His autobiography is going to be something.

from Carolyn

Pete was rehashing his favorite soccer moment from the spring: how Jackson was about to kick a goal in and Pete came out of nowhere to kick the ball out of his way. (To be fair, it’s Erik’s favorite moment of the spring soccer season, too.) But it’s the one moment that Pete likes to replay, and this time he was taking me step-by-step through it, ending with a little testament to how he got the job done: “with my speed, and my special abilities in soccer, and my bravery . . . .”

I admit, it WOULD be nice.

Pete had two expectations for the department's external review: first, that we would win; and second, that winning would involve receiving medals.

Strike that. And that.

We've just returned from a fantastic trip to Austin, during which I introduced Pete to the culture of my youth, which is to say, bowling and pool.

I worried that Pete wouldn't be able to get the ball to the pins consistently, but he did fine, even moving to a two-handed version of the proper side release. Pete used bumpers and hit them most of the time, but in his second game (lifetime), he rolled two unbumpered strikes in a row on his way to a bumper-aided 104. The next morning, he chose to go back to the alley for three more games. Dude is ready.

Pete's further career advice for Carolyn

Background: Jackie Hutchison is the volleyball coach. Her son Henry is a little older than Pete. Pete and Henry often play together at the volleyball games.

Pete: Mom, are you going to be like Henry's mom?

Carolyn: How so?

P: Are you going to be a coach?

Erik: Pete, Mama's a teacher, and that's kind of like being a coach.

P: Except it's different, and I want her to be a coach. (Pause.) Mama, do you just want to TRY to be a coach?

C: Well, I don't know a lot about sports.

P: I could teach you!

One step from The Show

Pete has played his first "organized" "game" of tee-ball. "Organized" meaning a split into two teams, with everybody getting a turn to hit a tennis ball from the tee into a small mob of preschoolers who do not even pretend to spread out or play positions. "Game" meaning one inning, every batter and runner advancing on every hit, no scorekeeping. No mechanism for putting a batter/runner out, for that matter. Pete ripped the ball through the crowd when he had the chance and recovered ("caught" would be hyperbole) three or so of the other team's balls, though he afterwards lamented turning his head on one ball, letting his friend Will gather it. He'll now graduate to the "league"! With team shirts! I'm gonna go sharpen some teeny spikes.

Is this how Mark Fidrych got started?

Pete had his first organized sports event last night: Happy Feet soccer. It was a friendly, fun bout of kicking and running and flailing, and Pete loved it. This morning, he informed Carolyn that he'd like to eat the same dinner before future sessions of Happy Feet because the food made him run so fast.

As far as we know, he has never heard about lucky sports foods. So after his first 40 minutes of sports, Pete has begun developing superstitious rituals. He's got six years to build them up before Little League.

An old gag made new

Getting ready to play "volleyball" (i.e., the classic hippie non-competitive game of hitting a balloon back and forth, counting how many hits you can get) tonight, Pete said, "Papa, if we get to 17, I win. If we get to 12, you lose."

Baseball and then some baseball, please

Pete has become utterly obsessed with baseball. He has been mildly interested in baseball for a long time, but something clicked when I got a new toddler-sized wiffle ball set for him. We started playing with it about a week ago, and to my surprise, he picked up the basics right away. He started out missing most pitches, and he still misses a lot, but he makes a lot of contact now, and he can handle overhand pitching. He lined a ball at my head yesterday, hard enough to make me flinch. The entertaining parts of this are two:

1) The sheer intensity of his love for hitting. Now when we're at home, every little while, the idea of hitting will come to him, and he begins a relentless campaign: "Hit some baseballs? Hit some baseballs? Hit some baseballs?" He'll make his way to the front door, desperately trying to entice us outside: "Hit some baseballs?" This morning, during one of these episodes, Carolyn said, "Oh, Pete, can you give me a little kiss?" Pete walked to her, put his face up to hers, put a little hand on each of her cheeks, inclined his head slightly to the side, and said, "Hit some baseballs?"

2) Out of nowhere, Pete has made the shift from wanting to play sports to wanting to imitate sports mannerisms, which is much funnier. Jackie Brown's kids taught him to run after he hits a ball; after seeing the Cedar Rapids Kernels play on Friday, he added the step of tossing his bat away with a flourish. The Kernels also seem to have taught him the art of tapping his bat on the outside of the plate before each pitch--Pete now gives his favorite anthill a few gentle whacks. And when we watched the French Open final on Sunday, Pete started swinging his indoor (foam) bat like a tennis racquet and doing Rafael Nadal grunts with each pitch. If you see him and ask him "What does Nadal say?" he'll give you a great little "Ah!"

Deadeye

from Carolyn

Pete is occasionally hitting shots (into his kid-sized basketball hoop in our livingroom) from about 13 feet. I'm still probably a better shot than he is, but I'm guessing that will change before he turns 4. Maybe even before he turns 3. It may depend on how much I practice this summer.

Ice storm!

