Ian's First Day of School

A trip to the playground before school starts (in other words, Mommy arrived insanely early so we had to waste a bit of time).

Ian in front of Nichols Park where his Art and ABCs class is held.

Ian is done taking pictures and ready for school!
He's trying to reach the doorbell so he can go inside.

Ian, ready to start.
Oddly, no other children arrived 10 minutes early.
Ian is unimpressed with their lack of scholarly devotion.

School starts! Time to make name tags so the teacher can learn everyone's name.

This project totally confused Ian, because the teach called it a name tag, so Ian kept trying to stick it onto his shirt.
Luckily, Mrs. G did not hear Ian correcting her and calling it a place card.

End of school relaxation with play-doh
(after art, then dancing, then soccer...they pack a lot into an hour and a half!)

Armed!

I armed Ian with squirt guns and am now drenched and regretting the impulse buy.

Year of the Tiger!

Happy Chinese New Year!
All bundled up (it was a bit chilly).

Kat and Shannon.

Ian loved the parade and was smiling the whole time...although its a bit hard to tell with the scarf covering 90% of his face.

Notice how close Ian is to the parade -- he was dancing to the music and kept trying to join the parade.

FIRETRUCKS! The Chinatown Fire Station was open after the parade. Needless to say, Ian was ecstatic!

Jesse had a pretty good time, too.

Future fire fighters.

Happy little boy.

Two happy boys.

Ian's New Robe

"Check out my awesome frog robe from Nana!"

"I am modeling the hood now"

"Strike a pose"

"Are we done?"

Halloween Trick-or-Treating

Ian was a bulldozer and Milo was a tree for Halloween. They had a wonderful time, and consumed more sugar than they've ever had in their entire lives.



Getting two toddlers to look at the camera at the same time is hard enough. Adding candy to the mix made photo-taking completely impossible.

The shops in Lincoln Square had candy for the kids. From now on, Ian will probably expect shop owners to greet him with candy.

If you look closely, you will notice that Milo has just dived head-first into the wagon. Milo loved the wagon. Ian wanted to walk the entire time. There was candy to be had, and no time to waste.

I eventually convinced Ian to ride in the wagon for a bit when I promised to give him some of his candy early.




Jane made Ian a truck blanket which was a huge hit once Ian and Milo figured out that it would help return feeling to their hands and feet.


They must have given us good candy, because I look pretty excited here.

At this house, the lady said, "What a nice tractor!".
Ian looked at her horrified and then sternly said, "I BULLDOZER, not TRACTOR!"

She looked perplexed that the difference mattered. Clearly, she was a mother to girls, not little boys.

Ian's bucket from Buscia was totally full by the end of our day. It was a very, very successful Halloween.

Happy Halloween!

Ian's Halloween Costume

This was Ian's response to the dinosaur costume.

Three hours later, using stuff I had around the house, this was the
Bulldozer costume I created for him (with Ben's artistic input).

The back of the costume.

Strutting his stuff.

Daddy carves the best pumpkins.

Happy Halloween!

The Artist in His Natural Element

"I'm painting!"

"This is how you paint! See? Get tons of paint on your hands!"

"Then SMUSH them around the paper.
You can use your feet, too."

"I have occasionally used my butt to paint, but I would not recommend it."

"Hmmm...weird. My hands seem to have something on them."

"Yeah for painting!"