fall fun

apple picking w/ mommy and my friends

I picked these off the tree w/ mommy's help.


These are my buddies. We're eating apples our mom's helped us pick. Boy were they (our mom's) glad that the farm had a wagon they could rent that would hold all of us!
I'm all of 5 mo older than they are, but I do teach them all the "fun" things I know how to do and Mommy warns their mom's about the tricks I teach them. We have lots of fun together.


Yellow or red? I like them both!



pumpkin patch farm w/ daddy and his cousins

I'm looking at pigs with my 2nd cousins on my Dad's Mom's side.



Hey, these make really good balls! (at least he was rolling, not kicking or throwing, this one)


It's not as great as the bumble bee I was going to bring home to show mommy (who was out of town this weekend), but this pumpkin should do just fine. She was proud nonetheless.
It looks bigger in this picture than it really is (camera angles can be so distorting); I carry it around every time I get the chance. Mommy says she might just be crazy enough to let me help carve one of our bigger ones this year. She's insane. But I'm told that never stopped her before.

Water, Frogs and Snakes

There were turtles too.
What seems like WEEKS ago, but was only 10 days ago, Zane and I went to a Toddlers and Tunes event at our local park . Here are some of the pictures from it, taken w/ my cell phone.

Looking at frogs in a bucket.


Finding a drum beside the buckets of turtles.


touching a snake. he really touched, it, but this picture turned out better.


And the impromptu drum circle w/ fellow beat-sters. Their hands really were flying.


Lastly, below, a pic of Z in front of the flood waters of the North Branch of the Chicago River last Sunday afternoon.

Saturday around 5pm we got a reverse 911 call from the police saying that evacuation locations were at our local police precinct. Now it had rained a lot that day and we'd driver through some water earlier as we'd driven through Lincolnwood and Skokie, but really, evacuation?

Then I started noticing a lot of tow trucks in the parking lot of the elementary school across the street from us. Being the curious cat that I am, coupled w/ Zane in the middle of a very uncharacteristic severe meltdown, we went out to take a walk in the neighborhood.

Following the flashing lights, sirens and tow trucks about three blocks from our house we discovered our neighborhood was very flooded.

We got to see a group of about 15 city workers trying to figure out how to fill sand bags with one shovel. They eventually got their acts together b/c the next day there were many sand bags about.

We were in the restricted area for most of the week while police limited car traffic to allow the heavy equipment to not only put down the sand bags while the water was rising, but get this--front loaders were used and city workers help flooded folks haul the debris of their homes out of flooded basements (and 1st floors) into large trucks that hauled the stuff away.

If only the folks in NOLA had that kind of help early on. Of course Katrina was a lot bigger area than the blocks around the North Branch of the Chicago River....

Travel around town was quite a chore, but we gratefully did not get any flooding. Some of the faulty building of our condo did get some water, but really, when you get 10+ inches in less that 48 hours, 6.5+ of them in 24, a bit of water damage is not unexpected. (the remnants of Hurricane Ike were only the last 1 or 2 inches of water)

Some homes along the river are still mucking out. aprox 350-400 homes were effected. The park we were at a few days earlier was also under water.

This was probably the high point of the water.

Stay dry and happy fall!

Popping Wheelies

So now that Frank's an international man of of accounting and all, he has a leg up on the "competition" and can score bit in the "toys that no other kids on the block has" department.

In our neighborhood that is pretty international to begin with, that can be quite a feat.

(Although, I'll readily admit it's really not the 17mo in the house that cares about these things, but I digress!)

Feast your eyes on the MOPI. From Hungary via a friend of a friend of Frank's from work.

Within ten minutes of getting on it, I decided Z needed to be wearing a helmet. Good thing too b/c he started popping wheelies up and down the hall.

Needless to say, he loves it.
He got the helmet so he could go bike ridding w/ Daddy.
And this is just a shot to show you how helpful and cute he is. He loves the vacuum cleaner, when it's off.
Have a great day.
The Rev.

the dangers of watching the oylmpics

Ok, so you knew it would happen--why didn't you all WARN me?

Z is now able to climb into any chair--he's even attempting to scale into our super tall bar stools, he'll manage that by Wednesday. Someone this morning said that from the time they walk until they have some kind of self-preservation skills developed is called “baby prison” for the parents.

No surface is out of his reach. He's been scooting furniture around for months. He's an amazing problem solver. I give him a week to figure out that he has the ability to get to every surface in our house. By pushing a chair up to it and climbing.

A trip to the emergency room is just around the corner.

Now, on to why it is not safe to watch the Olympics in our house.

We caught a bit of the men's gymnastics last night and Frank joked, "We probably shouldn't let Zane see this, it will give him too many ideas."

I agree.

Example number one:

This was the day after we watched the opening ceremonies. Like 38% of the households (some stat I saw in today's paper) in the US we were DVRing it at the same time. I mean really, if you can zoom through commercials, you do. Then if you see a cute one you can go back and watch it, like the Coke one w/ the colorful birds--watch it closely and see what the red one is standing in front of when he picks up his straw.

Anyway.

During one of the commercial breaks we went back to see the awesome drums.
picture 1
picture 2
picture 3
Then in our own little living room our 16mo son crawled up on the couch turned his back to the TV and used the side table as his drum, mimicking the slow but deliberate moves of that he's previously seen.

