In this blog entry, rather than blathering on about dairy laws, neuroscience problems or Wisconsin oddities I will just share a few recent photos and movies clips of Everett. We know why you’re here. What follows is a pretty random assortment…

Everett’s attitude toward walking has been similar to crawling: leisurely. We have known since April that he can stand on his own, and lately he has been interested in walking while he holds our hands, but it has only been in the last week that he really took an interest in walking solo without immediately reverting to crawling (which he has become amazingly fast at). This video shows a little of each.

In the first half of this you may notice that E is wearing some kind of nouveau dance onesie, and those of you who have little ones may lament the fact that all sorts of fabrics and colors are available for little girls’ clothing but the choices for young boys seem limited to Darth Vader meets NASCAR. This outfit and many others that we like as well are from Sweden.

In the photo at top E is performing Saturday Night Fever during Oktoberfest at the Bavarian Inn. Moments later he does his Wallace and Gromit imitation (for those of you who have not memorized every W&G scene we have included a reminder):


Too many goldfish…

E makes a call on his cordless wood chip:

Posing for next year’s Harvest Fest poster:

Digging in the dirt with Nora at the Harley Davidson Museum:

Two hands are no longer necessary for drinking milk:

Lastly, Wisconsin is well-known for agriculture and also has some great bicycling. What do you get when you put them together? The bike-tractor pull! I think Everett could be a strong contender at this in a year or two, and in the meantime we will keep feeding him cheese. Stay tuned…

Today we returned to the Wisconsin State Fair Park for the annual Harvest Fair. Quite a crowd turned out for it. Once again we were introduced to some more Wisconsin traditions such as:
1. The pumpkin growers competition, during which we saw a piece entitled “Ginormous Pumpkin on a Dorm Mattress” (please ignore the police tape in the background).

2. Pumpkin bowling. In case I haven’t mentioned, bowling is BIG in Wisconsin, probably because of the long winters. And I know I’ve talked about how important agriculture is. So putting them together seems like a natural next step.

3. Scarecrow daycare. Yes, that’s correct. One of the events at the festival was to make your own scarecrow. Of course, these are life size and carrying them around the festival for hours may be inconvenient, which is why scarecrow daycare was invented. You can drop off your scarecrow, sign him (or her) up for a few activities and then pick him up when you are ready to head home.

Everett isn’t quite ready to make a scarecrow but he had fun playing in the straw.

4. Vintage rock bands. Ever wonder what happened to rock bands from the ‘70s and ‘80s? They didn’t fade away, they came to Wisconsin. Molly Hatchet is playing a free concert tonight.

5. Trains. Everett is pretty excited about them. There are some active tracks near our house that carry several trains a day, which gives E a chance to demonstrate two things. First, how much more sensitive his hearing is than ours. Second, the fact that trains preempt almost any other activity (except eating). He is not quite old enough for the children’s train that comes to the local events like Tosafest and the Harvest Fair:


At this point the astute reader will likely notice two things: first, like most trains that pass through our neighborhood, this one is Canadian (Canada is the next state, I mean country, over to the north). Second, is the conductor a ringer for Uncle Boy or what? And Uncle Boy is certainly the kind of guy who would build such a thing if for no other reason than to transport his grandchildren. Getting back to E, fortunately he is old enough to ride the train at the zoo.

In other news, we continue to receive vegetables from our CSA farm that are unfamiliar and a little difficult to identify. A couple weeks ago we received brusselini. This might have been some kind of joke because not even The Google lists this as a food. Melissa made a valiant attempt at serving it by roasting the leaves. We enjoyed gnawing on them for a while but it’s not something we are likely to try again. Last week we received a head of Romanesco, which look sort of like a land coral or a fractal vegetable:

We haven’t tried it yet but I’ll be sure to follow up once we do. In the mean time we are building a patio in the back yard which we hope to have finished before the end of the harvest season this year.

There is a giant oak tree in our neighbor’s front yard, and over the last couple weeks it has started raining acorns on our house.  This has had several consequences, some expected and some unexpected.  First, the acorns have caused a frenzy of activity among the local squirrels and chipmunks as they industriously prepare for winter.  This comes at a time when Everett is going through an explosion in language and he noticed the commotion right away.  “Quirrel” and “chip” have become two of his favorite words – they are the first things he says when he wakes up in the morning.  Once downstairs, he stands at the doors and windows calling for them:

Fortunately he never seems to have to wait very long before they appear.  Gramma came to visit us for two weeks and was able to see this new behavior first hand.  During this time Everett got LOTS of attention and play time.

