What It Means To Be the Third Child

It means your mother will leave you on the floor in front of the woodstove while she makes meatloaf, where you will be subject to your oldest brother's idea of fun.

Cubby: "I dressed him in the prettiest clothes because he's dancing!" The prettiest clothes being handkerchiefs? Right.

And the best part? You won't even care. Because you're the third, and that means awesome*.

* I'm a third child myself, but I am in no way biased about Jack's awesomeness. At all.

The Bucket Brigade

Happy news for all those who look for signs that spring is coming, even in the midst of technical (and seemingly never-ending) winter: the taps are in the maple trees at Blackrock.

Hey, it's a more reliable predictor of spring weather than a random large rodent.

We're not doing the big operation with Mr. Jason this year, instead just tapping about a dozen trees right on our lawn. We should get at least a gallon of syrup from that, maybe more if we're lucky. Mostly we're doing it because it's fun for the kids. They helped A. put in the spiles on Sunday morning.

"Helped" being used in the loosest sense here.

Jack helped, too.

By conking out in front of the woodstove so I could go outside without strapping him to me. Good boy.

Yesterday was gloriously sunny and warm (49 degrees! whee!), and the sap ran fairly well. The trees are coming to life. And so are we.

The Price of Nostalgia

Should your husband decide to start showing your two sons old He-Man videos on YouTube, be prepared to make cardboard swords from an L.L. Bean shipping box so they can hoist them aloft and shout, "By the power of Grayskull!" over and over again. Four inches from the baby's head, which makes it kind of hard for the baby to fall asleep.

I just thought you should all learn from my experience.