Looks so good I could just eat it!

Here's another reminder to me how boys think with their stomachs.


We were working in the yard the other night and the sun was setting. Many of the clouds in the sky were half pink and half grey-blue. The beauty of sunsets is amazing to me. I stopped and pointed this out to Charlie, telling him that God is the best artist EVER! He looked around at the clouds and said, "They look like suckers. I think I would love to just lick them!" And he proceeded to pretend to do a giant lick in the sky.


I see beauty, he sees food. Or maybe we both see beauty in it, but we associate it with different things. Anyway, it made me giggle.

Just giggle while you clean -- or at least CLEAN while you giggle!

In my somewhat continuing effort to purge and declutter, organize and clean, I'm trying to enlist others to help. Some are more of a help than others. Today, for instance, Brian is working in the garage, throwing some things out and organizing so that we can park at least the bikes and strollers and stuff in there as well as make room for more of my junk that I'm not ready to part with yet. He's so great not to grumble (very much) about my pack-ratting.

For the last two or three hours I've been in the big girls' room trying to help them get things cleaned up and stuff. We've got a pretty good amount of trash heading out and half a garbage bag of give-away stuff. Harriet is generally better at parting with things than Fred is, but I've been pleasantly surprised at what Fred's been willing to give up. However, we've hit the wall. At least I have. I don't want to do the cleaning for them, because I want them to know where to put things when they clean their own room. I'm trying to direct and help, but not do. But they've gotten to the point where they are tired of trying to get stuff done and so they are just laughing and playing with each other. That's when I had to leave.

Don't get me wrong. I'm delighted that they are playing together and not fighting. But I can't stand to sit there and gather a bunch of their craft stuff in a pile and ask, "Okay, where does it make sense to put this?" or get a bunch of Barbie clothes and ask where they keep Barbie stuff and have them point and continue giggling. So here I am blogging instead. I was hoping that they'd get their floor clean enough to vacuum today, because seriously I don't know the last time that happened. (I know that will totally gross some of you out. Sorry.) Don't think it's going to work out. But I guess that's okay, because we don't have school on Monday and we can start again.

Lucky them!

Which way was that again?

This story is from way back. Fred was probably only 3 years old. Harriet was still little, but old enough to feed herself things off her high chair tray. I remember we were eating and I was trying to keep pieces of whatever I was feeding Harriet on her tray. Fred was messing around while she was eating. Finally I looked at her and said, "Eat right!" I went back to my meal and feeding Harriet. I looked at her and she was still playing around while she ate. I told her again, "Eat right!"

She looked back at me and leaned sideways in her booster seat and said, "Eat left too, Mom?"