Trick or treating has no rain delays

If like me you were excitedly waiting for the World Series game 3 on Saturday night (OK this is Adam posting not Jennette in case you're doing a double take) you will have noticed that the Philadelphia was experiencing a pretty good rainstorm which delayed the start by more than an hour. Well there are no rain delays for trick or treating so Max, Olivia, and Jennette braved the elements for quite a while. Here are the soaked skeleton and flapper girl post diluvial.

Isabel (bunny rabbit) and Saul (little lamb or "the golden fleece") did some local treating before hanging out with Dad at home to dish out the goodies and watch a little "Nightmare Before Christmas."

Here's a picture prediluvial with friends from the neighborhood

and from pre-Halloween festivities. As in previous years it takes some serious coaxing to get Max to don any form of a costume. The face painting is his first face painting ever (really). Olivia and Isabel have taken quite naturally to costumes though, Isabel had a complete list of what she wanted to be for Halloween (dog, zebra, bunny, butterfly). Naturally we steered her to the bunny since we already had the costume:

I know J won't be happy with the missing face of the golden fleece, so here's his cute mug. Eat your heart out Argonauts.

September's Trip to NYC

I've let the blogging lapse again, when really, we had a pretty fantastic month of September.  And now, I've almost let October slip by too.   

We finally made it (as a family) to NYC to see Sha-sha.  It had been months since I'd been up, and this was Saul's first trip, so we were sure to do it right with breakfast at Metro Diner, some takeout Thai, and even a little knock-off shopping in Chinatown (aka in our family as, "Shopolopolis"). 

On Saturday afternoon Max, Isabel, Sha-sha and I all biked up the trail along the Hudson to see the Little Red Lighthouse.  We hadn't been there since Max was something like 6 weeks old.  Lucky us, it was the Little Red Lighthouse Festival that day.  So there were plenty of crafts and games and people wearing sequins walking on stilts waving large windsocks that made it so we ended up spending the entire afternoon there.  The kids even got to decorate red-colored sugar cookies in the shape of a lighthouse.  We had to come home and read our copy of the Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge all over again, it was so fab.

While we were on our bike ride and at the festival, Adam had taken Olivia and Saul to the carousel in Central Park (and then to find something in a yummy and chocolatey and buttery and sugary--with plenty of pink frosting, no doubt).  When we got back to the apartment and told them about our fun day, they decided that they couldn't miss that either.  So they cruised up with Olivia in the back of the bike seat to hit the rest of the festival and see the lighthouse.

Every time we're there, I think, "Yeah, I want to live in NYC."  And I totally do--I love it--but then I come home and park in my own garage and haul my stuff only a few feet from car to door and then I think, "Yeah, this is good too."  I'll just enjoy how nice it is to have such a swell mother-in-law to visit, and that we get to go and pretend that we're New Yorkers.   

Lazy Sunday

More than a few times Adam and I have had the discussion that goes something along the lines of how we should make more of an effort to invite other people over for Sunday dinner.  I've got a list, and I've got good intentions, but then no phone calls are ever made or roast ever planned.  So here's my invitation to all those intended invites to go ahead and call me a big lazy-head. But when push comes to shove, I really like my Sunday afternoon nap, a day off of thinking too much about dinner, and the slow-afternoon time where we can just kick-it as a family.

Actually, I'm having a hard time thinking that I want to trade in on the kind of peaceful day we had yesterday for an afternoon of my barking orders at the kids and Adam just to get some elaborate dinner planned and the toys picked up off of the floor and random papers on the counter shoved into a drawer before anyone shows up. 

Instead the kids turned cardboard boxes into various types of vehicles (air, land, sea) with Saul even getting pushed around the room in a smart little roadster.  And Olivia spent plenty of time dressing up with whatever assortment of blankets, scarves, and skirts were available.  (And then she spent plenty of time dancing to her request for the the Sound of Music soundtrack.) 

We polished off the leftover cupcakes I had made for Saturday's swim meet (stop....it wasn't the only thing we had for dinner!). Isabel, who only licked off all of the frosting (they are made with whole wheat flour and zucchini afterall), handed hers back and said,  "I all done with my cupcake," and then in the same breath, "Please I have another?"

