I think this is my last overdue post (for now). We had a great time with all the family in town for Ben’s baptism. It was my grandmother’s first trip east of Colorado, and Brooke’s parent’s first time to New York City. We had a lot of fun.

On thing about living close to a natural wonder is that you get to go there every time someone comes to visit. The boys went twice in a week: once with each set of grandparents.

Ben went on a field trip to the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester last year. They gave him a family pass to come back, so we brought the whole crew: us, my parents, Brooke’s parents, and her brother.

They are now mobile. They just needed some motivation, which Brooke found in $0.02 balloons left over from Miles’ birthday party. Our home is nowhere near baby-proof, but I started a project on Saturday to fence off the step-up into our family room, I’ll post some pics when I’m done. For now, enjoy these.

Also, they had their 9-month checkup. Each one is 27.75 inches tall and 20lbs 3.5oz. Yes, they were the same: 49th perctile in weight/height, 95th percentile in head circumference.

Here they are pantless in the examination room, waiting for their flu shots.

They’re scooting pretty well – especially Isaac, but he can only go backwards. He keeps getting himself wedged under the couch. [A quick update: I wrote this post on Monday... Since then, they've both started crawling.]

One of them found Miles’ sippy cup of milk and started drinking. So we gave them a little juice in their own cups. they took to it very well.

PS – I’m going to have to leave it to Brooke to caption these. I think Asher’s in green, but I could be wrong.

OK, I’m way behind here, but…

Make sure your volume is up.

The kids spent a lot of the summer catching various animals in our backyard. A few of them warranted pictures.

First was this baby snapping turtle. They left it with a small frog in a tub of water. When I saw it, I thought they were both dead, but the turtle was just playing opossum. We fixed up a little terrarium – as it continued to snack on the dead frog – until I did some research and realized what a pain it would be to keep as a pet. So we let it go.

Baby snapper

Next was a toad they named Ninja. The neighbors helped Ben and Miles set up an obstacle course for Ninja using toys on top of our hot tub.

Ninja the Toad

Ben making sure Ninja stays on course.

And just yesterday was a frog – I don’t know its name. Miles got so excited over it that he forgot to come inside to use the bathroom. While Miles was inside changing, Ben took the camera outside to take pictures. Miles, naked from the waist-down, followed him screaming, “Don’t take pictures without me!”

As usual, Brooke did more for Ben than I thought was necessary… But he had a wonderful birthday.

I warned several colleagues to watch out for this day – the day when President Obama’s poll numbers look ridiculous compared to George W. Bush’s. Right now, in the first September of his first term, Gallup has President Obama at 52%, which is similar to Clinton’s 50%, Reagan’s 52%, and Carter’s 57%. Where was Bush at this point? An astounding 70%.

Remember though that 9/11 hit during that month and the entire country was so busy tearing up at the sight of bipartisan off-key warbling that sounded something like “God Bless America,” that we failed to head off the greatest expansion of federal powers since the Civil War – or maybe the New Deal. The presidency at that time could have been auctioned off on eBay, and we would have supported our leader so long as he stoically confronted terrorism.

So from here on out, take the poll number comparisons with a large quantity of sodium chloride.