Daycare Sheet, June 1st
Nina’s Caregiver: “This morning every time another kid would taker her toy she’d say “I’m gonna tell Mommy!” For art she painted a giant piece of paper. We couldn’t go outside because of the rain sow we ran laps around the room.”

Daycare Sheet, June 1st
Ian’s Caregiver: “Ian really liked… washing veggies in the sensory table.”

Dialogue, June 4th
Nina: “It’s messy because crumbs are everywhere.”

Dialogue, June 4th
Nina: “There’s ian. And there’s mommy! There’s Nina! Daddy not in picture.”

Dialogue, June 4th
Nina, stressing the wrong syllable, but using a great big word: “Is compliCATEd.”

Daycare Sheet, June 7th
Nina’s Caregiver: “Nina had a good day today. This morning we praciced our balance not he balance beam. She could take 3 steps without falling! For art she glued together a penguin.”

Dialogue, June 7th
Ian, waking up, very sleepily: “Need a hug. (hug) Love you. Go back to work.”

Daycare Sheet, June 7th
Ian’s Caregiver: ” Ian really liked our first sprinkler-day. He really liked using the squirt bottle to wet down the rocks.”

Daycare Sheet, June 8th
Ian’s Caregiver: “Ian had a great day! He is such a great listener, very much appreciated around here. Thank you Ian!”

Dialogue, June 11th
Ian sings creatively: “Sometimes you know things, sometimes you don’t. When you do you try to jump in the shadow.”

Daycare Sheet, June 13th
Ian’s Caregiver: “Ian had fun in the water and liked playing w/the water toys.”

Milestone, June 14th
Doctor said Nina’s heart murmur was harder to hear. From a 2 to a 1, whatever that means — it sounds like good news!
34.25 tall
26.8 lbs 15th-20th weight jumped up

Milestone from Daddy’s Notes, June 17th
Ian and Nina… They are getting ridiculously big. And I’m watching Ian suddenly becoming more helpful, more interested in being helpful. Sometimes his motivations for doing so are mildly selfish, but it doesn’t matter… He’s thinking about other people, and I couldn’t be more proud. Nina is just entering her whiny phase as Ian steps out. But she’s also impressing everybody with the way she talks up a storm. In a few weeks she’ll be in a class that is two above her current class.

Daycare Sheet, June 20th
Nina’s Caregiver: “She did say she wanted to see her other friends and mommy a few times but she seemed very comfortable over all and shed no tears.”

Daycare Sheet, June 21st
Nina’s Caregiver: “Nina did a great job putting spots on her giraffe.”

Milestone, June 22nd
This week Nina visited the classroom she will be moving up to next week. Her sentences and speech are about 30% better from just a day or two of exposure to the older kids.

Daycare Sheet, June 22nd
Nina’s Caregiver: “Nina was excited to ride in the buggy on our walk. we decided to go past the fire station to see if we could see the fire trucks but the doors were close. Nina kept saying ‘we need to open the doors so I can see the trucks’ It was so cute!”

Daycare Sheet, June 27th
Nina’s Caregiver: “She tried very hard to cut with scissors this morning.”

Daycare Sheet, June 27th
Ian’s Caregiver: “Ian seemed to enjoy the water day! No problems w/him getting squirted.”

Daycare Sheet, June 28th
Nina’s Caregiver: “She enjoyed painting an orange ice cream with Ms. Jilian.”

Daycare Sheet, June 28th
Ian’s Caregiver: “Ian liked building a city w/jakob.”

Daycare Sheet, June 28th
Nina’s Caregiver: “Nina was singing E-I-E-I-O while building with Lego – it was doc cute! She really enjoyed our circle time songs too.”

Daycare Sheet, June 29th
Nina’s Caregiver: “In dramatic play, Nina fed her baby a bottle. Then she made a long track for r train. Nina loved making a smoore and eating it. She was so excited to play in the tent and tunnel.”

On June 28th, we piled in the car and headed south to Ohio. It was a long trip that lasted late into the night, but it was good. I’ll publish some of the songs that our magnificent children came up with along the way in an entry or two from now. We woke up on the 29th and it was very hot outside. It’s so hot that my lens ended up with a fog of condensation on it from walking out into the hot from the air conditioned comfort of the inside of the house. Here Ian and Kaylee had fun in a gigantic pool.

So, yes it was hot. Was it hot Connor? See, it was hot. See this image larger.

Kaylee, ready for her close-up! See this image larger.

