Black and white beauts.

Netta.

Bailey.

Nanna and the girls.

I saved these to post in hopes that they might cheer up my mother who is no doubt by now missing Netta and Bailey quite a bit. And us her.

Disaster in motion.

Lewis is a walking disaster. I swear. Lately he is playing with showmanship so that means lots of grand, explosive entrances or the idea of showing off a trick. Unfortunately, the trick has usually never been tried or even thunk up until the moment it is being done so it most often backfires either into a mess or a minor injury. Just tonight he was eating his noodle soup and said, "Mama, look at this!" and while he tried to show me a big bite of noodles the entire mass, including lots of broth, slithered off his fork and on the floor. Yesterday he was dancing around the baby room right up to the fan when I suddenly heard "prrrrrrup!" and he pulled his finger in with a sad face, quietly said, "Ow…" and left the room.

Poor fellow. He has so much loving energy he just can't contain it! He will jump in front of a baby with a huge smile and shout, "Whaddaaaa!" and then poke the little girl's cheeks… which usually makes her cry. I find myself constantly saying, "More gentle" or "More slowly" to Lewis in respect to babies. His intentions are to throw all of his wonderful, joyful Three-Year-Old energy at that baby to get a joyful reaction, but a lot of the time it just doesn't work.

And he is filthy. All the time. Many times I have dressed him and sent him out to the backyard clean and had him return, literally moments later, muddied on arms legs and face. He just puts his whole self into everything so there are a lot of casualities – clothes, household items, food and baby smiles… I still want to bottle him, though. This is a magical age and his innocence and lack of self-consciousness is slowly beginning to slip away. If only we could all drink the purity that is a two- or three-year-old's approach to life each day. We would be better for it.

Block partaaaaaaaaay.

Tonight we joined our neighbors for our block part as part of national night out. I heard the mayor on the radio talking about how Minneapolis had more than 3,000 block parties tonight, the most in the country I think. Take that, suckers! It’s always a nice time, and each year there are more kids. We’re all breeders! Jessica and I certainly have done our part…

GREEN LIGHT!

Dina, the baby whisperer, plays with Bailey. Be careful, Dina, she will try to rip your jaw right off if you’re not careful.

Don’t be fooled by this ‘oh aren’t I so cute, look at me smile’ trick, Dina!

Look at that vicious attack. I tried to warn her. You can never trust a baby.

Balloons were a big part of the night. Flying ones, water ones, and ones for making animals. Henry is giving Arthur a lesson on how to make a dog.

Goggled.

Mobile living.

Netta holds on a hotel bed.

When we drove recently to Wisconsin and then on to Indiana we took our sweet time. Stopped super often at little city parks to play or, if necessary, indoor play areas at the ‘french fry place’. It took quite a while to get where we were going but the trip in itself was actually quite fun at times. And of course totally horrible at others.

Art (and Lewis some) listened to many books on tape, we all listened to music, everyone took naps (expect papa). But I think the highlight, at least for the boys, were the hotels. And of course the pools (which I have no photos of). I remember traveling when I was a kid and how incredibly hard it was to wait to arrive at the hotel and a fun pool.

Anyway, both babies slept in a pack and play and each parent with a kid. I enjoyed being packed in like sardines, we made good use of our tiny room.

trying to feed babies high-chairless and table-less.

An escapee!

At home we often watch one night time TV show. Here the boys are watching one via Netflix on my fancy phone.

And, as per tradition, the boys had some sort of fruit as a night time snack.

We planned time in our return trip to stop in downtown Chicago to visit the Field Museum. Last time we were in town our membership at the MN Zoo got us in free and we assumed it would again. Wrong! So that was a bummer for everyone. It woulda cost nearly $100 to pay to get in for our short stay. Ugh. So we powered through up towards Milwaukee to stay overnight. That was actually a pretty horrible day of traveling. Everyone was disappointed, hot, super slow long traffic jams out of Chicago, no place to stop and play, and a shitty hotel with biting flies in the swimming pool. I remember once all four kids were finally asleep Jess and I talked briefly about how we may have just experienced the worst moment of our parenting lives. As I just recalled this with Jess and she shrugged and said, “Yeah, but it’s nice how temporary that stuff is.” And it’s true. It’s hard to even remember the details. The next day we stopped briefly at the disappointing zoo in Milwaukee and continued all the way home to Minneapolis, a long but much happier day.

Art roaming around the Milwaukee zoo.

Bulk reading.

Jessica reading books to our kids and couple others thrown in during our recent vacation at the cottage.

Just in.

My ma just sent this fun photo from our trip to indiana. –sent from my handheld device–

At the lumber yard.

We stopped by the lumber yard (actually, the Yarnelle Lumber Company) when we were in Wabash to visit my grandma. Uncle Ken (my mom’s brother) and his wife Jill pretty much run the place by themselves (it’s been in the family for generations). Wabash has big box stores and Home Depot now but the lumber company has survived, a triumph in itself in my view.