days of frustration courtesy of maddox

I haven't mentioned Maddox much on here lately. Probably because I spend most of my time trying to stop him from doing whatever he's doing. This 18 months - 2 years is a frustrating age because kids can do so much, but know so little about consequences, both the natural sort and the "this will end Mom's good mood" sort.

So he's into everything. His curiosity and zeal to figure things out is cool to watch, except that it's often so destructive. One of his more recent innovations is to use his kid-sized broom to knock the fly swatters down from their hook in the broom closet. Then he takes the fly swatter over to the chalk board and uses it to clear off all the magnets, which would usually out of reach without the assistance of the swatter/ reaching stick. Another favorite diversion involves transporting water about the house. He's often able to disguise this as "just needing a drink". He arrives in the living room with a partially full cup of water (filled either by pushing a chair up to the sink or using the water dispenser in the front of the fridge [in the latter case, this also creates a small to large puddle on the kitchen floor]), innocently takes a sip or two, and then dramatically upends the cup while grinning. Last week he varied this routine by preceding it with an investigation as to whether the "barrel" from a Barrel of Monkeys holds water (it doesn't). At least he has the good grace to then open several kitchen drawers, rip out anywhere between 1 and 4 towels, dab at the spill, and race off to put the barely damp towel in the hamper.

He has his sweet moments too, of course. He loves music and does adorable dance moves, in which he pumps up and down on his toes and walks in tiny circles.

Anyway, here are a few pictures of him last week helping me clean out the chicken coop. He loves being in with the chickens, using tools, and being outside. So I think this was his favorite activity of the whole week. Other than coating himself with chicken "stuff" this would've been a fine activity. The only snag was he wouldn't scoot over enough that I could get in there with another tool to actually clear out the bedding. He did manage to get some up; but even in our relatively small coop, 1 Tbs at a time is just wasn't going to cut it.

Twisted, Surreal, Hilarious

For about an hour the other night, Rachel and I were auxiliaries to Ellis's imaginative play. If the scenario were a book it would be described as a snowmobiling adventure heavily influenced by Laura Ingalls Wilder and Dinosaur Train, wackier than any peyote hallucination, and loaded with culinary and technological anachronism.

Ellis started by building his "snowmobile" by tipping over an Ikea chair and placing the Ikea stool underneath it. Several bits were held together with twisted pipe cleaners. Ellis was the builder and owner of the snowmobile, which apparently was a hybrid vehicle, given the quantity of batteries he claimed were involved and the amount of gas the thing used. Additionally, the snowmobile had a luxury cabin in the back that was basically a queen-sized area made from an old comforter on the floor. Thankfully, this was the area where Rachel and I were allowed to recline and relax while Ellis drove us through perilous locations including Indian Territory and eventually to Santa Claus Territory. (It may be telling that Ellis, in order to get us to join in his game, basically made us a bed on the floor.)

Along the way, there were myriad delays for repair as well as while we waited for a river to freeze hard enough to support the vehicle. After we ran out of packed meals, Ellis supplied most of our food by hunting with a "bone 'n arrow". When asked around noon of the third day what we would be having for dinner he replied, "We'll see what I kill." I think that night was Panther meat we enjoyed. I also know for certain that I ate a Tiger as well as a roasted loon that wasn't properly plucked. After I complained, time travel became possible and we some saber-tooth tiger and some stegosaurus.

In the end, I don't believe we ever returned home, but ended up somewhere in a house built by Ellis on the border between Indian and Santa Claus Territories.

bits of kid stuff

Not too much going on here, just chugging through the fall. The latest big excitement was that our hens have finally started laying! We found the first couple eggs on Monday and have gotten a few more since then. Thanks goodness because Ellis was just starting to give me grief about his daily chore of letting them out of their coop and giving them a scoop of feed. The prospect of collecting eggs seems to have renewed his interested. We made some eggs for supper last night, and I pointed out to him that our one fresh egg had a deeper-colored yolk than the store eggs. He promptly declared he'd be eating only fresh eggs from here on out. I just hope the chickens can keep up!

