More photography here.
Caught this ornate fountain sculpture in Middleton, WI, in the perfect morning light:
Specters of autumn at our local park:
Will never get enough of the two year old’s chubby hands:
And the two year old will never get enough of playing fetch with his fur cousin:
Spotted this heart-shaped root on my sister-in-law’s land:
The six year old loves being in the wilds of nature but also loves making orderly piles:
A rare trampoline adventure for the boys:
In what’s becoming an accidental yearly tradition, here’s a selection of creatures big and small I’ve captured.
A tree frog:
A milkweed tiger moth:
An oriental beetle:
A zebra spider:
An ovenbird just chillin’ on our front porch:
A great blue heron:
More photography here.
Life finding a way through a tennis court:
Exploring the ice rink at our local sports complex:
Angles at my parents’ house:
Summiting the little hill at my childhood park:
More angles and shadows at the library:
The six year old just kickin’ a brick wall while we waited for the splash pad to open:
Reaching, always reaching:
More photography here.
We did a gymnastics party for our now 6 year old’s birthday, which his little brother definitely also enjoyed:
2025 America in one star-spangled shot at our local library — gloomy and fractured, with stark contrasts and a cloudy forecast:
Happened to catch this sunsetting light casting shadows from two different windows into our entryway:
Love how Mr. 1 Year Old looks like a gunslinger strolling into a sidewalk showdown with his brother:
Taking in an amphibious view at Shedd Aquarium:
Admiring the Shedd’s dolphins with my own little water lover:
Warming up for soccer class:
More photography here.
In early November we visited some friends on their farm in the far exterior of Chicagoland:
Hat-tip to this payphone that’s just hangin’ in there:
Sunset from a different farm:
A song of ice and fog at our local park:
The view from getting gas at Costco:
The sun shone kindly upon my wife’s gluten-free blueberry muffins:
Shadows and signs:
More photography here.
Partly cloudy in the Windy City:
Feeling reflective at our park:
Fishing class with the five year old:
First time downtown with the lads:
Enjoying the hotel room balcony at Timber Ridge Lodge:
Burgundy boy blending in with the fallen leaves:
More photography here.
Scenes from some time in Michigan with extended family…
Gas station architecture:
Boatin’:
Cousins dancing to the sunset (also a perfect album cover for their future band):
Happened to catch the sunset reflected near the five year old:
Early morning dune summit:
In between teaching the five year old how to play and then letting him beat me, I absolutely smoked him in a game I’ve played since elementary school:
Some pre-dinner heckling of the granddads on the grill (notice the thumbs-down in the middle lol):
We’ve encountered more interesting bugs while out and about since doing this last September, so I figured I’d turn this into yet another of my recurring features with its own tag.
Here’s a midge:
And a (much smaller in real life) ground crab spider:
And a yellow woolly bear moth:
And an alder spittlebug:
And a juniper (or jade) stink bug:
And a white plume moth:
And a painted lichen moth:
More photography here.
Shadow play:
The tunnel into Brookfield Zoo:
Garbage Day is appointment viewing:
Barking up the front yard tree:
Puddle hunting:
More photography here.
Lots of red admiral butterflies in our backyard:
A goose family at our local park:
A toad tromping through our backyard:
The Great Cicadapocalypse has begun here in Illinois, and here’s one of many molting cicadas on our maple tree:
Our lilac bush is so vibrant for such a short time:
A marigold in our backyard garden area:
Today our youngest turned one year old. He and I are often outside together like in this picture because it’s what makes him feel better when he’s upset. Walking around while holding him will get tougher as he grows and begins to walk, so I’m trying my best to cherish these moments before he goes off to make shadows of his own.
Happy birthday, A!
Well, this is me now:
It started a few years ago when our firstborn got into our copy of The Little Book of Backyard Bird Songs that plays a dozen different bird calls. Then one day while on a walk through our local park, I heard a call that I recognized from the book, so I knew right away: red-winged blackbird!
More recently I started using the free Merlin Bird ID app, which identifies birds based on their calls and has made me much more attuned to hearing new ones as we walk. According to that, our neighborhood is full of cardinals, robins, house sparrows, mourning doves, red-winged blackbirds, grackles, white-breasted nuthatches, woodpeckers, and lots of other avian delights.
This summer I managed to snap pics of a few cool and colorful critters spotted around our yard and house. And thanks to my phone’s aforementioned Visual Look Up, I actually know what they are.
