Health update

Glenn and I are about to go to bed. In separate bedrooms, since I'm going to sleep on an air mattress in Ben's room to keep an eye on him, while Glenn stays in our room with Rex in his portable crib. Some day soon, we'll boot Rex out and put him in with Ben, but every time we think it's time, one of the kids has an awful night (like last night) and we decide to wait.

In any case, Ben had a slight fever this afternoon, but responded right away to some Motrin. We coaxed him into drinking Gatorade and he was in good shape when we put him to bed.

So we're in much better shape and hope tomorrow is also on the upswing. Thanks for thinking of us!

Another trip to the emergency room...

At least this time we didn't need to travel by ambulance.

Just as I was getting ready to go to bed, Ben woke up wailing. When I went in to investigate, he'd thrown up all over his bed. I know some kids are prone to stomach upsets, but this was the first time Ben had ever thrown up. He was understandably upset.

After two full rounds of vomiting and cleaning up his bedding, we realize that vigilance will be required. So we pull out our old inflatable bed and set it up on his floor, offering Ben the spin that it's like camping. He bites, fortunately, but unfortunately immediately throws up again. I finally get him to admit to some pain in the groin and decide to head to Children's Hospital.

Many long waits and no clear diagnosis later... the doctors say it's most likely a virus and we may see another day or two of vomiting (heaven help us), but I secretly hope it was yesterday's restaurant lunch that disagreed with him because then he should improve once the stuff is out of his system, as it most assuredly is now.

Anyway, this morning he seems to be in good shape. I've had two hours of sleep, however, and a video about John Deere doesn't help ME forget that, so Glenn's on duty and I'm off to bed

Christmas trains

Margarita and I made a date to take the kids to the annual Christmas ("Holiday") train exhibit at Seattle Center on Friday afternoon. It's one of the first times in my life where the experience minus crowds was actually less enjoyable than the same thing in a crush (last year). For some reason, having to peek through adults' legs to see the trains whizzing past made it much more fun for Ben. But then Iris came and he became his usual animated self, giggling when the trains came by and - as you can see - holding Iris' hand to take her to see the giant Christmas tree. Pretty charming.

Mommy is a mess

Tonight I went to the Nutcracker at Pacific Northwest Ballet. I went years ago and theirs is a truly beautiful staging, with costumes and scenery designed by Maurice Sendak (famous for writing and illustrating Where the Wild Things Are).

In a few years Ben will be old enough to go and I suspect he'll love it (if he can stay awake that late), but this year I just wanted to immerse myself in the gorgeous music and the fun of the holiday ritual. So I bought a single ticket.

Ben was all impressed with my outfit. Compared to most of the dressed-up women there, I looked just okay, but since he sees me in jeans pretty much daily, any skirt must look like a ballgown to him.

So great performance, really lovely evening and I'm feeling all grown up and sophistiated. Until the end of the performance when I head to the restroom. I think to myself, "What IS that thing sticking out of my shirt?"

I'm wearing my shirt inside out.

Halloween '08

I go to get Ben up from his nap (well, he didn't sleep, so I usually call it a "non-nap") and he tells me "I want to be Laura for Halloween next year." Last night I read him a little kids' version of the first of the Little House books. So he's telling me he wants to be Laura Ingalls Wilder for Halloween.

Fabulous! I think. The kid has great taste in literature.

Then he spins his idea out a bit. Turns out he liked the part where Laura and Mary got to play in the attic where all the food is stored for the winter. I think the bit he really liked was where they use pumpkins as tables and chairs.

I go to change his diaper and notice he's wearing striped socks. I'm sure he was wearing blue socks this morning. Turns out that although he did not trash his room, as he often does when he doesn't sleep, he did help himself to a new pair of socks. Why? I'll never know.

Rex continues to master English

After a full day of trying, I finally succeeded in uploading this video of Rex in his high chair. Be warned that it's pretty long, but I just couldn't bring myself to edit it. It's too beautiful as is. I am amused that it took me two years of university-level Spanish to learn to even occasionally roll my R's, but he has an unusual ability to roll his D's!

Why I've been silent

I talked to my Mom and Dad today and they had correctly guessed the reason I've taken a break from updating the blog lately. Everyone has had colds (except me, for some reason) and Rex's hit concurrently with a particularly nasty bout of teething. Life around here has been pretty unpleasant.

