Ouest and Lowe are feeling the love. It’s really great to have the family here. It has always lifted our spirits to be with family, but now we can see how much it affects our kids. Especially Ouest. She seems to blossom when she is around them. New words come out of nowhere. She is just a constant ray of light and energy. And she just seems more open and friendly. Maybe it is just the fact that I am able to get some separation. I am able to stand back a bit and be an observer of my daughter instead of an active participant. I really enjoy it.

We gave her a bike today. It’s one of these scoot bikes with no pedals or gears so is absolutely perfect for the boat. Some boat friends of ours have one and Ouest fell in love with it. And for the past few months she has fawned over every bike she comes across, big and little, new and old. She simply loves bikes. So we were excited to give her this gift today. Turns out she is still about one inch short. She can get her toes on the ground, but not quite enough to get herself flying along. Won’t be long though.

JJ turned thirty today. My thirties have been so amazing that I hope he can experience the same. It’s weird, Ali and I both have siblings eight to ten years younger than us and we both feel the same sort of responsibility towards them. Sometimes I think we try to press our ideas on them a little more than they’d like. In our minds they are just at the perfect age to take chances, to do something different, and to act as irresponsibly and outside the box as they’d like.

And yet they are both on the straight and narrow. Work for someone else, pay the rent, save money for the future. There is nothing wrong with that of course, which is what makes it so frustrating for us. I just have this overwhelming feeling that the thirties are tailor made for expanding horizons, not for being a spoke in a wheel. We both just want so much for them. I imagine these are the same feelings we’ll be having for our own children a few years from now.

Ouest couldn’t stand this little boy, and he knew it. She would stand back and he would flip the beer bottle case closed. She’d say no and flip it open again. They must have repeated this routine fifty times, and both families were getting a good laugh out of it, but I finally had to put an end to the fun and throw the case under my chair.

Uncle JJ just has this special way with kids. He holds them and they freak out. Fortunately he doesn’t take this personally.