Snow day

Ronan has a raucous cackle.  It's almost the same sound from when he was 1.5, and it's one of my favorite things.

Ronan hasn't come to work with me in a long time, but today his school was canceled and Orion's wasn't.  We explored all over campus and had fun (and he watched a live rodent surgery), and now he's watching Tom and Jerry cartoons in my office.

That cackling...

Orion has been practicing his kung fu moves following Ronan's lead.  Ronan does the poses shouting "Duh, Duh, Duh" as he punches, and so Orion kicks his leg up and says Duh Duh Duh!!

Then and Now

Holiday Hats!

Orion happens to have the same snowflake PJ zippersuit Ronan wore on his first Christmas.  So here is a succession of babies in PJs in holiday hats.

Ronan, Christmas 2009

Orion, Christmas 2015

Orion, Christmas 2016

Holiday 2016 into 2017

Happy Holidays!

There's nothing like working on a grant application to make me want to update this blog instead.  So many great visits are now over, leaving our noisy household of four feeling nonetheless quiet and empty.


Orion has taken to chanting names over and over (RoRo, Dada, Nana, Papa...) with his particular zeal and enthusiasm.  He is also experimenting with more sentences, although not all are equally intelligible (is he really saying HOT OWL?).  The best to date was "RoRo no bye-bye."

Ronan has been acting more cuddly, punchy (as in punching his mom), and especially silly.  Last night at bedtime we laughed over some selectively winnowed "inappropriate city names."  Favorites that had him in stitches were: Middelfart, Butt of Lewis, Suckerville Maine, Nowhere, and Itchy Bottom.  That last one might have been a composite when I couldn't read the real one.  We had a few "where are you from" sample exchanges that he wanted repeated over and over, finding them just as funny the second and third times.

I love the role you all play in these kids' lives!

Ronan is 7!

7 going on 12?

Our little guy is growing up!  7 seems like a big change in the boy department...6 was still somehow close to 4 and 5 in a way that 7 really isn't.  Ronan's personality has been so consistent over time (I suppose that's the point of talking about personality) but his capacities are ever changing.  He has been in a really sweet phase in the last month or so, asserting independence but still enjoying snuggles and attention.  He is starting to play with Orion a little more, and we are all continuing to adjust to our less quiet lifestyle.

We celebrated today with a "practice" version of the birthday cake for his party.  He wanted a Minecraft themed cake, and I was going for something like this but simpler (we're saving the blue jello for the kid party in a week).  Good thing there was a practice cake!  It was very nearly a cake wreck, but I sort of saved it with some last minute additions.  Lessons learned: 1) if you cut the firm edges off a cake to make it a new shape, icing makes the sides fall off. 2) freeze cake before icing, or use softer icing.  3) the standard buttercream recipe has WAAY too much powdered sugar in it.  4) according to the local expert, that special grass tip I ordered for making the frosting look like grass apparently makes the cake look less like Minecraft, where everything is flat.  

The brown frosting just WILL NOT STICK, and keeps tearing the cake apart

The green frosting did better, turned brown with the help of some emergency cocoa krispies.
Perhaps not visible, the cake is listing quite seriously.
Candles with different colored flames made up for a lot.

Update: I learned from my mistakes?  This is version two at his party.

Happy 7 kiddo!

Photos galore

I mourn the loss of picasa/picasaweb, but I finally uploaded some photos to Google photos. Here are pictures from the end of the summer (Fall photos not yet sorted).  Looking at these makes me wistful...the weather (and lack of mosquitos) was awesome this summer, and it's the time when small town living is at its best.  Ronan tried a sampler of 5 or so different camps all over the pioneer valley (his favorites were at the Acadia/Audubon nature preserve and Hampshire farm camp), we found a new favorite river spot, and we even managed to go camping for the first time as a family of four.  And of course there was the trip to Canada, returning by river and then ocean cruise.  Happy 75ths mom and dad!

July/August/September photos

2016 May/June

May photos are here
June photos are here

I can barely remember yesterday, but according to the calendar, some things have happened in the last two months!

First off, Ronan finished kindergarten.  It's a big year!  They send home all these great weekly notes about what the kids have been doing which is helpful when your child's answer to how any aspect of their day went is most often "it's sort of hard to explain."  The kids made monthly memory books, and just seeing how Ronan's drawing and writing changed over the year is neat.  Reading doesn't seem to come easy but he enjoys writing with "sound spelling".  After the school year ended, Ronan asked for school-style "morning messages" at home, and one morning he wrote me one back (see below, with UV pen shining on drawing)!

I found this note with an invisible ink pen attached

Dear mom. I found many messages and presents. Do you 
think I should also write you morning messages? Love, Ronan. 
P.S. I wrote this all by myself.  Look with my invisible ink pen.

Ronan has a fashion sense all his own, proudly dressing up with his self-knit scarves, matching socks to stripy shorts, and rocking silky dino leggings under his swimsuit. The first progress report we ever got on him as an 8 month old still rings true: Ronan knows what he likes.

Camp day 5

Ronan transitioned smoothly into his school's June program, and now we are on the second of four real camps for the summer as we sample some of the local offerings.  This week he is at a camp called "Ew that's gross" at a nature center, and last week and next week he was/is swimming and doing crafts on my campus.  For the last two camps he will be doing farm camp and another nature center.  He has at least one friend at each camp, so we are also are trying out carpools for the first time.

