W1 might be a little disappointed, come Dec. 21

We have been trying (with varying degrees of success) to prepare W1 and L1 for the arrival of their baby sister in December. L1 is mostly oblivious, but W1 seems to understand that we will have a new baby in our house. At least, that is what I thought until we had the following conversation:

To preface, we were talking about his friends who have baby sisters, and W1 got a little mixed up in the words.

W1: L1 a baby sister?

K1: No, L1 is your little brother. He is called your brother because L1 is a boy.

W1: Oh.

K1: And we call your baby sister a sister because she is a... (attempting to prompt W1 to come up with the right answer)

W1: Black?

K1: (fumbling around trying to figure out what he means, we haven't talked in terms of race before, and how do I answer this...) Ummm.

W1: (seeing that wasn't the right answer) Purple?

K1: (relieved) No, because baby sister is a girl.

W1: Oh.



Now I'm not entirely sure what he is expecting.



P.S. We have talked many times about the differences between boys and girls (in very general terms, mind you), and he seems to get it...

Even our trees procrastinate

Today was leaf clean-up day in our neighborhood. W1 and L1 were entertained for at least 30 minutes by the leaf blowers, tractors and dump trucks working in front of our house. (And I was able to make good progress in the book I am reading for book club!*)


Here is a close up of the tractor:


Oh, and the tree you see in that picture, the one with all the green leaves in our front yard? We have another one like it in the backyard. Our delinquent trees are always just a little too late for the leaf clean-up. Their trick is to wait and drop their leaves the night before the first snowfall, thus making them impossible to rake. Saves some work in the fall, but makes the lawn pretty disgusting by spring.

Time to rip them up and plant new ones.

Or move**.



* And book club is tonight. See, I procrastinate, too.

** I only say this because in all likelihood we will be moving when R1 graduates. We don't usually make drastic changes just because of our landscaping.

A little too accurate

Earlier today:



W1: Mom, you a cow?

L1 (in the background): Cow!



He somehow peered directly into my mind and found out exactly how I was feeling. (i.e. large, awkward, and slow)


Hopefully, in a few months, he will instead ask me if I am some sort of slender, graceful animal, like a gazelle or something.

But, it's more likely he will stick to the familiar barnyard animals.



I'm doomed.

Our recent (and ever evolving) vacation guidelines:

Starring last week's trip to the Poconos with our good friends the Holmes.


1. Go somewhere with stunning natural beauty.



We have driven through Pennsylvania many times in the summer and in the winter, but never before at Fall's peak. Oh my. My expectations of what Fall should look like are forever set high.


2. Find lots of things to do outside. Like climb.


And hike. Preferably alongside a river. So W1 and L1 can throw approximately 500 pounds of sticks and rocks into the water.


Both of the above activities are engineered to make everyone very tired.


3. Find some fabulous food. A day trip to Philadelphia provided the ideal opportunity for Philly Cheesesteaks.



4. Sneak in a little history (or a lot if your kids can stand it). In Philadelphia we dragged them to see the Liberty Bell, Benjamin Franklin's printing office, and Independence Hall.


During this tour, L1 discovered that if he screamed, I would take him out of the room. Huh. We spent most of our time in the stairwell.


5. Do something new.


Thanks to the Holmes' and their GPS, we found our first geocache.

Feel free to follow, adapt, or completely ignore these guidelines.

Something I would probably not do

On Sunday, we took a little drive up to the shore of Lake Ontario in Webster. The scenery was beautiful; leaves changing color, apple orchards laden with fruit, etc. Lovely upstate New York.

When we got up to the shore, we realized that it was very windy. A cold sort of windy. A beautiful and cold sort of windy.


If you take a really close look at that picture, you can see the windsurfer. To me, cold and wet equals not much fun, but he seemed to be having a great time. The wind got him moving really fast, and there were plenty of waves to jump. It looked like quite a ride. So maybe it would be fun, but on a day that was at least 40 degrees warmer.

While we are discussing our weekend, on Saturday we checked another item off of our "things to do in the Fall" list.

We picked out pumpkins.


L1 thinks his pumpkin is a ball and likes to throw it. W1 keeps getting knives out of the silverware drawer to cut his (they are only butter knives so he isn't very effective), and he already drew a "face" on it with marker.

For the time being, we are keeping our pumpkins inside so that the kamikaze squirrels in our neighborhood can't lay a finger (talon?) on them.

Suddenly, we are:

- scrambling around to find fleeces, hats, vests, sweaters and coats.

- picking more apples and having hot cider, apple pie, apple bread, and anything else we can think of.


- harvesting the fall raspberries from the bushes in our backyard. (L1 isn't so good at discerning ripe from unripe, but he eats them all, regardless)

- seeing pumpkins everywhere. W1 is extremely good at spotting them.

- planning Halloween costumes.



Today I finished off the first Kleenex box of the season wiping endlessly runny noses.

Yep, it's Fall.

W1 reveals his true motivations

A conversation earlier today.

W1: I want to go to the dentist.

K1 (shocked that those words would cross anyone's lips): Why? So he can check your teeth?

W1: Yeah.


A few moments later,

W1: And he will tell me to spit.




*We read a book about visiting the dentist a few days ago, and now we know which part made the biggest impression.