Jonas the Ornithologist

Jonas is becoming quite the avid bird watcher. His favorite bird is a Blue Jay, which is fortunate because there is a tree visible from our yard the is teeming with them most days. He likes to draw birds, especially interesting new sightings.
Today he spotted what may or may not be a Yellow Warbler. He saw it perched on a Black Eyed Susan in our neighbor's yard. He described it to me with such enthusiasm; as if it were a new ship in the Lego Mars Mission series. We set off at once to Google his findings. It seems that is was indeed a female Yellow Warbler, though it's somewhat late in the season for spotting them, I'm not sure what else it could be. He was pretty insistent that it was not anything like the other yellow birds that came up. We referenced our Birds Of Ohio library book, and the description matched well enough to satisfy him.

In the end it was decided that I got carried away and embarrassed him with my excitement, but that he would like to have a book to record his findings. Good thing I'm headed to Boarder's tonight anyway.

The impregnable cuteness of a girl in pigtails

There's something troublesome about how I feel when my kids look cute. It doesn't seem fair that if they sneak ice cream with sticky fingers, dirty faces, and a frumpy too small/too big combination of clothes that they picked out themselves and have since rolled in dead fish and mud puddles (or so it would seem) I am much less likely to let it slide as when they look cute to me. I am much less prone to loosing my temper and being snippy with them when they look more appealing. Is this my biology at work, the reason babies come out adorable with big eyes and helpless expressions and such, or is it something sinister? Should I feel guilty to acknowledge this phenomenon and use it to my (truly their) advantage? Perhaps I could purpose my perception to be always the same, or just better master my impulses so as to appear unbiased.

In truth I think this is fine and reasonable and unchangeable. But it does still worry me that I can feel so very different about this same little creature depending on the presentation. It's human nature to be sure, but that's doesn't mean I like it.

Jonas funny

"...Person, person, zombie"  ....  "no no, it's 'perons, person, zombie' then you get up and zombie-chase me around...."

omg I'm dying of laughter!  This is what I hear from the other room.  Jonas is appearntly instructing three sweet little girls in his new made up game.  I think it's "duck, duck, goose!" revised.  he's been talking about "duck, duck, goose!" a lot, so I'm not surprised, but this is indeed a new take on it.

Boxes and Babies

So we're moving in 2 days, just a few streets away.  A bigger, nicer, much higher rent house than we live in now.  It should be wonderful over all.  Nice big fenced in back yard, dishwasher, 4 bedrooms, yada yada yada.  You can read about it on my blog about me, along with the stolen car debacle.  
At any rate, the house over there is not yet ready for us, and my house over here is not yet ready to be moved.  After all, I still have to live here and take care of children here.  I broke down Jonas' room (since he doesn't use it for anything but lego building) and started packing and piling boxes in there.  It's hard to decipher what things we need to live here for a few days and what we don't.  I'm still not sure.  I'm confidant that there are many things I should be packing, but I'm not sure what they are.

Lavinia seem overly excited about the move and has woken in the night and done strange things the past few nights, many of which include peeing in my bed.  Lovely.
Jonas talks about it a lot, but I think I've discussed it all enough with him that he's handling it all very well, aside from being high strung and more aggressive than usual.  We haven't actually changed very much yet, so I still expect transition anxiety and post move insanity - in all parties.

Come to think of it, I should get up off my ass and start packing again.....

Egghead

Lavi's been carrying around this uncooked real egg for about an hour.  I can't get her to put it down.  She's professed her love for it (what's going on around here with that?) and how much she wishes her mother would cook it for her.  I can't stop giggling.  She's been known to do this before, but this is just over the top.

Baby Love

Jonas:  "Don't you know we love taking care of babies?"



Sniff sniff.... Have you ever heard anything sweeter? He said this moments ago and I came cyber-running here to document it. He really does, too. He said this gem to his rollie pollie baby girl friend who we watch twice a week. He looks forward to her. It's adorable to see this rough tough and seemingly insensitive and empathy-less big grown up guy simply melt over this little squish. You wouldn't even believe it.







p.s. yes yes I know I've been MIA for far too long.  Shame on me.

Loose Tooth!

Jonas has had a loose tooth for a while now, maybe two weeks?  Maybe less.  He has talked of little else since it's discovery, and he's been vigilant about wiggling it and keeping me posted about it's progress.

On Saturday he was with my sister and he called me and said "I wanted to tell you that my Tooth came out.  The wiggly one.  I was wiggling it and suddenly I noticed that it was actually not connected anymore.  It just came out.  How much money do you think the toothfairy will bring me?!"  *sniff*  My baby is growing up!  Using his big words and everything.