Trick or Treat

Snipes Farm

Although the weather promised sunshine, we hit the apple orchard and pumpkin patch under heavy skies.


The minimally-sprayed Jonagolds and Romes were scarce and marred by spots from the constant humidity of the past month, but that didn't dampen Noah's spirits. He got right to work picking and lugging apples, and rearranging the pumpkins.


Miles got into the spirit too testing the pumpkins by banging them, and working on a toothless imitation of apple eating.

Fripp 2011

First Food

 Noah gave Miles his first taste of rice cereal yesterday. 

Jumper

Pulled out a classic from the basement this week.  Thanks again, Janis & Jim!

Miles at Four Months

And Noah in his Phillies cap

Bob Ross, Jr.

"... and maybe in this world, there lives a little cloud..." Bob Ross intoned this on more than one Saturday mid-afternoon as I dialed the TV knob past PBS. And wouldn't you know, what started as an abstract smattering of color knifed on canvas slowly became a woodland scene with rosy sunset clouds glowing through tall dark pines.

Our little artist doesn't go in so much for representational art (or oils, thank goodness). Good thing he's got the banter and the explication down. Somewhere from rosy clouds, Bob Ross is smiling. Or maybe uttering a "silent F" of his own.

Dapper Dude

The young man likes to rock it with his top two buttons undone. 

Tummy Time

Miles has just started rolling over, back to front, though when you do this with one hand in your mouth, your arms get all tangled up.  He's a ways from crawling, but buries his head in the carpet, sticks his butt in the air, and churns his legs a bit until he manages to bring his head to where his feet started out.

Noah very kindly tried to demonstrate proper rolling-over technique yesterday, ending up under the couch, like old times.  A few minutes later, he drilled the soft football into the ceiling over and over until it landed on Miles' head on the way back down.  Then this game stopped, the point of it having been achieved: "I stinged Miles."

Which may or may not be better than "quimming" him.  We're still a little unsure.

Life in the Bouncy Chair

For the first month or two of his life, the most striking thing about Miles was the sheer number of facial expressions at his command for conveying discontent.  You'd be sitting there cuddling him, or poking his tummy, or whatever, and a new one would take shape beneath his creasing brow, and you'd marvel, Really?  Another way to signal displeasure? 

So goes the life of the impossible-to-burp baby. 

Thankfully, we're over that hump. Miles is a pretty happy fellow these days.  This morning he got into licking and eating the bouncy chair.  Couldn't have been happier.

The Collected Sayings of Noah, Vol 2

2. "Baseball players grab their crotch."

3. "I'm a disasternaut!"

4. [Gazing at a half-eaten, oozing peanut butter sandwich]  "It looks like a tiger with a runny nose."

5. "I'm a lifegaurdener!"

6. [Playing with his fireman gear, prized birthday loot]  "I am a fire fighter.  Miles is a fire baby.  Mommy, you can be a fire fighter.  Daddy, your job is over there, in the corner.  You can play with those things."  Indicating a corner containing no firefighting gear whatsoever.

7. The miniature fire fighter also donned his gear to buy milk at the corner store this morning.  "Are you a fireman?" the girl behind the counter asked.  "Yeah," Noah replied.  Conversation continued: apparently a fire engine had been summoned the day before to put out some flames at a house across the street.  The final day of our vacation had caused us to miss this excitement.  Noah listened with interest to the counter girl's report, then intoned: "There were no survivors."

Sanibel

The Collected Sayings of Noah, Vol 1

"Falling off is a terrible idea of hats."

Fortunately it did not possess his own wide-brimmed specimen as we padded across the lagoon footbridge on our way to the beach at Sanibel.

Boys of Summer

Tuesday morning, 8:15, back of the 17 bus on the way to the Friends Center.  The Puddle Jumpers' art project last week had been to make jerseys -- Noah chose a football and the number 5 for his -- and today everyone's supposed to wear them to school.  Since they've already done something about March Madness, I'm guessing that today's program is to do with baseball.  But obviously it's no use asking Noah, whose favorite non-ball-related sport is telling us as little as possible about what he does all day.  (Which, of course, is exactly as it should be.)

Anyway, we're sitting in a pair of seats facing the aisle.  The man opposite is reading The Daily News, whose amazing cover headline reads, "Black Madam, Linked with Butt-Injection Death, Dodges Cops."

"Hey Noah, who's your favorite baseball team?" I ask, wondering -- because clearly anything is possible in a world of black madams and butt-injection intrigue --  if he remembers the word Phillies from last summer. 

He registers the question and thinks for a second.  "Ryan Howard," he says.  Noah's a little fuzzy on the distinction between team and player -- his highest aspiration at the YMCA is to do something "like a team" -- but still, I'm kind of impressed.

"Ryan Howard!" I say, chuckling.  "He hits a lot of of home runs, doesn't he?"

Regarding me as a master craftsman might regard a seven-fingered moron gripping a hammer by the claw, he replies, "First, he spits on his hand."  Noah mimes it.  "Then, he rubs them together."  Rubbing his own plams, Noah now leans forward, projecting his chin over the front edge of the seat.  "Then, he spits on the floor, too."  He pretends to hawk another loogie into the batter's box.  The man across the aisle has put down the paper.  "Then," Noah concludes, before leaning back and smacking his lips, "he pops a bubble."


The man across the aisle guffaws.  "He's got the routine down!" he exclaims, laughing some more.  "Oh man, that makes my day!"

To my knowledge, Noah has never in his life watched a baseball game on our television.  

Little Lap

Noah didn't want to leave this morning before holding Miles in his lap -- not an everyday request.  (He usually doesn't want to leave without first gathering a fistful of loose change.)  Miles seemed to like it, though.