More parties!

Check out the nest in my Abelia! I saw all this ratty-looking stuff hanging out of the pot and pulled it out, suspecting mice. FORTUNATELY I was gentle enough that the nest stayed in tact. Inside are the most beautiful sugar pink eggs you have ever seen. I tried to place it right back in the bush in the same spot and leave it alone (just a few peaks now and again), but sadly, I don't know that there is a bird taking care of the nest. I've never seen one come and go. I hope I didn't cause it to be abandoned. I wonder if they are hummingbird eggs, they are very small and look just like candy eggs!

 

 

April started with the big crawfish boil. Our friend Andree, from Baton Rouge, went to high school with one of our neighbors, Stefan, whom James met during the big attempt to close Barton Hills. The two of them wanted to do a real Louisiana crawfish boil and I offered our yard since we had the most space. So we each invited several families to come, and it ended up being a neat blend of neighbors and friends, and we all had a blast. The weather was perfect (as it has been all spring!), mild in the 70s and wonderful. Sophie was completely entranced by the HUGE live crawfish which Stefan had ordered from his "dealer" who brought them across state lines. The kids were freaked out that they'd bit Sophie, but I knew she'd hold her own (BTW, Sophie has since killed a BIRD. She's killed lizards and cockroaches, but a BIRD is even more impressive. And just yesterday, she got in a fight with a fat Pomeranian that looked almost exactly like Cromwell. She would have KILLED that dog if we hadn't pulled her away. She started out seeming sweet and calm -- this is the slow devolution of all creatures that seems to be highly correlated to living in our house).

Hanging around the boiler...

 

Some kid lined up all these crawfish shells into a wall of horror -- reminds me of the wall of skulls at Chichen Itza.

I think there were 50 kids in our yard that day, playing in the treefort, playing on the roller coaster, the older kids playing baseball, torturing the crawfish, and of course getting naked and having a parade. It was fun to see.

 

Soon after, we went to Dallas to see Nani's painting in the Texas Visual Arts Association juried show.Hers, "Mina's Dip in the Pool" was one of fifty selected from five states out of 800+ entries. Pretty great! It also had prominent placement in the very professional-looking gallery and was selected to have a flower sculpture placed by it (the flowers were supposed to relate to the paintings and they did a great job).

This is Louis's Lego "Walkie Talkie" -- he's starting to get a little obsessed with Legos. He built one and I thoughtlessly dismantled it -- we paid for that. My dad and I tried to rebuild it to his specifications for several hours and finally it was to his satisfaction, so we duct-taped it so we didn't have to go through that pain again. Most of the second year of his life was spent screeching in frustration -- now that he talks and his abilities are so much greater, its much MUCH less, but he still screeches in frustration when his creations don't come out right (Lego or otherwise).

Big news for Louis is that we are re-doing his room -- and we put away his crib/toddler bed. It's hard to believe that, 5 years later, both our babies are done with that charming yellow crib that my mom, dad, and James picked up from Craigslist in Los Angeles (and James says mom bargained down the original owners -- think I got the crib and dresser/changing table, in great condition for something like $200). In any case, it's an ongoing process, but we started with bunk beds, which Louis was REALLY excited about. He is getting more and more interesting and cuter by the day -- he went to his piggy bank and offered me a few quarters to pay for the bunk beds, and was asking daily when they would arrive. Rosemary of course claimed the top bunk, and the kids have been sleeping together in his room for weeks now --mostly without too much disruption to their sleep (he does wake her up earlier than she'd like, but even in separate rooms he goes into her room and wakes her up in the morning). Next, we're installing new closet shelving and drawers in his closet, getting rid of the dresser/changing table, installing sconces, getting a new rug, and repainting everything (I just don't seem to get the color in his room right). Results to come at end of June.

Louis has a few funny new quirks -- one is that he is exceedingly modest. I have NO idea where he gets this, even his dad isn't THAT modest. We went wading in a creek with two little friends of his, and they both immediately stripped down. But Louis was having none of it -- he wouldn't let me take off his pants, even though he had one boxers, or even  his shirt. He was really serious about it too. I realized then that the reason he doesn't wear his leotard in ballet isn't because of the teacher's hang up about him being there (which is what I thought -- she's a little weird about it) but because he won't let anyone change him. And when we were camping the other weekend I changed him into his moose foot pajamas, as it was a COLD night, and he immediately said, "I don't want anyone to see me in my moose pajamas." Weird! 

Also, he has regularly been telling me that he doesn't want to be a dad. He only wants to be a kid. He asked me if Life Ki Do helps you grow up (I don't know why he made this association), and I said yes, and he said, "I don't want to grow up, I don't want to be a dad." Guess he's figured out how much work it is!

Next it was time for a long-awaited visit from Grandma Mary and Grandpa Dan. We had a wonderful visit -- one of our best days was a trip to Fredericksburg. We played hookey and kept the kids out of school (which won't be happening next year, apparently, when Rosemary starts Kindergarten) and went there for a German lunch, a wander around the town and the square, and a stop on the way home at Wildseed Wildflower farms. Spectacular, I've never seen anything like it except on the "Wizard of Oz". Clearly it was meant to be -- she was wearing a poppy dress that Mary bought her in Chicago.

 

Two-toned red and blue bluebonnets! Have you ever seen such a sight? 

 

It would be hard to distinguish this photo from an Impressionist painting

Have you ever  seen so many Larkspur?

The weekend brought even more adventures as we went on a foraging tour that I arranged with Amy Crowell (a former St. Mark's mom who went and bought a strawberry farm and moved to Wimberly) in Wimberly. Amy taught us, and several of our preschool friends, about the native edible plants in the area and the kids -- especially the older girls, really had a blast. We all especially enjoyed the Wood Sorrel (Oxalis) and the Cucumber Plant. Unfortunately we had a bit of a mishap after the foraging tour was over -- our friend's son Beck, who is Louis and Miles's age, was climbing on a water feature in the park with his older brothers, and fell off a 6 foot waterfall. He hit is mouth and knocked out his two front teeth. There was a lot of blood. We learned not to wait for the ambulance in Wimberly -- they took 20 minutes to arrive, and then didn't do anything (his mother and her sister drove to Dell Children's after all that). Poor poor Beck -- he was really brave, I'm sure it hurt a LOT, and I felt equally bad for his mother. Fortunately they were baby teeth, and he had no concussion. After they left for Dell, we all went wading down the stream in a new place Amy showed us, since Blue Hole wasn't yet open. 

 

As always, we eat very well when the Spindlers come to town.  We stopped by the Mueller Farmer's market on Sunday and bought fresh Gulf shrimp and oysters, which James grilled on our new fire grill and we had with an amazing spicy lime sauce and butter BBQ sauce he made. What a meal-- though we hardly got any oysters as the kids ate so many!