many milestones

cosmo is riding a two wheeler. now, with pedals! two days ago, he sat on the bike he got for his fourth birthday (back in november, thanks nani and papa!), to find out if his feet touch the ground yet. they did. then we went out to try to ride.

and he rode.
just like that.



okay, so...there was cotton candy involved, but he picked it up so fast, it blew my mind. he was riding, and i was actually stopping him, out of...well...fear. my own fear, that is. he loved it! he kept saying, "let go, mom, let go now." it made him giddy, the way learning to read made him giddy. the next night, we tried again, and it was as though he had been riding his whole life. in a way, he has. for nearly half of his life, anyway. he got a balance bike when he was two and a half, and became proficient on it rather quickly. it rides so much like a regular two wheeler, the jump to a pedal bike is pretty smooth. plus, he has been riding behind my bike, or carl's bike, on the trail-a-bike since early spring. that has pedals, but we do the balancing. the balancing and the pedaling all fell into place this week, and he got it.



yesterday, we walked our bikes (and rode a little) several blocks to the b-line trail, and then rode the trail all the way up to city hall. the trail is so relaxing, with no traffic to worry about. today, we loaded up all of our bikes, and headed out to the clear creek trail. there we rode for nearly 5 miles total, on a lovely paved trail that follows the creek. the temperatures were in the seventies, with low humidity...absolutely perfect. he's getting really good at using his hand brake, and getting out of the way when others approach. it's wonderful.



he's also making great strides in swim class. he floated on his back for the first time, on his own, with the help of a life jacket (rather than the swim teacher)

and, cosmo and justin figured out vision, a complicated room escape, computer game that they've been working on for quite a while. it was a delight to hear him tell the story of their accomplishment, in elaborate detail.



i also took him to his very first movie-in-a-theatre (not counting the cry-baby-matinee in houston, when he was 2 or 3 months old). we saw toy story 3. it was a great way to spend two hours, in the heat of the day last week, and he really enjoyed it.



in other milestone news, cosmo read pond, by lizi boyd, to carl and i, at bedtime. it is an extremely simple board book, with only a few words on each page, and reads like a poem. cosmo has read much more difficult texts, but it was particularly moving to me, because it is one of three books that we read to cosmo each and every night when he was a baby/toddler--when we were establishing bedtime rituals. carl and i pretty much have it memorized, and it holds a special place in our hearts. to hear his sweet little four-year-old voice reading those familiar words was heartbreakingly precious.

brought to you by...SKUUT

bear with me as i plug this product. no, it's not a christmas present. cosmo got this balance bike in june, because that was when he seemed ready for it. i know i have blogged about it before. i am overly impressed with this thing. it was the best $90 we ever spent. it teaches him balance, so he can avoid training wheels when he's ready for a regular bike. it has chunky, inflatable tires, which allow for bumpy sidewalks, gravel, grass, and any other uneven terrain. he rarely falls off of it, because he can easily steady himself with his feet. he has complete control over this vehicle, and can lift the front wheel to go over curbs, or turn around. it makes people do a double take and smile when they see him riding it.



this last point is both a blessing and a curse. at the playground, i feel like the mom of the rich kid, who always gets the latest and the best toy. i always want to tell the other parents who are staring at the bike, that it wasn't THAT expensive. that we don't spoil our child with fancy gifts. that we got it because we thought it would be good for his physical development, his balance, and his confidence. NOT because it's made of wood and sports a sort of euro-hip design. it was a practical gift, NOT a splurge!

on our trip to denver, we were trying to decide whether to bring a stroller or not. we never use a stroller anymore, but thought it might come in handy, moving through airports. cosmo does walk more slowly than we do, and i hate rushing him. i don't mind carrying him, but burdened with a carry-on bag, i can only do it for a short time. it occurred to me that we could bring the SKUUT, and treat it as we would a stroller; just check it at the gate before boarding the plane. we weren't sure if bike-riding would be permitted in the airport, but decided to give it a try.



he hopped on as soon as we got out of the parking shuttle bus, rode it into the airport, through the line to check our bags, all around the food court, through security (well, he had to get off of it and send it through the x-ray machine), down to our gate, and all around terminal b while we waited (and folks, when you miss your first flight, and are put on standby during the holiday season, you do A LOT of waiting). the airport officials were impressed and delighted to see cosmo rolling along, swinging his feet, smiling. we were never hassled about it. we got a gate check tag for it, and left it at the end of the boarding ramp, with the strollers.

i felt like a paid rep for SKUUT (in fact, i feel like that now, as i write this), and like i should have been handing out business cards. dozens of people stopped to ask me where i got it, how long he'd been riding it, and other detailed questions. kids his age stared in envy, and parents wondered how we got it through security. cosmo took notice of the attention, and eventually started showing off. he had the most fun in the denver airport, while we waited for our flight home. he was doing laps around an open area near the seating, and getting lots of exercise instead of being cooped up in a stroller. he had some near misses, but never crashed in to anyone, or anything.

