One of our iPad apps is the International Children’s Digital Library, which is a free collection of children’s books from all over the world that are written in an impressive variety of languages. One night at bedtime we were reading The Boat Ride from the app when one character said to another “You scrappy squirrel!” Everett thought this was hilarious and since then he has been calling people scrappy squirrels when he gets wound up. On a related subject we had a big storm late last Wednesday night that knocked a lot of branches out of the trees. Many of the small branches that came out of the oak tree in our neighbor’s yard had acorns on them, the first we have seen this year. Once Everett figured this out he collected them and put them in a pile on the patio to see who might come looking for them. This morning we setup Chris’ Canon Powershot camera running the Canon Hack Development Kit (CHDK), which provides a lot of capabilities that are not necessarily available when using the camera in its native state. We loaded a motion-detection script and pointed it at the pile of acorns while we were gone during the day.

It worked pretty well! Here are a few more shots.

In other animals news today: Everett had a lot of wiggles this morning so we went for a brief hike at Atwater Park.

One distinction about this park is that just offshore is the wreck of the Appomatox, which ran aground in 1905 and is clearly visible in the water (don’t worry – we couldn’t see it either):

Then we went to the Audubon Center for a picnic and the raptor show.

Today they were showing a red-tailed hawk named Skywalker and an owl named Tucker, neither of whom were labelled as scrappy but both of whom were very interesting.

This week we enjoyed a visit from Mark, Chris’ close friend from his graduate-school days in Utah. Mark came to town for Airventure, which is the annual Experimental Aircraft Association show that is going on in Oshkosh this week.

Chris and Mark used to bike together, and Chris is very familiar with Mark’s abilities on the bike and in other endurance sports. For example: Mark has run the Wasatch 100. Three times. This is simply beyond comprehension for most of us mortals. Based on this knowledge Chris didn’t have any reservations about giving Mark the heaviest bike in our fleet while he was in town. So on Tuesday afternoon we ran some errands and went to pickup Everett from preschool. Chris rode the Pugsley and Mark rode the Bakfiets. The Bakfiets is about 8 feet long and the steering takes some getting used to, but by the time we arrived at Everett’s school Mark had mastered it, so he (sort of) volunteered (but not really) to pedal Everett home. Total vehicle+cargo weight including the kid and all the stuff that comes with a kid was about 150 or 160 pounds. Good training! Chris asked Everett if we should go home via the hill route or the extra bridges route. Mercifully for Mark he chose the extra bridges.

We got home a little before 6 and made fish tacos, one of our absolute favorite dishes. It was a beautiful evening so we ate outside and then went to Gilles for custard.

We switched it up a bit and Mark rode the Pugsley.

From Gilles we went home through the village and decided to stop at Cafe Hollander for a nightcap. We got home around 9pm and Mark read Dog in Charge to Everett for a bedtime story.

Over the last few days Everett has become concerned about wolves, specifically that one has gotten into the house and might sneak into his room while he is sleeping. Perhaps this is because he has started paying closer attention to the details of the Three Little Pigs story. On the way to school on Friday we talked about what we would do if a wolf got in our house, and Chris proposed we handle it the same way as the 3rd little pig: the wolf goes in the pot. Based on this Everett asked us to make signs for some of the doors in the house.

It was a really enjoyable afternoon and evening. Here is a video of our excursions.

Today we attended Everett’s graduation from Safety Town. As we mentioned a few days ago, he has been taking this class for two weeks and has been extremely excited about it. Perhaps this is because it means he is big enough to attend a class by himself. Or perhaps it is because the content of the class provides him with a needed sense of structure about the world. Or maybe he enjoys a newfound sense of knowledge that he gained independently of his parents. Whatever the reason, the class has certainly accomplished its goal of raising his level of awareness and knowledge about safety-related issues. He has learned behavior about crossing the street, fire safety, police, strangers, road signs, medication, poisons and many other things. A few days ago he started paying much closer attention to Chris’ behavior on the bike and in the car.
“Dad, you didn’t stop at that stop sign.”
“Yes I did.”
“No you didn’t. I saw you.”
So it’s nice to have another pair of eyes looking out for me :-). Last night he came home with a page of Mr. Yuk stickers, removed the child-proof safety latch from the cabinet under the sink (?!?) and put stickers on all the bottles. He has also been instructing us to put thing like medicines and matches out of reach to keep him safe. There is certainly an increased sense of bossiness that has come with all of this knowledge, but at least it’s conscientious and is meant to be constructive.

