Construction

This is not exactly baby-buffaloe-related, and it's all old hat to our in-person friends, anyway, but the major construction on the house is done. I very nearly deleted this post because it was so old, but then I figured we may want it in the (seriously overdue) year-end photo book so I decided to publish it anyway.

The bathroom before:

The bathroom in progress. They ripped everything out:

Kids in the bathroom when it was mostly done.

Bathroom after:

It's still small, but now we have a ton more storage.

The garage before. Hey, look! There's a baby Buffaloe!

Too much junk.

The garage, all cleaned out:

Bedroom/garage after:

Closet:

The front of the house before:

Front of the house, after. You'll notice the Halloween pumpkins in the first picture and the snow in the second :)

The kids really loved having the contractors here. James (and Amelie) spent a fair amount of time watching the progress through this convenient hole in the door.

We saw one of them (Henry) at subway this week, and he stopped to talk to us even though it's been a good 6 months since they've been done with the house. 

Playhouse, etc.

James says, "CHEESE!"

Lately, Amelie likes to climb on top of her playhouse more than she likes to play inside of it. I'm pretty sure she's telling James he can't get up.

Naptime Lately

These are from two different days, but both photos are nap-related.

I put James down with his head on the pillow, and this is how he wound up when I went in to wake him at 4pm.

This is how I've been getting James to take a nap lately. I told Amelie that her job was to stay awake and that James's job was to take a nap. James replies, "No nap," but he did fall asleep about 10 minutes in. However, about five minutes into the walk Amelie says to me, "James isn't doing his job." 

First Day of School

My first day back to work after a summer off, and Amelie's first day back to school after having the spring semester and the summer off, was today.

She was very excited in the car on the way over, but she looked just a little nervous as I left. She was pretty proud of her backpack even though it just has a change of clothes in it.

I'll post an update at pick-up :)

UPDATE: I got a good report from her teacher, and Amelie wanted to stay. They had juice and cupcakes for someone's birthday and she made friends with a girl  in a butterfly shirt and she came home with a maraca made out of an easter egg, plastic spoons, corn kernels, and tape. Success!

Drawing

I mentioned a while ago that Amelie had started drawing pictures of people but I never posted any pictures. She still mostly draws scribbles like this:

Which is basically indistinguishable from the one James drew: 

And then there was this one by Amelie, where it looks like she just tried to make the page a different color. 

She uses a similar technique with painting: 

But here are some people and monsters from the past several months.

This one is from today:

Popcorn

I thought about titling this post "My Redneck Children." If you notice, one of them has on pants and the other one has on a shirt, so they'd make one complete outfit between them.

Someone does not look thrilled about having her picture made.

I took these closer to the beginning of the summer. I know this because James's nose is still scraped from when he fell at the splash pad. 

Professional Photos

We had a picnic dinner at our neighborhood park the other day and saw Rhiannon of Lollipop Photography shooting mini-sessions there, which reminded me to post the pictures we had made for Amelie's 4th birthday. We got rained out and had to push it back about a month.

James was a cranky mess for the first 15 minutes of the 30-minute shoot, but we got some smiley pictures of him. I was really pleased.

He absolutely would not let go of this book, though, which he'd never shown any interest in before (or since) that day. It was a gift from the kids' cousins Amy, Mary, and Christine in California.

A few more family photos:

There were a ton of shots of Amelie, but it was in honor of her birthday, so I think that's okay :)