Babysoroos

Outside this afternoon. Daddy was using his chainsaw, so the boys were standing well back. I think Ben might have been making sure Timothy stayed well back, but it’s a sweet picture whatever his reasoning was.

It was snowing, but we decided to go for a walk in the woods anyway. It’s never quite as drippy in the woods as elsewhere, just soggy and muddy. And soggy and muddy is fun for boys.

Timothy walked a good half of it on his own.

Ben is very interested in fallen over root systems and large tree stumps. And climbing.

They took a little convincing to pose together….

Then Timothy got tired and actually said “up!”

But I wasn’t quite quick enough….

I want to make this a Friday morning habit if we can. If we can do it when it’s snowing in March, we can do it in any weather! It’ll be fun to notice the differences in the woods as the seasons change.

Sorry for the long gap in posting. Busy, sick, technical issues. Writer’s block. Cute boys who want attention. 🙂

We’ve been busy in the garden, clearing out brambles and gorse, rototilling, and planting — fruit trees and vegetable seeds. It looks pretty amazingly different back there compared to when we moved in.

The boys love being outside, both of them.

Ben was actually sick in this photo — hence the pajamas with the wellies — but he still wanted to be outside watching. (And yes, he’s sitting on a tree stump, the remains of the tree in the background behind him. We cut it down with the help of a neighbor a few weeks ago.) He usually wants to be doing exactly what we’re doing, exactly where we’re doing it. Then he needs help. 🙂 He’s had a great time shovelling compost, getting completely black and filthy, and of course he has his own bed in the vegetable garden with a little of everything in it.

Timothy just wanders around clutching a child-size yellow rake. He loves that thing, it’s so funny. He doesn’t do anything with it, he just walks around holding it and stops and stands and looks very farmer-ish.

I’m trying to upload more pictures, but my camera’s software has started freaking out and giving me weird error messages and I’m trying to use the old version of iPhoto that’s on my computer but I’m just getting grumpy over technology and workflow. Bah.

Pictures of last week’s snow coming soon, though. One way or another.

Friday morning was gray and damp, but not actually raining. Ben didn’t want to go to school, so we decided to go for a walk in the forest instead. We were in the woods for well over an hour, and I was amazed — Timothy actually walked about half of it all by himself! It was a slow pace, but that gave us lots of time to notice the fallen trees, the odd-looking fungi, the white-tipped pinecones (lichen?), the puddles, the lack of slugs, the different types of moss. It was wonderful to spend time like that with my boys. The forest feels particularly enchanted to me in that sort of weather, and with noone else around at all, I didn’t have to worry about one lagging and one leading. (“Mama, sing the leader song!”) Not that we ever got too far apart.

View album.

It’s been gray here. Gray, and wet. For weeks, it feels like. So yesterday, when the sun was shining and the sky was blue, we headed to the park.

This is the first time Timothy has been to the park since he became a walker, so it was a whole new world to him. He’s going to have so much fun there this summer.

 

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What a perfect day we had yesterday.

It was one of the best type of fall days — cool, sunny, dry, crisp. We woke up early thanks to the time change, had pancakes for breakfast, and got out to the garden by 9am. We dug beds, we planted LOTS of garlic and some kale, we watered our newly planted raspberries. We built a low stone circle around the fire pit and piled up all the garbage the previous owner had left — soggy magazines and old diaries (1983!) and medical bills and random bits of wood and cardboard. We covered it with scotch broom we’ve been cutting down and added wood and dry kindling and finally got a good fire going.
We made a thick warm potato/corn soup for lunch indoors, then had an afternoon snack and tea at the new picnic table out by the garden.

We stayed out as it got dark, watching the fire burn hot and the stars come out. Timothy fell asleep on my lap and Ben sat on Eric’s and looked for satellites.

The boys both seemed to have so much fun just being outdoors all day, and they certainly slept well!

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