You know that old saw about a room full of monkeys with typewriters producing the next Great American Novel? Leave me snapping away with a digital camera for long enough and I’m bound to produce something like this:
(from southern Maine the weekend of July 24th, 2012, just after a torrential downpour)
Headed home straight from dinner into a giant deluge. Stopped at the Kennebunk rest area with storm clouds to the east and sunshine to the west just as the rain was petering out. Ran in for a quick diaper and pajama change for Brady and some coffee for me. Came out to this double beauty and lots of touristy gawkers. Lovely ending to a fantastic weekend with family and friends in Maine.
Me, that John Deere tractor and trailer to the right, a bow saw, a pruning saw, a pole saw, and 10 months. That’s what it took to clean up the consequences of last October’s snowpocalypse. The mound to the left of the tractor is the output of all that work, and the second photo is one of the more painful examples of how much damage was done, especially to our apple trees. Fortunately we have many of them, but as you can see this one lost 1/3 of its main trunk, and about the same amount of its upper foliage.
Susan tried to convince me to get a chainsaw after a couple of months of seeing how much work was involved, but I need my cardio and exercise, and derive a fair bit of satisfaction in this kind of work. I’m happy to more or less be finished though – everything’s cleared up aside from a few branches too high up for me to get at with the pole saw and too difficult to climb to, and a few that we hope will survive even if they don’t look like it.
In the first example of what’s sure to become an annual tradition, Brady gets a Spring haircut:
Brady’s first two works of art, sent home from daycare with him last week:
The magnificent black flowers that bloom each Spring are out. Sadly a little mishap with Soolin’s tail means we have only one to admire, but as you can see it’s gorgeous.
It’s been clear for quite a while that Brady understands a lot of what he hears. On a whim I put this to the test this Sunday. He was taking a bath and playing with his toys. His current favorite bathtoy is the bottle his eye infection medication came in. He knows it’s called ‘bottle’ (that’s ‘baba’ to him), and he likes to fill it with water by submerging it then dumping it out. He seems to have a similarly impish sense of humor to my own, and will try to pour the water on me (always good for a giggle), or out of the tub if he’s bored or notices I have stopped paying attention to him. Anyway Sunday I asked him if he could ‘fill your bottle with water, then pour it on your hand?’ and was astounded when he did precisely that, twice, while looking at me with a quizzical expression, which I took to mean something like ‘ok yeah, but why, what does this mean, Dad? What’s the significance, and why are you laughing? Did you just trick me somehow?’ I told him it would help him clean his dirty hands, which caused him to do the rub hands/fingers together motions he does when we ask him to clean his hands. Oh, the mysteries of cognition. I LOVE this period of development in kids.
Soolin with her Spring haircut. Truth is they took a lot more off than I asked for, but she looks cute all the same:
I got the pair of pants in this photo as a gift for Christmas at some point during college, and for many years they were my favorite pair of pants. At some point when I was in Maine the pocket ripped and I transitioned them to spring/fall yard work pants. Last weekend I tore the knee of them kneeling down, and concluded they’ve finally hit the end of the road. 21+ years ain’t bad for a pair of pants that aren’t even denim.
Heh. So my Dad came to visit for the weekend, and spent time coddling the toddler, and yet somehow we took exactly no pictures of him. How that was managed I have no idea, we even talked about needing to do it a couple of times. This post will have to suffice as the record of the visit. Brady was his usual little charmer. I loved watching him interact with Dad – he’d go over and test his theorems on him, like for example ‘da, wat dis!’ (holding up a toilet paper roll to me, say). ‘Toilet Paper roll!’ I’d tell him, at which point Brady would trundle over to Dad and hold it up and say ‘dis?’
I love this stage of development.
We didn’t do too much during the visit, a combination of the fact that Dad was still recovering from Australian Jet Lag and Susan and I are like a decade of recovering from ‘we’re parents of a toddler, and have 3 acres of land to tend to.’ That by way of saying, Dad slept a lot, and I had a bunch of chores, including mowing 1/3 of the lawn and finishing the frame for the enclosure on the new chicken coop and the roof and nesting box for the minicoop. Susan had garden work.
Dad did get to spend some time with Susan and Brady in Northampton, including lunch and the requisite shopping at the coop, which all seemed to enjoy, so at least we managed to do some quasi entertaining, even if I was stuck at work. Oh, and Dad and I took Brady to a playground on Sunday for a little sliding and swinging action. So – despite our various inadequacies as entertainers we’re still really glad he came, and after he left we swore to do better next time.
There’s one little coda, which is that Dad forgot his cellphone, and it was all I could do to resist the urge to prank it up, but I shipped it back to him intact with nary a bit of tinkering by me 😉
Dave's Place/Metamusing 