Austin, Texas - A Love Story

Oliver and I woke up this past Saturday morning at my mom’s house in San Antonio. We got up, got dressed and went out for breakfast (we had “Gackos” or “tacos”), and then headed north to Austin for music class. Music class starts at 10:30 and we left San Antonio at 8:45, seemingly with plenty of time even considering that I-35 was shut down in the south of Austin (which I knew before we headed out). My plan was to continue driving north on 35 until it started to slow down and then get off and take the surface roads the rest of the way to music class. It didn’t work out so smoothly. The highway never “slowed down”. It just stopped. Dead stop. We went from going 70 mph to going 2 mph. It was horrible. I knew we weren’t going to make it to class and I felt awful. I was so angry at myself but even angrier at the city of Austin. I mean, what sort of city has ONE north-south thoroughfare and shuts that road down for an entire weekend? What kind of city makes it so impossible to get anywhere? Shuts down roads every two minutes for some sort of festival or race, etc? Ugh. Austin was on my list. I was so over it.

Oliver and I got to music class thirty minutes late but our teacher was nice enough to let us sit in on the next class so Oliver didn’t have to miss it entirely. After class we headed home and Oliver and I both took pretty decent naps. When we woke up, Dauphin and Kelly called and said that there were headed to Zilker Park to fly kites and hang out. We headed down to the park and spent the next three hours running around, playing soccer and flying kites. There were hundreds of people out at the park but it wasn’t crowded. Oliver ran and ran and ran and met tons of people. He kept running up to people and saying: “Hi! I Oliver!” It was too cute. We stayed until the sun started to set and then headed back to the car. On the walk to the car I caught one of my favorite pictures of Brian and Oliver of all time.

 MoPac up to the house was smooth sailing and I found myself falling in love with our town once again. Well played, Austin. You’ve got a fan in me.

Chuckles

I don’t have the time or energy for a long post tonight but I wanted to jot down a few things that Oliver has done lately that have completely cracked me up. And most of them are related to his new trick... counting.

• Oliver started counting last week. He did great with one and two but kinda lost it after that. One of his first attempts went like this: “One. Two. Nine. Done!.” Now he consistently counts to three (I will get a video soon and post it). He will get to the top of the slide and sit down and yell: “One! Two! Three! Go!” and then slide down. The other day we went to the park with Dauphin and Kelly (more on that later because it was an awesome day) and Oliver was setting up to race Dauphin. He lined up with Dauphin and then counted to the start: “One! Two! Go!”  He totally skipped three. That little cheater. 

• We’ve been using time out for certain “infractions” lately with mixed success. The thing that always always always lands him in time out is playing in the dogs’ water bowl. He’s done well for awhile but in the last couple of weeks he has repeatedly splashed in the water bowl. When he screws up we put him in time out and tell him why he’s there. We also will tell him how much time he has left. At one point last week Brian even counted down the last ten seconds for him. On Sunday afternoon Oliver splashed in the dogs’ water, I put him in time out and told him why he was there and then tried to ignore him while he served his time. A few seconds later, however, he started shouting: “Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven!...”  He was counting down the end of his time out. It was so so so hard not to laugh. 

• He now calls the cats “girls” since he follows his dad’s example. Brian walks into the garage every morning and says to the cats: “Hi, girls.” Oliver now says the same. He can’t say boys for the dogs so he says “guys” which is his go to word for a lot of things - his toys, the dogs, the men who drive the recycling truck (who, by the way, made an unscheduled second pass on our street a few weeks ago because Oliver was outside cheering them on), the five year old boy who lives across the street whose name is Zakai (it’s pretty close, right?). 

That’s it for now. More later this week.