Mud Monsters

And then sometimes you just have crazy whims like, "Why not!?! All the kids really want to do is play with mud today....let them." I got out all my big mixing bowls and the hose and whipped up some serious batches of good squishy mud and then the boys went at it while I stalked them with the camera.

Simple. Slightly demented. And pretty fun to watch. Maybe they'll remember it fondly. The only rules? No mud on the car. No mud on the house. No mud on your mother. There was a serious round of baths to follow. Epic.

The Cupboard Stage

Last year when my pint-sized niece was visiting she was in the middle of a mad love for cupboards. They seemed like little houses I expect with tiny doors just her size. She went in and out and in and out... I was so charmed. How could you not be? Look at those curls.

She was right around a year old then...just about the age of her cousin, Nib at the moment. And just recently he discovered the cupboards himself. One year old must be the cupboard stage. I guess I could baby-latch them but for the moment I don't mind re-folding the washcloths he knocks out a few times a day, it's rewardingly cute to watch him "playing house," and every time I see his smiling face pop out of the door I think of my niece, halfway across the world.

Poetry Friday: Leaf Verse

We are to that time of year that is hard for me to enjoy. We're past the glowing throes of autumn when the world is a blazing whirl of color and crisp days...we've had our first frost and snow and jackets are now mandatory. Now its on to hearth-fires and handicraft marathons, days when we snuggle under blankets and read stacks of storybooks and when we can't so I curse the windshield while I try to unearth it from its layers of ice with that little scratchy tool buried in the trunk of the van.

I want to be so cozy about it, I'm trying to will myself into that space by trying to enjoy even the annual destruction of the foliage.

Late Autumn Theatrical

There is a host of seasonal Post-it notes,

Flittering in our street corner maple-top.

They are pale, wasted ghosts of leaves,

Performing some great arboreal Hamlet,

Thinner than themselves, inscribed “November”

On every shuddering vein and tip.

We are at the climax now, the part where

There is a great stage-death, en masse

One million staggering, fainting falls then

Performing on the chill, even lawn

They twitch at the heels, gag and roll

Crisp into rigor mortis and compost dramatically.

Such an impressive show will doubtless

Inspire an encore and we will have the whole

Thing over again beginning with the bit about the

Hope of sap rising and the miraculous green buds

Whirling open their newborn chartreuse feathers.

Check out lots of other Poetry Friday participants and their selections here.

Beach Rules

This weekend we took Baby to the beach for the first time. We'd been working hard, logging lots of "Be Quiet! Hold Still!" hours for our poor squirrely boys so we all needed a little beach time. Wow did it feel great to just meander around with our toes in the water! We all needed the break. Welcome to a new season of beach weather!

At some houses a trip to the beach is a big exhausting excursion and sometimes it feels that way to us just because life is busy but, I do everything I can to make them relieving, simple times, even for Mommy and Daddy.

Here's how it works:

• Shoes stay in the car....wear nothing but your swimsuit and/ if you need it a t-shirt
• Shells, and sticks and rocks are the best toys...if I'm feeling really extravagant we bring shovels and pails. I don't feel extravagant very often.

• Build sand castles....out of sand...and rocks and seaweed and shells....that's it.
• Get really wet and sandy, its tradition!
• If you feel artsy, make sand sculpture...my favorite thing to make is pirates with seaweed hair and beards and dark shells for eye-patches

• Go for a long, slow wander down shore (or two...sometimes we can't resist)
• Collect things....my rule is that everybody carries their own loot but, pretty much anything not alive is game for pocketing.

• Look for cool living things to admire (at our beaches we have horseshoe crabs mating right now, lots of seaweed washing up and cormorants and other birds diving for fish as a few examples)
• Eat before romping on the shore because all the crumbs and sticky wash off in the water and sand
• Write your name in the wet-sand with a sea gull feather and watch the waves wash it away
• Skip rocks

Bruiser!

Having a skateboard and being too macho to wear your elbow pads has its caveats.

 Poor little toughman is all scraped up and honestly, it looks a good deal worse in person than it does in this picture. He's a dedicated little boarder though, still gung-ho to keep rolling through the pain and not crying over it until he was indoors and trying to get ready for bed. So, we've had a generous coating of triple antibiotic cream and a little dose of Tylenol to calm to tears and at dinner we rolled his bum sleeve up greaser style so the cuff wouldn't touch the raw skin. Poor little wincing sport nut. Hope it feels a lot better in the morning like I heard A telling him as he tucked him in. Its easy to forget how much those sliding burns across pavement hurt...man do they sting like the dickens!