isaac ♥ moto

I realized how many pictures of Isaac and motorcycles I have from the last few weeks, so I decided they deserved their own post. Isaac really likes motorcycles, as you can probably tell. He even has a little toy scooter that a friend of Papa's gave him (see below). It is funny - he will try to sit on it and pretend to ride it. In French, motorcycle = moto. We usually use the shorter word, although Isaac can also say "motorcycle". It's funny how he mixes the two languages (but I guess we do too). He'll say, "a big la moto". If I try to correct him to say, "une grande moto", he usually says, "No, a big la moto", which is like saying, "A big the motorcycle".

 Silly boy.

 Uh-oh. Eye rolling... I can't wait for you to be a teenager, Isaac. Rolling your eyes and saying, "Whatever, mama, I'm going out on my moto anyway."

 Here's Isaac's pink Vespa. He really likes the colors pink and purple lately. I don't know if it has anything to do with me knitting a pink scarf.

Yep, Isaac is just drawn to les motos wherever he goes.

 A cute story, not related: Isaac apparently also likes running. The other evening we went over to the "track and field" by our house, and Isaac decided to run with some (young adult) girls. He actually kept their pace for 1/4 of the track! Then, he was done. But he ran with them two more times, about the same distance. Funny boy, you will be a good runner.



tutorial: how to make swiss "foom" pancakes

Chef Isaac here. Today, I will show you how to make my favorite breakfast recipe, foom pancakes.

First, you must gather all your supplies. I always remind my mama to get the griddle out.

Then, measure out 3/4 cup flour, 1 tbsp sugar..

and 1/2 tsp salt.

2 cups milk...

1 tbsp oil (canola or vegetable), and 4 eggs.

Mix together.

Stirring is the best part. Batter will be very thin.

Heat the griddle to about 375 degrees F. You could do this before you start the recipe, but our griddle heats up quickly and our batter comes together slowly.

Then, put a ladleful or so of batter into the griddle and tilt the griddle so the batter covers it in a square shape.

Like so.

When it starts to cook around the edges, flip it over...

and roll it up!

And then we get to eat them! That is the best part.

So now, dear friends, you can make foom pancakes at home.

commencement

Dear Isaac,

You did it! Thanks for putting up with your mama going to school for all of your short little life so far.

 Of course you can wear the hat! (Same day, clothes change for Isaac)

 Uncle John graduated too. He got a degree in History, which is actually no small feat. Have you ever seen the excessive quantity of reading you have to do to get a degree in history? It's definitely more than I ever did in my undergraduate or master's programs. And Great Aunt Christy had a nice party the day before graduation to celebrate! It was lots of fun and lots of good food.

Now, I'm just excited to enjoy the summer with little you, Isaac. No more going to the hospital (we hope not) or school, no working until September! We just have to find a new place to live... :)

fleurs de la forêt

Some wildflowers from our little walk in the forest on Memorial Day.

Well, this one is actually not from the forest, but the rest are.

Buttercup

? It was very pretty though.

 Some sort of centipede.

 A little wild iris! These were so pretty.

 And this one is an invasive species. Unfortunately we saw more of it than we would have liked to.

Hikes are so fun! We will have to go on another one soon, perhaps this weekend!

The perfect man exists

In fact, there are actually two of them.

 Luckily for me, I know them both.

Zoo day

It looks like it's going to be a chronologically backwards update over the next few days. So, before the last video with the birthday party, we went to the zoo. This last Saturday, actually. Everyone else in Oregon also went. It was quite packed. This is probably because it was the first sunny weekend in Oregon since quite possibly last August. (I'm exaggerating... but not too much.)

So, now I will share pictures and videos of zoo animals for you and Isaac to enjoy.

Elephants

Black bears

Reticulated giraffe

 African pygmy goat

 Speke's gazelles

Zebra and gerenuks

The higher mammals are feeding. They are trying to cool off on a hot summer day. Luckily they have ice cream to recourse to.

Babirusa

Dinosaur. Wait, I thought they were all dead!

Tractor. Admittedly not an animal, but equally enticing.

 The river at a rest stop on the way to the zoo.

 And races with Papa at the same rest stop!



There. That mostly covers the zoo.

Now for just a few little things Isaac has said lately, because you know I like to keep track of this sort of thing. Yesterday he said, "I'm taking the book in here," when he was going to read with Papa on the bed. We are so amazed with how fast the number of words and sentence length has expanded. I guess I remember for my study last year a lot of kids had 11-12 word sentences (2.5-3 year old kids) as their longest sentence their parents could remember, so I guess it will just keep exponentially growing.

It's interesting because now Isaac can do embedded clauses to some extent. The other day he said, "I want Mama read this one." An embedded nominal clause, right there. Impressive. I guess you need only about 5 word sentences to do it, but I hadn't thought about it before.

Vocabulary wise, he is just a sponge. He knows (and asks about) the ladle, griddle, and flipper when we are making "Fum pancakes" (Swiss pancakes), and he also knows what the whisk is. I asked him to get a whisk this morning and he pulled out the right kitchen utensil.

Apparently the other day, there was something heavy that needed moving, and Papa said, "Isaac, do you need help?" Isaac replied, "No, I gotted it, Papa." He's got it, no worries. That's the other thing - the adding an extra -ed or -ing all the time. Swimming is honestly something like "swimminining" now. I know it'll clear up but it's pretty funny. And also, I found out today from discussion from another mom that making a consonant cluster where there is none is not just something Isaac does. I can't think of a good example right now... but it would be usually a g or d turning into a dw or gw (or jw). The other kid said "dangerous" as "dwangerous" and that reminded me that I need to write about that here before I forget! I'm sure there are other developmental things that are going on, but that should catch us up on the speech-language aspect for now. I think there is still more backlog, so maybe I will post that tomorrow. :)

happy birthday TO you

Well, it's been a few weeks. I've been waiting to update Isaac's blog because I wanted to put up more of the nice pictures from his birthday from Nana's camera. But that didn't happen yet. Maybe I will get to it later this week. I still have so many little ends to wrap up this week - if I don't go crazy in the next 7 days, I should be okay for a couple of years.

Here is Isaac at a little friend's (3rd) birthday party yesterday. They had a swimming pool and he loved it. But what he really enjoyed was singing "Happy Birthday to you!"

More pictures to come tomorrow. :) Or the next day. I promise.

And thank you to everyone for your sweet birthday wishes, especially Isaac's best cousin, Lucia. :) Isaac is especially looking forward to having another birthday and turning 5.