It was fantastic for everyone, though since she left he has been looking for her as well.  Also, she shared with us a piece of the collective wisdom of grandparents that we initially found unbelievable but have since put to good use: it turns out that the bakery in most grocery stores keeps free cookies on hand for children, and all you have to do is walk up and ask for them.  Who knew?

The acorns are also one of the first signs that summer is ending.  This has been the most pleasant summer I have ever experienced, and I think Melissa feels similarly, but it has clearly been unusual for Wisconsin.  The two crabapple trees in our front yard never bloomed or never produced any fruit; the produce from our shares in a local farm arrived two weeks late, and most tomato varieties never arrived at all.
 
Lastly, the acorns signal the coming of fall, which means two things for us: Tosafest and winter preparations.  Tosafest is an annual celebration in the village of Wauwatosa where they close the roads and have lots of food and artists and musicians (and beer, of course).  During the celebration we ran into almost everyone we know in the state of Wisconsin.  For some time now Everett has been getting antsy in the stroller but couldn’t walk very far once on the ground.  At Tosafest he put shoes on and walked further than he ever has before.

As far as winter preparations go, I have assembled a long list of house repairs since we moved in a little over a year ago.  Our house is 80 years old and last winter we experienced a lot of cold-related problems: the attic is uninsulated and unvented, so the heat that escapes from the second floor causes the snow to melt which in turn causes huge ice dams which causes water to enter the roof and drip through the ceilings.  The bottom edge of the siding was never sealed to the foundation, which allows so much cold air to come in that our bathroom pipes froze last winter.  I could go on but you get the idea.  I have been making progress on these projects over the summer but not enough, and how I am in a dash to get everything done before winter.  Fortunately, collection of firewood has been going well and we are looking forward to cozy nights during the long winter.  Thanks to the squirrels and chipmunks we have a huge supply of acorn hulls for kindling.

Many times while hiking, particularly while descending a mountain, I’ve noticed a trickle of spring water that crosses the trail now and then, enough to catch my eye but still small enough to step over.  Then my thoughts wander and I pass a few more of them, but eventually I realize that the trickles have joined into a stream which grows each time I cross it, and that it has become a new feature in the landscape.  So it has been with Everett and words.  He started with just a couple here and there, and even then he didn’t really use them consistently.  One of his first was no (“Noo! Noo! Noo!” to be exact), soon followed by dog and cat, then duck.  For a while after this almost everything of affection fell somewhere on the duck-cat spectrum.  Ultimately he realized that the universe has more dimensions than can be captured on a line between cats and ducks and has now shown us his solution to the binding problem.  In particular, what is it about duck-ness or dog-ness that makes paintings, photos, lawn ornaments, plastic likenesses and the real thing all representations of the same animal, and how do you decide whether a new animal like a seagull or wolf falls into an existing category or requires a new word?  At this point he usually chooses the latter and is adding a couple new words a day that encompass parents, parts of the body, animals (with appropriate sounds), foods, clothing and exclamations such as “woah!” or “hooyeah!” (which he uses when we are launching rockets in the backyard).  This process is fascinating to watch.  Of course, by the time his spoken vocabulary started to grow we suspected that we had underestimated him, in particular how much he understands.  We have heard many times that children’s receptive language skills come long before their expressive skills.  For example, some friends of ours have a boy who, by the time he started to talk, thought the cat’s name was “Damn It Clyde”.  In our case we realized that we really had no idea how much language he knew so we started quizzing him on the location of body parts, household items, animals, whether things were hot and cold, etc.  Encouraged by some good success we next started giving him commands like “bring me my wallet”, “close the gate” or “put your toothbrush in your other hand”, and we were proud but surprised when he complied.  We have now accepted the fact that we really have no way of knowing how much he understands and will have to rely on clues that he provides, like today when our friend Amanda said the word “cow” in the course of conversation and Everett interjected “moo!” without being prompted.  Other clues are not so subtle, such as his reaction to bubbles, which he has grown quite fond of since discovering them earlier this summer.  Actually that is a bit of an understatement – he is crazy for them as you can see here:

Everett was born into a family that takes delight in words.  For example, we were originally going to call this website “sesquipedalia”, which is loosely defined as using a $10 word when a 10 cent word would have worked just fine, although this was ultimately rejected because it seemed too difficult to spell.  We also keep two dictionaries at the dining room table and use them daily.  So we are glad to see that Everett is similarly enthusiastic about words.  What remains to be seen is whether his stream of words will turn into a gently flowing river or a series of fast-moving rapids, or how far this analogy can be taken when comparing him to his parents.

