I love the way ferns so elegantly uncurl themselves in the spring.  After several cool, dark, wet weeks, suddenly we’ve had a string of warm days and sunshine, and the plants are exploding from bud to bloom and leaves are sprouting all over the place.  We’ve pulled out the sunscreen bottles and sun hats and sandals.  The Banana, not a fan of bugs, has continued to wear several protective layers of winter clothing to protect from bug bites.  She often ponders why God would ever have created mosquitos.

The reoccurring theme song of this Mother’s Day was:  Happy Mother’s Day to You!  You live in a Zoo!  Throughout the day it was boisterously sung by all the kidlets to the tune of “Happy Birthday,” and let me tell you, I really did feel like I was living in a zoo.

We ended up skipping the first service of church because everyone was dead asleep in the morning and we didn’t think it was worth the grumpy rush that would have to happen to get everyone there on time.  After Sunday School the kidlets coaxed us downstairs for scones (The Banana even enlisted the help of her Sunday School teacher to convince us to go down for treats.)

We came home for a quick lunch, and a change of clothes into my choir dress for me, and then the three big kidlets and I were off to my afternoon choir concerts at Sacred Heart Music Center.  I really wanted them to come to my concert, and Dr. Peds too, although we just couldn’t figure out what to do with Mr. Trouble on Feet, who definitely would have been trouble during a two hour concert.  So, we left the dad and the toddler home to take a stain the deck and take a nap (respectively, of course).  The kidlets made for a stellar audience, especially since they sat by themselves together, amazingly without any fighting or squabbling or yelping of any sort.  It was a gift, I tell you!  I loved hearing their thoughts about the very diverse selection of music at this concert.  We were performing with a Native American women’s drumming group and a wonderfully accomplished percussion ensemble, so there was a ton of stuff going on at the concert and a ton of different interesting instruments.

Because we were starving after the concert, we went out to eat supper and then came home to pick up the house, which was a catastrophe.  It was a good day:  My kids gave me smartwool sock;, I got lots of snuggles and loves; I ate ice cream, and Dr. Peds drove home from supper using my route, not his.  (He takes the strangest path when he drives.)

