Our pumpkin patch plans were a little messy this year. We had an idea to take the girls to a new place (sorry, Mr. Peppers) and organized a bunch of folks to join us and Sarah took the day off of work… without checking if they were open that day. Whoops!
To save the vibe, we got some pumpkins at a garden center, brought them home, and painted them so it wasn’t just a complete bust of a day. The children never knew anything was wrong and the adults understood and everyone had a nice time.
The next week, we correctly scheduled our outing to the pumpkin patch. It was another fun day, until the children completely ran out of steam and moods soured. You can see the shift in the later photos. It was pretty funny and yielded one of my favorite photos of Penny as a vengeful Japanese ghost.
I realize I am just a bit behind on posting photos of my children here. To rectify that, here is the first of a series of gallery posts from last year.
It was a beautiful day in September and it made sense to drag the children out in their finest rainbow dresses to the playground. Well, Cheeks didn’t wear a rainbow dress; she was dressed like a tiny Mrs. Roper. As one does.
My kids are obsessed with Frozen and its sequel Frozen II. Mina will request “Elsha” the very first thing upon waking up in the morning or returning home from daycare or as soon as she’s finished throwing her unwanted blueberries on the floor at dinner. It is relentless.
So, as you might imagine, the music from the movies is a constant stowaway in my head. And as much as I think “Let It Go” is a banger of a karaoke song and that “Lost In the Woods” is a hilarious Peter Cetera riff, I am not always happy to have the snippets of the other songs I only partially know bouncing around my consciousness.
The particular song that inspired this post is from the second film. It’s called “Show Yourself”. It’s sung by Idina Menzel as Elsha and it’s very, very catchy. Beatrice especially loves this one. We have a bunch of videos of her belting it at the top of her lungs. It’s really quite endearing how strongly it sings to her little soul.
When Menzel sings the line “Show yourself!”, it resolves in a way that, in my mind, connects to Paul Simon’s iconic hit “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard”. You know the song. We all know the song. Everyone knows the song. It’s been playing non-stop since its 1972 release.
The mental mash-up, the music portmanteau goes a little like “Show yourself! I don’t know where I’m going, I’m on my way, I’m taking me time but I don’t know where”. Try it. It’ll get stuck in your head, too.
All done?
Good.
As you can imagine, such a potent musical melange wouldn’t stay sequestered in my head. When I am doing chores around the house the music escapes, and that means that Sarah has to endure it, also.
“Oh, god, I hate Simon & Garfunkel!” she said to me.
“I mean, yeah, goodbye to Rosie! Queen of corona!” I said.
“Yuck! I hate that song. There’s only one Simon & Garfunkel song I like.” We started to search through Spotify to find the song she was thinking about, but without success.
Then I had a thought, “Maybe it’s just a Paul Simon song?”
Then we found it. “Yes! This one! I love this song!” she said.
“This song?! This is the song you love??”
And do you want to know what the super hot Paul Simon jam my wife absolutely loves is?
It’s this:
Wow. You think you know someone and then you learn that their favorite Paul Simon song is “You Can Call Me Al”.
It was a slow Monday close to Halloween when we finally made it to the pumpkin patch this year. We did manage to get some cute photos which is, really, the point. You can get pumpkins all over the place. You go to the pumpkin patch to get cute photos of your kids having a good time.
This year marks Penny and Bea’s fourth visit to this particular pumpkin patch; once in utero and three in cute outfits. This also marks Cheeks’ second visit; again, once in utero and once in a cute outfit. It’s become a bit of a family tradition, I suppose.
You’ve seen a bunch of these on Instagram already, but if you wanted to see the full pictures in a place that’s not your tiny phone then have I got a treat for you! The full gallery is after the jump.
A few weeks ago, there was a short opportunity while the two older girls were napping to take some quick photos of Sarah and The-Baby-We’ve-Come-To-Call-Cheeks. I’m sharing them now because I spaced on posting them and there are some good ones in here. I mean, just look at that baby’s cheeks.
The girls love an adventure. Who doesn’t, really? Sometimes “adventure” means a 2 hour long car drive to go to a doctor appointment, which is really stretching the idea of what you think about when you hear “adventure”. But sometimes it also means taking a ferry to New Jersey and going to a zoo.
Sunday was that second type of adventure. We loaded Penny and Bea into the van, left the baby home with a sitter, and got on the Lewes-Cape May ferry. After a boat ride and snacks, we loaded back into the car and took the girls to the Cape May County Zoo. They got to see lions, bears, monkeys, camels, goats, cows, pigs, alpacas, wallabies, kangaroos, and, coolest for dad, a bald eagle.
A bald eagle! Neat!
Of course, as one would expect with toddlers, the most interesting part of the zoo was the acorns and fallen leaves covering the ground. They behaved well, no one melted down, and Penny didn’t get motion sick a single time. Overall pretty successful adventure.
The 20th of the month was the girls’ half birthday and Sarah thought it would be fun to have a half birthday party. She was right. It was fun!
She made them a cake and put them in cute outfits. They got a couple of communal gifts (all gifts are communal at this age for a couple of kids who share a birthday) and had a grand time running around being two and a half. Also, Beatrice is really working on her stink eye.
I took some photos because that’s what I do. Enjoy a pretty big gallery after the jump.
A couple weeks ago I took some photos of Wilbee sitting in a chair outside because she’s a baby and you take photos of babies. That’s pretty much it.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t quite smiling yet and she definitely couldn’t yet hold her herself up. Our shoot was pretty short because of that. We still got some cute ones, though.
Apologies for sleeping on these for a couple weeks. It feels like I took these photos yesterday, but the dates in the EXIF reveal that I live in a timewarp where minutes, hours, and days have no meaning whatsoever.