Linden at finishing school

Linden deftly balances an elephant rattle on her head while reading her plush books (the one about triangles I think). Is there anything she can't do?

Linden in the sun

...to eat with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowl; to...

Parlor tricks

Rowan with a napkin on his head at the breakfast table. We try to keep him from doing these things too much.

Sister Marie!

Rowan and I do this thing where, if he tries to bite his bath towel, I take it from him, put it over his head and call him Sister Marie, while he screams "Apple towel!" Above, Linden does her own little Sister Marie impression while sitting in her baby swing.

Mary Kay's blanket

My stepmother, Mary Kay Fausch, sent Linden a handmade quilt with a beautiful rainbow pattern on it. She loves it. She uses it everyday, rolling around, practicing her crawling, balancing on her stomach with her arms and legs in the air whimpering...

A classic moment...

Looking up, looking down

I just like this shot from below of Linden's very circular face among the tree tops.

And in case you forgot...

Linden is cute.

Linden again

...to stare brazenly into the face of death and ask for a rain check; to screech in the night like the wolverine one bite shy of freedom from the trap; to...I'm gonna get the leaf!

Linden, mistress of cool

Sporting her brother's old hat and sunglasses, Linden goes out into the world, UV protected and ready to bring...it...on...to say to the world, I am baby, hear we squeak; to make the boys cry and put the girls to shame; to stake her rightful claim on this fistful of dirt we call life, throw caution to the wind and bury the hatchet of destiny into the heartwood of history...

Ooh, a leaf!

Captive audience

Winnie claims ownership of her children...

No, my dears, you can't get away. Your feeble struggles and droolings are futile: you are still mine, mine mine!!! Mwuuuuhahahahahahaha!!!

Leaf eating

Here's a perfect example of what I was talking about. Linden gets ready...

Insert leaf and...

Uh oh...

Linden gets a leaf. Come to my mouth, leaf...how DARE you disobey me!

Linden in Fall

So begins Linden's fascination with grabbing anything she can and stuffing it into her mouth. Here's how it usually goes: She sits somewhere, mindlessly moving her hands in a circular motion at the wrists; she sees something she wants; her eyes get really big, her mouth puckers into an 'O', she makes little rhythmic grunts while staring at the thing intently. From there it goes something like this:

1. If she gets it, she feels it with her hands a bit, shoves it in her mouth and starts making noises that either mean she's very happy or very annoyed. Or else she bats it around until it falls on the floor, at which point she stares at it, then returns to searching for another thing she wants (see above).
2. If she doesn't get it, she cries--very loud, very angrily. Hands are moving wildly in circles at the wrists.
Linden is in leaf-shadow.

Rowan in Fall

Rowan under a giant red maple tree. He found a leaf he liked, which is why he's smiling in this picture. You can see my coffee cup in the background.

Rowan is not too sure about the scarlet oak branch he's got. The acorn has no cap, so that just won't quite do, you know.

Linden in her eating chair

I think this is the first picture of Linden in her chair at the dinner table. She's eating solid foods now like avocado, rice gruel, apple, carrot, cauliflower, pear and beets. She likes the avocado and gruel, enjoys carrots once in a while, barely tolerates apples and pears, and is on the fence about cauliflower. Beets, her newest food, she seems to like--we need another test.

Family photo

Our first TRUE family photo. Everyone is beaming toothy grins, except for Linden, who stares off into oblivion and wonders "what is all this green stuff? is that a flamingo? what's a turkey?

Linden and Mama

Linden loves Mama SO much.

Rowan and Linden: harmonie

This will probably not happen again.

Oh, my...

That's alot of chair photos. By the way, look at his eyes, they look slightly more like Winnie's when he smiles really big, but the brow is all Baba, and that baby's growin' right across his face, man. Love it!

ANOTHER chair photo

Wow. Alright, Winnie uploaded the photos, and she could have included all these in one post but didn't so now we have many posts involving similar photos. Sorry, folks, but still Rowan looks mighty cute in this one...horribly, terrifyingly aware of his own greatness.

Good luck, everyone.

Another chair photo

Rowan, still aware of his own greatness...but more humble?