Ronan wanted a pet and through a process of elimination we ended up with two rats: Weasel and Comet (Weasel shown below).  The first choice--a rabbit--was vetoed based on longevity, but Ronan likes how smart and interesting and friendly the rats are.  So far he has been good about changing the cage with me each week.

TV: Ronan has moved past Wild Kratts and for a long time opted for the Netflix series that fills in the How to Train Your Dragon series.  These are great fun and well done, but unfortunately the kids spend most of the episodes making fun of each other with creative language. Whenever Ronan doesn't know a word he asks about it (sometimes much later), and this show has given rise to requests to explain (among others): elicit, dominate, rhetorical question, dimwit, and moron.  We coaxed him to move on to a new show and he now likes the Netflix reboot of Inspector Gadget which is a little less full of colorful phrases he wants to memorize.  It's going to be a while before we stop hearing "coming in hot, blowing out snot!" though!

*********************

Happy birthday Orion!  Happy survival of year one, parents!  Orion is now 13 months old, and he took 8 tiny steps in a row yesterday before diving into my arms.  He's not quite walking yet per se, but will happily lunge from a supportive structure to a person with some steps in between.  He's been cruising for a long time and climbing like crazy, so true walking is surely imminent.

Orion loves clambering and climbing and he is FAST.  If I set him down outside our front door he will crawl the entire path to the driveway, crawl with his knees off the ground across the gravel and pavement, and head straight the the garage where we keep the wagon.  If I get out the wagon, he will push it around the entire yard until it inevitably gets stuck.  At the river beach he will climb up and slide down rocks for an hour.  He loves baths (and tries to climb in the tub while you fill it), and once climbed into a full freezing cold kiddie pool fully clothed.  He can scale an entire slide solo, and sometimes lets go at the end to slide down and start over.

Orion signs food, water, and more all interchangeably, says "dat/cat" for the cat and the rats (and once for a ladybug), and takes an interest in ceiling fans, balls, and the present location of the cat.  If the cat is ever not in his heated cat bed (rare at this age), Orion points at it saying "Dat, Dat" and looking around for where Gandalf might have gotten to.

At Orion's age Ronan was saying and signing many more things, but was physically cautious. They are not that different, all things considered, but it is the difference that stands out to me.

1 year olds and 6 year olds don't have a lot in common (except for a desire to both play with the synthesizer in incompatible ways at the same time).  Nonetheless, we have had our share of sweet brother moments.  Some of these moments have come by surprise when David is out of town for work each week and bedtimes collide and everything is a little more hectic.  Ronan reads the baby books alongside Orion, sings songs with me, and is generally lovely (while simultaneously prolonging bedtimes).

Orion likes his crib a lot more when Ronan is in it!

Quotes:
R: I’ll be the king and you can be my servant
E: What’s a servant?
R: It means that you work for me.  Like you’re my sidekick.

April/May

Written on no sleep, but at least here are a few things that happened...
Photos (April)
Photos (May so far)

ORION
Orion is cruising, climbing stairs, feeding me, turning lights on and off, and just generally growing up.  He makes two clear signs now: food (putting his fist in his mouth repeatedly), and cheese (the Wallace and Grommit version).  I don't think he gets that you could ask for cheese, but if you ever mention the word he signs it immediately.  He also claps if you say "yay" and love to make a ba-ba-ba sounds with his hand in and out of his mouth.

At night we do one or two books, and his favorites are:

• CAT (has a squeaky ball in the book he can get to make sound, plus tails to pet)
• Moo Ba La La La (I swear he is working on saying Moo, but it sounds like Boo)
• Feely Bugs

Close to the end of April, Orion got a coxsackievirus (related to hand foot and mouth syndrome, but his was without the hand and foot symptoms).  Poor guy had GI symptoms and a mouth full of sores and stopped nursing for what turned out to be 2+ weeks.  At 2 weeks I got him to nurse while deeply asleep, and at 2.5 weeks he will nurse while asleep and also a bit while awake, but he really seemed freaked out by even the idea of nursing for a long time.  He's getting pumped milk mixed with cow milk in bottles for most of his feedings now.

RONAN
Ronan's class performed in a Spring festival with songs and dances and it was so sweet.  Ronan was so proud to be performing in Davis hall at Smith, and I finally realized he was thinking that's the same as Davies Hall (in SF).  :)

Ronan lost his first tooth on April 25th and his second today (May 13th) -- both at school (where they give you a tooth necklace to keep it safe).   He got no sleep that night because he was so excited, and this morning bounded into my room at 6am (David has been out of town for both, which I'm getting more used to). Of course the baby was already awake...

After the first tooth, Ro put a note in the "fairy house" in our yard asking for $100 from the fairies.  Apparently fairies have their own currency, and Ro now has his own $100 note.

Events:
Birthday parties, 2 reservoir trips, Grandma and Grossvater visit, bear visit, a robin laid eggs in our porch basket, the weather turned beautiful, and we've been eating outside again!

Quotes:
Ronan has started saying "I know, right?" a lot...not sure where he got that.