The Adventures of El Destructo (and Family)

Hi, so, we went to this amazing Corn Maze today. It was a lot of fun. The farm had a pumpkin patch, animals, and a corn maze. The maze was, to quote Quin, "Ginormous!"

Anyway, I took some picture phone pictures. My camera is dead. Like I said before, this is the perfect time to buy Quin and Oliver's Daddy a new digital SLR. Prices have come way, way down. So with that said, first some links to a couple of great DSLRs, and then, some great pics of the boys.

• Olympus E420
• Nikon D40

Okay, enough of that!

So, Quin and Oliver liked the Corn Maze. Here is them getting lost in it:


And a quick peek behind him:


Also, I grabbed a vid of the kids. My phone is pretty good, but not as good as a real digital SLR. Not sure if I mentioned that already.

So we're eating dinner. The radio mentioned "blah blah blah by twenty-twelve blah blah" and Quin picked up on the 2012 part.

Quin: "Twenty twelve??!"
Daddy: "Do you know what that is? It's a year, a date"
Q: Oh
D: You will be EIGHT years old in 2012. You'll be able to read, and be in school [etc etc]. Do you want to learn to read?
Q: Yes! But not right now, because I'm eating dinner!

I thought that was funny.

BYE!

So, yes, been at pool a lot. They have a nice snack bar (nice as in that it exists and has a large-ish selection of deep fried food items and ice cream, but it is run by slow, indifferent teenagers with generally poor customer skills).

Anyway, July 3rd we went and got some ICE CREAM. In cones. Oliver loves it, but is a little uncertain on the proper eating technique. Quin loves it but is a little uncertain on the proper eating technique, but different aspects of said ice-cream eating technique than Oliver.

OLIVER EATING ICE CREAM


So, do note that Oliver eats ice-cream cones from the bottom up. Yes, we know, it is not really the most effective technique, but it worked for him, and that's all that really matters, now, isn't it?

QUIN EATING ICE CREAM

Hi, everyone. Just some wee updates for yins. File under "Mommy and Daddy Notes," as this is Daddy spekkin. Lessee here...

So, been spending a good bit of time at the pool lately. So HOT out! Oliver loves, and I mean loves the pool. He is a bit more of a water baby than Quin every was, as Quin still doesn't like getting his face wet. I often wonder if that is a parenting issue -- did we jump in too quickly on our poor baby when he was a wee one, oh no, fell in the water oh oh oh! and condition him to be afraid of putting his head in the water -- or is it just his personality. Like most things in life, then answer is probably somewher in between, but my parental guilt assures me that it leans towards the "our fault" side of the spectrum.

Anyway, Oliver, who has pretty much converted into full walker-hood this week, loves the deep pool. The one that goes up to three feet. Mind you, Oliver is two feet tall. So, that is a bit of a problem. (See diagram).



He doesn't care about that, though. He just barrels on down into the deep end, laughing all the way. Oops! Too deep! Under water! Glub glub!

Quin, on the other hand, who is now tall enough to cross the entire big-kid's pool with his head above water, still insists that I hold his hand for the whole trip. "Close your mouth, Quin!" But it is pretty hard for our very active boy to keep his mouth closed for more than three seconds. But he'll get it eventually.

Right now, Quin is standing next to me saying a rhyme.

Gomikka pikka pickle man
a fna a man oh stan o lan
chacka bocka ban, a wakka wakka wan
oh stan oh man oh chokca locka fan

etc...

So, I broke my camera. Zowie. Not sure when I'll get a new one, so expect crappy cell-phone pictures for a while. (Actually, my phone takes rather decent pictures. Also, still got the video camera!)

So, Oliver is pretty much a full-on walker now. He roams around the house, this way and that, like drunken Frankenstein's monster. Or maybe The Mummy. But he is so funny; he will walk and wobble all the way across the room, stop, look, pivot, wobble, and turn, and then go back to where he was. The destination, the journey is, my young padawan Oliver.

So, anyway, no more good quality pics for a while. (The Nikon D40 DSLR is only $489.99 at Newegg.com hint hint birthday birthday hint) But I do have some more video clips I created for posting! I hope I get a chance, soon, to prep and upload them.

Oliver started to walk last week. Naturally, I shot it on HIGH DEF 1080p in 7.2 surround stereo. I cut the vid up a little and I'll put it onto YouTube, but I'm warning you: YouTube greatly reduces the fidelity of their videos. They don't even tell ya, they just shrink it up and make it look like some amateur shot it with a 9 year old video camera in his living room. I mean, really.

Anyway, I shot a few video clips recently, and here is the first of several. Oliver making funny faces at dinner time. He can be pretty hilarious!

OLIVER'S FUNNY FACES

Oh, by the way, that banging sound in the last clip is Oliver endlessly banging his feet against his chair.

I'm gonna go through and crank out some more clips, but I'm gonna dribble 'em out onto the web a little at a time so it looks like I have more to say than I actually do.

Oh, but first, the first steps clip, coming in a few minutes.

Okay, here it is...

OLIVER'S FIRST STEPS!!

So, last Sunday was Father's Day. Kim had to work. So I spent a good bit of the day with the boys, and we decided to go to the beach.

As it turns out, there are several great beaches very close to where we live. If there is one thing Baltimore has a lot of, it is access to waterways. These beaches just aren't all on the Atlantic Ocean, but on the tributaries of or the actual Chesapeake Bay itself. We went to Gunpowder Falls State Park. It was packed!

I took some pictures of Quin and Oliver having fun.

Yes, it is true, Oliver HAS OFFICIALLY TAKEN HIS FIRST STEPS! Yay. Across the room at Pati's and then this evening for Mommy and Daddy. Quite a bit, actually, and, although he is definitely walking like a drunken monkey sailor just off the boat and carrying a couple of sacks of rice overhead in each hand to provide a high, unstable center of gravity, it looks like we have a real walker on our hands.

Yay, Oliver!

I even have a like, 10 second video clip. I wouldda got more but y'know, as for dinosaurs and UFOs, one never has the video camera quite ready when one needs it, now, does one?

Okay, so, some processing-and-posting-to-youtube will haveta occur, but I'm putting it on my TODO list. A long and ever growing list including curing cancer, gluing plastic toys, finishing our windows, establishing a world government, folding the laundry, mowing the lawn, and getting perfect abs. But I'll get to it some day.

Loveya bye!

Great party. Lots of kids. VERY HOT.

Okay, so here is at least one picture. The kids had been playing in water activities all afternoon, thus the level of dress. Apparently we hadn't told anyone to bring a bathing suit, but of course, who could have known three weeks in advance that the day would be so unbearably hot? Anyway, 4 year olds are pretty comfortable stripping down to their skivvies, so that's what they did. After a bit of running around outside, a bunch came in and played with Quin's mountain of toys (do all 21st century tots have mountains of toys?)



So it was pretty fun, really! The bakery from which we got food was excellent, as well.

Quin turns, yes, really, 4 years old tomorrow. Here is his B-Day present wish-list:

• Metal Duncan ("retired" -- this one ain't gonna be easy to find!)


• Pretty much anything Thomas and Friends related. Yes, he is waaaay into Thomas again, after a long period of disinterest.


• Black Spiderman shirt like the one Big Ethan has. (Any black Spiderman shirt would be good, I'm sure. But is it "Black Spiderman" or "Black Shirt with Spiderman On It" or "Black Shirt With Black Spiderman On It"? Not sure!)