Friday Liam #27

Anna Wednesday #26 ... and Happy Turkey Day!

Click on the photo up there and you should be able to read Gideon's details (where he's from, what he likes to eat, etc.).


Anna "adopted" a turkey from Farm Sanctuary this year, as she has the previous two years. This year was better though, because she actually picked out the turkey, Gideon, from this page, and she waited and waited for his photo to come in the mail.

When we got the certificate she got all excited about, "the turkey that we feed." We hung it up in her room.

For the Piggy household, it's "Happy Turkey" day, instead of happy "Turkey Day."

And of course, we're still going to gorge ourselves on all sorts of deliciousness (which may or may not be detailed in an upcoming post).

Happy Thanksgiving! (To those of you in the US, that is.)

Friday Liam #26

Liam with his cousin Jacob (they were born on the same day).



It's Friday, right?

Veggie Nugget #31

Mt. Rainier, Md.: I want to care about the health and well-being of cows and chickens and pigs. Really, I do. But I don't. How can you convince me to eat less meat if I could not care less if 10,000,000,000 chickens or cows are tortured?

Jonathan Safran Foer: I couldn't. You are on the periphery of society---96% of Americans think animals should have legal protection. But you have every right to be.

Perhaps the environmental arguments mean something to you? Perhaps you like breathing good air, drinking good water? Perhaps you don't want E. Coli or campylobactor. Perhaps you like your antibiotics to work when you're ill? Perhaps not.

-From an online discussion at the Washington Post on Thursday with Jonathan Safran Foer.

His tone could be less snarky, but the substance of his answer couldn't be more spot-on.

Anna Wednesday #25

She wanted to carry all the heavy stuff out to the car today.

Friday Liam #25

I'm back-dating this one. I don't know how, but I forgot to do a Friday Liam two weeks in a row.

Anna Wednesday #24

Anna playing with her friend, Cameron (well, not really playing in this photo, but they did play for almost 3 hours straight) .

Halloween

Halloween seems like a month ago already. But it was just last Saturday. Weird.

Liam didn't have a costume this year. Just this "My 1st Halloween" shirt and another shirt with an alien on it that says "Be Green."


For the third year in a row, Anna was Yoda.

Here she is two years ago:


One year ago:


And this year:


She hasn't seen any of the movies and has no idea what the force is. I tried to briefly explain it, but didn't want to say too much because a) I didn't want to freak her out, and b) it's rooted in spirituality and religion and I don't feel like it's my place to instill those in her (seeing as how I have neither). And yes, I know, it's pure fiction. But I'm not sure she'd understand that at this point.


This year was Anna's first year of trick or treating. Obviously, a good deal of the candy given out at Halloween isn't vegan. That's a problem for us. But we want Anna to have the experience of going house to house in her neighborhood, saying trick-or-treat, taking whatever is given to her and saying thank you.

We really want Anna to grow up partaking in the same (or, at least similar) cultural experiences as her peers. We don't want to deprive her of trick or treating any more than we would want to deprive her of partaking in a Thanksgiving feast. On the face of it, it may seem like veganism would preclude us from these experiences or make them super difficult. But in reality, it's easy. It just takes a little bit of extra thought. Most decisions in parenting do.

So we decided that Anna would go trick or treating and she would then trade the non-vegan items for vegan ones. Her cousin isn't vegan, so he was willing to trade quite a bit of his vegan stuff for her non-vegan stuff. But he wanted to keep some vegan candies of his own, which left Anna with some non-vegan treats in her pumpkin. Of course, we had plenty of back-up candy for just such an occasion. We actually picked up a huge bag of assorted vegan candy at the Animal Rights Coalition.

So there you go. Vegan kid during Halloween problem: solved. Barely even a problem, actually.

Anna's cousin Noah didn't dress up as a scarecrow, he dressed up as The Scarecrow. From Batman. The face paint was applied after this photo.


Anna's uncle, cousin and uncle's girlfriend flew in from Colorado for my father-in-law's 60th birthday party, which was on Halloween night.








Where did that third kid come from? That's Sophia, daughter of our neighbor friends.


Here we are at the birthday party. I went as a Target employee, in case you're wondering. I used my old Target name tag from when I used to work one-hour photo there eight years ago.


Anna was up until 12:45 on Halloween night. I think that's the latest she's ever been up. From 10:30 on, she got more and more delirious. About a half hour before we left the party, she crashed (but didn't fall asleep) on a chair, staring blankly at a televised baseball game (is there any other way to watch baseball?).




So that was Halloween.

Friday Liam #24

Liam Laughing Again

So yeah, this laughter blows his previous laughter out of the water (another thing better about this video is that he doesn't spit up at the end of it).

He doesn't do it in this video, but he's actually started to initiate peekaboo now. It's great.

Anna Wednesday #23

Her idea to cut a face in the box (because of the pumpkin carving she did a few weeks ago). My idea to put it on her head.


Halloween photos to come.