Hey I am Now selling my crafts online so just tell me if you want to order some.
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Essie introduces herself, states her intentions, and immediately pulls in a very special guest.
Essie Lou is no longer a little skittle. She's growing up (way too) fast, and she has much she wants to say in writing, in pictures, through art, and on video. And so, we're reanimating this blog and turning it over to its new boss, Essie herself.
She will serve as Editor In Chief, Managing Editor, Head of Creative, VP of Operations, Head Writer, Director of Photography/Video, etc. I will be her humble servant, assisting her with the technical aspects of uploading and posting the content she creates. For this scintillating work, I will be paid primarily in hugs and kisses, but I'd do it for free. Looking back on all those years of posts during her early years...woof. It's so dusty in here... My voice was always the dominant one on this little family blog. Depending on what my new boss asks of me, my voice may still appear here. But our family has grown, and we're posting things elsewhere, and Essie may as well own the URL that has her name on it. And with that, I will step back and let Essie take over. Xoxo, Seth Head Peon, EssieLou.com The past 10 months have been wild with the arrival of our sweet little Camille back in December. With kid #2, we’ve realized that our old family blog has become inadequate for handling all the stories, photos, and video of our growing family.
So, we’re jumping over to Tumblr, which just makes sharing a bit easier. Follow us there at thecolaneri.tumblr.com. Love, Seth December was a flurry of flurries. Busy, insane, occasionally frantic, etc. But it was all good. So what went down? You can find out the same way Essie did: We’ll get some updates and pics up here soon, when we have a second to catch our breath.
:) Seth It’s hard to believe that babypants has now crossed the 4-year mark. And of course we’ll say this every year, and it will physically hurt when she’s a little closer to 18, but: It really does seem like just months ago that she was a little potato, gurgling and smiling at us and spitting up all over our house and clothing. However, as kids get older, their birthday parties--in my opinion--get awesomer. This year, we rented out the facility where she has gymnastics lessons, and we all had free reign of the place and access to all the equipment. (It’s locally owned, and the husband-and-wife owners are fantastic. He was actually there with their baby to run things, and it was his idea to pull out the giant rope swing so the grownups could swing over and into the big foam pit. My kinda guy.) The little ones had a great time, but the adults had even more fun. Several adult family friends were present, and they took to the fun like ducks to water. For those of us who love physical activity and controlled chaos, it was the ideal party! (Case in point: We were virtually unable to snap any clear pictures of the event, because everyone was moving so fast the whole time. We’re posting the least blurry ones. Yeah.) Because Es had been so into superheroes, we made that the theme of the party. Our friend made her this adorable superheroine outfit with a big “4” on the chest, and we made little capes and masks for all the kids.
After 90 minutes of wild gymnastics-ing, we all sat down for pizza and cake--note well that food is consumed after the frantic physical activity, not before--and before we knew it, the festivities were over. On the actual day of her birth, though, we had our traditional birthday breakfast, which primarily consists of chocolate chip-and-sprinkle pancakes, hot chocolate, and the opening of one gift. (Hey, she went to school that morning, all that sugar was someone else’s problem.) We also brought cupcakes to her class, which was fun. I’ll let the pics tell the rest of the story. Happy birthday! Seth I've said it before and I'll say it again: The missus and I have never really gotten into Halloween. There are multiple reasons, but let's just say it boils down to the fact that we don't have a rich family tradition of Halloweening, and thus, there's not much in the way of tradition that we have to lean on. However, as Es gets older and more and more into dress up/make believe/superheroes/costumes in general, Halloween has become as much a part of the family tradition for us as anything else. However, we still don't dress up. Or decorate. Or...anything. I know, I know, very boring people are we. But it just takes so much effort, and long gone are the days when it was fun to come up with a clever costume and go to some wild party with a bunch of other 20-somethings and guess each others' punny outfits. Now if we costume it up, we're just uncomfortable adults slowly trudging behind a sugary kid. Either we have to roll with a family theme (adorable but exhausting) or we have to be creative, and...man, we just ain't got it in us anymore.
Little miss Esther Louise, however, is just beginning. This was really the first year that she got super into dressing up, and she We'd had Es in a preschool/daycare part time for about a year (and were very happy with it), but this fall we started her in a wonderful preschool just down the street. It's been a terrific experience. Her teachers are amazing, and her class is incredibly diverse and interesting. She's found an identity in the class as a very verbal social butterfly who offers to play with everyone, which is a shock to exactly nobody. We're already locked in for next year, so the new school will be her home until kindergarten in fall 2015! (Nobody tell her that school stinks), Seth Summer 2013 was wildly busy for us. In addition to my many adventures (backpacking with dad and bro, coaching youth ultimate frisbee, playing on a competitive adult ultimate team, and more), we squeezed in family visits, a trip to see old and dear friends out of state, and partook of some of the local funsies in and near our town. I could blather on and on about the what and the where and the when and all the details, but instead I'll just post some photo stories and let the captions do the prompting. And let the pictures do the thousand-word each telling of the stories. Woooooo summer! Seth Little Essie Lou has a hero--or is it a hero complex?--and he goes by the name of Batman. Indeed, Es is in a hardcore Batman phase. She also loves Spiderman. And Wolverine. And Ronin from the (really good) animated kids movie "Epic". She's been asking to watch Batman, and we found an animated series called "Batman: The Brave and the Bold" that isn't too dark and goes easy on the heavier themes; it's almost campy, actually, and frankly it's just a really weird show. Lots of bizarre new characters, completely absurd storylines (even for a comic book superhero), etc. In any case, it's enough to sate her appetite for Batman, and she now likes to pretend to be him. We've had numerous discussions about why Batman does the things he does. That is to say, he hits people. A lot. But they're all bad guys; Batman only hits bad guys, and he only does it to keep them from hurting people. And after he bonks them, he takes them to jail so they won't hurt anyone else. Here she is, decked out in some Batman gear that she collected herself. Note the especially threatening strawberry hat that serves as her cowl. And so, we play a lot of Batman (and sometimes Spiderman, and very occasionally, Wolverine) these days. I typically play the...
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May 2018
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