And I'm not even going to apologize like Adam's working on building a wheel for his winter bike wasn't an appropriate Sabbath activity.  It was probably more of a family activity than was my sitting at the computer working on photos and helping Max with his blog posts (oh, and cuing up a new soundtrack from some classic musical theater for Olivia).

But, yes, Max has his own blog now, and it's pretty darn adorable (and hysterical) if you ask me.  He'd been begging us for a while, so one weeked while I was out of town, he and Adam set it up together.  And the creative license has been him completely--right down to the blog's title.  I only have to assist with how to upload the pictures, but even that he's hardly needing me for anymore.  And he's got his routine down as everytime a picture was uploading he would say, "Can I dance while I wait?"  Then there would be 30 seconds of jumping off the arms of the couch and running around the room with Olivia. (And one more groan from me about thinking that I might as well never plan on buying a new sofa since it would only be destroyed within the first year by the circus troupe that always mistakes it for some important piece of equipment.) 

. 

We made the blog private just to remove some of the worry about him posting what he likes. So far we've sent out invites to basically just his aunts and uncles, but if there's anyone out there who wants to see the inner-workings of Max's mind, as well as a few choice facts about his favorite animal, then send me an email and I'll send you an invite. If anything, he's been way more prolific than I've been lately so you can at least see some of what we've been doing these days. (p.s. He loooves comments.)

So maybe next year I'll reevaluate if we can muster up any sort of energy for dinner guests.  Until then, I'm enjoying the life with a lazy Sunday.

Now We Are Six Months

The Stats

weight: 15 1/2 lbs

length: 26 inches

percentile: 14th
eyes: brown, chocolate (but were we expecting anything else?)
times rolled over: none (but that doesn't seem to happen around here until they're walking)

sitting up: n/a

sleeping: a full night (please! that's waay old news now!)

smiling: constantly

# of chompers: one tiny tip--just popped up on the lower right front

interests: grabbing whatever is near (especially a sister with long hair) and gumming whatever he's grabbed

fan club at the gym's day care: huge

NYC Visit: finally!

resemblance: duh?

Now We are Six

When I was One,
I had just begun.

When I was Two,
I was nearly new.

When I was Three,
I was hardly Me.

When I was Four,
I was not much more.

When I was Five,
I was just alive

But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever.
So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.

-- A.A. Milne

My apologies to a very cute baby

We spent two days at the beach last week in our last-ditch effort to say farewell to summer. I managed to not get any pictures of us actually on the beach, but I did make the effort to dig out my camera while at Funland on the Rehoboth beach boardwalk because I couldn't believe the size of this baby's....

well,...

see for yourself......

First Day of School 2009

Another year begun, and this year it's two kids going for the full day. I have been dreading it for weeks, but mostly because I don't love waking up early, or getting two kids to practice piano before 8am, and not just lounging at the pool in the afternoon making a good excuse for not doing anything around the house, and did I mention it means getting up early. I'm tempted to put up a little countdown gadget marking when summer vacation starts next year.

However, I have two very excited kids, and honestly, the excitement was rubbing off just a bit, especially for Olivia. She was so ready. After three years of watching Max get on and off the bus, when it came time to line up, she didn't even wait for him at all but jumped right in line and got on by herself. I could only be happy and proud for her, which surprised me. When Max started Kindergarten I felt a little like I was giving him away to the world--like here was the beginning of the rest of his life and the beginning of the end of my being a primary part of it. But I could only be happy for Olivia. Not because she's gone all day, but because now I know that even in Kindergarten she's still more little girl than big, and that she's still mostly mine. Maybe I'll mourn the beginning of middle school instead.

At the end of the day, they'd both had a fabulous time. Max's report was that his teacher told them that she will never yell, but that the closest she'll get is turning off the lights--"And that's not close to me at all!" So, I guess he figures since he doesn't sit near the light switch that she'll never actually be directing her anger at him. Looks like a promising year!