This morning’s conversation with the six-year-old, re: what outfit she should wear to Kindergarten.

“Given that everyone in your school is going to be wearing Patriots gear today, what is the probability that you’re going to want to be wearing your Patriots sweatshirt when you get there?”

I’ve got to lay off the statistics work for a while.

I started Sadie on the Encyclopedia Brown books last night. She’s usually pretty quick at picking up stuff, so it’s fun to watch her squirm a little bit as she’s trying to figure out the mystery.

In a couple of months, she’ll probably be solving them before we’ve finished the last sentence…

Sadie is attentive, friendly and loves to color. As her mother likes to say, she’s made for Kindergarten.

Or, as I far more geekily say, she has achieved product/market fit.

If you’re five? You want to be WordGirl. You want to use your grand vocabulary to foil villains.

And if you’re three? You want to be WordGirl’s sidekick, Captain Huggy Face. You want nothing more than to be with and like your big sister.

And if you’re their parents? You want to be the type of parents who can wield a glue gun and cut some felt. And sometimes, you succeed.

Happy Halloween.

It’s been a while.

First, a professional update. I’ve transitioned away from day-to-day involvement with Practically Green. I’m still an advisor and shareholder, but I’m not going to be in the trenches any more. I believe deeply in PG’s mission of helping people go green, and I’m looking forward to the great things they will do.

As for me, I’m taking a little time off. I’ll take a few classes, bake a few brownies, rake a few leaves.

And, of course, by “rake a few leaves,” I mean “throw the children into the leaf pile.”

I don’t have time right now to do proper blog posts (damn you, startup world), but I can pull it together enough to put up new pictures of the girls. Enjoy!

I’m still the worst blogger in the world, but I can pull it together enough to put up a decent Halloween picture of the small children.

They are both girls. They both wanted to be Buzz Lightyear. What more could you want?

Ok. I suck. Also, my main camera is broken. And, I’m a little busy. That said, I feel bad that I haven’t put any pictures up in here in a while. So, here you go!

As part of having the house on the market, we’ve been working a lot on the garden. Lucky for us, both Sadie and Lucy really enjoy gardening.

Lucy also helped up sweeping the sidewalk, keeping everything pretty.

Lucy is now very much a two-year-old. She has pretty strong opinions about what she wants to do, what she wants to eat, and even on the proper way to hit a baseball.

She’s keeping up with her Toddler Room friends, texting constantly.

She’s also the social butterfly, hosting tea parties for all her friends.

Sadie’s been ripping it up as well. She’s patriotic:

She’s a blur on the hippity-hop:

She rocks the tricycle up and down the road.

And, in the end, we’re all in this together. Very fun summer.

I’m probably going dark for another couple of months. See you September (ish) with lots of new pictures and new life updates.

Things are a little insane at the Butler household at the moment (and about to get insanier). My photography duties have been dropped. Badly. I’ll try to be better. Here are a couple of pictures to keep you going.

Sadie and Lucy love playing Superman on the swings. They lie on their stomachs and are given giant swings. It’s like flying!

Sadie’s all about the Patriots shirt with the pink. This will be a tough combination for 2022 boys to resist. I cannot tell you how much I look forward to that!

Lucy’s second birthday party is this week. I’ll try to get some good pictures from that.

We’re getting to the point where Sadie’s mastering all the puzzles we have in the house. She knocked off this giant puzzle in about fifteen minutes (about as fast as I could do it, I think.) Egads.

We’ve had a busy month or two here in the Butler household. Here are a couple of pictures I’ve managed to capture while in the center of the maelstrom.

Lucy’s been feeding her book obsession. Her newest fun trick is to sit in the big green chair with her stack of books. She finds this an excellent use of fifteen minutes.

Lucy has very entertaining hair sometimes.

It’s very sweet that Sadie and Lucy both want to help me clean the house. They find the vacuum very useful for picking up the stray pieces of corn that someone managed to drop while eating dinner.

More soon!

They had “wear Patriots colors” day at Sadie and Lucy’s school yesterday. Luckily, we were able to make that happen. The teachers at school even gave Sadie a little war paint.

Lucy was excited too, but she was more concerned about bottle security. No way Meriweather is stripping that.



We took Sadie and Lucy to New York last weekend for a little vacation and a chance to catch up with some of our old friends. It was a great weekend, and I’ll probably write up some notes a little later this week. For now, I figured I’d just start with a couple of pictures.

We left the hotel and wandered through Central Park until we hit the Heckscher Playground. They renovated this playground since the last time we visited, and it was a big hit with the kids.

Sadie found a tire swing. That was enough for thirty minutes of sheer bliss.

Lucy was too little for the tire swing, so she was sitting in her stroller watching Sadie swing. She was a little bored, though.

So, we let her out to be free-range baby for a little while. She toddled around for a little while, but then found a mud puddle at the edge of the swings area. She circled it for a minute, then decided to investigate further.

As it turns out, you can do a lot of splashing in the mud puddle. It’s great fun.

