10 Awesome Years
Dialogue, September 8th
Ian finds out Daddy likes cottage cheese but never gets to eat it because his kids like it so much: “We should buy some cottage cheeses and write on there ‘for daddy’s only.'”Ian, during dinner…regarding the food no longer on his plate:“I’m makin art!”
Ian, helping Daddy snip one branch off of a tree: “We’re cutting down trees to make wood!”
Ian and I had fun playing a game with a helicopter, but I had to go outside quickly to take out the trash. I came back in to find the helicopter parked in front of the bathroom sink, where he knew I’d head to wash my hands after the aforementioned chore. (This is one of those things where the meaning chokes you up more than the words I can type here… he left the helicopter there as if to say “I had fun, Daddy. Let’s keep playin’.”)
On September 8th, Melissa and I celebrated our 10th anniversary. Hard to believe that much time has passed. I love you, Sweetie, and I love how you’ve grown our family and surrounded us with your care.
In the interest of getting a couple of updates up here, I’m going to skip videos and come back to them in a little bit. They’ll cover the time period between the 10th and the 19th, and will all appear in one entry, coming up. (It takes a bit more time to edit those.)
We got gifts and cards and flowers, and I thank you all for helping us celebrate. These flowers from Grandma Sue looked so good in the sun room that I had to take a picture, but again, thank you all for everything! See this image larger.
And these are from me to Mommy! See this image larger.
September 11th, the kids go nuts on an inflatable balance beam. (Really this is meant to protect their little noggins on the inside of a tub, but they’re too old for that.) See this image larger.
September 12th, I told Nina I was going to buy her this book while we tooled around Meijer. She casually started reading it. I love Ian peeking through, trapped in his section of the basket. See this image larger.
A real page-turner, that one! See this image larger.
Attention, Grandparents: No. See this image larger.
September 13th. We bought Nina this potty to see what she’d do with it. Mostly, at the time, she seemed intent on using it as a reading chair. See this image larger.
Again? See this image larger.
September 14th, a board game that we purchased for the kids included this piece of foam, and immediately the Chapmanooga Choo Choo was born. See this image larger.
*All aboard!* See this image larger.
Wow, are they getting big. See this image larger.
Me: “That’s Ian’s. Please put it on the table.” And Nina does it. She’s amazing like that. See this image larger.
Reading again! See this image larger.
This is the baby swing that we had when Ian was just born. He loved that little blue bird on the swing, I think there’s a video of him pointing at it on a DVD somewhere. I spent time then considering how to pry it off of there for him. Melissa puts a huge amount of effort into a sale that comes around once a year that gets us a quite a bit of money to get rid of stuff that is taking up a lot of room, like this swing. So here we’re saying good-bye to the little blue bird for the last time. Life’s weird, isn’t it? I was probably the most vocal in saying “let’s get that thing out of here,” but it was me that got a little sentimental as it went away. See this image larger.