Everett was really looking forward to graduation and asked both of us to attend. So Chris came home early and at 1:45pm we went to Wilson to setup our lawn chairs. The kids came out in a line with their team leaders, and the teacher gave a short speech. Then they sang all the songs they had learned and finally received their diplomas.


This was followed by cake and a few trips on the tricycle around the miniature town setup on the basketball court.

Photos of the event are here. And here is a video of the ceremony:

In the days leading up to today Melissa explained to Everett that this would be his first graduation, but she went on to list all the possible graduations in his future. Everett put his hand to his forehead, shook his head and said “I don’t know what to say baby.” Sometimes we don’t either.

For most of my adult life (Chris speaking) I have known coworkers who proudly displayed their children’s artwork on their office walls. And this has generally elicited the same feeling I get when I see a critically acclaimed exhibition that doesn’t resonate with me: I understand that someone thinks this is worthy of public display, I just don’t get it.  But what a different experience it is for the artwork that Everett has made! These are truly masterpieces, with many interwoven layers of complexity that could be difficult to understand for someone who is not properly trained. This is surely a result of witnessing the dramatic development that has occurred in such a short period of time, such as the fact that he couldn’t walk or talk a couple years ago but is now exploring his creative abilities. And it is possible that parental pride has tainted my objectivity when it comes to matters involving Everett, but I doubt it. Here is a gallery of some pieces we have collected, along with photos he has taken with his Kidzoom digital camera. This artistic work was supported and encouraged by his benefactors: his painting easel was a gift from Noni, and his digital camera was a gift from Gabby and Grandaddy.

Tour de Fat came to Milwaukee today.

This is the third time we have attended and it seems to get better every year. This is where you can let your inner bike geek out without any fear of seeming too crazy. In past years it was at Humboldt Park but this year it moved to the lakefront downtown, which was definitely an improvement, especially given the scorching hot summer we have been experiencing and the fact that temperatures are always a few degrees cooler by Lake Michigan. The name of the festival is meant to suggest fat tires, which is the name of an ale made by New Belgium Brewery and the name of a recent movement in bicycling to ride bikes with ginormous tires (29 inch diameter, at least 4 inches wide). Chris built his Pugsley in 2006 (or thereabouts) and at the time it was virtually unheard of. Seeing another Pugsley on the road was like lighting striking the same location twice. Fast forward to 2012 and things have changed:

This year the three of us rode two bikes: the Bakfiets and the Pugsley. The Bakfiets has become a workhorse in our family, easily taking the place of a car over the last year and a half. And for the first time ever we saw another cargo bike on the road.

The Pugsley is back on the road after getting new brakes, new cables+cable housing and an oil change for the Rohloff (this is one of the few bikes that requires an oil change about every 5000km).

The festival started out with a simple message: We are pro-bike, we are not anti-car. Then the Rhymanese Twins got everyone into spirit with some bicycle-inspired rap, and they were joined by Kevin Hardman, fellow Tosa Spokesman and executive director of the Wisconsin Bicycle Federation, as well as Mayor Tom Barrett of Milwaukee, who is also former candidate for governor of Wisconsin (twice in two years!). Here is a montage of some of the best bits. Special credit to anyone who:

• Knows the name of Gandalf’s horse.
• Finds the cameo appearance by Melissa and Everett.
• Watches long enough to see Chris try to ride a unicycle with some guidance from Everett.

The TDF has a wide range of activities for all ages. There is a lot of kinetic bike art, including a bike wheel kaleidoscope that was used to make the opening clip to the movie above. We spent a fair amount of time in the bike corral, and this was the first year that Everett really took an interest in testing some bikes out with Chris.

Also, one of the craft tents had a button maker that festival goers could use to make buttons with any number of bike logos or sayings. They also had a bunch of magazines available that you could use to cut out images. With this wide array of options at his disposal, it took Everett about 5 seconds to decide that he wanted a button with a picture of Martha Stewart from a magazine. We don’t think he has any way of knowing who Martha Stewart is, and he didn’t explain his rationale, but we did think it was pretty darn funny.

