It's been a while as usual. So here's a mix of photos and updates.

 

This was about a month ago--Atticus helping me make pizza for dinner.

 

He wanted to help trim the tree, but it's covered in thorns. So he climbed the ladder a few times, and he dragged thornless brush from the backyard out to the curb for the brush and bulky pickup.

Atticus got his first pair of scissors and loves them. We made this nifty cat puppet, which Atticus ripped apart and put together again several times before the materials were in such bad shape that the cat was finally dead for good (not quite nine lives, but close).

Here he is on the first morning of our trip to San Diego last weekend. We left Thursday evening at 4 and intended to drive all the way to SD, but Atticus was so devastated about the prospect of sleeping in the car (saddest face ever) that we decided that we wouldn't mind having a bed to sleep in too, so we stopped in Yuma. Thanks to the blackout curtains, Atticus and I slept about 11 hours straight. Best night of sleep I've had in a long time.

All in all, Atticus did pretty darn well on the drive to SD and back. It took longer than we anticipated, but he was a trooper. The ipad is a lifesaver, I have to admit. If all else failed, that almost always distracted him for a while. It also helped that we saw a ton of trains, and had a new, comfy car to ride in.

We went to Carlsbad on Friday to visit Mike and Lauri and family. Contrary to what Atticus's expression suggests, I think he had a pretty good time. He hit balls off their tee, built magnetic empires, and played with weird electronic cockroach-type things.

Dinner the night before the marathon--pasta, of course. Atticus had two wedding cookies before dinner because he was out of sorts and it was vacation, and I didn't want to fight.

 He enjoyed dinner.

Then passed out on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant. No, just fake sleeping. It's his version of planking. He has fake slept on many, many sidewalks.

Other tidbits:

• When Ava is not at school, Atticus says she's at work.
• Since we've returned from San Diego he's been asking to eat out all the time--I mean whining on the drive to school in the mornings about it, despite having a snack in hand and having had breakfast earlier.
• Last night he had a nightmare that someone was taking his chair. He cried out, "My chair. That's my chair."

I'm tired and blank now. I'll probably remember a bunch of stuff tomorrow that I wanted to post.