Our Thanksgiving

This is a shot of Quincy House at Harvard - You can't really see it, but there is a very, very nice penthouse apartment on the top floor (behind the trees) which is where we got to spend our Thanksgiving.


Note the fabulous place setting candy decorations - oreo cookies, reese's and candy corn - I think the boy thought he'd died and gone to some type of Martha Stewart candy heaven... He also thought that ALL the little turkeys were for him...

and here he is jumping on the furniture after eating his fill

Honestly it was quite a lovely thanksgiving with some of the best food that I have had & the apartment was very nice with incredible views of Cambridge & Boston. Also the house mascot is a penguin & the boy is now very attached to the 4 foot stuffed penguin that he played with all night!!

Demolition !

Jeff invited El Destructo upstairs to have a hand at the demolition thats been going on in their kitchen. The work he is doing is amazing by the way - the top floor is looking amazing with a laundry room & a new bathroom - rain shower head & claw foot tub included. The lower floor is in the midst of transformation.


Em, Mikey & Jeff in the newly framed kitchen doorway.


El Destructo with his goggles on ripping down some plaster in the kitchen.

Garden Nursery Pajama Day Fun

Monito's nursery school likes to hold a pajama day for the kids before the holiday weekends. Today was our first one. I had been looking forward to this since last year when Em & I visited the school it was PJ day & I thought it looked like so much fun. Really - what's cuter than a bunch of 3 year olds running amok in their footsies?

The teachers & the parent teacher also wear PJ's to school for the day & the classroom is transformed for "night time" with lots of caves (big boxes), sleeping bags, flashlights and other fun stuff.

This year the kids also were "going on a bear hunt" for PJ day ---
Here is the monkey & one of his classmates making bears with teacher Rachel (easy name to remember huh)



showing off his bear (that he carried around with him ALL day according to the teachers)

The classroom also has a cool loft space that the kids have transformed into a FIRETRUCK
this year - complete with hoses, helmets and the steering wheels that used to be in the outside play yard...



put this all together and you get.....

A couple of Pajama clad fire fighters!!!!!

Pajama Day

This is how he looked coming home from PJ day at school today. I love the footsie pajamas tucked into the rain boots and the rain jacket. He is holding the bear that he made for the "bear hunt" that his class went on.

Candy Land

After picking up recycled paper for nursery school, and then going to the final Farmers Market of the season with Jen, Dashielle and Daphne the boy & I stopped into 1369 Coffee House for a warm up for me & enjoyed a game or two of CandyLand. I am enjoying how each place we play this game the game board is slightly different - I may need to google all the different versions to satisfy my curiosity. The boy has been enjoying it since our SF visit when Jesse passed down his old copy of the game. At first Monito was excited for whoever was finishing first, but now he is beginning to want to win. He is also learning how to cheat a little bit too - if he pulls a card he doesn't like he slides it under the game board and pulls another one.

Post Adventure Day treats

After hanging out in Em's office the monkey & I headed down to Flour to enjoy a nice cuppa & a yummy treat - they make a WONDERFUL chocolate chip cookie -

He also enjoyed coloring a few pictures on some of the cafe fliers and in my calendar - isn't the B&W feature on my phone cool?

Adventure Day - BMC

Em has been telling the lil monkey about the construction that is going on "right outside my window" at her work... and has been asking us when we want to come down & see. So that was our destination on this weeks adventure day.

It's a pretty easy ride on the #1 bus & we passed lots of big buildings & construction on the way. As we got close to the hospital we were amused by the "antics" of the various junkies on their way to BMC - something that always gives me a bit more sympathy for Em since these are often her patients.

Then we got to meet up with Mommy & see the building - my photo's don't really do it justice but there is a massive construction project outside her office & the cool part is that they have a GIANT tower crane inside the center of the new building - which no one we talked to yet knows how they get out of there...

The boy happily sat in Em's office window (ps the office for the residents is something that just happend this year - and by office we pretty much mean a closet sized space shared by 16 - but hey it does have a DOOR!!) & ate his snacks and marveled at the crane.

Mud Boy

We started the day by exploring the mud puddles left from yesterdays rain on the Baseball field in Hoyt. There was one good, deep & dirty puddle left. He made the most of it - soaking boots, pants and even some of his shirt.