We've also stated reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books with Ellis. They're about perfect for his comprehension level, and he really liked the first one (including the portions Trey dubbed "the boring parts"). We've just begun "Little House on the Prairie", which is a lot more exciting because it begins with their journey from Wisconsin to "Indian Territory". I'm impressed with how attentive Ellis has been. With Trey out of town at a conference this week, Ellis was forced to relay some portions of the story to him. He tried to explain how "Pa" traded horses stating that he'd acquired "a pair of black muskrats". I had to remind them that were actually "mustangs", but he did repeat word for word that they had "soft brown eyes" and "were gentle as kittens". It's really amazing too, to see him get so emotionally involved. At one point in the story, they believe their dog has drowned, and Ellis asked me to go over what had happened and why about 40 times that night. The next day, however, we found out that the dog had made it across the river and safely back to camp. The little smile on his face was so sweet as Laura had her reunion with Jack the Bulldog.

Both the boys have been doing a lot of arts and crafts this fall, though Maddox's attempts are always a bit more harrowing for me. A marker in the hand of 20-month-old is like that rifle in the first act of Chekhov play. Something is getting colored on; will it be wall, table, self, sofa? Ellis's drawings have been getting more and more complex (I will have to make use of my scanner). They usually seem to involve "bad guys" getting killed and/or imprisoned. Sigh. Last weekend he helped my test out a craft project for Sunday school. Here's a picture of him gluing beans to create Indian corn. I wanted to think of a craft that would involve all of the three sisters, but had to settle for 2. Maybe next year I can work in some pumpkin printing or something.

rockets

I'm trying to catch up with some of the pictures and stories I should have posted earlier. The explosion though, it's not because it's a frenzy of activity, it's because there are some actual explosives involved. Ellis and Trey made their foray into model rockets this summer. They began with a little starter rocket, which was a birthday present from Grandma Audrey. Ellis especially enjoyed painting it, but Trey did most of the assembly. They quickly graduated to a pair of larger rockets, courtesy of Grandma Lisé.

Here's a little sample of what it's like to attend a rocket launch with this pair (sorry for the wind noise):

We also attended the Champlain Regional Model Rocket Club's September launch. It was amazing to see some of the biggest rockets launch. For instance, we use B and C engines and some of the larger rockets there were using M engines! The event was held in the back of someone's field/ mosquito breeding research area (I got two bites in the first 30 seconds). The kids especially liked having a little back of the car picnic and getting hot cider after dark. Trey and Ellis were perhaps a little too interested in proceeding with building some of the more "custom" rockets. Ellis especially liked the saucer-shaped rockets, which are neat because they stay a bit lower and so remain more visible.

Halloween Index Improves 100% Quarter for Quarter

Why did the index go up? This year there were two houses (out of fifty) passing out full size candy bars and last year there was just one. Clear evidence of economic growth in Milton.

Other notable trends included a chocolate-heavy haul, surprisingly little sour candy, and not a single Mary Jane or Bit o' Honey. Rachel pointed out that the last of those might be because few people go to www.crapoldpeoplecallcandy.com to order their Halloween candy.

Blues was bewildered by the whole thing. He seemed to clearly understand that being the dragon to Ellis's knight made him the butt of the Halloween costumes. It probably didn't help that dragon costume wasn't very fierce and was shaped roughly like Homer Simpson. The most excited he got all night was when we arrived on a porch and there was a plastic ride on toy that

belonged to the resident little brother. I thought we were going to have to buy the damned thing his grip was so vicious.

Ellis has begun to understand the benefit of houses that are close together and he frequently asked if we were going to a place with small yards. We did indeed execute on the general principle that close packing was necessary to get all the candy Ellis wanted before Blues conked out. We found that the neighborhood meeting this requirement was packed with people, most of whom weren't actually trick-or-treating, rather they were the support staff for those trick-or-treating. I swear I saw one 4 year old flanked by both parents, two grandmas, a grandpa, a step-grandpa and her priest.

Ellis was full of questions as one would expect. My favorite being, "Dad why did the government decide Halloween should be in October." I suggested summer might be more reliable weather-wise and Ellis countered that some costumes wouldn't be amenable to a hot night and would make you all sweaty.

The rule at our house is that after a good dinner you may eat all of the Halloween candy you want, but only on this one night. With a little help from me, Ellis made the most of it, choking down close to 20 pieces of candy. My help consisted of warning him to avoid candy that took a long time to eat like suckers, gum, and taffy which should be saved for a night when candy is limited to one piece and you want your selection to last for a long time.

apple picking

We've stopped the orchard between home and Ellis's school a few times this fall. Sometimes we pick, sometimes we buy apples they've harvested, and often we buy large quantities of cider. I think we may have picked our last time, but have a few pictures to share.

