The Family *roll

“We ordered a push mower yesterday after reading a lot of glowing Amazon reviews and receiving reassurance from a neighbor that a push mower will do us just fine. It’s due to arrive tomorrow. I don’t know how long we’ll last without a gas mower and if a push mower is the ultimate in hippie hubris or what. Place your bets now.” — Emily, August 11th, 2009.

So, did you place your bets? Because we have moved to a gas mower. We were happy with the push mower. It did a great job last summer and it provided some nice exercise. What we didn’t know last August, however, was what our lawn would like come spring. The answer is on offer in the right half of this picture:

Right side: pre-mower. Left-side: post-mower. Worth every penny.

The push mower literally couldn’t cut it. The dandelions glided under the blades unharmed, mockingly jumping up intact behind the mower. We couldn’t bear it. So we caved and bought a gas mower. As you can see from the left half of the picture, it does the job. Next year, we will have the new gas beast in hand before the dandelions turn white and, as their last act, spread their seed far and wide as the mower cuts them down. I should add that pushing a gas mower across our lawn on a Saturday afternoon made me feel more like a dad than anything else I’ve done since Eleanor was born. Strange that.

In other news, Eleanor is adding to her repertoire. She now climbs stairs:

Says “doggy”:

And sits on guitars:

The cheap (not the less cheap) Epiphone.

While we do not yet have a video of it (like some people we know), she also stands on her own (for the first time today actually). Finally, as you can see from the following picture (although it is a touch fuzzy), she has revealed her stripes as an empiricist of the first order, having chosen Hume over both Kant and Berkeley. Smart kid.

Eleanor peruses Hume's *An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding*