Toddlers and Scholars

A & J seem to be trying to get rid of their afternoon nap time. I’m trying to turn it into a “rest time,” but it’s taking everyone awhile to get used to. Some days they really don’t seem like they even need to rest, but other days I can tell that they really need to sleep. Sometimes during their “rest time” I find this:

Mapping sin–the South doesn’t look so good.

We’ve had a busy, busy weekend. On Friday night David’s uncle Kevin and his family came up from Huntington, IN to spend some time with our boys and to give us some time to go to Chicago (Thankyouthankyouthankyou!).

We weren’t there for very long, but we packed a lot in. We stayed in a really cool downtown hotel (I loved the chandelier silhouette on the wall–David thought it was tacky):

Last time we were in Lincoln Park we found a great French restaurant that we stopped at again for crepes. It really is a great little restaurant. If you’re ever near Lincoln Park, it’s worth a stop.

We did some fun and productive shopping at some of our favorite consignment shops. . .

Apparently the photographic theme of the day was me taking pictures of myself in mirrors.

We also saw a new theater production called “Fake” at the Steppenwolf Theater. We hadn’t heard much about it before we went, but it was really good.

We got off the train and back to our car just in time to hear the last 2 minutes of Notre Dame vs. Purdue. Sure kept us awake the rest of the way home!

Next weekend I travel to Aurora, Ore., just south of Portland to give a paper at the annual convention of the Communal Studies Association. Those of you who have been to Portland–anything I should check out while I’m there?

–David

Jonathan seems to be very tactile oriented. He needs more physical affection than Andrew does and has to touch everything to explore it. I think that’s one reason he enjoyed the beach so much when we were at Lake Michigan last month.

He and Andrew are really into the boat hats that Grandpa Steve gave them a couple of years ago. They recently rediscovered them in the closet and now they want to wear them everywhere we go.

He’s a really cute kid in person, but he must be going through a particularly un-photogenic stage because I’ve had a terrible time getting good pictures of him lately. He likes to make funny faces for the camera.

One of Jonathan’s (and Andrew’s. . . and my) favorite times of the day is the Sesame Street hour. Jonathan especially likes the character segments. For some reason his favorite character is Gordon. Not Big Bird. Not Elmo. Gordon.

Both A and J are really into letters. They want everything of theirs to be monogrammed. Jonathan thinks he owns the letter J. This picture is a little hard to make out, but his peanut butter cracker has a raisin “J” on it–minus the two nibbles he took out of the bottom while waiting for me to get the camera.