Hanging out with relations (or at their house, anyway).

Jim was pretty cool.


He made Lottie a blanket pile. I don't know why.


Best place for watching cartoons.


Aunt Emmy painted Lottie's toenails (and she held still for it, too!).


The result.


Jim and Uncle Ilya, silently entranced by the wonders of technology.


Lottie's first selfie. Well, no, she's had hundreds. Lottie's most recent selfie, anyway.

Miscellanea.

I asked Jim to go get Lottie a cheese stick. He came back and said he had a better snack. Lottie didn't disagree: An entire bag of grapes is basically baby heaven.


Jim likes to get crazy when he's brushing his face. Er, his teeth, I mean.


He said he was a safari guy building a safari truck.


Jim and Lottie are street, yo.


Jim was super super proud of this little pumpkin we grew. It turned into mini pumpkin pies at Emmy and Ilya's last weekend.


Forgive the blur, but I assume you can make out the sheer thrill she's getting out of dancing.


Lottie's stompy dance in all its glory.


Jim made a "friendly dragon." Lottie liked it.

What a charmer.

So I asked Jim what he did in his swimming lesson today, and he told the following story:

My girl was there, and I said to her "POOP!" and she said "Why you say poop to me?" and I said "HOT DOG POOP!"

Good come-back, Jim. I can already tell he's going to be a hit with the ladies.

Bowling!

Jim was too excited to stand still for a picture of him in his bowling shoes.


Forgive the blur, but you have to appreciate the technique on display. Jim mostly utilized the "chuck it from on high" method of bowling.


Watching the result. He was a pretty good sport, actually, for most of the game. Much high-fiving all around if a lot of pins go down, and a comforting pat on the hand with a "don't worry, you'll get more next time" if it's a miss.


Lottie was mostly just excited about the ball return thingy. And the olives that came with our nachos.

A much-needed trim.

Jim held perfectly still to earn the promised lollipop.


Afterwards with his prize, a cheese-flavored (yeah, that's what I thought) lollipop. He later told me he wanted his Jim-hair back. His first haircut remorse! I know that feel.

Now back to your scheduled programming.

Picture updates are complete! Everything should be visible now. Let me know if they're not so I can fix them. Updated posts are:

A Boy and His Rhinoceros
A Giant Photo Dump
Fourth of July Festivities
A Walkabout

Go look if you've missed any of them.

Handyman.

See, ordinarily I prefer to leave anything involving tools and lifting to Noah. Alas, with him gone, I've got to occasionally do work myself, so when my shiny new bed frame arrived in thirty pieces spread across two cardboard boxes, I rolled up my sleeves (uh, proverbial sleeves - it's Georgia in July, we don't wear sleeves) and prepared to get my hands dirty. Fortunately, Jim was ready to step in and help get the job done.


Big muscles to make the work go faster.


Lottie decided that her job was to try to eat the packing materials, so Jim helped me chuck everything in the trash right away.

At first I thought that, being four and all, Jim would probably be more of a detriment than a help. It turned out that I actually couldn't have gotten the thing together without him. There's no way I could've held up both ends of the frame so I could screw on the rails, but Jim held it up steadily and without complaint until it was together enough to stand on its own.


Jim held everything together while I put in screws.


Tiptoeing around the finished product.