Wednesday, January 11, 2012

The stare down

ImageSomething about this picture makes me smile which sounds weird since I look kind of mad and am holding a giant knife as I stare down my 1 year old son. That's my gardening knife. Best weeding tool ever. And it has waterproof matches and fishing line in the handle if it gets crazy. I can't quite remember what was happening. I do remember him running into the street and eating things he shouldn't have over and over. I think he was testing me. Waiting for me to let my guard down so he could do it again, and I guess I'm just letting him know that Dad's will is absolute around here. Mostly just in the garage and in the yard and around the van. Marnie is in charge of tables and pretty glass jars and inside kinds of things. It also makes me feel kind of proud that Jake even tried to match my glare. Little punk.

Friday, January 6, 2012

Our winter wonderland

I know the rest of the country raked up their leaves months ago, but ours are barely falling, and Penny loves it. Raking leaves is one of those things that drives me crazy. You spend all this time raking your leaves into piles and then transferring them into the yard waste bin only to have the wind blow the next day, covering your yard with more brown leaves. I told Stephan I want a Japanese Maple so maybe I could at least rake up beautiful red leaves. Maybe they don't grow here, I should look into it.

I've spend several days this week raking leaves into piles for the kids to jump into and throw in the air. Penny loves to throw a pile up and then run through the leaves singing a song about the snow falling all around her. She keeps saying it's like a Christmas winter wonderland and the leaves are snow. Poor girl. She'd probably freeze to death if she ever visited her cousins in Canada.

We had some "freezing" weather a few weeks where it was in the 40s for a high one day. Penny and Ginger were both in tears as they had to brave the "freezing" wind on their mad dash to the car. Penny kept whining about how she wasn't leaving the house again until it was warm enough not to wear a coat. Hah. It made me laugh, until I realized that I feel the same as them. Then, I was a little ashamed of myself.

Today, instead of wasting my energy, I just mowed up the leaves. Penny was devastated that I'd mowed all the leaves without letting her jump into any piles so I left a small portion of the yard unmowed and we raked up the leaves for her.

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In the meantime, Jake found a wheelbarrow of fresh compost from our nasty compost pile and started eating it. I'm the mom that runs back inside for the camera instead of rescuing him immediately from dirt and disease. He's already growing so fast and I want to remember him when he was sweet and innocent and loved eating dirt and playing with his stick.

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