A literary pair.

Lottie waits patiently for Jim to select suitable reading material.


Another day, another book.

Continuing the venerable Photo Dump tradition.

Lottie makes a discovery in front of the Y.


Posing for a picture.


Jim played an elaborate game of "store" with his bunnies. He made money, merchandise, receipts, and everything.


Lottie can put this hat on all by herself. It makes her feel super cool.


"Baby sister sit on me!" is one of Jim's favorite games.


One day I suggested that Jim come up with a surprise while I went to get a drink. When I came back, he had picked up his toys and set up my comfy old chair with a blanket, a book, a footstool, and a cuddly companion. Is he sweet or what?


While I was cleaning up her room, Jim took it upon himself to make a pillow fort in Lottie's bed.


Lottie was very interested.


Jim kept a hostage.


Alas, baby sister could still look inside.


There is no escape from babies.


Despite the lack of absolute privacy, Jim was pretty satisfied with the results.

Look what Jim can do!

Lottie's doctor visit.

It's a good thing Lottie's 18-month doctor visit was scheduled while Jim was at preschool. She was tragic enough to require all of my attention.


See how happy she is here? That's not how she looked at the doctor's office.

How tragic, you ask? She started to whimper the second we entered the waiting room, and refused to lift her head up off of my shoulder even to see the super cool fire truck toys they had on the floor. As soon as the nurse called her name, the whimpering turned into outright crying, and by the time she was being weighed, she was sobbing too hard to stand up.


This grin is also not representative of her experience.

Her crying subsided slightly while we were waiting in the examination room, thanks to some nice books involving kangaroos and piggies, but the second the doctor appeared, everything was tragedy once more. She laid her head on my shoulder and wailed while he listened to her heart, sobbed when he looked in her ears, and howled when he wiggled her limbs. In fact, she was crying so hard she didn't even really notice when the nurse came in and gave her a few shots. Small mercies, etc etc.


Turkey makes babies happy. Doctor visits do not.

So how did it all go? Well, her heart apparently sounds less like a party than it used to, and all her parts appear to be in normal working order. She's fully up to date on her shots and won't need any more until she's 4. She's about 30" long (29.92 inches, to be precise, which puts her in the 5th percentile) and weighs 22 pounds even (13th percentile), but the doctor cautioned that both of those numbers might be unreliable since she was thrashing about so much during the measuring. Still, moving up on the growth charts is nice. Maybe soon she'll outgrow her 6-9 month onesies.

Summer is OVER!

After an extremely long summer break, Jim started preschool again on Friday. It was a great day for everyone.


He was too excited to keep his mouth shut, but who can blame him?


Here he is on the first day of preschool last year. Apparently giraffes are just a great choice for starting school. I think he looks pretty much the same, only with shaggier hair in this year's picture.

He's got a new room, a new teacher, and a mostly-new group of classmates this year, but he didn't seem fazed in the least. When I dropped him off, he barely acknowledged me when I told him I was leaving.


While he was out, Lottie reveled in the chance to be an only child for the morning and keep all the cake batter for herself. She said "FANKS!" every time I gave her a taste.

We took advantage of the free morning to make a cake and go to the doctor. I'll post up the details of Lottie's 18-month doctor visit tomorrow.


Jim's teacher said he was a very hard worker all day.


He was very excited to show me what he did when he got home.

It's shaping up to be a good year. Miss Megan, his new teacher, is very nice and gets along well with Jim, and the class is really small - just six kids. It should be mostly the same as last year, lots of arts and crafts and running about, but they'll be working on numbers and early reading skills, too. I believe I invited most of you to his class's Facebook group so you can see the pictures, but if I missed anybody, just send me a message and I'll see what I can do.

Sneakers make babies look huge.

It's a fact.


If only I could get her to stop clinging to my leg for four seconds so I could take a picture and show you.


Now that's more like it.


Seriously, doesn't she look like a proper toddler? *sniff*


She can climb stairs and everything (as long as there are only two of them and they're on the playground and not in the house).


She can even fight with a long-suffering big brother.


Speaking of big brother, Jim's no slouch in the growth and development department either. Look at those muscles.


Give it five years. I bet they'll have their own trapeze act.

Jim helps with furniture, part 2.

So we had this elderly and well-worn but sturdy dresser. (keep looking, it's behind the cute baby)


Jim helped me sand it so it could be stained.


Lottie tried to help too, but she lost interest quickly.


She was more interested in admiring her reflection.


Fortunately, Jim was on the job.


The finished product.

How Lottie Became Afraid of the Kitchen Floor

So one morning this week, the kitchen floor was mysteriously swarming with fire ants. I have no idea where they came from, or why, or how. So I put the kids out of harm's way and set about spraying all the ants with bleach water so they would die and we could have breakfast in peace.

Naturally, halfway through the cleaning process, Lottie came charging in, slipped on the wet floor, and fell into a swarm of not-dead fire ants. Obviously she absolutely lost her poor little mind. I managed to scrape them all off her before she got more than a couple bites, but she was so scared she just stood there shaking and whimpering.

We went out for donuts instead of breakfasting at home.

Fast forward several days, the floor is ant-free, we're about to go visit the relatives, and I've foolishly packed the high chair before having lunch. No big deal, thought I. Lottie can just sit on the floor and have hers as a picnic, which she usually likes. But the second her little feet touched the floor, she went completely rigid and started screaming. Picked her up, calm and jolly. Back on floor, completely petrified.

So Lottie now has kitchen floor PTSD.

 (Sorry this post has no pictures - I foolishly neglected to reach for the camera when Lottie was flailing about covered in fire ants)

A ruckus.

A pose before the concert begins.


No one can accuse him of being lacking in enthusiasm.


I wish you could hear him shouting "Dance, Yottie, dance!"

Guess what Jim found!

Is it a cheesecake? Hulk Smash? Somebody's spare shoe? Fine, I'll show you.


One of the parks near us has a little pond with a gazebo over it.


The view from the gazebo looks like so. If you look down, though...


Turtles! A whole herd of them! There was a muskrat, too. Those critters are a lot faster than I thought.


Jim was nice enough to show baby sister.


She was more interested in using my leg as her own personal jungle gym, though.


So Jim helped her find her way back to the main path to head back to baby-attracting things like pine cones and gum wrappers.