A tragic moment, Nina dropped some of her goldfish crackers in the grass. See this image larger.

Nina now eating goldfish crackers. These were not the ones dropped on the ground, don’t worry Peanut. See this image larger.

Nina in hot pink. FYI, I think I woke up at like 11:00am that morning, but I drove all night the night before. So it was a weird day for me in so many ways. (You’ll see why shortly!) See this image larger.

Uncle D hops in the back of the minivan — we headed off to a Connor baseball game. Connor was headed toward the end of the season… if he won that night, he’d be playing more on Saturday. If he lost? We’d be done with baseball for the weekend. So which happened? Neither!

My delightful children await the start of the game. See this image larger.

Connor is sometimes a pitcher, sometimes a catcher, and all times awesome. Yeah, I said that. Extremely proud of my nephew! See this image larger.

Folks in the stands getting’ rowdy. See this image larger.

See that smile? That smile is the smile of a boy that just threw somebody out trying to grab second base. Nailed it. See this image larger.

He’s proud and he should be! See this image larger.

Here he’s up to bat and teaches that ball to respect. See this image larger.

He rounded first and headed for 2nd base… See this image larger.

He gave it a stomp, and kept movin’. See this image larger.

Meanwhile, Scooby Doo and Shaggy found the kitchen at the O’Leary Manor, and began to make sandwiches. See this image larger.

*Hey, that looks like a good sandwich.* See this image larger.

This particular shot I tried to correct the lighting a bit, but have you noticed that the exposure on my camera keeps slipping darker and darker in the shots above? That’s because a storm was blowing in. And this was no little storm. The game got called for lightning, first, so Connor’s games would end up being postponed long before a winner was declared. See this image larger.

We started heading home and then the wind picked up… and kept picking up. The local weather service said the windspeed hit 75 mph. This tree, behind Aunt Mel and Uncle Ben’s place tried very hard to knock down this phone/power pole, but it needn’t have worried, its brothers took up the fight.

This was one of four branches on the lines across the street. Power was out for the duration of the trip, and did not come back on until the night we got back.

This is what evening was like. Most of us gathered on the living room floor, with the doors open. There wasn’t A/C or running water. (That pool came in very handy, by the way… the water from it allowed us to flush the toilets. Aunt Mel came up with the idea of using the pool, good call. Uncle Ben knew the one place in town that would sell us ice because the old lady that worked there was awesome!)

Days went by and there just weren’t too many opportunities for photos, or I didn’t have my camera — but frankly none of us was feeling very photogenic, I think. One of the days we went to see a movie in a town that did have power. It was Madagascar 3 and the kids really enjoyed it. Nina’s a popcorn fiend too. Anyway… after that we went to a park that was like some kind of amusement park. It was fun and I think some good pictures were taken, but I didn’t have a camera with me and my phone had died days before. Aunt Mel got some shots, I’ll have to see if I can steal them from her someday. So this picture is from July 1st, the day we turned around and headed home. See this image larger.

The kids drove in Kaylee’s motorized vehicle. See this image larger.

The street in front of the house is never busy, being a cul de sac — I can see why it would make sense to play around with one of these in that scenario. I honestly would not let my kids drive one. On our street it’d be too dangerous.

And so it was time to leave, so we packed up our bags and went home. It was a good trip, but could it have been better with some power? Probably… the biggest thing was that it seemed like we went camping, but had not packed for a camping trip. So going was a treat, and coming home was kind of a treat too. See this image larger.

Douglas Walker Park is on 84th street on the south side of Grand Rapids. I call it the “Run Forever” park though because that’s what’s best about it. It is quite an expanse.

June 25th, and I believe this was Nina’s second trip here. I loved this moment, as soon as we got to the park, they hopped on a sort of hanging/bouncy bridge… Ian immediately stomped around. Some kids would be terrified of being jostled around… Nina loved it. See this image larger.

Ian almost looks like he’s either oblivious to what was going on with Nina, or just too focused. See this image larger.

I think this was supposed to be an airplane… See this image larger.

This picture is from July of 2009… Ian would be about 2 and a half at that point. As I’ve said to everybody, I love this picture. See this image larger.

And sort of accidentally (I did say “go run!”) here’s a very similar picture of Ian three years later. See this image larger.

Another pretty close! See this image larger.

Ian down a slide! See this image larger.

We had a lot of fun that day… See this image larger.

