All Packed Up

Big day for Jack yesterday: It was his maiden voyage in the pack.

He was very excited. So was A.

Big day for me, too, because when the day comes that someone else can carry an infant for me, I feel as if a great literal weight has been lifted. And of course, I'm much more likely to want to do things involving walking, since I only have to carry my own weight. So yesterday we walked up the (dry, thanks to no rain) gully next to our house and found a very nice muddy swimming hole for the older children to splash around in and pretend to be dinosaurs fishing. At least, I think that's what all the roaring was about.

Charlie, incidentally, had no issues with Jack in the pack, unlike Cubby when Charlie started riding in the pack. Charlie was all, "Whatever. That pack is for babies. I have to walk so I can attack things with my spear." This is the difference between the first and second born.

It's the beginning of a new era. An era of less back pain for me, I hope.

Hey, Kids! Let's Play Hide and Heads!

Remember the ducklings? They are now fully grown ducks, and six of them are drakes. And that means that today was Doomsday for the drakes. Or Decapitation Day. Or Death Day.

Whatever alliterative name you want to give it, those drakes were going down. (Hey look! There's another!)

So A. went out and sharpened his hatchet at 7:30 this morning and unceremoniously whacked the heads off of five drakes on the pile of wood awaiting splitting outside the duck pen.

The children were, of course, present for this. Cubby was mad that we didn't let him do the decapitating, actually, but we'll give him another year before he gets that job.

He did get to help, though. After the deed was done, the MiL was standing there with both hands clutching the feet of all the dead drakes and she asked, "Who's going to pick up the heads?"

Well, I know who isn't going to be picking up any drake heads. Hi!

But there were two very willing head hunters. Allow me to present Cubby and Charlie, the totally unsqueamish butcher helpers. And hunt they did, because some of the heads had fallen kind of in between the chunks of wood and weren't all that easy to see. So I told Cubby and Charlie to start searching for five heads. At which point Cubby exclaimed with glee, "It's like hide and seek, but hide and heads!"

Right. Carry on, my small country bumpkins.

School Days

This morning the whole crew is taking Cubby in to the doctor so he can get a physical before school starts next month.

If the stars align with Jack's random-these-days naptime, we'll also get Cubby's school supplies while we're in the Small City.

I called the school district on Monday about signing him up for the bus.

I bought two pairs of jeans, two turtlenecks, and two sweaters for him on Tuesday*.

It seems I have a school-age child in my house.  That sound you hear? That's my mind being blown.

* From swap.com, a site I had never heard of before, but it has a huge selection of used clothes and an easy-to-use format. Since I can never get to the thrift store anymore (or rather, do not want to go to the thrift store with three kids under six) and I am sure as hell not going to pay $20 for a pair of jeans that he will wear for six months before growing out of or destroying, I was very pleased to find this site. (No, no affiliation or sponsorship from them. As always.)

When Left To My Own Dinner Devices

A. took Cubby and Charlie camping for the night. They were very excited. So was I. Because with the three of them gone camping and the MiL away on a trip, I was left with no one but myself to feed.

Well, myself and Jack, but his idea of a balanced meal is pureed beets and yogurt, so I wasn't too worried about him.

I got some potatoes at the farmers' market this morning and I had great plans to cook some potatoes with cheese and maybe Swiss chard. Oh, and we have some leftover beets! How balanced! How healthy!

Yeah, who am I kidding? You know what I had for dinner?

Chips, dip, and gin. Hey, at least the dip was homemade.

I didn't even eat it at the table. And my dining companion was not required to wear pants.

He practiced his dry-land swimming while I ate.

I did manage to cook one of the potatoes, which I mashed and fed to Jack. So at least one of us ate reasonably well.

He approves of potatoes.

Based on my dietary choices when left alone, it's a good thing this happens about once a year. 

Ugh

We often say in this house that you're allowed to complain about one type of weather. If you hate the cold, winter is your time to whine ceaselessly about the temperature (ALL annoying D.J.s on the radio, I'm looking at you). If the snow gets you down, feel free to make your displeasure known on those days when you can't step outside without sinking in up to your ankles.

