Scoo-uh

For his birthday, Nate got a green scooter, which he adores. I never grew up with one and so I look at them -- wrongly -- with disapproval. Also, he likes wearing his helmet when he scoots, which ratchets up my disapproval to something approaching contempt. I keep it inside though. I behave.

Here is Nate with his scooter on a sunny September Sunday in front of our building. He pronounces "scooter" like this: "scoo-uh".

Cape Cod

We visited Anne and Jamie and Zeke in Cape Cod this Labor Day weekend, a 6 hour or so drive from NYC. We're hoping to see these guys at least once a year, and that Nate and Zeke have this cross country friendship. The water being warm and the scenery breathtaking, there was no choice but for the boys to get naked and splash around.

The boys played by the ocean and bay too. Spectacular!

Nate and Mama

Family in Love's Folly

The Moshans, Gessers and Liebmans spent a long weekend together on Labor Day weekend, 2011, to be together and celebrate various birthdays (Nate among them). Fun! These family gatherings feel important. With half of us in New York and the other half in DC, it's not often we get together like this. At one point, Sadie and Mae were pretending to be waitresses in a bad restaurant -- Mae urged us to be critical -- and the crew complained obnoxiously of the bad food and sloppy service. We were laughing, all together, an extended family truly enjoying each other's company. That is no small thing actually and I very much treasure it.

It's an understatement that Nate was showered with love from all sides. It was just the best best best weekend.

Here's Nate eating birthday cake with Opa:

Here's Avi and Mae (she fell asleep standing up) on a sunset boat cruise:

Here's dad, Sadie, Mae and I outside the ice-cream store, after a ferry ride to Royal Oak:

Here's the kids in the bath:

Cousins

We planned to take a 10 day holiday in Love's Folly prior to and including Labor Day. But Hurricane Irene had other plans. So we bailed from Love's Folly and headed to DC until the storm passed, staying with Opa and Mimmy. Before the full brunt of the hurricane was felt -- it was pretty intense for us east coasters -- Nate and I popped over the Brook and Avi's where we hung with the Gessers. Here's Nate with his cousins, the purple-clad Gesser girls.

Haircut

Nate's bushy wild hair was kind of getting goofy. So he got a haircut yesterday from Lucas.

And so today we went to a drab playground in Greenpoint where we found an old basketball and bounced it around on a basketball court, wandered around on a handball court, slid down a few slides, went on the toddler swings, went on the older kid swings, made friends with Phillip the Polish kid, chased Phillip the Polish kid around for a while and got chased by Phillip the Polish kid, then got on our bike and rode home.

All the while, Nate's hair looked awesome.

Shana is Showing

Shana is starting to really show. So far so good. Nate has no clue. No. Clue.