The Early Birthday Party

We celebrated Will's third (THIRD!?!) birthday early on Sunday with his local family.

"I got Mack! It's Maaaaaaaack!" is an appropriate caption here.

I was manning the camera and prepping the birthday cake Munchkins instead of posing for pictures, but it was such a fun first celebration. More to come this week...

In the Crib, Now and Then

THEN it was Will's crib;

in another town,

and Will was nineteen months old...younger than Finny is now.

They didn't know what to make of one another.

NOW it's where Finn sleeps,

and Will visits sometimes.

They are always laughing

and reading to each other

or reading to themselves, side by side,

happy just to be together.

On the Cape

We had a truly wonderful vacation with our friends back in August in Dennisport.

One thing that struck me was how fluid our days were because we were sharing them with people who had roughly the same daily schedule, eating and sleeping habits, and level of chaos as our household does.

There were overcast days at the beginning of the week that forced us to find fun diversions outside of our little piece of beach; then there was plenty of sun in the second half so we could take full advantage of the little float boat and giant shovels we'd brought along. 

Will never likes to break up a party, and this goodbye was particularly hard. Over a month later, he still asks to go back to the Cape house, and I'm pretty sure he'd be perfectly content to have a sleepover with Connor and the rest of the Flemings every night of the week. It's a good thing they only live a mile away from us year-round!

FIRST DAY OF VACATION!!!!!

Five little monkeys, sitting in a boat...

The Big Dig

Ice cream while watching "Cars movie"

Our cloudy day activities (above and below)

Our sunny day activities:

Dads and kids:

 Finny Loves Riley:

 The Whole Gang

The three youngest:

And the two "big boys":

 Noon boys behind the wheel:

Boys of Summer 2011

Because I wasn't the primary (or any kind of) photographer at either of our beach vacations, I'll have to show you the bulk of what we did in August later...that is, when I get around to collecting those photos. Instead I'll share some quieter more down-home stories of summer with you:

The two above are Will and Finn playing a variation on Abby's "Fairy Game."

They call it "Airplanes!"

That's...the only variation.

This summer, Will figured out that Finny was someone to actually play with.

He likes to teach him words: "Finny, can you say AIR-PLANE?"

and congratulate him on his triumphs: "That was gooooooood eating, Finny!"

(with a slight tone of condescension, but what do you expect from an older brother?)

and show him how to do things: "Like this, Finny! 

Will reads stories to Finn--and to us, and to no one.

He basically memorized "The Berenstain Bears Go to the Dentist,"

and if you've never heard a 2-year-old say things like

"There was a tamper, a squirter, and--ULP!--a yanker,"

--with emotion--you are truly missing out.

 I include the above two because I think they're indicative of both

the similarities and differences between the boys' faces.

People are saying more and more how much they look alike.
I also get a lot of definitive, "They look like their dad, hunh?" and

an equal amount of, "They look just like you!" 

All of this is not to paint a portrait of perfect harmony. 

Will has definitely begun a steep descent into "the threes,"

marked by the realization that he can actually STAND UP during a time-out,

even if we tell him he needs to SIT DOWN.

This has led to some lengthy time-outs, some removal of beloved objects from his room,

and a lot of stifled laughter when he's doing his apologies and recounts

the time-out story: "And then I finally sat down."

A preschool update will be added by the end of this week.

It might have no pictures, but it's coming, I promise!

Something Serious

This summer has been shooting past in a blur of 18-month birthdays and beach vacations (I know, I live a hard life), and I owe this blog at least a couple of posts chronicling the boys' latests and greatests.

But I feel like I have to acknowledge something that made me cry like a fool on the treadmill at the gym the other day, and something that I feel more connected to because I have close friends in Kenya working for the United Nations (who are going through various stages of a harsh flu right now).

People are probably aware that there is a horrible drought in East Africa right now, and children particularly are dying of starvation in spades. I know that there are terrible tragedies and even humanitarian crises occurring across the world every moment of the day, and I know that the economy here is playing mind games with every American, but this just feels unignorable to me. So I wanted to put a link here of where you can make a tax-deductible donation (and even put it on your credit card so you can get some points, too) online to the United Nations' World Food Programme, where Kristoffer works:

http://usa.wfp.org/donate

Select "horn of Africa" to ensure your donation goes to Somalia and other high-need countries, although I'm sure if you selected "greatest need," it would go there as well. I know Lisa and Kristoffer would be writing about this, and they have much more insight than I do, but since they're trying to manage their own family's health, I thought I'd do my best. I hope I don't sound too soapboxy, but this is just one of those things that hit me in a particular way, and I needed to put it into the ether.

I'll be back with lighter fare, updates and pictures very soon!