A few days ago was the annual Kavanaugh block party (photo above).  It’s pretty much what you would expect for a block party: close the road and fill the empty space with tables, chairs, grills, a keg and a potluck buffet.  Then sit and visit with the neighbors.  But there were also some things you might not expect, like last year’s frozen t-shirt contest (a race among the children to see who was the fastest at donning a t-shirt that has been soaked, folded and frozen solid), or the annual dog race.  As far as I know the latter was Dan Johnson’s idea, the same person who made national news for holding a pie fight with one of his high school buddies in the field behind our house.  The dog race used to consist of lining the dogs up (sort of), throwing a ball down the street and seeing who retrieved it first.  But the improved version of the race is to first find a hedgehog such as this one:

then attach it to a rope and reel it in on a motorized drum.  The winner of this year’s race was a rookie named Sprout who made up for his shorter legs with pure focus and tenacity, as you can see from the video below.  He won all heats and all race categories.

And speaking of sprouting, Everett took his first steps today!  We would love to have a movie of this as well but he rarely performs things on demand, especially when the video camera is running.  We’ll keep trying.  In the meantime here is a movie showing one of his other new tricks.

At the end of this video you can hear him correctly identify “bike”, which is a perfect segue into the next blog entry on Words…

Tonight we visited the Harley Davidson Museum for Bike Night, which is a Thursday night tradition during the summer with live music and outdoor food and beer.  This was our first time to the museum and the other visitors were mostly what we expected: lots of black leather, ZZ Top hair and custom motorcycles.  Oddly, there were also a fair number of families with small children and ours was certainly not the only stroller.  The museum grounds are beautiful, with lots of wide open space and riverfront along the Menomonee River.  The statue in the photo above is the centerpiece of the pedestrian plaza.  Tonight was also the christening of the Milwaukee Fire Department’s new boat the Trident (you have to travel a fair bit farther north before they become boots):

And here is the boat with black and orange water cannons as a tribute to the Harley Davidson colors:


We ate at MOTOR, the museum restaurant, which in addition to upscale biker food serves Motor Oil (dark beer) and Motor Gasoline (amber beer).  Both were pretty spicy.  The former was heavy but somewhat sweet, almost like molasses.  The best part was that all drafts are $2 on Thursday nights.  Sitting in the restaurant also allowed me to reflect on several questions I’ve thought about since we moved here such as:

-What is the demographic of Harley riders in Milwaukee?  My observation so far is successful men, post-midlife crisis.

-Will we get a Harley someday if we stay in Milwaukee?  If so, will we wear helmets even though they aren’t required in Wisconsin?

-How would people react if I rode the Pugsley to bike night?  Motorcyclists and bicyclists tend not to be kindred spirits, but Harley riders might feel some affinity for the Pug as long as I’m not wearing spandex.

Everett enjoyed the events but eventually got bored and went for a crawl along the river…

Today we returned to the Wisconsin State Fair for another slice of midwestern Americana.  The fair park is a mile or two from our house and thanks to Wheel and Sprocket it now has bike parking, so we put the family on six wheels (two bikes and the Burley) and pedaled over.  I don’t like using the Burley as a stroller so during our last trip we towed the Bob stroller behind the Burley (not a good idea).  Today we put the Uppababy on top of the Burley.  It’s certainly not in the owner’s manual but it worked well.  Highlights from the trip follow.

We visited the fair with Russ, Lauren and Nora.

In this photo Everett doesn’t seem terribly interested in Nora, but later that evening he grabbed her by the collar and kissed her.  I guess acting cool and distant wasn’t working.

When Everett was born we had all kinds of high ideals about how only healthy, natural food would enter his body.  But over the past year we have relaxed a bit, perhaps even more than we anticipated because today E shared his first corn dog with Dad.  For those who may be unfamiliar, especially our friends in other countries, corn dogs are one of the true American contributions to the culinary world along with cotton candy and the turducken.  And in case you are wondering I do not normally eat them – I think I might have had one in the 1980s.  In any case he seemed to like it quite a bit.

Nora showed us the butterflies on her shirt:

She also went down the world famous Wisconsin giant slide:

And E wore shoes for the first time this summer without screaming:

He also drove a tractor:

And we finished the day with a sunset ride home.

