PUMPKIN PATCH

There is a place here, a big field, where they grow giant orange pumpkins for Halloween. You go there and get a big wagon and choose the perfect pumpkin. You can also go on a hay ride driven by a real witch. And there is a corn maze where you can get lost. Dad and I got lost and Mama tried to find us and when she finally found us she realized she had lost her glasses somewhere in there but it was so mazey that she couldn't remember the way she came and she couldn't see that well without her glasses and then she went through one more time and there they were under some corn husks. It was a Halloween miracle!

and Auntie Cari

So we showed Auntie Cari and the baby Ondine all of our world here and it was a nice reminder to us all that it is a real cool way we are living right now. Sometimes my mom misses life in the big city and she forgets. We walked to the water by our house and Aunt Cari wore the baby in her shirt which Mama said I used to do too up in Elysian Park Ay. There is a long pier to the middle of the glassy cove and kayaks and canoes that I will go on as soon as they let me. Lately it is harder and harder to get me to keep up or stay focused on the walking home part so it was a big relief to my mom's tired arms when Mamam came zooming by and scooped me up in her car.

Well, good-bye for now Auntie and Cousin. We all love you because you are our family forever. And we will see you in Thanksgiving time......

Howdy Cuz!

My new baby cousin Ondine is visiting! She's a little girl and she has a lot of really dark hair. I on the other hand was a cue ball until I was one. She is very teeny tiny and I was very careful to be extra gentle around her. I was pretty shy and coy when everyone kept telling me to look at her and talk to her, but by bedtime all I could say was baby baby baby and I woke up saying baby baby baby. Mama was real happy to have her sister Cari and new neice in our place and she kept holding Ondine so much that I felt that I should hug my mom the whole time and grab her face so she could look at me and say coo coo coo instead of the baby. I mean, I can sing and dance and jump and hug and kiss, and that baby doesn't do anything but eat and sleep.

The Tractor Factor

Oooooh man oh man do I love me a tractor! I see them when we drive and I scream and point and go berserk. Can you imagine how I felt when I looked out the window of our house and saw one in the yard? And then when I actually climbed up on it and pushed the levers and pedals and made the tractor noises with my mouth? And then when I got to see the tractor actually digging up dirt and moving around? Can you DIG IT, man???

Autumn in Washington, Part Three

Yep, there are a lot of beautiful sites to see here in this Pacific Northwestern world. And sometimes if you're lucky the autumn wind will even blow in something big and dark and mexican.

An Autumn in Washington, Part Two

More of the sights we see when we drive around, which Mama and I do a lot. If you make a right turn you see one of the many little coves with water and boats and birds and sea smells. If you make a left turn you see farms and meadows and horses and sheeps and roosters. Like I've said before, this place would be 100% perfect if we had some of you guys living nearby. But Mama is big on percentages and she reminds us that 100% is a lot to shoot for and you are luckier than most if your clearing 60%.

An Autumn in Washington, Part One

Man, is it ever pretty around here these days. This is only my second Autumn and its blowing my wee mind. The first one was in Los Angeles and it really wasn't any big deal. This one is like magic. The trees have turned from green to yellow to orange to red to pink. Pink trees! I'm not kidding, they're bright pink. And the yellow ones are so bright they hurt your eyes. And then there's the ones that are all the colors, pink and red and yellow at once, like a Big Stick popsicle. I'm going to have to do a whole series because everywhere we go is a beautiful picture.

