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”.
We also got to celebrate Mina’s first birthday this March. She’s proving to be an incredibly pleasant little girl, all smiles and laughs with very little unprovoked freaking out. If she is melting down, something is wrong.
Fortunately, he birthday was free of freak outs. We were also dealing with lingering daycare plague, so we delayed her birthday party until the second half of April. This nice thing about tiny kids is that they have no idea what “time” or “dates” are, so making them wait to celebrate their birthdays until it makes most sense for everyone is totally fine. Parenting!
It’s that holiday time of year again. And again I have a holiday card to share with you all. Spend some quality time with people you love whether they are your given family, chosen family, or whoever else. Eat something good. And I’ll see you in 2024.
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 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.
