The little garden

I was thrilled that our peonies were kind enough to hold off on blooming until we returned from Pennsylvania and Michigan. Also, I'm thrilled with the new camera that lets me take closeup photos. And thrilled that my son seems to love flowers. All in all, it's pretty thrilling around here.

Game time

The Swishers, our children's godparents, introduced us to the Chicago White Sox Kids Club about a year ago. Said Kids Club allows us to attend a baseball game for free (along with sending a poster, baseball cards, and temporary tattoos), which further cements my loyalty to the Sox and my disdain for the Cubs. On June 10, we were able to attend the Sox - Tigers game, which was the dream matchup for my husband. Of course, watching the game with two young kids is a much different experience than enjoying the game without the munchkins, but we're both thrilled to be instilling within our children a great love for the American pasttime.

Manny, who spent almost half of his in utero life in Michigan, couldn't decide which team was worthy of his adoration. He finally decided to cheer both, suiting up with the Tigers cap and White Sox shirt. (Recognize the cap, Gaspards? You were so sweet to send it to Jonah last year.) Jonah's our south Chicago boy and had no qualms cheering for only the Sox, regardless of his father's ancient loyalty.

Somebody hit a homerun, which the Sox always celebrate with fireworks. Manny, lover of danger and loud noises, gave us his sign language sign for "more." "More fireworks," he demands.

This picture fairly effectively captures the personality differences between our two boys. Not that Jonah doesn't know how to or enjoy having fun, but Manny really knows how to have fun.

Hey, not a bad picture! One of us looks directly at the camera, the other two have their faces turned in the camera's general direction. I'll take it!

This is a much more typical example, though, of what we get with our boys in the frame.

Baby pool

Have I mentioned yet how much I love having our new backyard? A yard in which we can actually play? Hmmm, I probably have. And now that it's warmer out, we're able to get out the water hose and fill up the pool a bit. Mind you, the boys don't actually play in the pool; no, no, they're far too busy caring for the plants and playing with the hose water. Well, whatever keeps them happy.

Jonah also likes to line buckets up. These days he insists that anything that is in line form is a train. Things like the heat radiators in our apartment and buckets full of water. This child lives on trains.

Practicing baseball. Here's his pitching form.

While Jonah loves to run thru the hose spray, Manny much prefers to stick his hand in the stream and spray himself in the face.

Hey, he asked for it. Quite literally, he did.

Happy Birthday, J-Bird!

I still can't decide if it's hard to believe or not: It's been three years since Jonah rocketed into the world, 3 minutes till midnight on July 4, our "joke" due date. ('Cuz who ever thinks that their first child, a boy, will be born 11 days before his due date, on a holiday? It was a joke 'round our place, evidenced by the fact that my hospital bag was only half packed.) I say that I can't decide because it seems like there was hardly a time before there was Jonah in Gabriel and my married life, though I do have fond memories of our dating, engaged and married life, all not-quite 3 years of it, before Jonah was born. At any rate, it's been three years of the child known variously as "Jonah-Bean," "The Jonah Owl," "Senor Impaciente," "Mr. Poop," which morphed into "Mr. Poo," and , currently, "Little Bear" or "J-Bird". Considering my pregnancy, the extent of our summer travels and the fact that it still sort of seems to me that we "just moved," we opted for a lower-key celebration this year, inviting just a few mom-friends and their offspring over to our place for play, lunch and cake. The party managed to be fun without being crazy (at least that's my interpretation of it), and Jonah thoroughly enjoyed himself. That's the important thing, right?

(You wouldn't know it from the photos below, but we had eight children and five mamas in the house. Clearly, I should've designated picture-taking. Also, the darkish quality of the first few pictures is due to the fact that Gabriel bought me a spectacular new camera for Christmas, but I often forget that I need to switch the setting from outdoor to indoor. Also, there's something called a "flash" that really brightens things up. Who knew?)

I made Jonah a construction sign / dump truck cake, chocolate inside (from Christopher Kimball's "The Cook's Bible"), cream cheese frosting (Betty Crocker cookbook). It was a really good cake. Jonah was a bit perturbed that I put his dump truck out of commission for an evening and a day, but I do think that he forgave me. It's not for nothing that we call him "Jonah the Merciful." I made the mistake of telling Jonah to smile. Yup, that's a camera-worthy smile, not a grimace of pain. It took long enough for him to blow out the candles that I actually got a picture of it. Maybe that's why no one else ate the cake?

Jonah was able to choose his birthday breakfast on July 4. He chose French toast, which surprisingly won out over pancakes. Jonah loves to help me in the kitchen. "Help," of course, is a relative term, but I do like to have him with me. Look, he's mixing the egg mix with all my measuring spoons. Hey, whatever's handy!

Happy 3rd Birthday, Jonah! You are our little sweetie, and we love you dearly.

In color, and with moving pictures!

My dad ("Pop-Pop," in our boys' parlance) fairly recently resumed work on his model railroad, a project that had been on hiatus in our basement for many years. I can remember being excited about it when I was a girl, but I'm pretty sure that my long-ago excitement would be faint next to Jonah's enthusiasm. Pop-Pop showed Jonah (and even Manny) how to use the control board to direct the trains, something at which Jonah became farly adept (he is, after all, not even three yet). In this video, though, you'll see that controlling the trains is hardly better than watching them: It's something of a miracle that Jonah's nose wasn't skinned by the passing locomotive. (This video is from our early April visit to Michigan.)

This truck was a Christmas gift from my sister and her husband to the boys. I won't say that I hate it: It's not out for play often enough for me to have developed any strong feelings about it. It does, however, provoke some pretty cute reactions in the boys that keep me from re-gifting it to another child. I'm just glad that the boys don't yet know just what it is that they're supposed to be shaking.

The great outdoors

At our new apartment, we at last have a usable backyard. Besides the dog poop that initially lurked in the backyard of our former apartment, there were two sets of treacherous cement stairs; a giant, sharp piece of metal that I dug out of the grass one day; and a significant portion of what might've otherwise been grass claimed by a garage stuffed impossibly full of junk (trust me, I once got a glimpse) and a giant cement pad on either side of the double-wide lot. I'm thankful that we had a park almost right out our back door, but I wouldn't trade that for the luxury of the play-in-able backyard that we have now: It's paradise! (Though I do need to find a way to secure that back and side gates, now that the Monday Monkey has figured out how to open them and hears the siren song of the alley.) As I write this in June, the peonies are in full bloom out back. As these pictures are from mid-April, said peonies are still in the ground. The neighbors I've met are nice and have pretty backyards, and the ease of just going downstairs and into the outdoors makes living in the city feel that much more homey. This lovely plot of grass alone may have been worth all the hassle of moving.

Despite the face, Jonah actually loves to play in the backyard. Manny's far too small for this yet, but that doesn't mean that he can't try.

The neighbor's barking dog caught the attention of both boys.

Dog barking from one direction, bus going by from the other.

I "re-purposed" what I think is an old dog food-and-water stand that I took from someone's trash pile at the curb as a play table. ("Re-purposing" from other people's trash or litter is a skill that I watched my dad hone over the course of many years. I've never actually dove into a dumpster, though.) I've since upgraded to a plastic under-bed storage bin filled with sand, which the boys love. The dog food stand will do in a pinch, though.

Hammy Manny

Yes, Manny's a pretty happy kid. Why do you ask?