Orion

When I arrived home last night — in the fog and pitch black — Orion wanted to ride bikes. So I fixed him up with a set of blinky lights and we rode laps around the cul-de-sac.

That was pretty cool, but it’s not the moment of awwww. This is:

When Iris saw Orion and me putting on our helmets and fixing up for a ride, she pulled her helmet off the shelf and dragged out Orion’s old scoot-bike, which has kind of become “her” bike. She can barely walk, so even the scoot bike is kind of beyond her, but still.

(My kids are three y.o and one y.o.)

The little Lego guy was supposed to be a birthday present from my parents. (Legos for grownup birthdays are a long-running in-joke in my family.) Orion couldn’t wait to get his hands on it.

We spent half an hour before bed putting it together. I was worried it would be too complex for Orion (who is still on Duplos) but he was really good at decoding the instructions. These Bionicle/Hero things don’t snap together like regular Legos, they are more of a ball-and-socket affair. They are also more dimensionally-complex than firetrucks or whatever — they articulate on three planes.

He made up a really fun story about this guy. He’s scary but a good guy, “a scary protector like a dragon.” This is our usual line about fierce creatures, including real ones (e.g. snakes, cops). Like Orion’s dragon kite, he protects the house from “ghosts and monsters,” his go-to bad guys (along with pirates).