Ben is generally such a sunny, good-natured kid that when he starts behaving like a real pain in the ass we know he's getting sick. This one was worse than usual and both Glenn and I had to remind ourselves repeatedly that his behavior meant that he was in pain. Motrin helped a bit, but it was just not fun.

This is Rex's first real cold and it's so pitiful to see him struggling to breathe through a clogged-up nose. I try to remember that as adults we know the cold will pass, but for him, there's no reason to think this isn't the new order of things.

So two days ago I was up with Rex at 4 AM, standing on the cold front porch (taking him outside calms him when he's worked up a real steam), jiggling him and singing songs. And last night he woke up just as Glenn and I were getting ready for bed. So from 9 till 12 I was up with Rex. I finally got him settled at midnight and he woke at 3:30. Another couple of hours and he and I both went down for a nap, just as Glenn and Ben were getting up (Glenn spent the night in our basement guest room since he had multiple deadlines today, but wasn't able to sleep through all the baby's wails. I should feel horrible for him, but the lack of sleep seems to have affected my ability to sympathize.).

Here's a photo that Glenn took that I quite like. I have none to illustrate my point in this post since we don't usually take pictures of the kids when they're screaming...

Halloween

Well, this was it. Ben's first year of trick-or-treating. I had rehearsed the routine with him in advance; first knock on the door, then say "trick or treat!", then hold out your jack o'lantern for a treat, then say "thank you!" But when I asked him what kind of treat he thought people might give him he'd inevitably say "A toy plane!" or "A truck!" Honestly, candy never occurred to him. In fact, in the late afternoon I wondered if I should disabuse him of the idea. It was just barely possible he'd be disappointed when he got candy. So I said "Do you think some people might give you food for a treat?" He looked at me with surprise and then his eyes lit up: "Maybe they'll give me yogurt-covered pretzels!"

Yeah, we're pretty tight with the sugar at our house.

Here is a giant collection of photos from our outing with our friends. Iris is the red daisy, Ami is the ladybug (who didn't want to wear her wings), Ben is the silver plane, Devon is the pink princess, Ethan is the little lion, Dominic is a fluffy chick, Rex is the pumpkin. It was quite a scrum of parents and grandparents escorting the trick-or-treaters, as you'll see.

Goodnight Ben

Today we got Ben a "big boy bed." We've been thinking about doing this for a while, but needed time to find a bed and to ready ourselves for the change. Glenn found one at a consignment store today and when both kids were down for "naps" (neither slept) I jumped in the car and sped off to the baby gear store up north for a new mattress.

We kept quiet until early evening, when Glenn started shifting old and new furniture around the boys' room. Ben was just vibrating with happiness and spent pretty much the rest of the evening sitting on his new bed, repeating key phrases of our explanatory statements ("I have a big boy bed. It has a railing to keep me from falling out. If I fall out, there will be nice soft pillows on the floor.") over and over. This is his regular method of dealing with change and/or interesting ideas. He walks, usually in a circle, and thinks out loud. He'll say the same thing a dozen times, usually in identical language, as a way of getting it into his head.

Then, come bedtime, it was my turn to supervise the bath and bed routine. He handled it all beautifully and we both enjoyed the novelty of getting to sit together on his new bed to read his bedtime stories. Usually, we jostle each other in a too-small chair. I read the same books, sang the same songs, tucked him in with the same blankets and same stuffed animals, and ran out to the living room with tears in my eyes to check the monitor. He didn't move an inch. Just fell asleep happily in his new bed waiting for the next challenge to conquer.

Autumn sun

As I've already mentioned, yesterday was not a fun day, for the most part. But Seattle is getting an unusual spate of sunny Autumn days so I couldn't keep the kids inside. We walked up to the elementary school a block away in the late afternoon. Ben was delighted to find the playground full of big kids in an after-school program. He gets all excited being around older kids, picking up their language and cool moves on the climbing equipment. He mastered two new ways of climbing up to the higher parts of the playground, with only one fall involving a conk on his head. He bounced back quickly, though I probably lost about two weeks off my life.

Window dressing

Ben decorated construction paper pumpkins this week and they're proudly taped in our front window. We just had a conversation that went something like this:

Lynn: "And when Christmas comes we can put something else up in our window to decorate."
Ben: "Like cards."
Lynn: (astonished that he remembers holiday cards from last year) "Yeah! Like cards. "
Silence while I think about the unlikeliness of this.
Lynn: "Wait. Do you mean 'cards' or 'cars'? Cars like racing cars?"
Ben: "Yeah, CARS! Like Subarus and Hondas. We could put garbage trucks and cars and garbage cans up on our windows. Paper garbage cans, not real ones but paper ones."

