The in laws

will be in town this week, passing through in their motorhome on the way to the South Island. Lucky them!

This shot of the three generations was from Peter's last visit on 11 February. I adore this picture.

as happy as ever

20 March 2009


17 March 2010

It's not often I check to see what pictures I took a year ago, but when I do, I sure am glad I took a moment to look.

one adventure, two ways

Last weekend, Quincy got some new animal stickers. He was anxious to use them. I suggested he use them on a scrapbook layout about our trip to the zoo earlier this month. I told him that when I got the chance I would print out some zoo pictures for him to use.

Fast forward to last night and he reminded me about those photos. Only it was bedtime, so I kinda lied and told him that my printer was broken. He walked over and looked at it for a while before pressing the ON button. He looked at me so proudly, grinning from ear to ear. "It's not broken anymore! See, Mama, you just press this button. This one right here."

Anyway, I promised I would print them out in the morning and luckily he was satisfied.

So now it's today and me and my boy just had our first crop. Meaning, I actually scrapbooked my own layout while he worked on his. He chose the photos, helped me with the picture captions, attached his first brads, and helped with all the trimming, inking, gluing, + corner rounding. He was thrilled to use my Fiskars scissors and paper piercer for the first time.

me: Why do you think I am letting you use my super sharp tools?
him: Because Quincy is so nice to Mama.

(I was kind of going for "careful" rather than "nice"!)

And, of course, he used his stickers.

So here you go, one adventure, scrapbooked two ways...

mine

his

I'm pretty partial to his.

winter? slow down. and feed the meter.

In between hot, summery days, winter made its second ugly appearance this week.

Plus I got two speeding tickets today. Yes, two. One on the way to music and one on the way home. But I was completely unaware. I got nabbed by cameras for going a few k's over in a school zone. So Q's $3 music class turned into a $113 class.

A parking ticket two days ago makes for a trio of infringements and one unimpressed husband.

a zoo keeper in the house

It's no secret that Quincy loves animals.

I think his favorite place on earth is the zoo. He always wants to go but never wants to leave. He talks about our trips to the zoo in such detail for months and months. Sure he has his favorite animals, but he gives equal attention to the blue-tongued skink and the giraffe.

We have been lucky enough to visit three different zoos in the last eight months and thanks to my obsessive picture taking, he keeps track of which animals were found in which zoos. On our last trip to Wellington Zoo, he was understandably a little frustrated with our zoo's lack of elephants, so he hopped in the zoo truck and drove "to the Cincinnati Zoo where there is a whole variety of elephants."

He studies the zoo vets as they treat animals at the Nest, our zoo's very cool new animal hospital, and gives Berkley and Kai the same treatments at home.

Following our last stop at the Nest, the cellphone in his pocket is now a critical part of the zoo vet uniform.

He pays careful attention to the zoo keeper talks.

And he even goes so far as to mimic them, move-for-move, during a presentation. I'm not kidding.

Endearing now, but this kind of behavior might result in a black eye someday!

He regularly sets up elaborate zoos with his animals,

making sure to keep the African animals of the Serengeti Plains separate from the polar ones, the rainforest ones, and the New Zealand natives.

Speaking of New Zealand natives, the tuatara is a current fav.

But he is also very partial to all sea life. He would love nothing more than to have a great big aquarium complete with turtles, tadpoles, frogs, clownfish, a baby otter, the biggest goldfish he's ever seen, and the oft-neglected skunk-cleaner shrimp.

And he regularly fishes for great white sharks, basking sharks, humpback whales, and salmon.

On Saturday he got to rent his first movie. Finding Nemo lost out in the end to a South African one called Elephant Tales (where the animals weren't cartoons) but insisted it should be called Elephant Trunks. He was terrified of the poachers but couldn't look away. (It was rated G, who would expect poachers?) He was so engrossed that he never actually ate the popcorn.

If he had his way, he would be able to watch animal videos on National Geographic Kids at his leisure.

I am pretty sure all his current library books are animal-themed. One day before his nap, it took quite a bit of convincing before he accepted that I could not and would not read this 375-page animal encyclopedia.

Well I bet you can't guess what kind of birthday cake he wants this year. One with wild animals on it. Just like last year.

So it should be no surprise that he wants to be a zoo keeper. In fact, he currently is a zoo keeper, round the clock, and he has the gumboots to prove it.

Dolphin gumboots, at that.

I so admire this boy's passion.

The pool is closed,

but we made the most of the last day of the season.

It was Jeremy's first time there and we met some friends. It was a really nice day, but once again it was virtually empty. I don't get it.

I will have to remember to take a picture like this next year to see how he's grown.

new sunnies + gumboots

Rain or shine, gumboots are a part of Q's uniform, so after outgrowing his pair a good six months ago, you can imagine how happy he was when I suggested we get him a new pair today. We got lucky with a 50% off sale...at the beginning of autumn...weird.

We also found a cheap pair of sunnies, which he needed since I very sadly lost the pair Stef gave him last year. Ironically I lost them, at the Blueberry Farm, the same place we went the day she gave them to him almost exactly a year earlier. We combed the rows of blueberry bushes to no avail.

So these...

were replaced with these...

Just look at that swagger. Blue dolphin gumboots and snake sunnies apparently do that to a nearly three-year-old boy.

a Sunday playdate

We started at the playground with Priya and the girls on this lovely Sunday afternoon. And we ended up on the beach, the kids swimming in their undies.

Margaret + Jacob in the house

This week we were lucky enough to have a baby in the house! A super cute and pretty cruisy baby at that. Four-month-old Jacob was here and Quincy was smitten from the start.

It was so fun to pull out all of Q's old stuff and watch him (re)discover all things baby.

He was really gentle, shared pretty well, and surprisingly didn't get jealous of all the attention I couldn't help but direct at Jake.

It'll be nice to watch a friendship develop between these two little guys over the years.

Jacob didn't come on his own, though. He brought his very confident and calm mum, Margaret, along. It was a good thing because as hard as Quincy tried, he just couldn't offer him milk like mum could!

(I so wish I could share a certain photo here!)

I loved watching my friend in her new role. Motherhood suits her, for sure.

It was so funny how quickly Quincy dropped my hand at the airport for Margaret's. There was clearly something familiar about her. In fact, a couple times I caught him calling her "Rosey", my sister. Sweet.

Here are some more snapshots from our very relaxing and memorable week...

We couldn't let them leave without some gelato. Delish.

Margaret and Jacob (and Jon too), we miss you and can't wait 'til you move back to NZ!