Mama Scissorhands

Well, Mama finally broke down and cut my hair. It was really long and flowy and EVERYWHERE I went people thought I was a girl. They'd say she and her and the little girl and then the nervous look of doubt and confusion, the awkward pause, and finally the is it a girl or a...question and my mom would give her standard reply, he's a boy, his hair is really long. So she locked me in the bathroom and cut it in secret from Dad and Mamam who said never cut it and its still long-ish and I still look pretty cute so everyone is all right.

gratitude

I will tell you what a perfect day is. It is when you wake up and its raining hard outside and everyone is happy to see that because it has barely rained at all yet. Then you go deep into the woods of the Grand Forest with your rain boots and your rain jacket and you walk with the rain and you stomp in all the puddles. Then you go to the Bay Hay for a tasty treat and a hot latte. Then you fall asleep and sleep deeply with the heater on for almost four hours. When you wake up their is a toasty fire cracklin' and everyone is very glad to see you because you slept so long. Its not that hard to have a perfect day, just so you know.

stairway to nowhere

Grandpoop is making stairs to the attic so we have a whole other floor's worth of room for all the guests and visitors and folks that come in and out of our life here. I worked at my workbench and Grandpoop worked at his. His job was to make everything perfect and level and my job was to stay away from the stairs which everyone knows I can only do for a very short time. As Bob The Builder says, Can we build it? Yes we can!

good night and good luck

We have recovered from Friday the 13th around here. There was some bad ju-ju in the air. The deWitt men had a very frustrating day on the job where the paint gun broke and everything went wrong. It ended with Grandpoop locking his keys in his truck, waiting an hour for AAA who finally let him in so he could immediately drive into a ditch. Three of his tires were not touching the ground and the AAA man was still there but made him call again for his second tow and somewhere in that time Grandpoop lost hist checkbook in the ditch. At this same time, back at our house, Mama let me play in our car, me sitting in the driver seat pushing all the buttons and levers while she sat in the passenger seat, when suddenly the alarm went off making the horn blow loud over and over and all the doors locked and we were trapped and could not unlock them and the keys were in the house. Mama finally pried the manual lock open and escaped and turned off the alarm that gave us a nervous breakdown and the whole Bainbridge Island too probably. And then when Mamam came home at the end of the day, a black cat crossed her path just as she pulled into our driveway. Geez! Did anything bad lucky happen to any of you?



I unwinded today with a little Teletubbies, which I've just recently started to appreciate. I've seen them before but never paid any attention to tv before but my mom says my attention span is growing. I watched for ten straight minutes, mesmerized, while Mama told me the animal print top hat that Tinky Winky was wearing made him look like an early nineties Melrose Avenue fashion victim.

this is BIG

There are times in my life when something truly major happens and I get so worried that I won't be able to explain to you how big a deal it is. This is one of those times. TEDDY. Teddy is a very big deal. He's been sitting in a corner of my room for as long as I can remember and I never noticed, never cared. Then one day, Mama asks me if Teddy might want one of my organic crunchin grahams and I gave him one. Then she asked me to give him a hug and then a kiss and we've been a team ever since. For some reason none of us know, his hands and feet and bum are covered in wax, but I don't care, he is awesome. I carry him around the way my mom carries me. I share everything with him. I'm teaching him about all the things that I know about which is a whole lot. And he sleeps over in my bed where I give him many many kisses and hard hugs and there is nothing wrong with that.

I AM NOT A TOY

One day when my dad is old and cripply I am going to strap HIM to a hand truck and wheel him along the interstate.

me and my buddy

Grandpoop's finally back from Lake Tahoe for good and now we are very inseparable. We like to hang out, just the two of us, just us guys, downstairs in the workshop for hours. I sit in my chair that GPoop made for me while he works on things and we listen to Miles Davis and Clifford Brown and he talks to me about which jazz man is which and what every tool does. He brought home a long boat called The Bucket that as you can imagine is my newest favoritest toy to pretend in. Then GPoop tells my parents Why don't you kids go out. They do not argue and are down at the local art house theater and cafe eating brie sandwiches and commenting on indie filmmaking before I can blink an eye. So we, us guys, watch the baseball playoffs and then Grandpoop puts me to bed and then the next morning when Mama has to wake up at 6am with me because its her turn, there's GPoop again, saying Why don't you go back to bed and Gus and I will eat breakfast and listen to NPR? WE HEART GRANDPOOP !!!