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The other day at the park Luke was followed by a ladybug for awhile, which then spent about thirty minutes walking all over him. He also met up with a boy a few years older than him. Luke was explaining that a ladybug is a type of beetle, the older boy did not believe him and said it was just a bug, but luckily for all of us, Luke was persistent.

Luke also told the boy that he did not yet know ladybug language, but was going to learn it soon. This comes from his love (and ours) of the Dr. Doolittles series of books, particularly The Voyages of Dr. Doolittle.

Once again an incredible discovery of work, truly fun to read for all of us and not at all what I expected from a history of lame-o movie adaptations. I guess there are usually good reason they pick works like this, and Dr Doo as we like to call him around here, is one of the best examples of children’s literature I have yet had the opportunity to read.

If you pick up a copy, make sure to get one that includes the wonderful minimalist drawings by the author himself instead of the garish, over the top ones that are more like the movie than the book.

What can I say. Spring break is two weeks long and I feel like I have not posted in over a year.

I also feel like the kids have completely changed since my last post and the idea of catching you all up seems impossible. With that said I will be back, shortly and regularly as usual with my daily updates.

Life is incredible and so are Luke and Lily, just let me gather my thoughts and catch my breath and I will try to show you how.

Time flies.

Lily was sick over the weekend and I went on a trip to see my mom via a red-eye to Boston. When was the last time you were on a red-eye?

Ugh.

Ugh, Lily is sick again. Brought her in tho see the doctor, had to wait 45 minutes at the doctors office and two good things came of it. One is that she just plain has a cold, no sign of infection anywhere. Two, the doctor leaned into me at one point and said “you have two very patient kids”, to which I grinned and inhaled a breath of contentment.

When Luke gets sick, he totally shacks up on the couch with a bunch of books and chills. When Lily gets sick she just keeps doing all those things she likes to do, but when she hits the wall, she hits it hard. To her credit, she is amazing at asking for a moment of quiet. She just asks for a bottle and her pacifier (unya and umma) and promptly walks into her room and points at the crib.

Meanwhile Luke has developed a wonderful interest in tight rope walking. Like many things he distills, they come from books he reads, in this case a great one called “Mirette on the high wire”, about a girl who befriends a fallen high wire genius and together they find courage and commitment to define their relationship and partnership

He holds my hand as he crosses, but his concentration and commitment is pretty impressive.

Luke’s birthday recap.

It may have been a little while back, but Luke Wallace Cline’s fifth birthday was a day to remember.

From start to finish it was darn near perfect. The weekend before was outrageously hot the the following weekend it rained.

I was able to burry the treasure chest lickity split and move on to assembling the play arena. We had flags and shovels and buckets of water and tangerines for all. All the concerns about there not being enough booty in the trunk evaporated once the chest was open, my goodness the kids were so thrilled to find a real treasure chest filled with lollipops, harmonicas, kazoos, pineapples, you name it!Late in the even was a rush on the kites which had been lying in wait, and much enthusiastic merriment ensued.The home homemade cupcakes survived and were eaten with vim and vigor.

Clean up was not bad and before leaving as the last standing member of the       party I jumped into the cool Pacific ocean to celebrate.

A special thanks to our friend Tim Hennessy for taking these lovely photos, without which we would only have our memories, which in this case are certain to be pretty good ones.

It was really great, everyone had a blast.