Of cabbages and kings

We went down to Brooklyn today to see the family. It was a really nice visit. I gave Kenn and Giselle some knitted birthday goodies, pictured here. Kenn's hat might be too big for him. I mean, it fits, but it's biggish. I thought it looked quite good (and so did Giselle and Chester so there!), but since he's the unconvinced wearer he's going to try it out for a winter and see how it goes.

The kids had fun seeing their aunt, uncle, and assorted housemates. They also enjoyed playing with the Pointy Faced Cats who reside at 540. Melville was particularly keen on the twitchy sort of way that Zion dangled the fishing pole toy for him. Oddly, Ajax also prefers to play with this style of toy when Zion is on the other end. Ah, innate talent! July was hot and sulky, so she hid upstairs most of the time, tho she did allow Liel to smoosh her stomach a few times. Coming from July, that's some serious love. And tolerence.

Zion got a haircut with Uncle Kenny's clippers, since we've lost the guards to Robert's. He looks like quite a big boy now, so I'll post some pictures tomorrow or so. Since he was napless today he kind of freaked out about taking his shirt off for the haircut, and I got to hold him for the event. Let me paint the scene: it's a relatively humid 85 degrees in the house. My shirtless, sweaty son is clinging to me- clinging! and sweating!- with his little furnace of a body touching mine at every possible point. We're standing in the kitchen, and Robert is wielding a pair of clippers. Zion's hair is falling on the floor, all over his back, and all over me. It was very prickly. But he looks adorable, so it was a small price to pay, right?

On to other subjects. I read in Backpacker magazine that the town of Woodstock, NY recently voted for the town and it's residents to be carbon-neutral by 2017. How cool is that?? I promptly began exploring the possibility of moving to Woodstock. Sadly, I'm afraid I've hit nothing but dead-ends there. It's too far for Robert to commute very comfortably, and while home buying prices seem quite good, home renting prices leave something to be desired. And we're just not up to committing to a brand new town a 2 hour drive from work with out trying it out first. Guess we'll just keep chipping away at that carbon all by ourselves....