can you believe it?

Today marks Macon's 10-month birthday.

back then

today

plus a picture of Jed because I thought this one was pretty

update from the land o' puffs

Winston is getting fat on puffs, but Macon is getter more accurate by the day.

thomas the tank engine, in person

Yesterday, we visited the North Carolina Transportation Museum for the "Day Out with Thomas." I'll confess it felt like a bit of a rip-off because basically, you're just taking a ride on the museum's passenger cars being "pulled" by Thomas, who is ably assisted from behind by one of the museum's diesel engines. But, the kids seemed pretty stoked about it, despite rain and cool-ish temperatures, and it gave us an excuse to catch up with Ellie, Eli, and Ezra, which was great fun as always.

pretending to blow the whistle

Ezra and Chris wait for Thomas to pass by

Ellie stands beside a bridge that connects the museum to the parking lot. Check out where the bridge came from: the motherland of Stokes County!
(Hooray for NC DOT's bridge reuse program!)

riding the rails

posing, joyously, with Thomas

welcome to the jungle

This week has been pretty yucky. It's been cloudy, rainy, and unusually warm, and any time the sun has peeked out, it has made things feel even steamier. Even the bugs seem to be out in greater profusion. I cannot keep the mosquitoes off the boys when we're outside and, while walking Winston after dark one night, I crossed paths with several giant "palmetto bugs," which is the term folks from the deeper South use to politely avoid descriptors such as "giant cockroaches." Blessedly, they were out on the sidewalk and far from the house, but still . . . There are reasons we don't live farther south and enormous bugs are one of them, so I hope the temperature drops soon. An article in today's paper described the terrible mosquitoes down east following Hurricane Irene, and I just cannot fathom it being worse than it is on my front porch, so I'm also glad we don't live any farther east!

Today, the rain was heavy enough and constant enough that we were pretty well house-bound, and no, we don't have playschool on Fridays!

Amazingly, everyone managed to make it through the day without coming to blows, and Jed showed great brotherly restraint as Macon repeatedly tore down Jed's block construction projects.

I even got out the ironing board and ironed some long wrinkled napkins, including those used back at Christmas! The iron's hissing and steaming mesmerized Jed. He was captivated and handed me napkin after napkin for about 20 minutes before he finally set up his own iron (a plastic goldfish-shaped snack box) and ironing board (his little table) and got to work on some napkins, too. Who knew ironing was so entertaining? Maybe I'll do it more often. (Please insert laugh track here.)

rescuing a train from Macon's evil intentions

fire truck as climbing obstacle

fire truck as drum

train and engineer

all toys on the floor

at least he's wearing clothes

As Jed has become more skilled at dressing himself, he's also become more passionate about what he's wearing. This morning, when I tried to talk him into brown shorts or brown shoes, he informed me that "this red matches this red and this red matches this red."

get to the sofa everyone!

macon's mouth

Nice teeth, Macon.

Let's see what those chompers can do with a teething biscuit.

Whatee?*

*Whatee is an old Jedspeak term signaling a query of almost any nature.

Hhhuummm. So I'm supposed to do what with this?

Well, here's what I think about this thing.

But puffs are another story.

Here's a snack I can really get behind . . .

. . . if only I could get them in my mouth.

Moving from Macon's mouth to mowing, here we have Jed "doin' my 'ard work."

And finally, Marmie just sent this photo to us.
Sometimes, I think Jed looks a lot like me. Then I see a childhood picture of Eric . . .

winston, how do I love thee?

Hey, Winston. Whatch doin?

I'm just going to check out your paw.

Or maybe your ear.

Chomp.

Did someone just bite my ear?

Well, then, I'm going to lick you.
And then give up.