Stragglers

As with every fellowship, this one, too, must disperse.

Notes

Bernadette from the backseat in Herkimer at the RR crossing: A coal train!
Marian from the front seat as the wheels squeal and moan and whine by: Yep.  Hear the saxophone solo? It's definitely a Coletrane!
 

Matt: Mama's wearing sandals.
Bernadette: No, she's not. She's wearing flap-flops.

Grandpa: Who do you think invented S'mores?
Isaiah: Daddy!
I rest on my laurels.

Marian: Hey, I'm juggling a beer, a brownie and a baby.  

Friedrichses

Moving is stressful...

Friends can make it easier.

Quotable

Isaiah: Whenever someone leaves the light on in the bathroom, they are very naughty. If you do that one more time, I'm going to have to ask Momma to call the police.

Bernadette after Marian pulled a piece of sea glass from her mouth: What is sea glass? It's for the seals!

Bernadette (3 in July) is saying "Honey" this and "Honey" that. We're checking for diners with help wanted signs.

Kateri (8 months+) has chosen "yay!" and "Yeah" as her first Understandable English. 

A new stage in my life: Bernadette asked me to help with her pony tail.

The life of a 3-year-old: standing naked in the kiddie pool eating a slice of pizza.

Bernadette puts hairband on my head. "You look gorgeous."

 

After the weekend

Sky

Matt: Can you see the stars?
Bernadette: I hear them stars.
Matt: you can hear them?
Isaiah: Daddy, of course stars can sing.

Family pic

Sweet dreams

Notes

Bernadette really likes purple. And pink, too. But especially purple. She's still chatty in her own language, but she's also repeating sentences back to us. And she can replicate rhythms and melodies and songs after hearing them once or twice. Often she does this with her own words or shorthand.


At dinner, a fussy Kateri refuses to be calmed. Finally, she nurses. And then Bernadette becomes upset because something is wrong with her drink or her food. Kateri pops up, now happy and looks over. "Feeling some schadenfreude, Kateri," I say. She smiles broadly.


Sometimes when you are 4 months old a lamp catches your attention and you talk to it with all your pre-verbal abilities.


On a day of snow
As ice builds on rocks in streams
Store sign: summer hours


You've heard of rage against the machine? This morning Bernadette is rage to her mother's machine.


The whisper of tiny snow pellets hitting paper-dry leaves clinging to a tree in January: the continuous sound of thousands of unsynchronized tiny snare drums, audible no more than five feet away.


 Just a note about the house rules: the two older Friedrichs children are now banned from playing with forks.


Isaiah: Please write a note to Peter and Magda and tell them I want pirates next Christmas.    


The most amusing thing a 3-month-old has ever seen: Her older sister jumping on the bed and singing.


Sung loudly with a growl: "we are pirates sailing on a silver sea (treacherous pirates)"


Isaiah's career plans: be a quilt maker and when he's too old for that he'll be a race car driver.


How you know the conditions are perfect: The sled wants to go before you even sit down.    

Noses

CT Whale

Bernadette would not high-five the Whale mascot when he was right behind us, but she spent the rest of the game asking where he was and saying she wanted to give him five.

Firsts

Kateri takes her first subway ride, visits her first Indian restaurant and hangs out late at a bar on the Lower East Side for the first time (somewhat against her will; that Peter Tascio guy is kinda loud).

The tree

It's up. Of course my decision to use only one color of lights, and white at that, has "spoiled Christmas," according to Isaiah.

The Baptism

 Thanks to everyone who joined us and helped out.

Art!

The kids sure enjoy an opening, especially when there are appetizers.

Sunny day

New York adventure

 Isaiah tries to eat chicken with chopsticks at Pho Grand Vietnamese restaurant in New York, near the Bowery.

 Bernadette used chopsticks, too, but only to stir Daddy's soup.

 The mango smoothy wasn't to your liking?

 A taste of the sweet and spicy dipping sauce that came with an appetizer.

 Matt, Clare, Matt and Bernadette

Peter, Magda and Isaiah

Counterbalance

I haven't tried to hold all three children at the same time ...

More Lake Compounce

 Isaiah offers some thoughts on the engine.

The horsies.