tyrannosaurus we won't bonk him.

[Pushing one magnet across the floor with another without touching]

A: Whoa, why does it move like that?

R: It's magnetation!

R: Do you know something?  Outside of Nate's house, he has a lot of were-rabbits.

D: What!?

R: Yep.  They're in a cage.

D: You know, I think those are probably normal rabbits.  [and also at a different house]

R: No.  They're were-rabbits.  They're *this* big!!  [holds arms about a meter apart]

D: Can you get out of my way so I can get the toilet paper?

R: What's a politer way to say "get outta my way" is to say excuse me.

After a waiter asked us if we wanted dessert, we told Ro that instead of having dessert there we could go to the frozen yogurt shop he loves, across the street.  He was a little confused that maybe the restaurant got their desserts from across the street too.  Upon the waiter's return...

R [to waiter]: Do you know what?  Most restaurants make desserts in their own kitchens.

Waiter: Oh, we do that here too.  Would you like a cookie from our kitchen?

R: Actually, we're going across the street for dessert.

Just found this note from our babysitter this summer:

Ronan and Josie are discussing allergies (particularly the difference between dust and dust mites). Ronan thinks for a second, and then declares, "But Josie and me are both allergic to poop." 

Grownup house quotes:

Today was a really long week

[Friday morning]: I just have to make it through the day so I can get to the weekend, so I can make it through the weekend to a new week, so I can get through the week to the weekend.

You know you want to see the pictures of costumed kids in a bounce house...and many more here.

A new semester

Then (Sept 2011)

Now (Sept 2013)

The jack-o-lantern mushroom came back this year!  The mushroom is smaller this time, true, but also that boy got big.  Evidently we have been in our house for two years!

Ronan delights in running past and then asking if he was so fast he was a blur.  He is, life is, work is, everything is right now.  The semester has started and I forgot what this felt like (good thing).  We are committed to not make life easier exclusively by ditching the fun stuff so we have still managed to play with house guests, do lots of berry picking, and take a little trip.

State of the Ronan:

You know what's hard?  Learning units.  We have numbers and they are one thing to master, but that a hundred seconds is shorter than one day is properly baffling.  Frequently Ro's solution is to leave them out entirely, telling us that he is a million strong, or a hundred tall.  Just a moment ago he said that pepper can make a billion thousand dusts.

Walks here are gorgeous!

He is fascinated by bodies.  Having learned about dinosaur bones he wants to know about our bones, and after an episode of the Magic Schoolbus he got really into digestion.  But understanding our biology comes with a dark side.  He is a little worried about what happens to make bones come out in dead things and this leads into his big fear.  He is currently seriously worried about death.

It started slowly, with wanting to know how long he would be alive and how long we would.  And he got a little upset that he would live longer than us.  Then for a few nights he started crying at bedtime because he didn't want us to ever die, and he didn't ever want to be dead.  It's a hard thing to comfort someone about, since I don't know that any of us really ever come to terms with it.  And it's hard for a three-something to understand that if their body turns to dirt that they don't feel it.  So we talk about how the feeling part of you isn't in your body anymore and that you become part of the universe.  Beyond that we had to have a little parental conference to get our stories straight.

I'm pretty sure Ronan has better manners than I ever did as a child.  Or at least he delights in playing the adult and pointing out when the grownups are doing it wrong.  I have been accused of chewing with my mouth open, forgetting to ask to be excused after a meal, and occasionally of not taking my shoes off at the door.  D was recently told he needed to floss!  The upside is he also compliments: "Mom you look so beautiful today" or "you are doing a so good job."

It's amazing to watch him cope with his feelings these days.  Something will disappoint him or not go as expected and there will be this moment of wrongness and quiet.  Then he will run off into another room, or get visibly upset, but most often if we can catch him in a hug at just the right moment (right after the quiet) he will take a few seconds to feel really sad and then emerge just fine.  What a change from the tantrums of earlier in the year (fingers crossed)!

Events and happenings

This month we had a visit from friends in Boston, headed to the lake house of D's boss, and went to a music festival and visited friends.  It turns out that Ronan has a knack for boat steering, turning and aiming us right at different house targets at some speed!  We had a particularly great time at the music festival, enjoying one of Ronan's favorite musicians (Elizabeth Mitchell) in addition to some of ours (Sarah Jarosz, Mike Marshall & Edgar Meyer, etc.).  It was held in a giant sculptural playground and unlike every other music festival was quite mellow and uncrowded but with plenty of ice cream.  Plus we got to stay up late talking with friends and enjoy mornings with pancakes and french toast!

More pics here as usual (new ones are at the bottom of the album).

Driving the boat!

At the festival

Ro Quotes:

I'm magical.  I can turn a person into a boot!

Dad I want to tell you something.  Did you know that I want to tell you something?

D: I need to remember to give something to Mama
R [walks over and picks up iPhone, holds down button until it beeps]
R: Siri, remember to give something to mama.  
R: [to dad] Now is it on your list?

