Strawberry fields forever

The return of strawberry season was eagerly anticipated by Jack, who, as you may remember, last year wore a semi-permanent strawberry-stained beard and mustache through spring and well into summer. Danny had taken him strawberry picking at Swanton last June, and still has pictures from it on his iphone, which Jack asked to see with increasing frequency once strawberries started showing up again at the farmers market. I wouldn't call Jack narcissistic, but he does have a lot of love for himself. Looking at pictures and watching videos of himself has long been a favorite past-time, but he has lately been going one step further, trying to recreate the photo or video. (This has led to several dozen reenactments of Jack and the Sock Puppet Waving Bye-Bye... which I may someday post as a montage alongside the original.) So naturally, Jack wanted to recreate the strawberry picking experience he remembered so fondly through the lens of the camera-phone, and this weekend we finally gave in and made the long drive down the coast.



We invited our friends with the daughter who is Jack's current crush. (I'm not kidding, he L-O-V-E-S this girl.) They are my new favorite playmates because they have yet to turn us down whenever we invite them somewhere. I don't know if that's because they like us so much or they just don't have anything better to do, but it sure keeps Jack happy to have them along! He might have done more girl-chasing than strawberry-picking this morning. And of course the sweetest berries were the ones his little friend picked just for him.


Aren't they cute?

Sadie protested my bending over to pick berries at first, then she passed out and didn't make a peep the rest of the morning. Until it was time to get back in the car, at which point she was wide awake and let us know she was not interested in being in her carseat, thank you very much. She continued registering her displeasure the whole way back, right up until we got to our next destination, at which point she promptly fell asleep. Stinker. As long as we're talking about Sadie, though, I must tell you that she is laughing now. On Friday I was picking Jack up from a playdate at the neighbor's house and was wearing Sadie in the carrier. I was doing nothing very remarkable, when Sadie looked up at me and just started belting out laughter. Actually, it was more of a guffaw. It was like she'd been saving up a laugh since the day she was born and just couldn't take it any more. I was very proud of my immediate reaction to reach for my phone the moment I realized what that delightful noise coming out of my baby was.  Much to my disappointment, however, the video recorded no sound. I guess "silent mode" means "only records silence" as well. Which is one of the more comically tragic things I can think of, really. A beautiful video of your baby's first laugh, without sound. Oh well. She'll do it again someday, I'm sure.

Now, back to the narrative, the next destination was my cousin Clare's graduation party. We knew it was kind of a big deal when we pulled up and there was valet parking. At a person's house. I'm glad Jack and Sadie aren't old enough to be getting any ideas about what parties are supposed to look like. Because you are not going to have any candy bars with your faces on them for your next big event, my dears. I'm sorry. Jack enjoyed the candy, the catering, the dj, the karaoke, the hijinx of someone getting thrown in the pool, as much as a two year old could. Mostly he enjoyed spending time with Clare and the rest of his family, and tolerated his mommy making him dance with her when he really just wanted to play chase. Sadie slept on her nana for a while and then woke up to receive her accolades from her adoring public.

You have no idea how many people told me "you have such BEAUTIFUL children!" And these were the Beautiful People telling me this, mind you. The people who probably spent more on their cocktail dress than we spend on clothing in a year for all four of us. But remember this Sadie. Because when you're a teenager those are the girls that are going to make fun of you. (Because their dresses will still cost more than your family's annual clothing budget.) In 2011, they were the ones calling you beautiful.