the milkman

Me: "Parker where are you going?" (he's naked in the hallway outside our front door about to head down the stairs.)

Parker: "Me going to buy milk now. See ya later."

Parker-isms

Had to jot these down before the moment's lost...

Me: "Look at that huge goldfish in the tank."

Parker: "Cute fish. Parker hold de fish like!"

Me: "Parker do you see the panda bear? It's so big and furry."

Parker: "Parker hold de Panda like!"

Parker: "Parker tummy-ache hurting. Parker need medsin like Panda. Parker have fevra too."

Parker: "Bunny's tummy-ache hurting too."

Peter: "I have to pee"

Parker: "Parker like pee too."

Parker: "Mama help!"

Me: "What is it Parker?"

Parker: "Parker don't know how pee. Mama hold de Penis pwease."

Aunt Barbara: "What are you doing now Parker?"

Parker: "Fly strassenban, uh-uh-uh-uh, 30 minutes, uh-uh-uh-uh, outer space, uh-uh-uh, blast off!"

Me: "What are you doing with your bike?"

Parker: "Bike on couch. Bike like read book too."

Me: "What are you doing with your doll stroller Parker?"

Parker: "Stroller on couch. Stroller like read book too."

Me: "What are you doing with your paper airplanes?"

Parker: "Paper airplanes on couch. Paper airplanes like read book too."

Me: "What are you doing with Peter's scooter?"

Parker: "Scooter on couch. Scooter like read book too."

Me: "What are you doing with that chair?

Parker: "Chair on couch. Chair like read book too."

Me: "Now where are you going? I thought we were reading a book."

Parker: "No book. Parker lay down take nap now. Tired. now. me."

Me: "Parker do you have a dirty diaper?"

Parker: "No Mama. It's just gas."

Me: "Parker that playdough is Micki's. It's his birthday present."

Parker: "No. Parker buy it like. Parker Uh-uh-uh take playdough home uh-uh-uh now. Bye-bye."

Me: "Parker where are you going?" (We are waiting for the subway, and he's heading toward elevator.)

Parker: "No more subway. Me go back home now. Bye-bye."

Me: "What's wrong Parker?"

Parker: "Don't like kiwi. Kiwi go away."

Me: "What's wrong Parker?"

Parker: "Don't like cheese. Cheese go away."

Me: "Parker what's wrong?"

Parker: "Don't like Peter. Peter go away."

Me: "Where do you want Peter to go? He lives here?

Parker: "Peter go Omi's house now. Me stay with Mama."

Me: "What should we do now Parker?"

Parker: "Read a book. Read Parker Rabbit."

Me: "Okay."

Me: "Mr. McGregor jumped up and ran after Peter, waving a rake and calling out, "stop thief!"

Parker: "No. Mama. NO! Mist Gregor run after Parker Rabbit. Parker! Not Peter."

Me: "What's wrong Parker?"

Parker: "Me sad. Parker miss Lindsay."

Me: "I know how you feel."

Me: "What are you doing Parker?"

Parker: "Me like Peter now. Me kiss Peter."

So long for now Mallorca

Peter and Parker enjoy a moment in the town square while their friends Ella and Simon are at school.

Parker takes a farewell run down the red-brick sidewalks which he's grown so fond of.

Donna and Peter fetch the kids from school, and we all meet up at her place for lunch. Peter and Simon decide to play hide-and-seek in the bathroom after lunch and lock themselves in. Always quick on her feet, Ella draws a diagram of the hook and eye latch and shoves it under the door. They still can't figure it out. I thought we were going to have to call the Mallorcan fire department, but Donna shoulders the door and breaks the latch. Phew. We all pile in the car and race off to Ella and Simon's horseback riding lesson.

Ella and Simon are learning to post. Peter watches as they trot around the ring, and begs for a ride too. The riding instructor agrees to let Peter sit on a pony after the lesson, and in the split second I turn my back on Parker to lift Peter onto the saddle, the little guppy disappears.

For my first lap around the stables, I'm nonplussed. The second lap I start to feel a bit unsettled. I yank Peter off the horse and tell him to look for his brother and motion to Donna to look too. Still no Parker. Ella and Simon have joined the hunt. It's dark. There are horses and cars. I'm starting to sweat. Timi and Michael pull up from a solid day climbing.

The walls of my mind are suddenly flooded with images of that couple whose child was kidnapped from their hotel room in Spain two summers ago, and I grab Timi and pound him in the chest: "Parker's gone. What if he's been kidnapped! I can't find him anywhere."

I now have the attention of everybody at the stables, and we're all on the lookout for my two-year-old. A kid signals to Timi that he thinks he spotted bambino behind the back arena. Timi runs back screaming, "Parker, Parker." A little voice pipes up: "Hi Papa. Look Papa horse!"