Photos of the festival are here.

On Monday this week Everett started Safety Town, which he will attend for an hour an a half each day this week and next week. So every afternoon he puts on his Safety Town shirt, sunscreen and bike helmet, and walks to school with Melissa.

He is EXTREMELY excited about it, perhaps because he senses that this means he is one of the big kids. Also, Melissa talked up the fact that she went to Safety Town when she was young (Chris never attended, which is perhaps why he eats leftovers that have been sitting on the counter overnight). A few other possible reasons he is excited: he is inquisitive; he enjoys a sense of belonging with groups; he seems to find comfort from developing a sense of structure about the world; he is an enforcer, and this class will give him plenty more things to enforce. Interestingly, since all this talk about Safety Town started Melissa and Chris have independently started singing “Won’t you take me to…Safety Town!”, which is sung to the tune of Funkytown by Lipps Inc.

On a somewhat related subject, we are in the midst of a drought that is becoming severe. We haven’t mowed our grass since June 6th due to the heat and lack of rain. Most of the grass in our area is brown and crunchy, and many types of plants are not doing well. There are few insects this year, which is good and bad. We don’t miss the mosquitos but it has been a challenge to find flash bugs. As of today there are burning restrictions and watering restrictions in a large area of Wisconsin, and in some areas there is a ban on smoking outdoors, so it’s not a good time to be a smoker. Then again, it probably never was, a fact that Everett points out when he sees direct or indirect evidence of smoking in public.

Summer in Wisconsin is a time for festivals. Last weekend was the end of Summerfest, which is a huge annual event in Milwaukee with a dedicated festival grounds on the waterfront downtown. Until last weekend we had never been, probably because of the amount of effort required to plan ahead, get tickets, find care for Everett, etc. However, on Sunday from noon to 3pm they had free admission so we took Everett and had a pretty good time for about 15 minutes until he got too bossy and we wouldn’t obey him and he went into a tailspin that he could not recover from and we had to carry him out of the park screaming, after which he cried all the way home. Rough. So we still haven’t really attended Summerfest.

Another festival that we haven’t attended is the Annual Cheese Curd Festival in Ellsworth, Wisconsin. However, we have heard good things about it based on this report (even if you don’t read the article make sure you watch the video). For those of you who haven’t tried cheese curds, let me provide the following reviews from local experts.

Chris: “Seriously? What is all the fuss about? I don’t like foods that squeak, and cheese curds don’t taste like anything. The only way to eat them is deep fried at the State Fair.”

Melissa: “If they are fresh then they are squeezy and squeaky and tasty. They come in bite size shapes and they are perfect and you can just pop them in your mouth. The better kind are deep fried, which is molten cheesy hot perfection. They are delicious.”

At least the experts agree on the deep fried part! Speaking of which, I would like to alert everyone to the fact that the Wisconsin State Fair is coming up from August 2-12. The following is the list of the 57 new foods this year. Our loyal readers may recall that foods that are fried and/or on-a-stick command a high premium. If you search the list for the word “stick” there are 21 matches, and for the phrase “deep fried” there are 15 matches. Of these, Chris will be eating the Reuben Brat On-a-Stick with a side of Deep Fried Bacon Wrapped Tater Tots On-a-Stick (though the Irish Beef Sundae is tempting). Melissa will be trying the Chocolate Covered Cheese and the Fat Elvis On-a-Stick (Peanut Butter Cup in Banana Batter with Bacon). We will report back with expert reviews on these new culinary delights.

We have had a great visit with Grandpa and Grandma Linda for the past few days! Between their arrival on July 4th and departure this morning we managed to pack in quite a few activities.

• Wednesday: catch fireflies and watch fireworks.
• Thursday: we went to the Milwaukee Art Museum and saw many exhibits including Posters of Paris, which is a really neat exhibit in it’s own right but also contained a collection of posters featuring naked women and bicycles. It might be difficult to imagine more interesting subject material.
• Friday: Milwaukee County Zoo. At one point Chris and Everett went to see the dinosaur exhibit while everyone else took a rest in the shade. One funny sight was a macaque cooling his feet in the 100F temperatures.

• Saturday: Trip to Sheboygan to see the Kohler Design Center and then playtime on the beach at Blue Harbor Resort.

• Saturday night we went to Gilles for frozen custard.

We all managed to travel in the same car together during these outings. Chris and Grandpa sat in the front, Melissa and Grandma would sit in the back with Everett in between them. Everett had a great time sitting next to Grandma Linda while the two of them played with magnets, played games and read books.

One night at dinner we were discussing the animals that live near our houses, and whether it is possible to design a squirrel-proof bird feeder. I think the general consensus on this is No. However, Grandpa told a story about a bird feeder at his and Grandma Linda’s house that hangs over the porch and has some empty plastic bottles around the pole to discourage squirrels. The idea is that the bottles are too large for squirrels to hang onto, and they can’t walk over the bottles because they will spin around. One day he came out to find that a squirrel had leaped over the bottles and was hanging onto the bird feeder, gorging himself on bird seed. So he took a stick, smacked squirrel on the bottom and the squirrel ran off and wasn’t seen again, probably until the next morning. Everett thought this has hilarious and asked to hear the story over and over for the next couple days!

On Saturday night we asked Dad to tell stories about when he was a boy growing up on the farm, and it was pretty interesting to hear about the many different jobs he had including milking the cows. It was also a pretty incredible contrast to the life that Everett leads right now.

Safe travels Grandpa and Grandma Linda! Photos of the trip are here.

Happy Fourth of July!

We got up late today (about 8:30am), ate a quick a breakfast and then rode to North Ave for the annual July 4th parade.

One highlight this year was the Milwaukee Dancing Grannies. Everett wanted to do three things: 1) see the parade; 2) get a flag; 3) get some candy (he remembered that in previous years they threw candy to the crowd). The first objective was easy enough – we parked the bikes at the end of 81st St this year and within a couple minutes the Boy Scouts walked by and handed out flags to everyone. Everett is not what I would call and aggressive kid and is not inclined to elbow his way to the front, so Chris had to hoist him over the phalanx of lawn chairs that lined the street in order to get a flag (there was also a Mom of two young girls who helped us). A few minutes after that a man came through tossing Tootsie Rolls. Amazingly, Everett managed to grab one despite moving pretty slowly. He certainly benefited from the fact that we were mostly surrounded by adults and few children, so he had little competition. In fact, once the adults saw him they started re-tossing candy in our direction so Everett could get them. Even then, he would not pick the candy up without first asking us if he could have another! Chris later commented that in this circumstance he was being too obedient.

On the way home from the parade we passed the pool and decided that might be the best way to spend a couple hours, especially given the fact that the temperature reached a new record of 102F, but the sun was blazing and even the pool water was too warm. We swam for a while, ate lunch and Everett used his own birthday money from his new wallet to buy an orange PushUp from the concession stand. Melissa had a flat tire on the way to the pool and Chris had replacement tubes for just about every tire size/valve combination except Schrader 27″, so Chris got the car to shuttle everyone home.

It was way too hot for the Hart Park festival in the afternoon. Instead, we napped and waited for Grandpa and Grandma Linda to arrive. Everett woke up just in time to see them drive up to our house in their new rig: a 5th wheel and pickup truck.

Chris and Gary spent a fair amount of time getting it backed into the driveway while avoiding the tree in our front yard, the neighbors house, etc. For dinner Chris grilled burgers and corn, and Melissa made two kinds of potato salad (one egg, one parsley-caper) and homemade chocolate-mint ice cream. Around 9pm we walked behind the house to catch fireflies and watch the fireworks. This year Chris practiced photographing fireworks.

It hasn’t rained in weeks, which has had a range of effects. One blessing is that there are far fewer mosquitos this year than previous years. However, roads have been buckling due to the heat, and many municipalities have banned fireworks because the ground is so dry, not just for the citizens but also the annual fireworks display. In Waukesha and Oak Creek the fireworks shows were halted after grass fires started. When the Tosa fireworks started they were all behind the line of trees, leading us to speculate that the show had been modified due to the dry conditions. This is the first year Everett is staying up to watch the fireworks and we had built it up quite a bit. We didn’t want to disappoint him so Chris and Everett jumped in the car and drove to Hart Park to see the rest of the show. As soon as we arrived we realized that the show hadn’t started yet and the fireworks we were seeing behind the trees were from Milwaukee. We drove back home, went right back to our spot behind the house and watched the whole thing, at the end of which Everett spontaneously jumped up and started clapping.

