Happy Thoughts

In the midst of a deep valley that is one in the series of peaks and valleys I've been through in the past six months, I have forged ahead and some lovely things have happened. 

I took Adam's three year photos by myself this year, instead of taking him to Target or Penney's like I usually would have.  A coworker let me borrow her photography space.  I only had to pay $10 for lighting.  Here's how some of my faves turned out:

I even did my best to use Photoshop to edit out oopses in the background and reflections of the big lights cast in Adam's glasses' lenses.  I think they turned out pretty well if I do say so myself.

Speaking of Adam, he's done some pretty hilarious things lately.  The other day, he was holding a toy and a sudden sneeze came upon him.  He sprayed the toy pretty good since he didn't have time to cover his mouth and then exclaimed, with some surprise, "I bwess you'd on dat!"  Just yesterday, we got to spend a large amount of the day playing in the plastic kiddie pool and with the slip and slide in the backyard.  We finally had a gorgeous, sunny, warm day.  We'd been playing for a couple hours and Stu and I were resting a little, lounging in our Adirondack chairs - I now use Stu's old green, plastic one since I bought him a real wooden one for Father's Day (or was it his birthday?) this year.  We noticed Adam standing over by the picnic table near the side of our yard.  He called out, "I hafta go potty!" and we responded, "Go ahead.....oh....you're going right there?" and there was nothing we could do do stop him.  He'd already whipped down his pants and tinkled right there in the yard.  We admonished him, "Humans do not go pee-pee in the yard.  Only dogs do.  Next time, you need to go inside to go potty."  Adam just agreed, "Ok."  He's such a liar.  I can see him doing it again.  He's in a phase where if he wants to do something, he just does it.  When you tell him he should not, he responds with, "But I wanted to!"

Grandma Stu took Ryann shopping the other day.  Here she is modeling one of the dresses she just had to have.  Isn't it sweet?

We got Max's baseball photos delivered last night.  I think his turned out adorable!

Grammie found a bunch of classic books on sale at Target for a buck a piece so purchased a bunch for Max since he is such a voracious reader lately (partly because he loves it but partly because he's filling in his time sheet for the library so he can claim a prize for having read 10 and then 20 hours this summer).  The books included "Black Beauty" and "Moby Dick" and several others.  Max chose to start "Moby Dick" last night, in bed, and said he's really enjoying it.  These are illustrated versions so I don't know if the prose is "dumbed down" a bit, too, or not.  If not, I'm impressed.  I've picked up "Moby Dick" a couple times and found it hard going.  I'll have to check Max's version out.