Smart little twerp. Seriously, it was pretty awesome so watch him, and a lesson in how he is soaking up EVERYTHING around him and more often than not giving it a whirl.

He also LOVES the "wawa". He and I were at the lake for a while when we visited my parents. He's a beast in the pool, jumping in w/ abandon, never thinking that he might *NOT* be caught. Even when he'd go under the water he came up smiling.

My sister suggested today that with is loves of all things "ball" and now "wawa" that perhaps we have a future water polo player in our midst.

Now off to search for a toddler gym in our area that will teach him how to do all this stuff safely, so that I don't deplete the oxygen level of every room I’m in as I watch him tumble off his latest height.

Flying solo - a day in the life

The Rev and Zane have gone on an extended trip to Missouri to visit friends and family, leaving yours truly to fend for myself (without a car). I started off the day by heading over to church to pick up our weekly share from our CSA. Drop-off is around 7:40 AM, and the buses don't run too frequently at that time of day on the weekends, so I had to leave the house around 6:45 to make it in time, even though it meant arriving 15 minutes early. Fortunately, a bus arrived a few minutes after I picked up the groceries, and I was able to make it back home fairly quickly.

Next I decided that our bicycle, which has barely seen the light of day in the past 5 years, needed to be cleaned up and put to use. Unfortunately, the tires were flat and we didn't have a bicycle pump. I figured I could pick one up at Home Depot (which is probably the closest hardware store to us if you're using the CTA), so I decided on a plan. I would go to Agent Orange (because it makes your green disappear) and buy a pump, then head to the Roscoe Village neighborhood where the annual "Retro on Roscoe" street festival was taking place, figuring I could have lunch and also find a bike shop (there aren't any in our neighborhood that I know of). Then I could head home, pump up the tires, and take the bike in to get tuned up and buy other necessities (helmet, lock, cable, spare tubes).

Well, it's always wise to have backup plans when public transport is involved, and when the southbound bus I wanted didn't show up for 10 minutes, I saw a bus heading westbound so I hopped on and went to Jefferson Park. As the bus was nearing the end of its route, I spied a bike shop on the left, so after I got off I walked over to check it out. It didn't open for another 30 minutes, so I walked to the library, checked e-mail and read for a while, then walked back to the shop.

The guy behind the counter (I believe it's the owner) doesn't win any points for congeniality, but he did help me find a combination pump set (one for home - a floor pump - and a portable one to mount to the bike) as well as some tubes and I headed back home on the bus. I was able to pump up the tires and ride back to the shop without incident. I left the bike for a tune-up and was promised it would be done by the late afternoon, which meant I had about four hours to kill.

So I decided to head to the Near West Side, which I've never been to before (that I remember). I knew that the original Al's #1 Italian Beef was in the 1000 block of West Taylor Street, but that's about it. I took the train through downtown (avoiding the crowds heading to Lollapalooza) and got off near Union Station, then walked south to Taylor Street and headed west.

As I walked down Taylor I saw the street blocked off with lots of fire engines and other equipment. Turns out it was the Chicago Fire Department's 150th anniversary celebration at the Robert J. Quinn Fire Academy. I stopped in and got a "junior firefighter" hat for Zane, but didn't stay around, although there was free food and other cool stuff, which in retrospect could have kept me fed and entertained until I was ready to head back. Incidentally, I learned in my readings at the library that the Fire Academy was built in the 1950s on the site of the former home of Patrick and Catherine O'Leary, where the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 started in a barn behind the house. (The O'Learys' cow was probably NOT responsible for starting the fire, by the way.)

I continued west through the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago, had a Polish sausage at Al's, then headed north to catch the train back to Jefferson Park. I had more time to kill, so I went back to the library, then found a local coffee shop and got an iced coffee, then back to the bike shop, where I bought a lock and a helmet and biked home (but based on my experience and comments from others, I'll be looking for another bike shop next time). A good day of exercise. Maybe I'll hit Roscoe Village tomorrow - now I can bike there instead of navigate by train and bus.

dumpr.net

Modern Art Museum by dumpr.net

lazy days of summer

So, you'd never know it's summer by the thermometer here in Chicago. Seriously I hope we don't pay for this with a bitterly cold winter.


We've been busy, going to the beach in Fl (which also was not unbearably hot) for the 4th of July, hosting family and friends back here at home.












He loves to mow. Outside and in.























Zane continues to be a learning machine. He babbles away. Words are still not completely understandable, except for "truckKKKKK", but the sign language I've taught him has come in handy as he UNDERSTANDS a lot more than he can talk about.For instance, he know to sit down when he wants to play his rythm sticks, or have his shoes put on. Plops right down in fact. He really enjoys both.

He loves anything that has to do with water:

He loves to boogie, dancing to whatever music is at hand: a commercial on the TV, a song on the ipod, a passing car playing Latin salsa or rap music. He's got the music in him and it makes his daddy VERY happy. Me too, it's just plain fun to watch him spinning around to the music.

Last night we got to take in one of Chicago's many free offerings: a Bossa Nova concert at Millennium Park. We put a blanket out on the lawn and Zane made everyone around us smile w/ his twirling/dancing/flirting.