Ellis's class had visited the orchard with his class and so was full information for me about the proper way to pick an apple ("twist, twist, then point the eye to the sky, you'll have it") and how to use the apple rakes. I agreed to let him bring a rake with us, even though I sensed I was essentially arming him. Fortunately, we've already made our year's worth of apple sauce and apple butter from not so nice apples that grow on the neglected trees in our yard. So we only had to pick for 20 minutes or so to get a good supply for eating over the next couple weeks.

Finally, we stopped to pick out a few pumpkins for carving.

because i have nothing coherent to say

It's obviously been way too long since I posted anything here. Ellis is back in school and a wet and windy fall is here in full force. So, appropos of nothing, here are a bunch of pictures from various playground trips this summer.

Oh, and one video. I wanted to put Helter Skelter over the top of this, but that's why it never got posted in, you know, July. So just image that when you get to the bottom you go back to the top of slide...

weather, garden, nearly back to school time

Only one more week until Ellis goes back to school. Thank goodness because everyone's getting pretty testy and bored of playground and library trips. Today we ventured a bit further afield: into the Green Mountains to visit the Birds of Vermont Museum. It was a small, but interesting museum composed largely of wooden birds carved by a man who chose this as a "retirement project". The museum had a very friendly curator and some interesting interactive aspects including a bar code scanner that you can carry around with you to hear the sounds of the different birds you see, little bean bags weighted to match different birds' weights, and a viewing window/ microphone to observe live birds. We also discovered that Ellis loves scavenger hunts.

Unlike many places in Vermont, we were fortunate not to suffer any damage from the visit of the remains of Hurricane Irene. Our power company had warned of possible outages, so we made sure our candles and flashlights were ready, stocked up on bread and milk, and ran some extra water into buckets. We tried to explain to Ellis that we'd use the water so we could flush the toilet even if we didn't have power. I think a bit of this was lost on him, though, because he later stated that, if we didn't have electricity but we wanted to watch a movie, we could just use the water to power the TV. If only.

We did get strong winds and lots of rain, which pushed our already sagging tomato plants closer to the ground. They've already started dying, so it's the typical end of summer race between the tomatoes ripening and the plant totally crapping out. Trey helped me get a batch of tomato sauce canned this week. This is the first time we used the pressure canner, which should be safer for lower acid foods (such as "mixed tomato products"). However, this was used canner that Mom sent us last year, and the helpful extension site informed us that we should definitely test the gauge on all pressure canners. Did we do that? No. So that will give me botulism to worry about this winter. Whee!

Also, the devil's edamame plants were knocked over. I call them this because they seem to be the most spiteful plants in the garden. They grew preposterously large and shaded everything around them. And, throughout the summer, we couldn't find a single bloom. About 2 weeks ago I got so angry I was ready to rip them out when what did I see? Loads of tiny white blooms. After the storm, I found the rest of the garden looking fairly good, but the edamame was lying on my tiny spinach plants. Again today, I was ready to rip them out since it didn't seem possible that we'd get any soybeans before it turned cold. And, you guessed it, teeny tiny little pods had appeared.

We did pull out the corn stalks and feed them to our compost pile. As we did so, Ellis (mostly whining about how bored he was) and I were chatting about our experiment growing sweet corn this year. He's been pretty interested in how the ears developed and about a month ago we watched a short you tube video on the topic. Today, Ellis suggested that since our corn grew well, we should try growing popcorn next year. I said that would be fine, but then Ellis informed that we'd have to use bags. I asked him if he meant plastic bags to collect the popcorn kernels, since we'd frozen some sweet corn in Ziplocs. Exasperated, he informed me, that no, we needed to paper bags to keep out the pollen. He was warning me that we'd need to cover the ears to prevent cross-pollination! At least someone around here is thinking ahead.

up the mountain

On Thursday, we decided to pack everyone up (including the visiting Grandpa Hank) and take a hike up Stowe Pinnacle. It's actually a fairly short hike, but fairly steep so it's a little tricky with little ones in tow. We hiked this once before and Ellis was a trooper though he had to be carried at some points. I was also eager to see whether it was worse hiking it four and half months pregnant or with a hulking toddler on my back. It was worse last time, I think. But it's not a truly fair comparison because Trey vastly underestimated the hike and we were short of both food (at lunch time! I am still indignant) and water. Also, this time, Trey carried Maddox for the first half up and all the way down. However, I did have to "manage" Ellis on the way down. This included holding his hand down the many steep spots (and he really tugs), keeping up his tiny spirits, and supplying him with "chocolate bursts" (1-2 chocolate chips to power him through the tough spots in the trail). He was fairly enthusiastic on the way up, but getting pretty tired on the way down. When we reached the summit, he announced that it "smells like flowers and popsicles." Hmm. And now, pictures...

