Outtakes

"Amos, look at the camera.  Isaac, keep your eyes open, and try to do something with your brother's head.  Theo could you smile a little less . . . like that?"

"Does this seem like an improvement to anybody?"

"Isaac, what are you--"
"Mom, I don't know why you let him hold the--"
"WAAHHH!"

"Whew.  Good catch, bruh."

"Theo, what kind of photo shoot do you think this is?  And can somebody get Amos's tag?"

"Oh, foley shucking hit."

"Don't you even start, kid.  Don't you even."

Brudders

Double kissies!

Wake-up Call

Nothing will get you out of bed faster than certain sounds.

Previously, the top performer was the sound of a child retching, because, well, you know.  Second place was the baby gate being pushed over, because that meant the Kraken had escaped.  Sounds of potential home invasion were way, way down the list.

But we added a new one yesterday: the sound of a seven-year-old saying, "Don't worry about the ironing, Mommy!  I did it while you were sleeping."

Yes, he did.  A napkin, one of his brother's school shirts, and a pair of gym shorts.

The shirt looked great.  And he remembered to unplug the iron when he was done.

He left the iron face down on the ironing board, but, well, singe marks don't hurt anything.

So.  That was exciting.

We decided that it was past time to teach him to cook, then, since his appetite for Doing Dangerous Grown-up Things had clearly been unsatisfied.

Scrambled Eggs À La Theo it was, then.

If you want to make them, here's how:

Mix eggs (one per person, plus one extra), salt, and cream in a bowl.

Pour eggs into hot pan with melted butter.

Burn your finger a little, so that Mom remembers that people should wear shirts while cooking.

Stir gently to keep eggs from burning.

Enjoy a good breakfast with Mom.

Battle Squirrel 2014

Well, that organic squirrel deterrent wasn't.

Not much from the spring planting survived.

A few broccoli.

Some herbs and peas.

And the pretty pansies, which really have been cheering.

The onions were squirrel-proof, as promised.  A few got dug up and nibbled, but the rest were entirely left alone.  But they didn't stop the squirrels from traipsing their way through and eating all the greens.

So, we're trying something new.

Stephen built me a few pest-deterrent cages.

 
(He had lots of help.)

Wood frame, covered in chicken wire.

All right, you vermin.  Here's another salad bar for you.  Come and get it.

Oh, Pinterest.

Pinterest promised me that I could make heart-shaped cupcakes without a heart-shaped pan.

They promised.  Marbles.  That's all I needed.

Well.  They didn't exactly turn out heart-shaped.

In fact, they look skull-shaped to me.  (So, I'll keep it in mind for my next Dia de los Muertos celebration.)

But a little judicious decorating helped.

And, of course, the benefit of living with a bunch of Y-Chromes is that no one fargling cares what the cupcakes look like.  They just shove them into their mouths as fast as possible.

Okay, so, sometimes Theo appreciates my alleged artistic skills.  That's why we keep him around.

Battle Squirrel 2014

Okay, last year's garden was an unmitigated disaster.

The squirrels ate everything, and everything the squirrels left, the cats dug up, and every thing the cats left the bad soil left stunted and bitter.

But hope springs eternal in the gardener's breast, so I'm trying again this year.

Parsley and broccoli and lettuce, with onions standing sentry around the outside.  The bare spot is where I've planted some peas.

Two boxes of broccoli, red cabbage, and lettuce, again with the protective barrier of onions.

Chard, cilantro, and lettuce, plus some overwintered pansies that may be starting to flower.  And our good friends, the onions.

I'm really, really hoping that the friend that told me onions repel squirrels is right.  But, just in case, all the white powdery stuff is an organic pest deterrent.  (Pepper oil and cinnamon oil and such.)

So.  There we go.  Spring planting.

(Six-year-old added for scale.)

Trinitarian Theology for Third Graders

Mimi: "Okay, wait, so they don't have different functions?"

Sarah: "No. That's Modalism.  The only thing you can say about the Father that you can't say about the Son and the Spirit is that he is the Father.  But they're all the Creator, they're all the Savior.  All those things that they do, they all do."

M: "Okay.  Okay, I think I'm getting this.  So when it says that Jesus was the only one to die on the cross . . ."

S: "That's right.  That's the only exception, because only the Son took on a human body that could die.  So only Jesus died on the cross."

M: "Okay.  So only Jesus died on the cross, but Jesus and the Father and the Spirit were all creators together--"

S: "The Son, not Jesus.  Jesus hadn't been born yet.  You can't call him Jesus before then.  There's no Jesus in the Old Testament."

M: "Well, the Son was around, but he hadn't been revealed until the birth of Jesus."

Theo: "Mimi, you've got to get it right.  They talked about the Messiah in the Old Testament, but Messiah didn't appear until God sent him to Mary, and she named him Jesus because that's what the Angel Gabriel told her to name him.  So there's no Jesus in the Old Testament."

S: "Gosh, Theo, that's very accurate."

T: "It's because I have a third-grade Bible.  That's why I can know so much."

Third-grade Bibles for everyone, then, shall we?

Sugar it up!

When the kids--ours and a few other people's--started to get a little energetic last night, Stephen said, "We better get them dessert."

Normally, I would question the notion that adding sugar to an already over-energized crowd of under-tens will somehow help.

But, last night, it actually did.

We decorated cupcakes for dessert.

It was fun.

There is, I suppose, a point past which a cupcake becomes un-yummy in its overdecoration.

But we didn't seem to get there last night.

Everyone enjoyed their creations.

And then they all played quietly (no, really!) for another hour.

Brudders

Theo, on the other hand . . .

These are such sweet names for a Sunday School group.

Something tells me, though, that long about December of Theo's third grade year, it will occur to someone to rename the groups something else.

Something like Third Grade Quiet Lifers and Fourth Grade Contemplatives.

Just a guess.

During. And more during.

After all the work Stephen and Isaac did pulling down the sickly, thin, and annoying trees, there were still some serious problems with the trees.

There were several trees, like this one, that were just dead or dying.

And most of the rest were hackberry trees, which have a tendency to rot and split and generally make life difficult.

So we decided to take thirteen of the weakest and least healthy trees out.

The tree guys came, and very sensibly marked which ones we wanted gone.

And then on the appointed day, they came, all seven of them, with their bucket truck and Bobcat and ropes and pulleys and fourteen (!) chainsaws.

First they dropped the easy trees.  Right in the middle of the yard, without, like, measuring it or anything.

They used the Bobcat to help them cut it into pieces.

Then they brought out the bucket truck.

And we all watched . . .

(some of us more nervously than others)

. . . as they cut down the trickier trees.

I will admit that I got a little nervous at this point, too.

The guy in the bucket seemed less concerned for his safety than, perhaps, he ought to have been.

He kept leaning right out of the bucket, with the chainsaw in one hand, just lopping off big old branches.

I mean, he was really leaning.  Really far out of the bucket.  Using a chainsaw one-handed.

I found this a little stressful.  (But nothing went wrong, and we're all grateful for that.)

There were a few trees that needed an even more elaborate setup.

There were pulleys and anchors and a bobcat pulling rope and all kinds of fun stuff . . .

. . . so that they could drop the individual branches slowly and carefully, before taking the trunk down.

It was a fascinating process.

The Bobcat had a lot to do, in addition to anchoring ropes and lifting big trunks to be cut up.

It hauled all the trees to the curb.

There was a rather big pile.

So big, in fact, that they needed even more heavy equipment to come haul it away.

(I'm pretty sure Theo and Amos had the best day of their lives.  And I feel really stupid for failing to take video.  We could have made our own episode of Mighty Machines, and it could have been about two hours long.)

Theo hung out with the guys whenever they took a break.

Because, you know, he's Theo.  I'm pretty sure he wangled a job offer out of them.

And, finally, it was done.

We went from this:

. . . to this:

(Still not a huge change.)

This:

. . . to this:

This:

. . . to this:

And this:

. . . to this:

Alas, once more, the improvement left us feeling even more depressed and unhappy.

All the light finally flowing in to the yard only served to point up all its deficiencies.  And as hard as they tried not to destroy anything, you can't bring all that heavy equipment into a place without tearing up the soil.

We tried working with it.  We thought about ways to go piecemeal--a little grass seed on this side, a little mulch on that side, a few bushes here until we could get the ones we really wanted there.

But after a few weeks of trying to wrestle it into submission, we surrendered.

We got even more professional help.