Farewell Old Friend...

Ribbon or Bibo Video

Winter Storm Brooke

Evan's First Big Boy Bath!

The Krystal Gnome

Matt's mom makes gorgeous christmas decorations every year - here's Syd with her adorable "Krystal Gnome," the gnome of all the things that grow in the earth, according to the story card. Just beautiful!

Post-Thanksgiving Get-Together

I had SUCH a great time yesterday spending time with Matt & Sarah, Alison & family, and Shannon & family. The kids (7 of 'em!) got along amazingly well, and we enjoyed good wine and good food (thanks everyone!). We're going to try to make a date for a winter break get-together, too...Anne, Brittany, Nancy - hope you can make it then!!

Dr. Wallace brought out his beautiful bug collection for the kids - how cool. And Evan had no lack of girlfriends to entertain him (evidence below).

I'm so glad we've been keeping our little after Thanksgiving mini-reunion tradition going.

Sydney's 7th Birthday

"Shake, shake, shake your shakers"

Evan and I are in our second session of "baby music" classes with Kath Bloom at the Artwell Gallery in Torrington.  Kath is wonderful and Evan LOVES the class.  His reaction to her singing and guitar playing is amazing - hopefully I will remember to give my camera to one of the other moms to snap a few shots before the session is over.  

Kath is a really neat person, and has written some really beautiful lullabies and kids tunes. At the end of every class, she sings a song she wrote called "Bye Bye Baby Bye," which gets me a little teary every week - the lyrics are just beautiful.  

So we had to get Evan his own shakers for home.  He loves them - he holds them high up in the air and goes to town!!

The title of this post is a link to Kath's myspace page, where you can check out a clip from the movie "Before Sunrise" with Ethan Hawk - the scene is built around Kath singing her song "Come Here."

Tubby Tub Tub

Apple Picking at March Farms

My new favorite photo of Evan

Bronx Zoo

Since we didn't make it up to New Hampshire, we took Mom and Dad to the Bronx Zoo for Dad's birthday trip.  Syd had her moments of impatience, but it was a nice day otherwise - perfect weather for a drive.

Evan's Half Birthday

Just realized tonight that it was Evan's "half birthday" today - the big man is 6 months old!  My mom sent me some photos tonight that were taken of Syd around the same age - in the same high chair, even.  You can tell they're brother and sister, for sure!

The Last Sunday of Summer

Another Day of Firsts

I had a long conversation with my friend Suzanne this morning about all of the things that could possibly be keeping Evan awake at night. I fed him a breakfast of cereal and sweet potatoes (we've only been giving him one "real" meal a day - dinner), thinking he might need more substance to make it through the day AND the night. While washing his face afterwards, I checked his gums, as I've been doing lately, and there was A TOOTH! That could explain things.

So on this day, September 15th, at 5 months and one day old, Evan pushed up his first tooth. And also on this day, he went to Costco and sat in the grocery cart like a big boy!

Baby You Can Drive My Car

Baby Einstein...

Evan seems to be just as into these DVDs as Sydney was. I cleaned up Syd's old "original" exersaucer (which actually was Ray and Emily's before that), so now we have one upstairs and one downstairs. I bet if I look around I could find a photo of Syd in the same position!

First Day Fun

Poor Syd. We failed to get her into her school-year bedtime routine before school started. The poor kid DID get into bed on time on Monday night, but still didn't want to get out of bed on Tuesday morning.

Not a completely smooth first morning - the outfit she bought for the first day was too warm for the weather, so we had to find something else. I was able to at least give her a different NWT (that's eBay lingo for "New With Tags") outfit out of her closet, and she wore her cool new Keens (thanks Grammy!), so she was just as happy.

Then she took so long eating breakfast that we didn't have enough time to do her hair very well...and to top it all off we missed the bus going up the road. Lucky for us, it's also got to come back DOWN the road and past our house, so it wasn't a total miss.

She came home happy and reported that 2nd grade is "fun." Guess the wacky morning didn't throw her off her game!

The First Day of Second Grade

'Nanners

Since he's been taking rice cereal for a week or so, we thought it was time to see how he liked banana baby food. I'll spare everyone the photos of it coming back OUT (apparently he's not a big fan of the 'nanners), but here are some adorable shots of Evan and the jar of bananas before we tried to get them into him...