The Race

Today was the CHaD super hero half marathon in Hanover, NH. I've been told I have to post a couple photos so here you go. For those who aren't familiar with the characters I ran as the Tick and Jeff ran as the Green Lantern. The event set the Guiness World Record for most costumed heroes in one place (something like 1510 people dressed as heros). Best quote of the day was from Jeff (pointing at me) "I can't believe we're in a place where I can't find you in a crowd dressed like that."

Here we are lining up for the start. Don't I look excited to be there? You might need to click on this one to enlarge, but here's a little "Where's Waldo" for you.

Julie and Molly met up with Tessa and Alan. The timing worked out that I just happened to run by while they were getting picked up. I was disappointed that more people didn't manage to keep the costumes going for the whole race.

Molly got to spend some time playing with Lex and Eve

I managed to run the whole race and even beat my time goal so I was quite pleased with the results. Jeff ran the race having spent the last week hiking and camping in Glacier National park and getting only 3 hours of sleep last night. Molly was super well behaved the whole time and even played with some kids at the event. A good (if somewhat sweaty and warm) time was had by all.

Beppe's beads

I finally let Molly open her bead-making kit from Beppe.

Painting the beads:
The mess
Beads drying
The final product, a necklace and two bracelets.

Beach day

We went to the New Hampshire shore Friday with our friends from the north. It was perfect weather and perfect company.

Molly and Lex play in the sand.


Molly and Eve play in the sand.


Molly, after much coaxing, finally gets into the water with the other kids.


Here she is playing with Tessa -- running out of the water, then turning around and waving to her before running back in. Repeat. Repeat.


Moms and daughters.


The after party. For three kids who had a long, busy day, they were perfectly behaved from beginning to end. What a fantastic day!

Busy week

We've had a ton of stuff going on this past week, yet we don't have a single picture to show for it.

I spent the weekend in NYC visiting my brother, my first night ever away from Molly. I missed her terribly the whole time. We had a great time shopping in the garment district, riding the Staten Island ferry, heading out to Queens in search of strange ethnic food. But everything made me think of Molly and Jim -- all the cute little girls everywhere, daddies bouncing fussy babies, playgrounds, basketball courts, just about anything.

I came home expecting everybody to be cranky and exhausted. Instead, the living room was vacuumed, the kitchen clean, the refrigerator full of freshly made food (even a peach pie). Molly bounced over and hugged my knees and then went back to exercising with Daddy on the floor, as if I had just been in the other room the whole time. Well. I'm not sure what to think about all this. Maybe I should go away more often. :)

The closest we have to a picture is this, Molly in her NYC t-shirt the night I got home. This is the only way we can get her to talk on the phone lately. Can you tell that Jim's on the cordless? She hops on the other phone and chatters away.

Then, in yet more excitement, we had a visit from Oma and Beppe this week. Molly showed them her library and Beppe took us for ice cream. We went swimming in the hotel pool. Molly was full of kisses and hugs for her grandmother and great-grandmother. We were all sad to see them go.

Today we went to another neighborhood kid's birthday party, where the dad gave Molly two servings of cake, and she left with a sack of candy from a pinata, party favors and a goodie bag full of more candy. We let her eat a lollypop for dinner (cringe).

It was actually kind of funny. She started the meal chattering about "pop starts with 'puh'" and "Daddy, do you want a lick?" and "this silly band is a sailboat and it's yellow and it matches the yellow towel." By the end, Jim was playing Greensleeves on the ukelele (which actually didn't seem unusual until I typed it) and Molly gazed off into the distance and said, "This song sounds like saying good-bye." Huh.

OK, so I was only half paying attention just now as I helped Molly zip up her backpack. I just found her by the front door, about to walk outside with her sippy cup in her hand, the backpack on her back and entirely naked from the waist down. Time to go pay more attention. Clearly it's not safe to leave a kid alone after this much sugar.

Little things

I realized the other day that Molly's toe were almost touching the bars of her crib bed, so we decided to upgrade. This is Molly in her new twin bed, complete with the oh-so-important purple sheets. She did really well in it last night, considering --she's been waking up a few times a night for a while now for various minor complaints (need blankets, just general crying, etc) so it's hard to separate what's the new bed and what's just normal.


This is what we did this morning.


I've been bugging the local food pantry for a while about giving me some volunteer work and they finally gave me a couple stories to write for the newsletter (tight deadline, sources that can't be reached ... ah, just like old times). In the process of interviewing a volunteer this week, it occurred to me that as a non-journalist I'm free to participate in the story so we accepted an invitation to go pick peaches for the pantry clients. These are peaches that the orchard isn't going to sell and they would otherwise go to waste.

Molly was a very good sport, even though she wanted to leave pretty much from the moment we got there. The other volunteers saved the day and somehow got her picking. At one point Molly sat down with peaches in her hands and refused to put them in my box. She told me she was helping "the lady" and would only put them in her box. I'm just glad she didn't seem to notice that we didn't bring home any fruit. :)

And lastly, is it OK if I post a little art work?
This is a drawing Molly made a few minutes ago of our family. That's me in blue on the bottom right, Daddy in green (looks like black) in the middle and Molly in pink in the upper left.



It's just in the last few days that she's been drawing family portraits. It looks random, but the drawings tend to have the same elements, the circles and the pair of vertical lines with horizontal cross lines.

As she was drawing this one tonight (I think it's just me and her, she told me she hasn't drawn Daddy on yet) she was talking about it, saying something like, "line them up together" as she drew the vertical lines, then "give a hug, ooh I like hugs" as she drew one horizontal line and then "ooh, a snuggle" as she draw the second. I thought that was cool.

Dancing

Daddy made Molly a new CD. Molly approves.








Like father like daugher? The picture on the wall is Jim as a little boy.

Birthday party

This was our excitement this week -- Teddy's birthday party. His mom arranged for the kids to get a tour of a local fire station.

That's Teddy in the blue t-shirt.





The kids were all pretty tired by the time we tried to pose them for a group shot. This is the best one I got. The neighborhood gang (minus one or two kids who wandered out of the frame) ...