An unholy trinity

In just the past week I've seen clearer and clearer indications that Rex is starting to have separation anxiety. Now it's impossible to ignore: if I leave the room for more than five seconds, he cries. I remember reading about it when Ben was tiny and feeling kind of flattered that he would care that much whether I was around or not.

It became clear that separation anxiety is not cute. Not at all. And Rex is teething as well as having another refluxy period, so even if I can figure out a way to handle one challenge, he mixes it up and throws another one at me. Today was exhausting!

Off to bed now. Let's hope tomorrow is calmer.

Rex and Dominic

Rex is teething. It sounds so mild, even cute, but it's not. It sucks. Ben cut his first tooth at 4 months, so Rex has given us a respite until now, but given the additional trouble with reflux, I'm not feeling too refreshed. Anyway, we had a pretty uneventful morning, but after both boys took good, long naps (!) we headed over to the Morrows for a playdate. And that is when Rex started up.

We lasted a little while, but not as long as Ben and I would have liked. I wound up bundling them both up, and running for the car. Even after I got Rex home and fed again, the complaints continued. We tried Motrin and the homeopathic teething remedy, but in the end I had to strap him into the front pack and take a soggy walk around the neighborhood to kill the time until his bedtime.

The photo is of Rex and Dominic playing together this afternoon. It was the first time I watched Rex grab a toy out of another kids' hands...but probably not the last.

Rex's new voice

Rex has developed a new high-pitched squeal, squeak, or shriek. It's hard to pick the right word. Feel free to vote after you hear this.

Now we just need snow

I've been talking up skiing with Ben since I've decided that this will be his first year to try it out. It's not that hard to get a 3 year old excited about skiing anyway, but it's just a kick to show him pictures of people skiing and talk about the gear and the snow and all the delights that await him. And I haven't even started to play the hot chocolate card.

Anyway, I found ski pants today at a consignment store and showed them to Ben. He was utterly delighted as you can see. Being a thrifty Yankee, I can't bring myself to spend $60 on a kid's ski parka, another $50 on pants and then nearly $200 for skis and bindings, not to mention boots. So I've been collecting gear at Goodwill and consignment stores and will hit a swap or two to get the skis. I might spring for new boots, but only because Ben has inherited his father's feet. A boot fitter helping Glenn select ski boots once called them "Fred Flintstone feet" which he got away with only because he himself was a fellow sufferer.

Another catch up post

My mother must be getting mad at me since I'm being so flaky with the blog. On the other hand, she understands better than most people that sometimes life just gets ahead of you while you're dealing with a six-month-old's teething pain, cottage cheese in the fridge that should have gone away a LONG time ago, and laundry. Always more laundry.

Sigh.

Anyway, to atone, here are some great photos of the kids. Obviously, we had another outing to the Museum of Flight with Iris and her Mommy and brother Dominic.

Rex goes swinging

We all went out to lunch today and hit a favorite playground on our way home. Ben mastered a new type of climbing apparatus and celebrated by repeating the feat a dozen or more times. In the meantime, I finally got Rex on a swing. He's smiley but not too much of a laugher, but he was giggling just from the sensation. Very very fun day!

Pumpkin time again

We inadvertently started a tradition last year in which we visit our local pumpkin patch during a visit from Uncle Mike. When you're living with a kid every day it's hard to see the changes, but check out these photos for evidence that Ben is, in fact, and despite some efforts on my part, growing up.

Sleep, oh, how I love sleep

Grandpa and Nonnie are back from New York, where they had a fabulous time at their 50th high school reunion. The boys are sleeping, though only out of sheer exhaustion. Ben was in poor shape coming home from child care today (no nap, of course) and it only got worse as the evening progressed. After two nights sharing the room with Ben, Rex started kicking up a fuss at bedtime too, so the last two nights we've pulled him back into our room to protect Ben from the wailing.

Tonight we did the dreaded "cry it out" simply because we were out of other options. Rex cried for an hour and five minutes and then fell asleep. Ben did his crying in the bath and beyond, but once I got him in the bed he was out like a light.

The photos are mostly here to remind me that I love my kids, even though their current behavior makes me wonder why.

