SO MANY Winter-y posts, you need to start on the second page of this blog. Get yourself a cup of tea and get cozy!

Stay tuned for an upcoming gallery post of recent Gus art featuring muppets. Salut!

Grandma Kathy came for Christmas

Gus' Grandma Kathy came to visit this season; another person to play trains with! Also, Kathy shares Gus' love of putting together jigsaw puzzles. Gus has been handily putting together 12, then 24 piece puzzles himself, so we got Grandma and Gus a 60 piece-r thinking it would keep them busy. It did, for about 3 minutes. Though, they happily put it together several times over her visit, and now Gus does it himself. Gus has been pining after a 750 piece puzzle at a local bookstore and we've been putting him off--well, his Great Aunt Pam sent him a gift card for the store SO he got that puzzle (and a bedtime book). He has worked on this puzzle in 1-2 hour sessions at a time with Matt--first sorting the pieces, now putting together the different piles. Anyway, here is Gus and Grandma with the puzzle, Grandma making lefse, and Grandma watching a Thomas the Train Christmas special with Gus, which she cheerfully subjected herself to anytime Gus would ask.

Exciting Holiday Mail!

Gus had a lot of brown paper packages this year from all you lovely folks. I give a little explanation above each picture, and if you're the gifter and want more pictures of him opening your gift, just email me. Also, Auntie Susan, I am so sorry but Matt was the one around when Gus opened your farm animals, so it went unrecorded. See how I just called out my husband like that one the internets?

These shirts are from Mary Ann, to celebrate Gus' March 2010 upcoming concert to see They Might Be Giants, who he adores. I told Gus they came from John and John themselves.

As much as trains, Gus loves the sea, and aquariums, and the water. Because Auntie Jessamyn is a wise and loving mama herself, she guessed he would love Jacques Cousteau, a friend of both of our families. Here is the Jacques hat she knit him, and there is also a book, which we have read 100,000 times. Gus likes to pretend the couch is the Calypso.

This is Gus with his train case from Grandpa Phil. He looks surprised because he thought he would never get one because I had already denied him this very thing at the toy store about a hundred times.

This is the box filled with peanuts that his Grammy Lu sent. It also had other stuff in it, but look A GIANT BOX OF PEANUTS! (he liked the building set to Grammy Lu)

Here he is, delighted, discovering a train engine sent by Grandpa Dennis. He opened it and proceeded to tell us EVERYTHING about this kind of engine.

Children's Science Museum Train Expo

For an explanation of Gus' deep passion for trains, see the post below. The train expo at the children's science museum was one of three we went to over the holiday season (the first was the Columbus Expo, then the unphotographed Columbus Library Expo, then this one). This one was a great overview of different gauges of trains with lots of kid-friendly explanations. I love the picture of Gus against the chain around a big train set where you can see an entire line of shorties gazing, cupid-struck, at the trains.

Columbus Model Train Expo

Gus is obsessed with trains. He reads about them, draws them, builds them out of cardboard/clay/legos, talks about them, listens to music about them, and plays with his own Thomas the Train set. He is one of those kids who watches a train at a crossing and names the coal car, the hopper car, the freight car, the gondola car, etc. So naturally, when a model train expo came to town, we practically got an engraved invitation from the International Be A Good Parent Association to take Gus. It was totally worth it to see his face when we walked into an expo center full of running model trains.

OH-IO (this post for Jan who is a buckeye through and through and handed down this spirit-filled sweatshirt)

This is how we clean our bathroom

Fill sink with soap foam+toddler, rinse and repeat.

Jack Hanna and Holiday Light Spectacular at the ZOO

Every year the zoo covers every tree, bush, and habitat with holiday lights, stays open until 10 p.m., lights fire barrels, and sells hot cocoa. It's very amazing to walk around the zoo at night, listening to the animals sounds, with no other light than the bazillions of twinkle strands. This year, one of the times we went, Jack Hanna was there hauling wild animals up onto a little stage and talking about them. He seemed very nice and pretty much exactly like he is on Letterman. In the picture below, he is talking about that nervous looking Siberian Linx.

Wexner Children's Film Festival

Every year, New York City has a Children's Film Festival, and then afterwards, the series is sent to major U.S. cities for their own festivals. The Wexner (art museum) held the series this year, on a Saturday morning with a "pajamas and cereal" theme. Hundreds of kids in their PJs, eating complementary sugary cereal, with a whole theater to themselves to watch kids' movies! It was awesome. We went with our buddies Sarah (grown-up and mama), Nolan (4 yrs.), and Helena (2 yrs.) who is the red-headed family that also red-headed Gus spends time with when his parents have to be doing boring grown-up things. Picking Gus up from Sarah's, I often feel as though I am taking one of her children instead of bringing home my own, as I walk into her house full of red-headed people. The last picture is missing Helena, who was too busy dancing around in her PJs eating fruity loops to poke her strawberry head into the picture. If you want to watch Gus' favorite movie from the series, click here.

