It’s almost Thanksgiving, so it seemed like the perfect time to post some pictures from, well, eight and a half years ago! This album features snapshots from May and June of 2014, when William was not quite one and Julia and Joseph were still in elementary school.

It includes some pictures from a fun YMCA Adventure Guides outing in which the boys launched homemade rockets; there’s even a video of Joe launching and chasing after the rocket he designed. It also features some photos of Julia napping with Felix; little did we know at the time that this would become a pervasive, recurring theme in our lives.

But the majority of the pictures focus on William’s trials and tribulations trying to maneuver finger food—in this case, Gerber Puffs—into his mouth. As you can see from the photos, he’s making a valiant, two-fisted effort at it, but his tiny fingers aren’t fully on board with the plan. He does eventually succeed, but it’s not immediately clear that the caloric value of the puffs he ate made up for the energy he expended consuming them.

The whole series reminds me of a much older sequence of pictures showing Julia attempting the same feat with Cheerios. Unfortunately, that photo album has vanished from the Internet for the time being, but here’s one sample:

And here’s the more recent equivalent:

The gallery closes with some pictures of William at dinner in a stunningly stylish outfit that’s even older than these photos. Somewhere out there, there are surely pictures of me in the same getup, but unfortunately, I don’t have any to share at this time.

Gallery: Late Spring 2014—William Eats