Gap kids

Who lost a tooth now you ask? Robert!

He lost his first tooth at bedtime tonight (evidently a good time to lose teeth, who knew?). He calmly handed me his tooth and said "It's out." This doesn't seem to bother either of them. Doesn't anyone freak out when losing a tooth anymore? I remember coddling my loose teeth until they were hanging literally by a thread.

Robert doesn't really get to have a gap tooth picture though. His permanent tooth has been coming in steadily right behind. He still looks like a shark though, the spot right next to his new gap has both the baby tooth and the permanent one behind it.

Okay, so that's an inventory of Robert's teeth, just in case the world was wondering. Now, he's off to sleep. Right, Robert?

Pizza on the grill, round two

We went back to the pizza-on-the-grill concept last night for dinner and I was pretty pleased with how they turned out. We'd planned to do this a couple weeks ago but the propane tank ran out at the wrong time, so we ended up cooking them inside, which took a lot longer and was a lot less fun.

We didn't have Neil's expertise rolling out the dough, and that's my least favorite part so Cate took care of it and I stuck with the grilling part. Cate and the kids had plain cheese pizza, nothing too fancy. (We'd eaten up all the pepperoni from a couple weeks ago.) Elizabeth had red onions on hers as well.
By the time we got to mine, we were basically out of pizza sauce, but I wasn't too broken up about it. There was plenty of other stuff to work with. Mine has pesto, red onions, artichokes, chopped basil, sun-dried tomatoes and a little bit of cheese on it. (My camera's phone doesn't do justice to anything with colors in it, I'm afraid.)

The best part was that there was leftover crust from the kids' pies for me to eat, so I only ate half of this pizza. Heading downstairs to go reheat the other half and eat lunch now!

With this blog post, we reach the 200 mark for Colemans' Couch. Once upon a time I thought we might do something more creative with post 200 but it took a little longer to get here than I anticipated with just three posts in May and five in June.

Capturing Colleen's attention

It's hard, and it's been harder of late, to get our youngest child's attention.

That's why it fascinates me to look at her face when I am reading Colleen a good-night story. She is so incredibly focused, even if it's a book we've read before.

I love those moments.

The perfect capper to a long day

At about 10 p.m. last night, Elizabeth came into our room and handed me a tooth. It had been loose for a while, no worries, but just figured it was the only way our pretty packed Sunday could end.

No money under her pillow. Like Santa Claus, something we don't really subscribe to. We did the rewards when she was younger.

Robert still has yet to lose a tooth. He's at the dentist, now, though, with one tooth really wiggling and another pushing it out. Like with the bicycle, he's afraid of the pain, so he won't eat on that side of his mouth and won't eat corn on the cob at all.

Of course, none of this compares to Saturday. Sunday was supposed to be the easy day, while Saturday we started the day with a Bloomington Chorale concert at the farmer's market in Bloomington and finished with a family get-together because Aunt Kathleen and Uncle Jim were in town from New Hampshire. That and I left in the middle to go sing at 5 p.m. Mass and returned later. Sunday was just supposed to be the golfing. And just ours, not Tom Watson's.

Tee for two

Well, I wish I could drive like Cate, and I think Cate wishes she could putt like I do. And that was the upshot of our first husband-wife full golf outing, part of a pretty packed Sunday this weekend.

As I said when Cate and Jennifer went golfing a couple of weeks ago, we haven't been golfing together since a pitch-and-putt outing sometime in the mid-1990s. And by full outing, I mean nine holes of a par-three course, but hey, it was time outside and without the kids.

I only had two holes of my personal nightmare. I've always feared I would be unable to make solid contact with the ball and would end up dribbling the ball up the fairway 20 yards at a time. Then Cate gave me a couple of pointers (oh, you mean I shouldn't stand centered over the ball?) and I finished with a par and back-to-back double bogeys. Hey, for us that was a high point. We each parred the 71-yard sixth hole, and Cate bogeyed the opening hole, but other than that it was fairly dismal. We finished one stroke apart; definitely would consider it beginner's luck.

