April 25 - Relative Silence

                Here I sit; taking in the relative silence…it’s beautiful.  The kids are in bed with their music playing.  Much of today was loud.  Nate and Elli seem to have broken volume switches.  Sometimes they work if you hold your mouth just right.  I’m not complaining I really wouldn’t have it any other way.  Just enjoying and reflecting.

                Ells and I went to the library today - a very busy day there.  Thirteen moms, their children, and a small pig.  Story hour was about… you guessed it… pigs.  It was a cute little piglet and the kids loved it.  Elli described it as soft instead of spikey.  They made pig puppets.  Elli picked out a selection of new books and we came home with a full bag once again.  We’re going to miss story hour next year once Elli starts preschool three days a week although we’ll still make regular trips to the library I’m sure!

The adventurers!

                This afternoon we set out on an adventure to find an old garden that we’ve been given permission to use.  Nate drew a wonderfully detailed map and led our expedition.  The kids were appalled at the amount of litter on the trail.  It’s becoming our Green Up Day project.  Although we searched for signs of the old garden we came up empty.  However, I’m very excited because there is a small stream nearby and I know the kids are going to have so much fun splashing about in it this summer.  Nate and Elli were also delighted at the discovery of burdocks, actually wanting to plant them in our garden.  Ahhh…. yeah…no! They did have a good time playing with the stickiness of a few. 



Some of the litter!

                Upon arriving back home we had to immediately set to making signs to tell the students not to pollute.  Nate hopes to teach the students that it’s not ok.  He drew an angry bunny and a sad deer to show them how the animals feel when we don’t use a trash can.  Our signs will probably get hung up tomorrow; Nate said we need to hang them really, really well so they don’t become litter.

                So apparently we have lost that nice little boy “vroom” that accompanies matchbox play.  We have traded it for a “begin deep in the throat, soul rattling     vvVVVVrrrRRRRRRRooOOOOOmmMMMM.”   Every time I hear it I jump.  Nate says that real racecars hurt your ears and he’s trying to be real.  In spite of his propensity to randomly rev his engine, we had a fun time playing cars on his purple track. 

                The random revving combined with their desire to challenge everything that I said made for a long afternoon.  However, books came to my rescue.  After dinner and cleanup we snuggled in on the couch so Nate could do his daily reading.  After six stories, four read by Nate, we were all in a much better place.