Fruits of the season

I have great plans for those flower pots...

The boys moved their sandbox into the pool today.

These rows speak to my sense of order and they say, "Look at us! Look how pretty we are!"

Lost in deep thought

The baby got a hold of a marker today.



The sad thing is, I was standing right there wrapping up the cord at the time.

Solidarity

Twice in the last few days, I've walked up the steps leading to our back door and was startled by a baby robin nestled between the rocks surrounding the steps. Both times I've thought the mother abandoned the bird, but both times the mother robin came swooping in squawking when I got too close. At first I thought the mama bird was trying to scare me away, but at the second encounter, I noticed the mama bird wasn't coming after me at all. What she was doing was flapping her wings and squawking at her baby to get moving, there's a human near!

This little bird valiantly flapped her wings as she tried to get up to the higher rocks away from me. She seemed reluctant but the mama kept squawking and flapping until baby was far enough away from danger. I feel some sort of solidarity with that mama robin. My days are filled getting after little humans who are reluctant to stay away from danger and messes and embrace responsibility. And the hardest thing about it is not the first squawking & flapping. The hardest thing about it is correcting them twice and three times and again and again and again. The frustration is not in the thing itself, it's in the recidivism.

But that God-given love, commitment, bond that we have with our children renews our strength each day. And God renews His grace sometimes each hour...sometimes each minute. I understand your plight and your responsibility, Mama Robin, so I'll try to go through the front door until your little one grows up a bit more.

Boys will be boys on Memorial Day 2009

After I gave what I thought was an age appropriate explanation of who we honor on Memorial Day and why, this led to a long discussion of what the military does which led to the two younger boys getting together with the older boy (aka husband) and viewing tanks and missiles on YouTube and watching things blow up.

May God rest in peace all of the souls who have fallen while bravely protecting our great country. It is because of them that my husband and sons can share an experience that only boys can truly appreciate.

Nursery Rhyme, meet Reality

Jonathan was drawing with window markers today (which are probably dry erase markers marketed as window markers, but if I don't test it, I'm not a sucker for buying them). Interrupting the quiet morning, he yelled, "MOM, DON'T COME IN HERE!"

Of course, I promptly ran into the room comtemplating all of the possible scenarios that I might encounter. The one that I saw was #53 on the list: marker drawing all over the wood bench below the bay window. When I asked him why he did it, he replied, "I just wanted to see what Humpty would look like."

Humility Is...

...telling your three year old that for goodness sake sitting down in the middle of an aisle at Target is not appropriate. We don't sit or lay on floors in public (geez, how embarrassing!)...

...when five minutes later you find yourself sitting on the floor in the middle of an aisle at Target to make sure your screaming one year old is okay after you've accidentally smooshed his foot in the kid cart thingy.

Note: no children were seriously injured during the learning of this lesson.

Vocabulary Lesson

ME: You might have a canker sore.

JOSEPH: What's a Kanga sore?

ME: No, Cank-er Sore.

JONATHAN (who's really into dinosaurs right now): Yeah, Kangasaurus.

ME: No. Cank-ER SORE. Two words.

JOSEPH: KANGA Sore?

JONATHAN: No, Canker SAURUS!

ME: Sigh.