Early in the hike, still on flat ground and in good spirits:

A quick snack stop:

A particularly explosive chocolate burst (that sounds like of gross, actually):

The top, at last:

because because because

• Why must Ellis wash his hands in only one of two ways: not at all or up-to-the-elbows-each-of-the-four-finger-surfaces-seven-times-my-next-stop-is-the-OR thoroughly?
• Why did our insurance company send us a questionnaire to determine whether a trip to the ER might qualify for a worker's comp claim (despite the patient being 11 months old at the time of treatment)?
• Why are "skinny" cords even available for 5 year old boys (not slim fit for boys that happen to be thinner, but "skinny" cut)?
• Why did Maddox have to discover a forgotten bottle of flea shampoo in the bathroom and hose down both the carpet and his own hair?

kempo!

I see I haven't posted for a while, partially due to being lucky enough to have some visitors this week. So here are a couple of (not particularly riveting) videos of Ellis at karate. His class size seems to vary anywhere between 3 and 8 kids, and yesterday he was the only on there so he essentially had a private lesson. He's pretty excited because he also now has a yellow stripe and an orange stripe on his little white belt. I really have no idea what precisely these stripes signify, but he seems happy and the lessons have definitely improved his balance and coordination.

kids and vegetable....my whole life

Here are some pictures I hadn't gotten around to posting. Firstly, Ellis being very helpful in the garden by harvesting peas:Now Maddox being somewhat less helpful by harvesting a hard, green tomato:This week, our purple pole beans ripened. Ellis was really excited to grow some unusually colored vegetables, and I think they're pretty delicious raw (we haven't actually cooked any). Maddox gave them a try:And so did Ellis:But, unfortunately, they weren't as pleased with the flavor as I was:

mount philo hike

The small heat wave we had in Vermont finally broke on Sunday so we decided to head south for a quick hike up Mount Philo. It's a pretty low mountain, which was good since we haven't done much hiking this year and we have to carry a giant child the whole way, namely:

Here are Maddox and Trey checking out the map to the top.I didn't go up Camel's Hump last year with Trey and Ellis so I didn't realize how much Ellis loves hiking. He runs most of the way up and must always be in front. Trey said "oh, yes, he's always curious to see what's going to be around the next bend." Ellis, unfortunately, latched onto this phrase and repeated it about 37 times during the 40 minutes it took us to reach the top. A photo op near a giant boulder:Here's a quick stop to check out a ridiculously large millipede (though not so large you can see it in the picture):The top...hooray! It was a lovely view of the Adirondacks and Lake Champlain, considering the minimal investment of time.
No pictures of our descent, as it was my turn to carry Maddox :(

overheard in our garden today

1. Just for a reminder, I don't like those. -- Ellis, after being told the green beans are rapidly ripening and ready to eat
2. Oh, for pete's sake, what am I going to be overrun with next? -- Rachel, after noticing that the green beans are rapidly ripening
3. ##@$@%^$ -- Rachel, while trying to untangle approximately 6000 feet of hose to water the corn
4. Oh no, Mom, they're bolting! -- Ellis, upon seeing the corn tassels for the first time

raspberry pics

Here are a few pictures from last week's raspberry picking. Ellis is getting more and more patient with the picking (must be his Grandpa Hank's genes coming through), and I suspect that, by next year, he'll want to pick longer than I do on most trips. We picked for only about half an hour because we needed to head to swimming lessons. Ellis monologued pretty much the entire time (i.e., "boy these red ones sure are the sweet and juicy ones, ooh, there's some I almost can't reach, really good ones, oh, there, I got em, Mom can you believe I managed to reach those? they really are the good ones" etc, etc). He also occasionally alerted me to Maddox's behavior, "Mom, Blues is eating some ungripe berries". Ellis calls mature berries "gripe", no matter how many times we say "ripe", but I guess it's likely the last summer for that so I should enjoy his little ways for a bit longer.

who needs art camp?