But the rest of the time, you have to hold your tongue. Because no one wants to hear the weather-whines on repeat.

Now is my time to whine.

It was 93 degrees yesterday at 4 p.m. The only saving grace was that the low pressure hadn't moved in yet, so at least it was still dry and clear.

But the low pressure arrived last night, the temperatures are going to be well into the eighties today, and that means nothing but prickly sweat and misery all day until the blessed relief of a shower when the children go to bed. Thirteen hours from now.

I despise heat and humidity. Hate hate hate hate.

What's your season for weather whining?

Edited to add: This afternoon, while sitting at the table eating peanuts, Cubby slumped down in his chair and announced, "Mom, I'm stunned by this heat."

Me too, son. Me too.

The Vegetable Vandal

We have an eggplant, uh, plant in a pot. Did you know you could grow eggplants in a pot? I didn't. The MiL didn't either, but she brought home this big eggplant plant from the nursery and stuck it in a pot, and lo! Eggplants! More eggplants than we have ever gotten out of any plants in the garden, as a matter of fact.

So now I have some eggplants to cook with, which is nice. I picked a couple to put on the grill with the hamburgers tonight, which I guess gave Charlie ideas, because he then picked a teeny eggplant only a couple of inches long and brought it to me.

So we had a little talk about not picking them until I tell him they're ready to pick, because that tiny little eggplant should have been left to grow bigger and blahblahblah . . . leave the vegetables* alone, okay, kid?

"Osay," said Charlie. Because that's how Charlie and his three-year-old pronunciation say "okay."

Fifteen minutes later, Charlie was circling the lone tomato plant that is in a pot near the grill. He asked if they were ready to pick. I told him no. There were maybe five or six that were almost ready, maybe a day or two more, but not all the way ready. Wait until I tell you to pick them, okay?

"Oooosaaaay . . ."

Did you guess how this ends?

No, he didn't pick them. Instead he squeezed them. Yup. Popped 'em all like water balloons. I went out to check on the grill and found every single almost-ripe tomato still on the vine but burst open and oozing seeds and juice.

DAMMIT, CHARLIE.

He got another lecture, this one delivered more forcefully. I told him the tomatoes wouldn't get fully ripe now.  I told him they wouldn't taste as good. I told him I was angry that he had ruined the tomatoes I had asked him not to pick. Was he repentant?

What do you think?

I almost wish I had had a camera to capture the defiant look on his face. 

I threw the two least-ripe tomatoes right onto the grill, figuring that would help their flavor. The others I cut up and dumped into the vinaigrette marinade left from the eggplant. So it worked out okay.

Charlie shuffled off to the front porch to sulk. Then he snuck into the house and sulked in the living room for awhile, hiding there while I ran around outside calling him. When I finally did find him in the living room, I told him I was making the tomatoes into a tomato salad and he could help me pick the basil for the salad.

He did. The salad was good. Would've been better with riper tomatoes, though.

* Yeah, yeah, seeds on the inside means it's technically a fruit, as is a tomato, but who ever refers to eggplants and tomatoes as fruits? 

Twelve Years, Three Kids, One Way

At the time we got married twelve years ago today, A. was working as a security guard at a bank building. It continues to this day to be the job he always counts as his worst ever, but the one thing he got out of it (other than a modest paycheck to pay our rent every month, that is) was a priceless piece of advice on marriage.

It came from Clay. Clay was a black man who grew up as one of something like eleven kids in the hills of Arkansas. He played professional baseball before World War Two. He was in his eighties and still working as a security guard when A. knew him. He had been married for at least fifty years. So I think it's safe to say that this was a man with a lot of wisdom in general, and someone to listen to on the topic of a successful marriage.

What Clay told A. was this: "Ain't no your way or her way. There can only be one way."

What he meant, obviously, is that two people who choose to marry are choosing to live their lives together. And the only way to stay together over many years and even more changes is to commit to following the same path.

I don't know where Clay is now, or if he's even still alive. But he gave us a great gift that day he told A. his opinion on marriage. Because here we are, twelve years later, and still going our way.

Happy anniversary to A. I don't know where the hell this way we're on is going, but wherever it is, at least we're in it together.