We met josh today at a park in Richfield for grilled hot dogs, playground play, and disc golf.

Art was asking for a specific little bulldozer to play with this morning, and Jessica was looking everywhere. In her frustration she become inspired to completely organize toys and, most importantly, rid ourselves of unused ones. This is a photo of every toy we could find. Arthur helped (although not in this photo) and was allowed to keep any toys he wanted (and put them on the couch). For the most part he was fine with giving stuff away, although he was quick to say he wanted to keep the train whistle, new microphone toy jess got, the marble toy, and a few others.

Last night Ben rode his bike home from St. Paul and saw a festival in the Mexican neighborhood on Lake Street. He said there was food and one of those big, inflatable jumping things. So we took the kids out there for dinner. Art didn’t eat at all.

He spent the whole time playing in the big, inflatable things. He jumped what seemed like an hour. He jumped for so long we had to pay twice!

While they were cleaning the inflatable jumper I was talking to a man about how much fun my older son had had (Art was off getting a baloon) and how I had to pay again since he wouldn’t come out. The man said, “Oh, the little boy with the tutu? My wife told me about that.” (Art wanted to wear the tutu because we told him there would be music and dancing at the festival.) Then the man let Lewis go inside while they were wiping it down. Great for Lewis!

Art also went through an inflatable climbing thing, which was pretty fun. But he only did two of his three allotted passes. The jumper was calling him, I guess.

It was great. He jumped and jumped in that thing and what was the best for us parents is that he is usually pretty scared to go in things alone (see me on the climbing thing?) but he wanted to be in the jumper so bad at one point he even told us we could go away and he would just come and find us. When we initially told him that only kids were allowed, not grown-ups, he said, “That’s ok. I can just go in by myself and look at you through the window.” That was great for us. Poor Lewis. He couldn’t go in there because he would have gotten smacked down, but he got his chance later. And both kids got balloons that night. It was a nice evening.

Today we had a loverly bike ride over to and around Lake Harriet, then up to Linden Hills for lunch and some playing at a fun park.

Nanna just sent some photos to us from her visit.

Well, first of all, we've been on our own for a couple nights while Ben is shooting Viking Training Camp in Mankato.  Doing fine.  Keeping the fort under control and taking advantage of convenience food.  (Tonight's dinner was frozen stir-fry vegetables with tofu and a bottled stir-fry sauce.  No technique – or chopping, really – necessary.)  Lewis ate a lot,  as usual, and we had a lovely dance party after dinner.  Lewis was nude and trying to jump all over the place (his feet never actually leave the ground) and Art was wearing his shoes, so he could stomp, and a tutu.  Good times.

This just in from Jessica (I’m away in Mankato covering the Vikings training camp, ugh):

“Art ate a lot of stir fry veggies tonight, the boys played in the mud and washed off in the sink, and we banged our hands on the table really loud and yelled, ‘POOOOOP!'”

Over the past couple weeks – or maybe a month or so – we have been blessed with a lovely new development in Art's awareness.  He is telling the people he loves how he feels about them more than ever.  Just last week he said to Bubbe, out of the blue while they were playing a game or eating a snack or something, "Bubbe, you always make me happy."  He told Nanna that he loved her twice while she was in town.  At night he's started saying, "Goodnight, Mama.  I love you."  He only just started saying goodnight to us recently.  Just think.  3 1/2 years of hearing, "Goodnight, Art.  I love you," and suddenly something inside compelled him to start saying it back.  I like to think about it.