Happy Birthday!!

Happy Birthday Eleanor Ruby!!

I can't believe my favorite little niece is one year old today! The night before you were born I had a dream that you were going to be a little girl. The next day I drove through some bad stormy weather to come meet you in the hospital! I was so happy to see you. You've grown and grown this last year and we're so pleased with everything you do! We can't wait to see you again very soon!
XOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Thursday Morning Videos

Henry has been rocking out to Van Halen lately... (note: Henry sings "I can't wait to feel your heart tonight" whereas the real lyrics are "I can't wait to feel your love tonight")


Here's a clip from bowling...


And a little taste of swimming lessons...

So Soon?

Time has a way of continuing to march on...no matter how hard we try to run in place.

Stookey is leaving Shure...
But we have heard promises that we'll still get to hang out with him and Amanda.Sandy is already 7 months into growing her own little bowling ball..
And Henry is already bowling.Clara is almost sitting up on her own. Still a little tippy.
Henry took his first jump off a diving board.
And Katie's time with us is already up. She's leaving here tomorrow and moving on to SLC.

Change can be hard, but I guess it's all good news!!

A Little Crabby

It's hard to believe, but Katie's only here for another week! So Monday night we wanted to take her out for a fun dinner. We chose Bob Chinn's Crabhouse.
Clara enjoyed her bottle...
While the rest of us enjoyed Mai Tai's....
Well, some of us anyway....we did let Henry have some lemonade, because he wanted a special drink too.
Katie had never had crab before...after a short lesson in using the little tool, she went for it enthusiastically.
Henry also wanted to try (ignore my weird face in this photo).
Oh, for cute!
More cuteness!
And just to show that I can look normal too...

Swim Lessons

Today was Henry's first day of swim lessons. We dropped Clara off with her grandparents to Henry and I could scope things out without distractions. Then he picked out which trunks he wanted to wear (the blue fishy ones) and we slathered on some sun screen and walked over to the pool.

Once inside I realized that I had written down the wrong time for lessons. I thought they started at 10:40, but that was actually the ending time! Ugh! This has got to be one of the worst feelings in parenting...when you get your kid all excited about something, make a big production out of it (like taking his picture in front of the sign) and then find out that you messed up and missed everything. I hate it so much! Fortunately we had planned (or so we thought!) to get there a little early- which left us 10 minutes to join the class. I felt a little goofy taking pictures, so I only got this one.
It was maybe an okay mistake as I would much rather we end something with Henry saying "I want to stay!" (as he did) than saying "I want to leave!!!" before time is up. Now I know he'll be excited to go tomorrow. He just loves any time he gets to be with other kids. He sat down on the side of the pool and immediately grinned around at his classmates.
And we were able to stay and play around in the "sprinkler park" or zero-depth, kiddie pool area. I didn't have a suit on, but I rolled up my pants and we played for a while anyway.
I can't believe how much my little guy is growing up. I get emotional thinking about how some day he won't want me to cuddle in bed with him, or hold his hand across the street. Some day he'll even move out of the house! How do mothers cope?!?? Already I understand that some day I will be needing grandchildren.

My Daddy Rocks!

Happy Father's Day to the Dad of my children....


My own great Dad...And a couple other great papas I know...

Floods and Sedaris

My hometown is flooding again. You can read more about it here. And they're under another tornado watch, as I type. So are we. Do you think Mother Earth is trying to tell us anything?
Here's a photo of the water coming over the spillway (in the distance). When the water came over in 1993 and crashed through this foreground area it uncovered a large fossil bed. This is now known as the Devonian Gorge. I'm curious what will be uncovered this time.
Here's an aerial shot of City Park. That structure at the top of the photo is the Shakespeare theater where Rob and Carrie were married. You can kind of tell, by the line of trees, where the river is usually contained.
Hopefully Rob will post some photos on his blog. He's been sandbagging and overseeing operations. I'm hoping he'll have some stories about any crazy hijinx those Hawkeye football volunteers might have been involved in.

