Our Little Genius

Ok, a Zachary update is long overdue. Above is my boy-wonder playing on the beach outside Schooners on Ryan's birthday.

My little boy is a genius. This is not some competitive mama's wishful thinking, it is truly fact. I mentioned in a previous post that he can count in French and Spanish. I really love it when he asks me the French or Spanish words for things in public - people look at me in amazement. But this is OLD news!

So here's the new news: he is beginning to write his letters! He's not even three! He can legibly write the easier ones - O, Q, Y, M, N, U, V, I, P, and D (I think that's all of them), but the rest look a little scribbly. He, however, knows what letter he's just written. I swear I am not tying him to a chair or anything, he just suddenly expressed an interest and I ran with it. The other day, when he woke up from his nap, he asked if we could go outside to play with the sidewalk chalk and draw W's! How else do I answer that except "Of course, my dear!!!"

He is reading right to left some of the time still - we have to read the make or model on the back of cars as we walk past them in the parking lot. He's reading the letters out loud, but he's starting to get the idea of the sounds that letters make. I think I waited too long to introduce that concept, but he'll comprehend it when he's ready. For now it's fun being in the car, we play a sort of version of "eye spy" with letters and numbers.

I'm sure there are many more examples to support my conclusion, but tonight I am tired.

Surprise!

Friday was Ryan's birthday. So I decided to throw him a surprise party. Last year his birthday was not too fun, we were doing anchor drills in the Dry Tortugas and Mama wasn't happy. You all know the saying, if Mama ain't happy . . . So this year, all Ryan kept saying was that he wanted to have a happy birthday. Now, I know he's not much up for surprise parties, but I thought it would be fun to have his friends gather. A tradition in our house is the birthday honoree gets to choose a restaurant and we go out to a nice dinner. Ryan decided he wanted to go to Schooners, a fun, family friendly restaurant/bar on the beach. He wanted Zachary to go with us, thinking that after dinner we could let him play on the beach. He invited his Mom to go with us. Here we are enjoying our dinner.

Meanwhile, back at the hacienda . . . I had recruited D-Day and Stef to unearth my hidden decorations and prepare for the surprise. I made a surreptitious call when we left the restaurant. Here is Ryan's reaction:

Doesn't he look surprised? Too bad I now know what he was really thinking "oh, I'm so tired, I can't wait to log some couch time!"

These are the decorations. I made a carrot cake, Ryan's favorite. We had around 15 people hiding in the kitchen. Ryan was so surprised, and he did concede that it was a very happy birthday.

Pictures!

Ok, we have pictures! I found the camera cord and all is right (sort of) with the world.

Here is Zachary and one of his favorite games, pick up sticks. The sticks are orignially a charades game, a Christmas present from my Mom, but Z has his own ideas of how to play!

Are here are the Kit Kat Girls, from Cabaret. Left to right we are Linda, me, Caitlin, and Marie. We are in our "underwear" and our Mein Herr wigs - this was what we wore to dance down the aisles in the Entr'acte just prior to Act II.

Here we are again in our full Mein Herr outfits.

And here we are in our Don't Tell Mama outfits, which we promptly rip off at the beginning of the song (down to our underwear from the first picture). On the far right is Kelly, who played the lead of Sally Boles.

And here we are in our incredibly ugly Money outfits. Left to right we are Caitlin, Austin, me, Rick, Bonnie (Fraulein Kost), and Marie. Austin was Marie's dance partner, Rick was mine.

Okay, so that's enough for today. I have gobs more Cabaret pictures, but I'm not sure how interesting they are to everyone else. I'll have a good update for tomorrow, it's Ryan's birthday!

Frustration and the "V"

I have been terribly frustrated for three days now. Why, you may ask. Well, I'll tell you. I have gobs of fabulous pictures - of Cabaret and of Zachary - that I need to download to the computer, but I cannot find the damn camera cord! Oh, I know I could buy a new one, but really! If you are familiar with my previous blog, "And the Southern Cross", you are aware of my camera foibles. Therefore I should have at least three of the stupid cords around here somewhere. I will find one of them, even if it kills me.

On a different topic, some friends and I went to see "The Vagina Monologues" last night. It was fantastic. I went with several of the girls in my belly dance troupe, and it was the ultimate girls night. The girlfest continued today - I taught my monthly Saturday class, which we call "Belly Dance Boot Camp" and afterwards we all went to a nearby Irish pub to hear a bagpipe band and drink green beer. The boot camp, an obvious play on words in this military town, is a circuit training class with higher intensity belly dance moves. We all worked our butts off today, so green beer was definitely in order. And in a wonderfully surprising turn of events the owner of the Irish Pub wants me to call him to discuss booking my belly dance troupe there! Oh, the power of the "V"

Ok, I'm BAAAAAACCCKKKK

Alright, I've hung up my high heels and turned in my songbook. I'm no longer a showgirl. It's actually a little bittersweet, for the lights and the stage were intoxicating. But I'm happy to return to my normal life.

I'm quite proud to report my son is now tri-lingual. He can count to ten in Spanish, French, and of course English. He's not terribly conversational (representative of his gender?) but boy can he count! Today we had a picnic in the park. The weather is so perfect that we had to get outside. It was our second picnic of the week. Zachary loves to run around saying "picnic" the entire time. Another interesting Zachary development: he's suddenly concerned about people/pets/things being happy. We went into a stationery store this morning so I could order a present for a friend, and the owner always has her two dogs in the store. Zachary loved petting them, they are very good dogs. As we left he looked at me and said the dogs were very happy when he petted them. Isn't that cute? Smart and sensitive! This kid definitely has my heart on a string!

Kurt did correctly report that the Southern Cross has been moved to Mobile, but since the move weekend was the last weekend of Cabaret I was not aboard for the journey. Don't feel sorry for me, however, since the highs were only in the low 60's that weekend. It was quite a cold one on the water.

Okay, well everyone tell me what YOU have been up to since I went underground to be a Cabaret girl! I'll post pictures from my Cabaret adventures next time.