Summer photos!

Just put together a little slideshow of the second part of Oliver's summer - lots of photos from Maine, and a few from here at home. Enjoy!

Sunny days

Sorry it's been forever since I've written... we've been having a very quiet August here in NJ, and the weather's been surprisingly mild and pleasant! I was bracing myself for hot and sticky, but we lucked out this summer. Oliver's been enjoying lakefront beaches, playdates with his pals, lots of trips to different playgrounds, and other fun stuff. A few weeks ago we went to Guilford for the day, visited with Sharon and Lisa and played on the green with Rachel and cousin Saul! Dad had a big long kayak ride.

Just the other day Oliver was telling me why he thinks Barack Obama is so much better than John McCain... I think he summed it all up by explaining that he doesn't want another four years of a Bush presidency. I thought these were very mature sentiments coming from a 22 month old, but then he showed me this article so I better understood their origin. Very clever boy!

No really, Oliver's still not talking! Lots of lovely sounds and sort of words... especially "uurdn" which repeats with regularity and gumption!! We're wondering if it's a variation on "Aidan" (his cousin). Who knows?!

No new wildlife sightings, just our usual backyard groundhog and some very vocal foxes waking us up with their crazy screams at 3am a few nights back. Will keep you posted!

Oliver's new friend

So here's the latest installment of "Wild Kingdom in the Backyard..." - we had two raccoons on the deck the other day, one of whom dashed away pretty quickly after we started watching them, but the other one was very, very tame. He basically acted like a cat, stretching, yawning, sniffing curiously, even lying down and lounging around - all right on the other side of the glass from us. He even played in Oliver's little kiddie pool (eww, I know, we washed it out afterwards), pushing the toys around for a while. He was SO not afraid of us, even when Oliver banged repeatedly on the glass -- I think he was outside there for at least 40 minutes. He was still there when Andy got home from work, and he managed to chase him away, although I think the raccoon pretty much thought Andy came out to play with him. Weirdest raccoon ever! But very well groomed and happy, as far as I could tell. One of these photos shows Oliver blowing a kiss to the raccoon, and you can see his little friend peeking out from under the grill cover. Who needs the zoo when you live in Landing, NJ?!