Ellis has been on a bit of an art project jag since he's been home this summer. He especially likes to take advantage of Maddox's nap time. We purchased a little plastic palette to simplify color mixing, which h loves. I've never heard anyone get quite so excited about the color turquoise. In this photo he's decorating a toy motorcycle, with what turned out to be highly staining paint.

Here he is working with an Ed Emberly book to create a wolf (because we've been watching Game of Thrones [Trey and I, not Ellis, obviously], I'm pretty sure it's a dire wolf). In this picture he's discussing color choice for the wolf.

some garden pics

To follow up from an earlier post, here are some pictures from the garden yesterday. From the left, there's broccoli (we just harvested the first head last night and ate it in this), kale, a row of half lettuce/ half purslane, half radish/ half carrot, and beets. The purslane is something we ate often in Germany, and this is our second try at growing it this summer. I think it may have been too cool the first time we planted, but we're hoping it gets taller than 1.5 inches this time.

The upper bed has more peas, beans, edamame, a couple tomato and pepper plants, more lettuce and radishes, and some chard. Due to space limitations, I was planning to plant only pole beans, but we ended up with a little extra room so we also planted some bush bean seeds that Lucy sent to Ellis. However, they're growing very tall and showing no signs of stopping, so I suspect they were some sort of elaborate practical joke on Lucy's part. If they take over the pea fence, though, she'll have to answer to answer to Ellis. In this photo, you can also see Ellis headed out to pick black raspberries from the edge of our forest. I asked him to run inside and get a bowl. I guess he was hoping for a big harvest, since he chose a bowl larger than his head. We picked about two dozen, of which zero made it back inside the house.

culture shock of the tiniest kind

Okay, here is something weird about Vermont. When you go berry picking at a U-pick place, these are the instructions you receive, "Yep, the berries are pretty ripe on the left side of the field, pick anywhere you want."

This is completely disorienting to me because it seems like you can get in big trouble in Indiana for not picking according to the very detailed instructions you are given, which include, where to start, where to stop, which sides to pick, and the angle at which to place the flag that marks where you stop.

The boys and I went berry picking yesterday and managed to get a few more strawberries into the freezer. The strawberries here are just about done, but we got a few raspberries. Ellis is almost helpful, but Blues just wanders around and determines experimentally whether red or green equals ripe. Is eating large quantities of under-ripe raspberries bad for a toddler's GI tract? We're about to find out. Berry picking also gave Ellis and me some extra chat time. Unfortunately, the subject of trying to get a little sister somehow came up:

Me: Being a big brother is a lot of work, do you think you could manage having another baby in our family?

Ellis: No, there's no room in our house.

Me: Well, soon Blues will sleep in your room in the bunk beds with you. Then there'd be room, right?

Ellis: What? Three kids and one mom? I don't think so.

I don't think so either.

ack! a month since the last post

It's been quite some time without a post around here. Ellis finished school and we're slowly getting adjusted to a summertime routine. We'll probably have that complete about a week before school starts up again. The boys are mostly managing to get along alright and are enjoying the play structure that we finally got complete a couple weeks ago.

On other extended project fronts, we finally got our stove replaced (we were rapidly approaching 1 year with only one functional burner). While my parents located and delivered a replacement stove for us waaay back at Thanksgiving, we had to get a new gas line run to enable the switch from electric to gas. This, in turn was complicated by their needing access to an outside area of the house, which was blocked by a stack of paving stones, which were frozen together by snow and ice all winter. It kind of reminds me of the song about the hole in the bucket. Anyway, spring came, the ice melted, and we now have multiple burners. Plus, because they are gas, we are on again able to properly stir-fry. Hallelujah! AND we've finished painting and family room and hung up new curtains. Trey built a low shelf for the kids toys which needs to be sanded and painted and then there will be pictures. In case you think we're productive, let me just state that mean time to project completion = 8.75 months.

