huck blog

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last minute stories

July 22, 2008, 8:53 am

Before we sit on some delayed airplanes and head to Kansas and Colorado, I thought I’d share some last minute pictures and stories from July. Yesterday Huck got some construction paper, scissors, markers and glue and created something he titled “Mysterious Crack,” which may be my favorite title of anything ever. Below is a drawing from a few days ago of a sunflower, windows (with people and bugs looking out of them) and a flower without petals. It’s one of my favorites.

Huck’s new thing to do at Dolphin Park is to draw a pretty detailed cello or violin in the sand and use a toy knife from the sandbox to make the music. Sometimes he turns one of his legs into a violin and makes the other one an awkward bow. Maybe he'll play a stringed instrument one day like his mama, aunt, grandma and great-grandma did when they were kids.

The other thing he does in the sand is make mummies (which he pronounces “mimmies”), usually when several confused children and their parents are watching. He received a sample magazine called Kids Discover (clearly for older kids than Huck) and before I knew it I was talking a lot about dead Egyptians. The magazine also has a section on blood and he loves for me to read all about red and white blood cells, anemia and clots. This whole side of parenting is really testing my acting ability, let me tell ya.

Huck has now reached that point in his life when he must talk about every and all things from the moment he wakes up until the moment he falls asleep. Frankly, I’m running out of facial expressions to pretend interest. I’m all out of words and phrases that communicate excitement over the same old stories told many times a day. In summary, Mommy’s tired and happy that a bunch of grandmas and grandpas and aunts and uncles and cousins get to be talked to for a while. Get your faces ready, family!

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we love dorney park (but think it should be air conditioned)

July 20, 2008, 1:56 pm

We spent yesterday at Dorney Park with Betty, Amanda and Rosa, and what a hot, fun, exciting, exhausting, hot day we had! Boy, was it hot! Things got off to an exciting start when Pappy T won $11 playing bingo on the delightfully air conditioned bus ride to Pennsylvania, which he would later blow on a hamburger, hot dog and fries. At the amusement park Huck rode many rides and had no fear, though he did suffer stage fright when it came time to jump in the bouncy castle without us. We got to have a thrilling five-minute date on the Tilt-a-Whirl, and daredevils Betty and Troy rode the most frightening thing I've ever seen called The Dominator, which we nicknamed the Elevator Drop. Minutes before we were all about to die of heat exhaustion we moved to the water park, thank the dear Lord in Heaven. There were several water slides just right for Huck and one available lounge chair (out of 40,000) just right for Mommy.

Next stop: Kansas!

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a day in the country

July 15, 2008, 7:29 pm

Today we went to New Jersey with our friends Jennifer, Allie, CJ, Tiffany and Kadin for fun at the Bergen County Zoo. We city slickers felt like real live suburbanites! We drove in a car and no one honked at us ...

We took a train ride that was not underground and only cost a dollar ...

We rode a pony that was not a hansom cab ...

And we ended the day with a trip to Target and the world's largest cart ...

Sometimes it's fun to act like Normal People for a day.

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what's summer without some cello, sprinklers and a sunset over the hudson river?

July 12, 2008, 6:19 pm

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huck these days

July 7, 2008, 10:11 pm

Huck and I love reading children's nature encyclopedias and learning interesting facts about termites (the queen can live up to 50 years and become the size of your pinky!), dung beetles (they lay their eggs inside animal dung and the babies eat their way out of it!), venus flytraps (we also watch lots of action footage of these carnivorous plants and their insect victims on our favorite channel YouTube!), wheel spiders (when being attacked they make their bodies into balls and roll away, which Huck imitates daily!), thunder (hot air and cold air!), volcanoes (fire in the earth!) and so much more. A few days ago Troy and Huck brought home a firefly in Huck’s bug catching cage and named it Dusty. It became our little weekend pet who gave magnificent light shows as soon as Huck went to bed, which was his only complaint. When people ask me what Huck’s really into, this is my answer: nature facts. Lots and lots of nature facts.

All right, enough about dung beetles. Here's a few Huckisms from the past month:

He told me he accidentally ate a little spinach. I asked him, “How was it?” and he answered, "It was a disaster."

We were playing tic-tac-toe and Huck cheerfully changed the name to Huck-Mommy-Ho.

While walking by the river we found a rubber ASPCA bracelet on the ground. Troy and I began explaining what they do and I gave some example of seeing a dog who wasn't being fed and calling the ASPCA so they could get the dog some food. Troy gave an equally heartbreaking example. And once again giving us insight into the mind of a three year old Huck declared, “Or if we see a giraffe down here and it’s hungry, we can feed it the bracelet.”

Sometimes Huck reminds me of his daddy, but never more than the other day as he told me he loved me. When I asked, "You love me?" he looked me in the eyes and seriously answered, “Very much."

Right back at ya, kid.

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new neighbors

July 5, 2008, 11:20 am

Our good friends Mark, Sharron and Gus did a house swap for the last five days with our other good friends Tiffany, Brian and Kadin. We enjoyed the city with our new next door neighbors by visiting the Museum of Natural History, Central Park, the church play group, Dolphin Park, riding the Staten Island Ferry, challenging the laws of gravity on the subway, acting out the Three Little Pigs (Gus makes a frightening Big Bad Wolf), picnicking down by the river, and lots of time hanging out on the ninth floor of our building. (And the Mommys and Daddys each got to go on dates while the others babysat!) When the Greenes left us to head back upstate, they had a new member of their family. They've adopted the Houck-Loomis dog Micah, promising to give him an exciting new life in the mountains. We'll miss you, Mark, Sharron, Gus and Micah!

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