Family Self-Portrait

Buddies

With Rockam growing stronger and being able to hold himself upright more easily, Stephen now sees his little brother as a potential playmate. Today he was trying to teach Rock to build a tower with blocks. Then Joe managed to get them on Stephen's dump truck together.

Little readers

A few shots from our Chicago trip at libraries and in laps :-)

Deep thoughts... by Stephen

Stephen: Can God turn you into a CHICKEN, Daddy?
Joe: He can, but He doesn't want to do that. Then you'd eat me for dinner!
Stephen: You don't want to be a chicken. I don't want to be a CHICKEN. And Rockam doesn't want to be a chicken either.
Emily: Stephen, can God turn you into a chicken?
Stephen: Yeah.
Emily: Does He want to?
Stephen: No! He doesn't want to do THAT!

I will not eat it in a swing...

...I will not eat it if you sing!

You expect me to do what?

Not impressed.

Interestingly, Stephen went beserk over rice cereal when we gave it to him.

Suburban splashing

Splash fountain parks have become all the rage in the last couple of years. The Chicago suburbs have several; we took Stephen to two of them. My good friend, Sharon Speck, met me with her four kids at a park in Streamwood. Stephen enjoyed his own private sink for much of the time.

Sharon's daughter, Lola, is her "mini-me."

Sharon's other children definitely favor her as well.

He's got a bit of a sag problem.

There's a splash fountain with an element of suspense near the Schaumburg Library, where my mom works. Stephen enjoyed stomping on one of the geysers.

Ravinia

We've always got to get a little dose of culture when visiting my folks. It was actually a little chilly the night we went to Ravinia to hear Lang Lang perform Chopin and Liszt. Stephen wanted to know where the guitars were,

We enjoyed a picnic spread under the trees on the lawn.

Rockam found a polonaise mingled with the whirring cicadas to be the perfect napping nusic.

Rockam laughs

Steve's first sail

Candid portraits

I love these two photos... Stephen playing in a nylon tube and Rockam in my arms at the Chicago Botanic Gardens.

Metromunchies

I always love going to the Rocky River MetroParks. Rockam got to share in his mama's joy of watching the birds and bees, pretending to be a furry woodland creature, and catching the attention of some bluegills that thought his fingers and toes looked like plump pink worms.

Again, I wanted to post more photos, but for some reason I'm having trouble getting them to upload to blogger.

Rockam's first trip to Cleveland

So, I'm extremely behind in posting photos and text from all our summer travels... and blogger isn't cooperating with all the photos I've tried to add to this post. At least it let me upload this cute shot of Rockam sitting on his great grandma G's lap, and looking mighty content! Rockam and his great-gram share a Feb. 6 birthday, but they're 80 years apart!



Rockam chills with his Tia Cris. (For some reason my photo of Steve with Tio Jack didn't upload)

All this socializing made him a little sleepy. Notice that he fell asleep with his arm through the ring of a dangling toy... kind of like he's handcuffed to his play mat!

More photos to follow if I can get blogger/my internet connection to cooperate.

Oak Island, by day