Our Little Garden 2012 (#1)

With all of the knowledge we gained from last year's garden, Ethan and I began our garden this year when we had a week-long blast of early spring. Below are pictures of our flat of tomatoes and peppers. In our window planters, we planted cilantro (which I have had very little luck with before) and basil (which I had a lot of luck with before).

Here we are fertilizing the little plants with plasticware provided by Uncle Dan.

Welcome Samuel

Samuel Reed Holiday
4.6.12 @ 11:03 PM
7 lb 5 oz
20 in
beautiful

big brother ethan is in love

nana and pappy are in love

welcome little one

Papa has a 31st birthday party (and mayhem ensues)

When Jody asked me a few weeks ago if I wanted to have people over for my birthday, there were images from last year's party that kept flashing back and forth in my mind. The first was of our little apartment filled to the brim with warm friendship and bubbling conversation. The second image was of Ethan and my friend Ben's son (Keiran sp?) pushing a metal Tonka truck crazily through the legs of the party grazing shoes, ankles, and legs -- all the while screaming at the top of his lungs and repeating the run every few minutes the entire night (or so I remember it). So, I wasn't quite sure what to say to Jody about having people of for my 31st birthday.

In the end, I decided that I wanted to have the party, even if Ethan would be crazy. So, when I put together the email invite list, I made sure to invite lots of folks with kids so Ethan would have some buddies with which to play. Jody quietly suggested several times that we reserve the community center for the event, and I was reluctant at first because I was holding on to that image of the warm friendship and bubbling conversation in our little apartment / town house-ish thing. On Wednesday of the week before the party, I reserved the space, but only as a precaution. It wasn't until Jody asked me on last time the day of the party, that I realized what grand wisdom she was offering.

Anyway, the party ended up being great fun and there were just as many, if not more, kids than adults. It was kinda like the year before, but Ethan was running crazy with a whole gang of kids with plenty of space for their energy and I sat and had a few conversations with good friends. It was kinda perfect. But, it was chaotic and at one point the whirlwind of kids found some streamers and ran them all around (and I mean ALL AROUND) the community center. The pictures below were provided by Jenny Ham, a good friend who made it out to the party, made a wonderful apple crisp, and got some time away from her two boys to catch up with Jody and I.

Ethan joins the Clean Plate Club

Dinner time has turned into a bit of a battle ground these past few weeks with volleys of whines and consequences being launched with reckless abandon.  Tonight a quiet victory was achieved as Ethan joined the clean plate club (thank you Emma Wright) by eating an entire broccoli and chicken quesadilla with minimal encouragement from anyone.  We celebrated by immortalizing the event with a picture.

Ethan's Lego Creations #1

I saw a flyer for lego time at the local library and a number of things happened.  1) I saw that they had a theme for each building session and then took pictures afterwards - This inspired me to both give more structure to our endless Lego play and to document our creations. 2) I noticed that the class was only for 5 and up (Ethan is not yet 4) - but with some help from Jody we decided we are gonna crash the party one of these days and see if we get thrown out.  It is the kind of library where you will get sushed by other patrons who want quiet, so who knows (I could go on a PRETTY good rant here about the library patrons I have encountered at this particular library... but I won't.. they're all rich folks, they don't know any better).  Anyway, I figured I would try to document some of Ethan's lego creations in the future and here is the first entry.

Papa calls it a Helicopter truck:

This was made by cannibalizing the yellow tractor trailer I got ethan for his birthday last year.  With my help, he actually built the cab and the trailer from the instructions earlier that morning -- It was amazing work on his behalf, just amazing.

A more relaxed pose than the proper little kid showing you his thing by putting it right in front of his face as you take the picture.  I have SO many of those kind of shots of myself from when I was a kid,

Sitting on the counter

It seems like a silly thing to make a blog post about, but it is the kind of thing I want to be reminded of when I forget.  Often when Ethan is sick, he wants to be held, what child doesn't.  But, when I need to cook or do the dishes he wants to stay up at my eye level so he often asks to be set on the counter while I work.  Its just one of those sweet things...

Little Chemist

Ethan's love of mixing things began long ago with pouring water from one glass to another.  When we discovered color mixing at the Montshire Museum of Science, we reached the next level.  Then, not to long ago when I decided to show him what happens when you mix and acid and a base (vinegar and baking soda), we reached yet another level of mixing fun.  Until today, we had been doing our mixing and what not with makeshift equipment -- but no longer.  Thanks to Uncle Dan (and Fischer Scientific) we have an assortment of pipettes, bottles, and test tubes.  Below are some pictures of Ethan using the new equipment. Thanks Uncle Dan!

Getting the hang of using the new pipettes...

Mixing up some good quality red water...

Mixing up...

...some blue water.

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I was going for a mad scientist kinda of picture... I kinda got it...