1000 Words

I have nothing to say, just couldn't resist sharing this picture.

Yippee!

Last night, after much gnashing of teeth, we put the kids in the same room to sleep. Rex thinks Ben is fantastic and Ben absolutely returns the compliment. In fact, Ben has been agitating to have the baby move in for months. But we were nonetheless expecting a few bumps in the road, and both of us were in bed by 9:30, just in case.

Rex went down first but needed early attention, so I nursed him again and got him settled down before doing Ben's bath. We had prepped Ben, doing the usual parental song and dance routine of "Won't it be fun to put on your pjs and read your books in Mommy and Daddy's room?" Thank heavens he bought it, and had great fun romping around on our bed while we got ready for bed. After we'd sung all the songs (our current repertoire is Goodnight Benjamin, Polly Had a Dolly, Little Red Caboose, Merrily We Mow the Lawn (an ad lib, obviously) and finally Nobody Likes Me, Everybody Hates Me, I'm Going to Eat Some Worms) I hefted Ben into his room and quietly put him in his bed, arranging his six stuffed animals, two blankets and one ladybug washcloth according to Ben's requirements. I pulled up the side of the crib, zipped up his crib tent and slipped out of the room.

Rex did wake soon after, but he didn't make too much noise. I went in to nurse him again about five minutes after putting Ben down, and Ben was obviously fully passed out already.

Both slept through the night!

Rex woke at 5:30, as usual, but Glenn was able to extract him before Ben woke up.

Not bad.

Bob the Builder Bikini

Ben is choosing to traverse the path to potty training slowly. For the most part I'm okay with this. Honestly, I have a baby on my hands and only ONE bathroom in the house. So potty training is a double-edged sword for us.

But of course eventually, we'll need to tackle it. A couple of nights ago I decided to light just a teeny tiny fire under him, so I unveiled the Bob the Builder underwear I'd bought ages and ages ago. Ben was all over them!

I won't go into graphic detail here, but suffice it to say that it was not a great success. When you walk into the room and see your three year old saying "I did not pee" you get immediately suspicious.

The pilot hat adds to the ensemble, don't you think?

More Morrows

Another fun visit with Iris Morrow today (and her mommy and little brother). Ben and Iris had their usual great time together, Dominic gave me a fabulous smile (see photo), Rex took a nap that I expected him to refuse. Altogether a marvelous time!

Margarita and I even had a full conversation in which we both were able to finish a train of thought!

Unfortunately, it was about Britney Spears.

Numbers

I'm cheating today and using an email Glenn sent me yesterday after taking Ben to child care on the bus. It's just too cool to re-write. (Thanks, honey!)

---
Okay, here's a stunner.

Ben and I are sitting at the front of the bus. He starts saying numbers, but I can't figure out in relation to what.

Then I realize he's reading the vinyl numbers on the window for the bus number, 3649 or something like that -- flipped, of course, but he's reading them right to left as if he were standing outside.

Whew.

And then I say, "Ben, are you reading those numbers backwards?" And he proceeds to read the numbers left to right from the inside (9 4 6 3). He also gets the 6 and 9 right.

Um.

Rex's turn

Ben gets a lot of time in this blog, mostly because Rex is preverbal. But man, he can be funny, too. Today we all went to the farmstand/pumpkin patch in Redmond and had a marvelous time. Ben and Glenn took the hayride (you ride in a trailer behind a tractor and sit on hay bales. What more could a three year old boy ask of life?) while Rex and I cut some organic flowers to take to a friend's housewarming party this afternoon.

I nursed Rex in the car while Ben and Glenn picked out a pumpkin and he was in such a good mood I took a bunch of photos of him propped against the dashboard. The other photo was taken yesterday when Rex went for his first spin in the Jumperoo. Ben LOVED the thing and I suspect Rex will be just as big a fan.

Ugh

Rex has the cold that's been making the rounds through our family. As a result, he woke up when I went to bed. I was in bed at 10:40 and heard him making noise at 10:51. After a number of failed experiments (Maybe he can sleep in the bed with me if Glenn sleeps in the guest room! Hmm, I wonder if I should unswaddle him? Gee, do I smell a poopy diaper?), I finally got him down at 2:09. He "slept in" till 6:45 but for some reason I'm not feeling grateful.

Amelie turns 3

Yesterday we were among the throngs attending Amelie's third birthday party. She's a lovely little one and her mother is one of our favorite people ever. We dressed Ben up in a hand-me-down jacket and he learned a new word, "spiffy."

