It's Fall!

So we went for a walk in the woods with our neighbors, Jennifer and Bill. Max considers them some of his best friends and I believe they feel the same way. They all like us, too, but they have a special little thing going. Jennifer is a master gardener and teaches Max how to identify perennials and various herbs. It is likely that he is the only member of his K-1 class able to identify both chocolate mint and lemon balm. Nearly every day in the summer, Max insists on going to visit them whenever we return from anywhere, at any time of day. We do our best to not be the kind of parents who will let our kid bother you because we want him to feel validated and all that jazz, but sometimes he wears us down.

So the walk. The Boston Nature Center is a big preserve on the site of a former bedlam-style state mental hospital. Now, it is lovely. See? That there is one of them green buildings everyone is so crazy for. And that little red fella is Abe.

We wandered about and looked at some wetlands and identified wildflowers. It was a good time. We also started to run out of steam, at least some of us. Like Max. He gets very tired on weekends because, for no good reason, he wakes up very early, something which never happens on a school day, and he won't nap. So he collapses on my head and gets very heavy. But in front of such a pastoral backdrop, who could complain?

In order to keep him engaged, I showed him the camera, and he was entranced. All he wanted to do was take pictures. Of course, we wanted to encourage the little darling. And of course, the camera is a) not really ours and b) pretty damn expensive and c) attached to a strap that would protect it if I dropped it, but not if someone 3 feet tall did. So it was nerve-wracking. But we are parenting in 2009, so we are powerless against the ambitions of a 4-year old. Here is a sampling of his work:

Also, we saw a snake:

Next stop, Halloween. A sneak peak:

On to August, indeed

August came and we headed for Cape Cod. Then I had to go back to work for a couple of days and got on a boat. I liked that, as it had wireless. When I got home, I was treated to an awesome sight. Our neighbors have been destroying house, little by little, ostensibly to rebuild it later. The one with the sexy back, squatting by the trunk of the red car, is the drunk fella who used to own our house. Now he is helping with the construction. They started in March and have proceeded with the following schedule: work from 7 to noon, drink in the driveway until 7, go home. What you see there is 2000 beer bottles being recycled. Good drinking, neighbors. Some people on our street are planning to move if the drunk guy actually finishes the project and moves back in. Wild times.

Then, back to Cape Cod. Abe got into the beach this summer and ate about 4 pounds of sand. He showed no fear of the water, which is, of course, terrifying. Max was a little more skittish and was purchased a life jacket, which ended that. Later, my parents arrived, followed by my sister (plus 3) and my brother (plus 1 girlfriend, slightly shellshocked at being tossed into a Labor Day wknd of 11 Barcans). Much bumping into each other ensued, culminating in my cooking three enormous lobsters on the grill.

And then, just like that, it was September, after two solid weeks of 90 degrees every day and one more with 75 beautiful degrees - nicer for living, not so nice for swimming - each day. Max starts KINDERGARTEN in a few days. More on that later.

Summer, Part I

The children continue to get along well. Abe doesn't always smell that great, but Max does not seem to mind. What did we do this summer? It started with Abe deciding to grow his hair long to keep warm in the chilly months of June and July, when it rained every day.

Abe's day care sort of got cancelled all summer because his teacher is from France, so he and Leah hung out and caused and prevented danger, respectively. Abe got himself mobile with the aid of rolling toys and headed for the stairs at every opportunity. Max went to camp and learned to a) play a drum, b) dress up like a clown, and c) sort of swim with a lot of flotation devices attached to him. His teacher told him to spell "clown" on his picture of a clown as "C L A W N," and he will not listen to debate about whether an O might go better there. To 4-year olds, teachers are in charge of spelling.

Max has discovered that, in addition to clowns, he enjoys some me time each day in the bath. He gets this time by floating on his back and knocking on the side of the tub, reveling in the echoey sound of fiberglass being bonked under water. He cannot be disturbed while he is doing this, mostly because he can't hear you, or at least pretends not to. This selective deafness led to a terrifying moment when Abe was doing something dangerous and Leah called for me to help catch him. When we leave Max alone in the tub (something we do very rarely, I assure you) we talk to him the whole time so we know he's alive. So we called to him and, of course, as it was me time, he did not answer. Running into a bathroom in which you have recently bathed a wild, splashing one-year old at the pace you run when you think your kid is drowning: extra dangerous.

But not as dangerous as complications from surgery, and we thought we were tangling with that, too, when Abe busted out the 102 degree monster when we went to NH to visit Sue and Jeff. A tense conversation with the surgeon on call turned comical when he asked if Abe was lethargic and had lost interest in eating. At that moment, he was swiping Max's soup from across the table and eating it with his bare hands. So, no to both. He just had Parent Scare Syndrome, in which kids get a fever and a rash but no other symptoms. Fun! Max decided that he wanted to sleep with Sue and Jeff and got to use Matt Gallup's king size air bed. They were very good natured about it and welcomed him into their room. The adults stayed up late playing Wii. I am an excellent boxer in Wii world, but my arm still hurts.

Next post, on to August.