1

Birthday party dress.

A girl

her dad, her neighborhood, and the most fortuitous piece of bad-movie merch in the history of bad movies. (8/5)

Grandma!

Looks like they're playing poker and Daisy's winning, doesn't it?

You're kidding, right?

Now what's really for dinner?

What's for dinner?

One kid we can't get to sit on the pot ...

Spectacles

Special glasses that come with the pop-up "Wizard of Oz" book.

Lulu's Lei and Candy Shop

is what her shirt says. And how about a hand for Olivia!

Get your motor runnin'

Old school

Wearing Mommy's dress, vintage circa 1968. (And Molly Ringwald's haircut, circa 1985?)

Buster dives in!

to about two inches of water at the Tower Grove Park wading pool. (late July)

Dave

[Big worker voice] I'm gonna go in the house, OK Dave?
Uh ... [bursts into laughter]
[Very serious] Your name is Dave.
It is?
Yes.
I'm sorry for laughing. I didn't know my name was Dave. You surprised me and it made me laugh.

[Note: Buster doesn't like it when you laugh at him, and recently said, "When someone's being funny and you laugh, that's OK, but when you laugh at someone, that's not very nice." That was in his normal voice. Now you have to go back to imagining his big worker voice, which is very deep. Picture Lucille Ball dressed up as a man, for some scam, you know? And imitating a man's voice. That's what it sounds like.]

[Another note: I don't think we know anyone named Dave. It's hard to convey how out-of-the-blue this sounded. OK, I'd just apologized for laughing.]

It's not funny.
Yes it is.
No, it's not. Your name is Dave.
OK. And what's your name?
My name is Zhuzhen.
Su-Jen?
No, Zhuzhen.
Nice to meet you, Zhuzhen.
No, we live together. You live in my house, Dave.

Gotcha again

And the horse you rode in on (late July)

Off to the workhouse

Sorting it out

Does Mommy have Daisy?
Yes.
Why?
I guess Daisy wanted to go with her.
I think Daisy loves Mommy more than she loves you.
No. Daisy loves Mommy and Daisy loves me. Just like you love Mommy and you love me, and just like I love Daisy and I love you.
Yeah, and just like I love Daisy and I love myself.

The tickle monster

strikes

Got it made

Furlined seats and lettered windscreen
Elbow on the windowsill
Eight track blazing Brucie Springsteen
Bomber jacket, dressed to kill

Siouxsie Sioux

Part 2?

Gotcha!

Snuck one past the don't-take-my-picture guard

More walking

Feet on the ground this time (mid-July)

Bath time

In the kitchen? Also note the new double pony tails (mid-July)

Bright

Paging Dr. Freud

Daddy, you're the daddy giraffe and I'm the baby giraffe and Mommy's the mommy giraffe. But Daisy's not a giraffe. She's a zebra. She lives in a different cage.

Aghghh!!

My hand is gone!

Ha!

Cal Buster

Fourth of July

Over the next few days, we will be presenting a collection of photographs taken at our Fourth of July barbecue, held of course on the First of July. All of the photos were taken by Rebecca Reardon, shown here in a self-portrait while in the process of becoming Buster's one true love. In the next week, everyone who asked Buster about his weekend was told, "We had a party -- and Rebecca was there!"

Just now when I posted this picture and looked at the site to make sure it was OK, Buster looked up from his breakfast and said, "Hey! There's Rebecca and me!"

Fingers

[Buster licking cookie dough off his fingers]
All my fingers were like, "Let me in there. No, let me in there. No, let ME in there."
[More licking]
The big finger ate up all the little fingers!

Happy-sad

"It's happy-sad. They're on the yellow brick road and they have to go to the wicked witch's scary castle and Dorothy's crying 'cause she's scared and then they melt her and they sing 'Ding dong the witch is dead.'"

Buster tells Uncle Peter about his favorite movie, while wearing his new favorite shirt, his fireworks shirt from Seattle.

Confession: I lost my scribbled note recording this conversation, so it's largely from memory, but he absolutely said "It's happy-sad."

Walking

at Grant's Farm. The camera caught a little cheat there. (7/4)

Morning

Daisy Lou

American Rococo

Strong

Sometimes we use Daisy to hold up a wall (7/1)

Party

Buster and his pal Matthew at our annual Fourth of July BBQ. (7/1)

Momma!

(6/24)

Increasingly

upright

Evansville

Lindsey is still Buster's best girl.

And here's Amy with Daisy, and special guest star Daisy's belly. (6/17)

Worker man

Buster helps Ms. Kathy wash the dishes at the Art Cafe at school. Regularly. He also helps her clean up the table, move the trash can and generally tidy up after breakfast.

Just like he helps out at home!

Riiiiiiight.

Conversations with my cousin

Buster: My mommy's in Seattle. That's very far away.

Talia: My mommy's in the kitchen. It's right there.

Sunglasses

First inaugural address

Hide and seek

Or something, with Grandad Jim. (6/17)

The firefighter

It really helps to picture Buster's half of these morning conversations spoken in his big, deep, firefighter voice.

After the party, when all the people go, you can carry all my toys back downstairs, because I have little hands, and you have really big hands.
Let me see. [Compares hand sizes.] Oh, yeah, my hand is a little bigger than yours, isn't it? I never noticed that. I bet my feet are bigger than yours too, huh?
Uh-huh.
Someday yours'll be bigger than mine. Can you imagine that?
Yeah.
You can? I can't. But I bet you will. You'll be bigger than me someday. You can picture that, huh?
Yeah. I'll be a big, tall firefighter.
Oh, OK.
Yeah. But I'll still just be Buster.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Firefighters have really good pencils.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

I'm the firefighter, and you're the firefighter, and Mommy's the fire chief.
She's the fire chief? She'll be glad to hear that.

Mom: Good morning, Buster. [Kisses top of his head.]
No. The fire chief doesn't kiss the firefighters.

Daredevil

Daisy

C

L

I

M

B

S

Uh?

Whatchoo lookin' at?

Play-doh

What's this blue stuff?
Eggs
Blue eggs?!
Yeah.
Like green eggs? Like green eggs and ham?
They're blue jays' eggs.
Oh. Are blue jays' eggs blue?
Yeah.
I didn't know that. What about cardinals' eggs? Are they red?
[No answer]
Or are they blue? Or maybe white. I dunno. I've never seen one.
Yes you have.
I have?
Yeah. Remember? We went to the old Cardinals and there was a Cardinal bird there with pants on.
Yes! I do remember that.
Yeah! He was silly!

Whoop!

This is a game where Eula snatches the bowling pins away just before Buster can knock them over with his sippy cup. Owen and Buster agreed this was the funniest thing ever to happen in the history of the world. (6/3)

Playground

Daisy's new hangout: Under the table.

Big world

Little kid.

Dance party

Working it out to "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" -- we have a 45 -- with Owen Gastineau. Dad Jeff is only encouraging this sort of behavior. (6/3)
Here's Owen's front:

Buster explains the toolbox

These are pliers.
What do pliers do?
They ply.

Last Cali picture dump

Filbert Street near Washington Square in San Francisco. Buster thought that parking on this hill, which is way steeper than it looks in this photo, was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. He's from St. Louis. We live near a neighborhood called "The Hill" that he thinks is actually on, you know, a hill.


Some big bridge (5/7)


Family portrait, Sacramento zoo, Tom Double D Thumb and Veena's wedding. (5/6)


Big Stick Mick, aka Just Mick, aka Michael, with Daisy, and with his son Hank, aka Buster in a few years. That's Hank's sister Fifi in the background. At the wedding. (5/6)