The place was an enjoyable madhouse complete with children's entertainer. She led the kids in a number of songs and had them riveted. Once I realized that she reminded me of Cheri Oteri on Saturday Night Live doing one of her cheerful, chirpy characters I couldn't look her in the eye.

But the kids loved it and the cake was fabulous! Here are some iPhone shots of the party.

Tim Gunn's new show

Glenn and I became really attached to the Project Runway TV show last year. It was a guilty pleasure for me and Glenn, to my surprise, took to it too. Turns out that the projects assigned to the competing fashion designers remind him of his own graphic design training, at Yale and abroad. They're told to make a black and white cocktail dress, in one day, with $50 of materials, for example.

Anyway, Tim Gunn, Chair of the Department of Fashion Design at Parsons, serves as the designers' mentor. He appears at times to talk over their work, giving gentle but firm critiques. He's such a supportive, positive person that Bravo TV inevitably gave him his own show, Tim Gunn's Guide to Style.

I watched this week's episode tonight after the kids were in bed and it hit home. The woman getting made over is the mother of two and has a hard time carving out time for herself. When asked, she talked about missing manicures and dinner out with her husband (sans kids). They did a bit of tough love on her, reminding her that you have to be happy, fulfilled and successful in order to raise happy, fulfilled and successful kids.

Point taken. Life should smooth out a bit next month when we start Rex on solids. He's not too keen on bottles, so my "time off" is usually scheduled to overlap as much as possible with his naps. But I miss dancing and going out with my friends and reading books and skiing. So I'm going to try some tough love on myself.

Rex is a caffeine addict

Wow, it's been a wild week. Sandy and Downs were here Monday and Tuesday nights. On Wednesday Glenn brought home a delicious chocolate cupcake from a new gluten-free bakery near his office. I had half after dinner and the other half before bed and could NOT fall asleep. I inherited my sleeping gene from my father of whom my mother says "he falls asleep BEFORE his head hits the pillow." So falling asleep is usually no problem at all. It took me nearly 40 minutes to fall asleep and that was when Rex woke up.

You have to understand that Rex is only 5 1/2 months old but has been sleeping through the night for two or three months already. I honestly had no idea what to do with him but nurse him and hope he would go back to sleep. Nuh-uh. He was wide awake and ready to play. Glenn got up to try to bounce him back to sleep. Nuh-uh. At some point it struck me that there could be a coincidence between my inability to sleep and Rex's. Damnit, the caffeine in that #^$! cupcake.

So Glenn defrosts a bottle of breastmilk (I figure nursing him is probably counterproductive because of the caffeine still coursing through my veins) and I give it to him. It's 12:45 or something like that and finally, we succeed in getting him to sleep. Then he was up before 5
to start the day.

Ugh.

We were poised for another rough night last night, thinking he may have gotten a taste for nighttime shenanigans, but fortunately, he was his usual predictable self. Let's hope he sticks with it.

Family ties

I'm a little behind on the blog, but my Uncle Downs and Aunt Sandy arrived on Monday afternoon for a quick visit, so I've been too busy trying to masquerade as a competent mother, housekeeper, menu planner, etc. to keep up here.

Downs is my mother's brother. He and Sandy used to haul their kids Tim and Becky to Bradford, PA every summer, just like Mom and Dad trekked there with me and Mike. Each family would get some time there with Grandma and Grandpa Herold, but we would overlap in the middle, which meant we had lots of fun horsing-around-with-the-cousins time. I remember those summer visits very fondly, but the only time the cousins see each other these days is at (our own) weddings. Tim and his wife Liz now have three kids and Becky and her husband Marty have four kids, so they don't do lots of quick flights to the west coast. We only have two kids, but we understand, since we're in no rush to do any air travel, either. Still, I hope someday we'll manage a family reunion. It would be great to catch up with Tim and Beck and to meet all these kids!

In the meantime, it was really lovely to have Sandy and Downs here. They're veteran travelers and seasoned grandparents, so can easily handle the noise of a small house full of kids. We heard some great stories from their many travels, and it made me a little jealous. Our international travel won't be extensive for a while...

