I’m finally getting around to posting some more pictures from Connor’s birthday party, and also from our trip to Montana for the wedding of Shannon’s cousin Collin.

There are some great ones from the party.  here’s Connor with our friend Nichole and her son Desmond:

Then there’s this one, also of Connor and Desmond.  This one pretty much sums up their personalities (sorry Dez):

The more I look at that, the more I laugh.  Some of you may remember Desmond from Connor’s first few weeks:

The rest of the birthday photos are here.  As I mentioned, I’ve also posted our Montana pictures, which are here.  Here he is ready to set out, riding on the back of his Uncle Pat:

Of course the Montana pictures were taken using Shannon’s mom’s camera, because promptly after Connor’s birthday, my camera up and died on me.  I’m in the process of deciding whether to get it fixed (for $150) or replacing it with a later-model refurb from the company at a hefty discount (anybody have an opinion on either the Canon G9 or EOS Digital Rebel XT?).  So feh on that.

James Lileks – a Minneapolis newspaper columnist and internet personality – has a daughter who turns eight today.  Reading columns like that makes me wish I was better at writing here.  (Link to his main page here, in case the link to the specific article doesn’t work, which it doesn’t right now.  The article will be on the main page through today).

Connor, one year ago, circa 9 PM, roughly two hours old (you’ve seen the hand before):

Tonight, at his birthday party:

Saying much more would probably turn me into a blubbery mess, so we’ll just leave it at that.

Oh, except: for his first birthday, I’ve set up an e-mail address of his very own. It’s his-first-name ‘at’ his-last-name dot-com (I’d rather not type the actual address in plain text so as to cut down on the mail he receives from Nigerian money launderers, discount pharmaceutical firms, and other, less appropriate correspondents). I plan to formally give it to him at some as-yet undetermined point in the future (how old is old enough for an e-mail address?), at which point I think it’d be cool to have lots of messages from all sorts of people. Keep in mind that you’re probably writing for a 4 or 5-year-old, so keep it relatively simple and short. I’ll of course be checking the inbox from time to time to prune spam and get rid of creepy messages from strangers and retouching those messages insufficiently enthusiastic about the virtues of listening to ones’ parents, but otherwise: have at.