Farmer's Market

Here we are at the Farmer's Market this morning. Jake is sporting his new fall collection, as well as a little pumpkin he picked out for Sadie. He said it was for Sadie, and he kept showing it to her, but he never actually gave it to her. Anyway, it's the thought that counts. We picked up some fresh basil and big juicy tomatoes. One last gasp of summer....

Here's Sadie snoozing in the wagon. That's the life.

Pebbles

Nice day

It's a little bit cooler today, and I'm glad summer is finally starting to give way to fall. On top this beautiful weather, Ali brought the kids in to visit me at work today. It was story hour at the bookshop downstairs, but today they had little-kid yoga instead. It was just Jake and another little boy and when I walked in they were doing tree and lion poses.

Afterwards, we went out to Enjera for Eritrean food with Fred. If you like Ethiopian food, you'll love Eritrean food. Actually, it seemed to be identical to Ethiopian, but I didn't want to point this out since I think those two countries don't get along too well. They give you a giant piece of round, flat sourdough-y bread, with little piles of food on top. We had some lamb, chicken, beef, lentils, potatoes, etc. Then, they give you more of the bread that you use to scoop up the toppings. I think Jake was a little confused, although he did seem to like the spinach topping. But mainly he just went around to all the other tables and brought the salt and pepper shakers back to our table. Luckily we were the only ones in the dining room.

And the best news of all is that Sadie has been sleeping through the night for the past four nights!!! One night she woke up needing a diaper change and went right back to sleep, but other than that she's been going 11 or 12 hours!!! We're so excited we didn't want to even talk about it for fear of jinxing it.

Zoo

Over Labor Day weekend we visited the Roanoke Zoo, which is situated right off the Blue Ridge Parkway, overlooking the town/city of Roanoke, VA. It was a really pretty setting, and a cute little zoo where you could get pretty close to all the animals. Jake had fun naming some of them. The big turtle was "Taxi", one Boa snake was "Pony" and the other was the ubiquitous "Pokeeno." Pokeeno has been the name of most animals since he started naming things about a month or so ago. We asked if he meant "Pinocchio," and he said "yes, Pokeeno." I don't think either of us have read him the Pinocchio story, so we have no idea where that comes from.

On our way back to the car, we passed a bench in a wooded area and Jake sat down. We hardly noticed, and kept walking for a minute until we hear him shouting about something. We turned around and he was saying "Jake BIGGER! Jake BIGGER!" Apparently a few weeks ago Jake was upset that his feet didn't touch the ground when he sat down and Ali assured him they would once he was bigger. Well, Jake found a bench that sat pretty low, and sure enough his feet touched the ground. He was so excited. It was pretty cute.

Hiatus

Yes, we're still here. I took a break from the blog while we were on vacation last week down at Smith Mountain Lake where, in fitting with the small town atmosphere, they only have dialup internet.

It was a great week, and the Jacksons came down with us, so we had a lot of fun with them. Jake got more practice swimming, and even jumped in the lake from the dock! We also visited a real dairy farm and the Roanoke Zoo (pictures coming soon...).

Here's a short clip of Sadie practicing crawling with Jake at her side. Of course, as soon as he realizes I'm filming, he takes the camera and uses those weird camera angles that are popular on MTV these days.

Sittin' Pretty

Greetings from Ft. Lauderdale

Typed on the blackberry, waiting for dinner, overlooking a dark Atlantic ocean...

Business travel is funny. Especially conferences and tradeshows. Normally, if you were walking down the street and someone tried to hand you a little plastic penguin, you'd probably politely decline. But at these tradeshows, people line up for all kinds of tchotchke. Platic penguins, glittery pins, little foam trucks, cheap pens that won't survive the plane ride home, and paperweights (paperweights?).

It seems like once you get on the tradeshow circuit, and you have your wardrobe of logo'd golf shirts, you get to know everyone else and you become like a traveling gypsy caravan.

But as much as I respect gypsies, and the new breed of gypsy punk rock (google it- I can't do hyperlinks from the blackberry), it's not the life for me. These gypsies don't have that great of a sense of humor and they don't know any Django Reinhardt tunes.