brothers

In trees in Palm Park:

They call it "Ahh-ing". Here they are in the giant fig tree:

Going down the slide together:


Playing with new Star Wars figurine Hanukkah presents:


An entire collection having a pajama day at Elijah and Nathan's house:

Witness the spectacle:

Ventura iconic winter scenes

Driftwood collecting at the beach:

The annual Harbor Lights Festival, complete with Santa in a sleigh, hot chocolate and full moon:

motor control

Micah continues to be as devoted and talented an artist as ever. This dreidel that he colored in at a pre-Hanukkah Torah School class hardly shows his passion:

Our little bitty Levi is finally starting to show similar interest and control. Observe his concentration as he carefully colors a menorah at the same class:

Levi has also taken to embellishing Micah's discarded drawings.

That's not the only area in which he's proven greater control. Levi has resisted pooping outside of diapers for the last few months, so I decided that when his school ended and the long winter break began we would go diaper-free cold turkey. He's gone entire break so far without wearing a day-time diaper and has even earned a new set of big-boy underwear for his progress. He began by asking us for a diaper when he had to go and, when we refused to give him one, chose to hold it in rather than use the potty. We kept this up, curious to see how long it would last. A few memorable accidents and some determined diaper-begging later, Levi has grown accostomed to-- nay, enamored with-- pooping on the potty. Good boy.

Levi's not the only one mastering new sphyncters: Micah has taught himself how to whistle!

Winter Pageant

Levi "performed" in his Montessori school's winter pageant this year. I'll admit, he did better at 2 and 1/2 than his older brother did at that age. Whereas Micah was left to wander, confused off the stage, Levi took his protective shy stance while corralled into the center by older classmates:
Here he is pre-performance in his finery:


And here "singing" "Here Stands a Lovely Christmas Tree":

fro-yo

from the set of Woody Allen's Sleeper:

any turkey can tango

From the Thanksgiving feast in Micah's kindergarten class:

things that come out of Levi's mouth

...besides drool, that is. Levi is quite a talker and he says some very interesting/cute things.

-When Amy is calling out to Micah around the house, she'll sometimes use a sing-song voice and include his middle name: "Micah Forest!...Micah Forest!..." Levi must have picked up on this, because we heard him calling her: "Mama Forest!...Mama Forest!..."

-If we are trying to get the boys' attention when they are engrossed in play, we'll come into the room and say, "Boys!" So when Levi wants our attention, he's been known to come into the room and say, "Boys!"

-Levi does not like getting his hair wet in the bath/shower and having the water run into his eyes. When we insist on washing his hair, he'll warn as he gets increasingly upset with, "I'm going to cry! I'm going to cry," and then, "I'm crying!" as he finally breaks down into tears. Of course, he's still working on some of his phonetics, so "cry" often sounds like "fry".

-"C'mon, baby!" He must have picked this up from school. He even used it once when struggling to stab some pasta with his fork, when a frustrated "c'mon" would be entirely appropriate. But after a pause, he added in the "baby!"
"C'mon baby!"

-He very excitedly talks about the new pet turtle at his school and adorably mangles her name, Turtleena.

-He talks about his friend Zerek from school, and Morgandy ("Wardy" or "Wardandy"), much in the way Micah at that age would come home talking about Tova ("I give Tova huggies")

-The little potato figure sitting on the logo of the nearby futon store (The Couch Potato) looks like Humpty Dumpty to Levi and causes him to burst out with his version of the verse: "Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, all the King's horses and...(garbled, comic syllables that vaguely resemble the last line)!"

-At some point, when he wanted to do something after dinner, when it was already dark out, he must have registered our response that it was "too late" to do it. So now when he notices (impending) darkness outside he'll remark that "it's (almost) too late." He also says inquisitively, "it's too late?", seeking confirmation, or defensively, "it's not too late!"

-Finally, every once-in-a-while he surprises us with the clarity and sophistication of his language. He left the dinner table toward the direction of Amy in the bathroom, saying, "I'm going to see Mama," before pausing and looking back at me with, "I will be right back."

these are the critters in our neighborhood

Two spiders (of many) in our back yard, some kind of orb-weavers, perhaps?

 

 Praying mantis at a cafe downtown:

Lizard in the playhouse:

this is our life

What is it with boys and their sticks, lightsabers, swords, and daggers?  They are constantly swashbuckling, sparring, and "fighting".

At Grandma and Grandpa's house:

 

With Mateo in the orchard (wait for it...):

At the beach in Florida, waiting for the wedding to start:

After the wedding, Micah got all Star Wars Kid on us:

Post-Halloween (in clearance-sale costumes):

And at home with his friend, Callum:

Today at the Schweitzers' house, seeking a segue into the next play activity, Micah asked Lauren, "who can we get?"  This behavior is deeply ingrained in both Micah and Levi's play.  I've been hearing a lot of lonely sighs from Amy lately.

family and fiori fun in NY

In early October, Levi and I visited Grandma and Grandpa in NY.  We had lots of fun carving pumpkins, playing with animals, mucking about in the puddles with our ducky boots, and enjoying some typically rainy autumn days.

Nick and Mateo even drove up from NYC one day.

We played around the yard,

dug potatoes in the garden,

and visited Bowman Orchards to pick apples and play on a wooden farm-equipment playground in the rain:

Thank you to Nick and Mateo for making the trip up to see us.


Also, a HUGE thank you to Kristin for the amazing home-made, silk-screened shirts.  
Levi's monkey shirt garnered him a personal rendition of Monkey Rhythm from George Spike at the Farmer's Market this weekend.

ouch! and oooh!

Is that a T-Rex biting your finger, Micah?!

 Yes, but he's actually going for the triceratops.

The biggest bones of all (a Fin Whale, second largest creature ever to live on this planet):

 

It spoke to us in Whale, so we tried speaking back to it, like Dori in Finding Nemo.

Where?  The LA County Museum of Natural History.  Micah and I had 8.5 hours to spare in LA before Amy and Levi arrived on their separate flight home from FL, so we hit up the new dinosaur hall.  We ended up spending about 4 hours there, enough time to hit all the major halls.  In the CA history hall, Micah was fascinated by dioramas of the Chumash indians, models of explorers' ships, dioramas of Mexican-American War battles, and real GUNS!  He stopped to take my picture:

Plenty of stuffed and mounted animals in the museum-- kind of reminded me of my last trip to Vegas:

 

What-the-who?  That's the showroom of the Bass Pro flagship store at the Silverton Casino in Las Vegas.  I stopped there briefly a few weeks with some friends on the way to Zion NP to stock up before an overnight trip through the Virgin River Narrows in Zion Canyon.  Hooo boy, you have to do this trip at least once in your life.  There's a reason it's consistently listed as one of the top hikes in the country.

As a bonus, here's the urinal in the gas-station bathroom right before the NV state line:

 

Yes, that is a waterfall urinal.