Forgiven

Last night Clara had an especially bad, nightmarey, screamey, yelley, sort of a night. So this morning when she didn’t sleep until noon I was still tired when we got up. Tired and perhaps a little grumpy that the girl who kept me up all night was also the early riser of the day.

Without waking Ivy we quietly made our way downstairs and found an armchair in a patch of sunlight to sit in. Clara went into her snuggling pose. (Unlike most snugglers Clara cuddles up to your chest, nestles in with her heads, then picks up both arms and tucks them in between you.  Which is odd but endearing) So we sat in the sun while we woke up snuggling and every so often Clara would pop upright and give me a kiss on top of the head.

And all the screaming of the night was forgiven, forgotten and irrelevant just like that.

Our Poor Carpet

Our house is old, and most of our family, friends and acquaintances have at one point or another suggested the best fix for it might be either a wrecking ball or a fire.  I don’t usually agree with these plans, unless it has to do with the carpet. The carpet in the house was less than perfect when we moved in. Then we arrived along with our unfortunate version of  Murphy’s Law; if anything is going to secrete a bodily fluid it will end up on the carpet.  The marginal carpets made the transition to nasty carpets and I have been removing them room by room. Only two rooms in the house still have carpet in them.  Yet the Murphy’s Law of Carpets remains and every time something in this house pees on the floor, it hits carpet.

Tonight in the current installment of you’ve got to be kidding me. I stepped in a cold pee puddle on the carpet in the girls play room. The play room, the only room in the house I’m not planning on ripping the carpeting out of. No doubt because it used to be a storage room with the door always closed preventing anything from doing anything to the carpet. But I digress, back to the pee puddle.  Given that Clara is working on personal diaper removal and therefore I am working on potty training her I assumed the puddle was hers.

I was wrong.

A long conversation with Ivy later I learned that it was in fact Ivy’s puddle. This conversation, which was conducted in calm reasonable tones by both parties should have won me some sort of award in the Best Instance Of Mom Not Losing Her Cool category. Especially when it concluded like this:

Me: “But why did you pee on the carpet?”

Ivy: “It was just the only place to go.”

Poor carpet.

Zen Shorts by Jon J. Muth

Please allow my lovely assistant Ivy to show you one of her (and my) new favorite children’s books.

Here you see her posing with the cover of the book.

It’s a pretty cover, after all it is a Caldecott Honor book.  You’ll know when you see it at your library because it’ll be the one with the panda with the red umbrella on the cover.

Here you see Ivy showing off more of the illustrations. Wonderful, beautiful, some of my very favorite ever, illustrations.

In addition to the gorgeous watercolor ink paintings (have I mentioned that I really like them?) the book has three “zen shorts” within the main story.  According to the author’s note at the back, ” “Zen shorts” are short meditations – ideas to puzzle over – tools which hone our ability to act with intuition. They have no goal, but they often challenge us to reexamine our habits, desires, concepts and fears. ”

It sounds all scary and woo woo and heavy but I promise it’s not.  It’s just wonderful.

Would I recommend it? Yes, and so would Ivy.

What Happens in May

What happens in May is that the lawnmower breaks.

Last May I wrote about the difficulties in fixing a lawn mower with help.  (You can read all about it here: New Respect)

This year the lawnmower had difficulties beyond my paltry mechanical skills so I laughed and took pictures while the girls helped John.

That was fun until he looked at me with this smile on his face and said something to the effect of…

….”If you don’t put your camera down and get YOUR girls out of here I’m going to feed them to the pigs, throw the lawn mower in the neighbors pond and run away to Acapulco.”

So the girls and I left him to his work and did the only other thing to do when the lawnmower is broken, we made dandelion crowns. Because when your grass has grown tall enough that you can lose a Great Dane in the yard (Really, it was that tall!) the dandelions have nice long stems for braiding!The lawn mower was back in service today and we finished mowing the lawn for the first time this afternoon!

Seeking Justice

Today as Clara, Piper and I were napping upstairs and Ivy was watching a movie downstairs, I awoke to the sound of purposeful footsteps.

Small purposeful footsteps that came stomping through the house, up the stairs and into my room.

I kept my eyes closed hoping it would go away.

When Ivy yelled, “MOM!” next to the bed in what could only be described as an “outside voice” I lost all hope.

“Yes?”

In a tone of indignation: “Piper ate my dinner.”

I responded without opening my eyes with some mumbly half asleep line about how the dog shouldn’t have done that but you never ate it and you didn’t put it away when you were done and it’s been sitting out for 3 hours so should we be surprised by this?

Ivy was quite for a moment, and then:  “Mom…. aren’t you going to say something to Piper?”

I opened my eyes and looked at Piper who was cuddled up next to me also faking sleep. I gave her a very half-hearted, “Bad dog, don’t eat Ivy’s food.” and closed my eyes.

Apparently satisfied that justice had been served the little footsteps left my room, headed down stairs and climbed up on the counter looking for a snack.

When Chickens Fly

When the girls and I do the chores in the morning one of Ivy’s jobs is to let out the chickens.

Notice how Ivy hides behind the door after opening it.

I used to think she was kind of silly.

I’ve changed my mind.

As I was taking pictures one chicken started flying straight at me. Foolishly thinking it had control of it’s flight I ignored it.

Bad idea – it crashed directly into my camera, and then on into me.

Make a note, chickens are really bad fliers!

This was the picture that resulted from the collision.

Also notice that Ivy is still behind the door, not so silly after all!

When the flow of birds slows to more of a trickle that’s when Ivy starts to peek around the door. Smart girl.