Fall Is Here

I started taking down the pool this past weekend and since then we have had hours and hours and HOURS of rain, which just filled the damn thing back up again.

This is the back of our yard at about 5 in the afternoon yesterday, though it looks more like 10 at night.

And here are Frederick and Simon heading off to the park, in the pouring rain, to get a bit of exercise before dinner.

Fortunately, this came in the mail today for me all the way from John Lewis, Sheffield England (finally!!) so now I have something to keep me amused during the (ever longer) evenings.

Thomas makes YouTube movies...

This is Thomas's new hobby: making little videos of the kind that he likes to watch on YouTube. Here's one:



Personally I have NO idea what's going on. I think he video'd himself playing his DS, and I think it was to demonstrate how to get to a particular, possibly secret, part of a game. But your guess is as good as mine, really. Does this show he's a future Spielberg? I think there can be no doubt.

Lock Down!

Well, it had to happen. Frederick and I arrived at his school this morning, perky and feeling fine, when a police officer shooed us off, telling us the school was in "lock down" because someone had been murdered nearby. Annoyed and bewildered, he and I walked back to the car when I heard two mothers take the opportunity to teach life lessons to their kids. One said, "See? Bad people mess up everything for everyone else." and the other said to her child, "Killers make mommies and teachers very annoyed." Ain't it the truth!

Frederick Goes To School

Yesterday was the first day of school for both Thomas and Frederick. After spending weeks (in Thomas's case) and months (in Frederick's case) trying to figure out where they should go and how we could possibly finance it all, we decided that Thomas should stay at The Valley School (which, on the brink of financial disaster in May was flooded with new students in August--weird)and that Frederick should go to Manley. For those with good memories, Manley is indeed the same school Frederick tried two years ago and, after 8 or 9 months of low-level misery, it went horribly wrong and we pulled him out. But now he is starting kindergarten and will have Miss Perkins as a teacher, and all the school officials you could stand to talk to at any one time assured us that everything will be fine this time around. Simon was too afraid to take him yesterday, so it became my job. And yet Frederick was not in the least anxious--he sang the whole way to school (a tune he must have invented because no one knows what else it could be: "In the summertime, maybe, baby. In the sunny time, baby, baby. Anytime, maybe, baby. All the time, baby, baby."), skipped into the building and into his classroom, and then happily waved me off as I left. All day I was a mess, imagining meltdowns and despair...But apparently the day was great: he loved circle time (he was the loudest and most enthusiastic singer), loved playing with toys (the dollhouse the best), and loved lunchtime (ate a large slab of ham (argh!) and then stole his classmate's deli bun and polished that off with gusto. Today I took him to school again (Simon claiming that he "just can't") and again I feared the worst...but again nothing bad happened. He skipped into the classroom, went straight to the library, got a book, a few toys and went right to his chair for circle time. Here he is waiting patiently for his classmates (who ride the bus) to arrive so class can begin:



Here is the art center:

Here is the "wind down" area for venting stress and anxiety:

I try not to get my hopes up, but maybe Frederick will really like school.

My cell phone ("mobile") takes crappy pictures

I've had this phone for at least six months (as you can tell from the range of weather depicted) but have only just managed how to work out how to get the photos off it without paying to email each one individually. Turns out it wasn't really worth it, as the post heading indicates. However, the wildlife photos are at least interesting...


This creature was on a flooded path in a big park that Frederick and I like to walk through. Jami thinks it's an escaped pet lobster, but it was only about the size of the width of my hand.


He is indeed.


Mmmm. That's good eatin'.


Frederick climbed up this himself (with a little boost) but was at a loss how to get down. This park is by a lake near us. It's only occasionally closed down because of e coli scares.


Yes it is a fawn, and no it isn't dead. I think it was feigning death so we'd go away.


I looked up this device online - apparently it's used to catch frisbees. I kid you not - we were walking around here once and people showed up to play Frisbee Golf. They had professional grade Frisbees and everything!


This is the other side of the e coli lake, both geographically and thermically. Yes, those are picnic tables embedded out in the ice.

Pac-Man follies

I know this isn't family-related, and I should set up a separate blog for this, but I found the following two items strange and amusing. For the uninitiated (can there be any such?), Pac-Man was THE game of 1980, and the first hint to the west that people in Japan were completely unhinged: you are a happy face that eats dots and is chased by ghosts, which you can eat if you eat one of the special "energy dots" in the corners of the maze, whereupon the ghosts turn blue for a short while. But be careful, because when they start flashing, they're ready to turn on you again. Periodically a fruit of some kind (usually a cherry) appears for a time in the middle of the screen and you get bonus points for eating it. Strange but (so we thought at the time) completely entrancing. Anyway, apparently some of those people who encountered it at the time were permanently marked by it, and it has influenced their creative endeavours thereafter. First, a clever shift of perspective from Pac Man - the Movie:



Or, from a less ghost-centric viewpoint:

What Do Frederick and Emily Do All Day Long?

Emily has been helping out with Frederick for almost five years. What do they get up to in a typical day? Let's find out.

To the Children's Museum

The local children's musum, full of stuff you can wear, climb on and bang, is a favorite place for Frederick.
The portal to the magic inside.
Why do kids always insist on doing this? Thomas was exactly the same.
Why does the red car have lips?