Little things

Last week we heard of two young mothers with advanced cancer. Neither of them is hopeless, but they have some difficult days ahead. And then, I have been thinking more about the Syrian refugees, and the mothers all over the world whose immense love for their children can't keep them from horror or even give them a safe place to sleep at night. 

I am so ridiculously lucky. The wild luxury of an ordinary life.  

These are ordinary pictures. Mostly from my phone, which is why I haven't posted them. But they are ordinary little pictures of the lovely little people in our life. 

Mom bought Elsie a Child's Book of Cozy Poems by Cyndy Szekeres. She spent one whole morning on the sofa, flipping through it and showing me the best parts.

On the way home from one of our walks. As we were walking along, Elsie said "I want to push the stroller up the hill by myself, so you will have to help me." She is definitely the spoiled youngest. 

These sheep have already moved on to the next farm

Pigs and drop apples

Orianna doing homework with Abilene. "She is so cute! I can't even concentrate!"

Gilbert has loved learning

A goose egged Elsie

I do love sheep

This was one day's magazine haul. Tis the season!

Elsie thought Dogbert was hilarious.

Playing with Play-doh from California cousins

Gilbert's creations

Gilbert met this sweet dog at the new Sierra Trading Post in Burlington. STP is a store I love more online than in store. 

Elsie and Hoyt's lunch table. And the bulk of the mess is my daughters. Sigh.

Hoyt loves cooking up tractors

Elsie, being a turtle. "Hoyt, you put the book on my back." She is really into pretending she is an animal. Her favorite is a puppy. She crawled around an Old Navy store last week until she started getting in people's way and I told her to get up. 

Dinosaurs

Eating carpet strings

 

Dressed up turkey's outside the pre-K room while I was walking the halls after hours. They are quite spectacular. I am going to assume there was a lot of parental or teacher guidance on these. Because they look better than the older grade's turkeys. 

An Elsie self portrait. Tutu on leather. 

Beautiful November

Justin is home from Colorado. A week and a half ago. Which is lovely. The morning he came home, I had a line of a poem running through my mind--"Home is the hunter, home from the hill" but after googling to see what the rest of it was, I found out that that is apparently about death. So I gave up on being poetic about it. 

I remember being in Alaska and hearing one of our good friends saying that it was actually hard when her husband came off the North slope for his two weeks off of his two week on/two week off work cycle because it meant she had to readjust her schedule completely. I remember thinking how terrible that was and that we would never live like that because I never wanted to have my husband being home be a disruption. (I also once declared that I thought it was selfish that someone only had one child because she hated childbirth so much. Foolish, foolish me. I was quite obnoxious and know-it-all-ish. I blush for my young self.) And now, here we are, after five months of Justin not being home during the week and his being home now has thrown my vague schedule for a loop. There is adjustment. 

My foolish young ideals are turning over in their grave at me. 

But it is lovely to have him home. My hunter. Home from his mountains. 

Looking up towards Owen and Ashley's

I always think of November as just a time filler between gorgeous colors and brilliant snow. Drab, dreary, and ugly. But this year. it is beautiful. 

Or maybe we just have had more sunshine lately.

I took Gilbert to Burlington this Monday. We were driving along when I saw a cloud of snow geese. I only had my phone, and snow geese are so hard to see against the sky.

But isn't that a lovely morning light? November light just seems so.... honest some how. 

Grainy geese on Lake Champlain

And on the way home, there were even more snow geese. The sky was full of geese and honking. 

We have just been listening to "On the Shores of Silver Lake" by Laura Ingalls Wilder and they often talk about the sky being full of birds during migration times the first year they were there. 

And then, this sunset. 

Teensy moon

Homeward bound

Poinsettia & Her Family

If someone forced me to choose a favorite children's book, I would have to choose this one. (I can just see someone using force to get us to confess our favorite kids books...) At least right now. There are so many thousands of lovely kids books, but this one... I identify with it so much. The pictures are cute. Every time I read it, I enjoy it. It isn't too wordy, the kids love it, and the words are so evocative of my life, growing up in a small house with a big family. 

I love this book. 

Felicia Bond is a possibly familiar name to you, due to her success (along with Laura Numerof) with the Give a mouse a cookie and Give a pig a pancake and give a moose a muffin books. This book was from before her fame. But, oh! If it was up to me, this book would have made her famous. 

The book starts with 

"Poinsetta had six brothers and sisters, a mother and a father." They all live together in their fine old house.

One day, Poinsetta gets her favorite library book out of the library and heads home for the red leather window seat, her favorite spot for reading. She has a cherry tart in her pocket and eagerly anticipates precisely how buttery the sun will feel on her skin as she sits in the window seat reading her book and eating her tart.

(See!?!?! How could I not love this little pig already?)

But when she gets to the window seat, it is full of her brother napping. Her next two favorite spots are full of siblings too. After all that anticipating, she gets mad.  

She is "sent to bed early that night for general misbehavior." See how mad she is in that picture of her sleeping? I can remember that feeling of "No one understands me or cares about me and I am mad and I am going to stay mad for a long time." 

The next day, her father announces it is time to look for another house, since their fine old house is just too small. While they all go off to look for a house, Poinsettia hides in the pachysandra bush. 

She has the house to herself all day, while her family is out looking. "I'm a pig in bliss," she gurgled. 

Oh the peace and delight of having everything to yourself, with no one to quibble with you. Especially after sharing continually with eight other people.

But as the day stretches on, she gets lonely. When she finds a picture of her family, she bursts into tears--"This is all I have left of my family!" Despite all the fighting and arguing my siblings and I did, we did miss each other terribly every time we were apart. Weeping and wailing as every plane lifted off for Alaska. (Or car left for North Dakota or Wyoming.)

Then her family, that had been stuck in the snow, comes back for a joyous reunion. 

But Poinsettia, like all great heroines, does not capitulate totally to being a perfect child. Her brother Julius tells her "I don't know why we didn't notice right away you were missing. The car was too peaceful." He gets a well deserved pinch.

And then, the family is as together as nine pigs can be...

In their fine old house. 

Isn't that a lovely winter sunset? Sigh. I love this book.