He Looooves his rain boots & He Loves getting dirty

After a change of clothes & a meal we were back outside with Kath & Gabe until Unka Adam got here & enticed us inside with promises of a yummy BBQ dinner from the Red Bones.

In here somewhere there is a longer post about when good boys go berzerk -- a combo of missing the grandparents after a weekend with them & no food stuff except chocolate.

Grandparent Visit for Dori's Birthday Weekend

Dori turned one this weekend & the grandparents & cousins came to town!!! Which means a couple of the Boys' favorite things - Hotel Rooms & swimming pools.

sadly it also means flu shots....

Here he is giving a shot to Grandma Nancy - she took it very well!!!

SkyScraper 1,2,3 ....

Adventure day this week was a trip to downtown Boston to do a return visit to the Boston Public Library and to take a harder look at some of the SkyScrapers of our skyline. The plan was maybe going to include a trip up the elevator at the Prudential Bldng. but the weather was funky so we ended up sticking to the ground on this trip.

He has become really interested in the tall buildings - singing about sky scrapers, building them out of blocks, asking us to draw them... etc. And it was really apparent to me that he's even more nutso about them than last time we were downtown - I thought that he would fall over from craning his neck to look up at the big glass skyscraper.


what you are missing in the photo is his animated babbling and the occasional jumping up and down with excitement.

This is the view he had:



I, on the other hand love the buildings placement....

and the reflection of the old church in its modern facade.

Tortoise & Hare

riding the tortoise at Copley Square, and


bringing the bunny some carrots from the farmers market.

Police search for Harvard Square bank robber - Cambridge, Massachusetts - Cambridge Chronicle

Police search for Harvard Square bank robber - Cambridge, Massachusetts - Cambridge Chronicle

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Its got to be hard to find a 20 year old white guy in Red Sox gear in Harvard Sq at lunchtime... but this does explain why the red line train was backed back into the station and searched car by car by a bunch of police when we were heading home from preschool.

More fall foliage fun

Gabe, Jack & our boy get busy at the Amigos school playground.

R the Builder

We went to the swedish store of furniture & meatballs to purchase a new shelf system for the boys room.

and the best part is he got to help put it together with Mommy -


They both pulled out their powertools & had it put together in no time...

School Holiday - Fall

We met Dan, Gina, Farah and Dori at Cambridge Common to enjoy the Veterans Day Holiday. After playing in Cambridge Common for ages (with all the families of the greater Boston Metro area) the kids had a good time throwing leaves on Uncle Dan.




then we walked by an odd one-man-band in Harvard Sq. - who was doing Old McDonald.

It was F's 4 3/4 Birthday so we all got to have some Ice Cream to Celebrate!!!!

Next up -

Dori's One Year Celebration!!!

Adventure Day - Science Museum

After the teacher conference in the am - we caught a bus to Lechmere & made the quick walk down to the Museum of Science. We haven't been here for awhile and this time we spent some time outside looking at the big rocks - there are some from Lassen even...

There is a Harry Potter exhibit, but I thought we should wait until Em was with us till we went & saw it, but they do have the flying car on general display... how cool is that. (oh the boy is TOTALLY not impressed by this yet though). He did like playing with all the body parts on the computers and also running against the arrows & lights & of course our old standby the pneumatic tube. I enjoyed the fish & chip lunch as I always do.

We headed home on the T & passed out promptly.

Growth Chart according to the Science Museum

According to the Museum wall the boy is measuring 40" now
(some of that might be hair - it is time for another cut I think) -

by contrast he was only at 38" 8 months ago in late Feb. (2/24/09)

More Fall Fun

Today was school report card day - he got to play in the park while I met with his teachers. He is doing great. Since we came home he is even asking to go to school - rather than trying to talk his way out of it. It was a lovely day - sunny & crisp. We had a great time playing with Maya & Briac from school and then throwing leaves on each other.

Night of the Dead

Here is a shot of the AMAZING full moon over the 17th Street Hill as we drove back toward the Mission from UCSF.


We got to the park & Monito wanted to play rather than look at the alters - you can't really blame him - there were some cool things in the playground, but it was pretty dark.


The alters were still being set up as we walked around but they already looked amazing.


there was even an alter to the maker of the upside down bus...