happy memorial weekend!

The boys hope your holiday weekend is as fun as theirs has been so far.

They started out with a picnic feast out in the yard:





Then they moved on to the "bathing" portion of the evening:




And now they're doing some camping (indoors, but still very fun):

spring concert

Max and Henry had their spring concert this week, and Liam was very excited to finally get an audience member perspective on the proceedings instead of having to perform. He gave us his prediction for the show:



The program itself started with the younger kids group. Henry was probably the youngest one, and he didn't quite live up to Liam's expectations, but he was definitely in the spirit of things (you can hear him squealing in excitement):



It should be noted that X, the baby next to Henry, is at least six months older, but barely any taller. So even though Henry's kind of shripmy compared to where Liam and Max were at that age, he's still quite tall. Anyway, after the little kids joined their parents in the audience (or, in Henry's case, a parent, sibling, aunt, and Yami), the big kids took over. They did six or seven songs, and culminated in this impressive finale. Apologies if you wanted to see all the kids, but there's only one I really cared about so I focused on him.

sharp-dressed men

before and after

the force is with them

the misgivings tree

My friend Natalie's excellent post on the real meaning of the classic children's book The Giving Tree reminded me of our own recent arboreal adventures.

We have a pair of giant maple trees in front of our house that flank the small parking area. Every time there's a storm, or the wind blows the right way, the trees give give generously of their branches -- the small ones and the large ones. Branches in the parking area, branches across the sidewalk, branches hitting the house, big branches in the street -- yes, these are truly generous trees. But eventually, all the giving just got to be too much. So I called the city's street department.

Since the trees are in the park strip between the sidewalk and the street, it turns out that they're not our responsibility, which I found out six weeks later when a city crew showed up at our doorstep before 8:00 one morning. The verdict: One of the trees got a nice trim, and the other one was too far gone inside, and got the chop before it could fall on its own and smash our house.

It was pretty exciting to watch them cut down the tree, and apparently, we saved a TON of money since the city would do it (I've been told this by my parents, one of my uncles, and helpful members of the city crew themselves). And we have an added bonus: Since we've got one less tree, we were able to get a satellite dish for TV and now we can kiss our crappy cable provider good-bye! And that, my friends, is definitely a gift worth getting.

P.S. Lest you think I'm too callous about the loss of our ancient friend, you should know that we've already planted a flowering plum tree nearby (but out of the way of the dish) to balance things out a little.

triops

Mike and I both had to work during the school's fun fair this year, so brave Avalon took all three boys over to the school and navigated the masses by herself. The boys enjoyed dinner (hot dogs and chips) and a variety of games (including their favorite, an inflatable slide!) along with something relatively new to them: face painting.


Max chose to get a tree on his cheek for reasons unknown to me, while Liam went with an eyeball on his forehead. Since the boys' favorite band is They Might Be Giants (who are definitely in my top five as well!) I can only assume that this was the inspiration:

max wanted in on the photo shoot, too

henry at eight months

Henry is a very confident little guy. He knows exactly what he wants, and he goes after it. He's also quite possibly the happiest baby I've ever seen, and the combination of those two factors makes him really fun to watch. His favorite activities right now are crawling all around the house, knocking down blocks, splashing in the tub, and laughing at Liam. Max can make him laugh, too, but Liam is usually the one who earns the happy baby belly laughs from Henry.

Still no teeth, and still gallons of drool every day, so he must be working on it. Right? He MUST be. At this point, though, he'll still be ahead of both big brothers if he gets a tooth during the next month or so. The race is on!

He is growing like a weed (definitely time for some new onesies for these pictures) and constantly on the go. Next month, I'll have a more formal growth update, but for now, you can see it in his happy baby photos.

See also: one month, two months, three months, four months, five months, six months, seven months.

blog note

Been missing us? We ran into a little tech problem -- namely, the motherboard on my computer bit the dust and had to be replaced. So for the past few weeks, things have been pretty crazy as I snagged Mike's laptop whenever I had to work, but otherwise didn't have much time to compute. But my computer is back now, so I can finally start downloading all of these pictures and videos, and get back to posting more regularly. Thanks for your patience!