Farewell, Summer

It's now in the mid-50's in the morning and late evening. It usually warms up to the 70's during the day - just perfect weather, really, I have no complaints, it's just that it's no longer summer. And we had such a wonderful summer. So while I'm appreciating the day that we have, and the new season to come, I have so much gratitude for our blissful, perfect summer.

We had many gatherings of friends and family and here we are celebrating the birthday of a dear friend.



One of the sweetest moments of the evening was G asking his friend if he'd like an ice cream cone. The kid loves to be a good host, just like his mom.



One of the highlights of the summer was when my dearest friend from high school came to visit with her family. Her daughter just turned 13 and during her early years I always came up to visit them. Now that I have a little one she says she is happy to return the favor. She's the best!



We managed to slip away to NYC for a long weekend and stay in my brother's fabulous Washington Square apartment while he was out of town. I think I mentioned it in another post, and it was exactly as we hoped - we got coffee and bagels from the corner cafe and spent most of our days in the parks. Here we are hanging out at the awesome farmer's market in Union Square.




On Sunday morning I got to visit with one of my parents' most long-term dearest friends. We used to crash on the floor of his tiny one bedroom apartment in Manhattan all through the 80's. He still teases me about when he and my parents would go out at night I would perch myself in a chair by the window watching the scenes from the street below with his opera glasses. I thought it was the most magical place back then and I still do. We had a perfect, quintessential Sunday morning in New York: we met at his upper East Side co-op, walked one block across 5th Ave and were in Central Park where we proceeded to jog around the reservoir and chat for over an hour. After working up a good appetite we had brunch at a delicious little deli. We then walked the few blocks to his medical office where we took this picture. Isn't it fantastic that I can call one of my parents' best friends one of my own?



G still loves to command the camera and many mornings are happily spent snapping pictures. I thought this was one was especially sweet.



Last Saturday we had the special privilege of getting to hear one of our favorite author/illustrators, Graeme Base, speak at our local book shop - something I never would have imagined would happen because he's from Australia! He even brought copies of his new book, Enigma, which will not be available in bookstores until October. Here he is reading from it and G is trying to break the code embedded in the book. Very cool.







Bubbles and the last days of summer are a perfect fit - they are both beautiful, luminescent, and fleeting. We are filled with joy and gratitude for every one.

Tri-rific!

Yesterday I was in my first triathlon! The tri consisted of 1/2 mile swim, 18 mile bike, and 3.2 mile run. I was inspired/compelled to participate when my dear friend of 30+years let me know this is something she wanted to do and asked for support. She trained hard and smart for over 3 months and I am so proud of her accomplishment. It was an all-women's event and the energy was so great. It was a beautiful day - well, if you can call it day as it was pitch-black night when we woke at 4 am, left the house at 4:30 and set up our transition stations a little after 5. It was dark until about 10 minutes before we got in the water at 7 am. I watched a brilliant full moon set and the sun rise as we swam. It was cool on the road for the bike and then the run was under a tree-covered trail. You could not have asked for better weather and, again, the energy among the women was fabulous. Of course, it was the greatest delight to be there with my dear friend as she was achieving a long-held and hard-won goal and I was covered with goose bumps as we crossed the finish line together. It's obvious she has caught the tri bug because right after it she was planning how she could make it better next time. I have no such thoughts - I love to run and swim, but I borrowed a bike for the race and really don't love it enough to justify the expense of a road bike. I realized, though, that I miss running marathons more than I thought and I expect another one in my not-so-distant future...in the meantime I will bask in the glory of finishing a very satisfying triathlon.

Before the race:



During the race (after the swim and bike):



After the race (check out how radiant my friend - in the middle - is!):

The G-Man

Last week I promised to post some pictures of our intrepid photographer and these offer a small sample of our days together. There is never a dull moment.

G has a book titled "While We Were Away" that portrays the adventures of a domestic bunny as she explores her owners' house while they are away. One of G's favorite scenes is of the bunny in rollerskates, aided by chopsticks. G has even devised his own "chopsticks" with pieces of wood he reclaimed from the garage. He loves the whole ensemble more than actually skating - as you can see from some of the other pictures: it's all about the outfit!


In this case the outfit is a cloth napkin attached with a paperclip - his idea for an improvised cape - and a Buzz Lightyear compass. He's showing his Kung Fu moves for the camera.

Here we're celebrating Papa's birthday. G and P share a special brand of humor. They love looking at pictures in books and magazines and making up names for them - pointing at an alligator, they rush to come up with another animal: "That's a sea star!" "That's a penguin!" I don't really get it, but they think it's hilarious.

