This year Ana was Belle and Alex was a pirate. Ana’s not all *that* into the princess thing, but she likes it when people tell her how pretty she looks. Alex was totally in his element. I doubt I’ll be getting my skull-and-crossbones bandanna back from him.

We tried something different this year and went to the local city Halloween festival instead of the usual door-to-door march. It was packed. There were, no joke, close to a thousand kids there. There was a massive line for the ho-hum petting zoo and pony rides. There was an enormous line for the too-scary-for-a-four-year-old haunted house. There was a line for everything.

After about 20 minutes of wandering around and playing carnival-esque games to win candy, the kids pronounce it lame and ask to go trick-or-treating instead. It was all good. The kids and I had fun wandering up and down our block extorting the neighbors for candy.

Categories: food, kids and parenting, memes
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We don’t have very many ‘formal portraits’ of the kids. It’s not that we don’t enjoy having them and hanging them in the hallway, it’s mainly the process. You get all the necessary crap together to sustain a three-month-old while on a trip out of the house, go out in the scorching heat, get in the car, drive somewhere, back in the scorching heat, into a shopping center of some kind, and then you wait. Has anyone ever been to an affordable kid photography place that isn’t ridiculously overbooked? As if the previous hour wasn’t unpleasant enough for your baby, when you get there at precisely the time you reserved they tell you they’re running late and you’re just going to have to sit on your ass for twenty minutes. When it’s finally your turn and this teenage girl is waving a stuffed animal at your baby and making stupid noises like that’s going to stop the screaming and you’re crouched there under the glare of the studio lights, propping up the baby and trying to stay out of the frame and you start getting that pounding headache and you pray that it’s your mutant powers about to manifest and you’re going to go all Drew Barrymore and everything is going to start blowing up around you…

Well we gave up on all that garbage years ago when Ana was around nine months old. Since then I’ve taken just under ten thousand pictures, probably 99.9% of them featuring our children. They’re mostly candid shots of the kids at play, reading, running around, doing kid stuff. Just enough of them have been decent that we really haven’t considered going back to the world of ‘formal portraits’ for the kids. This decision has cost us though. I have relatives who may stop speaking to us if I don’t provide ‘formal portraits’ in a specific size to match the dozens of very similar looking pictures already hanging on their wall. The last time we sent pictures it was like, oh that’s very nice thank you for the snapshot but we’re really looking forward to the pictures you’re going to send us for The Wall.

Yeah. So… how do I take a picture that looks as if it were shot by a teenage girl in some kid portrait studio somewhere? Ideally it should actually be a good picture so that we can use it too…

I’m pretty pleased with the results, given my ghetto approach to creating a portrait studio. About half of the lighting is indirect sunlight through a big sliding door, the rest is from a 55w daylight CFL bounced off our rice paper closet panels. White sheet and gooseneck floor reflector from Ikea, daylight CFL from the internets – total cost about $45.

The best part? She was still smiling afterwards and so was I.

Categories: kids and parenting, toys
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And now for something completely different. A post about some of the things going on this summer that aren’t baby related!

Since I’ve been put on a 4/10 (ten hours a day, M-TH) schedule at work for the summer, I’ve had Friday off to take the kids swimming. Yesterday was our second lesson and the kids are doing GREAT! Ana is motoring all over the pool in her little inflatable ring and occasionally dunking her head to blow bubbles. Alex just went from non-swimming to being able to swim half the length of the pool underwater in one visit. I’m so happy with their progress and really looking forward to all our remaining trips to the pool this summer.

Alex yesterday while in the pool: “This is more fun than playing video games!” And that is what they refer to as Epic Win.

The fireworks pictures were shot from our driveway with a 50mm lens. One of the advantages of living about a mile West and thirty or forty feet up from the local HS where they put on an outstanding show every year is that we don’t need to leave home to enjoy the best seats in the house.

Julie’s birthday fell mid-week this year so she got two celebrations. One today with all the family here and one last Sunday with just the five of us. For dinner last Sunday I took the two big kids out shopping and helped them cook dinner for Mommy. They got semolina flour from our local Italian market and made fettuccine from scratch with a hand-crank pasta machine. I’ve got to make this a tradition because I didn’t get any pictures of Alex cutting and Ana hanging the noodles! The sauce was mushroom vodka and the zucchini was fried in parmesan beer batter. We got rave reviews from the birthday girl and the chefs alike so I’ll call it a success.

Happy Birthday to the kindest, wisest, and hardest-working mom/best friend around.
Love, Your Four Biggest Admirers

Categories: food, kids and parenting
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Being outnumbered by the small beings is in turns lovely and terrifying and hilarious and very, very in-the-moment. I spend most of my time trying to give the older kids the parent time they need and they keep surprising me with all the little things that change in a kid’s life on a daily basis. As I write this, I’m carrying on a conversation with Ana about what’s going on in Pet Town. One of her favorite activities is role playing with her toys. Apparently the animals are busy splashing and tickling each other – activities she happens to know quite a lot about.

Little Mouse is getting big so fast. She is very aware, always looking around. She grins at every opportunity and has continued experimenting with different sounds. Sometimes you’re talking to her and right as you finish a sentence she’ll go “heh!” and it’s all interactive and awesome.

I don’t know how Julie does it because Angie wants to be in her arms about 23.5 hours a day. The 30 minutes of freedom is partly from Mouse deciding to tolerate daddy for a few brief minutes but mostly because she really enjoys her swing.

Cute baby is cute.

Earlier today I spent 20 minutes or so catching up on my feeds. Okay, I had the best intentions, really. I ended up spending the entire time reading everything I missed during the last two months over at Cool Tools. This feed has been in my reader ever since I discovered RSS and, for a gadget freak like me it is like crack. The first thing I noticed was the review for the Blender Bottle. I hate mixing up protein powder when I’m not at home because every container I’ve tried either leaks, doesn’t mix properly, is virtually unwashable, or some combination. This may be the answer.

Aiyah! Why didn’t anyone tell me that Leatherman has a new, slimmer, full-size multitool on the market? The Skeletool looks like the perfect update to the tremendously useful Leatherman Wave. I carried my Wave whenever I left the house (but especially at work) for years and loved the combination of an easily accessible blade with good sturdy needlenose pliers plus phillips head and several flat head screwdrivers. The only problem was that the edges of the steel frame weren’t quite rounded enough and the significant heft and bulk caused it to slowly cut its way through my trouser pockets. I like to keep my geek side under the radar when possible which rules out the belt sheath as a carrying option. About a year ago I got fed up with buying new pants and started carrying the Kershaw Ken Onion Leek instead. It’s super slim and lightweight and is a great little knife but doesn’t do much for all the other multitool applications. The Skeletool is about half the weight of the Wave and retains all the most important functionality. I should plan to catch up on Cool Tools reading at this time every year when I’m trying to figure out how to spend the remains of my department’s fiscal year budget.

Categories: angie, kids and parenting, toys
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Happy Birthday, Angelina! On Monday night we brought home the newest member of the family. I may be a little biased but I think she’s one of the three most adorable babies ever. So far she mostly eats and sleeps but she’s very aware of everything going on around her. Julie’s been amazing, taking care of her day and night. She’s going to be home with Angie for four months before returning to work and I don’t know which of them is luckier.

The before picture was taken on April 8th and the after picture was this evening. I cut things a bit too close with the nursery remodel but had the bulk of the room done in time for baby. Over the last few days I did the rest of the molding and moved in the closet organizer and bookshelves. We’ve added the kids’ bookshelves, reading light, and pillows into Angie’s room so that all three of them can get story time together before bed. Between their book loving parents and their grade school teacher grandma, the kids have lots of opportunities to get new books. They now have a pair of 7′ shelf units for their library and are at two-thirds capacity with about fifteen linear feet of books!

Meanwhile, we’ve tried to keep change to a minimum for Alex and Ana and make sure they get lots of parent time. Today Ana came along to Alex’s karate practice and played with me at the adjacent park. After sparring was over, Alex joined us and we played frisbee for a while before heading home. It won’t be long before all five of us are at the park together.

Categories: home improvement, kids and parenting
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