when we arrived...

when Josee's family arrived

Baby Cousin Dan and our three monkeys

Mia and Mommy on a walk through Nana and PopPop's neighborhood,
which backs to the NC Art Museum.Tim and Nigel take a rest at the entrance to the foot bridge over the beltline, just a short walk from Nana and PopPop's new house. It was hot this day, and he had his fur coat on, but Nigel was a trooper.

PopPop and Simon love to take pictures, often times of each other, and at the same time.

Josee and Dan (7 months) in Nana and PopPop's kitchen.

Four cousins swimming on Nana and PopPop's back porch, July 4th. Can't figure out why I have no pictures of the fifth monkey, 10 month old Isaac.

Interesting development... Simon was making a non-traditional paper airplane, this part shown here is a wing. I was trying to show in the picture how he had written 'my airplan' completely and perfectly backwards. This fascinates me. Recently I read a part of How Children Learn by John Holt which addresses common, and often incorrect, ways people attempt to diagnose and treat learning disabled children and adults. More on this later.

far away cousin box

When Mia was a baby and Tim was deployed to Iraq, we (the boys and I) made a box like this for her so she could see pictures of her daddy. It had several pictures of him from different angles, in different light and setttings. She could hold onto it, turn it over and around, lick it, stand on it, etc. It was all hers. She had no trouble accepting him as her dad when he returned after 7 months gone - she was 13 months old when he returned. I'll never know if the box had anything to do with it. She still has the box, though she doesn't play with it - it sits on her dresser top.
Well, now we live far away from the kids' new cousin Dan (my sister's 7 month old baby). We are able to watch videos of him on Youtube, and get pictures from their blog, but for Dan, though, we made a baby-friendly picture box. This box had raw sugar in it. When it was empty, we added some dried black beans, taped the spout closed, and covered it in tissue paper to hide the package writing. Then we covered it with torn tissue paper in lots of bright colors, added recent pictures of our three monkeys, and contact paper to protect it all. I can never get the contact paper to wrap and secure well at the ends, so I added some packing tape over the ends.

Very secure, not indestructible, but sure to provide lots of noisy fun for little man.

National Gallery of Art, Friday May 4, 2007

Fountain in the West Building at the NGA, Simon took this shot.
All three kids with Nana Judith at the cascade fountain in the concourse at the NGA.
After lunch at an outdoor fountain, Mia found the large azalea on the ground and insisted on posing for a few pictures.
Another shot by Simon, Nana Judith showed him how to position the camera to include the capital in the background. Next lesson, how to command everyone's attention.