Rock 'n Roll James

James has been making up his own songs lately, usually about Hot Wheels cars. Enjoy a couple recent examples:

Rock 'n Roll James

The boy has his rock 'n roll moves down!

Camping Fun!

Last week-end, we spent a night and a day camping at Ledges State Park with our good friends from down the street Freddy, Ray, Lisa & Pete (and their dog Inge). James and Freddy are best buddies; even after spending all day every day together in the same room at daycare, it's an evening routine to hear James say, "Hey, I have an idea! Why don't we go to Freddy's house!" As we were parting ways on Saturday evening, after spending 24 consecutive hours with each other, James said, "Can Freddy come over to play tonight?" You can see from these photos that the boys had a great chance to get out their goofies on the camping trip!

Camping at Ledges State Park, May 2012

Happy Mother's Day!

James and Anna have some special wishes to share for Mother's Day!

From Mother's Day Greetings

Please notice James' new haircut -- he sure looks older with his hair trimmed. Becky & I were joking that Anna will need to get hers cut in, oh, maybe 18 months or so. Much love to all our mothers and grandmothers and great-grandmothers! We hope you had a very wonderful day and we only wish that we could've spent it with you.

Visiting Denver

For 5 days last week, James and I were back in our old stomping grounds -- Denver, CO. I had some research to do (which involved catching as many snakes as I could at a few sites in the area) and decided it would be fun to bring James along. Several friends of ours graciously allowed James to stay with them while I ran around searching for snakes, so many thank-yous and appreciations to Sarah/Eric, Ann/Ben, and Jen/Kim for taking such great care of James while his daddy was out "working". I was most curious to see how James would react to seeing his old buddies -- especially Benton, Adelaide, and Iris -- after nine months. As I had hoped, it was as if they had just seen each other yesterday and picked up the goofiness and fun right where they had left off. I hope that James can hang on to the memories of these good times with his friends and know that he can always go back and visit again. Unfortunately, I didn't take too many photos on the trip, but there are some here:

Denver Trip April 2012

Some things kids need to be taught...

I grew up on the Rolling Stones. We listened to classic rock pretty much all the time, but it was really the Rolling Stones that were instilled in me as the quintessential rock band by my father. At one point, I was just obsessed with "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Paint it Black" and remember clearly one Easter Sunday being quite upset with my dad for not allowing us to listen to the former tune in the car. Of course, this love for rock 'n roll has stayed with me and, though my tastes have branched out considerably, I can always come back the the Stones, Led Zeppelin, and other classic rock staples.

James, too, loves rock 'n roll and often requests it in the car. He is usually only satisfied if we play it "really really really super loud," which is just fine by me. This morning, he requested some rock 'n roll so I obliged with what is unarguably one of the pinnacle rock albums of the past 50 years: the Stone's "Exile on Main Street." I was quite dismayed as I went through the entire album, track by track, only to have James declare after the first 5 seconds of each song, "This is not rock 'n roll." Oh boy -- I've got some work to do if I'm going to live up the parenting standards set by own father.

What's that Troodon doing there?

Here is one of my favorite recent quotes, whose precocious vocabulary skills continually impress us:

"Hey! What's that Troodon doing there?"

Just in case you weren't sure:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troodon

Growing Up is Hard To Do

James seems like such a big boy lately. He's really been into wearing pocket pants (cargo pants) instead of his old favorites "soft pants", he only uses diapers at night, and he has recently given up his pacifiers, aka BBs.

Tonight he was once again stalling going to bed. He wanted a new book and wanted me to lift him up so he could pick one from the high shelf. On one of the top shelves were his BBs. He spotted them and said, "My BBs!". Then he looked at me, put his head on my shoulder and said, "I really love BBs you know."