…because yesterday was like this:
“Where are your pants?”
“Oh, they are just full of chicken poop.”
Later after new pants it was:
“I think a duck pooped on me.”
“No, I think you rolled in duck poop.”
Shortly after with a naked girl it was:
“Can you turn on the bathtub for me I have poop on my foot.”
How can someone who looks so sweet be so full of… 
… it?
Remember Judy Blume’s Fudge?
Remember “Eat it or wear it?”
Well I’ve yet to read Clara that book.
I don’t think I will, she doesn’t need the inspiration.
Today she discovered “wearing” her plate as a hat was great fun. I only took a picture the first time…
…because a good mud puddle will earn Mom twenty minutes of time to finish her own project.
Granted this disaster of a girl needed twenty minutes of cleanup when I was done, but hey I checked one more “to do” off the list!
Because there is nothing like frog hunt to chase away the three year old grumpies!
(Even if you can’t stop swatting mosquitoes long enough to take a picture!)
This is what comes off my kitchen floor in 48 hours. 
This does not include the small sweepings around the highchair that happen after every meal. (Sorry if you were eating or anything, but I thought a visual was in order.)
Add to this dirt one crawling kid.
Then add one large dog water bowl.
Imagine the dog bowl is on the floor, you know, so the dogs can drink out of it and stuff.
Now imagine what happens when you add to the large pile of dirt a large pile of water, because nothing gets Clara moving faster than a good dish of water to dump. Now I hear you saying, “Water doesn’t pile Jessie.” And you are absolutely right, it runs, all the way across the floor of my crooked, crooked house.
Now imagine what happens when a small girl crawls through the resulting quagmire, which is of course unavoidable because of the aforementioned crookedness and waters lack of pile-ing ability.
Yup, you guessed it, laundry…
This is my husband, he kills chickens…
…he is a mess, but he’s still smiling! 
*the headless chicken has been cut out of picture for you delicate types*
Because after a rainy day how can you not play in puddles when the sun comes back out?
Eating the rocks is completely optional…
…turns out gravel goes right through…
Ivy likes to help feed Clara, and she’s pretty good at it. Ivy’s very careful while she is feeding her she shows Clara signs for food and more, all in all she has been a very good helper. Ivy helps, I get to keep making dinner for the rest of us, everything goes great, until Clara’s arms streak out from her side and grab the spoon and shove it into her mouth like a kraken with a hobbit.
Forget about getting that spoon back , give it up and just get another one, I think it was easier to get the hobbit back from the kraken! This picture was taken early in the meal, they don’t look too messy, but believe me it got worse. I’ll leave it up to your imagination as to how much worse, just think:
– three year old
– baby kraken
– a jar of sweet potato baby food…
…and another load of laundry!
I like to teach Ivy how to do things. Right now Ivy wants to help, and is old enough to actually do it herself, if a bit slower and messier. So I try to squash my impatience and teach her how to do whatever it is she would like to learn. She learns, we have fun, it’s all good!
For instance:
Ivy saw me folding laundry, she wanted to know how, now she folds her own laundry.
Ivy saw me sweeping the floor, she wanted to know how, now she sweeps up my dust piles and throws them away.
She’s learned how to get dressed by herself (which makes for interesting outfits some days), navigate in the kitchen better than perhaps she should (When you wake up to your kid bringing you a breakfast of Swedish Fish candy in bed what is the proper response?) she helps feed the ducks, dogs and chickens, etc, etc.
The other night she saw me taking clothes off the line and wanted to help. We’ve done that together before and her job is taking the clothes out of and putting them back in the laundry basket. But not this night, this night she wanted to do the clothespins. I did that squashing thing with my impatience, tried to ignore the dew settling on the clothes, and helped her. She took every pin off and then would yell “Catch it!” I would catch it and put it in the basket. We had fun, she getting good at the clothes pins by the end of three loads that were hanging, but I’m hoping for the sake of my shoulders that next time she’ll be happy being the laundry basket girl again!
Over the past few days I told people that one of the things I have enjoyed about blogging is that it gives me a chance to focus on something positive that happened in the day. Lately Clara has been having some trouble and a little positive focus has made a bit difference!
Today was yet another challenging day because Clara looked like this:
She spiked a fever, didn’t nap well, hadn’t slept well last night, and didn’t want to be put down when she was awake.
But as I went through my day I thought about all the things I could write about that made me smile.
First I found Ivy “reading” out loud to herself:
Next I saw more new leaves on my Tulip tree:
I considered writing a post about laundry. To explain that while I hate doing laundry my favorite part is when it is hanging on the line:
Then I saw Piper NOT causing trouble and remembered that I would like to elaborate on her craftiness one day:
And at the end of the day the sight of broiler chickens on fresh pasture made me smile:
All in all it was a tough day. When Clara needs more attention Ivy gets less, causing her to act up more, and to top it off John got home hours later than normal. But when I returned from moving my chickens, just in time to sit down to dinner John looked at me and said, “You seem happy.”
And he was right!
Behind the Willows 