I took off work to help with 1st Grade Play Day at Olivia’s school. Beni and Reed graced us with their presence during the picnic lunch, and I stayed to help with the afternoon activities. Aside from a skinned knee or hurt feeling here and there, the kids—and adult volunteers—had great fun roaming the schoolyard. 
We hit up America’s mall—the Mall of America (or the MOA, as its public-relations people so desperately want us to refer to it)—as part of our visit to the Twin Cities. We were there to visit Jenna and her family, and we all made it over to the “Hollywood of the Midwest” (another gem from the PR department) in the afternoon to pick out a birthday doll and be amused by its giant indoor theme park.
The evidence that Reed is part-primate: he eats bananas in bunches, wraps his arms around us to be transported, and scampers vertically with the greatest of ease.
We gathered around the newest star—baby Stella—at her parents’ house for a mini-college reunion. Half of us suitemates were in attendance, and so our kids and spouses got to hear interminable tales of how hilarious we guys were in our late teens and early 20s.
Hello World from chris k on Vimeo.
If All the Raindrops from chris k on Vimeo.
Big Beautiful Planet from chris k on Vimeo.
Our little peanut got his hands on the peanut butter—which he simply calls “butter”—so that he could get his hands in the peanut butter.
Messi Kid from chris k on Vimeo.
Reed is often a little messy, and sometimes he’s a little Messi, as in the world-renowned futbol-er who plies his wares for Barcelona and the Argentinean national team. S.L. Price, a writer for Sports Illustrated, included this of Messi in a piece that previewed last year’s World Cup:[Thierry] Henry, 32, the lanky alltime leading goal scorer for France and one of the great players of his generation, can't find words to describe how Messi zips through and around opponents like a VW bug in a cluster of 18-wheelers. Finally he resorts to tapping out a staccato rhythm on a table. "He just goes -- like that," Henry says, drumming.
"People talk about basketball players, how they run full speed but they're in control of the ball with their hands, but that's way easier," Henry continues. "Running with the ball at your feet at full speed and being able to see, [being] aware of what is happening around you, [while] people are trying to make you fall? Leo is always kind of falling, but he doesn't go down. I would love to have his first step, and his double dribbles, but it's him being small [and] quick: He touches the ball every step of his run. It's impossible to do what he does. I go one-two-three, push the ball, one-two-three, push the ball. If I want to touch it every time, I [have to] slow down. But he can go full speed: Tack-tack-tack-tack, tack-tack-tack-tack." Henry throws up his hands. "I wish I was small," he says.
One simple thing that we can do better to encourage the biodiversity in our space is to keep our bird feeder full of seed. With Mommy’s help, Reed plunged into the giant bag of seed, and then he helped me hang it from the post by our back patio. 
The storm clouds rolled up right about the time we rolled up to the spray park this evening. The kids managed to squeeze in some spray/playtime before Mother Nature reminded us who was boss.
This afternoon the kids watched “Ponyo,” the Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by the acclaimed Hayao Miyazaki. For those of you who haven’t seen it, Ponyo is a fish-girl, and that’s about all you need to know about it/her and the film. The animation is stunning and the storyline is a bit—how best to describe it?—fishy, but the movie managed to keep the kids’ attention afloat all 101 minutes. And Olivia went as far as to create a soft-pretzel rendering of her new favorite fish-girl.
The meerkat is no mere cat (or kat or qat, which are variations in spelling—and Scrabble favorites—of the word for an evergreen shrub of Arabia and Africa, the leaves of which are used as a narcotic when chewed or made into a beverage). In fact, meerkats are small mammals of the mongoose family. And not unlike most other living creatures both human and non-human nowadays, they star in their own reality TV show.
Beni’s mother sent this lovely fruit arrangement for Mother’s Day. The kids and I also went the consumable route, having picked up some Krispy Kremes and a bubble tea for Mommy’s sugary breakfast in bed.
Some months ago, I’d posed to my loyal Twitter followers (all 100 of them—well, more like 50 since the other half seems to be always be peddling some product/web site/service) this question: what’s an equivalent of the phrase “it’s like riding a bike,” especially for the context of someone trying to learn or relearn how to ride bicycle? An erudite non-spambot offered “it’s easy as falling off a log.”