i was happy we decided to bring it. from now on, we won't leave home without it. we brought it on our road trip to texas, and it came in handy at rest stops too. it is so compact and light, and easy to carry, there is no reason not to bring it along. i hate to just go on and on about this bike, but i want to suggest to anyone with a two year old kid in your life, to set aside $15 each month (if you can), for the next six months, and get that kid this bike when s/he turns two and a half (that is the age when most kids can comfortably reach the ground from the lowest seat setting). they can ride it 'til they're five or so. but they probably won't, since they'll be ready for a big kid bike before they turn four.

what's your hobby?

we can (not) stop canning! after blueberries, we made some incredible peach chutney, some green beans with lemon and tomato (a slow cook recipe from bittman, where the beans just melt in your mouth), last night we did some spicy pickled green beans (the kind that go great in bloody marys), and we expect to make salsa, maybe this weekend.



i also tried making some fruit leather with peaches i got at a great discount from the farmer's market, because they were quite ripe. i am not sure of the results of the fruit leather yet, since it is still drying, and we haven't tried the green beans either. the peach chutney is to-die-for though, and i am tempted to make more while the peaches are on. apparently we aren't the only ones around here with canning fever. i looked for some books on food preservation today at the library, and all but one were checked out, some with holds 3 deep! i know that part of this mania for me is inspired by reading animal vegetable miracle by barbara kingslover. a couple of people recommended it to me, so i finally started reading it.

(a recent garden and farmer's market haul)

the book is all about eating local, and since we are so privileged to live in a place with an abundance of local food available all summer and fall, it makes sense to put some of it up for the winter months. that way we won't have to buy as much food that is shipped from far away. besides that, we are having a blast.
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in other news, cosmo got a balance bike called skuut. it costs about a third of the german made like-a-bike, but seems to be about as well designed and built. cosmo has never been crazy about vehicles, generally. he tries to ride his trike now and then, but he wasn't one of those kids who was pushing himself around on those little toddler cars all the time. so, we weren't sure how he'd take to the bike. after a day of awkwardly walking it, his heels getting run over by the back wheel, he quickly got the hang of it. i couldn't believe it when i saw him picking up his feet and coasting the next day! now he has a taste for speed.

the great thing about it is that he has so much control. he almost never falls because he can catch himself with his feet, and he can steer it and pick up the front tire when he encounters a step or other obstacle. i love this thing, and feel like it was well worth the money ($90, with free shipping*). it works great on grass, gravel, and pavement, and is really fun on hills and inclines of any sort. it is also light and easy to carry, in case he's tired of riding on the way home from the park.

cosmo has been blowing us away with how grown up he seems. it seems like major transformations take place every couple of days or so. i guess it has always seemed that way. he really digs music, likes to sing, and knows a lot of songs now.

(cosmo, carl and maggie at music class)
he's been making up new words, and new verses to songs that he knows. while they rarely rhyme, they do make some sense, and usually they crack us up: have you ever seen cosmo, eating edamame...down by the bay? (down by the bay).... he's developing an imaginative world, which is wonderful to witness, and he draws simple faces on a regular basis now. he calls them people, and sometimes some ghosts.



we went to the county fair a couple of times. first to see the animals and the precious 4H crafts. we went back one afternoon, with shawna and justin, to check out the rides. to my surprise, he loved the rides. there were many that just went round and round, maybe a bump or slope along the way, but rather tame, and suitable for his age.

he went from motor boats, to crocodiles, to flying saucers, to dragons, to trains and trucker convoys. his favorite thing though was the bounce house. he went into that one at least ten times, and jumped and laughed and fell down, and contended with other kids bumping into him, and kept coming out saying "i want to do it again!" luckily the line was relatively short. unfortunately, it was right in front of the funnel cake stand pumping greasy fumes into the air all around us. cosmo also played a couple of games on the midway, one of them involved throwing darts at balloons on a wall, and he popped one and got a prize. all the others were incredibly easy. everyone's a winner, basically. and for a kid whose not yet three, that was just fine. we came home with more shwag than we knew what to do with. (fair photos by shawna bean)

cosmo also got properly introduced to the world of candy at the fair (someone at a booth handed him a dum-dum) and now, it is all he talks about. for the first two and a half years of his life, he didn't know that those brightly colored small things in intricate wrappers were edible. the cat is now fully out of the bag.
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well...this post sat around for a week or so, unposted. by now i have some updates: the fruit leather turned out great. it was a wonderful use of a whole lot of very ripe peaches. cosmo, naturally, loves it, and it packs great for snacks on the go. here's a couple of photos of the one i spread out onto a round pizza pan.


we also canned two batches of salsa, one red, one green. they both taste incredible. carl said, of the heat in the red salsa, it's slow in coming, in the back of the mouth....
i said, i may never eat store bought salsa again! carl and i consider canning our new hobby. we lucked into a bunch of canning jars at the goodwill, at bargain prices, and snatched them up.

i should point out that our new hobby is something we carry out after cosmo has gone to bed. it takes some focus, and there are a lot of burners going at once. not a safe place for little ones.


* typo stating the bike was $80, corrected 12/29/2008