Good things...

 We caught a fairly large & spiky looking caterpillar in the greenhouse this morning.  Sadie made it this comfortable home in a jar.  Eli offered it some of his meat to eat--so I guess that is our new family pet.  Name still unspecified.

Bugs and worms are a subject of much fascination amongst these two.  Eli has been smacking mosquitoes and squishing flies in the windowsills.  He is getting pretty ninja about it, so I was only partly surprised when he brought me a bee pinched between two fingers last week and said proudly, "skeevo!" (mosquito). Yikes! Poor bee.  We are working on insect identification.  So much to learn!

 Some days I just can't even believe how fast these children are growing.  They are different sometimes even one day to the next.

Eli has started using the potty and is talking up a storm. He wants to be doing everything that Sadie does these days.  He is beginning to get into imaginative play which is so cool to see.  He is also a major fan of his DaDa right now. Despite his natural bent towards all things rough and rowdy, he is a perfect snuggler. Seriously, I couldn't have asked for a more cuddly child.

 It seems like Sadie has grown by about 4 inches this year.  She has so much more hand-eye coordination and independence than last summer.  Yesterday we had to go to the dentist to get a shard of something sharp (flaked coconut maybe?) dislodged from her gums and she didn't even shed a tear.  She is all about princesses, fairies and fancies, but she is strong and brave too.  She seems to be gifted with a keen understanding of the natural world, and she is a whiz at plant identification.

Hello Good Life, it's DaDa here.  Mum left her blog post up partially unfinished so I thought I would take an early Father's Day license and say how much I appreciate the wonderful, intelligent, insightful, compassionate, patient, gifted and altogether beautiful woman of this house that we all love to call Mom.  Thanks to YOU, Tara, for helping me be a good DaDa, and growing this fantastically crazy and delightful bunch of grommets we call our family.  That's all, DaDa out.  Back to your irregularly scheduled Good Life...

a bouquet for Sadie

All last winter Sadie handed me bouquets of dried flowers from roadsides and ditches.  On our walks through our woods and nature trails she collected brittle yarrow and grass tufts by the fistfull. When the first blush of spring kissed our landscape she lined the windowsills with mason jars of dandelions and cranes bill, wild roses and dogwood. What an extravagance, now that summer is here, to be able to go out with clippers and fill a large vase with cut flowers from the garden.  It seems like maybe only yesterday or ages ago that I was little girl like Sadie, filling up any spare glassware in my mama's kitchen with whatever loveliness the season had to offer. It is a joy to hold a gathering of stems and blossoms for a moment, then tuck them into a vase to see them fall this way and that with an unstudied elegance.  They may only last a day or two (or sometimes just an hour or two) but I hope with all my mother's heart  & my cupboard of canning jars that Sadie never outgrows the joy of gathering flowers for the kitchen table.

50 shades of green

 1. SPRUCED UP

2. LIVELY LEMON LEAF

 

 3. HONEYSUCKLE HANGOVER

4.  STRAWBERRY PEEKABOO

5.  FERN FOREST

 6. GOOSEBERRY GAUNTLET

 7. APPLE BOUGH

 8. TINY TURNIP TOP

 9. COLE CROP RAINDROP

10.  PICKLING PEPPER

11. TRES TOMATO

12. PICASSO PETUNIA

and finally....

13."BATHROOM STOOL"

um, the kind you build from lumber scraps

 so your kids can get up to the sink to wash all the garden dirt off their hands.

Okay, so that's only 13, but you get the point.

Wheee! SUMMER!

tiny!

Spring is here.
All around us the tiniest most determined green things are bursting into bud & bloom.
The songbirds are the last ones to bed and the first ones up.
Sadie and Eli are barefoot running here and there--
occupied with important tasks like making a rainbow with the spray from the hose,
or waving garden stakes perilously close to someone's eye.
The trees are dusted with that perfect spring green color that evades adjectives.
Hens are brooding eggs in the coop.
I'm leaving my plants outside tonight.
Here's hoping...
Spring is a hopeful season, after all.

rocket science

 We all took advantage of the mild spring weather today to work outside getting some raised beds put together for the garden.  I guess more accurately, Loren & I were building raised beds.

 Sadie & Eli were building a rocket ship.  They spent a couple hours happily entertained inside the frames, with some pots, dirt, and the ever popular "bucket-o-birch-logs."

The joy and imagination of childhood.  It isn't rocket science, and yet, it kind of is.

reflections

I.
In a different time
a long ago life where bare feet tiptoed through wild forests
soft and soundless against carpets of ageless moss
we might occasionally catch a glimpse of ourselves when passing by
a still pool or lake's edge
but mostly we saw our image reflected
through the eyes of our family, our lovers, our children, our tribe.

Not so long ago
mirrors were not a household staple
and a portrait was a solemn and momentous life event.
In the fading light we stared at the rough-hewn boards of a cabin wall
as we smoothed our hair with water from a basin and hung up our hat
a rumbling stomach chased away vanity's ghost
as we sat down with family to break the evening bread.

II.
In this day
we are surrounded by our reflection
a mirror on every wall to catch us from every angle
to hold our wrinkles and flaws in high definition
to make us linger a moment longer
scrutinizing

We have a camera in our pocket to capture and store proof of our lives
with a click of a button we record moments instantaneously
and watch the playback, sometimes before the moment has even finished passing.

We have pages of our children looking spotlessly beautiful
books filled to bursting with neatly documented details of weddings, birthdays, graduations
sporting events, vacations, new homes,
Life's firsts, lasts and in-betweens.

