Back to the motherland

I'll be sharing a few photos from our recent trip back to Ohio. We got to play with babies.

And little boys. Did you know they make electronic hamsters? Brilliant. They have as much personality as a real hamster (e.g. zero), and they live longer. Max and Danny are going over their collection with Tom.

The kids really get into their food.

My cousin and her husband made the rustic table. Note the contrasting glossy chandelier with 'tennis bracelet' accents.

My uncle's grilled fajitas. Yum.

My aunt's raspberry pie made with berries from her backyard and garnished with berries and mint leaves.

Baby Brock demonstrating safe Oreo eating techniques.

Oreo, post-Brock.

Blue

We (very appropriately) had a family reunion at the St. Louis Zoo recently. Isabella is a little droopy because it was so HOT.

We fed the sting rays and watched the monkeys being gross.

For posterity, here is the whole family saying hello.

Gratuitous cuteness

Brock with stool. (He gets on it sometimes to see and sometimes to be seen.)

Tayten making brownies. (They were good.)

Eye roll

Love watching newborns fall asleep.

This is wee Finnigan of Sacramento.

Flower child

Children of the leaves

A few things I learned after a play date with my cousins Max and Danny:

• Digital cameras, which are fine for shooting interiors, rocks, trees, mountains and people my age, don't have the speed required to capture a child.
• When playing with little boys from Ohio, one must be precise about equipment. Not a "bulldozer" but a loader. Not a "truck" but a combine.*
• Pushing two kids around in a wheelbarrow will wear you out long before it does them.

*Addendum: While playing, Max said that I could be "boss" and that I should tell them what to do. I suggested picking up all the leaves in the yard.

Consulting with mom later, I learned that "boss" is supposed to tell them to do any or all of the following:

• Transport the backhoe loader to the jobsite via flatbed trailer
• Offload the backhoe loader
• Spread new asphalt on the road
• Steamroll the asphalt down
• Transport the backhoe back to the yard to hose it down
• Pick up coffee and a donut at the yard to eat on the way to the next jobsite
• Transport the backhoe loader to the jobsite via flatbed trailer again
• Choose the front loader bucket or the back backhoe bucket to do the job
• Dig a foundation with the back bucket and dump debris in a dump truck
• Forget the backhoe loader then transport a crane to the stone shop to offload stone slabs from the truck
• Decide if we need to use the mobile crane or the tower crane
• Finalize the crane decision and offload all slabs in record time
• Start over.

"Note: All job assignments are given in a 'boss' voice behind a cupped hand i.e. walkie talkie," explained mom. "The worker is known as 'buddy.'"

Roger that.

Three men in a tub

It's a credit to my photojournalism skills that I captured all three in a shared microsecond of modesty.

Once some three and a half decades ago, I splashed in the same tub with my cousins. Thank goodness there was no such thing as a blog back then.

I really have so many other things I should be doing

Besides turning my baby cousin into Henry VIII.

The 16th Century suits him, though, don't you think?

SoHo with kids

Sunny spring day

Block after block

To the same cafe everybody ate at last year

Cram jammed in

With creme fraiche, organic beer, crab cakes

Wee wobbly table

Teeny tiny food

Barely blending in

Until the diaper comes off

The teeter tot

Love triangle

I promise this is it. This is the same as earlier pic with watercolor filter.

A bit more of the baby

I'm sorry. I can't stop. I don't see him very often, and, as you can see, he's quite adorable. Above we've captured his form of locomotion in lue of crawling. (Weird crawling habits run in the family. My oldest cousin Beau crawled using only one arm and dragging the other one along. My youngest cousin Ryan required two or three butt lifts before launching in a forward direction. Brock prefers plank position, which he pirouttes into a bit of a salchow.)

Great-grandma with Gabby and Brock.

Bye-bye baby face.

Duet with baby and puppy

Every time Gabby barks, the baby laughs. I did my best Brian Regan, and the baby didn't laugh that much. Upstaged by a lapdog.

Brock's first face plant

We all sat with rapt attention, cameras rolling, hoping this might be that Special Moment when the little one first learns to crawl. (Hint: you may want to turn up your audio in order to fully capture the crunch of baby cheeks impacting plastic keys.)

Bald and beautiful

Back home in Ohio now. Cousin Brock turned six months. He's a happy little guy who loves his chow.

Life with Boy

Here are some recent pics of our great-nephew Tayten. Not only is he beautiful, he's a genius. Besides speaking fully formed sentences, he's also learning ASL. Here is an actual bedtime conversation, as reported by his mom:
Mom: I love you
Tayt: I love you more
Mom: I love you most
Tayt: I love you to the moon
Mom: I love you to the stars
Tayt: I love you to the sun
Mom: I love you to Pluto
Tayt: I love you to MICKEY MOUSE

Baby Brock's first "formal" photos

Finally received my Brock photo. What a cute little puppy. Amazing how they got his head propped up. And yes, the eyes are wiiiiide open. With just a little digital editing, the child is totally Margaret Keane.

Oh, while we're at it . . . Brock as seen by Renoir and Andy Warhol respectively.

I'm going to be in so much trouble.

My newest cousin

Last night we had dinner with Jessica and Nikki at Harry's Steak House near Wall Street. Thanks to the magic of stop-action photography, we did catch little Brock with his eyes open.

Isn't he bootiful? Here he is again, offering his opinion of the radicchio salad (thats ra-deek-ee-oh, for all you Pennsylvania Dutch out there).

Tom with Brock after he "broke."

Nikki with her "au pair" Jessica. What a pair of stunning blonds. And their hair still looks good, despite walking several blocks in the humidity.