Columbia, MO

Charlie spent two weeks in Columbia with Marin's sister and her family. He loved it, and (drumroll please), he emerged from the experience with an 8 o'clock bedtime! His bedtime in NYC wavered around 11 pm. The bliss of an early bedtime! The unsung bounties of a living space with more than one bedroom!

Anyway, Marin and Gil joined Charlie for a few days after they found their apartment.


This meant that Marin's sister spent two weeks strapping three toddlers into carseats before she could go anywhere. Luckily, Marin's niece and nephew have the patience of saints, and there was very little clonking between car seats.

Charlie and his cousin were firefighters for Halloween. Charlie has been enamoured with firefighters ever since.


Marin can't take any credit for the costume. Marin's sister was the one with the inspiration and the perspiration to the pull it together. Come to think of it, she is the same sister who put together Charlie's second birthday party when Marin was out of commission with bar studies. This is a pretty terrific sister. Charlie owes her a Mother's Day present.

Part of the day's festivities included a Halloween party with Charlie's cousin's playgroup. In a rare two minutes of interest in a craft-related project, Charlie made a jack-o-lantern finger puppet.

We celebrated another cousin's birthday on Halloween with a butterfly princess tea party breakfast (her tastes run that direction).


In a frenzy of butterfly princess tea party two-year-old joy, she dumped pink sugar all over her cupcake. And, of course, pink sugar is exactly what you should eat at a butterfly princess tea party.

We also took a walk in a nearby state park that afternoon. The scenery was more winter than fall, but it was still a great walk for us city-dwellers.

Now, every night Charlie wants to hear a story about a little boy named "Cousin" and his adventures in the forest.

Before trick-or-treating (which Charlie didn't really dig), we had dinner at a wonderful southern food restaurant.

Marin had fried catfish. Gil had fried frog legs. Charlie had fried french fries.