Lovelihood

Late evening light doesn't do these guys justice. Just take my word for it that when I arrived home this evening two lovely botanical specimens were laying about waiting to be photographed.

My parents, here for the week, drove here from California. Had they flown, they likely wouldn't have been able to haul with them the case of wine, the trunkload of carefully stockpiled boardgames for the kids, and the basket of succulents divided from their own plants back home. Perfect for flanking the empty bed on the driveway retaining wall.

Picked up a cute, albeit plastic, build-it-yourself, packed-flat kind of affair of a birdhouse. Heading into winter, though, it may be absolutely the wrong time of year to hang such a thing. But it's so adorable, who can resist forcing The Boy into his shoes so we could traipse outside and hang it from some barren branch in the backyard?

My parents rolled into town with a seeming car-load of grandchild spoiling fodder. All fine and good, because included in the haul was a small case of self-bottled wine. Works for me.

It's a little embarassing that The Boy has slept for three and a half years in a bed that didn't have a blanket big enough to cover it. That changed today when I made good on his imposed deadline, removing the mishmash of crib-sized blankets piled up on the bed, and laying out the new quilt to surprise him when he came home from school. Six months of work, done.

We're in the midst of waging an all-out assault on diaper-wearing here. It had been a half-hearted affair starting when we first brought out the old potty ages ago. And half-heartedness, when it comes to this matter, is a set-up for utter failure, as we've learned for a second time now. But, also for a second time, all it takes to kick us into honest-to-goodness potty-training mode is to tack up a piece of cardstock to serve as a sticker (ahem, incentive) receptacle.

We route the daily walk to school so that it takes us past the snail bush (you know, the shrubbery that has all those snails sliming up its greenery). I'm pretty thoroughly grossed out by these things and their bloated, shell-less counterparts. But I do appreciate when they can content themselves on a botanical perch rather than litter themselves underfoot on the sidewalk.