Nothing makes Lucy happier than a little mud.

Sadie then wandered around the “castle” a little bit. Whoever designed the park did a nice job pulling this section together. There’s lots for a three-year-old to explore.

At the end of the day, Sadie was very happy.

The girls even got to share a big hug back in the hotel lobby.

I’ll write more later (especially about the Museum of Natural History), but I wanted to get these pictures up quickly.

We’re back from vacation. I’ll have a longer Cape post coming up eventually. (Did I mention I’m launching this week?) In the meantime, here are a couple of cute pictures of the girls to tide you over.

Lucy:

Sadie:

We went to Sadie’s Preschool/Pre-K graduation yesterday. This was my first one of these, so I didn’t have much of idea of what to expect.

It’s always important to have cake. If you want a quick snapshot of what parents were naming their kids 3-5 years ago, here you go.

The kids arrived on the bus from school and marched on in. They then went through all the songs they’ve been practicing for weeks. We had spirited renditions of “Open, Shut Them” and “Twinkle Twinkle Traffic Light.” Then, they went around the room and all the children called out what they wanted to be when they grew up. We had a couple of motorcycle racers, a fireman or two, several ballerinas, and Sadie: a farmer.

Then they came up to get their diplomas. Sadie strided purposefully across the stage.

She was pretty excited when she got to sit down with her diploma.

Then, the kids got cake and lemonade, and the parents milled around. I whipped out my charcoal pen and did a quick drawing of Sadie eating her cake.

Finally, it was time to go. But, we did get one last touchdown celebration.

Congratulations, Sadie!

I took Sadie to her first Red Sox game at Fenway Park yesterday. She enjoyed wearing her red Jacoby Ellsbury shirt. She enjoyed looking at the field and all around the stadium. She enjoyed her Fenway Frank. She enjoyed her Italian Ice (great for kids at the game, because it gives them something to do for 15 minutes as they’re scraping at it with the little wooden stick.)

She especially enjoyed sitting with her friend, Wally the Green Monster.

We didn’t want Lucy to feel left out, so we dressed her in her Youkilis shirt for her morning swing in the backyard.

So, my fabulous niece Samantha had her final acro-dance show on Sunday, and we got to bring Sadie along for the first time.

Within twenty minutes, she was dancing along, mimicking the dancers on the stage and creating quite a fuss in the hallway. Eventually, I took her outside so that she could dance with a little more freedom.

Yes, I am the worst blogger ever. I’m been heads-down with Serendeputy and a couple of other things, so my picture-posting record has been spotty. Let’s see if we can improve that. Here are a couple of pictures from the end of February.

Lucy has become much more mobile. She doesn’t crawl, though, she scoots. It’s one of the funniest things you’ve ever seen. She gets around really well, though. She gets around well-enough to have earned the name “Lucy the Destructor” as she leaves a swath of destruction wherever she scoots.

We’ve given her a cabinet she’s allowed to play in. Tupperware is endlessly fascinating.

She is also really intrigued by the dishwasher (well, by anything forbidden, I suppose). She’s look at Mommy plaintively asking for permission to touch the dishwasher.

She will then ignore Mommy’s “no” and touch it anyway.

Or, just admire herself in the dishwasher’s reflective front.

Sadie and Lucy enjoy spending time together, playing on the floor and chatting.

Lucy will often rebut a point by means of a stiff-arm. She finds it an effective debating technique.

Here’s Lucy at the end of February.

So, let’s move on to this weekend — at the end of March. Have things changed?

A bit. Lucy now has two bottom teeth!

Lucy’s getting good at playing with the letters on the refrigerator. She’s a little sad when she tries to stick them to Mommy and they don’t stick, though.

Lucy’s getting much faster at moving around. She’s pulling herself up on the furniture, too. Elmo better watch out when the baby monster is on the loose.

Sadie and Lucy are still pretty cuddly, which is nice to see.

Lucy’s a pretty happy baby right now, just about to turn one.

Sadie likes to keep an eye on me.

But mostly, Sadie likes to smile.

Ok, I’ll try to be a better correspondent as the summer goes along. It’s a little tricky with the two small children, though.

This is one of the longest, ugliest winters I can remember. Thank God it’s finally spring, and we can all go out and play in the yard and on the playset again.

Sadie’s an old hat at the swings. She got back in the groove within a minute of hitting the backyard.

For Lucy, though, it was really her first time in the backyard. She wasn’t quite sure what to do at first. She did enjoy being all bundled up, though.

She started scooting around the backyard, making a break for the slide.

We then put her in the swing. Oh boy, was she happy. We’ll see if she enjoys it all summer. Next summer, she should be able to make it into the big-girl swings.

Ok, she mastered this toy about two years ago, but she still finds new ways of organizing all the shapes and sorting them accordingly.

We’ve pretty much blown through all the toys we have inside the house. I can’t wait until Spring, so that we can go back to swinging on the swingset and playing soccer and basketball in the backyard.