Frogs In The Sunroom

It was a good day full of sunshine and warmth and scratching things off my list that I have been meaning to do for years. Like catching wild frog eggs with my sons!


Frogs are hard to see...harder if you are between 2 and 7 and prone to wiggles. BUT...I persevered with my stillness coaching and we saw frogs. Several of them, mostly males of different colors, brown and green with touches of gold and black trim and one that was a dark russet orange. I also saw one female, pregnant with a big poofy clutch of eggs. She dived before the boys could follow my pointing finger.



I thought we were out if luck looking for eggs though. None. Not one cluster. And then I started seeing them, tucked almost into the leaves, visible when your head was tilted just so, sunlight hitting to surface of the vernal pond in a certain way. Like a cluster of black pearls just below the surface.



The boys were curious and amazed and each had to feel them and ask 40 questions because 20 is for slackers. We put one cluster off glistening eggs into a plastic Superman bowl and filled a juice bottle with extra pond water for later and took them home.



And now there are teeny, little frog babies growing in a fishbowl in my sunroom! :) Happy Thursday to me!

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Green Brain

I have Green-Brain. Its that time of year. There are any number of things sprouting and greening and budding in our sunroom which is very cheerful. This is a good time of year to be one of my houseplants. I'm dreaming of gardens and gardening and yet feeling so cold averse that I want to spend all my time snuggled up indoors. All of that amounts to much more attentive, loving care for the plant members of the household right about now. I am clinging to each little chartreuse leaf and unfolding blossom to tide me over until the warm comes back and until the baby is willing to me wander farther than a foot from him with my pruning shears and my trowel.

Almost every night I am carting the clanging metal compost can outside to our backyard pile and dumping more veggie trimmings and fruit cores. I feel very motivated to grow the heap, thinking about all the earthworms that I hope are churning away in the core of the pile, making me sweet fertilizer for filling up anemic raised beds, and tucking around my sad strawberry plants. Its a good time of year to be anything gardeny that wants my attention. Green leaves, and curling tendrils and produce of all kinds from my own land are what I am dreaming about at night, craving at the library, and turning my camera on whenever I look around for subjects.

Pom is not a fan of plants, unless he can eat them. He puts everything in his mouth and is scooting around backwards making himself angry at the way everything gets father and farther away every time he moves. And he is starting to make stabs at standing and stepping a little with hands to hold. The doctor tells me he is 5th percentile for weight and height but I find it hard to be too concerned, when he's so impossibly round and happy.  He's just a small, plump, happy man.

Pajama Christening

Time for a little sewing.

I keep finding that Ru has no pajamas and he keeps going to bed in an undershirt and a diaper. Its getting a little bit chilly for these sorts of shenanigans. Today I was moping a little about how I just spent a good bit of money on curtains so I shouldn't go buy pajamas and I was just moaning to A about how overtaxed I feel about running all over kingdom come all the time and therefore never being home or staying caught up on day to day maintenance. Ahem. Yes...that is the reason why I stayed home today and sent A off with the car so that I'd be grounded here. But, a boy needs warm bed clothes...what's a mommy to do?
Remember her sewing machine of course! Silly me!  I'd been thinking a while back that I'd love to try to make some simple elastic waist pajama pants for the boys anyhow, just for the experience of seeing how it would work...and then here I was with a genuine need for some!

It was my first little project in the Sunroom Studio that is going to be our creative space. This means its been christened and will forthwith be a place to dream and cut and paint with great abandon.That's a pleasant kind of milestone to mark off.

I just meant to make a couple for Ru but of course Dee couldn't resist chiming in and asking for a pair of his own and what mommy could resist eager pleas for some pants of one's own. Pajama pants all round!

 

I made three very serviceable  pairs, some of which were personally designed by the wearers, and hopefully, here ends The Great Pajama Drought.