Nina and Ian off to play “drop sticks” off a nearby bridge over a small stream. They’d read about this in a pooh-bear story, and finally got to try it themselves! See this image larger.

Ian was excellent and catching his sister and stopping her from falling into the dirt. You can see he’s even kind of looking away here so that they don’t headbutt each other! See this image larger.

Alright so let’s let these speak for themselves, there’s plenty of them! See this image larger.

A little tickle to get the smiles started, good boy! See this image larger.

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I need to turn this one into an animated gif… I have two shots that show Nina at the apex and lowest point of a “bounce.” See this image larger.

I took a picture of a group of people, and sure enough somebody offered to take our picture! It was a very happy day! See this image larger.

June 19th – Came home from Doctor (good visit! My “bad” cholesterol dropped from 141 to 117! Yay!) to find that water was streaming into our house. The culprit was a downspout draining in a bad way. Found that this had happened before, because there was mold in one of the rooms.

June 20th – Mold torn out of room.

June 21st – Found carpenter ant damage behind torn out drywall. (The good news is that later on, it turned out that the damage was somewhat old, and the exterminators that Melissa called did not even spray or even really recommend a course of action.)

The above trio of days would end up costing us thousands of dollars, and cause a lot of the “down” parts of the ups and downs for June.

June 21st, the night before, tension was high because of the above events, and Ian was misbehaving a bit, but absolutely cracked me up when he looked at Mommy’s blouse and said “If you turn your head sideways your shirt has a bunch of hot dogs on it.”

I’m not sure what day it was, but I came in early to pick up Ian, and Ms. Jill was taking pictures of her TumbleTime class. I told her to get in on the shot, told a couple kids to smile and snapped this one for her… must not be bad, ended up on her flier! Ian’s in the shot, see him?? I do remember that day was a really good one too… Ian always enjoys a little extra attention.

On June 22nd, I went with Ian and Ian’s class as part of a field trip to Meijer Gardens! Thanks to the girl that is standing behind Ian in this image, I can tell what he’d look like with a ponytail. No thank you! See this image larger.

This is a sort of topographical map of the Great Lakes. Perhaps you’ve seen it before in one of our many other trips here. 😉 See this image larger.

One of Ian’s friends, Dominic. We’ll miss Dominic and his mom and dad… they’re good people, but Dom won’t be heading to the same school as Ian. :-\ See this image larger.

Ian was an amazing boy this day. He helped a kid get a boat. I saw him sharing a lot as well. See this image larger.

Later on in the field trip, we ended up in a place where they needed adults to spread out and watch the exits, so I had to lose direct observation of Ian, but had him more or less contained to an area. I found him helping a kid in a wheelchair to play with a sort of fun exhibit with doors in the trunk of a tree. The kid couldn’t reach them from his chair. The child then ran over Ian’s toe. I immediately downplayed the scenario, because Ian has a tendency to overreact to injuries. The child’s mom then said “You might want to check him out, that chair weighs 300 lbs.” Ian was fine, and calmed down quickly, and even better, he went back to play with the child in the wheelchair for a few more minutes. See this image larger.

I really should send this image to Ian’s daycare. Ian’s not in it, but it still struck me as funny. See this image larger.

Ian’s in this one as the group forms to move on to the next activity See this image larger.

Some of the local flora. See this image larger.

Ian running all over the place, as usual. See this image larger.

The great big sandbox activity is always a hit with the kids! See this image larger.

Possibly for the first time in my career as a dad, I turned down help from a passer-by that offered to take my picture with one of my kids. She just looked frail enough to drop my camera, I guess. Anyway, meanwhile, I did pull off this one with Ian in it. See this image larger.

Sometimes I just provide images that I think could be used for wallpaper on Grandma Marcia’s iPad! 😉 See this image larger.

Another one! See this image larger.

This was another area. One of the parents said “alright, this says ‘hops’ better jump through it.” Well done! See this image larger.

And then, the egg hunt was on!!! See this image larger.

Ian was like a little pale hornet, buzzing around the grass, grabbing eggs left and right! See this image larger.

I mentioned something about sharing because the littlest boy found zero eggs. Ian was more than willing to let him take every egg Ian had, and then he looked upset. So I looked at the little boy and said “Hey you think you could give a couple of those back?” They got it figured out.

Afterwards there was song. See this image larger.

She stumbled through “three blind mice” and we were all happy it was over quickly. See this image larger.