Stuck behind a fivesome that included a 3-year-old, it took us just about two hours to play the nine holes. But the kid could swing and had at least one drive off the tee that was better than mine. Made for a lot of waiting, though.

Thanks, of course, to Neil and Alicia (again) for the use of their clubs and Kyle and Jennifer for watching the little ones. And there's one more Pretty Packed Sunday post to come, probably on my lunch break.

He's got a ticket to ride

Robert wasn't, shall we say, the most enthusiastic learner of the ins and outs riding a bike. I guess in the end many kids aren't. I mean, who likes falling off and skinning their knee, right?

To add insult to potential injury, the bike we've had Robert practicing on isn't exactly the best suited for a barely 7-year-old. It's probably a bike he would be riding next summer, even the summer after. It's tall and it's heavy. But he's been a gamer and this afternoon he finally got it. I mean, it has a hand brake and a coaster brake.

By got it, I mean he rode the bike by himself, four houses before coming to a relatively controlled stop. He rode it so far that I had the chance to come out from running alongside him and ran backwards out ahead of him.

We had been up and down the level section of the block in front of the house three or four times already and he was getting kind of tired of the process before I pulled out the card I was hoping I wouldn't have to play -- his friend, Cate Jensen, learned to ride her two-wheeler earlier this week and we were about to take him and Colleen over there for a play date.

"She's going to be very proud she can ride her bike. You're one more trip up the block away from being able to say that yourself. Wouldn't you like to be able to say you can, too?"

Bingo. And he had a good time at the Jensens, too, from all I've heard.

Congratulations, Robert!

We don't have photos or video from today, but here's a clip of a previous attempt.

Almost-reader Colleen

Colleen has been making leaps and bounds with her pre-reading skills.

Many, many times in the past couple of months she has asked us "how do you spell... [insert any random thing within her sight line here]?" but she's branching out on her own now. She's taking her best guess from a few letters.

Today on a trip to the zoo, we had some funny ones. We parked in front of a sign that said "Remember you are parked in the Gibbon Lot." Well, Colleen told me she was glad we were going to get Dippin' Dots (that really frozen pellet ice cream). I told her not today. She angrily pointed, "But that sign says Dippin' Dots!!" There was some foot stomping and hrmph-ing. She certainly likes her sweets.

And later we stopped to have a snack at an eating area and she asked me, "What's a zoo coffee?" She was reading the "Zoo Cafe" sign.

This reminds me that we need to find her a preschool for this fall.

I missed my camera

I've been without my camera for a little over a year before finally getting it repaired (thanks Ryan, and Canon). So for a long time I've been borrowing Cate's, or Elizabeth's, or dad's. I am just glad to have it back.

Been a nice week-plus here since Cate and the kids got home. Spent some time down at Lake Harriet last night visiting the Lake Creature (don't ask) and just missing the end of the concert at the bandshell ... again. But a nice long walk and the kids even almost fully cooperated with a group photo.

A hole in three

It's been two and a half days and Cate is still talking about her golf outing from Friday.

Cate hasn't picked up a golf club since she and I went to a pitch-and-putt sometime in the pre-Web age. She used to golf much more regularly as a teenager, took a few lessons, but didn't have anyone to golf with.

Meanwhile, our friend Jennifer had the day off on Friday, like most of us, and has been looking for a golf partner herself. She's been threaten... promising to take Cate out golfing since we got here 11 months ago and on Friday, the planets aligned.

Cate had just a great time. She's been talking about things that I've only heard on television, like doglegs and that sort of thing. It was a nine-hole par-three course and it seems Cate and Jennifer were a good match, as they finished within two strokes of each other. Both came back raving about the fourth hole, which Cate parred after both got on the green with their tee shots.

Thanks, Neil and Alicia, for lending Cate your golf clubs.

"I'm consistently inconsistent," Cate said. She'd also like to thank "that great man, Theodore Wirth, who had the great foresight to include a park with a golf course in North Minneapolis."

No photographers were permitted at this outing.