Still flustered, we spit out hurried goodbye's to our hosts and tossed the midgets in the minivan. The uneventful journey to the airport allowed us to regroup. We arrived a good hour before departure time, plenty of time to fuss around and resort our ample baggage contents.

Not very prudent. At check-in they informed us they'd closed the flight. Timi persuaded them to reopen it, and so we were back on course. We made it through security and read that the flight had been delayed until 8:45, so, our starving family, sat down to supper in Terminal B.

Timi excused himself to go to the men's room and happened to look up at the flight monitor and see a new departure time: 8:20 from A24. He ran back to me to check my phone for the time. It was 8:17.

We gulped down our final bite and all ran helter skelter to the A-terminal. Timi was in the lead, and I sprinted behind pushing the stroller with one hand...the other arm outstretched ready to catch Parker who nearly bobbed off his shoulders at the hairpin turn to the connecting hallway. Thankfully the guppy recovered his balance just in time for Timi to leap onto the moving sidewalk over a small Mallorcan woman and her purple suitcase.

I take a second to glance back at Peter. He' miraculously staying in step behind his long-legged parents, despite complaints of a gimp left leg from a bit of glass in his foot and ample wind resistance from a magician's top hat that's he'd insisted on bringing along on the trip. Well why not. A traveling circus might be a handy explanation for a lot of things.

It's midnight, and we're back in Vienna waiting for our bags. Mallorca was fabulous, but it sure it good to be home safe.

The March to Deia

It's our third day in Mallorca and Timi and Michael have granted Donna and me "a pass" for the day. We wake up refreshed and decide to forgo a day of yoga and shopping and make a hike over the mountain to the coast.

The guys take the kids into the town of Soller to ride the tram. After a quick glance at the guidebook, we trot off to find the path to Deia. We had some navigational difficulties at the roundabout and managed to waste the better part of an hour trying to find our path.

My stomach rumbles and I suggest maybe we should go into town for shopping after all. Donna dismisses my idea and waves to a local hanging out her wash and asks for directions in her newly minted Spanish tongue. I'm awed by Donna's perfect pitch as they carry on discussing roads for several minutes.

We finally spot the trailhead tucked behind some shrubbery and set our course along a 13 km, rambling stone pathway through half-century-old olive groves and over the hill to the shoreline.

The trees were an enchanting support cast...

...but Donna's new life took center stage. I had plenty of kilometers to catch up on stories about settling in in Mallorca, including the harrowing episode about how her brakes gave out on her one afternoon while driving home from horse-back riding with the kids, who kept chattering away in the back, in total ignorance. Despite being new to the roads and unaccustomed to a standard automobile, Donna gracefully downshifted them all home through steep and narrow two-way streets to safety.

We heard the sheep bells from the distance. Must be lunch time for the sheep--which reminds me I'm hungry. We've been walking for an 1 1/2 hours, and the sign we just passed said we still had 2 hrs 45 minutes left. Donna says not to worry, she has two oranges in her pack. I quickly calculate how many miles an orange will hold my cafe-con-leche flooded gut and contemplate swiping a bit of soggy bread from the sheep.

Donna exchanges pleasantries with this friendly woman in yet a second new language, Catalan. I'm impressed. Hmmm...wonder if she has any sheep's milk cheese.

This must be the sheep-herders house. Donna muses that maybe she and Michael should start a green olive farm. From this perspective, it sounds like a great idea.

Carrying the pack is nothing compared to my normal resistance training: hauling a 35-pound toddler on (insert: hip, back, shoulders).

I've always enjoyed trees, but the knarls and knots of these old guys are way more compelling than your average trunk. Donna explained that they started grafting olive trees in biblical times. A branch from a good olive tree is transplanted onto a wild olive tree to help it start producing.

We chug up the path, and are dumped out at a crossroads in front of this lovely old sanctuary. Where to? We take a break and study the guide book for clues. I'm wondering if I can snag some communion crackers from the cupboards.

We veer right and a few minutes later stumble on this place. Voila! A chalkboard by the front door. This must mean food!

We peek in to see if anybody's home and hear a delightful greeting: "Bonjour."

We decide to forgo the savory...

...for the sweet. This french lady made the lemon meringue herself.

And the chocolate cake too. I'm pretty certain I need both.

Donna feels right at home jabbering away with the french mother-daughter duo. I try to open my ears wide, and what I think I hear is that the mother is very proud that her 10-year-old Basque granddaughter has learned to speak Basque, Catalan, Spanish and French. Now I'm feeling really guilty about my lack of progress in German. I make a silent vow to find a new German teacher (I thought the last one was going to hit me with her pencil when I told her I didn't think I could learn the cases) the moment we get home to Vienna.