What else, then? Garden is bursting and we're hoping to have at least two dinner's worth of proper beets this year. Lettuce, peas, beans, chard, kale and broccoli are all doing well. The cucumbers and squashes have been somewhat bothered by the damp and we've lost many leaves and a couple vegetables to powdery mildew. Curses! Out sweet was voted least likely to succeed by Trey, but so far it's looking pretty good. Only bad news was Ellis and I went to let the dog out on Sunday and found a deer hanging out in the front yard. Further investigation showed that 4 stalks had been nibbled. Double curses! Three other stalks were knocked over; Ellis claimed the deer must have stepped on them, but I'm pretty sure they were actually the victims of an earlier wind storm. We don't have a fence and so far have kept away most critters via use of carnivore urine (you guess the source if you don't already know). At any rate, whatever we ultimately harvest, it's been totally worth gardening just for Ellis's excitement. He loves seeing anything new blooming and watching the vegetables develop from the flowers. And he's pretty sure that the corn cobs are going to pop out of the middle of the stalk (I think he's picturing it like broccoli) , so there are more surprises in store for him.

happy birthday Ellis

Ellis is five! We made some cupcakes to send into school on Friday. Ellis insisted that one of the girls in his class was allergic to chocolate and so we had to make both chocolate and vanilla. This, incidentally, turned out to be a total fabrication. Anyway, we'd planned to do shark cupcakes using this approach. It was approaching bedtime when I produced some initial decorated monstrosities and pronounced them ridiculous. I fiddled around with fin placement and eyeball size and position before deciding I must've been nuts to think that these cupcakes looked even remotely like sharks. I asked Trey for suggestions on how I could improve it, but he answered with "sharks aren't round" and somehow managed to prevent himself from adding "you twit".

So, I googled for some new ideas and Trey pitched in to help (largely to prevent a total freak-out on my part). He diligently went to work with two cutting board and some gum drops to produce octopi and star fish, while I piped on blue icing and, yes, this real, chocolate-coated gold fish. Result:

Ellis's actual birthday was Sunday and we had a pretty low-key celebration. Ellis awoke from an afternoon snooze to his favorite dinner of ham and pea pasta, an apple cake, and a much-coveted mylar balloon. This year, we bought a wooden play structure for the backyard (it's about 80% assembled, most of our time has been spent trying to get the ground adequately level) and so didn't really have gifts to open from Mom and Dad. Luckily, Ellis's extended family came to the rescue -- super soaker style squirt guns from Aunt Lucy et al., a selection of lovely books from Aunt Catherine, a watch, foam swords and a model rocket from Grandma Audrey, and a bank and constellation finder from Aunt Bridget and her boys. Everything was much appreciated!

like a true metal child

Ellis was lucky enough to get an early birthday present when Aunt Lindsey visited last weekend. After a couple days of trying to convince him he was getting a pink princess dress, he was very excited to find a new bike in the living room on Saturday morning. Thanks to Aunt Lindsey and Grandpa Hank for the awesome bike!

On Saturday, he had two practice sessions at the local elementary school parking lot. Amazingly, he was pedaling on his own by the afternoon. I think getting practice on both a tricycle and a balance bike must have prepared him very well for a "big boy bike". On Sunday, he even learned how to get himself started without a push from a grown-up. He also lost his first tooth this weekend, and he's turning 5 on Sunday...so basically, he needs to slow down with the whole growing up thing.

feels like summer

Sorry for even less blogging than usual. These children have been waking up in the 5-5:30 area. It is exhausting. Trey and I try to take turns "sleeping in" until 6:30 or so.

We've managed to make some progress on the garden. We decided not to expand the raised beds this year, and they're already largely planted. I am a gardener of little faith, however, so I'm already despairing because seeds that were planted 5 days ago aren't up yet.

We did decide to create a new patch for squash. Or, more accurately, we pulled a bunch of overgrown decorative plants out of a weird oval area in the lawn. We discovered a large piece of cement and didn't bother removing the stump. Looks great, right? Well, maybe after the squash has filled out a bit....

Since we're planting new squash plants, it seems like I should be sure we've used up the last of the frozen zucchini from last year. I can only get Ellis to eat it when fully diluted by chocolate, flour, and butter as in this recipe. Ellis was quite helpful in getting the batter scooped into the mini muffin pan...look how neat and tidy!

Unfortunately, Blues decided to get in on the action and grabbed the spatula. In the blink of an eye, the batter was smeared all over his face. I booted him outside onto the porch with Trey while I finished up baking the muffins. Unfortunately, he and Ellis then got to work on the sand table; Ellis mixed up a sand and water slurry and dumped it on Maddox's head. Maddox thought this was hilarious. By the end of the afternoon he was looking quite a state (I like how he's about to lose his diaper cover as well).

All in all, it's looking like summer, and we've already been on a couple creemie runs. Here are two reasonably clean children, for a change: