Balloon

There's often a balloon.  Tonight it's red.  Somewhere is an orange one, sadly deflated from its prime.  It languishes in corners and under beds until Sprout needs a pretend orange or something small and squashy.  Tonight it's the red one, still large, round, proud.

There was a blue one that lasted quite well, several weeks, until an unfortunate popping from an enthusiastic bite.  The terrific bang it made surprised me into dropping a spoon in the kitchen and made her laugh maniacally for several minutes, then mournfully cry out "My 'loon!  My 'loon!" followed by "Mama, can I have another one please?  Pleeeeeaaaaase???" and then exhortations of "Papa, you blow it!"

The red one is a good size for hands both small and large.  It's been stuck between the fan blade and the ceiling until Papa effected a rescue.  She likes to rub her teeth against it, making a kind of squeaking, frog-ish noise.

Her favourite thing, though, is to toss it at her Papa, then catch it when he boinks it back towards her with his fingertips.  She could play endlessly.  When the balloon goes wild, she shrieks, giggles, chases it, tosses it back to him.  From time to time she will stop, lie on the lounge, hold the balloon, roll from side to side.  Or she'll carry it about, tucked under her arm.  She talks to it.

When it pops, there will be another one.  And another.  We buy them by the bagful, worth the few cents per balloon - imagine a few pennies for hours of fun.

It would be worth far, far greater expense just for the joy of watching them play...

Family

We've had some quiet days here at Casa de Crazy. The holidays are over, the Evil Genius's birthday is past, and we're settling into Winter and something of a pattern for our daily lives. Last week, a couple of us took turns feeling rather unwell and are really only just now on our feet again.

This evening, the Evil Genius wanted to play with his new Monopoly game (thank you Aunt J, my ex-sister-in-law, aka my sister-out-law), and wondered if I would play with him. I've put him off with other games and toys lately, busy with my own thing, and he was so hopeful...I decided that blogging could wait, housework could wait...my kid needed a round of Monopoly.

Someone had an errand to run, but he offered to join us when he got back.

The three of us sat at the dining room table and played for nearly three hours. The Evil Genius had plenty of opportunity to work with his math skills and to learn about negotiating and calculating the potential benefits of a deal versus the pitfalls. He had ample opportunity to remember (and be reminded) not to interrupt other people when they're speaking, to keep track of his turn, and to read cards and instructions.

He even saw what paying an honest compliment can mean to a body - I drew the Community Chest card that claims the reader has taken second place in a beauty contest and won some money. He offered "Well that makes sense because you're beautiful..." Whoof...seven years old and already knows how to lay it on thick!

He had his dinner while we played - fish sticks and baby carrots and the most basic food group of all, catsup (studies show that little boys are fifteen percent catsup and get cranky when their supply is low) - and played past his bedtime a bit. Someone suggested we finally end after two more turns, and we agreed. We ended up about even, no clear winner - each of us had monopolies on the board, each of us had buildings and cash. We'd helped each other out, laughed, chatted about nothing and everything. The TV wasn't on. No news or talk show on the radio. No one on the computer paying only half attention to what was going on. No one on the phone. We focused on each other, on listening and seeing and being.

When we were done, and I'd gotten the Evil Genius off to his room, I realized that tonight...tonight, we felt like a family. Sweet.

Family isn't always who you're born to. Sometimes you have to build it with bits and pieces, a ragtag collection of people and critters and love and elbow grease.

It's not always blood...sometimes it's choice.

Yesterday...

Mum wanted to clear weeds from the dam and plant some curly willows by the pond. I'll tell you about the dam and why she wants the trees there another time. T started at the end of the dam closest to the path through the woods, and Mum, Bird and I wandered through the arse-high grass to the other end of the dam to get plantin'.
First, we had to clear away some weeds that were much larger than the weeds I'm used to, strange plants with fluffy tufts that rained down on us whenever the plants were disturbed - which was often. Umm...any idea what these things are?

This is the view that the trees will enjoy (we hope) when they are grown. Nice, huh?

Even Bird got in on the action. Note the height of this weed - it could take Bird down in a heartbeat of it was feelin' feisty.

While Mum went back to the house for a shovel (we had our hands full of trees and cages on the way down and couldn't manage the shovel, too)(also, better her than me - it's a haul from the house to the pond, and it's only downhill one way - to the pond from the house)(bless her, she brought water back, too...it was hot and sticky work), Bird and I decided that I should pull the giant, white-puff flinging weeds and he would haul them to the randomly placed pile of displaced vegetation. I am still picking seed-fluff things out of my hair.

Bird chose a tree to plant, and Mum got to diggin'.

Dig, Mum, dig!! Good thing we're near a pond - it's been dry enough that the clay soil we enjoy (enjoy being a euphemism for "can't get out of our clothes or from under our nails and it stains everything and not much will grow in it but weeds") can bake hard and be nearly impossible to dig into without copious amounts of explosives.

Bird planted the tree and told it "Grow, little tree, grow."

Mum caged the tree - these curly willows are wild, I tell ya!! OK, really, the cage is so the deer don't eat the poor helpless tree before it can grow into a whomping willow and have a fighting chance against those vicious herbivores.

Eat your heart out, Mike Rowe. I'd like to pause a moment here, to mention that my family is pretty wonderful about my penchant for photographing their odd behavior and posting it on the Internet. Mum even struck this pose twice so I could be certain had the shot - and she knew I would be putting it here! When I said "That is so going on the blog!" she just laughed. Her hands got that way from carefully crumbling the clay over the planting soil - it may be sticky and hard to get off one's hands, but it's also brilliant stuff for holding in moisture.

Meanwhile, Bird and T had to go fetch more line for the weed-eater - there are some gnarly things growing on that dam, in among the grass, and they were tearing up the nylon line on the trimmer. Halfway across the dam, they found a turtle sunning itself in the recently shortened grass. They felt compelled to "rescue" it from it's happy, sunny afternoon - mostly, I suspect, because boys and turtles go hand in hand, and T figured it would be better to move the poor critter so Bird wouldn't keep tormenting it with his sweet curiosity and endless chatter. That pulling back into the shell thing? It isn't afraid - it's trying to shut out the verbal assault! Those are T's hands, by the way. Mine are bigger but less hairy.

Bird was tickled to set his hapless new friend by the pond, and even more tickled when it dove into the water with a plop and swam away, trail marked by tiny bubbles popping along the surface.

T couldn't get the weed-eater to start after refueling, so Bird had to help. Mum and I finished planting the trees along the pond.

I shot this while standing halfway up the stairs to the trail. Those grey pillars at the far shore? The caged trees. Those two white-shirted forms on the left at the far-end of the dam? Mum and T. You wouldn't see them if T hadn't cleared the dam - those weeds were tall!

Later this week, I'll post some more pictures from our Sunday at Mum's - the path from house to pond is lined with all kinds of delightful things, and there's some terrific stuff growing in those woods. Also, I will explain the fifty-pound chocolate rabbit from a prior entry (and that may be one of my shortest entries ever!).