Happy Fourth of July!

We got up late today (about 8:30am), ate a quick a breakfast and then rode to North Ave for the annual July 4th parade.

One highlight this year was the Milwaukee Dancing Grannies. Everett wanted to do three things: 1) see the parade; 2) get a flag; 3) get some candy (he remembered that in previous years they threw candy to the crowd). The first objective was easy enough – we parked the bikes at the end of 81st St this year and within a couple minutes the Boy Scouts walked by and handed out flags to everyone. Everett is not what I would call and aggressive kid and is not inclined to elbow his way to the front, so Chris had to hoist him over the phalanx of lawn chairs that lined the street in order to get a flag (there was also a Mom of two young girls who helped us). A few minutes after that a man came through tossing Tootsie Rolls. Amazingly, Everett managed to grab one despite moving pretty slowly. He certainly benefited from the fact that we were mostly surrounded by adults and few children, so he had little competition. In fact, once the adults saw him they started re-tossing candy in our direction so Everett could get them. Even then, he would not pick the candy up without first asking us if he could have another! Chris later commented that in this circumstance he was being too obedient.

On the way home from the parade we passed the pool and decided that might be the best way to spend a couple hours, especially given the fact that the temperature reached a new record of 102F, but the sun was blazing and even the pool water was too warm. We swam for a while, ate lunch and Everett used his own birthday money from his new wallet to buy an orange PushUp from the concession stand. Melissa had a flat tire on the way to the pool and Chris had replacement tubes for just about every tire size/valve combination except Schrader 27″, so Chris got the car to shuttle everyone home.

It was way too hot for the Hart Park festival in the afternoon. Instead, we napped and waited for Grandpa and Grandma Linda to arrive. Everett woke up just in time to see them drive up to our house in their new rig: a 5th wheel and pickup truck.

Chris and Gary spent a fair amount of time getting it backed into the driveway while avoiding the tree in our front yard, the neighbors house, etc. For dinner Chris grilled burgers and corn, and Melissa made two kinds of potato salad (one egg, one parsley-caper) and homemade chocolate-mint ice cream. Around 9pm we walked behind the house to catch fireflies and watch the fireworks. This year Chris practiced photographing fireworks.

It hasn’t rained in weeks, which has had a range of effects. One blessing is that there are far fewer mosquitos this year than previous years. However, roads have been buckling due to the heat, and many municipalities have banned fireworks because the ground is so dry, not just for the citizens but also the annual fireworks display. In Waukesha and Oak Creek the fireworks shows were halted after grass fires started. When the Tosa fireworks started they were all behind the line of trees, leading us to speculate that the show had been modified due to the dry conditions. This is the first year Everett is staying up to watch the fireworks and we had built it up quite a bit. We didn’t want to disappoint him so Chris and Everett jumped in the car and drove to Hart Park to see the rest of the show. As soon as we arrived we realized that the show hadn’t started yet and the fireworks we were seeing behind the trees were from Milwaukee. We drove back home, went right back to our spot behind the house and watched the whole thing, at the end of which Everett spontaneously jumped up and started clapping.

Around the time of Everett’s fourth birthday we watched some old videos of him and remarked on how he has changed over the last year in size and abilities. Here are a few recent thoughts and observations.

According to a recent story on NPR, children are cute only until they are around four and a half years old. This was based on a recent journal article that subsequently was picked up by several news outlets. The researchers set out to determine perceptions of children from infancy to age six in terms of likability and attractiveness. The actually data appears pretty weak (though amazingly did reach statistical significance) but reinforces something that many of us openly acknowledge: babies are cute; teenagers generally aren’t; sometime in between the cuteness wears off. Interestingly, these articles do not explain what comes after being cute, but it appears that we will find out in about six months.

Chris had just become accustomed to reasoning with a three year old when he was introduced to four year old reasoning. One morning we were getting ready to go to the beach when Everett announced:
“I don’t want to go to the beach.”
“Well all the adults and all the children are going to the beach, so I guess we’ll go play in the water and build sand castles and eat custard and french fries. And we will leave you here.”
“Well then you will get arrested.”
Melissa got her own version of this when she gave Everett an answer he didn’t want to hear and was told
“Momma, you need to learn a lesson about yes.”

Everett recently attended the fourth birthday party of his close friend George. Kelly, another close friend, was also there. The three of them have been in school together for about a year and have formed quite a bond. Now that Melissa has finished her dissertation Everett attends school just one day a week, and by coincidence the three of them were reunited at school on the Tuesday following George’s birthday. George’s parents had rented a bounce house for his party, which was a huge hit, but when Everett returned home from school that day he had something very serious to report: “Mom! George…did not…get…to keep…the bounce house.” Apparently no one explained to them that the bounce house was a rental, and they must have talked about it a lot on Tuesday. On a similar subject, Everett has been asking if he will have a birthday party at home with his friends. He has had mini-parties with family while we were traveling in June but has not had a proper birthday party at home yet.

Chris gave Everett a wallet for his fourth birthday. This idea came up because Everett has taken a great interest in Chris’ wallet recently. In fact, Everett can sometimes remove the wallet from Chris’ pocket without his knowledge, which is somewhat disconcerting. We asked Everett if he wanted his own wallet and explained to him the various kinds including the 1980’s era nylon wallets with velcro closures. We always got the same answer to this question: he looked at Chris and said “I want a wallet just like yours.” So a couple days after his birthday we went to the store and looked through all the wallets and picked one out. Note that this one has a bumpy texture but we explained to Everett that after years of use it will become smooth and shiny, just like Dad’s.

One comment that Everett received in the report card from his swim class a few months ago was that “He is a good conversationalist!”. And that is really saying something for a class that doesn’t involve much talking, and during which you can’t hear anything anyway because there are about 50 other children in the pool with a lot of echoes from the concrete walls. Our experience has been that conversations with a three year old often touch on existential questions, but recently they have become more fact-oriented, such as:
“How was the earth formed?”
“Does outer space ever end?”
Some time ago Chris did an imitation of Dr. Evil in one of the Austin Powers movies (the second one?) where he tells Scotty to zip it. Everett thought this was hilarious and picked it up immediately. Anyway, one day Chris was trying to answer the question about how the earth was formed while he and Everett were riding to school on the bike. Everett must not have liked Chris’ answer because he threw both arms in the air, pinched his fingers together and said “Bzzzzt!” just like Dr. Evil. Chris was laughing too hard to remind him that this was not exactly polite behavior.

A couple of interesting factoids about Barber-Butson offspring: Everett has stopped going to sleep before 10 or 11pm. We usually put him in bed by about 8pm and he stays in his room building nests, looking at books, herding elephants, etc. We have also noticed that BB offspring have a lot of complex vocalizations that seemingly continue throughout waking hours. As I write this (Chris speaking) it is about 10:30pm and Everett is still stomping around his room, singing, talking, asking if we are going to have any chocolate and whether someone can check on him.

During a recent bedtime Chris asked “What was your favorite thing about today?” and Everett replied “Seeing you.”

Melissa has been slowly introducing Everett to Star Wars, and Everett has started to make sense of the characters. From time to time he will ask questions like “Is Darth Vader bad or good?”, and we have tried to explain to him the changes that some of the characters go through in the course of several movies. After digesting these ideas for a while he said:
“For Halloween this year I want to be Darth Vader.”
“What do you like about Darth Vader?”
“I like his badness. This is what I want to wear:
Chicky hat,
Duck hands,
Dinosaur feet,
And the whole thing is Darth Vader!
And I will sing the nice Darth Vader song (to the tune of the Imperial March):
Da Da Da Duh Da Quack Duh Da Quack.”