Yesterday's Escapade

So on Monday night, Raph had a hockey game. Apparently he hasn't play hockey very recently because when we was packing up his gear he found a mouse nest with three itty bitty baby mice. Now let me be clear about how I feel about mice: I don't like em. I spend a lot of energy every summer trapping red squirrels, chipmunks, voles, and mice and relocating them across bodies of water so they don't come back. I am thrilled every year when I see the short-tailed weasel come back (cause they take care of the problem!) or a hawk circling above. Still, when these little babes became our problem, I wasn't prepared to be responsible for their demise. At first we put them in a basket back in the shed hoping the mom would come back to them (so that I could then trap them in a few months and relocate them.) This didn't seem to happen, however, and it was pretty chilly out there, so we brought them in. Raph tried to feed them out of the kids' medicine syringe, but they weren't really going for it. I spent a little time yesterday morning reading what needs to be done to keep baby mice alive. I was really unprepared to buy special formula, to massage their bellies so they could go to the bathroom, or to get up with them every hour. (Did I mention here how this would lead to me trapping them later this summer?) And yet, could I let the little things die right in front of the kids' eyes? No. I worried about it all morning, and then it occured to me to call the Center for Wildlife in York. So I did and amazingly, they took them! They were even excited about it! They had another mama mouse with babies about the same age. I couldn't believe it! And I don't even have to trap them later this summer!

Signs Easter Happened

progress on the housebed snuggles
new friends


Yummy tofu scramble
beautiful artwork
the grass we grew for the bunny going into our smoothies!
and a whole lot of fort-building.

Hudson Cash Beal

Before the trip to DC with the exchange students (where I lost my camera battery, card reader and a memory card full of pictures:() I got to see my brother and his family, including my new nephew, Hudson Cash Beal. What a little cutie. Luckily I still had the pictures on the memory card that was in the camera, so i didn't lose all of them, but I lost a lot.


Here I am making the whole family laugh with my behind the camera antics.And of course the boys were very interested in Hudson.

They spent a little time teaching Kaylee how to be a big sibling. You start by being nice.

Then you harass the crap out of a little sibling.
She'll learn fast, I'm sure.

Into Everything

This little guy had (in addition to the broken leg) a bloody lip and a bloody nose this week. Last week he climbed out of and fell out of his crib - with a broken leg. He is into EVERYTHING. But boy is he cute. His language is absolutely adorable. He says almost everything in a mono-syllabic overly emphasized way. "Ploy! COME. BACK. HERE. NOW!" "Water. Get it!" He slept especially poorly the night before last and yesterday I was trying to talk to him about it. I said, "Remick, you were screaming at me all night long and mommy didn't like it!" His response, with a smile, "Mommy! Out!" He totally understood what I was saying and totally knew he had been screaming unneccesarily that night. I said I didn't want him to do that again. He said, "awight, I won't." And amazingly, that worked. He gets the cast off this week and he is so excited to go swimming like big brother, who has been taking swimming lessons. He is so cute.

Recovery

Well, it's taken me all week to recover from a trip to DC last weekend with 20 exchange students. It was lots of fun, but lots of work too, and I came home minus my camera battery, battery charger, and card reader. I in fact took about three pictures in DC with my phone because I left the battery at the hotel after exhausting it taking pictures of my new nephew, Hudson Cash Beal, who I had the pleasure of meeting on Friday. So tiny and adorable! As soon as I find a card reader, I'll post some lovelies of him.

So any way, I thought I post a few of Matty and Rudy from two weeks ago that were sweet. I'm so glad they seem to be "settling" around here, and not trying to disperse like the rest of the Mattys:)

A sequence

In the span of one minute my guy can give me all of this:



This kid is completely adorable and exhausting in the same breath. He is really into flying (jumping from one couch to the other over and over again with accompanying noise), playing pirates (which includes a lot of swords), building forts (inside and out), eating, eating, and eating (if someone else has food, he should too. just ask him. this irritates Raph to no end), digging roads in the compost pile (I think I might have mentioned the impact this has had on the laundry load), and swimming (major improvement over his first lesson which involved encouragement, bribery, threats) He's still obsessed with Lightning McQueen, though it's not really genuine any more. He is instantly attracted to anything "Lightning" but doesn't really play with them that much any more. He whines a lot despite my best efforts to ignore it. He likes his garden a lot, but might seriously not see anything grow because he insists on raking it every day. He insists on dressing himself every morning, often the second he gets out of bed and will absolutely not let me make suggestions as to what goes together. And speaking of "absolutely" - this is his new favorite word. As in, "This fleece (size 12-24 month) will absolutely fit me."

Until the next time

We had a little going away party for Abram, Ny and the kids this weekend. I can't believe they are really moving to Thailand. I would LOVE to visit them, so I hope that could be in the picture! But I am genuinely worried that we'll never see them again. More of the great Matty dispersal. We will definitely miss them.

Poor Ploy is already learning to run away from the boys, which I'm sure she'll be doing a lot of in her life! Remick is just the first of many to follow Ploy around!



Look at this pile of cuties!

Kinda the Same, but different...

Five years ago today, I woke up to a morning like this:and today, we certainly lacked the sunshine, but we definitely had snow:

And today, I got to wake up in an almost finished room in my own house and then shortly thereafter see these two crazies too - with bad bed head and stickers on their noses and all sorts of silliness.

But five years ago, our day was different. We gathered under a pine tree in the snow surrounded by our friends and family and said vows. Five years ago today Raph and I forged a super-human-life-bond (as it said on our wedding invitations).

Our lives have changed so much in five years and sometimes I miss things about our old lives - independence, quiet:), etc., but I never wish I was in it without Raph. Never.