More work on the house

The latest improvement, which is moving the kitchen redo farther into the future, I might add:

We had all replaced except the 3rd floor, basement, and two in the kitchen, for a total of 16. And just in time, apparently, with the cold, wind and rain we've been having. I'm sitting on the couch in front of one of the living room windows and there is no draft on my neck!

Greyson's class had its spring band concert last week, but I didn't have a good view of him for a picture (and you can thank me now for not posting the video I took). They had improved amazingly since the fall concert, and now he wants to take tuba lessons over the summer so he can play that instrument in band in sixth grade. I'm all for it, since the school provides the instruments if you play tuba and a few others. Now if only he can remember to bring the permission slip home...

As if parents of young children don't have enough to worry about...

...expensive umbrella strollers are amputating kids' fingertips!
http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml11/11222.html


And speaking of worrying about young children, yesterday was a classic in our "Life with Reece" show. I had a meeting that was going to go a little long, so I asked Greyson to pick Reece up from the bus stop. I even called my neighbor who is at the bus stop most days meeting her daughter, to let her know what the plan was, just in case.

So, I did everything a good parent should do, right? Greyson is very responsible, has gone with me a few times so the bus driver knows who he is, and it was his bus drop off for five years. What could possibly go wrong, you ask? Well, it was a perfect storm of errors.

First, there was a substitute bus driver. Then, Reece forgot to get off the bus. Greyson and my neighbor asked if Reece was on, and the driver emphatically said that he wasn't. Greyson then thought Reece still had karate after school (which WAS on Thursdays but ended last week), so he headed home while assuring my neighbor that he would call me to let me know what was going on. I got the message a few minutes later, as I was leaving my meeting 20 minutes away from home, and after talking to Greyson, I called Reece's school. They checked with his teacher to confirm he got on the bus, and then they called the bus depot (or whatever it's called), and found out he was still on the bus. I had to call Greyson back and tell him to run back to the bus stop so he would be there when the bus brought Reece back again. And then worry until I knew they were both home safely.

The thing is, I wasn't actually very concerned that it wouldn't end up just fine, only because we refer to Reece as "the cockroach" in the sense that he would be the one person to come out of a nuclear war intact. Somehow, that child will survive and probably benefit in some way. He has a lot of his father in him.

Serious progress

As of yesterday afternoon:

Happenings these days

A few, relatively minor, new things have been going on around here. First, Reece is learning how to ride a two-wheel bike. Not because he had some personal desire to do so. No, because 1) he wanted me to drop him and his bike off at Greyson's school to meet Dan and Greyson (who had biked there) and I told him only a two-wheeled bike would be fast enough, and 2) we told him he could have extra time on the computer if he learned. I'm seeing the future with him, and it's full of bribes.

Two other items of notice:

There were four originally, but two have ended up on the cement. Lessons on nature all over around here. Oh, and if you come to visit between now and June, don't come to the backdoor unless you enjoyed the movie "The Birds".

I used my birthday money to buy this. We're all already loving it - even the kids who can make hot cocoa in it. Just in time for warm weather, of course. I never said my timing was very good.

More signs of spring

Last week, (on Greyson's birthday, actually), I was one of the parent volunteers for Reece's class field trip to the Lake Metroparks Farmpark. You probably can't find a better place to see spring exploding all over than a farm, and we got a bit of everything. The kids actually had a schedule we had to keep to that involved milking a cow, grooming a horse, and clearing a garden plot. I see what they're doing out there, couching slave labor as a "learning experience"! Not only did the kids not suspect anything, they fought over who got to pull weeds. We parents all tried to figure out the trick so we could use it at home, but we concluded there must be something in the water, because it was just as cold, wet, muddy, and weedy as all our backyards are, and MUCH smellier. Really, with our wild rabbits, squirrels, a bird that built its nest in the wreath on our back door (and keeps dive-bombing Dan), and the garden plot, I could offer a similar field trip to our backyard at a bargain rate and much closer to school. Hmmm, I'm going to work on that...

Doing his part weeding. Luckily, parents weren't encouraged to participate.

He wasn't sure he wanted to do any horse grooming, but once he got in there, he was surprisingly gentle and enjoyed it.

Waiting for a turn to milk the cow, with Ella. He runs his fingers through her hair when they sit next to each other at group time, and she was very upset on the Thursday before Easter that she would miss him too much over the long weekend.

When they brought the cow onto the platform, all the women in the room who had ever nursed let out a collective "ooh" in sympathy. Experiences like this bring me closer and closer to vegan-ism.

How I spent my weekend

I heard there were a couple of minor events that occurred this past weekend, like a small wedding in England and a skirmish between US forces and some guy in Pakistan.

I, of course, had more important things to do than pay attention to such mundane news stories. I had to grab what little sun there was on Saturday and start planting the garden! With the help of the boys (at first - they quickly got distracted by pounding on rocks to see what was inside them), I purchased a variety of early season vegetables, herbs, and flowers and then put them into the very damp soil in our garden bed.

Of course, by the time I got around to taking pictures, the sun was gone. You'll just have to believe me that it was out for a while, although I'm starting to feel like I'm living in a Ray Bradbury short story. The upside? Didn't have to water that day, nor have I had to since.

Front row: Three little pea plants that started as seeds! It was a big risk, since I usually need all the help I can get to start and keep plants going.

2nd row: Garlic, chives (both Greyson's picks), dill, tarragon, basil (because, as Reece said, "we're going to grow tomatoes, and you have to have basil with them" - never mind that he hates basil), thyme 

3rd row: Spinach, kale, Brussels sprouts

4th row: Three butter lettuce plants (and two rabbits were spotted in our yard later that day - I'm not holding out hope that I'll actually get to eat any of the lettuce)

Very top of the picture: The chocolate mint plant is a perennial! Who knew?

Since you can hardly see the flowers in the planters, you'll just have to imagine how lovely they are. And they coincidentally match the fake wreath on the door. Probably because I always end up picking the same flowers in the same colors when I have a choice.

Eleven years old today

Greyson at age 2:

Age 4:

Age 6:

Age 8:

Today:

Happy birthday to our preteen, 11 year old boy!

Big day for Reece

In the span of one hour last Thursday, Reece earned the special belt in karate (given to the child who does the best job that week) AND got his first library card. Being six is very exciting around here.

March weather in Cleveland...forget lion or lamb, think schizophrenic

Wednesday afternoon:

Friday morning:

Different day, same old crazy

Last night, I was waiting in Reece's room for him to finish brushing his teeth so I could tuck him in. I heard a huge and fairly drawn out crash from the bathroom and then didn't hear anything else, so I raced in fully expecting to see Reece splayed out on the floor seriously injured. Instead, I found him standing by the toilet trying to look innocent with a shelf and all its contents strewn around and on the toilet (including a million pieces of glass that used to be a bottle of bath bubbles). Apparently, he had been standing on the toilet messing with the blinds on the window, put his hand on the shelf for support, and discovered that the shelf only rests on its holder and isn't, in fact, attached to anything.

The first thing he said to me was (in an annoyed tone), "MOM, why didn't you tell me it wasn't attached?" Because then it would have been fine that he was somewhere he wasn't supposed to be, doing something he wasn't supposed to be doing??

It gets better.

As I was cleaning things up and he was now, finally getting his brush ready, I said to him, "Reece, do you think you've learned a lesson from all of this?"

Complete silence.

"Reece??"

(With much exasperation in his voice) "MOM, I'm still thinking."