While we've been on our trip to The States, Anthony heard that Mommy had progressed to a new level in her ballet dancing, so he wanted to send her a letter to congratulate her...

Anthony can write Hiragana fine (one of the three Japanese scripts), but he can't yet write kanji ("Chinese characters") except his name, so I wrote the address and had him copy it. It's not a good idea to do this very much, because the order that the strokes of each character are written is very important, so no experience is better than untrained experience. But doing [...]

Two years ago during our summer visit to my folks', Anthony and I shot off a rocket, his first, to his great enjoyment. I still had the rocket, and with his three-year-old cousin Josh in town, I thought to fire it off again, giving Josh his first experience. (I had intended to do this last week while Anthony's four-year-old cousin Grace was here as well, but missed the chance.)

My intention was to let Anthony fire off the rocket once, then let Josh do it, and then alternate back and forth until I was out of motors or they got [...]

Anthony's tooth, quite loose from a few days ago, got flippy-floppy-dangly loose this morning while eating breakfast. I thought it should be left to come out naturally, but once it was that loose and bleeding (but not at all painful), both my ER-nurse sister and mom said that I should just pluck it out.

So, under the guise of "checking" it, I had him open up and I gave a light tug, and out it came. He didn't quite realize it, but when I feigned surprise ("it just came out right in my hand!") and he saw it, he was [...]

More from the Summer of Cousins as Anthony and I spend a month in Ohio at my folks' place....

My folks bought a kiddy pool in preparation for their six grandchildren all visiting for the first time, and after I blew it up and put water in, Anthony was less than impressed. Frankly, I was too, until I found out that this one was intended for the two sub-year-old grandchildren, and that a bigger pool awaited in a box nearby.

Four-year-old Grace enjoyed it right away....

The blow-up slide was intended to be installed with its base under a foot [...]

Since the tractor ride the other day, Anthony has gotten to steer the small riding lawn mower while he sits on the seat in front of me and I work the foot pedals. As you might imagine of a six year old, he can't get enough of it.

As we were riding the mower around the lake this afternoon, I was struck, as I often am, by the beauty of the view, so I stopped the tractor. Anthony protested "I want to drive more", but I asked him to appreciate the view. Kids take every good thing that comes their [...]