He loves soccer and really dribbles the ball well on a field.

He loves to pretend he's a pirate and he loves nothing better than to get you dressed up as well for some real scallywagging. He's with his beloved Grammy in the photo below.

We love our garden. Almost everyday G goes to the garden to pick and eat our Sungold cherry tomatoes, or "chocolate 'matos" because he thinks they are so sweet, like candy. Here we're with our first big cucumber. I wanted to include the pic of him taking a big bite of it right off the vine (just like Mei, for all you Totoro fans!), but he isn't wearing any pants and you can see, um, everything.

Here he is with one of my parents' horses, Reno. (You can see his play camera behind his back, too.) This horse is known to nip at adults but he is always very calm and gentle with G. It's very sweet to see them together.

And finally, G really loves to paint - usually paper on his easel, sometimes on old boards we have around the garage, and, for the first time documented here - himself! As I've said before - there is never a dull moment!

Next week we go back to NYC. Our camera ran out of batteries on our last trip in April (why do we have so much bad luck with cameras on our trips? I guess the point is to focus more on the experiences than the pictures.) and I hope to get some more pics from this trip. For us, nyc is a slowed-down and unfettered experience - we stay at my brother's beautiful apartment with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge, we walk almost everywhere and spend most of our days in the park. We eat great food and drink great coffee. It's heaven. I hope you all are having a wonderful summer!

The G-Cam

I can't believe it's been almost 3 months since my last post. We've had such an amazing time: a week in NYC, a lake vacation with my family, and many, many more wonderful gatherings with family and friends. I've wanted to share them all and I just didn't know where to begin. Happily looking back through the pictures of the last several months I was surprised and delighted to see many shots taken by our sweet ds, G. Usually he is the focus of all of our pictures, as our world does indeed continue to revolve around him. As a change, though, I thought it would be fun for you to see the world through his eyes - The G-Cam. He will make his reappearance in the next blog.




Note how my dad and his dog have almost the exact same expression: head tilted, mouth slightly open with a smile, both seemingly thinking, "Is he really taking a picture of me?"



In this picture we got it: yes, he really is taking our picture and he takes his craft seriously. We often don't think to get pictures of my mom, dad and myself in a picture, so I am especially grateful for this shot.

I really don't mind that G commands our rather expensive digital camera. He seems to be very careful with it, but it makes dh a little nervous, and here he is trying to convince G that it really is more fun to take pictures with his old broken Pentax. G, of course, was not convinced.


This is a picture G took in NYC where we were staying in my brother's apartment while he and his girlfriend spent a week in Costa Rica. I hear Costa Rica is lovely, but I love New York, and we had such a blast. Even throwing paper airplanes seems more cosmopolitan in such a setting.



This is our dear friend who was visiting from Italy for a few weeks. I teased him that G was his very own paparazzo.

Another neighbor on our walk. G took many pictures of his truck, which he loves, but I will leave them out.

Sometimes I mourn the lack of trees in our neighborhood. Development seems to be removing every bit of green space. This picture reminds me to see that there still is much lush, green beauty to enjoy. Now, to wrap this post up and get out and revel in it again with my sweet little camera man.

Delight Incarnate

Our son is three years old today. We celebrated with friends and family on Saturday the 3rd with a Cinco de Mayo-esque fiesta - 50+ people, a Taqueria lunch truck, and a refrigerator full of Mexican beer. I think this is the last year for our grand style fiesta - I've wanted to make the party as much a celebration of the community that supports us as it is of our son. But I imagine that next year ds will have more of opinion about how he would like to celebrate - like at a Build a Bear Workshop or something - and that's what we'll do.

I'll post a bunch of pictures from our party and they can tell the story. I'm grateful for all of them because they represent so much joy and will help us all remember this perfect day. Most of all I want to remember the look on ds's face when we sang him Happy Birthday and Las Mananitas (the Spanish language equivalent). He looked so sweet, shy, and delighted - my eyes filled with tears and I thought my heart would burst with gratitude to be present at that moment when he *got it* that he was the focus of the celebration. That *he* was the reason that we were all there in such lovely communion.

Let the Party Begin!



With my mom and ds's godmother:



So many friends:










With my mom and ds's godfather:



Everyone wants a piece of that pinata!













Here is the picture worth a thousand words. Here is delight incarnate:



We had a treasure hunt (featuring Ring Pops):












With Poppy Hoot (dh's father) and Papa (my father) - capping off a perfect party with Ring Pops:



The end of a perfect day. Asleep only 2 pages into Goodnight Moon: