May: more birthdays and letters

Snoopy and Napoleon

I start this post with Nikita because May is his birthday month. He loved our gift, The Maze Runner, and later celebrated with his classmates with pizza and a movie, "Avengers: Age of Ultron." I came out of the movie wanting a Gung Fu Scratch t-shirt and thinking the Scarlet Witch should have her own film, but especially enjoyed the post-movie conversation with the boys over pizza.

The birthday was only one highlight of many this month. Nikita placed third at a fencing tournament in Rhode Island, went to a local chess tournament unsupervised, and got one of his ideas (a game-making club) accepted for the school's after-school program. Meanwhile, Ivan had two end-of-the-year cello recitals, learned how to rollerblade from Igor (below), and made a new friend at my program's Memorial weekend BBQ. They devised a new rule for penalty kicks during soccer (two goalies!); I witnessed the development a new idea for toys (programmable mood braces) and laughed over a colleague's adventures in urban gardening (how does one know when to harvest root vegetables?).

Passing on skills.

I knew it was the end of the semester because I accomplished a lot of reading (most memorable were Being Mortal and The Adventures of Amir Hamza) and baking. The best new recipe was for Hoosier sugar cream pie; my favorite podcast was Alex Baldwin's "Here's the Thing." With all the baking I had been doing the past few months, it was no wonder my annual physical revealed a weight gain.

I also became very active with the League of Extraordinary Penpals. The group inspired me to make my own envelopes and my first pocket letter. Check out the results:

Courtesy of The New Yorker

First pocket letter

Despite the lack of snow (finally!), I still got flashbacks of what the roads were like and was subjected to random delays on public transit. I ended up taking a cab to my physical, but got treated to a vigorous poetry recital the driver, who claimed to work for the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal. Unfortunately, I cannot find the poem online, but it was composed by the journal's founder. And the last weekend (packed with a fencing tournament, two birthday parties, a play date at our house, and a cello recital) was marred by a hit-and-run of both our cars and our neighbor's. Amazingly, Igor found the car parked on the next street, with the driver and passenger passed out on the dashboard.

I end this post with Mother's Day. Ivan made me a lovely card and strawberry jam, and we had a nice dinner at the Village Smokehouse (below). One of these days, I will warn the boys about catcalling (yes, from that Playboy), but for now, what I will remember most this month are my car conversations with Nikita about math and Ivan exchanging mail with me.

Dinner with my favorite boys