Francis turns two

August 29, 2007

Mar­tin and Theo cel­e­brat­ed Fran­cis’s sec­ond birth­day with an after­noon out­ing to fav spot Bat­sto Lake. 

Francis turns two Francis turns two Francis turns two


Pho­tos: Fran­cis laughs by the lake, Theo mak­ing rip­ples, group shot, video speech.

The Young Conservative

August 29, 2007

The Young Conservative
Fran­cis on the cov­er of the mock magazine.

Pho­to: A new pub­li­ca­tion of the Neo Post Con­ver­gent Dia­per Set. An irony I have to point out is that I’ve agreed to have the boys raised Catholic, the faith to which Julie returned after eleven years with Friends. Can I help it if the kids look so dern pho­to­genic in front of Quak­er meet­ing­hous­es? Enlarged pho­to.

Lead-painted toys? Aye-Yeash!

June 19, 2007

Trains & MessesThe Times has a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle on the rise of recalls on Chinese-made toys over the last few years. Two of our kid’s “Thomas and Friends” wood­en trains are part of the lat­est recall because of lead paint. We’ve long pre­ferred the met­al Thomas trains since 21-month old Fran­cis chews on the wood­en ones and gnaws their paint off.

We learned about the lead paint­ed Thomas’s on the same day that our fam­i­ly doc­tor told us that it was offi­cial­ly time to become con­cerned with Fran­cis’s slow speech devel­op­ment. When Theo was just a lit­tle old­er than Fran­cis is now we put togeth­er a dic­tio­nary of his vocab­u­lary. Fran­cis makes cute sounds and seems bright and curi­ous but he’s not even got­ten out a con­sis­tent mama or papa and we haven’t been able to fig­ure out a mean­ing for his most com­mon word (Aye – YEASH). He’s got an appoint­ment six months from now with spe­cial­ists at Wilm­ing­ton’s Nemours (that’s how backed up they are!).

We’re not blam­ing the trains — the lead ones we had were rel­a­tive­ly unpop­u­lar and have few signs of wear. And we’re not pan­ick­ing. My moth­er brush­es off all con­cern with the assured dec­la­ra­tion that kids learn to talk at lots of dif­fer­ent ages. She could cer­tain­ly be right of course: our doc­tor sent us to Nemours for Theo with the wor­ry that he had a big head. If Fran­cis does turn out to be a lit­tle “slow,” well then we’ll just take that as anoth­er les­son plan God has for us.

Some gratuitious family pics

June 14, 2007

In the What a Dif­fer­ence a Year Makes (or Does­n’t) Department:
Julie took the kids out to South Jer­sey’s fabled Sto­ry­book­land last week.The fun­ni­est dis­cov­ery were the pic­tures that matched those from Theo’s class trip last year.
|2006|2007|
|Theo's class trip to Storybookland|Theo returns to Storybook Land|
|Theo's class trip to Storybookland|Storybookland 2007|
|Theo's class trip to Storybookland|Storybookland Return 2007|
We all went togeth­er on a fam­i­ly trip this week­end to reac­quaint our­selves with one anoth­er: our sched­ules haven’t been sync­ing well late­ly. Julie picked a farm B&B out in Lan­cast­er Coun­ty full of chick­ens and goats and an easy com­mute to Stras­burg PA, a good place for those who like to look at trains, trains, and trains, then drool over trains, trains, trains, and trains (we haven’t seen trains or trains up close yet). Pic­tures from around the B&B are here; strange­ly we for­got the cam­eras on our steam-powered out­ings so you’ll have to look at old pics. Here’s a shot of the kids on top of the play­house barn’s slide:
Trip to Lancaster Co. B&B

I too can buy kid clothes!

June 1, 2007

!>http://​aycu07​.web​shots​.com/​i​m​a​g​e​/​1​6​6​0​6​/​2​0​0​1​6​0​0​2​3​5​0​2​8​0​3​7​5​3​9​_​r​s​.​jpg! A pos­si­ble addi­tion to my page of “odd search phrases”:https://www.quakerranter.org/its_light_that_makes_me_uncomfortable_and_other_googlisms.php that bring peo­ple to my site is this one from ear­ly this afternoon:
“Why Men Should­n’t be Allowed to Buy Clothes for Children”:http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Why%20Men%20Shouldn%27t%20be%20Allowed%20to%20Buy%20Clothes%20for%20Children&btnG=Search
There’s Quak​er​Ran​ter​.org at num­ber eleven. Oh the shame of it! I’m going to run to W*LM*RT right now, well I would if only I kind of knew the kid’s sizes, ummm… I could call Julie at work and ask her I guess…