Yesterday's was the second major ice storm I've seen--the first was a legendary storm in Virginia and elsewhere in 1994. This one was much more localized but much more damaging. We were without power from about noon yesterday until early this morning, and four or five large branches fell on our little property, including one that tore off the side mirror of what Pete calls Papa car. We were very lucky compared to a lot of people, including our next-door neighbors, who have at least a dozen large branches down, some of them huge, and some damage to their fences and perhaps also their deck. We were also very lucky in that we got our heat back overnight when radio reports were warning the outage would take "not hours but days." I walked two blocks last night and saw dozens and dozens of downed branches and a couple of power lines. The amazing thing about ice storms is that the damage is all about having the perfect temperatures for making ice accumulate on surfaces, so they can be ordinary-seeming winter storms, slow and fairly calm. It's like getting hit by a train that has almost stopped. It doesn't look like much, but you don't want to be hit by a train.

We had to get seriously creative about playing with Pete. We were well and truly stuck in our house. Two of the day's highlights:

1. In the morning (before the outage), we persuaded Pete to wear a bib when he refused by putting one on a doll of Shakespeare (a gift to Pete from one of our friends). Background information: Pete's big fabric model of Thomas the Tank Engine was folded flat on the couch.

Erik: Pete, do you want the blue bib?
Pete: No!
Carolyn (knowing this had worked before): OK, we'll have Shakespeare wear the blue bib. (Puts blue bib on Shakespeare, sets Shakespeare on another seat at the table.) Would you like the green bib?
Pete (hesitantly, eyeing Shakespeare): No.
C: Would you like the blue bib?
P: Uh-huh.
(C moves the bib from Shakespeare to Pete.)
(Pete looks at his cereal, thinks. Gets down and walks to the other chair.)
P: Shake speare seepy.
E: Shakespeare's sleepy?
P: Uh-huh.
(Pete takes Shakespeare to the couch.)
P: Move train.
(Pete tosses Thomas to the floor and gently sets the Bard, face down, on the couch.)
P: Shake speare seepy.
(Pete heads back to the table to eat his Kix.)

2. After learning volleyball hits earlier in the week (he now has spotty setting skills and an uncannily good bump technique), Pete turned his attention to baseball yesterday. He started out wanting us to pitch to him--underhand, with puffy balls aimed at where he usually swing--and later in the day decided to pitch to us. He's very good at the step-and-throw pitching motion, and yesterday he decided to extend that to many steps. As you recall, we were inside for many hours, so this had time to develop into its culmination. Carolyn or I would stand with a bat (a toddler maraca) by our front door, with Pete about five feet away. He would consider throwing the ball, then decide to get a head start and run with his quick toddler steps to the adjoining living room. (We have a small house with the kitchen gated off, so this is all the space he has to work with.) Stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp (circling around the dinner table and then getting louder) stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp THROW!

And the pitch would come in from about four feet away, very fast and completely unhittable at that distance. Pete would collapse, laughing, then pick up the ball and start again. Stomp stomp stomp ...

Pete becomes a toddler

I haven't written much about Pete lately, so as the Super Bowl winds down, I'll try to capture some of what it's been like to watch him pass his second birthday and careen into full-fledged toddlerhood.

We've been struck by how Pete develops in streaks and bursts. For example, he was a little slow to pick up his numbers; he had gotten pretty good at identifying two of something, and he had become fond of five ("Pie!") as a word for more than two. He had said three only sporadically and almost never four. Furthermore, he had never counted, even to two. Last Sunday, we all came downstairs in the morning, and Pete was standing in the kitchen as Carolyn prepared the coffee that would fuel the day. Pete looked around, then, as Carolyn put the scoops of coffee in the filter, said with complete authority, "One! Two! Three! Four! Five!" Or, phonetically, "One! Choo! Fwee! Fo-or! Pie!" And he squealed and clapped and laughed until he fell on his butt.

He's still shaky with three and four, and he still likes shooting balls at his hoop more than counting them--these developments have been complicated and cyclical, but the initial gains can be flashes of lighting. Just as he passed that tipping point from not counting to counting in a night, he later did a somersault out of the blue and began without warning to catch thrown balls; the kid who wouldn't leave our grasp in a swimming pool eight months ago wanted immediately to climb the ladder and jump in by himself this winter. In the last few weeks, Pete has gone from identifying no letters to naming about half the capitals most of the time.

I say these things not to brag about Pete but to wonder at toddlerhood: this is the stuff kids learn at Pete's age, but I find myself endlessly amazed by the way the process plays out, and my favorite part is how--as in the counting breakthrough--Pete takes such joy in the new things he can do.

Oh, a random bit of fun from the last week: Pete continues to love music--playing it as he can (mostly drums and kazoo), listening, watching videos, whatever. Becuase Carolyn's dad plays banjo, that is one of Pete's favorite instruments, so I found him this vidoe of Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. As we watched it together after breakfast a few days ago, Pete started holding his nose and saying, "oooo." Over and over. After watching this for a minute I realized what was happening: Pete was playing harmonica! So we learned that word and looked for other harmonica videos. Excellent.

Pete for THREE!

Pete now hoots "For three!" when he hits one from downtown. He also calls out "Yay, Papa!" or "Almost, Papa" (or "Yay, Pete! and "Almost, Pete!") as appropriate. I think "Almost!" is one of my favorite Pete expressions: he doesn't get down about a ball not going into the basket, he just celebrates its closeness to the basket.

He's also starting to string words together, often when he wants something. He was doing it a lot today: "Mama? Ball? Shoot?" when he wanted me to play, too. "Pete? Out? Snow?"