Zoo Birthday

For Dexter's birthday, we went to the Oakland Zoo with Owen, Riley and Laura.

Checking out the newish bear exhibit.

Hello bear.

Kids and bears.

Incognito at the zoo.

Look, human contact.

Elephants!

Serious conversations.

Happy Birthday Dexter!

Birthday Boy

Dexter's birthday was a lot of fun. We collected messages from his friends and family and made him a special birthday video. Maya also created a treasure hunt for him.

Dexter watching his birthday video.

Maya presents Dexter's card and the start of his treasure hunt.

The first clue.

Following the clues.

The final clues leading to a Link stuffy and a squeeze stress toy.

Opening more presents.

There was a bit of excitement when Dexter got the Mario lego set.

He was also thrilled about being able to pick out a new skateboard.

Happy 9th Birthday! 

Dexter at 9 Years

Dexter is 9!

The stats:

Weight: 64 lbs (around 50th percentile)

Height: 54.5 in (around 78th percentile)

It’s been a crazy year. Dexter is a wonderful kid navigating a time that has been really hard on kids. He’s been frustrated and scared by the pandemic, the fires, the political tensions... you name it. He misses seeing his friends, doing his favorite activities, and just being an ordinary kid. Overall, he’s handled everything pretty well. He has great days and then he has days where he stays more sad or angry. 

Dexter treasures his friends and loves to play. He is into creating “clubs” where the mostly boys have some sort of odd common interest. He is enjoying distance learning more than he was in the spring because the teachers are present all day long and there’s less independent work with Mom over his shoulder. He’s been getting more advanced with his reading and writing. His writing has really improved and he’s writing more complete stories with good handwriting. He is still reading easier chapter books (Roald Dahl, etc) and never loses his love for graphic novels including: “Dogman,” “Plant’s Versus Zombies,” “Big Nate,” and “Garfield.” We are still working our way through Harry Potter. Dexter still prefers for us to read those.

He loves art and creates very detailed drawings. He recently completed a series of drawings about platypuses doing different activities. He also is really starting to blossom with his piano playing. He sometimes tries to learn new songs that he likes by playing them by ear. He sometimes succeeds. We had hoped he’d be able to play baseball again this year, but that obviously didn’t work out because of the pandemic. We tried for soccer in the fall and that didn’t work either for the same reason. He did get a little soccer coaching from Malcolm Zalayet and he really enjoyed that.

Dexter’s biggest complaint since pandemic is that he’s the youngest and he gets frustrated that in our family he has that disadvantage. We try to remind him that he gets to watch a lot of TV shows and movies sooner. He’s also been able to play video games sooner. Much of this is a function of parental laziness and the extraordinary times. It is fun that we can now play a lot of games together now and have some fun although Dexter still gets pretty upset when he loses.

Speaking of video games, Dexter’s love in life has been revealed (hint: it’s the same love as every other boy in his class). Dexter started playing Minecraft last year. He and Maya had a lot of fun mostly playing in creative mode making elaborate homes. At Christmas, life got even more exciting when we got the Nintendo Switch. This meant that Maya and Dexter could play Mario Kart and Zelda: Breath of the Wild. This became another new obsession. He loves it, but we aren’t sure we love how it impacts him. We are hoping that we can find a middle path with the games. 

Overall, Dexter has been a trooper over the last half-year of isolation and difficulty. It’s created more anxiety and anger for him, but he’s still a very intuitive, sweet, funny, creative spirit. We are hoping that he gets back to school soon so he can get more social time outside the family and raise his spirits. COVID stinks. We love Dexter so much! Happy Birthday!

Home School and RGB

Well, life has been pretty rough lately with endless COVID, fires, and scary politics. RBG dying was another blow. We keep on going.

Dexter at school and at Daddy's work, aka the studio behind our house.

Love the smiles.

At a vigil for RBG shortly after her death. 

RBG is a personal hero and will be missed.

Orange Skies

We've been having a terrible fire season and the smoke invaded our area in a way we've never seen before. 

Welcome to daytime in San Rafael.

Yep. Everything is normal.

10 am.

11am looking out the window.

It actually looks worse than this.

By lunchtime it was a little brighter, with the sky turning green.

Covid School

Well, it's time to go "back to school." This year the kids didn't go very far. 

The kids got dragged out onto the stairs for their usual first day of school photo. This year no shoes required because they weren't going anywhere.

Time for "screen school" as Dexter calls it.

Maya's classroom.

Dexter's classroom. Here we go...