in which Lalita becomes soccer mom extraordinaire

"Fall" has well and truly begun. The roads are green and yellow with fallen leaves, and temperatures are dropping. We still get lovely and sunny days as well, but summer is definitely slipping away. One way of knowing that we're moving into a different season is that all the School Recreation classes have started again. Having failed last time to get a place in swim class I made sure (with a little bit of help from my sister Flien who was at a computer at the right time) we enrolled early this time around, and as Lucas has been asking to play "soccer" again since the World Cup I signed him up for that as well. Of course we still do "jump jump" (gym) as well so the week is busy enough. Then recently we drove by karate school and Lucas started screaming and hollering that he needed to do "raaty". So after some enquiries we had our "introductory" karate class this morning. It must have been the most stressful 20 minutes of my life. It was very formal, starting with the fact that we had to call the 23-year old instructor "Mr.....". Lucas had to say "yes sir" (which he is good at, especially when I make what he deems to be unreasonable requests of him, as in - me: "Lucas can you eat one nanogram of the vegetables on your plate please?" Lucas: "yessir!" [completely ignoring request]) and try to be very focused which is hard for a superactive not-yet-4-year old. He loved doing the kicks and screams but not the being quiet in between part so much. I couldn't decide if this was an insane exercise in trying to control a child's natural exuberance or a good way of teaching him a little bit about discipline and focus in the real world, and as long as Lucas is happy to go for lessons I'll just roll with it and see what happens. We now have a little karate costume and are signed up for another 1-2-1 lesson ("Lucas may benefit from some more personal attention") next week.So here I am, trying to prepare my classes and keeping up with emails in between ferrying my child from soccer to swimming to gym to karate. Please don't suggest I sign him up for violin.

James is visiting from India and we have been having a fabulous time. Lucas has been increasingly aware that families have different shapes, and he likes to point out other friends' situations: X does not have a dad, Y's daddy lives far away, etc. So he was thrilled that his dad was visiting and they both rose to the bonding challenge. I was even a little nervous in the beginning that the inevitable absence ahead of us would be a source of pain but Lucas seems to just bounce from situation to situation, and on days when he doesn't see "mine daddy" he is absolutely fine about that too. On Labor Day in early September we visited a state forest a few hours away from here, it was a lovely sunny day but maybe because the forecast had been bad ( and it did rain a little as we were driving up) the park was relatively quiet. We walked around for a bit and then spent ages at the playground, watching American families have the most insanely enormous picnics. (I failed my citizenship test again - our packed lunch consisted of a bagel each, a juice packet each, some goldfish crackers and chocolate chip cookies. The real American picnic consists of 4 burgers each, a couple of hot dogs, a bag of tortilla chips and a case of beer. The fact that state parks provide little grills where you can cook up your food providing you bring your own charcoal does help a lot of course. Next time!)

Last weekend I had an all-day meeting in Washington so the three of us flew out there on Saturday so we could have an extra day in DC. I was nervous about flying to DC on the anniversary of 9/11, and when we got to the tiny little plane that would take us to Detroit for the first leg my anxiety was only heightened by the attitude of the strict and surly flight attendant. Enter Mr Lucas who warms the heart of even the most jaded and exhausted airline staff. They had a lovely time together chatting and when the inevitable happened - the "fasten seatbelts" signs go on for landing and Lucas has to go potty - she dealt with it incredibly well: first she asked all the passengers to stay seated even after we had come to a halt so "a young man can get to the restroom" and then when we were taxi-ing forever and the situation grew more desperate, she called the pilot and asked him to stop. We raced to the back (no, this is not a good time to play with all the different buttons in the toilet) and raced back to our seats, mission accomplished. If anyone flying into Detroit that day should have missed their connection thanks to a halted airplane on its way to the gate then I do apologise.

Serendipitously our gate in Detroit was the one with the play area so we horsed around for a bit and then got on to the next plane. This one was much more roomy and Lucas was asleep before we were even at altitude, so James and I had a quiet 2 hours to chat and catch up. Lucas woke up as we were landing, looked out of the window and exclaimed, much to the amusement of fellow passengers: "Mom! They have a Capitol here too". I think I will let him think that the Washington Capitol was modelled on the Madison one rather than the other way round for just a little bit longer. Then we had a great time - the Air and Space Museum was a phenomenal hit with all of us, the Natural History Museum has the coolest dinosaurs, and although Lucas did not think too much of the Tea Party parade that we detoured to in between museums, I rather enjoyed my little brush with the latest movement in American politics. (I was less impressed with the photos of Obama with a Hitler moustache - I mean, are you kidding?? -, the man screaming about how America has been turned into a Marxist state (Reader, I did not ask him which chapter of Das Kapital he thought was the most relevant), though I thought the "Buck Ofama" slogans were quite humorous.) On Monday when I was working James and Lucas spent all day in the zoo with the giant Pandas and Orang-Utans. In the evenings we went swimming in the hotel pool, and thanks to the joys of having booked a larger room with 2 tvs, Lucas was cruising the Disney channel on one while we watched the US open games on the other. It was bliss!

A few weeks ago we had a very busy weekend too with a funfair on Saturday and a biking event on Sunday. Some photos are below. Teaching is still going well, I had a lazy week last week and showed a movie in both classes but now I have to get back to preparing and making sure I have done my own assigned reading.