Recent Happenings

Where to begin...

Benjamin, Lydia and I have been having a lot of fun playing with a little baby during the days. Her name is London, and it worked out that while her mom has to work, she gets to play with us. Lydia and Benjamin are so cute with her. They are always trying to give her toys and kisses. London does not know what to think about the kisses, but Benjamin thinks they are great!

Then, to add to the fun, we babysat a dog (Gizmo) this past weekend while his owners were enjoying Disneyland. We thought it would be great to see how the kids would interact with a pet, because we have been wanting to get them one. After a couple of bumps at the first, we got along just great, and the kids cried when I had to take Gizmo home. Needless to say, they are going to get a pet soon...stay tuned. (Just probably not one that has to live inside 24/7.) Nope, this post is not done! We had a great Saint Patrick's Day. Lydia insisted that she wanted green eggs, green pancakes, green juice, and green grapes for breakfast. (She has been asking this since last Saint Patrick's Day, so I thought I should make them for her.) Last year the green eggs were left forlornly on plates, because no one would eat them. I added a little more green this year, and am happy to say that they were completely gone.Lydia also wanted a bunny instead of a shamrock pancake, so she ended up with a bunny...the rest of us had shamrocks. Yes, we decked ourselves out in festive green for the holiday. Hope everyone had a great Saint Patrick's Day, and I am going to leave you with a picture of the ingenuity of my children. They figured out this morning that they had enough train track to go around the entry wall. My dirty curtains ended up as the mountain. Toodles!

Rain, Rain...

Today has been a beautiful day in Santa Fe. Beautiful navy blue clouds blanketed the sky all day, and it has been raining intermittently. As I sit here and type I can hear the rain hit the windows and chimney, and it reminds me how wonderful spring is. Spring has always been one of my favorite seasons. There is something amazing about the waking of the earth, the first buds to appear on the trees, and the rain. I don't know that I have ever explained the reason why I titled my blog the way I did. I can remember when I was in high school, and my older brother had to memorize poetry. I would listen to he and my mom recite poetry back and forth, and fell in love with a poem by E.E. Cummings entitled "in Just":

in Just-
spring when the world is mud-
luscious the little
lame balloonman
whistles far and wee
and eddieandbill come
running from marbles and
piracies and it's
spring
when the world is puddle-wonderful
the queer
old balloonman whistles
far and wee
and bettyandisbel come dancing
from hop-scotch and jump-rope and
it's
spring
and
the
goat-footed
balloonMan whistles
far
and
wee

I absolutely love how he explains the world of spring from the point of a child. It's so innocent, breathless, rushed (I love how the names are ran together, in the breathless way an excited child would talk). There is something magical in the way he describes the world as "mud-lucious" and "puddle-wonderful." That is the way I like to think of my world of mommy-hood: magical, mud-lucious and puddle-wonderful. It isn't always perfect, but at the end of the day when I think of the many fun things we were able to do, I am grateful that I get a moment to glimpse life through the eyes of my children.

For the love of mud!

So my kids absolutley love mud. They see it, and, most definitely, it will be tracked in. It also helps that because of all the snow that is slowly melting in our back yard, we have a literal bog/pond surrounded by glorious heaps of mud (i.e. mud pies and castles). Today was no exception. Both kids came in looking like this... Lydia had already headed into the shower, so we did not get a picture of her in all her muddy finery, but here is the muddy finery of both laying in its usual spot by the back door while I ushered them to the shower...
I also thank heaven every day because I have hard floors. Could you imagine trying to clean this up every day on carpet?
I am so lucky that my kids love to play outside and are very content with using their imaginations to help in the entertainment department. Now if I could just get them to play in the mud without getting it all over themselves, that would be helpful to cut down on the load of laundry I do every night when they are finished playing.