a belated happy new year to you all

For Rosh Hashanah, we went to Boston to spend time with our peeps. This was a while ago, and I have finally taken care of posting the pictures. It happens.

Our lovely hosts for the weekend: Cousin Sue and Grammy Shirley!

Once again, I could tell you all of the fun stories about our visits with friends and family, the giant dinners we consumed at Grammy Shirley's and Cousin Harriet's, and Kenny's first foray into the world of mini-golf. I could, but I won't. Sorry. Instead, I offer you another fairly large gallery to peruse. Huzzah!

THIS is how you know your holiday dinner was a success: The table is declared a national disaster area by the Feds. Yeah, baby.

happy thanksgiving, from the king

Our hearty spread.

We had a nice, relaxing Thanksgiving with just the four of us this year. Overboard whipped up a lovely meal, including the traditional Rolnick cornish game hens, and much food was had by all. We also found Kenny's old Thanksgiving headdress. After putting it on, he declared that he was "the King" and that all of his subjects were allowed to enjoy Thanksgiving, so long as the King was paid his proper respect in Pumpkin pie.

"It's good to be the King."

go west, young family

Kenny takes in the Pacific Ocean for the first time.

Back in October, we made a special voyage out west to Los Angeles and Carlsbad, CA. The first few days in LA were spent visiting with friends and introducing the kids to the joys of LA traffic. We then motored down to Carlsbad and hung out for an action-packed week of fun with Aunt Carol, Uncle Mike and cousins Adam and Hannah. Everything culminated that weekend in the 2nd Annual Rolnick Family Reunion, where we mingled with our fellow Rolnicks and celebrated GG's 97th birthday. Yes, I said 97.

GG tells Chloe about what life was like when he was a baby.

I could go on and on and tell you all the fun stories, but I'm much too lazy to do that. Instead, I offer you a huge gallery of pictures that have not been captioned to help you follow along. May I suggest inventing your own narrative? Feel free to share.

very puzzling

Kenny puts it all together.

Kenny loves puzzles. LOOOOOOOVES them. And he's getting really good at putting them together. Sure, the first time through can be a harrowing, scream-filled experience, but after that he's all business. The other weekend he decided to put together every puzzle he owns (as arranged in the photo by me). It's pretty awesome to see him get so focused and into what he's doing.

a melee of cuteness

ladies of hadassah

Introducing the newest life member of Hadassah.

In the tradition of Great Grandma Bessie, Grammy Shirley makes all of her granddaughters lifetime members of Hadassah. At four months of age, Chloe is no exception. Which of course raises the question, "Do they serve Similac at those donor dinners?"

checking in with ms. chloe

Chloe had her four month check-up the other week and we're happy to report that she's doing awesome. I believe that is the technical term, "Awesome." Whereas Kenny has been consistently in the middle of the pack (50th percentile or under) for height and weight, Chloe is charging ahead. She's currently weighing in at 15 lbs, 7 oz and measures a very respectable 25.25 inches. That puts her somewhere in the 80th percentile. Basically, at four months, she's looking more like a six month old. So, huzzah!

new portraits

I have tons of pix to get up here in the near future, but here are three amazing shots taken by Cousin Eric while we were in Carlsbad for the 2nd Rolnick Family Reunion.

slip slidin' away

Little kids, by nature, are freaked out by showers. Baths are cool. You get to sit in the water, play with tubby toys, and generally control the action. But a shower is a deluge of rushing water, coming down from above - way out of your reach or control. I think it's for those reasons that Kenny has, up to now, been freaked the hell out by showers. I even used to employ the shower head over the tub as a way to get him to wrap up an extra long bath time session. All I had to do was reach for the shower head, and Mr. Man went scrambling over the side of the tub in a furious attempt to escape.

This changed about a week or two ago, when for some odd reason, we started discussing showers vs. baths at dinner. Kenny got a little smirk on his face and I innocently offered up, "Do you want to take a shower with Daddy tonight instead of a bath?" He said, to my surprise, "Yes."

The shower went fairly well, except for Kenny screaming like a banshee when the idea of standing under the water was presented to him, instead of sitting on the shower seat, just outside of the water's spray range. So instead of him taking a real shower, I stood under the water (or "rain" as Kenny called it) and splashed him silly.

Interestingly enough, the next night, Kenny wanted to take another shower. And the night after that, and so on. With each successive shower, he grew slightly more open to the idea of standing under the "rain" and letting it wash away the soap/shampoo, instead of Daddy taking handfuls of the stuff and dumping it on his head.

Which brings us to last night. The shower went fine. Kenny even stood under the water (briefly) with only a minimal amount of screaming bloody murder. It was the getting out of the shower that took a turn for the, "Thank God your mother isn't home right now."

After turning the water off, I grabbed my towel and dried off. Then I went and grabbed Kenny's towel and dried him off. Then I stepped out of the shower and instructed him to be very careful as he stepped out, because as I must have told him about 5421 times now, that shower floor is slippery. What's that? You see where this is going? Yeah, I should have too.

I stepped out, and then as I turned back to watch him, everything transitioned to slow motion. Kenny took an awkward step towards the door, his foot slipped, his body went forward, and he intriguingly used his head to bounce off of the raised doorframe. With a lovely, "THUNK" the boy whacked his noggin' off the frame and began to wail as if, well, he was standing under the shower.

Digging deep into my parenting skill toolkit, I raised him up and checked for damage. Blood? No. Skull fractures? None that I could see. Huge purple welt that would raise his mother's eyebrows and heart rate? Check.

"You're okay, Buddy," I reassured him. "You just took a header on the slippery shower floor."

Kenny gave me a dubious stare and continued to sniffle and let the tears flow.

I had him look into my eyes and I gave him my most casual, confident smile.

"When we fall down, Buddy, what do we do?"

"We [sniffle] get back [sniffle] up again [snort]."

"Right. And what would Grandpa say?"

He looked at me quizzically.

"You get back up again, because YOU'RE A HOCKEY PLAYER!"

"I'm [sniffle] a hockey player [grin]."

"Damn right. Now let's never speak of this in front of your mother, lest she send you on an indefinite stint on the IR."

beautiful boy

When Kenny was an infant, I used to rock him to sleep in my arms and sing John Lennon's song, "Beautiful Boy". A few weeks back, I started singing the song to Mr. Man again, and it's now known as "The Daddy Song" (which is not to be confused with "The Mommy Song"). This is requested on a nightly basis, and not just for stalling purposes (or so I'd like to believe).

The repeating chorus of the song is, "Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy." At the end of each of those lines, Kenny likes to add, "That's me."

gentle it

Part of our routine at bedtime is to read Kenny a few stories in bed before he goes to sleep. Mr. Man usually gets to pick the books out himself, and lately he's been recycling one from a while back: "Good Morning, Good Night."

As you can see from the image above, it's a touch and feel book with various animals (and eventually a little girl) going to bed. He digs it and likes to feel the various soft surfaces.

The other night we were reading it and when I asked him to gently touch each animal, he was cool with it. Then Overboard came in and sat down on the bed. Instead of telling her to touch, Kenny admonished her to "Gentle it" each picture.