Here’s an ailanthus webworm moth:
And a two-striped grasshopper:
And a grapevine beetle:
And some kind of mantis (species unknown):
And a southern sickle bush-cricket or katydid:
Recently my aunt got my 4 year old a “something special for the new big brother” gift: a popup butterfly garden with a cup of live caterpillars. The cup came in the mail prefilled with caterpillar food, which they ate over the course of a week as they grew and eventually retreated into their own chrysalides.
Then soon enough, they wriggled out one by one and emerged as painted lady butterflies:
We fed them some fruit and “nectar” (sugar water) and after a few days set them free into the wild. As they were flying away, the 4 year old said: “Goodbye butterflies, I’ll never forget you. I think the butterflies will always remember me.”
It was a fun little project for all of us, and a cool thing for the 4 year old to witness and directly facilitate.
More photography here and on my Instagram.
The view of the capitol building in Madison from the Madison Children’s Museum rooftop:
Mr. 3 Year Old and his cousin on the slide at the Madison zoo:
Stumbled upon this view atop a slide at a nearby suburban park:
Ascending a magically wooded tunnel of stairs adjacent to a sledding hill at another nearby park:
More stairs, this time at the DuPage Children’s Museum:
We’re finally, finally, doing stuff in our yard and garden areas. Some of it is remedial caretaking—fertilizing and weeding the lawn, removing dead bushes and trees—but a lot of it has focused on beautification and planting vegetables we’re not totally sure will thrive but are giving a try anyway.
I gotta say: I’ve really loved it. Perhaps because the work is the polar opposite of my digital, desk-bound day job: it’s an ancient practice, outside, requiring arduous physical labor, with visual progress toward to an end goal but no screens whatsoever.
The key reason we’ve been able to do so much thus far is Mr. 2 Years Old is now old enough to help, and boy does he enjoy it. We got him his own set of tools so he can work along with us, both for real and in the little dirt area we set aside just for him to romp around in. So far it’s collected a bunch of rocks and sticks, though we also set him up with a geranium to water.
As is the case with homeownership writ large, the list of things to do is seemingly endless and grows longer the more ambitious we get. Who knows what we’ll actually get to this year. That said, I’m kinda shocked by how much progress we’ve made with only partial weekends and the scattered weekday morning at our disposal.
Next up on the list: laying down a goodly amount of fragrant cypress mulch!
More photography here and on my Instagram.
This picture barely captures how cool the evening light was through these clouds at my local strip mall:
Remnants of winter:
Black Play-Doh + white Play-Doh = accidentally awesome marbled design:
“Aphyllous trees beneath cirrocumulus clouds” sounds like a line from “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” but is really just what I caught here at our park:
Just doing domino runs with Jenga blocks with the 2 year old:
On the move in Pure Michigan:
Liked the colors and lines here:
Shout-out to the kids playing pickup baseball at the park who probably have never seen The Sandlot but nevertheless showed why it’s such a timeless classic:
As above…
…snow below:
Before the recent heat wave started melting the abundant snow, I was able to enjoy a moment in the snowfall with Mr. Two Year Old, which is where I grabbed the clips above. I’m so glad he loved it as much as I did.
Anytime I’m able to dwell in idyllic winter weather I think of Adam Gopnik’s Winter: Five Windows on the Season, which I read back in 2014. I’m always on the lookout for quotes and books that capture the alluring spirit of winter and why I love it so much, and that book definitely delivered.
But I realized I hadn’t actually taken any notes from it, so I did something I rarely do: I reread a book. Admittedly it was less a full reread and more a skimming for the best quotes, but I’m glad I did because there was lots I failed to note and appreciate the first time.
See my book notes for the full list, but I also want to highlight an excerpt from a poem Gopnik himself quotes—1794’s “The Winter Evening” by English poet William Cowper:
Oh Winter! ruler of th’ inverted year,
Thy scatter’d hair with sleet like ashes fill’d,
Thy breath congeal’d upon thy lips, thy cheeks
Fring’d with a beard made white with other snows
Than those of age; thy forehead wrapt in clouds,
A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne
A sliding car, indebted to no wheels,
But urg’d by storms along its slipp’ry way;
I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem’st,
And dreaded as thou art! …
I crown thee King of intimate delights,
Fire-side enjoyments, home-born happiness,
And all the comforts that the lowly roof
Of undisturb’d retirement, and the hours
Of long uninterrupted evening, know.