My sister dropped off some glue sticks for her hot glue gun and I’m using them to make Art’s costume. She stayed long enough for Lewis to help her with her zipper, up and down, up and down, up and down.

Today I headed up to Brainerd to watch the press run of the Ant Farm book at Bang Printing. It was a real thrill. My friend and publisher Norton and I spent the day tweaking color on the prints. It looks really good and will should be bound and in book stores within two weeks!

(Jessica made me take this photo…)

Bubbe made this for her Halloween bake sale at her job at the hospital. She stopped by after work to deliver us the morbid remains. thanks, Bubbe!

I am making Art a stegosaurus costume.  I didn’t have a pattern so I made a practice model on Pinnochio.  Oh, and the real costume is totally cute – if you don’t look too closely at the duct tape and staples holding it together.  Will post pics when it’s done.

She sings a beautiful song and I’d feel guilty if I was the only one who was able to enjoy it… Art had taken a late afternoon nap and Jessica was trying to wake him.(video is audio only)

From a year or so ago.

Today we took the kids to the bird sanctuary at Lake Harriet, about a 15 minute bike ride from our house. Jess and I are gonna try and make Monday’s nature day (zoo’s, nature walks, etc). Nice for the kids to know what to expect, and also for us to know what the hell to do with them. Here are some lovely photos from our time there.

Jessica, as usual, was taken with the mushrooms. It’s actually a real treat to be around her and absorb the excitement and fascination she has for them. And for nature in general. Things that I take for granted are fascinating and wonderful to her. I love that.

just after we arrived we stopped to watch the street sweeper show.

As I’ve said before, I am just salivating in anticipation of seeing Art make some representational art. I just so desperately want to see how he translates what he sees in the world to paper or clay or whatever! But alas, Art is not into realism. He does, however, love to manipulate his materials! Any project I’ve ever done with him that had scissors nearby eventually disintegrated into cutting for cutting’s sake. Making lots of pieces for some unknown purpose. Or going and gluing and gluing, probably just because he likes to squeeze the bottle. But he did make a beautiful abstract crayon “piece” at school last month (picture coming) and he did a project at school where he cut up fall-colored tissue papers and dropped the pieces, like leaves, onto a precut tree-shaped paper. That was a nice collage. We sent it to his great-grandma.

So I thought, maybe I could get him to draw a face if I gave him paper in the shape of a head! These are the results.

He actually made the pom-pom one on the right first. I gave him googley eyes to use but he preferred the pom-poms. That’s two eyes and a mouth up there. You might think the red dot in the middle of the pink one’s ‘head’ is a mouth, but I think it might be a nose. I can’t remember now. What I do remember well is that he made the two dots for the eyes first. Then I asked if his person would need a mouth. He drew a big circle around the two dots. I asked him if my eyes were inside my mouth like that. He said, “No, but his eyes are. That’s just the way he is!”

Art tells Mama about our visit (he also threw in a nice ‘pumpkin butt’):

Last night Arthur said he wanted to go to the aquarium where you move by yourself (the mall’s overpriced underground thing where there’s a moving walkway) and see the sharks, and he wanted me to stay there the whole time. So today we went. Sharks have been on the forefront of his little mind ever since we saw the massive and amazing great white shark attack seals in 40-times slow motion on the nature show. It really is incredible footage. In fact, I just found it on YouTube! Watch the whole clip, but the most incredible part is when the thing soars out of the water with seal in mouth at time 2:10: