Dada: “What were you doing?”

Liam: “We were fighting Sam!”

Dada: “Do you think I want you fighting Sam?”

Liam: “I wasn’t the one fighting him. I was the one blocking him so Nate could get him.”

front

back

The front of the card this year was all taken in one shot - there was no Photoshopping necessary other than for the border and the text. In years past, I’ve had to take the best elements from several pics and combine them all into one shot. This time, after the turkeys were wrapped up and trundled off into the front yard, all that Jill had to do was stand behind me and yell over my shoulder, “Hey boys, you know what we’re having for dinner tonight? Spaghetti and POOPballs!”. I found out later that she’d been saving that one.

Liam and Nate looked at one another for a beat, then burst out laughing, and Sam joined in simply because the other boys were laughing, and they were holding his mittens. So, poop joke = mirth, togetherness, and what can easily be mistaken for brotherly love.

*sound of camera clicking*

The back was done in Photoshop with the help of my Intuos4 PC Tablet. Initially, the cards came back from the printer and the yellow snow looked lime green. So we had to order another set pronto. Unfortunately, after a week of waiting for the mistake to be corrected, those cards also arrived with lime-green whiz. In the end, we decided to send them out anyway. It was either that, or we were going to have to hang onto 500 holiday postcards until St. Paddy’s Day.

As usual, my part in all this was mostly that of a Photoshop Puppet and Printer Liaison.

It was all Jill’s idea.

After a hard day hitting all the area parks and playgrounds, it’s nice to sit in the Ice Cream Shop and relax with some “Birthday Batter” ice cream and a few peppermint sticks.

So the two big boys are now in school, as seen below on each of their orientation days - getting into the car for Liam’s, and man-handling Sam’s umbrella stroller for Nate’s.

In a statement that would undoubtedly warm the hearts of all overworked preschool teachers everywhere who do it for the simple reward of shaping and influencing young minds, Liam told us that he likes his new class better “because it has different toys”. He’ll actually tell you what he’s done that day if you ask him within the first 30 seconds of picking him up. After that, his standard response is, “Um, I don’t remember that.” I’ve resorted to turning it into a game and asking him to tell me one thing that happened in preschool that’s true, and one thing that’s NOT true, then letting me guess which is which. So I get a little information and at the same time, teach him to lie convincingly.

Nate, after helping to drop Liam off all last year, is simply happy to be able to now stay. Jill used to find him trying to hang up his coat and sit down at the activity tables. She’d help him back on with it and tell him that he’d get to go to Big Boy School next year. So now it’s next year, he’s the “Biiiig THREE!” (holding up three fingers), and he gets to stay. It’s his class this time, and he has his own hook. He brought home a little class photo, framed with popsicle sticks and generously glued-on pumpkin seeds. In it, he’s definitely the happiest kid in the picture, and he’s not even the one picking his nose.

And so begins a lifetime of calendar-based adherence to a repetitive daily schedule dictated by the clock and seeded with the occasional small block of cheese.

Welcome to society, boys!

Day One: Liam

Day Two: Nate