Happy Birthday Alex and Ben

New Bob (the Builder) and Wendy! (Thanks, Ebay).


New Bob costume! (Thanks, Evan Seufert).


Ben eating birthday cake.


Playing with the balloons ("loons"-- because it's a bird joke, not because they can't say balloons) before the party.


Birthday cakes before being eaten. OK, these are out of chronological order. Or else the cakes spontaneously reassembled.


Identifying all the birds in the new storybook from Grandma and Grandpa Y.


Matchbox cars (also thanks Grandma and Grandpa).


Toby and Bertie! (Thomas characters. Honestly, what planet do you live on?) Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa L!

Bird Geeks, Continued

Playing with bird sounds. The book makes bird calls, but since the boys can't find the right number on the bird book to play the bird call they want (without help), they take control of the process by making the bird sounds with the piano, their play-a-sound books, or of course, they can make the sounds themselves.




The book Alex is using here (below) has fanciful rather than species-specific drawings of birds in it, leading him to nice bird-neologisms like "Red-Crested Chickadee," "Falling Falling Bird," "Pileated Owl," and my favorite, the "Spotted Red-Chin." (He clearly has the form down). On the other hand, the sounds of many of the real birds are rather accurate imitations (Willow Ptarmigan, Ring-Necked Pheasant).

Bird Geeks

The thing to keep in mind here is that we had just returned from the public library with this book, which they had not seen before. (Alex holding the book and Ben doing the identification, largely). Only grandparents and birders are likely to be interested in the entire five minutes of this video (I did delete long arguments about the id of various birds. Incidentally, "Bison blackbird" is the house name for Rose-Breasted Grosbeak. And Alex did correct "Snowy Flycatcher" to Loggerhead Shrike, but it got zapped somewhere in the upload process.)