Around the time of Everett’s fourth birthday we watched some old videos of him and remarked on how he has changed over the last year in size and abilities. Here are a few recent thoughts and observations.

According to a recent story on NPR, children are cute only until they are around four and a half years old. This was based on a recent journal article that subsequently was picked up by several news outlets. The researchers set out to determine perceptions of children from infancy to age six in terms of likability and attractiveness. The actually data appears pretty weak (though amazingly did reach statistical significance) but reinforces something that many of us openly acknowledge: babies are cute; teenagers generally aren’t; sometime in between the cuteness wears off. Interestingly, these articles do not explain what comes after being cute, but it appears that we will find out in about six months.

Chris had just become accustomed to reasoning with a three year old when he was introduced to four year old reasoning. One morning we were getting ready to go to the beach when Everett announced:
“I don’t want to go to the beach.”
“Well all the adults and all the children are going to the beach, so I guess we’ll go play in the water and build sand castles and eat custard and french fries. And we will leave you here.”
“Well then you will get arrested.”
Melissa got her own version of this when she gave Everett an answer he didn’t want to hear and was told
“Momma, you need to learn a lesson about yes.”

Everett recently attended the fourth birthday party of his close friend George. Kelly, another close friend, was also there. The three of them have been in school together for about a year and have formed quite a bond. Now that Melissa has finished her dissertation Everett attends school just one day a week, and by coincidence the three of them were reunited at school on the Tuesday following George’s birthday. George’s parents had rented a bounce house for his party, which was a huge hit, but when Everett returned home from school that day he had something very serious to report: “Mom! George…did not…get…to keep…the bounce house.” Apparently no one explained to them that the bounce house was a rental, and they must have talked about it a lot on Tuesday. On a similar subject, Everett has been asking if he will have a birthday party at home with his friends. He has had mini-parties with family while we were traveling in June but has not had a proper birthday party at home yet.

Chris gave Everett a wallet for his fourth birthday. This idea came up because Everett has taken a great interest in Chris’ wallet recently. In fact, Everett can sometimes remove the wallet from Chris’ pocket without his knowledge, which is somewhat disconcerting. We asked Everett if he wanted his own wallet and explained to him the various kinds including the 1980’s era nylon wallets with velcro closures. We always got the same answer to this question: he looked at Chris and said “I want a wallet just like yours.” So a couple days after his birthday we went to the store and looked through all the wallets and picked one out. Note that this one has a bumpy texture but we explained to Everett that after years of use it will become smooth and shiny, just like Dad’s.

One comment that Everett received in the report card from his swim class a few months ago was that “He is a good conversationalist!”. And that is really saying something for a class that doesn’t involve much talking, and during which you can’t hear anything anyway because there are about 50 other children in the pool with a lot of echoes from the concrete walls. Our experience has been that conversations with a three year old often touch on existential questions, but recently they have become more fact-oriented, such as:
“How was the earth formed?”
“Does outer space ever end?”
Some time ago Chris did an imitation of Dr. Evil in one of the Austin Powers movies (the second one?) where he tells Scotty to zip it. Everett thought this was hilarious and picked it up immediately. Anyway, one day Chris was trying to answer the question about how the earth was formed while he and Everett were riding to school on the bike. Everett must not have liked Chris’ answer because he threw both arms in the air, pinched his fingers together and said “Bzzzzt!” just like Dr. Evil. Chris was laughing too hard to remind him that this was not exactly polite behavior.

A couple of interesting factoids about Barber-Butson offspring: Everett has stopped going to sleep before 10 or 11pm. We usually put him in bed by about 8pm and he stays in his room building nests, looking at books, herding elephants, etc. We have also noticed that BB offspring have a lot of complex vocalizations that seemingly continue throughout waking hours. As I write this (Chris speaking) it is about 10:30pm and Everett is still stomping around his room, singing, talking, asking if we are going to have any chocolate and whether someone can check on him.

During a recent bedtime Chris asked “What was your favorite thing about today?” and Everett replied “Seeing you.”