Darby tries on the hat

Behold, Darby as Indiana Jones:

 

Bonus photo! Casey's turn:

I love that one. We got lucky and caught the whip crack at a nice moment. He looks like he just stepped out of the poster.

Also lucky: Darby and I only took a light lashing. And that's how Casey learned to wait until his family is out of range before trying out the weapons.

Work and Play at the House

We've spent quite a bit of time at the house the past few weeks cleaning and painting. Finally we're starting to see it all pay off. It smells like fresh paint and new carpet instead of wet dog and cigarette smoke.

Here's the living room with new carpet and new curtains (and a lot of space for the boys to run around). We don't have much furniture to put up here yet, so for a while it's going to be the room where we play soccer and have dance parties.


Casey took this sweet photo of Chris and Darby.


Casey thinks the fireplace is a great place to play cars (not when it's on). It's gas-powered, so we can just flip a switch and have a nice fire. Casey's very cautious around anything we tell him is hot, so really we just have to worry about Darby getting too close.


We put Darby to work cleaning the kitchen. I'll probably re-sweep that floor later.


All that sweeping was hard work, I guess. Time for a break. (Hey, you can see the old carpet in this photo--heavily-stained grayish berber. Yuck.)



The boys enjoy a snack.


Back at the apartment, we're making sure to pack all the important stuff, boys and cats included.

Before and After Photos

Master bedroom before

In progress

We got this little bit of paint on the wall, and I totally freaked out, "Oh, no, what did we do?!"

AfterWe're happy with how it turned out. Chris picked orange because he wanted a warm color, and it definitely warms up the place. We are picturing it with very neutral bedding, maybe some black-and-white photography on the walls.

Boys bedroom before ... definitely not a fan of the previous owner's Badgers theme.

And, after. The color is called Sea Fog. I was looking for a blue that wouldn't be too babyish as they got older.

Monday we'll get our furniture moved in and start calling this place home!

Pictures of the Actual House

Chris mentioned that some people might like to see photos of our house, not just the neighbors' houses. So ... without further ado, some images from the MLS listing:

Upstairs living room

Kitchen

Dining room ... I have big plans to paint that dark blue wall immediately

Downstairs family room

Enjoying the View

Our new house is in a bit of a valley with huge, wooded hills surrounding us. Maybe it's because I grew up in flat, flat Indiana, but I am wowed by it.

View from the front porch:



View from the rear deck:

What the boys are up to these days

One of Darby's new favorite activities is coloring. He loves it so much that if he asks for the crayons, and you deny him, he will burst into tears on the spot. This is very different from Casey, who never had much patience for artistic endeavors. But now that Darby's doing it all the time, Casey wants to join in.

Krista gave this Five Little Monkeys puzzle to Casey for Christmas. It has 24 pieces, and at first I thought that was going to be way too advanced for him. The first few times, I helped a bit. By the third time, he put it together completely by himself.

Look how proud he is! At least, I think that's what that expression means.

I'm pretty sure this isn't the correct way to use this, but Darby finds this intensely amusing.


About a month ago, the boys and I took a trip to Indiana to see my parents. Here's Darby peeking through the railing over their staircase.

Snow Day!

They say we have 12-18 inches already, and it's still snowing (although it looks pretty light right now). It was 32 degrees when we got up this morning, and the temperature is supposed to plummet today. I thought we could go play in the snow for a bit before it got too cold, but there's a really a biting wind. We only stayed out for a few minutes, long enough to see that there's no way we're getting out of our parking lot until it's plowed. Then Casey wanted to go back inside, and we had some cocoa. Chris is working from home, so we're all safe and warm. And it looks like the snow will stop today, and then there will be a couple days of decent weather for the state to clean up before we have to fly out on Saturday.





Darby was a little better sport about being outside today. That kid's up for anything.

Darby's First Haircut

The new haircut makes Darby look so much more like a little boy now. That, and he's not nursing anymore, and he's toddling around everywhere with sudden confidence--he's so grown up all of a sudden!

First Snow of the Season

It started snowing up a storm this afternoon, and Casey watched in awe through our balcony door, waiting impatiently for Darby to wake up from his nap so we could all go out. He's young enough that snow still seems new and interesting each year.



I think this counts as Darby's first official snow, since last year he was still too new to notice. I remember that Casey kind of freaked out the very first time I took him out in the snow, when he was about this age. But Darby took it in stride and was quite happy. He loves to be outside, and he's a good sport in general.



Look, snow sticks to mittens. Amazing!



This is a pretty slippery sidewalk to be trying this maneuver (that is, standing). But no children were injured in the making of this photo.



Or this one, for that matter.

Halloween at the Zoo

The zoo had a special trick-or-treating event on Sunday, so we put the kids in their costumes and headed over. The line for the trick-or-treating was ridiculously long, so we skipped that. Casey didn't know the difference. He was just enjoying wearing his costume, seeing the other kids in their costumes, and just being at the zoo, his absolute favorite place in the world.

Casey is a monkey this year. I had some vague aspirations toward making homemade costumes, but in the end I just got him this off Craig's List. I don't even know where my sewing machine is packed. And every day, it seemed like Casey was telling me he wanted to be something different. Batman. Ghost. Lion. I heard giraffe quite a few times.

He never mentioned monkey, but I thought the monkey costume was cute and that I could talk him into it. Unfortunately the conversation went something like this:

"Casey, do you want to be a monkey?"

"No, I want to be a giraffe!"

"Hmmm ... I don't think I can get a giraffe costume. Wouldn't it be cool to be a monkey?"

"Oh ... ok ... I want to be a hippo!"

Seriously, how do you make a kid look like a hippo? Luckily, ever since we acquired the monkey costume, he has been very excited about it. I am still a little ashamed that I didn't try to come up with a giraffe costume, though. Maybe next year.

Isn't he cute? When he was first modeling it, he turned around and made me take a photo of his tail too. But I'm not going to post that.

This was a popular costume. We saw quite a few just like it at the zoo. One of the best costumes we saw was a guy dressed as the Man in the Yellow Hat (his kids were Curious George and a baby banana). And, we ate lunch at the same table as a family of penguins. That was a little odd, actually. They kept trying to make polite conversation, but I just couldn't take them seriously.

Darby's wearing the pumpkin costume that has been handed down to us from the cousins. He doesn't resemble a hobbit in the same way Casey did at this age, so we won't be reusing the Frodo costume I made. (Unless ... could he pass for Samwise Gangee?? I don't know ...)

One of the best moments of the day was when these three macaws knocked this pumpkin off the branch. They all looked down at the shattered remnants in stunned silence for a moment, then simultaneously started squawking at each other in this very accusatory way. Like, "I can't believe you just did that!" "ME?! You were the one shoving your beak in there!" "Now what are we going to peck at?" You kind of had to be there, but it was hilarious.

Fun at the playground ...

Darby intently watches the giraffes. (Giraffes plural! Two additional giraffes are staying in Wisconsin for the winter.)

Stay tuned in the next few days for "Darby: The Year in Review."