Fourth grader & pre-Ker: the first days

Cheese kiddos, it's your first day of school! They made these adorable faces on the first try!

Just kidding, they totally didn't. THIS is the first face they made. Obv.

Subway commute. Good thing they're little, cause this was all the space there was to squeeze them into.

Background: I-roc overheard Matt saying something about a fire drill at school and was very worried about his class room catching on fire. (These are the things you worry about when you've never been to school before in your life and don't realize that nothing remotely that exciting will probably ever happen there.) But so the first day of pre-K, he gravitated right to this costume and wore it the whole time. Phew. Fears conquered.

What we did this weekend

It was the first weekend of real spring, so we dug a few holes, got us some lumber, and built us some raised beds.

Putting the urban back in "urban gardening"

We used the dirt we dug up to line the edge of the yard - it's safe for growing flowers and maybe a protective hedgerow, but probably not anything edible. The raised beds are half full of layers of organic soil and mulch and whatnot, to be added to every year until we have nice deep soil without any broken glass or lead.  

Next project: putting up some kind of a fence so people don't wander over into our yard and accidentally fall into the raised beds. It hasn't happened yet, but this is still Brooklyn, anything is possible!

Ridgewood reservoir

 We went for a wintry walk around the Ridgewood Reservoir, on a hill overlooking Queens and Brooklyn. The running/biking trail loops all the way around the reservoir's three basins.

There were little signs telling us to keep an eye out for the wildlife, but this is all we really saw.

It's not an active reservoir anymore, so two of the basins have just gone completely wild. That's about 35 years worth of unchecked re-wilding, and it's starting to be a regular forest down there.

One of the basins still has a bit of water in it, and man is it pretty.

On the other side of the path, past the dozen or so cemeteries that surround the reservoir, you get these awesome views of Queens and Brooklyn, all the way out to the water and JFK airport.

And some more wildlife.

And then it got dark and we went home and had hot chocolate.

 

Thankful

Me: What are you thankful for, this Thanksgiving?
P-roc: I'm thankful that instead of a life with aliens and spaceships and lockdowns and meltdowns and escapes and aliens shooting at you, I have a normal life. What are you thankful for, I-roc? Living?
I-roc: Yeah.

Third birthday's the charm

At Ikea, eating yogurt (his choice - what's more fun that the Ikea ball pit on your third birthday?); Strollin'; Punchin'; Happy birthday!; Monster cupcakes; Grinnin' and eatin' mac'n cheese. 

Summer! Mango ice cream!

First Communion

After mass.

Outside with proud Dad.