Birdie Gets Bangs

Keen-eyed observers will have noted in the last post that Birdie has bangs! Fans, you will recall when Birdie recently took her do into her own scissors if you will and hacked off several clumps here and there. One such hank was in the middle of her forehead. We have now reached the point in The Great Grow Out that tide-over bangs are needed.

Birdie is keen to have longer hair. She would like hair like Julie's--"sort of long, sort of short." Medium, in other words.

The deal is hair is only trimmed when it is not put in mouths, not cut by Clara, and brushed each morning.  Pinkie promise.

Night Birdie

Julie ate dinner out tonight with a friend and so said her good nights to the bambini early, before leaving. But she arrived home around nine-fifteen to find Birdie awake, sitting up with head bowed, quietly looking at books. In response to Julie's hushed, "Birdie," Clara said, "I just love books." She said, "One more." Julie agreed and offered her hand to shake. Clara have her a sideways high five instead and then held out her pinky. After Julie had hooked her pinkie around Clara's, Clara said knowingly, "It's called a pinkie swear."

It's also called darling.

The Love Goes In the Suitcase

But what of Our Birdie? Oh Fans. Such sweetness she holds. Sometimes, while Julie lays next to her on Birdie's bed after reading books to her at night, Clara will fling her arm across Julie and say, "Mommy, you're the best." She says it with such passion and conviction it's impossible for Julie not to be moved to tears. (Though we all know Julie's propensity for tears.)

The bambini have spent two weeks--one in June and one in July--with their Grandparents Trump. Upon their return one Sunday evening, we met up with Grandma Connie's cousin, Judy, and husband, Bob, at a fancy restaurant. So Birdie was decked out in one of her long dresses, accessoried with the charm bracelet given to her by Aunt Kate. One of the charms is a heart-shaped locket. Clara calls it "a suitcase" and will brook no correction. But it's a charming notion anyway, to pack your loved ones into your suitcase and dangle it from your swinging arm.

Here is the picture Birdie wanted to pack in her suitcase, then when we arrived home from dinner. In the first, the people are suitcase-sized. The second is there so you can see the Birds a little better.

Joe's Seventh Birthday Party

Birthday Boy

Our Hero celebrated his seventh with roughly 20 of his nearest and dearest at a local park. One of the neatest things about Joe is how he seems to get one with just about everyone and carries his friends from one part of his life into the next. So his guests were a mix of kids he first played with--or next to!--as a baby, kids he met along the way at KinderCare, friends from kindergarten and then first grade, and kids he met because they too go to Kid's Place. And one of the nicest things about seven-ish-year-olds is that they are all still content to play in bug, shifting but still all encompassing packs. So the rain held off, the parents who stayed chatted they way grown-ups do, and the kids tore around the way kids do in between eating handfuls of chips and guzzling Gatorade.

Joe's cake featured, after much thoughtful consideration and debate, a peregrine falcon and a cheetah. (In case the connective tissue is not obvious, that would be the fastest animal, period, and the fastest land animal.) When Julie placed the order, the bakery folks made like it would be no problem to find a peregrine falcon and cheetah in their image database. A few days before the party, they were stumped. They requested pictures, but cautioned against using another's image. Well sure. We have so many--of each!--on hand.

Our legal counsel considered all this for about two milliseconds before placing a call to Ted. There are laws and there are laws.

Somewhere out there are two photographers whose pictures--courtesy of YouTube and Ted--were on a cake for less than 12 hours, before it was cut up into at least 20 pieces and ingested, but not before it made one newly minted seven-year-old really happy.

Making a wish. 

Holiday card preview. No. Birthday photo bomb.

The Knudermuths Come To Town

The company.

By now, they have come, and gone. Some two weeks ago now, our friends Sanne and Todd rolled into town on their way to Todd's family's annual get-together in Wisconsin. We usually see them only once a year, but the four kids get on like gangbusters all the same, which is so much fun to see even if it makes us miss them and their parents all the more. Most of our adult-friends-with-kids have two boys which creates a dynamic that is a little harder for Clara to move in. Joe rolls as easily with the gals though as he does the guys. This visit included a long trip to the pool following the performances of two ballets, pictures of which you see here.

Friends. They're the best.

Female ensemble.

Taking five.

Joe's Seven-Year Well-Child Exam

Fans. We know! You'd have given us up for dead had many of you not seen smoke signals.  Here we are. Our silence has been due in part to technical difficulties flowing from the acquisition of a new computer (and indeed, we are still restricted to pictures taken with the iPhones) and in part to just the trials and vagaries of Life.

We will plunge in to the here and now and loop back in the coming days. Our Hero is SEVEN--!!!!!!! That's a seven exclamation mark sentence. He had his seven-year well-child appointment late Friday afternoon. He fell asleep between his pick-up at camp and Dr. H's office, not that you would know it once he was there. Fans, he was in fine from, chatting up Dr. H about this, that, and the next thing--sharks at the zoo, why Dr. H uses a computer with a mouse that's a red dot. . .you name it. When asked what he liked to eat, he said not macaroni and cheese (which he would mainline were it possible), but--wait for it: carrots. And strawberries. This last, at least, we believe. He was lolling on the exam table like he was at home on the couch watching Wildkratts. That was how we saw he hadn't remembered to take off his pajama shorts. They were peaking out underneath his other shorts. He was on. Fire.

He continues to be a big dude: weighing in at 56 pounds (72%) and measuring 49 1/2 inches (71%). He continues to have some common, benign but irritating skin virus that produces little flesh-colored bumps on the affected area. It's been about one exasperating year now and the virus has not "run its course," so we're to taking him to the dermatologist. Apparently, she will apply beetle juice (for real) and that will evaporate them. Otherwise, Our Hero is the picture of a well child.