So, in other life, last night I went to see David Sedaris do a reading in Evanston. I didn't know he was going to be there until I saw a friend mention it on Facebook around 3 yesterday afternoon. I inquired and she said she had a wristband for signing if I wanted to meet her down there. I jumped at the chance. I had never seen Sedaris before and I hadn't seen Natalie for a couple of years either!
The place was packed. I grabbed a wristband on the way in, in case Natalie and I didn't hook up. I'm glad we found each other, though- because her wristband was gold- meaning we were in the first group. Mine was purple....and those people had to wait all the way downstairs.
I'm was lucky to get this picture. I couldn't actually see Sedaris for most of the reading. This was a taken before he started. Also, when I asked about photos later (hoping to maybe get a cheesy shot with him) I was told that he really wanted no pictures taken at all.
The reading was great. He did a question and answer session afterwards- in which he repeatedly gave the advice to youngsters that they should have as much sex as they can while they're young and look better than they ever will again.
He had a short chat with each person who came through the signing line. Here's what he wrote in Natalie's book. *
He went on about it a little bit. Told her she should visit Pittsburgh because the women there have great natural breasts as well. Etc.
I'm curious what he wrote in the book of a woman who was near me during the reading. She tried to put something witty on her post-it for him to write, but it seems to me that that sort of defeats the purpose. "Here, famous humorist author, here's a funny thing you can write in my book!" I'm sure he disregarded it and wrote his own thing.
Natalie and I had a bite to eat afterwards and caught up on life in general. Some of you may remember that Natalie and I worked together at the Barnes & Noble cafe in IC, then she worked at Cambus for a bit as well. Now she's a manager at Starbucks. When I was in the hospital to deliver Henry she sent over a mocha-frappucino for me. Great gal!
I'll let you be the judge on her breasts.

*You may ask what Sedaris signed in my book. I had him sign it for my uncle who's about to turn 50 and seems like he could use a little levity. If you read the page from top to bottom it says "To Tom When You Are Engulfed in Flames on your 50th Birthday David Sedaris" I'm sure it was intended. I don't think Tom's a blog-reader, but if you are (Tom) sorry to spoil the surprise.

Charlie!

This is really cracking Henry and I (me and Henry?) up right now...

Arts Fest

Here are a few photos from our weekend in Iowa City...
Eleanor showed us all her toys.
We had some dinner and caught a little music downtown. Henry danced, which was entertaining (as always) for Clara.
Once we settled down, we all slept well in Rob and Carrie's guest room.
The next morning, after hitting Java House, the Englert had a great children's orchestra concert. It was a perfect intro to the Englert for Henry and Clara. Then we found a relatively cool spot on the Pentacrest and enjoyed food from the vendors. I cut up my foot chasing Henry around a tree (I failed to look down and notice the tree identification sign) and got to visit the first aid booth for some ointment and an ice pack.
We did a little browsing around before the heat overtook us...
That night Mom hung out with all the kids while we went out to Pagliai's. We were perhaps the loudest table in the joint. Then we went to hear some more music. We met up with Darcie, Pope and Kirin as well.

We might have hijacked Kirin for a bit.
This morning Darcie and Kirin came over for some hang-out time at Rob and Carrie's.
The boys enjoyed playing together, and seemed to come up with their own private language.
After the rain passed, we went downtown for Children's day activities, which had been moved into the library. Henry wanted a turquoise bunny for his facepaint. He was so still and patient.

Henry loved the puppet show. He was especially taken with Dave Panther's shoes.
Eleanor was also very interested in the puppet show.
On our way home Henry really wanted his picture with the Sinclair dinosaur. I suspect he faked a need to go to the bathroom just so he could get out and see the dino. (In other sad dinosaur related news, The Cove Restaurant appears to have closed. Boo.)
We had a great weekend with everyone! Can't wait to be back there in less than a month for Jazz Fest and Eleanor's party!!

And now we're trying to decide whether we should take shelter from another storm....

Other Recent Activity (light on the text)

Here are some cute pictures of Clara from when Mom was here.

And here are some pictures from when we went to see the Cubs. They beat the Dodgers, which gave Katie and I mixed feelings.


And here are some pictures from the drive up to Wisconsin, which was much more enjoyable than the drive back.




Some images from our time at Dad and Kathie's place:

(I swear, some day I'm going to take a vacation without computers!)

Yes...I was actually there. There are just no pictures to prove it. There are also no pictures from our nights in the hot tub. This, surprisingly, is just a coincidence.

And, finally, a picture from our drive home, wherein the compressor for the a/c blew up. Our mechanics, Steve and German, say they have never seen the likes.
Ahh.....always nice to wrap up a vacation with the news that you have to spend several hundred more dollars on your car. (Not just to fix the a/c, also the cruise control is out and there's bad steering-related squeaking.)