Because Ian and I met his class at the field trip, when it was time for him to go back I loaded him on daycare’s bus, and they went to daycare while I hopped in my car for the trip home. Ian wasn’t wearing his I.D. bracelet because he had been with me that morning, so I made sure he got in and sat in a chair before even walking toward the car. What was neat was that I could tell what seat he was in, so a few lights up the street I pulled up along side of the bus, and chanced a quick glance to see if he was looking. The windows were tinted but I could make out his silhouette, and I saw his hand come up to a wave. As I waved back, there was this moment that felt important, like life was telling Ian and I “You gotta do what you gotta do. Daddy works. Ian goes to school. But you can still love each other from any distance.”

May had some ups and some downs, I was hoping for (at least) a more stable June. Nope. I’ll do my best to focus on the ups, though. Ready for June? Here we go! Of note, this entry starts with Melissa and I still feeling pretty sick, and in the worst part of the crunch and grind before NeoCon, the furniture conference. Usually one of us, or the other is in over their heads around this time of the year. This year it was both Melissa and I.

June 3rd, and Daddy insisted this dress be bought from a garage sale. I think Daddy was right! See this image larger.

She still runs up to me squealing “DADDY!!!” and it makes me happy every single time! See this image larger.

Playing with the mats. See this image larger.

June 5th, Ray and Barb came up to visit us, and help us celebrate an important milestone for Ian… he graduated from preschool!!! I felt bad that I barely got to talk to Grampa Ray and Grandma Barb… the deadlines I had coincided with their visit, unfortunately. See this image larger.

The kids performed several songs, and Ian did good singing along with the first one. He’s pretty much in the middle of the image. I’ll reprint the lyrics here for the first song, if I can find them. It was about how love grows… and seeing him hit another milestone really made that hit home. See this image larger.

During the graduation, even Daddy learned something, which one might think is an activity reserved for students on a day such as this. You see, the kids all performed a song called “A tooty tah.” At each step of the song, the kids get themselves cramped further and further into a more ridiculous and impractical stance, to the point that by the end of the song they can’t really sing properly. I believe it starts with bending the knees, double thumbs up, elbows in, butt down, tongue out, etc. The shutters were clicking away taking pictures of kids doing this number, but I didn’t take too many: My kid was up there not singing or doing any of the moves. He was standing there with his face in his hand. Later I lightly scolded him for making me the only parent in such a position. But as I found myself trying to explain to him that he should sing along when everybody else is singing, I realized I was wrong. I took it back a couple days later and instead said “There are times and places to sing along, and times when you’ll want to strike out on your own.” I went from being upset that he did this to being pretty proud. The world doesn’t really need another person that focuses only on marching along to the beat of its drum. And besides, look at how these kids look! No wonder he’s trying to hide his face! See this image larger.

There was a slideshow of all of the kids that ran from a projector while music was playing. The kids began calling out the names of the students that appeared during each slide, which was not meant to be part of the program, but made it more interesting by a longshot. You start to realize these kids may not be lifelong friends, but they really like being together. That’ll make kindergarten that much harder for some.

The one shot where they had Ian’s name up on the screen was from the day after the Super Bowl, when Ian wore his jersey to school.

Ian accepts his diploma, and becomes a man. Well wait, that’s a ways out yet. Doesn’t feel like that’s too far away though, the way that kid’s growing! See this image larger.

Every diploma comes with a free hug. See this image larger.

The walk back to the pew. I was already happy that they laminated the diploma, Lord knows what paper airplane we would have received for safe-keeping later.

His mind is already wandering to something about toys, I guess. See this image larger.

Grampa Ray and Grandma Barb pose with the big man on campus. See this image larger.

This was an awkward photo moment, too many people rushing by us to get to their cars… but at least I got Mommy smilin’. See this image larger.

Not bad for self-shot. So proud of my boy! See this image larger.

Another shot. Hey look, we got Grandma Barb and Grampa Ray in the shot too!

*I wish my brother George were here…*

Charlie hops into the fray and soon we’re scrambling to get the kids to stop pounding on the keys. See this image larger.

Home again, checking out Mommy’s flowerbeds. See this image larger.

And here is the official certificate! Can you hardly believe it!?!

June 6th, Ian makes this cool face out of blocks and shows it to me with pride.

“I added a smile!”

Ian and Nina have both watched their fair share of a pretty weird show called Yo Gabba Gabba. This book from the library had a part of the show’s host’s face on it, and with a little help from Ian, we had a pretty funny looking picture!