I OWN you...

Rowan, too aware of his own greatness.

Rowan's FDR shot

This is one of Rowan's school photos in which he's behaving extremely well and enjoying sitting on an old wooden rocking chair that actually fits him. One hand on the chair arm, one hand on the thigh, look at the camera, (smile)...

Not out of the woods yet

Rowan places Mama's hair on Linden, who is not amused.

Into the woods

Rowan, Mama and Linden in Dunn Meadow on the IU campus. Linden is nearly bald at this point, but that's OK.

Rowan and Ian (and Ruby)

Rowan's best (human) friend, Ian. Ian adores Rowan and gives him fierce, violent hugs, which Rowan seems to grudgingly accept.

Rowan converses with another friend, Ruby, at his school during the Halloween party. Ruby is dressed as a ladybug--very chic.

Halloween at Rowan's school

For Halloween, we came up with embarassingly awful costumes for Rowan: gay aerobics instructor, Chinese CEO. We finally manned up and, with the help of Bel, made him a shark costume (technically a blue shark, as Rowan is very fond of blue sharks because they eat whales, at least dead ones).

Rowan shows off his fins and tail, the latter of which almost fell off while on a trick-or-treating excursion. Now, as it happens, at this same excursion, I dropped the lens cap to my camera somewhere on the sidewalk and for the life of me I couldn't find it, returning home with the idea that, oh well, it's not a big deal, at which point Winnie corrected me that it IS a big deal, and I went back out, this time a little further than before, and finally found it lying on the grass right next to the sidewalk. Lesson learned: don't be a dumbass.

Rowan flaps his fins in this absolutely lunatic procession. Please note: boys = cowboy, pirate; girls = princess.

Rowan and Linden, growing up

Linden wears a constant look of shock on her face, and it only gets more shocking when she sees something she wants. More on that later.

Rowan blows out the candle for honestly I can't remember whose birthday we're celebrating here, but look at Linden in great anticipation for what Rowan is about to do--is he going to eat it, is he going to yell at it, what is he going to do?!

Finally...some new photos

Sorry, folks. Just busy. Here's a recent picture of Linden on top of Baba (with beard). If you compare this picture with some of the previous ones, you'll notice she's losing some of her hair. She's not as bald as Rowan was at that age, but she's getting there.

Rowan and Linden try to eat each other on Rowan's birthday.

Another one of Linden's rare smiles, though they're becoming a little more frequent these days. Heck, she even laughs for all of 1 second.

Rowan blowing out the candles for his third birthday. He's just started Montessori School and doing splendidly. He even has some new friends. And he shares with them and talks with them and plays with them and does normal things with them that he never did before.

Presenting: The cutest baby ever...

...and don't you deny it. Well, OK, you can of course deny it, and it was probably an exaggeration to call her the cutest baby ever. I mean, she's got, like, no neck.

Linden's 2 month birthday

We celebrated Rowan's 2-month birthday with chocolate cake, so we decided to do the same for Linden. Rowan girds himself for the ensuing onslaught; Linden looks at a chair.

Mama gets in the action, holding Rowan back from attacking the cake head-on; Linden looks at the wall.
Rowan gets that greedy look in his eye. He likes the cake, but he doesn't like the strawberries ON the cake. These things must be separate--strawberries here, cake here; chicken here, parsley here. There is no admixture of things in Rowan's culinary world, as each retains its pure essence as a self-contained entity, the thing for its own sake and nothing more.

Waiting for his slice...

Rowan and Linden look on as the cake is divided and parsed out to the respective persons at the table. Rowan wants the BIG piece. Linden is just happy to be here.

Linden, almost 2 months

Linden is growing up, wearing Rowan's old clothes (like the panda outfit above), and enjoying fine literature with the family. The Frog and Toad books are actually quite charming, with simple but thoughtful stories. Rowan loves them.

Linden in her first real dress, seen here with Bel. She's chubbing up nicely--Linden, I mean.

Linden struggles with tummy time with Mama, but she does very well. Her head and neck control is pretty remarkable, and she has very little trouble holding her head up in this position.