La Familia Brophy

Here’s Nathan celebrating Colombia’s Olympic medal in weightlifting. Our congratulations to Mabel Mosquera, who lifted nearly four times her body wieght to score the bronze.

This morning when I left for work Nathan got upset and said “Airplane! No! Airplane!” Meaning he didn’t want me to take off for another buiness trip. Stab me in the heart why don’t yah? So anyway I said, “No airplane, just a choo choo.” And he understood. Choo choo = 8 hours, airplane = 3 days. So he stopped crying about it. It’s not much of a conversation, but it’s amazing that we’re starting to use words to communicate ideas.

I got a good nice impression of Ann Arbor today. I’m here for a work and went to meet my colleagues for a paddle on the Huron River minutes after checking in at the hotel. The paddle was great. We got shuttled upstream and paddled for about 2 and a half hours. It was easy, with a couple of fun ripples. We played frisbee between the kayaks. Fun. fun. fun. Then we went for beer and sandwiches at Casey’s Tavern, where I had some of the best french fries ever.

Here are a few highlights of our visit to the Fox Cities. Winnebago County, Wiscosin.

• Special Mememories Zoo. feels like it was a farm until the farmers said “Hey I bet we could make more money by just having a zoo here instead.” There was a petting zoo which Nathan enjoyed quite a bit. Unfortunately I messed up and let a big 4 foot tall nubian goat out. I just couldn’t hold him back becasue I was holding Nathan with one hand and he was just a really strong goat. It ran out and started eating plants in the rest of the zoo. The zoo workers (farmer’s daughters?) ran out to catch him. I saw he’d gotten loose again about 30 minutes later, so I don’t feel too bad.
• Fresh Cheese Curds from the Union Star Cheese factory. It didn’t seem promising when we parked - there was an unholy stench of curdled milk. But the curds were so good, they were all squeaky when you chewed them and totally delicios. They aren’t nearly as good a day later, they lost their squeek.
• Scooter Rides. Nathan’s gramma has a mobility scooter, and Nathan loves going for rides to see the neighborhood digger. Much like the rider mower in Maine he thinks the scooter is one of the prime attractions here.
• The Pizza Pit featuring family funtime area. We stopped here after visiting the Wisconsin Maritime Museum. Nathan thought the police car that shook around for a few minutes after Mama put a quarter in was awesome. Papi won a tootsie roll playing a wack-a-dino.

We’re off to Wisconsin to visit Lisa’s parents. Well, we should be off. Lisa woke up and immediately checked our flight info on the web. Good thing she did - our flight was cancelled. We have new flight in the early afternoon.

The big stress for both of us is how Nathan will do on the flights, especially the 2.5 hour flight to Chicago. He doesn’t have his own seat and the flight is sure to be packed since an earlier flight was cancelled. Can we keep entertained in our laps for that long, or will he go into endless screaming fits? He’s flown before, of course, but he was a little baby who liked to sleep more, and he always got his own seat. We have some new toys and a new book about diggers and stickers of construction equipment. We’ll see how it goes.

Last night I made a DVD about our trip to Vermont, with a short film, browse-able by scene, and a bonus slideshow. I love having a Mac. Nathan’s in my lap now as I type. He wants to watch he videos of himself so I have to sign off. That’s why we made the DVD so Mr. Narcissist could get his daily fill of Nay Nay TV. It will be fun to show Debi and Mike too.

I saw an ad on the side of the number 1 bus today for one.6 wine, a new lo-carb wine. Don’t you think that’s really taking it to far? I have never thought of wine as one of those diet busting beverages. I think this lo-carb thing must be past it’s peak now.

That’s what Nathan said today when we were playing ball. While we were on vacation he started using two word phrases and now he uses them pretty regularly. Still this one came out of nowhere and I did a double take. He repeated himself, “Get it Mama!” As we kept playing he occasionally threw in a “please” as well.

His understanding of words is what really amazes me sometimes. He uses adjectives and prepositions and a few verbs as much as nouns and I think that makes him smart. It can be a little embarassing when he tells our neighbor that her table is dirty (”Table dirty”) and that she should wash it (”Wash!”) because he says it over and over until she washes it.

I love it when someone asks him a question and he can accurately answer it. Like when Grandma asked who cut his hair and he said, “Mama.”

Sometimes though with powerful key words like nap or poop his answer is always, “No” and it is clear that he doesn’t understand everything we are saying. Everyday after nap I ask him if he had a good nap and he always says, “No” and laughs a little.

Here is a photo from this weekend when we went to Drumlin Farm. Nathan loves it because of all of the tractors. Here he is with Papi on the “Red, tractor.”

This afternoon we drove to the playground near the Charles River, and I kayaked a little while Nathan an Lisa played. I can see two adventures right on the river that with a little practice I could accomplish during a nap time.

One is the great ditch. Dug for irrigation before the Revolutionary War the ditch cuts through an uninhabited stretch of Dedham, between two points on a curve of the river. I could do a loop down the river, through the ditch and back to the point where I launched. The ditch is very narrow, but I believe it’s navigable in high water, and is quite wild. The other to go down Mother Brook, which connects the Charles River and the Neponset River. Native Americans must have used it to travel between the watersheds in olden times. I’d love to go down it at some point, but I’ll need a partner to shuttle with.

Both of these adventures, and more, are on my USGS quad. I got a USGS map printed with our house dead center, and I get inspired when ever I look at it.

I posted some of our vacation photos the quick and easy way from iPhotos on our .mac site. Here’s the link:

http://homepage.mac.com/benbr/PhotoAlbum10.html