It seems that 2013 was a busy year, at least judging by how long it’s taking us to get through all the pictures we took. We’re happy to present another new/old album of photos from that era, though this one bears a unique distinction: it’s the final set from before William arrived, harkening back to a simpler time, when Julie and I were
not outnumbered by other members of the family (as long as you don’t count the cats who, unlike the kids, haven’t yet shown much interest in tearing down the familial power structures).

This album documents roughly a month-long period from the middle of August through the middle of September, just a few days before William was born, and it includes Julia’s ninth birthday and a whole lot of soccer. I can only surmise that we were taking more pictures than usual at the time because we were trying to get the hang of the camera we’d bought to capture William’s arrival. This would explain why the album contains an average of four pictures for each day of the month it covers, as well as why the photos were taken using an incoherent mixture of camera settings and lenses (those with an eye for such things will be able to identify the pictures taken with the cheap zoom lens we bought on eBay).

Five-ish years later, things are quite a bit different. William is loving school and is slowly but surely getting the hang of reading, even if he can’t quite handle the differing pronunciations of ”th” and “f”. As a result, his “thirty” sounds a lot like his “forty”, which makes counting games interesting. He is particularly enamored of a classmate of his named Alexa, for whom he’s drawn a great many pictures over the last few weeks (see below). We haven’t yet had the nerve to break it to him that she won’t be attending Booksin next year—she’ll join her siblings at St. Chris.

Julia has had rehearsals for the school play until 8:00 almost every night of the week; as a result, we’ve often been up until 10:30 or 11:00 finishing up homework and studying. For now, at least, I don’t really begrudge her teenage tendency to sleep in on the weekends: she needs it. Days like a week ago Thursday, when she had to wake up at 4:00 to get the airport for her journalism trip, certainly don’t help.

Gallery: The Final Countdown (To William)