Yeah, that’s me anchoring.
1: Ryan Thorn
2: Jason Brunette
3: Jay Lillie
4: Moi…

Thanks to my lil’ brother for turning this VHS tape into a DVD a couple (more?) years back that I finally uncovered and turned into 1’s and 0’s I could upload to YouTube…

The family tradition (thanks to Suzanne’s family) of taking a picture in front of the garage. Can’t start fingers until 1st grade though.

“Are you excited Colin?”

“Are you really excited Colin?”

With his friend Jackie Kalaher.

“Mrs. Illingworth, this is my pirate ship shirt, isn’t it great?”

As you can see his teacher is already having to tell him to clean up after himself. That blur you see in the front of the picture is his best bud Ellie.

All of this after he sang most of the song deep and wide on his own.

Tonight Matt’s wallet went missing briefly. It was discovered in Colin’s pants (not inside his pocket as his pajamas don’t have pockets, but actually inside his pants). He told us he was “daddy”.

We will try to get some video of it to post. Very cute!

Hannah from her brother’s perspective. I think he gets some great expressions out of her. Perhaps we have a model/photographer team on our hands? LOL

The scene: mom and dad sitting on the sofa tapping away on our laptops while Colin plays with his trains in the train room. Colin comes over and sits down between us.

“Mommy, can I play alphabet on your computer?”

“No, honey.”

“Daddy, can I play alphabet on your computer?”

“Sorry Colin, I’m trying to find a sofa for the basement.”

…Pause…

“Oh. Where’s MY computer?”

He busily told us for a couple of minutes about how he needs a computer and wants one when he gets older. He wants a Colin Computer.

He’s not even three years old. And he has a iPod Touch. C’mon Colin, that has more computing power than the first 10 computers your dad every had…

Here are some various shots.

Colin, Hannah and Grandma enjoying a meal on the new porch. The weather quickly turned too cold for this, so we haven’t done it since.

Colin’s brand new sneakers. We went in one day to get measured and were told that his size 9’s would be fine for a bit longer. We went back a few days later because we decided to go ahead and get the new shoes and discovered that there must have been a full moon because there was no question that Colin is now a size 10…

Hannah will be a flower for Halloween this year. This is just her trying the costume out. We will have more pictures for the event itself later.

My mother knitted Hannah a beautiful pink flower hat that was a bit too big for her right after she was born, but now it fits perfectly. The crying in the picture is not because of the hat which she wore happily for some time prior to the picture. She was upset for some other unknown reason at the time I decided to snap some photos.

To keep Colin happy one of the very first things I did after we moved into the new house was turn the den into a train play area using all of his tracks, which we were never really able to do at the condo. That room now has his train table in it and is our main play area. At some point downstairs will become our main area and we will get a piano in there.

After the choir or chimes or bells would finish everyone would clap and Colin really enjoyed joining in on the clapping. So much so he decided one of the performances deserved a loud “Woo hooooo.”

After the children’s time we decided to go ahead and bring him down to child care. Before we headed there we wanted to let dad know at the back of the church what we were doing so we walked back to him and he said quite loudly “Dad, we are going to go”. He amused several members of the congregation and made his parents blush.

[Thanks, Joe, for shooting it over to me!]

Colin is definitely potty trained, albeit a bit of a slave to his little potty, but we can work on that. It’s actually impressive that we only started a few weeks ago and he’s already able to stay dry through the night! I’m told night time dryness can take a year or more. And before anyone says it, I am well aware he can regress.

Yesterday while an adult (I will keep his identity anonymous) was sitting on his throne and Colin was hovering around. At one point Colin says “What’s that sound?” I don’t recall if there was a reply, but Colin then said “it’s crap sounds”. Matt and I were in shock because neither of us know where he learned to say that.

This morning while changing Colin I happened to use the word crap, like “oh crap I forgot to start breakfast” so we figured out where the word came from, but that doesn’t explain how Colin used the word to refer to poop since neither of us use it that way (as in I have to go take a crap, etc).

Today Colin went into the bathroom to go number 2. He finished and then proclaimed “Holy Crap!” He repeated this proclamation after his second trip to the potty for number 2.

If anyone would like to take credit for telling Colin that crap means poop, please let us know. And if you have any tips on how to stop him from using that and the word stupid, we would appreciate it.

It is a story about this woman:

It was the beginning of 2003 and Matt and I were still in our first blissful year of marriage. Matt’s parents were in town for a visit. Judy is a lover of lighthouses so we were visiting the Point Bonita Lighthouse just over the Golden Gate bridge. It is well known for its cool suspension bridge that is a bit scary due to the limit of people that can be on it at once.

After enjoying the lighthouse we walked the trail back to our car and I ran ahead to use the porta potty that was along the road. Matt and Judy, I believe, strolled slowly probably taking in the calla lillies I remember we were all impressed with along the way.  Matt came upon the porta potty and decided he would play a trick on me. He proceeded to whisper into the potty “I can hear you peeing…” And then decided he would lie in wait to snap a picture of me as I exited since he was certain I would have some silly reaction to his comment.

To his chagrin, I had already left the toilet and the lovely lady in the picture above was the recipient of his little jokes. She doesn’t look too thrilled, does she?

And to add to the humor, Dan watched the whole thing go down knowing that it wasn’t me in the bathroom and didn’t say anything! LOL

Ah memories!