julie

senior pictures on the cheap. i realized when taking these that it might very well be the first time i had a willing participant in the photo taking relationship ... julie didn't try to eat the camera, blow raspberries at it, close her eyes on purpose, turn her back, or scream "no pictures!" and run away. good job jules.

overheard at the fair

(i was resting against a building visiting with a friend while watching two men in handcuffs being questioned by various security and police 30 yards away ... also watching a couple a few feet away watching the same scene as us while smoking a joint ... but the story isn't about either of them ...)

a hippie-with-money-and-i-surf type guy (longish, curly, blond hair; sunglasses; flip flops) was sort of walking in circles outside the door of the building obviously trying to get a hold of someone because the cell phone was up & down to his ear every few seconds.

a group of 3 girls walks out of the building. the one pushing a baby stroller has a tattoo on her neck with someone's name in cursive, a tattoo on her arm "in memory of..." and various other cursive writings on her body. she also appeared to have no eyebrows, but rather ones that were drawn on. i was so sucked into her various shades of scary that i couldn't even tell you what the other two girls looked like.

the conversation:

surfy guy: "hey, did you see a wiener dog and a blond walk into that building?"
tattoo lady: "no, have you seen my earring?" (she lifts up her hair to reveal the no earring)
surfy guy: "no"

and they go on their separate ways. meanwhile guys are out of handcuffs writing statements to the police and the pot smokers lost interest and moved on.

true story.

and ... we have a walker!

i think we can officially say jack is walking. i measure this in a child by whether they get up to walk again after they fall or if they sigh heavily and resort back to crawling (until put back onto their feet by an adult (or all-too-happy-to-help brother)). by this measurement, he's a walker. flipping finally! what's up with my kids wanting to live forever in a stroller and pack n play?!

he also insists on a banana for breakfast everyday. this means he screams 'nana' while contorting his face into some sort of whiny twist. of course we give him the banana, so we repeat this scenario again the next morning. i, in fact, do not even believe he particularly like bananas over anything else we might give him. i just think that because he can say the word he feels he must then have the item. every morning i remind myself to move the bananas to the pantry so that he doesn't see them on the counter for every meal. (the whining (screaming) is not limited to breakfast, it's just at it's worst then). alas, the bananas are still on the counter as i type.

he has a lot of other words down -- dada, mama, hippo (his blanket, which he actually calls ho-po), outside (his version, of course), night night, bye bye, moon, ball, elmo (thanks to the diapers), aidan (his version), no (prounounced ney-o, sort of a spanish version of the german niet ... we hear this one A LOT) ... he will try to mimic just about any word we throw out at him. i think he's just trying to make up for starting to walk so late. he knew he would have to show me some improvment in some developmental area or i might put aidan on the job of gently nudging him forward in one of said areas.

i LOVE the child's interpretation of the adult

oh, sweet aidan ...

"ha, ha, ha-ha-ha, you'll never forget me" (you'll never catch me)
"froggywogs" or "frollywogs" (pollywogs)
"i have to tell you a question"

they are doing construction on the freeway and we can hear it from our house. last night it was so loud it woke aidan up and scared him, so today he kept talking about it. i explained that they were widening the road so that there wouldn't be so much traffic. he then explained right back to me that he didn't like traffic and he thanked me for fixing it. i just said "you're welcome honey".

he has also taken to giving me a very placating, high pitched "of course, mommy" when i ask him a question he deems silly ... apparently he deems a lot of them silly.

super-cool-one-notch-above-a-zoo-fake-safari

air museum

happy 3rd and 1 month birthday aidan!

(reason #452 why i was better off having boys ... odds are, aidan will not be insulted when he's 25 years old and sees that a 3rd birthday blog post went up a month late)




we decorated a cool dinosaur cake


















we (after a little more work than i-anyone-thought it was going to be) broke open a pinata















we let some balloons accidentally fly away (one of our favorite games to play when there are spare balloons laying around)















we got some really cool presents (a camera, a bean bag chair, a sleeping bag, lots of dinosaurs, a beach towel, sunglasses, clothes ... and lots more!)















we went to bed early

my three boys

"children are contemptuous, haughty, irritable, envious, sneaky, selfish, lazy, flighty, timid, liars and hypocrites, quick to laugh and cry, extreme in expressing joy and sorrow, especially about trifles, they'll do anything to avoid pain but they enjoy inflicting it: little men already."
-jean de la bruyère les caractères

i would like to highlight various adjectives above and assign them to their respective boy, but i'll refrain ...