Happy Halloween (and a nod to South Africa)

Well, another halloween, and this one even more exciting than the last; as Jeremy comes to understand each holiday better, so increases his enjoyment of it.  Jeremy dressed as "the dark Spiderman" (aka Venom, for those in the know).   Like his friend Jacob, who was Darth Vader, Jeremy certainly has an interest in the dark side these days.  After viewing Hansel and Gretel with a particularly scary witch last night, Jeremy announced that he was a king, and the witch was his queen.  It seems clear that this is his strategy for dealing with fear- although I don't know what I think about it, I am glad it works at least.

As you can see, his interest in theatrical play hasn't waned.  He's a boy whose favorite way to play is to "make things talk"; for example, the race cars are a family.  I have to come up with a dialogue between one car, who is named Brandon Bernstein (a real race-car driver- search for his name on our blog for photos), and the car's dad, Kenny (Brandon's father's real name).  The theatrical play nearly always involves a family of some sort, and it is interesting to note that they come in all varieties.  Today, when we were raking leaves, the inflatable dinosaurs were first his babysitter's family (I was Brooke, and the two dinosaurs were my mother and father), which then morphed into our family pretending to be three fathers to one kid.  Sometimes there is a mommy and a mama, like our family, but just as often there is some other permutation.   Although at first glance, three fathers may seem odd, but even in heterosexual families, divorce and other events have created all sorts of numbers of parents of different genders.

On another note, as most know by now Fran and I had a wonderful two week vacation in South Africa recently, where we frolicked with the cheetah, petted ostrich,  and connected with some really amazing people.  Jeremy had a great time with his grandparents, meanwhile.  There is simply too much to put here, but I'll include the link to our 6 min video here: