La Familia Brophy

So you may have noticed we haven’t ben updating this blog for a while! A lot of people have been asking me why.

We’ve decided to stop using this blog. Having the blog has been great - when we started four years ago it was amazing to communicate our early days with Nathan this way. Reading through those early updates I feel like they had a lot more passion and energy than we give the blog now. I had thought I would only blog for a few months, now four years have gone by and we’re ready to let go.

We are continuing to post our photos. So if you want your regular updates bookmark La Familia Brophy on Flickr right now - it’s got the photos along with descriptions even an RSS feed if you like that kind of thing.

I’ll also be be continuing to post fresh links on benbrophy.com. Many of those are related to my work the more fun ones, listed in the diversions column on the right, are available through Ben’s Magnolia account.

So I hope we’ll see you there. Even better — I have a growing appreciation for actually talking to people and seeing them in person, so we could always fall back on older technologies.

(You can also see photos of Nathan’s weekend at East Hill Farm)

Nathan has had a great start to his school year (here’s he is going to his first day). He really likes going and jumps right into playing when he gets there. He has a nice group of kids to play with and his teachers are very good. So far, in typical boy fashion, he has been stuck in the block area and always “forgets” to go paint.

I was so excited for him to start up so that I could have a few hours a week to get stuff done. But I am finding that I feel a little sad leaving him and facing four quiet hours to myself. I thought I’d get more cleaning done but it turns out that it isn’t really any more fun to clean the toilet by myself than it is when Nathan is playing in the other room.

After just a few days of school it seems like Nathan is changing a bit. He’s a little more flexible and a little more independent. It could be school or it could be that he only has a few more days left as a 3 year old. It is really hard being 3 (and living with a 3 year old) so hopefully 4 will bring easier times.

He has been enthusiastically checking the mail each day looking for presents and cards. He’s much more aware of what birthdays are all about this year! It is hard not to pile on the gifts but we are trying to moderate ourselves.

It turns out that when you have fish for lunch everyone in the house shows up. Two of the guys in this photo are usually fast asleep at lunch time….

My company moved to new offices this week. We were in a refurbished 19th century factory in Lechmere, now we’re in a sparkling office tower in Kendall Square. I have to say - I like the sparkling office tower. Everything is so new and spiffy, it’s fun. The views are pretty remarkable. This picture was taken in a meeting room, but from my desk I can look straight ahead and see MIT’s great dome, the Back Bay over the river to my left, and the new ultramodern biotech buildings of East Cambridge to my right. I admire the views when I need a micro-break from my work. I can’t wait to see the fireworks from here.

We just got back from our trip to Wisconsin. This was Nathan’s favorite photo that we took. We were lucky enough to go to the Tractor Show in Chilton. There were hundreds of tractors there but I think we all found this one to be the most spectacular. The photos on the ladder show the condition of the machine before restoration. It was in much, much worse shape than then tractor in the background.

We also had a lovely time sitting on the pation by the new pond with Rara Debi and Dooda Mike, eating out, going to the farmers’ market, and to the National Train Museum. Click the photo to see more.

Nathan had his first bad dream the other night. It was at least the first he was able to tell us about. It went something like this: There was an old lady with an umbrella and they were walking in the rain together. She told him not to think about scary things. Just then a pumpkin fell over and turned into a spooky pumpkin (jack o’ lantern). It definitely sounds media induced but creative and spooky.

Saturday was going to be so beautiful that we decided to find a fun day trip. Lisa spent a long time researching the various fairs and special events going on in the area. We finally agreed on the Maritime Festival in Salem, especially since it was great excuse to take the High Speed Catamaran.

It was great - Nathan loved going on the Catamaran,though his obsession with the Catamaran’s “Cafe Car” (his generic term for snack bars - even our grocery store has a Cafe Car in his mind) got a little trying on the return trip. Even after gorging on ice cream the boy can still collapse into tears screaming “I need SNAAAAAACKS! SNAAAAAAACKS!” (he was pretty wiped out from the long day of fun in the sun).

The catamaran really is fast - it is so windy out front it can be hard to stand up. We all got really wild hairdos.

Nathan’s favorite part was the remote control boating which we visited more than once. I thought they were pretty cool too, one of the perks to having a little kid is that you get to do stuff like get a turn with the remote control tug boats.

We had a great time camping last weekend. It is Nathan’s 3rd summer camping but so much has changed. For us the most exciting part was watching him figure out how to swim using his ring. Today he got more practice with it and he can really propel himself forward.

He tells everyone who asks that his favorite part was that Rara Theresa came to spend Saturday night with us.

We had a lovely trip to the harbor islands this week. It was Nathan’s first trip out there and his first experience on a ferry boat. He loved the boat ride which of course has the added feature of going right past the airport so you have planes right over your head for some of the trip.

Nathan managed to play in the water at Lovell’s Island despite the frigid temperatures.

Oh well, I’m not too inspired to write anything about this. I just thought it had been a while so there you go. We’re off for a weekend of camping today…