Deep questions...
R: Mom, where do babies come out?
A: There's a part of a woman's body called the birth canal...
R: Is it like our butt?
A: Well it's not part of our digestive system.  But it can let a baby out.
R: It's basically like a valve!

Dada, how did the whole universe get made?

Funny pronunciation:
Ambliance instead of ambulance.  Sadrin instead of Saturn.

July quotes I found lying around!
[Ro is biting each blueberry in half and splitting it with D]

D: Thanks!  It's so nice to share.  Sharing makes everybody happy!

R: Yeah, *very* happy.  And it's like they don't even wanna lose that feeling.

A: You have very long eyelashes!

R: Why?

A: Because you're a beautiful boy.

R: Yours are very short.

Three and three quarters

Ronan on Laguna Arenal in front of Volcán Arenal

Late monthly update but what a month this was!  We finished up our trip to California and were home for a scant 5 days before heading to Costa Rica for 11.  We are finally just enough caught up that classes starting Tuesday isn't a total disaster, but boy was all that travel worth it. 

Ronan is a pro-traveler for someone so generally cautious (and whose first word was "uh-oh").  He's done a lot of it for a three year old (let's see, cross country trips at 5mos, 7mos, 8mos, 1yr, 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5; Germany at 1.5; Costa Rica at 3.5; camping every year, and long drives to and from DC).

His enthusiasm for travel is aided by a love of planes.  He adores pilots and overcomes all shyness to talk to people with wings on their lapels, no matter what they might be in the middle of.  He pores over the pictures of planes in the magazines and can't wait for his first sighting of an airbus 380 (he also wants to see a Tesla for what it's worth, and identifies every Mini, Fiat, VW Bug, and convertible we drive by).  

Costa Rica

We went all over Costa Rica with friends, a rented SUV, a guidebook, and various maps.  The electronic ones were essential (as roads aren't signed).  We stayed in 7 places over 11 days, most of which I would recommend highly.  We ate casados (rice/bean/veggie/cheese or meat plates) for nearly every meal and cooked them upon returning home because all other food seemed strangely wrong.  We soaked in hot springs, hiked to light blue waterfalls, kayaked, swam and snorkeled in the warm ocean, felt the softest sand I've ever touched, saw monkeys and tons of birds and iguanas, rode horses, got muddy and wore through our hiking sandals, read books, and were generally offline for the longest stretch in recent memory.  We slept really well, rising early and going to bed soon after dark.  I would go back in a heart beat.

Ronan in the sort-of-a-kid-carrier backpack crossing the Rio Celeste

Ro is of an age where we needed to bring almost nothing special for him.  We had some books on an e-reader for bedtimes, an inflatable swim vest for all the water stuff we did (packs down small), and a frameless kid carrier/daypack (Kelty transit 1.1) that is unbulky enough to bring as a carry on and use for regular loads (pictured left).  Ro's big accomplishment for the trip (besides being adventurous) was to do most of a hike (~2 miles) on his own, on very muddy terrain over huge rocks and roots and up and down hills.  I was tired by the time he pooped out and none of the rocks to climb over were my height.

When invited into the cockpit on our return flight home from Costa Rica, it turns out what Ro really wanted to say was this: "Did you actually know that when I get home I'm going to be three and three quarters?"  Kids do seem to love growing up.

Ro
We have officially entered the know-it-all phase of development.  Ronan loves to learn things and then teach them.  About half the sentences out of his mouth start with "did you actually know that..."  What's amazing to me is how much he does know.  He knows Mars is dusty, that you can tell whales aren't fishes because their tails go up/down, that anglerfish live in the deep deep ocean, and that space just keeps going.  This all makes it more charming when he says "I knowed that already".  

The other half of Ro's sentences start with "why."  Boy can a parent get tired of that phrase.  Why is the sky blue? Why does air absorb light? Why not blue light?  Either way you end up at chemistry and physics pretty quickly or at "because."  And either way it's turtles all the way down.

• Pictures of Costa Rica are here.
• Other new pictures from this month are here (or will be after Tuesday).

Quotes:

8/5/13
R: Mom, what does ironic mean?
A: [totally fails at explaining in 3-year old terms]

8/9/13
A: I wonder if Diego would like to see that
R: Well, Diego's in the TV and I don't think he knows how to come out
[N.B. Watching Diego was awesome before heading to a rainforest -- Ro wanted to see sloths and monkeys and asked if he was old enough to go on a zipline. (No)]

8/25/13
R: Peaches are the best
A: I think blueberries are even better
R: Grapes are the best
A: You're the best!
R: I'm not the best for eating.  I'm the best for hugging and snuggling.

9/2/13
R: Dada, look what I found-- what's this?
D: That's a hairpin.  Maybe Shira uses those to keep up her hair.  Mama doesn't use those, because she uses hairbands instead.
R: Yeah, is Shira Sasha's mom?  Siri doesn't use anything, because she's a machine.  Well, she uses electrical things inside.

Wood fired hot tub at the riverside