We just returned from a longish weekend in Pennsylvania, where Little Boy proved that he can spend 6 hours in a car without crying, screaming, or looking freakishly like a teenager in angst so long as he has a portable DVD player screening The Lion King. Helping to maintain automobile sanity were an inordinate amount of airplanes around Newark International and trains around New York, as well as a pitstop at an oyster bar in Rye, NY that serves a sustaining kiddie portion of mac ‘n cheese. Overall, a tensively relaxing end to an exciting week filled with adoring grandparents, exotic junk foods, unforgettable second cousins, and stubborn chest congestion.
On Sunday, Little Boy met a good portion of his extended family on my side, an occasion that, of course, warranted a cake:
He met his adorable, witty second cousins, who were equally excited to met him. He followed them around all afternoon, romping and playing and emulating them to the point of actually eating a grape:
His camera smile is really improving… still a bit peculiar and unnatural, but not nearly as menacing (as evidenced by this portrait with Nana and Pop-pop):
Of course, soon after this cooperation, the tongue came out in full force:
Little Boy also got to experience *actual driving* at Grandpa and Grandma’s house, which had a kid-sized Jeep waiting for a certain car-obsessed boy from Ethiopia:
Everything else that Little Boy will experience in life — his first skiing trip, his first kiss, his first real car, his high school graduation, his Nobel prize– could not possibly inspire as much joy as the Jeep, which owing to its size and brute force will have to stay at Grandpa’s house:
He also (over-fed) the fish in the residential fish pond:
Little Boy doesn’t know it, but summer is over and soon the days will grow shorter, colder, and (God allowing) snowier. It’s a new phase in our lives together that fittingly begins after his first trip to PA. He goes back to school tomorrow, enriched by all the love, acceptance, and food! he has experienced there.
