Cheerful Abundance

A year ago, were collecting school supplies to take to Ethiopia, as humanitarian aide. We lugged several hundred pounds of stuff across three continents, destined for an orphanage in Addis Adaba.

But you don’t have to go halfway around the globe to find classrooms and children in desperate need of supplies. Recent floods in Georgia have left some schools and classrooms completely bereft of supplies, in a year where budget cuts are rampant in education. One little kid would like your help in collecting school supplies to give to a school in his district that was completely flooded. We challenge our friends and family to participate in “Give Back With Jack“, a grassroots initative started by a little kid to help other little kids.

… to Hallowe’en! Today we wore our Hallowe’en t-shirts for the first time. Other firsts: first bath together in the bathtub! Up until now, we have bathed them in the kitchen sink, but today we tossed them both in the bathtub and gave them a good scrubbing! And then we put them in their cute black cat t-shirts and watched Elmo, so … good day!

City living isn’t so bad when the end of your street runs into a giant park/golf course. Since our own lawn is still embedded with burnt and broken glass (thanks, arsonist!), we don’t let the kids play on it, but we do try to get them to the park as often as possible, and as always, we take a camera along. These pictures are in chronological order – that’s the Chicago weather for you – one day, a sweatshirt, the next, shorts. Argggh!

September 3rd: G strikes a pose.

Click the link, below to see how the kids are spending the last nice days of summer vacation.

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Yesterday, we took a huge series of photos of M, capturing the first time she ever stood up on her own without using a piece of furniture (or a very large dog!) to push herself up with, or pull up on, and we were ecstatic about it. She can finally stand, using a sort of modified yoga technique, which involves putting your head on the ground and your butt up in the air, and sort of rocking upward. G has been standing and walking for awhile now, and we have been anxiously waiting for M to figure it out, and praying that we did not have to go to our 15 month pediatrician visit with a toddler whose greatest physical achievement is biting hard enough to draw blood. So we celebrated like fools.

Yeah, M can stand up on her own, we cheered. That’s a big step. But then today, out of nowhere, she stood up again and started walking across the room, back and forth, as if it was No Big Deal At All, and What Is Everyone Making A Fuss About. Introducing…. M’s first steps. (if you doubleclick the video it will take you to a larger, HD version).

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftSgJ_VVqYE]

We would like to point out two things about this video:

1. Your living room would look like this too, if you had to babyproof for two rambunctious toddlers.

2. I know that we sound like helium-addicts in this clip, but this was taken with my point and shoot camera, and the sound card is pretty weak.

When you are this cute, it seems a damned shame to waste it in the privacy of your own living room, which is why we took the sparrows out for a little jaunt around our local shopping centre.

But this time, there was something just a little bit different about how we got there…

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Its been a big month for our sparrows, who hurdled new milestones, ate new foods, tried new things. And if you are us, you might be asking yourself, how did these two geniuses manage to outsmart us so often this month. And then you would answer your own question in two words: Sleep. Deprivation.

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