A day at the park

Ben, Rex and I had a date this morning to meet our friends Flynn and Tasha Irvine. (Glenn, bless the man, went to the Farmers' Market, the drugstore and Whole Foods while we were gone) It happens that Tasha and I live about four blocks apart but met at a parent/child class at the local community college when the boys were a few months old. She was by far the coolest and most fun person there! Until Rex's arrival, she and I used to do regular date night swaps, sneaking into each other's homes after the boys were in bed so that the other couple could get out for dinner.

Ben and Flynn have been going to the same child care center two days a week, but Flynn just started at a new preschool. So Ben's been really looking forward to seeing Flynn again and it was his suggestion that we all go to Seattle Art Museum's Olympic Sculpture Park.

It turned out to be a great idea! The park is designed to cross the railroad tracks near the Seattle waterfront, and you can imagine how the boys liked that! Seaplanes and parasailers to watch in the sky, ferries, barges and police boats in Elliott Bay, and two long freight trains you can see from a bridge directly above the tracks. Nirvana!

Equal time for Rex

Rex, being by far that quietest of our family, gets a lot less ink (pixels, rather) here than Ben. But that does not mean he gets little attention! He can be a charmer, though you work pretty hard to get good smiles out of him. Laughs are pretty rare, and are quiet, but still pretty breathtaking. Glenn got him really laughing today and it was so delightful to hear that all of us joined in, even Ben. Here are a couple of pictures. He's just turned five months old and he's almost sitting up by himself! And it's getting colder, so I figured I'd better get some nearly naked photos before he's all covered with goosebumps.

At a loss for words

How's this for a poignant example of how difficult it is to be three?

Tonight I was reading Ben a letter from Grandma in which she mentioned reading Mike Mulligan and the Steam Shovel to her little brother 185 times. I said something to him about how he could read books to Rex when he gets bigger. I hadn't even finished the sentence when I saw his face crumple and I knew immediately what the problem was. We tell him that he's "reading" Goodnight Moon to us every night, but we all know that he's not really reading the words, he's performing a charming piece of recitation. And even this is a recent accomplishment, so I had no idea that he's painfully aware of his inability to really "read."

I grabbed him for a huge hug and told him that no one can read when they're three. (Between you and me, I'm sure very rare kids can, but they probably don't have easy or happy lives if they're that precocious, so let's just skip over that inconvenient truth.) He was thoroughly upset and tearful, but that did console him a bit and I just babbled on, hoping to channel some unknown Inner Parent who could fix this. Eventually, I grabbed Goodnight Moon and had him read it to me. I occasionally pointed out a word, like "moon" that reoccurs and might begin to look familiar to him and give him a taste of what it means to actually read.

The rest of the night was uneventful and ended, as usual, with Ben saying "Goodnight noises everywhere." Amen to that.

A day full of friends

Ben, Rex and I met Iris, Dominic and Margarita at the fabled Indoor Playground today, which was its usual super-fun self. One of the other parents told me that the gym sometimes opens up for an Adult Indoor Playground in the evening. And I am going to CHECK THAT OUT!

Afterwards, Margarita invited us to come over for pizza tonight and hang out with our friend Lara and her little ones, Amelie and Ethan. We are usually way too rigid about bedtimes, etc., and decided to just enjoy ourselves and try it.

I'm so glad we did. The kids were marvelous, sitting at Iris' little Dora table while the grown-ups sat at the dining table. It reminded me of Thanksgiving dinner, with the segregated tables. Glenn was eavesdropping and caught the big kids actually having a conversation while eating their pizza. They love to play near each other, but they very seldom actually talk "to" each other, so it was a lovely moment, hinting at good times to come.

Why Daddy shouldn't dress baby

When I saw Rex's outfit today I had to dig out a favorite old photo of Ben. In both cases, Glenn dressed the boy. Or maybe you can tell. Rex, at least, appears to be less than pleased.

A little early Halloween prep

.
I asked Ben the other day what he wanted to be for Halloween this year and he answered without any hesitation "A airplane!"

So be it.

I've been mulling over how to construct a suitable plane costume (it will certainly involve silver lame fabric), and realized that maybe I could costume him as a pilot and build a plane that he could carry around, or could hang from suspenders, while he "sat" in the middle of it. Like this, but no way am I buying a Halloween costume. Where's the fun in that?

So today found us at the Museum of Flight and Glenn took Ben off to get lunch. Rex and I sneaked into the store and got some supplies. I found a pilot cap and a set of wings, but couldn't find the propellor beanie I had hoped to use on the nose of the plane. Ah well.

Let's just say Ben liked the hat. Left it on till bathtime, in fact.