Thanksgiving with Grandpa Phil

Grandpa Phil came for Thanksgiving in order to, according to Gus "play trains." Of course! It was a busy visit, and this is the only photo I managed to capture!

November "Peanut Butter and Jazz" concert

In early November, we went with Gus' friend Oliana's family to a local Jazz series called "Peanut Butter and Jazz." Jazz artists from all over the country participate in this special series. Ours is held at a historic jazz hall in Columbus. It's totally FOR kids--so dancing in the aisles, craziness, and vocalizing are totally expected and celebrated. They even pass out rhythm instruments to all the kids to play along, and after the musicians, who are like gods to these kids after a concert like that, let the kids come up on stage to ask questions and gently touch their instruments. Gus danced, and danced, and danced.

Merriest Christmas dear friends and family!

Look for an end of the year review of new posts and pictures throughout the week!

Lots and lots and lots of posts, scroll way down to catch up!

Happy Halloween (say that in a robot voice)!

For three months, Gus has held steady with the desire to be a robot for Halloween. The following reveals "Gusbot 2.5" who is, according to Gus "a friendly robot who says 'meep meep." He has gotten a lot of milage out his mama-made costume so far, wearing trick-or-treating on Columbus' beggar's night Thursday (the first picture is of Gus going up to his first house all on his own. He said trick-or-treat and thank you, then sat with the lady on her stoop for a while to watch the other kids), then to a friend's house for a harvest dinner on Friday, then today for "Spooky Science" day at the science museum. At the science museum, our friendly robot did experiments, rode the space capsule, and got his face painted. He does look a bit like David Bowie in a space outfit, it's true.

Meet Naan and Chicken Joe

We all know Gus loves animals and aquariums, but it was only recently that he started asking for a pet of his own. One weekend, he very seriously asked for either "a yellow cat or little fish in a tank." After a family meeting, we took a trip to the pet store and came home with two betta fish. Gus set up their tank almost entirely on his own, and named his new buddies (entirely on his own, and who knows where he got these names) "Naan and Chicken Joe." He takes excellent care of them, and often reads to them, "holding their fins through the tank, like this, because they can't come out."

Late Summer in Review

Hey! So, we're still here, and we still take pictures of our kid! Who is two and a half years old! He is nearly 40" tall, talks and sings all day long, has multiple imaginary friends, and loves trains, dancing, drawing, inventing things out of recycling materials, and is obsessed with jigsaw puzzles, chess games, and 'They Might Be Giants' songs about science. We had a busy end of our summer, and below are pictures with captions. We took a trip to Minneapolis, went on a open van safari trip on the plains of Ohio, spent a 'Day Out With Thomas,' saw the Toldeo Zoo, and took some dance lessons. Part of the reason for our hiatus has been due to a big change in the family--Mary Ann, after a year of a medical science post-bacc, was accepted and started Ohio State University's Pediatric Nurse Practitioner program in the graduate school of nursing. She's been in classes and on hospital rotation since September. Enjoy!

A rare mama and Gus portrait--Mary Ann usually wields the camera and everyone forgets to get their picture.

Gus doing the hokey pokey in dance class.





The above are pictures from our trip to Minneapolis. Gus LOVED the airplane ride, and we got to see Allen and Jenny (we all went to an aquarium), and Uncle Josh. Uncle Josh and Gus had a bachelor's night while Matt, Mary Ann, Allen, and Jenny went out to a fancy UND Theatre Department reunion downtown.


A late summer trip to the zoo (one of many, actually). Family portrait on a zoo boat.



Our trip to Ohio's 'The Wilds' a huge nature preserve where west African animals have a gazillion acres to hide from the open air bus that rides us around. We saw a lot of scenery, glimpses of animal butts, and the very un-shy rhinos.




We had a LOT of fun going to a historical railway station to meet the real Thomas the Train. There were lots of activities, the train ride through town, and the total thrill of watching Gus be "star struck" meeting the real Thomas. Mama so did not have to pull out the Kleenex watching Gus' face when Gus saw Thomas roll down the rails for the first time.



The Toldeo Zoo was super fun--we met up with our friend from Bowling Green. We now think we should visit all the zoos in Ohio. Two down, two to go! The Toldeo zoo reminded us of the Brooklyn Zoo.