Strawberry social
July 1, 2009 | Filed Under General | Leave a Comment
Saturday, we drove to Rushford for the strawberry social at our CSA farm, Featherstone. The kids had a ball picking and eating strawberries, but not so much on the farm tour 
Sam absolutely went crazy, and we couldn’t keep him away from the berries. He looked like a little vampire. We paid the price the next day in diapers…
Many more pics on Flickr.
4 years and 9 months
July 1, 2009 | Filed Under Photos, Benny | Leave a Comment
Last night, I let Ben stay up a little later. As I put Sammy to bed, he cleaned up his toys in the basement and got out a huge floor puzzle that he got for Christmas. Most normal people would consider watching someone put together a puzzle something like torture. For me, it is completely fascinating to watch him choose pieces and decide where to put them. It is a very deliberate process, but one that I don’t understand. He approaches it completely different than I would, and I love to try to read his mind. I can easily image doing huge puzzles with him in a few years as our special activity.
The patience he shows in puzzles is completely lacking in other areas. A combination of lack of coordination and fear makes most physical activities a source of frustration. Riding his bike is still a struggle and we have to beg to get him into the pool.
My favorite thing to do with Ben is simply to talk with him. His stream of consciousness conversations are funny, inspiring, and confusing. He recently suggested that we build birdhouses and place them at all the houses for sale, reasoning that the birdhouses would help them sell. No, he hasn’t been watching HGTV, and I have no idea why he is concerned about houses selling. The other morning, he suddenly announced, “Ok Mommy. I’ll marry you” in a tone of resignation. I had to break it to him that I was already married. Meals always lead to interesting proclamations from him. “Mommy, you’re a real genius for giving me so many waffle.” and “Daddy, this is so good. You’re my best friend.” (Eating homemade pizza)
Not all conversations with him are fun. After stripping his swim trunks and streaking through the neighbor’s yard and grabbing Mommy and Daddy inappropriately in public, we had to have a serious conversation about private areas.
In the spring, Ben moved to the 5 year old room at daycare a few months early. Except for a couple of bad streaks, he’s been doing really well. The 5 year old class gets to do many special things in the summer. They go to the library every Tuesday and the movies every Thursday. Field trips have included the zoo and the YMCA pool. The school work he bring home now is worthy of note. They are working on phonetic spelling, where the teacher sounds out a word and he writes what he hears. I see these things and can’t even believe it is my little baby doing it.
His art work is getting far more advanced too, not that he is the best artist, but the stories behind them are great.
UPS trucks delivering motorcycle parts:
A monster at night:
An alligator trying to eat a fish, while riding in a monster truck:
A firetruck on a flatbed trailer and a butterfly:
–Update–
I’ve been working on this for several days, but I had to add this. This evening (2 nights ago now!) Ben and I had our first serious discussion about death. My mom’s dog, Rusty, passed away not long ago. He was a big, sweet golden was much loved, and will be sorely missed. I haven’t told Ben. I figured that we wouldn’t see Rusty again for a long time, so maybe Ben would forget him. Unfortunately, our neighbors have 2 goldens and seeing them each day makes Ben talk about ol’ Rusty dog. Tonight I decided I had to tell Ben the sad truth before our trip. My sweet sensitive boy, immediately began crying. “I don’t want Rusty to be dead. I’ll miss him. I’m sad.” I comforted him as best I could, while assuring him it was ok to cry and we were all sad. Before long, he was wailing “But now they only have 1 dog!!! Wahhhhhh” Holy smokes. Parenting is hard. I know it was better tonight than with a bunch of family around, but I still wish I could shelter my babies from all the cruel realities of life.
Rest in peace sweet doggy.
fire! huh-huh
June 24, 2009 | Filed Under Photos | 1 Comment
(Shout out to the B&B.)
So, Friday afternoon, Jason said friends Laurie and Jim were having a barn burning, and he thought the kids might like to go. I quickly corrected him and said “Stuff the kids, I want to go!” And so we went. A barn burning is exactly what it sounds like: They had old barns. They had a big fire. They had no more old barns. Actually, the fire department came out and lit and controlled the fires. Adding fire trucks to an already very exciting night. And now, pictures!
Barn one went down in 12 minutes:
Barn two took about 18 minutes:
There were several fire trucks on hand, and a huge pool of water. The fire fighters were spraying the fire to keep in under control, and also surrounding structures and trees to keep the fire from spreading.
I think I had it in my head that I could get a cool shot of the boys in front of the fire. The fire was amazingly hot, even from a fair distance. I didn’t want them anywhere near it! The toddler Sam had his heart set on a fire truck of his very own and kept pointing and crying “MINE.”
looking rough
June 22, 2009 | Filed Under Photos, Sammy | Leave a Comment
Sammy missed most of last week at “school” due to pink eye. Thursday night, he had us really worried when he tripped and fell into the corner of the wall. We kept him up late to watch the swelling and to look for symptoms of a head injury. Luckily, he has his dad’s hard head (I’m sure J would say my hard head). He wasn’t looking so pretty this weekend, but he was feeling fine.
(This was taken at Friday night’s barn burning. Photos from that will be coming later this week.)