Another Glut of Pictures

Back in the saddle again.

The only patch of shade on our back patio. Good for plants, less good for hot little boys.

Bobby took this picture of me testing soil samples for nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium content. 

James trying out a new hairstyle.

Three not-so-baby robins. The fourth egg never hatched :(

A week later, it's an empty nest.

Speaking of empty nests, I've started learning about kids moving away from home. This book made me a little sad. First, because the author herself was talking about feelings I wasn't anticipating: loneliness, walking that fine line between being close to your child and squashing their independence, knowing that children want to remove themselves from you (independence) without often thinking about how that affects you and your life. She talked about "walking on eggshells" around your own kids as you navigate their adult life. I've invested my best and hardest labors on these kids. How will it feel to no longer be as involved in their lives as I am now? I always thought it would feel like a release or completion. A celebration. But this author made me reconsider. I thought about my own parents and how my efforts to prove myself as a capable adult might have appeared to them. I thought my independence and distance would be something they looked forward to. They cheer my successes and empathize with my failures, but maybe they don't care about any of that as much as they care about simply being a part of my life. Because they love me. Because they had invested their best and hardest labors on me. I had to put the book down. Those were heavy thoughts and I was already working through some pretty heavy Alice issues. Gonna think about this for a while.

Up close and personal with Hades. James loves these guys.

Alice is learning to play the accordion! We met her teacher this week and they totally clicked on sooooo many levels. She couldn't be more thrilled. I couldn't be more thrilled. Her plan is to take lessons a couple months until she knows her way pretty well around the instrument and can pick her own music to play. The clip below is something she came up with after her first lesson.

This is James sitting in a garden aisle building a stockpile of "fairy dust" (a superfine dust that floats on the air when dropped or thrown). It was hot, so he got an umbrella to keep the sun off. The boys developed a crazy game that used this fairy dust. They threw it at each other. Surprised? I banned them from actually chucking it at each other, so they modified the game a little. They threw the dust at the person's feet and any dust cloud it made was "poison" that killed a player and kicked him out of that round. Last boy standing was the winner. All three boys were maneuvering around the garden beds collecting and throwing this fairy dust at the each other for an hour. And they were having FUN! So, I didn't stop them. I didn't even stop them when the game morphed into dumping buckets of dust onto Matthew's back so he would make a dust trail when he ran. I did draw the line at pouring buckets of dust down into his clothes, though. Of course, neither Robert nor James were getting so heavily dusted. Matthew didn't seem to care. He loved the game. I don't think the bigger boys were being malicious or anything. It's just an unspoken sibling dynamic of power that the youngest guy is the guinea pig. And this guinea pig was having a RIOT. The natural consequence of bathing your little brother in dust, though, is helping him bathe it all off and washing those filthy clothes. They kinda groaned at that, but couldn't deny the logic.

Matthew snapped this picture of James enjoying his open window on a recent car ride. His long hair amplifies the effects.