Last weekend Leah's brother Jacob came to visit us. Well, he was around for the weekend but rolled into Roslindale around noon and was gone before dinner. I believe he did consume a roast beef sandwich, so maybe that was lunch.

Around 4ish we headed to some beach in Dorchester -- maybe it was Patten's Cove? -- with a lot of jellyfish and broken glass. Actually, it was pretty nice and the water was pleasant. Pictures were posed for with the lovely Dorchester skyline in the background and Max's new hat.

We left there around dinner time and headed home as Jacob's buddy was on his way down from New Hampshire. I got to give him directions on the route that has about 7 rotaries, and he nearly got in a few accidents. At least, that's what I assume he was swearing about. About 10 minutes after he made it to Rossie, they were off. To Kathmandu. Via Doyle's. And a movie. Very well.

Normal days have us spending a fair amount of time watering the garden now that the temperature is very very hot all of a sudden. Max is an obsessive if imprecise waterer and provides for the plants with an enthusiasm that gives away his status as someone who does not pay a water bill in the city of Boston. Often, he waters himself (always very surprising, and typically followed by a close inspection of the business end of the hose, which is typically followed by about 5 seconds of crying, which is followed by this lament, "You looked at the hose and you got wet and then you cried!") and it can be risky to take pictures of him, since (see the last post) one of the few things he likes more than commanding the hose is getting his mitts on the camera, and he leads with the nozzle. Nevertheless, summer is so short enough around here that I am already wondering how we are going to get him in for dinner without a little watering action. Of course, it wasn't too long ago he was similarly obsessed with...uh...um...I'm glad we have the archives. Two year olds move pretty fast.

Well, Max has discovered that the camera is another gadget with buttons, and so we are getting a lot of shots like this one. Here, I've tried to capture a delightful scene of him and his friend Ella, but he lunged at me, yowling, "You want to push the button yourself!"

Max does not yet have a grasp of the first and second person pronoun and refers to himself as you, which makes sense, since he gets called you all day. We've tried to explain it to him, but his attention wanders. Typically, to something with a button on it. Ella was visiting because Carrie had volunteered to help us get ready for the end-of-school party we threw last weekend by hanging around with the kids. Before they began climbing all over the chair, they watered the garden with tiny watering cans. Max also watered Ella.

The party went just fine and meat was eaten and a good time had by all except the vegans. We also overestimated by a factor of two the amount of beverage we would need. This means that there is a lot of beer in the house, which goes great with the end of work. All in all I would say that I was a decent principal (the exit surveys of one departing teacher, who included the phrase "Totally on the side of kids" as an insult, notwithstanding) but that the school year of 2006-2007 is best toasted goodbye with an extra case of beer, if you happen to have one lying around.

We also had a lot of very delicious chicken left over, and Max enjoyed this wholeheartedly. Given a drumstick mostly to keep him busy while we hung out with M. Braverman, in town on business and with gifts from Kenya, Max ate himself into a stupor. The gifts were fab. I scored a shirt with an elephant on it, LZB got a purse, and Max got a Masai rattle that makes him count to twenty over and over while keeping time ("eleven, twelllllllllve, thirteen, eighteen, thirteen, eighteen, sixteen, twenty!"). No one doesn't like a present.