A Right of Passage, a Sick Baby, and Gabe Helps in the Yard

Sunday afternoon, Libby arranged for us to experience one of the many rights of passage for small children--attending a live performance of giant puppets performing for the enjoyment of the children. Specifically, she got tickets to see Sesame Street Live. Going to this performance, she claimed, was something that we had to do as parents because ALL parents have to go through this sort of thing--that's where the "right of passage" part comes into play.

Before going, I argued that a person only ever goes through a right of passage one time--any more and it becomes something else entirely--and, thus, if we were going to do it now, we would NEVER have to do it again, and that didn't seem fair to Norah since she would be too young to enjoy or remember it. I voted that we not go in favor of waiting two or three more years so both kids would remember the experience. Not surprisingly, she didn't appreciate this analysis or my suggestion.

As it turned out, for me anyway, it was a moot argument. Norah was too sick to go, so I volunteered to stay home with her while Libby took Gabe to the show. He had a great time and was even able to stay mostly in his seat through almost the entire program (until Libby noticed that he had had so much soda to drink over the past few hours that he had peed through his diaper and soaked his pants, so she decided it was time to come home after that).

Gabe's souvenir, a spinning Elmo with batteries so cheap that they had already run out by the time they left the place. Probably cost $200 too.


Gabe's first gigantic bucket of popcorn. He did a pretty good job working through it, considering their comparative size.

The schwag counter. Notice the soaked ass of his pants.

And I know my last post was on the subject of Norah being sick, but we got a few more pictures of her--Libby got some last night that were really great. Well, not "great," because she looks like absolute hell, and it sucks when babies are sick, but "great" because they did a good job of capturing just how miserable she is.

This one was taken Sunday while we were working in the yard (it was around 60, so she really didn't need the cap, but we figured she was sick so we'd try and keep her warm). She doesn't LOOK all that sick, but it's a cute picture, so I posted it anyway.

Taken last night about two hours before bed time. In her defense, part of why she's so disgusting looking is because she just had a chocolate graham cracker (that's what is on her sleeper, before anyone gets TOO disgusted). She's been doing some really inspiring stuff with the snot she's producing as a hair gel. You can't really tell from this picture, but her hair is a matted, crusty mess from her wiping her hand up her nose and then into her hair. You couldn't run a comb through it without pulling out half her hair.

And, finally, a little video of Gabe helping Libby out in the yard. We had our first officially nice weekend, so they spent both days out there working on the gardens that Gabe and I had cleaned the leaves out of earlier in the week. Here he's helping to put some mulch down. I was sort of hoping he'd slide, face first, into the wheelbarrow thingy, just for the entertainment value of it being on film, but he didn't.