We rode to Ballard for the Second Ascent Twilight Criterium this afternoon. It was so cool! The boys were both very taken with the caution tape separating the spectators from the course, but they also liked watching the bikes zoom by. I wanted to set Brandt up on the podium in first place, but he insisted on standing on third since three is his favorite number now. Mini wasn’t too interested in being first place, either, because he’s recently figured out backing down stairs and that’s all he wanted to do.

The boys and I spent the first half of this gorgeous day at the U-District Street Fair. We tried something new and bungee’d the umbrella stroller into the bike trailer and I’m so glad I did so because it got very crowded as the day wore on. I’m not sure we’ll hit this event again, but we saw some good stuff. The bounce houses weren’t free so we skipped those, but we watched plenty of musicians, a tap dancer, balloon artists, and not quite as exciting: saw some giant chicken the website made a big deal about and spotted Dave Matthews (I think–it may have been some other smelly-looking dude).

After we walking the entire street fair, we continued downhill to Gasworks Park to watch boats and sea planes. Dan was able to take a break from weekend work and join us for a bit, too. After biking back up Stone (nonstop–yay!), I was too tired to ride one more block uphill to get to the house, so Dan headed home and the boys and I went six more flat blocks to the Green Lake playground.

We had a terrific day! We enjoyed our second annual Mother’s Day brunch at The Dish in Ballard. We even had the same table by the window as last time. Baby Rijder made the most of his first M-Day brunch and repeatedly spun in his high chair to flirt with diners and waitresses behind us. He may have convinced our previously-done-with-kids waitress to have a third baby.

After brunch we rode to the Ballard Farmers Market where D and B split an ice cream sandwich. We also had to find every booth with radishes–Brandt is way into radishes after recently reading some Peter Rabbit books. He has no desire to eat radishes, but he really likes to point at them. He also did a lot of horsey dancing in front of some street musicians. I thought we’d never pull him away from them, but eventually we got back to the bikes and made our way to the locks.

We had hoped to hang out on the grass at the locks for a while, but it’s just so covered in goose poo as to make it not worth staying long. But Brandt ran up and down the steep hills for a bit and we watched lots of boats make their way through. Baby Rijder found the bottom rung of the metal fence the perfect height for holding while standing. Unfortunately it also proved the perfect height for creating a big welt on his head while toppling. Thank goodness for sun hats and their lump-hiding properties.

We rounded out our big day at Golden Gardens beach. I almost had a chance to take a leisurely nap on the shady grass, but I made the mistake of announcing “Baby Rijder is asleep in the Burley” within Brandt’s hearing so he promptly shook his baby brother awake. It’s hard to be too upset when Brandt looks so surprised and excited as he says, “Hey, Baby Rijder woke up!” We met a 10-month-old baby boy who had just started walking. I tried to keep Baby Rijder from watching him, but I think he saw what was going on. The dad admitted he tried to prevent the baby from walking by pushing him down. That’s not the first time I’ve heard that one.

In other exciting Mother’s Day news: I made it up Stone! But that was only because my Bianchi city bike is in the shop finally getting tuned up so I was on my Specialized road bike. It’s so much easier to go uphill on a road bike with SPDs, though it was still harder than last July 4th on the city bike. Go figure. We each had a trailer and one kid and it worked out well. Once the boys can sit next to each other in the big trailer, I might do more road bike riding.

Today was the Celebrate Urban Nature bash at the Magnuson Community Center and I made the mistake of thinking it’d be nice to ride the bike there. The good: Brandt got to try out his new Bobike wind shield and liked it, and I got to see a couple students doing the walk of shame as I pedaled past the university. The bad: it was more ride than I’m ready for. In retrospect, I see why this ride caused so many contractions ten months ago.

It took forever to get there, but since the band started late we were able to see Caspar Babypants live finally. After the festival, playground visit, and lunch, I really wanted to call for a pickup, but I ended up braving the windy ride home. I only made it up one block of Stone this time, but some day I’ll be back in shape. Sigh.

I got a new helmet for Brandt (matte black with blue flames) so the yellow bird helmet is now Baby Rijder’s. I tried it on him, but he wasn’t a happy camper. Maybe we can practice wearing it around the house so he gets used to it, but in the meantime, he’ll keep riding in the car seat. So today was just a normal ride down to the Ballard locks. There weren’t a lot of boats passing through, but fortunately a train went by while we were there.

I decided to take advantage of the great weather (great = not pouring rain) and take the bike down to the Burke-Gilman Trail. I haven’t made the trek since the 4th of July and was in much better shape back then. The ride down was great and we had a little picnic along the canal. Baby Rijder slept the entire time and missed the whole thing. Probably for the best because it was pretty cold out.

Watching boats and ducks on the canal was OK for Brandt, but he had his heart set on trains so he [slowly] took off down the trail in search of train tracks. He’s not much of a strayer so I waited on the picnic blanket for him to come back…and waited…and waited. Eventually I hopped on the bike and rode down the path to retrieve him. To appease him we packed up the picnic and rode further along the trail to a couple retired train cars that live in Ballard. That seemed to do the trick.

The ride home was a bit harder and I had to walk three blocks up Stone. I should find a convincing stopping point halfway up the hill so I can pretend I needed to pick something up at the bead store rather than admit I’m about to pass out.