Friday

Friday was farm day this week, as the boys were too sick to go on Wednesday. There were record-high 85 degree temperatures yesterday, so we had to stop on the way out for sunscreen. Next week there will be a knapsack for water in addition to the baby carrier, which did well in a pinch to hold sunscreen, cell phone and discarded sunglasses.

We walked over the dam and up the hill and went down the path past the old dairy barn into the woods. Wildflowers were everywhere. Several different kinds of violets, including one that was the palest lavender with a hot pink stamen for each of the five melon-shaped petals. Also buttercups and dandelions (usually I write about buttercups in May!), but the jack-in-the-pulpit hasn't yet bloomed. (I think I also need to bring my camera in the knapsack, although I'm worried I won't be as in the moment if I do...)

Down through the woods and over two little brooks and through to the banks of the Goose. That sweet baby grass is popping up all over, and when we emerged from the woods there were two mama cows and their calves nibbling near the path by the first pole vertical jump. G was delighted, clapping his hands (a relatively new trick) in the carrier and pointing with glee, "Caaa, caaah!" (H: "Yes, Georgie, cows! You're right Georgie!")

We walked down the bank (H all by himself) and out on to the sandbar and H used his walking stick to be an elephant, splashing us with his trunk. He had asked to shed his pants on the walk up the hill so he was free and happy in his underwear and muck boots. G was a little more hesitant, but couldn't resist getting in on the act when H started throwing rocks into the creek. Ker-plunk! I turned around and looked back and both boys were sitting in the creek, March or not.

It was hot walking back through the field to the house. You can see from the photos that G was not so happy about the heat, nor about being required to wear his hat. Picnic on the porch and then the added treat of meeting our new 8-day-old cousin William (-with-more-hair-than-George). Boys slept all the way home. Such a nice farm day.

Sunday observations

1. He's a very smiley baby ever since he learned to walk. Often I will look over my shoulder and catch his eye and he will lower his chin and smile a conspiratorial smile, like we have an inside joke that no one else will ever understand.
2. His drawings are always about a story he wants to tell, and not about the finished masterpiece (although some of them are also masterpieces, says his proud mama). Today it was a story about a little fish named Flash who lives in an underwater barn with water bugs and worms. There was lots of straw for all of the animals to eat. Oh, and it's always mixed media and collage, which I love.

Felt fruit

H got a wooden play kitchen for his birthday. It came with select foods (a pizza, cheese, one lone fried egg), but the boys needed some more food. Especially more food like the food we eat. Enter a new pastime for Mama. Felt fruit (and veggies soon, I hope). I usually kind of dislike hand sewing and the glacial pace of it, but these guys have gone together so quickly. The fruits you see above were completed in two nights' worth of tv sewing. And they're so fun and tactile. The patterns are from umecrafts on etsy.