We went to the kids' preschool graduation yesterday. I especially love that last shot - with Carter smiling in the foreground, and Sean laughing uproariously in the background. That was taken while the clown was telling jokes. Both kids found her hilarious.
Lori took the kids out to play at the playground a couple of weeks ago, and took this picture while there. I think they had the whole place to themselves. She got a bunch of the usual pictures - smiling kids swinging and climbing - but we've got lots of those already, and something about this particular shot really appealed to me. It's just nice to see the kids "sharing a moment".
One afternoon last weekend, Sean and Carter were sitting at the kitchen table having a snack. Lori and I were in the living room, sitting on the couch. Sean was trying to tell us something, and then suddenly started coughing and choking. It was the sort of choking where you can tell something just went down the wrong pipe, and he wasn't in any danger. So we call out to him, "Sean, are you ok?". And Sean responds, "Don't worry Mommy - I didn't die." Something about that tickled my funny bone.
I love how this set of photos tells a story. In the first one, you can see how Sean is enjoying terrorizing his little sister as she runs away. In the second shot, you can tell that's he's been reprimanded, and is carefully watching to see if he is going to get caught this time. And in the final photo, you can see how Carter has finally had enough and has decided to enact her revenge.
Now that the weather is warming up again, I've restarted my weekly weekend walks at Maudslay State Park. On my most recent trip, I took more of an interest in two things I've been curious about several times before, but never followed up on. The first is the tree you see in the middle picture, which is in the formal walled garden at the park. Late last fall, I noticed that this tree had fruit growing on it (they looked like apples). It seemed like an awfully strange and interesting way to grow a tree, though. Well I looked it up, and apparently this technique dates all the way back to trying to grow fruit within the walls of castles, in a very limited space. The technique is called "espalier" -
here is a link to the wiki article. The other interesting thing is the round stone you see in the third photo (forgive me for the terrible quality of that one). I'd always suspected it was a millstone, but I wasn't sure. Well I looked that up, too. It
is in fact a millstone - a runner stone, to be precise. Based on what I read in
this article, it looks like this particular stone has a "quarter dress" pattern. It makes me wonder how it ended up here, out in the woods at the park. The park
is right on the river - I wonder if there was a mill here once upon a time?
Sean has been asking a lot lately why certain things have the names that they do. In some cases, it's a decent question - he'll ask about some compound word, live driveway, and we'll talk about how it's called a driveway because you drive on it, and it's a 'way'. Or how a 'swingset' is a set of swings. But sometimes he asks some that are harder to answer - like why milk is called 'milk'. Well the other night, he said, "Why I am named Sean? What if I was called... Johnny Kiki?". It tickled my funny bone that that would be the name he would choose for himself. So for the last few days, I've been calling him Johnny Kiki just for fun.
