Making chicken mole and funny faces

Last week our friends Ariel and Taylor came over to cook mole (not the garden rodent - I don't know how to make an e with an accent in Blogger). They brought their dog and made fast friends with Max and Abe. Chicken mole is very complicated to make and involves instructions like, "Heat the ancho chiles on a griddle until just a wisp of smoke emerges." Seriously, Rick Bayless? One man's wisp is another man's smoke alarm going off.

But the food was, in the end, delicious, and a good time was had by all. See?

It's Fall!

So we went for a walk in the woods with our neighbors, Jennifer and Bill. Max considers them some of his best friends and I believe they feel the same way. They all like us, too, but they have a special little thing going. Jennifer is a master gardener and teaches Max how to identify perennials and various herbs. It is likely that he is the only member of his K-1 class able to identify both chocolate mint and lemon balm. Nearly every day in the summer, Max insists on going to visit them whenever we return from anywhere, at any time of day. We do our best to not be the kind of parents who will let our kid bother you because we want him to feel validated and all that jazz, but sometimes he wears us down.

So the walk. The Boston Nature Center is a big preserve on the site of a former bedlam-style state mental hospital. Now, it is lovely. See? That there is one of them green buildings everyone is so crazy for. And that little red fella is Abe.

We wandered about and looked at some wetlands and identified wildflowers. It was a good time. We also started to run out of steam, at least some of us. Like Max. He gets very tired on weekends because, for no good reason, he wakes up very early, something which never happens on a school day, and he won't nap. So he collapses on my head and gets very heavy. But in front of such a pastoral backdrop, who could complain?

In order to keep him engaged, I showed him the camera, and he was entranced. All he wanted to do was take pictures. Of course, we wanted to encourage the little darling. And of course, the camera is a) not really ours and b) pretty damn expensive and c) attached to a strap that would protect it if I dropped it, but not if someone 3 feet tall did. So it was nerve-wracking. But we are parenting in 2009, so we are powerless against the ambitions of a 4-year old. Here is a sampling of his work:

Also, we saw a snake:

Next stop, Halloween. A sneak peak:

On to August, indeed

August came and we headed for Cape Cod. Then I had to go back to work for a couple of days and got on a boat. I liked that, as it had wireless. When I got home, I was treated to an awesome sight. Our neighbors have been destroying house, little by little, ostensibly to rebuild it later. The one with the sexy back, squatting by the trunk of the red car, is the drunk fella who used to own our house. Now he is helping with the construction. They started in March and have proceeded with the following schedule: work from 7 to noon, drink in the driveway until 7, go home. What you see there is 2000 beer bottles being recycled. Good drinking, neighbors. Some people on our street are planning to move if the drunk guy actually finishes the project and moves back in. Wild times.

Then, back to Cape Cod. Abe got into the beach this summer and ate about 4 pounds of sand. He showed no fear of the water, which is, of course, terrifying. Max was a little more skittish and was purchased a life jacket, which ended that. Later, my parents arrived, followed by my sister (plus 3) and my brother (plus 1 girlfriend, slightly shellshocked at being tossed into a Labor Day wknd of 11 Barcans). Much bumping into each other ensued, culminating in my cooking three enormous lobsters on the grill.

And then, just like that, it was September, after two solid weeks of 90 degrees every day and one more with 75 beautiful degrees - nicer for living, not so nice for swimming - each day. Max starts KINDERGARTEN in a few days. More on that later.