surveillance

With children you have no filter. The thoughts come out of their heads exactly as they think them. It's refreshing when you spend your day in a world where you so often have to guess what people really mean. Schuyler is a little girl now - bursting with thoughts and ideas and half-understood words and concepts. It's so lovely to watch what she does when we're not watching. Tonight, she 'read' a whole book. Page by page. If she turned over two pages by accident, she went back and inspected the missing image. Sometimes she'll just sing to herself or talk to the ceiling or bang a book against the table. And then she falls asleep. And there's nothing cuter in my life.

a spoon & a sibling

Moments like these are why we had two.

bright & early

In the top photo is a new furniture addition to the household: Schuyler's stool. As I wrote that last line, I realised how mundane our lives must seem to the untrained eye. I certainly never pined for the day when the highlight of my home life would be an addition to our stool collection. But there you have it. This is an important stool. You see Schuyler had taken to sitting at the counter on the frighteningly unstable bar stools and had tumbled to the unforgiving tiled floor below on many an occasion. She was intransigent. She would not return to her high chair but yet she would not let Charlie sit there either. And her Mum and Dad are not about to go buy another high chair. But a stool? Sure, we'll buy a stool. So we took Schuyler and guided her through the stool selection to the one we wanted. The one with the back. The one with the wide leg span that couldn't be toppled by an obese drunk at four a.m. (the only suitable stand in for a toddler on a fructose high). And now Charlie gets to sit in the high chair relatively undisturbed and Schuyler sits at the counter on her big girl stool. So there you have it. Our lives are really that interesting. All of this masks the wonder of the moments in between all the required chores that glue this life together. People who are in love seem pretty boring. You watch them talk in silly voices to one another and make silly faces. They enjoy even the most insipid activities because they enjoy them together. They don't do anything. They just sit there and enjoy each other. Nobody told me I'd fall in love with my kids as well and that through all the necessary unpleasantries of the day-to-day grind, I'd see a glimpse of something larger than all of us when I hung out with them.

I tried to give Schuyler a high five. She put up her index finger to mine and cried "No, Daddy! High ONE!" That's my girl.

treasure hunters

And so it was that Eli and Schuyler ventured into the dense jungle of Tom Moore's armed with a map hand drawn by pirates and led by the intrepid Schuyler's Dad. As you can see, the map clearly shows the treasure ("X") is buried in the cave. Unfortunately, their intrepid leader couldn't find the cave and so he reinterpreted the X as being "hidden NEAR the cave". Finally, the hot, sweaty little adventurers in their unseasonally warm adventurer uniforms, found the treasure and made it back safely for lunch and a much deserved nap time.

summer days

While their parents toil away in that far off land of "work", Trystan and Schuyler do what kids are supposed to: play. As the start date for Big School approaches, their days when they are each other's Playfellow In Chief run short. They really don't know how lucky they are.

gone fishin'

If we are ever stuck for something to do and/or we have bread that has become a clear source of penicillin we traipse down to Tom Moore's and feed the fish. Schuyler and Charlie both try to surreptitiously eat the bread themselves (see the crumb pasted to Charlie's chin) which may pretect them against infection but is still kind of gross.

Papa and his brood

You'll notice that Charlie switches sides in the photographs... that little tyke gets HEAVY! He's not in a stroller because his sister gets a little chargined when he gets to be chauffeured and she has to walk peasant style. In any case, a good father's day event.

Vacation in Bermuda for Jackson and Schuyler

"Jackson, honey, can put the Baby Sunblock on my back?"

"Not now, Schuyler, can't you see I'm busy?"

"Well, you were the one who wanted to eat here. It's not my fault that they don't have chocolate ice cream on the menu."

"mmmm.... Nutter Buttery."

"zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz"

introducing...his first tooth

We managed to capture a glimpse of Charlie's first tooth; if you look really closely you can see that white strip breaking through. Schuyler got her first tooth at almost exactly the same age.

(almost) 9 months

waiting...

weighing...

stretching...

screaming (but lots of padding)

Charlie Bear's results:
21lbs 8oz
29.5"

back in and out the city

And so it was that the tired little family shuttled from Penn Station into the heart of Tribecca in search of creature comforts and more of that knockout pizza at Shaunna's.

training again

An exhausted but content family on the train back from Albany en route to NYC to see Shaunna and Lucca again. They were actually pretty good and patient about the whole thing. Maybe it's because secretly they knew that if this didn't go well, it could be years before another non-emergency trip off the island. Smart kids.