Delaney Network is not Dead

I'm starting to work my way through the backlog of photos. Sorry it's taken so long, and a thousand thank you's to the relatives who have only nagged me intermittently. Commentary is going to be pretty light so I can get these up faster, and the main thing you all want is photos, right?

Starting with ... Chris made us a trifle sometime back in June. For no particular reason. Just because he's awesome like that.

What a peach

I stopped at the grocery store today and had both kids with me. We needed bananas immediately for lunch, so I was picking over the display for the yellowest I could find when that tingly parent sense kicked in. I turn around and there's Darby, just standing there, waiting, totally innocent and giving the impression that he hasn't moved at all. But I've learned to trust that feeling when I get it, so I kept the investigation open.

We're in the produce section, and I do a quick scan. Opposite the bananas, right next to Darby, is a big pile of peaches. And one of the peaches catches my eye, because it's the only one in the bin with a couple bites already taken out of it. My eyes narrow. I study Darby more closely, and he looks as still as he did before, but ... yes, there it is, his mouth is working something over.

"Darby, did you take a bite of this peach?"

"Oh yeah, Daddy!" Totally cheerful, not a care in the world.

And! Now he's finished with that bite, so WHILE I'M WATCHING, he reaches in to get some more -- and of course winds up with a completely different peach. At least I intercepted that one halfway to his mouth, but anyway ... that's the story of how I bought Darby a peach at the grocery store. He seemed to really like the rest of it once we got it home.

One more thing: I told Erika as soon as we got through the door, and she pointed out how it's kind of a whole new concern for us -- who could imagine Casey picking up a strange piece of fruit and starting to eat it?

I just had an idea.

In case you haven't heard, Chris had a great idea for a birthday present for me this year. He is going to cook dinner for the family every Sunday for a year. Now, this is cool on several levels. Most obviously, it means 52 meals over the next year that I don't have to cook. Now, I kind of like cooking, but it does get tedious sometimes, and it can be a strain to constantly be trying to figure out what to make--what's healthy enough, what will the kids (Casey, really) actually eat. I'm taking on some new tasks these days, and Chris is well aware, and so it's greatly appreciated that he's stepping up to lighten the load. Secondly, and this is one of my favorite things about it, is that it's totally out of his comfort zone. This is the guy who survived on spaghetti and takeout before I came along. Occasionally he'd make a fabulous dessert--trifle, anybody?--but only because he felt like dessert was worth the effort, whereas normal food wasn't. So him volunteering to take up cooking--it's like he told me he was going to take dance lessons.

Day 1 was a success. When he first told me what he was doing, I immediately pictured him making spaghetti once a week, which was fine with me. But he's actually seeking out recipes for real food. His first meal: Stuffed shells! He's not just pitching in; he's showing me up. I only take the time to stuff pasta for special occasions. And that's awesome! He can show me up anytime he wants.

Anyway, I just had this idea today that he should be blogging about this experience. Then he could totally parlay that into a book deal, a la that blogger who made all of Julia Child's recipes in a year. I guess it's not quite that level of commitment ... but he could write humorous accounts of his kitchen adventures, combined with moving prose about how it helped bring him closer to his wife and appreciate her more. It'd be a bestseller! Women everywhere would buy it for their husbands.

But ... who would play him in the movie version?

Off to College

These seem like bright kids, so we decided to ship them off to college just a bit early. For a few hours. UW-Madison science program was having an exhibition over the weekend, and the info I saw said "all ages." It had been cold and drizzly here, and we were itching to have somewhere to take the kids, so we decided to take that literally. Luckily, there were a ton of little kids there, so we were in good company. Different departments had booths set up with activities. A lot of it was way over our kids' heads (genetic mapping anyone?) but Casey was very interested, and the college students staffing it were nice about trying to talk at his level. He got to do weird things like make a pipe-cleaner neuron and build a diaphragm out of candy.

Casey's favorite booth was the one by the engineering students. They had lego robots that were hooked up to computer controls that the kids could use to make them move.

 The entomology booth was also very popular. They got to pet a caterpillar and look at some creepy crawlies.

Ew. (That's one of the entomology students holding a live cockroach. They tried to convince us they make good pets, but yuck.)

I don't even know what he's looking at here.

Casey really liked this globe in the campus geology museum. He has a thing for maps and globes in general. The rest of my pictures from the geology museum didn't turn out, but they had a bunch of rocks (of course) as well as fossils and some dinosaur and mammoth skeleton replicas. We spent an extra twenty minutes there while Casey listened to a professor talk about the teeth of different Ice Age animals. I was bored, but he was rapt.

Darby also enjoyed the day but in a different way. He just likes to be out in the world chilling.

Lunchtime! I told Casey to smile for the camera.

Then we told him to close his mouth. This is a little better.

This is now one of my favorite pictures of Darby. He looks great in his dad's hat.

And finally, one leftover picture from March. Occasionally Casey will come home from school looking a little strange. Around St. Patrick's Day, they gave him back to us looking like this.

Some Like It Hot ... ter than Freezing

The sun came out and the snow started melting this week. It was in the 30s, maybe low 40s, but it felt so good that I was about to burst into song of some sort: "It's the dawning of the age of Aquarius, age of Aquariu-us, Aquar-i-us ...." Does that song have anything to do with springtime? I'm unclear on the connection, but it felt right.

