A springy Thursday

I asked Phoebe to not pick the daffodils this year. 

The blooms tend to last longer when they're outside (at least when I'm in charge of taking care of cut blossoms). But naturally she picked one of the very first daffodils to bloom and brought it to me. 

A delightful gesture, really. 

I do wish they could live out their happy little lives outdoors, but I appreciate her gifting it to me. And she really didn't understand that this flower was going to blossom into a daffodil because it was white with a yellow center (and not quite open yet). To her credit, she left the yellow daffodils alone!

Today she also gifted me with a dandelion, tucking it into my bag. 

I'm not quite sure what to call this bag. My school bag. My work bag. My laptop bag. My briefcase. 

I picked a small one because I have a habit of amassing stuff to carry around. The size of my bag limits the amount of stuff I can keep inside it. But sometimes I chuckle over what I end up dragging to campus with me anyway: extra outfits for Phoebe, colouring pages from church lessons, a little container of animal crackers.

I wonder if I took that dandelion out or whether it will make its way to campus with me later. 

There used to be a time I would have remembered whether or not I had taken the flower out of my bag.

So perhaps it's still there, a little piece of sunshine, a little emblem of her love. 

And I wonder whether fathers' bags ever look this way. Surely some do.

*****

Last night Zoë asked me to put her hair in curlers before bed. Miriam helped her take them out this morning. They were quite successful; she wants to recurl her hair later.

I put Phoebe's naturally curly hair into braids to keep it from getting so tangled.

She played in the sandbox while the kids did their writing time and was very happy when Alexander was able to join her. Together they dug a very big hole.

Benjamin made a wreath by interlocking pinecones:

We took a little walk around the pond and Phoebe convinced Benjamin to give her a piggyback ride:

The pond had been drained for some reason and the kids wanted to go exploring. Benjamin was wearing brand new shoes, so I asked him to please not get sucked down into the mud. He responded, saying that he'd send Alexander on ahead to see whether or not he'd get sucked down into the mud first. Alexander didn't think that was a great idea, so Zoë took the lead...and then her shoes (flip flops) quickly got sucked off her feet and...so the kids decided to abort their muddy mission (much to my didn't-want-to-do-a-bunch-of-muddy-laundry-today relief).

When we came home we made dinner. Benjamin suggested kale soup (because the bunch of kale we got to feed his bearded dragon was starting to look like it was on its way out) and it was delicious. We followed this recipe by Love and Lemons. Benjamin helped with many steps. Miriam helped by fetching some fresh rosemary from the garden. Phoebe helped by hand-shucking the rosemary, painstakingly dropping one leaf (needle?) at a time into the pot. 

This picture was taken before we added the kale, but I thought it was pretty.

Much to my surprise, we ate the entire thing!

And then we went for a walk. And came home. And the middle kids started a game of kick-the-can with some friends in the cul-de-sac. 

Phoebe wanted to stay outside to play, but I told her she was too little to play outside at nighttime without parental supervision. I also told her that I had "things to do" but instead of doing those things I ended up reading a pile of stories to her (equally important work, I suppose) and then I must have dozed off, I guess.

When I woke up (around 8:00!) Phoebe was gone, but I could hear a lot of happy noise outside still.

I made my way outside and found Benjamin, Zoë, Alexander, and Phoebe playing together on the see-saw (teeter-totter) with a couple of their little friends. Luna (puppy) was there, along with the mom of these little friends (probably making sure no one squashed Phoebe or Avery, the two littlest ones).

She made no judgement about me falling asleep on the couch and my toddler getting on her shoes to go outside...in the dark...to play with her friends (and siblings). "It happens," she shrugged. "It's not like she would have come outside if she hadn't heard us playing in your front yard!"

And that's probably true. 

If all my kids had been inside, Phoebe would have been locked up differently (she can't open the front door, for example; she has to leave through the garage door, which she can open...unless it's locked). But the kids were all outside and the doors was unlocked and...she was just fine. 

"She just wandered over and said, 'My mom fell asleep. Can I play, too?'" this neighbour-mom told me, so she helped facilitate some play (which is always necessary when mixing big and little kids on that see-saw because while it is a ton of fun, the big kids tend to get a little carried away with things, which can get dangerous for the little ones). 

And now I've stayed up far too late writing and editing and trying to find a quote that I really wanted to use but can't quite seem to locate...so that will be my impossible task for tomorrow (I might have to let it go, as much as I'd really like to find it).

While I recognize that we'll likely have some chillier, drizzlier days in the future, we're happy spring has sprung!