Category: Photos

More smiles from a guy once addicted to The Power of Glower. 😉

Little “Captain Salty” explores his ship (or, to my mind, young Skywalker traipses around the bowels of Bespin):

Finnster, enjoying Mom’s glasses + neighbor Chris’s tools during the building of the swing set:

We’ve just put the finishing touches on a very busy weekend with the boys. In addition to riding on Thomas the Tank Engine Saturday morning with friends, we built a terrific new play structure/swingset in the backyard (a.k.a. the “Nackyard”).

John and I had been talking for a while about getting some kind of jungle gym or swingset for the guys, and after tons of research, we found one that we thought would be both super-fun and would fit the smallish space we had available for it. It was delivered to us on Thursday in three enormous boxes on a huge pallet, and it was up to us to build the thing. The estimate on the instructions said 5-7 hours, so I figured we’d be doing really well if we doubled that and assumed we’d need two solid days.

After sorting and labeling the hardware, and grouping the lumber into piles, we set to work after lunch on Saturday. We got the skeleton of the base constructed and left the rest ’til Sunday. I got a bright and early start at 8:30, and by 10:00, we’d gotten the climbing wall on, the deck finished, and the swingset support arms up. The boys were anxious to know when it would be finished: “about 30 more minutes, or more like 45?”, asked Finny repeatedly. They were happy to help out by using their own play tools to hammer, saw, and drive screws. We worked through the afternoon after a quick lunch break. Even though we made a deal with Finny that we wouldn’t put up the swings and flags until after naptime, he decided he was too excited to sleep and came out to hang out with us while we finished up. He was so thrilled to help Dad-o put the flags on, test out the swings and trapeze, and do an inaugural run down the slide (belly first!).

By the time Henry woke up from his nap at 3:30, we had the whole thing done, and the guys spent the rest of the afternoon playing their hearts out. Standing on the deck preparing to slide, Henry looked at me and remarked with a grin, “I like this play equipment, Mom-o.” Here’s a gallery of the weekend’s proceedings, and a shot of the finished set. Viva la Nackyard!

Mealtime greetings from Henry & his stuffed buddies. (As it happens we’ve just retired his “hopper” (clip-on booster) shown here, having promoted him to a big-guy stool. End of a tiny era. :-))

Greetings from the Nack family basement (aka kiddie rave-cave). 🙂

“Nack… Hen Nack.” 🙂 (compare to the original)

“I’m a big weirdo, Dad-O,” announces our caped crusader. Yes, son, and we couldn’t be happier about that. 🙂

Last week I took Finny to the optometrist for his first eye exam. He didn’t seem to see so well when the nurse at the pediatrician’s office tested him, so they recommended that we see an eye doctor to get a full assessment.

I decided to take Finny to my eye doc, Dr. Feldman. My friend Tara took her twins there and said they did fine, and Dr. Feldman’s got 4 kids of his own, so I figured Finny would do well, too. I spent some time talking to Finny a few days in advance about why we were going, what he could expect, and why we needed to get the exam done. I told him about Dr. Feldman’s office, the fact that he’s my doctor too, and the sorts of things Dr. Feldman would be asking him to do (shining little lights in his eyes, making him look at shapes and letters, stuff like that.)

Once we were at the doctor’s office, Finny was very calm and composed. He followed all Dr. Feldman’s instructions, answered all his questions, and was even quite chatty with the doc. It was really cute to watch him in action–telling Dr. Feldman about the toy trucks he brought, the hat he was wearing, and what we might have for lunch after the exam.

We met Dad-o for lunch at the deli across the plaza from Dr. Feldman’s office, and while we waited, Finny and I debriefed on the whole experience. I asked him what he thought of the little flashlights, the computer, colors and shapes. Finny explained that his favorite part was, and I quote:  “when Feldman asked me to pinch the little animals on the page.” (Which was a cool 3-D vision test to find out if his eyes are working well in tandem, complete with 3-D glasses!). I loved that he referred to the doc as “Feldman”, like they’ve played basketball together at the gym for years! Sometimes I swear he is 3 going on 30. (Happily, his eyesight is also fine, by the way.)

I also love that out of all the toys in the doctor’s post-exam “toybox”, Finny went straight for the goofy green groucho glasses. The kid’s got a real appreciation for prop-based comedy!

We had a ball celebrating Memorial Day with a ton of pals, both tall & small, in our backyard barbecue. Thanks to everyone who came, contributed food, and kept the little guys from singing their faces off on the grill! Here’s our little gallery. (Thanks to friends Tara & Tom for contributing some shots.)