The kids were just ecstatic to be playing outside without being uncomfortably cold. We built a snow fort, a snowman, and they even got out their bikes because the driveway was dry enough. Spring cannot arrive fast enough to these guys.

Darby puts on weight.

A couple days ago, Darby was wearing his one-piece pajamas with feet, and Casey thought it was hilarious to drop toys down the back. Darby didn't seem to mind and was actually pausing whatever he was doing to let Casey put another block or small toy down his back, so we didn't put a stop to it right away. I didn't think much more about it until Darby came hobbling up, sobbing, and I realized that he had doubled in size.

When we unzipped those pajamas, here's what fell out:

Let's see, that's a pirate sword, two maracas, dozens of blocks, a few cars, a hammer, a snake ... I can't believe he didn't complain sooner. Or, that all that stuff fit in his pajamas.

Christmas Part II

Happy Valentine's Day! Well, this is just getting silly. I should never, ever promise Part II of something, because it almost guarantees that I'll immediately be swamped with work and never get around to it. I spent most of January writing a book about Argentina, which turned out to be pretty all-consuming. I started out knowing embarrassingly little about Argentina, mostly what could be gleaned from a few 1990s Madonna songs. As it turns out, just thirty years ago their military government was literally massacring thousands of citizens. Now they're not only a democracy, but a world leader in emissions standards, women in government, and the legalization of gay marriage. This fascinating story, coming soon to a junior high library near you!

So, Christmas at my parents' house ... let's see what I can remember. The first thing that springs to mind is the car trip there. I feel like this was the first time we traveled with BOYS in the backseat (as opposed to boy and a baby). It was an entertaining trip. In the past few months, Darby has developed a stubborn and argumentative streak. He's two, so he doesn't know much yet, but he will declare certain facts with absolute certainty and never give in. Someday far in the future, I predict that a certain family friend is going to get drunk and loudly tell Darby's significant other, "Let me tell you about Darby. He always has to be right!" (As this person warned me about ten years ago about Chris--and it still makes me laugh.) Anyway, conversations in the car went like this:

Casey: Merry Christmas!
Darby: No. Happy Halloween!
Casey: It's not Halloween, Darby! It's Christmas!
Darby: No, it's not Christmas! It's Halloween!
And, so on, for a LONG TIME. Because Darby won't give in, and Casey won't let it drop.

Here's another gem:
Casey: There are cats in the back! (The cats were traveling with us in the back of my hatchback.)
Darby: No, muffins in the back! (There have never been any muffins in my car.)
Casey: No, cats in the back!
Darby: No, muffins in the back!
I think that debate got us all the way through Chicago.

I don't have a lot of great photos from this trip. I ran out of battery power halfway through. And for some reason, photos at my parents' house don't seem to come out that well. Something about the lighting? Luckily, I do have some photos of Chris and boys wearing funny fuzzy hats.

They wore those hats for pretty much the whole week. Very festive.

One of the highlights of the week was that we got to take the kids to the Indianapolis Children's Museum finally. This was cool for two reasons: one, it is the world's largest children's museum, and it is awesome. Two, it is the museum I remember from my childhood. I actually volunteered there on Saturdays for a few years, so I knew it pretty well.

It's changed a lot. Almost nothing was exactly the way I remembered. One of the coolest changes was that they replaced the Imax theater with a huge Dinosphere exhibit. They have acquired a number of actual skeletons and displayed them in such a way that you feel like you're walking through a prehistoric world. Using the former Imax screen, they had the ability to do some cool atmospheric effects. Every so often, the exhibit would darken and a thunder storm would sweep through. In another section, kids could play with real fossils, dig at a pretend excavation site, and even talk to real working paleontologists.

Here's a view of part of the exhibit from up above:

Here's Darby "consulting" with a paleontologist.

The kids got to see their first planetarium show, which Chris was so excited to show them. Luckily, they had a 20-minute version for little kids that featured Elmo.

When I was a kid, this was the world's largest water clock. Now it's billed as the largest water clock in North America. This is still pretty cool, but apparently someone somewhere has something even more impressive. At any rate, I was always fascinated by it. Let's see ... it's about 11:59 in this picture.

This is a blown-glass sculpture that was installed a few years ago up the middle. If I remember right, it's about four stories high.

Blown glass was also in the ceiling in the lower level. I thought it was cool looking, so I took a picture. There were some sculptures on the floor that the kids could play with and reconfigure.

One of the first exhibits we saw was the model trains, and it was hard to tear the boys away. That was a challenge all day--they never understood that the next thing would be just as cool as the current thing.

At one point, Chris and I were waffling over where to go next, but Casey felt strongly--he wanted to go to the Egypt exhibit. A few years ago, they actually had King Tut. Too bad we missed that. Here's Casey trying on some sort of Egyptian garb.

We ran out of time and missed some exhibits, including science, which was disappointing. I'm sure we'll be back, though.

The rest of the our trip isn't recorded pictorially, but we really enjoyed visiting with my family. We saw my parents and Krista on Christmas and my brother's family later in the week. We also had wonderful visits with some of my relatives in Ft. Wayne.

And that, folks, was Christmas Part II. Now we can all get on with our lives.