• Out of the blue I had a random knock at the door this week, and it was the florist from around the corner with a beautiful bouquet of mixed flowers.  I’ve been admiring the outside of that floral shop for months every time I drive past it, and these flowers are probably some of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen:  enormous gerber daisies, tulips (my very favorite) a rose, and some delicate purple and pink flowers that I don’t really know anything about but love to look at. The very best thing are these wonderful twigs sticking out the top that are the perfect touch.  I put the flowers next to the window by the piano and I have been enjoying them all week while I’m teaching.
• The amazing bouquet is quite a contrast to the well-loved but a bit soggy “ditch flowers” that YaYa and I collected on a walk up the road on Saturday afternoon.
• In other flower news, the rhododendron bush that we planted on the corner of our house last year is blooming!  I have fallen in love with rhododendron bushes since we moved here several years ago.  They are very popular around here because deer do not eat them, and we have herds and herds of urban deer in our neighborhood.  Every neighborhood has them actually.  Gigantic, bright purple flowers (not munched on by deer)  loaded onto a bush that blooms in the very early spring?  Yes, please!  My little bush makes me very happy.  I hope it grows lots.
• Because of a dangling branch that broke off on a windy day recently, we needed to call (a very expensive) tree trimming service to do some pruning on our big ash trees next to the boulevard.  I have a lot of issues pruning pretty much everything.  It really makes me nauseated, even though I KNOW that the tree/bush is better for it in the long run.  I just feel terrible about it every time.  My husband usually sneaks around with pruning sheers when I’m not looking because I tend to get rather upset when I see him hacking away at things in the yard.  It was hard to watch the tree trimmers in their little cherry bucket, but I didn’t have nearly as hard of a time as YaYa, who was extremely angered over the fact that they knocked down the crow’s nest at the top of the tree.  She was so mad about the destruction of avian habitat  that she stomped off to the office and took a two hour nap.
• We signed papers last night for carpenters to start building our floor to ceiling bookshelves in the living room.  SO.  EXCITED.
• We haven’t used it much until now, and some people might think it’s cheesy, but the kidlets are quite taken with the capability to FaceTime dad on his iPhone using various devices here at home.  Even Mr. Trouble on Feet gets very excited.
•  Last night at AWANA the store was open.  Twice a year there is a “store” where kids can cash in their AWANA bucks to buy prizes.  YaYa got a jump rope and a stuffed animal and gave the rest of her AWANA bucks to a little girl who only had but just a few of her own.  She said to me, “It made me happy that she was SO HAPPY to have them.”  I was a happy Mama to hear all about it.  Mr. SP used his AWANA bucks to get something that he really liked.  The Banana was beyond excited to spend her AWANA bucks, and she made them reach as far as she could, picking out a small stuffed animal, a plastic ring, and then as many sugary snacks as possible. She was beyond thrilled with her stash.  Oh, that Banana and her sugary snacks.
• Inside a ziploc bag right here on my desk is the full skeleton of a rodent extracted from owl pellets and reconstructed and then glued to a piece of paper.  I think it’s a mouse.  It came home with YaYa from a field trip a few weeks ago, and it sits on my desk and stares at me, because all things precious that a kidlet doesn’t want anyone else to touch ends up on my desk, since my desk is off limits to everyone.  I’m getting rather fond of the thing.  Having your own personal rodent skeleton is kind of like having a lucky rotten orange:  unique.
• The kidlets declared 64 degrees warm enough to run through the sprinkler, and today they pulled out the “build-your-own-waterworks” box with the babysitter and had fun constructing all sorts of crazy water-spraying contractions out of PVC pipe.  I love that they still enjoy that activity.  Everything is better with a sprinkler running, right?  Well, everything except maybe my water bill, but sometimes an additional water bill is worth the peace of kidlets playing in the sprinkler.

Mr. Trouble on Feet is our most cautious child yet.  He doesn’t climb out of the pack and play.  He doesn’t climb on furniture.  He backs up way, way, way before the stairs actually start and crawls down backwards in a very careful manner.  It took him a LONG time to get up the courage to go down this teensy slide by himself at the park, but now that he has it figured out, he’s incredibly thrilled with himself.  He climbs up and slides down over and over and over.

Thankfully, he’s not attached specifically to one certain blanket, but he does prefer two different kinds of blankets to drag around:  thinner flannel blankets, and also thicker flannel blankets with a little bit of batting in between.  I’m grateful that I have several acceptable versions of each kind, because  he likes to drag one or two or sometimes three or four blankets with him wherever he goes:  inside, outside, in the car.  Wherever he is, Mr. Trouble on Feet appreciates having a blanket close at hand so he can stop what he’s doing and destress a bit by chewing on his favorite corner of soggy material.

As a small child, I had a wonderful wooden steps tool that transitioned from two wooden steps into a pint sized chair by folding the back down and up.  I think my mother might even have the steps tool in her basement.  I have very vivid memories of playing church with this step stool.  I’d turn it into “steps” and stand on the top platform and preach from the pulpit at length.  Then I’d step down, fold the stool up into a seat, and park myself down to be the congregation and loudly sing away for an equally long time.  Repeat and repeat.

On Wednesday morning I came around the corner and found The Banana dressed in a quite fashionable get up that included leggings, a skirt and a shirt all with their own mismatched pattern.  On her feet were ridiculously small plastic high heeled dress up shoes that I have no idea how she can even shove her ginormous feet into, and around her neck was a pink feather boa.  She was standing on our plastic steps tool which has been missing for months.  I have no idea where she found it, but her hip was jutted out to one side and she was tapping her feet in those nasty pink dress up shoes.