We drink fresh-squeezed orange juice, cafe con leche and eat our desserts. I forget how pleasant it is to sit down to a meal without having anybody interrupt my sentence or ask for warm milk in the mug with the yellow Swedish propeller plane on it. My stomach sated, I can now relax and enjoy the view.

The march continues, post pie, underneath this canopy of wisteria.

And through this gate.

The next section is supposedly dotted with newly-constructed homes of the rich.

Still our first glimpse of the Mediterranean is pristine and stunning!

Wouldn't it be nice to swim out to that little crop of rocks.

We hike down to a little cove called Cale Deia.

It's good to be nimble. You find these rustic-wood ladders all over Mallorca. When we saw one two days ago, Parker said: "me hold de ladder."

This is when you know you're not in Kansas anymore. One of the locals mentioned that the water was 20 degrees (that's 68 fahrenheit), which I realized was about the average temperature of Attersee in summer. Not bad. Plus the sun was still high, which meant we had ample time to kick out toward the arete and dry off in the sun afterwards. The water was calm and, once I adjusted to the cold, the texture was so luxurious I felt like I was being wrapped in fine silk feathers.

We dried off and picked our way back up the path and on toward Deia.

I couldn't stop staring at the endless walls of stone, terracing they constructed to farm olives on.

Now if only this tree could talk.

These hanging melons gave me a chuckle too.

Plus, I felt like giggling: three hours and forty-five minutes into our journey, we had finally arrived in Deia! Thankfully, there was still one restaurant open (we were between lunch and dinner), and we sat down to beers, bread, cheese and ham. Then it was time to start back and pitch in with dinner and bedtime.

Here's our bus stop. It's a far cry from the Port Authority don't you think?

Well there's no bus running to Soller today, and I'm not walking. Looks like we're hitching. Two cars pass, and a guy in a minivan slows down and rolls down his glass. I'm almost bowled over by the oily fumes, but Donna stays composed and asks in Spanish for a ride to Soller. The smelly-car driver nods, and I settle down in back next to his very forward Great Dane, who immediately claims my lap as the very pillow he's always wanted. Amped up on fumes, smelly-car driver cranks the tunes, lurches into 5th, and we hang on for our swan song: a wild descent down winding shoreline roads back into town. I just hope he can brake.

Climbing by the Sea

It's day two in Mallorca, and we piled all four kids and all four adults in our Sixt mini-van, and headed off for family climbing day by the beach. The hourlong car ride was accompanied by a fair amount of pushing and shoving and "how much longer?" in the way back. Peter at some point took a choke hold on the shoulder strap of my seat belt, at which point I found myself in the unenviable position of having to discipline my son in front of seven pair of eyes. Ugh. I'm convinced he just loves to put me on the spot. Is it cocktail hour yet?

I told Timi to pull over and everybody watched and waited to see how the standoff would proceed. I channeled my inner Siyon, and somehow calmly convinced five little fingers to release their clutch on my belt. Timi put the car in drive and we were back on the road.

We parked, and all the boys trudged ahead to the climbing area. Whoops, they forgot to clue Donna, Ella and me in on the directions. Michael returned to escort us the remaining 15 minutes through some brambles and along a soggy riverbed to this crag...

...here. Now I know why I haven't given up climbing yet.

The kids immediately strip to their skivvies and go for a wade in the tide pool.

Ella returns an errant ball.

Parker tests the waters with his stick while I study the rock. Gorgeous.

Parker prickles his nose and sniffs the salt air. "We having fun Mama," he says. I couldn't agree more.

Ella and Simon look around the river bed for cool rocks. Ella spots an hefty white one full of intricate little crystals.

Peter contemplates his building materials.

Donna gets ready to climb her warm-up route, which will sub as an easy route for the kids too.

We meet Michael's new climbing friends from Germany (well do they still count as Germans if they've been living in sun-drenched Mallorca since 2001?). They've also towed in their kid plus a couple extras.

Donna is all grace on the warm-up route.

The kids fuel up before their climb.

Ella, Peter and Simon each take a turn on the rock, but let's face it, ropes and harnesses have tough competition from mother nature today.

Parker and Timi have a late-day siesta while Donna and I climb a steep but juggy route. Short, steep and easy, so I feel like a hero. Now that's just the way I like it.

'

While the kids get to work building the grill pit. Menu du jour: burgers and pork chops a la seaside.

For some reason tonight they were really into the idea of washing up for dinner.

That's me out there luring them in.

And here they come. The perfect ending to the perfect day. Well not quite. It's 4:30 and we still have to cook, eat, clean-up and hike out with all the kids, and all our gear before dark, (but then you knew that). Thank goodness for headlamps and phones.