just a nice Sunday

The weather forecasts have been wrong all month...at least, as reported on my iPod.  It has been an exercise in flexibility.  This weekend I'm glad the dire predictions didn't come true.  It was mostly sunny, and dry enough to do some serious outdoor work that's been accumulating.  It's the end of May already and I just today got the opportunity to put the garden in (at least, the important stuff).

Today we slept in, making us late to church again (but not as late as we have been!)  Afterwards we went to Shopko and finally got Elias a couple more pairs of shoes that actually fit.  He's Size 11 already (well, actually his left foot is a 10.5).  He darted away when I was considering shoes and in 2 minutes excitedly brought back a Thomas the Train 24-piece puzzle.  It must be Thomas radar.  Well, he was being very patient and I'm a sucker for random gifts, so I said we could get it, provided he kept being good.  He showed off his prize to several fellow shoppers on the way out.  I bought a lot of plants:  flowers for the front and some "missing" pepper and tomato varieties for the garden.  As a bonus, a woman gave us her 20% off coupon, which ended up saving me >$25!  I passed it off to someone else upon leaving.

We stopped by McDonald's on the way back and had a "picnic" on the front lawn.  Elias declared it naptime and cooperatively went to bed...and then continually got up, read books, kicked, and talked to himself to keep himself awake.  Grrr.  I played hall monitor until most the kitchen was clean, then gave up and went outside to start on the garden.  By 2:45 or so I went in to get him, and discovered he'd been covertly playing in the basement.  Busted!  But he'd had a "quiet time" so I declared naptime over.

Last night I'd gotten my tiny rotortiller running and started in on breaking ground, and today I finished off the parts I needed.  It was a lot of work.  Elias cried most the time I was tilling, being overtired and scared of the loud noise, and I think because I said it was "very dangerous" and had him watch from the deck.  He watches out for me!  The soil is nice this year, with a lot of grass and chicken litter compost I added months back, and it was a pleasure to work in it without gloves.  This year I planted the sandy end of the garden with potatoes for the first time:  something Elias has been begging to do since around January.  Not sure where he came up with the idea, but it's a good one.  I also put in my standard zucchini, pole beans, 6 kinds of tomatoes (lots of canning this year!), 4 kinds of peppers, and carrots.  The basil and eggplant didn't quite get in today, and there's still the possibility of another kind of squash and something else that piques my interest.  It feels so good to get that done.

I couldn't get Elias to participate beyond the potatoes.  He played most of the time with his newly-favorite toy, a firetruck my folks got him a long time ago.  He's been taking it everywhere with him,  declaring that he's going to be either a fireman or (more often) a firetruck when he grows up.  His play mostly consists of what a friend generously calls "gravity verification experiments":  driving it off the edge of anything he can find.  Yes, it's destroying the truck, but he certainly gets a lot of joy from it.  Such a boy!  He'd mix it up a little with little excursions to climb anything he can find, explore the dense trees along the back, and chase the chickens.

After at least an hour of crashing his truck around different backyard features he convinced me to play frisbee with him.  I grabbed my camera and we did that, and catch, and just some plain old frolicking until I was totally worn out.  I was rescued by a few raindrops and dinnertime.  He's now at such a fun age.

I also had great fun taking LOTS of pictures, then reviewing them tonight to admire some and toss out most of them.  I used my 85mm most of the time and just continued to get used to my camera.  I'd share more it they didn't take so long to upload!

Some creative efforts:

Some playtime pictures.  He picked up frisbee throwing in just a few tries and is really good at it.

...and here's some of just plain cuteness!

(he can make) the best of times, the worst of times

My birthday did not start off well.  I stayed up far too late, giving myself a birthday present by indulging in Netflix episodes of Dr. Who in bed.  A mere 2 hours after turning in, Elias crawled into bed with me.  Normally I'd just roll over and return to sleep, but, no, he was wet through his nighttime pull-ups, so I had to get up and force him to go potty and change his clothes before stumbling back into bed.  But Elias wouldn't just go back to sleep; he was all squirmy and wanted to chat.  Forbidding movement and sound lasted about a second, then Elias'd say "NO squirming, NO talking when Mommy is trying to sleep!" recited dutifully and with feeling, with no hint of irony.  Ughh.   Then he got up, went to his room, and returned to my bed with books which he proceeded to "read" to me, begining or ending most sentences with "mommy":  MOMMY!  Pooh had too many honeypots, Mommy, so he decided to give some old honeypots away, Mommy, to make room for the new ones--right, Mommy?" One can not sleep through that.  Then I said if he wanted to read he'd have to do it in his bed.  So, whining and unwilling but obedient he took his books and climbed into his bed, where he proceded to set up shop and start the Pooh book all over again, this time shouting the narrative to be sure I could hear it.  I tried really hard to ignore it, but although I couldn't quite awake to functional consciousness, neither could I truely fall asleep.  Every 10 minutes or so he'd try to come back in "for just a little snuggles" but couldn't restrain himself so was soon kicked out again.  A couple times he was banned from my room altogether, resulting in loud, disolant crying, which I also, unsuccessfully, tried to sleep though.  I tried bribing him with my iPod (AKA "the game") but for maybe the first time ever he was uninterested.  After a couple hours of this, continuous, PBSkids came on TV so I tried that.  This decreased the periodicity and amplitude of the interuptions yet stayed above my sleep threshhold.  The broadcast kept freezing, which would drive Elias back to my bed to plead that I fix it.  By the time I got him to daycare I was absolutely beat.  Then I got to go to work, where I discovered I'd left his naptime gear in the car.  When I opened my email I found a message from a recruiter who reported she heard through the grapevine that my position would be opening and wanted me to view a candidate's CV--which was very good, to boot.  I did not pass it on.  A coworker confirmed the CEO is constantly singing my praises so I chalked it up to a mistake, but it still rattled me.  People at work did treat me to a very nice lunch...but it ended up making me feel very sick until late evening.

Yet, the day ended well.  I found a birthday gift from my parents on the front porch.  Elias and I watched The Polar Express, curled up together on the couch while he let me type on the computer with only a few lobbying attempts for sesamestreet.org.  He didn't put up much of a fuss for bedtime.  I read some books to him, he reciting many of the passages, and even reading a word from the background illustrations.  He arranged stuffed Pooh and "Puppy" beside him so they could read the books along with him.  He talked about his many friends at school (something I can rarely coax him to do).  Finally, after the alloted 3 books were done he requested a song, "Amazing Grace" and we sang it together.  He's fond of that as a bedtime song mostly because it's long, I think, but it still warms my heart to hear him sing hymns!  What could be more endearing?

I'll have to keep that memory alive, come 4:30am tomorrow morning.

Kite day

I'd never had much success flying kites, but the conditions yesterday were just about perfect:  a cool but sunny and dry weekend day, a strong, fairly constant wind, and a flat, open ~25 acre field next door that'd not yet been planted.  I dug out the kite I'd bought for Elias last summer but put away because I thought he was a bit too young then, and we headed out to the field. 

Happily, the kite practically flew itself!  Handing it off to Elias, he immediately got tangled up in the string.

...but soon we were off and flying agian.  Elias hung on tight..

 ...and was delighted to see his little kite take off into the sky.  But then he let go altogether.  We both ran after the string holder at full speed, as the kite dragged it bouncing along the ground.  I caught up to it in time to increase the tension to save it from the big maple tree in our front yard...

but not soon enough to escape the telephone lines.

 
 
 
After a maybe 5 minutes of kite-flying glory, we were done.  I had to cut the line and let it fly up there all by itself.