With a click of a button we can broadcast these images
to hundreds or thousands of people
our friends, family, family friends,  friends of friends
and total strangers
But somehow there seems to be no time anymore to look deeply into another person's eyes
to take in the smile lines, the smudges, the unspoken
the whole of a living, breathing, unedited human being.

III.
My little girl has experimenting with self-adornment.
She engineers extravagant creations using up the entire contents of the button jar.
Placing these garlands around her neck she is like an tiny, ancient queen
but she has not once asked to look at the finished product in a mirror.
Maybe it is the satisfying weight of 57 buttons against her chest
or the reassuring sounds of wood and glass and metal clicking softly together
Maybe its the way her little brother reverently runs his fingers across the necklace,
so uncharacteristically gentle.

I picked my camera up to photograph her radiant joy and creativity
but then I set it down.
I thought, just this once, let the moment go uncaptured by shutter or screen
Instead, let her see her own beauty reflected in a mother's loving eyes.

about a boy

When Eli was growing in my belly I was pretty sure he was a boy.  So sure, in fact that when Loren announced "It's a girl!" at his birth my first words were, "check again." During Eli's pregnancy in the rare moments I was able to sleep through the intensive tae-kwon-do routine that was going on in my uterus I would have these crazy action-hero dreams.  Like I'd be skydiving into a flaming airplane where I would need to rescue 20 people and fight off terrorists in hand-to-hand combat.  Stuff like that.  So not my style.  And while It may have crossed my mind sometimes that perhaps we would get a laid-back kinda boy... I knew deep down it wouldn't happen.  Some things you just know.

 Eli's verb these days is "DO."  A hundred times a day he brings me something and says "do."  Put on a shoe, peel an apple, change a diaper.  Fix a page he just ripped out of a book.  "Do, mama, do."  It seems fitting.  He is a non-stop do-er.  As is evidenced by the way our house looks most days by 10 am.

But this do-er has a snuggly side to him.  He has taken a shining to this bear "Helicopter, " a hand-me-down with a mysterious name given by a two-year-old Sadie.  It might have been the name that attracted Eli to him in the first place (or possibly the belly-button) because when Eli can't find Helicopter he sleeps with a magnet with an actual helicopter on it.  He likes to hold the bear real tight and say "deeeeze" which is his word for squeeze.

Eli gets a lot of squeezes these days, because sometimes, it's all you can do to save your sanity.  His state of perpetual motion is something to be reckoned with.  Water cup dumped in plate, hands splashed in that water,  giant mess.  Every. single. meal.

Kitchen cupboard unpacked, pot lid flung frisbee-style across kitchen straight into eggs on counter. Epic mess.

Bath time.  You'd think bath time would be neat.  It is either a combination of water being splashed out of the tub--or inappropriate items being added to the tub. Or both.  Recent casualties have included a hair dryer, and a well loved book of dad's "Flying with Floats."  Didn't make too good of a splash landing.  Praying our bathroom floor holds up.  Washing lots of towels.

This week Loren and I have been attempting to renovate our sunroom--just paint and put in a new floor really.  The project is a source of endless fascination for Eli.  He just wants to do.  He watches carefully as I use an exacto knife to cut the molding from the wall before I pry it off.  Without a word he disappears into the kitchen returning with the carrot peeler and proceeds to "remove" the fins from the wall heater.  As we install one plank of flooring we look up to see that he has scribbled on no less than 7 freshly painted walls with a carpenter's pencil.  I should have looked when I heard him saying "paint, paint, paint!"  It's so frustrating, and yet also understandable.  The world looks different from 18-months-old than it does from 33.  I am quite sure that most of what could easily be written off as mischief is actually an attempt to contribute to our household in a meaningful way.

It is a challenge.  Every day with this guy.  I was thinking about it in a brief moment of solitude this morning.  Actually, I was thinking of my youngest brother, on a freighter somewhere between here and Japan, and how as a little guy he never slowed down.  He had a true desire to move and learn the world around him kinetically.  It can be hard to parent this kind of a kid (ask my mom, she can tell you all about it x4) but it can also be so rewarding when their energy is directed into a worthy cause.  Of course, Eli is going to need to work hard and use his hands along side his head and his heart.  I'm not exactly sure how this will look over the years, but I know what it doesn't look like, which is a lot of time spent in front of a screen watching violent images and playing video games.  I feel like that would most certainly spell disaster for a boy as inclined to rough and tumble as Elias.  It is probably a saving grace that he has a big sister who is currently into everything fancy.  As I type this Eli is sporting a Disney princess tattoo on his bicep and wearing a pink t-shirt.  (Thanks to the random lady at the hardware store for introducing my kids to fake tattoos and Disney princesses in one fell swoop! Do those tattoos ever wash off?!)

I'm going to watch this boy so many times, caught between a nag and a sense of outright wonder and amazement at what he is doing.  Today it was standing  in a box on the teeter-toter, on top of the couch (Loren had set it there to vacuum).  Sometimes there just aren't any words.  But lots of times there are, and those words need to be positive, affirming ones.  I can see how important it is to shower love like that on a kid who could easily make you yell and want pull your hair out 20+ times a day. 

Every morning Eli sits straight up in bed and says to me, "wake!"  After all, a new day awaits. Why linger in bed, right?  Then he goes out to the kitchen and tells Loren who is usually up making coffee "Joe!"  He helps his dad (and sis) bring me a cup of coffee and hauls his favorite books into bed where he flings them over to me too roughly (usually spilling some coffee) and snuggles in for a read. In these sweet moments, with only a little spilled coffee burning my arm, I feel like the luckiest mama in the world--call it what you will, snips & snails, zen or straight up grace, whatever it is...it's good stuff.