accidentally patriotic {MLK Day 2010}

He had a dream.

We knew he'd had a dream. We hadn't forgotten his dream, but we may or may not have forgotten we live so close to where he gave a speech sharing that very dream, and that should we venture out on a bike ride on the day honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. himself, we might stumble onto his monument (or at least his engraved quote at the top of the stairs of someone else's monument). Of course. Welcome to the convenience of Arlington. (Potential visitors, that was a plug for you!)

As a free day to have Jon with us at will, we plotted and planned a bike ride since it's been much too long since our last (darn the January sub-twenties phase we've been having. We left Logan for a reason! This is not what we bargained for!!), and decided it would be a route of Van's choice. Not that he's fluent in English or anything, but were we to ask him what he likes, he would either soar his pointer finger through the sky with an appropriate airplane engine sound, pump his arm while sounding the imaginary train whistle with his "too too!" train sound, or flap his fingers to his palms and say "duck! duck!"

In that case, our course was set. Load up the bikes and start the party at Gravelly Point. Where all airplane sighting dreams come true, ducks can be regularly spotted, and if you're lucky, you can even catch a metro passing overhead while you're cruising on the trail.

And we're happy to report, Gravelly did not disappoint. Van was pretty stoked to see that things he'd only seen (or could only remember seeing) in books were actually real. He rocked our parental world with his appropriate self-sign-language responses to everything he saw, accompanied by his perfect sound effects and sheer joy for having recognized each thing.

We like ducks.


And airplanes.


And we LOVE bike rides. Clearly. {see joy below}. And tell me you love the fact that I have a sippy cup in my pocket. The mommy staple. It turns out I can handle losing a little pride for the sake of his happiness.




Happy to be on his own feet with the freedom of ridiculous amounts of open air.


"more? more?"


Taking on the stairs at the Lincoln.



Walking with dad. His hero.








Work it, dude. Love the tongue.


Dance and rock on. Jon was so proud to see his son pull off the rock sign. He's been teaching him long and hard.


As luck would have it, we even happened upon the MLK Day presentation by the National Park Service, including the playing of a recording of Dr. King's speech, which took place from the very place the rangers were standing. Really cool idea until they realized no one had charged the stereo battery the night before—cue park ranger #2 to read the speech out loud to the crowd. Really cool opportunity for us until we missed it all thanks to the maniac...oh how we love our crazy man.




The face of mischievousness we've come to know all too well. This was when he was trying to sabotage the ranger's big moment.


Plan B: let him roam wild and free in the Lincoln.






The classic lesson never learned by parents: trying to pose your kid where and when the last thing he wants is to be posed. In public. Shamelessly. It's official—we've joined the big leagues.





Fearless of man and beast alike.


I absolutely love the way Van's looking up at the officer in the second photo below. Like he's the coolest thing ever because he's sitting on that huge animal. Van's totally jealous.


And he's off!


We heart long shadows.




Still watching for airplanes.
















This was the greatest part of the day...

The unbelievable happened. He fell asleep on his face while riding in the beach cruiser. Completely unaffected by bumps on the path, roaring airplanes overhead, and his parents stopping repeatedly to capture the perfect picture of his nose being squished just so. Seriously, it was possibly the cutest thing we'd ever seen.




Still sleeping...








Bikes loaded, airplanes passing, strapped in the carseat...and he was still sleeping. He gets those mad sleeping skills straight from his parents.


Enough of our "sleeping in funny places" story...what about you? Do share. :)