“I’m a missionary!” she exclaimed.  And then she began to tell Mr. Trouble on Feet (looking on with rapt admiration) and Brutus the Cat all about the Bible.  ”I’m going to tell you all about JESUS!” she nearly yelled.  The audience’s eyes widened. Tap tap tap went the pink plastic shoes.  She proceeded to preach at length.  Swish went the father boa.  She swung her hips from side to side.  ”Sometimes I even need to tell MYSELF about Jesus.”  Swish went the feather boa in the other direction.

My, oh my.  It will be interesting to see what God does with her.

This is the face you get when you are talking with your husband and discussing that in the next two years or so you might need to think about getting a new minivan.  Mr. Sneaky Pants HATES change and transitions.  He hates getting new clothes.  He hate growing out of old clothes.  He hates substitute teachers.  He hates moving the furniture in our house.  He hates having his daily routine disrupted.  He’s not thrilled about the future prospect of a new mode of family transportation.

In the children’s choir play on Wednesday, YaYa was a very convincing sunglasses salesperson, and Mr. Sneaky Pants was a bully who pushed down an elderly man carrying a sack of groceries and then made a dramatic exit running down the aisle of the church only to be caught by the police.

On Wednesday the kids choir at our church presented their spring play/musical.  YaYa and Mr. Sneaky Pants were involved.  Before leaving the house to pick up YaYa from art club and then dropping both Mr. SP and YaYa off at the church for one last practice before the presentation, I gathered up all the things we needed to take with us and looked over at my son, who truth be told, looked a bit scruffy and sloppy since his last shower had been on Monday.

Me:  Hey, buddy!  Maybe we should quick wet your hair down with this spray bottle of water and comb it before we go.

Mr. SP:  Nah.

Me:  Well, it might be kind of a good idea. Your hair is a little crazy and you are going to be up in front of a lot of people at choir tonight.

Mr. SP:  It’s a terrible idea.

Me:  What’s a terrible idea?

Mr. SP:  Combing my hair is a terrible idea.

Me:  Huh?

Mr. SP:  I’ve been practicing with this hairdo for weeks.  If I change, it’s going to mess EVERYONE up.

Sometimes there’s just no fighting great logic.  I just left the spray bottle on the counter and we jumped in the car.

Last Thursday afternoon I was in the midst of a piano lesson with one of my youngest students, a wide-eyed, very energetic  kindergarten boy who has a passion for all things boy.  He was just starting a new set of books at his lesson, and he was very proud and excited about his new materials.  In this particular new book, composers are introduced.  We talked about what composers do:  create music and write it down on paper.  Then I began conversing with him about two famous composers who lived a along time ago:  Mozart and Beethoven.  We talked about their long, unusual names.  We talked about how they wore different kinds of clothes than we wore today.  We talked about when and where they lived.  We talked about some different kinds of music that they wrote that is still very famous today.  Then I introduced “Ode to Joy,”  a piece that the student was going to learn to play.

Student:  That Beethoven guy, he really wrote that song?

Me:  Yes!  He wrote it a long time ago, hundreds of years, and it is still very famous today.

Student:  Really?

Me:  Yes, it’s part of a big and famous symphony that uses lots of instruments and singers, and our symphony here plays it sometimes too.

Student:  No.  I don’t believe it.  Are you really telling me the truth?

Me:  Oh yes, really.

Student:  I think you might be lying.

Me:  Really, I am not lying.  Beethoven really lived and he really wrote this music.

Student:  How do you know?

Me:  Well, when he wrote the music people went to see him conduct it and hear the music at the concert.

Student:  I think you are making this up.

Me:  Well, you can check with your mom when you get home and look it up on the computer.  I bet you can find a picture of Beethoven, and you can listen to some of the music that he wrote.

Student:  Are you sure he was a real person?  I’m going to have to check with my mom, because I’m just not sure I should believe you.