Remember when I told you all about how funny it was that Jordan couldn't ride a bike? Simply couldn't muster up the energy to pedal along at the park with her friends and so Tom and I pushed her along in an back-achingly persistent show of love and support for her getting it at her own speed? She was so advanced with swimming so we didn't care about the biking? I don't. Remember it, I mean - because yesterday as I was chasing her around the park, her on a brand new red bike, me running after her and just thinking "She's getting so far out in front of me, going so fast" and then realizing that it was pure
metaphor for what's happening with her as it is.

Jordan outgrew her green and black Crocodile bike. So we went shopping for a new one. Go to Costco, Sports Authority, and Target and look at bikes. Girls bikes are obscene (and so are many of the boy ones) - Barbie, Princess, BRATZ, even Groovy Girls - full of pink and glitter and just too damn much STUFF in the wheels and on the handlebars and just everywhere. Though I did think the zebra seat cover on the Groovy Girls bike was pretty badass. We got the red one so Sawyer could ride it when he gets big enough (which should be in about, oh, 5 minutes at the rate they seem to be growing). The bike was a boys model because apparently unisex is completely a thing of the past. It had a "Major Damage" theme with stickers saying so all over it, which luckily peeled right off. I mean, major damage is just not something you want to associate with your child on a two-wheeled vehicle as it is, so Jordan put some good butterfly and ladybug and fish ones Matt gave her on it and she's set. Angelina Ballerina for her birthday got an awesome plain red bike as well, according to the book she picked out at the library last week - thank goodness!

So she's biking around with two different shoes on (I was sad when she gave that one up so I'm always glad when she reverts to it now and again) and a cute valentines day outfit from her Ama on, and pedaling too fast for me to keep up with on foot, occasionally slamming on the brakes and looking back, saying "Did I make a skid mark, mama?” and making exercise walkers cower in fear on the sides of the pavement. Then she started in with the "Pretend that I'm a _________ and you're
a ___________ and I ___________________ and then you _______________ and then a dragon______________ and then you had to save me and then I ______________" while she's riding further and further away from me, down the steep part that used to have me so fearful, now it's barely a blip on her radar, and she's still talking, still dictating a story, still riding away from me and her little once-a-baby self and into some world of her imagination that is at once exhausting and enthralling.

Tom and I have been playing Boggle and she wanted to learn and, sure enough, writes away these lists of words zigzag and wood (wod) and red and on off and just blows us away. She works hard at home and takes it easy at school. Lucky teachers. Oh - and Tom will be one for a few months, don't remember if I mentioned it, but he's taking over for a teacher going in for chemo. It's ridiculous pay, but a great opportunity to be with Jordan and help out.

Sawyer and I will keep on with the lessons - he learned how to say, "quack quack" when you ask him what a duck says. It’s pretty damn cute, ask Mattie. Call if you want a taste, he'll say it on the phone after he sends a few quiet face-plant kisses to you first. We cut the feet off of Jordan's ballet tights and he loves to put them on his feet. We call them his ballet slippers - he sits outside her class, looking in through the sliding glass doors, so forlorn and sad that he can’t be in there as well. He'll grab his slippers and bring them to me and stomp around the house in them - not too far off from what a couple of Jordan's steps look like... Jordan is in a new class, one with a "recital" - 3-minute dance - at the end of three 6-week sessions. For which they want us to pay $50 for a costume. I came to my senses and thought, no. She's 4. It's really not that hard to drag the pennies out of parents. Guilt is a great motivator, until you remember she has the long-term memory of a goldfish about these things. That she still has fifteen pounds of Valentines Day candy left is a huge surprise each day - and this is with Tom and I helping out once a day or so on the volume...

In keeping with the follow and imitate the sister theme, when getting ready for the pool today, Jordan changed into her suit before leaving for the pool and Sawyer ran over with one of her suits and insisted I put it on. That's the attached picture. He was pretty stoked. He likes his little wetsuit as well, but he's pretty into his sister's things.

There's been one very sad happening in our community this week, if everyone can pray for these people, that would be great - our friends Tom and Shannon (Tom was in the Men's Journal article with Tom years ago), both former river guides who live and work in Davis but whom we see a few times a year, have a little girl whose 2nd birthday party we were meant to go to next weekend. She went to the doc feeling bad and the next day went in for brain surgery - they thought she had a tumor at the base of her spine, it turns out she had a few in her brain and a few in her spine. She had surgery but will now undergo intensive and experimental chemo. Her name is Ella and they call her Ella Bella! So send healing thoughts her way. She has a website similar to Ryan's, I'll forward it along. Tom and Shannon guided for us one early 4th of July, you may or may not recognize them.

I forgot to tell you my favorite part of the weekend for all my book-loving family to enjoy. Tom gets Sports Illustrated (thanks, Dad!) and every year we look forward to (kidding) the Swimsuit Edition. This year, their attempt at making it special and different (models in swimsuits, I mean, c'mon) involved a pair of 3-D glasses. Jordan got hold of the magazine and glasses and loved looking at ALL the pages with the glasses on, all the while saying 'ooh, this page is REALLY beautiful, Mama, look at this one!" And she was right, there were beautiful pictures of beaches and boats, and sand and more sand and more beaches and probably someone riding a horse or something, I’m not sure. (And, come to think of it, I'm sure she identified with the scantily clad models - after all, we're talking about a girl who asks every day if she can wear a skirt and short-sleeved shirt, and when I point out the frost on the ground outside she says "but I don't see the frost". She wakes up naked, sheds as many clothes as possible throughout the day, and prefers to swim in the bottoms only of a bikini that is likely a size or two small for her. She's got the exercise regimen of a swimsuit model - the hours of swimming and the daily sessions on either the bike or the trampoline or both - she is a fitness princess, that one. Jordan's comments didn't seem at all to be about the girls, except when she turned to one page with an especially pouty girl and exclaimed "oh, poor girl! She looks upset! Poor thing." And when she pointed out one picture as beautiful and showed it to her papa who said "Eew, that's gross", Jordan did a double take and said, "Oh, yeah. She’s got mud on her, that's gross, right?" Of course, said mud in question was strategically placed sand and while I tried to explain that getting dirty wasn't gross but fun, Tom was trying to cover his tracks (nothing spoils the Swimsuit Edition like having a girl) about why the picture was gross. Fun for the whole family! Jordan and I had a favorite page - the pullout of a very hairy Tom Selleck or who's that other mustachioed guy who looks like him - poised in cheesecake position laid out on some fur rug. A hilarious ad for HDTV, I think, we laughed a lot at that one. So we were sad when Tom threw the magazine into the fire. After all, Jordan had said, "Oh, Mama, this book is WONDERFUL! I love it sooo much!' Sawyer's favorite book right now is "Tails" that Mom and Dave gave him; he wants to read it all day long, first thing in the morning.