The Salad Days

A friend recommended a new playground to Lori - the Amesbury Town Playground. As you can see, the kids loved it. I've yet to see it myself, but I'm looking forward to checking it out. Only one downside, although hopefully they've learned from the experience. Sean sat in the very center of the spinny-thing (as you can see in the photo below), and after the other kids spun it for a while, he threw up. Hee hee. Live and learn.

We're going to have to hit my mom up for whatever pictures she took - as this is the only picture we have of Sean in his costume. And we don't have any of Carter. They sure did love Halloween though. This was Carter's first year trick-or-treating, and she got the idea right away. Coming down the stairs from the first house, she reached into her bucket, pulled out the candy bar, and said to Lori "open this please, mommy?". It wasn't until three houses later that we were able to convince her that we didn't have to open each piece immediately.

Since we started having kids, we have taken almost no pictures of the dogs. I wonder how they feel about that. I'll bet they do a lot of grumbling when I'm not looking about getting the bum end of the stick. So here's a picture of Paige that Lori took recently. Personally, I think she looks very cute. In pictures, at least, she's not showing her age yet.

Lori and Grandma King took the kiddos to the farm one day last week. They got to feed the chickens, see lots of animals, ride in a wagon. My sources tell me that they had a great time!

Sean has really taken to the computer lately. He plays games on pbskids.org. He especially loves the Curious George games. He's learned how to navigate all around the site himself, and has taught himself how to play almost all of the games. His precision with the mouse is getting quite impressive. I remember when he tried to use the computer a year or so ago, while we were living in Texas. He was trying real hard, but his fine motor skills just weren't there yet. Now he's a pro. The other thing he does is look at our blog. He likes to look through all of the pictures, and tell me all about each one. He actually remembers a lot of detail about when some of them were taken, and not just the recent ones either. It actually surprises me that he has any memory of some of the things that happened so long ago.

Aren't they so cute? They hardly ever sit still long enough for us to capture a photo like this, even though in reality they do hug a lot. Getting them both to look at the camera and smile at the same time usually takes a miracle of lucky timing.

We went to Tracy's a couple of weekends ago (I know, I'm slow to post lately). While we were there, we all went for a walk around the neighborhood, and the kids rode bikes. Sean couldn't get enough of the horn on Ryan's bike, and almost crashed the bike several times as he kept squeezing the horn bulb over and over instead of watching where he was going.

For those who don't know, for the past few months Sean has had a serious fascination with pipes. He is always under the sink checking out the pipes, talking about pipes while he flushes the toilet, talks about food going down his pipe when he swallows, and hanging out in the basement to check out all the pipes overhead. This story makes a lot more sense if you know that ahead of time.

Last week I had to go to Washington, D.C. to give a presentation for work. The night before I left I was tucking Sean in and talking to him about the trip I had to take, and how I wouldn't see him the next day, but that he would see me the day after. Here's a summary how that conversation went down:

Me: "Sean, I have to go to Washington, D.C. tomorrow, for work. I won't see you, but I will see you the next day, okay?"
Sean: "Okay. Will you see the pipes?"
Me: "Sure, buddy!"

Flash-forward to two days later, first thing in the morning. This will be the first time he has seen me in a day-and-a-half. I have the day off, but we need to wake Sean up to get him ready for school. So I go in, kneel down by his bed, and gently wake him:

Me (softly): "Sean...time to get up, buddy."
Sean (extrememly groggily): "Hi Daddy...did you see the pipes...?"
Me (softly): "Sure did! They were great!"

We had Carter's second birthday party this past weekend. It went really well, and everyone had a great time. We didn't really get a lot of photos though - we were too busy enjoying the festivities to actually record them for posterity. But here is a sampling of the few we actually did manage to grab.

We've been playing outside more lately. With the weather cooling off so dramatically, we're starting to realize that winter is really coming, and our outdoor time is about to be curtailed for a while. Sean found a rake and tried making himself a leaf pile. Suprisingly, he was actually able to do it - even though the rake is probably twice his size. This kids also found a worm, when one of them accidentally tore up a small section of the lawn. They were both fascinated by it, and crouched and stared at it until it wriggled away. Sean has been asking me to help him find worms for at least a month now, but every time we've checked under logs and rocks lately we've had no luck. So he was thrilled to finally see one again.