An aquarium surprise!

Keep your eye on the beluga in the background!

you should have seen the other guy

DSC03724.JPG, originally uploaded by dansinker.

Roosevelt somehow managed to scratch up his face repeatedly today, in tussles with Lucy (twice!), a can of Raid (once!), and just walking around (like three more times!). He's now scratched and swollen like he went 10 rounds in a prizefight.

You can't even see all the cuts in this photo! You can see more here.

Moray vs. Roosevelt

where everybody knows your name

"Let me tell you it's always cool / And the boss don't mind sometimes if you act the fool / At the car wash"

Washing cars today--both our real one, and the Grandparents' fleet--accompanied by the deafening cries of the cicada.

Can I take your order please?

DSC03684.JPG, originally uploaded by dansinker.

Roosevelt's favorite thing to do at the park (any park, really, not just the fancy one in the suburbs) is to pretend that he's running a restaurant and to take food orders. When there's not a nice drive-thru window like this one, he makes due with pretty much anything that separates the order taker from the order giver. He's very thorough and, when this picture was taken, was insistent on serving chocolate-covered tomatoes. YUM!

Throw your hands in the air and HONK like you just don't care!

Ride 'em Roosevelt!

DSC03626.JPG, originally uploaded by dansinker.

Roosevelt riding his grandparent's rocking horse one-handed rodeo style!

Cicada Dreams

This morning when Roosevelt woke up, he walked out onto the back porch (we're out in Glenview) and the first thing he said was, "Good morning cicadas. How are you? Sleep well?" I asked him if they had dreams since he likes to talk about dreams. "Yes mama. They dream of penguins". So, in case you ever wondered what these strange creatures dream about, you now know that it is of arctic birds they can't possibly have time to see in the short chapter of their lives spent out of the dirt.

Roosevelt Sings the Cream Song

Not much more to say here other than that's the din of cicadas in the background, not white noise.

Listen here!

Roosevelt: 0, Cicadas: 10,000

So we decamped from our home this week, desperate to escape the constant cleaning required when your home is on the market (cleaning that's close to impossible with a two-year-old and a dog), and headed up to the suburbs to stay at my folks' place. Added incentive was that we could have easy access to their beautiful yard in the first week of June, a great time here in Chicago.

Unfortunately, we didn't factor in that the 17-year cicadas would be in full swing--swarming on the driveway, the side of the house, in every shrub and tree, and flying their strange, slow flight across the yard. Then there's their song--an otherworldly warble that, at mid-day, is almost deafening.

Which would, in it's own kind-of-gross way would be fine and certainly an experience to write home about (or write this about) if Roosevelt didn't decide the moment we pulled up yesterday that he was deathly afraid of cicadas. He refuses to stand on the ground, can't go outside, and cries when he has to get out of his carseat because he knows the cicadas are out there.

It's a beautiful early-summer day and we're stuck inside looking out, the din of the cicadas matched only by the chorus of "no, no, no cicadas," that follows it.

Conversations with Kennedy

So we have a painting of JFK above our dining room table, opposite where Roosevelt eats his dinner. And the other day, while Janice and I were still getting things ready in the kitchen we heard him saying "Hi John, I'm eating burrito and guacamole today."

At first we thought, "John? Our upstairs neighbor?" Then we looked at Roosevelt and realize that he was looking right at the painting. And the conversation continued! Until we got there with our meal.

Tonight he was at it again, asking John for more frozen strawberries. We caught the last of the conversation--Roosevelt trying to pronounce Kennedy on video and then telling him, "I love you."