We have developed our first tradition since moving here, which it to visit the parks on Lake Michigan on Sunday evenings for dinner.  This usually entails getting together with some friends or family and taking a picnic to the lakefront in late afternoon, followed by playtime and dinner.  Last week we were enjoying dinner with grandparents Gary and Linda when a bus pulled up and several dozen college mascots jumped out.  We met the Cincinnati Bearcat (and I learned that the bearcat is a real animal known as a Binturong) and the University of Wisconsin Badgers.

We also met the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee Panther and the University of Minnesota Golden Gopher.

But my favorite was the unidentified mascot below who has unmistakeable Sean morning hair.

As for Everett, he was a little freaked out by these people but eventually started warming up to them.

Another tradition we started this summer is visiting the Wisconsin State Fair which is held at the fairgrounds about a mile from our house.  It’s all about cream puffs, rock bands from the 1980s and getting in touch with our agricultural roots.  Highlights this year:

1. Chocolate covered bacon on a stick.  Both Melissa and I tried this and had a few thoughts.  First, the chocolate is messy, especially on hot summer afternoons while trying to eat off a stick.  Second, the flavors don’t really mix.  Instead we both tasted chocolate, then bacon, both delicious.

2. The Herb Kohl Milk House, where you can get any flavor of milk (and I do mean ANY flavor) for 25 cents:

3. Timber Tina’s World Champion Lumberjills who performed ax throwing, log cutting and log rolling.  They were fantastic.

A third tradition we participated in is ‘Tosa Night Out, which is a safety fair and concert they hold at Hart Park in early August.  The event ends with an organized flashlight walk at dusk which happens to run in front of our house:

I’ll end this blog entry with a video of Everett’s first bike ride, which will hopefully become another new tradition for us:

Activity on the website has slowed a bit because of some technical problems that surfaced a couple weeks ago and that took some time for me to fix.  Hopefully that is all ironed out now but let me know if you notice any problems.  I’ve added some new photos to Everett’s webpage and made some changes to the home page to make it a bit more informative.  The downside of this is that I need to catch up a bit.

Every once in a while you meet someone who makes you aware of something that is all around you but that you didn’t notice before, and it changes your perception of the world.  For example, many years ago I read An Exaltation of Larks by James Lipton, and ever since then I have realized how common collective nouns are, yet how easily they are overlooked (e.g. a flock of seagulls, a school of fish, a catastrophe of debt, etc.).  So it has been also with Everett and ducks: he is an expert at identifying them.  In the photo he is pointing out a couple of them at the petting zoo that came to Hart Park on July 4th.  Nothing too surprising about that, but what’s interesting is that the real ones bear little resemblance to the iconic yellow duckies, yet he readily identifies those in books and toys.  Many times during the day he exclaims “duck!”, and he is usually right even if it takes us a while to find what he is referring to.  He has been finding them in wallpaper borders, lawn ornaments and company logos on books.  Of course he won’t do this on demand, only when he feels like, so it’s difficult to catch on film.  But we managed to catch it once recently as you can see below.

Summer has finally arrived in Wauwatosa and we have started exploring Wisconsin a bit more.  Last weekend we visited Kohler-Andrae State Park near Sheboygan.  Among other things this is home to the Lottie Cooper, which I think of as the Vasa of Wisconsin, except that it was a lumber schooner rather than a warship.

But it is interesting and symbolic of the shipbuilding industry that used to thrive here, as well as the number of shipwrecks on the great lakes, which are estimated at over 10,000.  We have also started visiting Veteran’s Park on the Milwaukee lakefront for Sunday afternoon picnics – that’s where the photo at the top was taken.  And we are now in the process of preparing for quite a few visitors over the upcoming weeks which will provide new opportunities for us to be tourists in our hometown.

So far this summer we have learned a few new facts about Everett:

-He does not like to wear anything on his feet.  Any attempts to put shoes, socks or sandals on him will result in screaming.

-Same goes for his head.  During the summer this is only a problem with the bike helmet or sun hat, but the outcome is the same as for footwear.

-He seems amused when we try to teach him things, and usually doesn’t pay much attention.  Yet he continually surprises us with things that he has learned without our intervention.  Recent examples: how to blow his nose or wash his hands.

-He seems ready to start walking.  Over the last couple weeks he has started standing by himself.  Last week Melissa bought him a cart that we hope he will use to help us with yardwork, but in the meantime he discovered that it is handy to hang onto for practice as you can see in the video below.