The Builder

.... is he.





And today he turned EIGHT. Eight years ago, I was 21 and my little boy was a squishy beautiful ball of flesh in my arms.



He wants to be a builder (on the days he does not want to be a circus boy, or Spy, or pizza chef...) and fell in love with this kit a while ago, so of course, for the boy that never asks for a thing, it was the perfect gift. It really was! All day from pre-birthday breakfast to the chill of sundown he has been inside and outside building up the first house. Although modified to suit himself. Like all good builders. Especially ones who are eight and can see in their mind's-eye a better way to do things :)









There are always better ways to do EVERYTHING for Isaac. Quicker ways, faster ways, meandering ways, longer ways, backward ways, secret ways..... but chiefly, His Own Way. He has a very sure sense of his self. He tells me that if his body tells him not to do something, he will not. Can not. Like eat mushrooms, or slide down the Death Slide, or go for a walk when his Beano book calls, or zip down a zip wire, or wear anything other than PJ's until lunch time.... He tells me there is no point in my trying to convince him of another way because he is sure his way is right for him. How did it only take him eight years to know himself so well?







Keep on your own path sweet boy. Happy Birthday Isaac!



The building kit was bought from Hawkins, and also is available from Holz Toys. My dh bought it one lunch time last week and a work friend saw it and thought it was the best thing ever, I wish you were my dad! he said to my dh. :lol We ALL had many turns with it today, it is highly addictive. The cool thing is you submerge the bricks in water and the 'cement' melts away so you can build everything up again. A Boy Toy if ever there was one.

Bounce Girl!

She likes to bounce. We like to watch her bounce. We like to bounce with her. She likes to watch us bounce. Yeah, bouncing is GOOD here right now :)

Touching and feeling and doing for the first time is always so exciting, I had forgotten how much so but am treated to seeing it all again through Esmé. And her brothers. It's true, they start each day anew with the good grace and appreciation that adults tend to leave behind somewhere.....



Felix and Esmé are really similar in personality, they giggle at the same things and both adore animals. She lifts her head to bump into his; her way of saying 'kiss'. They both get intrigued by tiny things, like bits of bark, or touching the tip of that cat's tail..... and right now they are really liking bouncing together :)

The cat too. Honestly, he jumped on there himself.... he's odd, but trust me, he was sharply off about one second after the sqeeze and bounce by Felix.







All Three.



Esmé had her first ever ride inthe pushcahir (honestly it's just not practical here, no paths, just very narrow twisty roads so that I am forced to hop into grass verges and our nearest town has narrow tiny streets, so much so I would never contemplate using a buggy... and REALLY? I just LOVE carrying her, what would my arms do without a baby to carrry? Flap around uselessly....? :) That's the truth). But, it was good the other day whilst I did some gardening and she loved it; especially the brothers who fought to push her.

Lambing

We are walking each day to the lambing barn behind our house. Alone in the fields away from the farms and so often we are the only humans around. But this last week it's been busy. I love lambing time! It's so hopeful and deliciously joyful to see Spring lambs. Who can resist their sweet charms...



We have had so many interesting conversations about lambs, ewes, birth, farming, why some lambs and ewes die.... we have quizzed the farmer, she is lovely and encourages us to visit again and again and answers my endless questions: Do ewes ever abandom their lambs, why? How many lambs are the norm? Have you had any unusual births? Lost many lambs? Fostered others out to childless ewes....? In answer to these and many: Sometimes young ewes abandon their lambs, 'teenager ewes' she called them. The most lambs born to a single mother so far has been four. Only two deaths so far, and three fostered and taken by new mothers. Lots of multiple births this year. No powdered milks used (or afforded - they prefer to use another animals milk instead)..... I have many questions :)



Esmé is so enamoured with the lambs she bleats and mimics them constantly and bounces out of my arms in a bid to be off into the fields for a closer view. Felix has been making barns from his wooden blocks and collecting twists of fleece he finds along the lanes.



I managed to find a lamb book for Esmé and though I imagined it 'young' for them, the boys like it too. The pictures are entirely British, portraying that stark landscape of the Yorkshire Moors which I do love.















When we were home again last night after a lamb-walk, the boys were playing restaurants. What's on the menu boys, Lamb? I was joking. A bit sick I know. Nooooo, not today, today is fried mice with snake blood dressing and leopard brains. Loud laughter from Isaac the joker and then from us all, as we in actual fact tucked in to baked potatoes and humous. Still in the circle of everything I imagine Lamb with feature on our table at some point this year.... fried mice? Snake blood dressing? Maybe more sustainable but entirely revolting. I'll leave those delicacies to the cat.....

There's music in the air and the air is everywhere.....

Our favourite Music CD right now is Snack Time by Barenaked Ladies. It is so funny. The first time I heard it I sniggered and giggled and laughed out loud. It sounds like they had fun putting the lyrics together. Plus the tunes are Good. Plus my boys LOVE it. Really. Following on from Dan Zanes Family Dance I wondered if we'd find another kids/adult music cd that we all could listen to without the usual teeth being on edge at yet more sugar coated syrupy 'children music'. This is even better than Dan. Sorry Dan we love you but we're also very fickle.

Buy it, you'll love it. It can be your Summer 2009 driving around album. Plus, I bet you'll end up playing it even when there are no children in the car. My dh said he did that and I gasped, because theat means it really must be good. He's picky about things like that and has a low tolerence level for anything that's even vaguely scented like The Wheels on the Bus. I tried to find something from Snacktime to play here but You Tube supplies only live stuff which isn't so smooth sounding, still, if you are interesed here you go (click over at the right side).

The First Birthday Boy

'First' because his birthday is two weeks before his older brother.... :)

Felix turned SIX!!!! And his day was a blur of movement!



My little Pixie Boy. Like a little bird he still tucks his body neatly next to mine, his hands so narrow and light, giggle-monkey, dreamer of days and nights. I am so GLAD I get to live my life with this small person.







Highlights~
~Painting paper plates for his b'day 'tea'.
~His birthday crown my mum and I made him in shifts right up to the night before his day of Beng Six.
~His anual and expected trail of b'day stars to his gifts and cards ~EARLY inthe morning.
~Two cakes - one chocolate almond, one honey.
~His beloved Nanny here for the day.
~Tiny wrapped gifts to give out to his friends.
~The wearing of Birthday splendour - crown and cape.
~Chocolate, because no birthday is complete without a bit of your very own :)
~Birthday Gifts. This boy LOVES the excitement of anticipating gifts. He has spent much time between Christmas and March talking about his birthday. A LOT of time. He is so funny. And very easily excited. Which is always a Good Thing, because you need that, yk, excitement in little bits every day especially enthusiasm for goodies coming your way :lol

Happy Birthday My Lovely Wee Man!

On raising your head

It must be one of those comic quirks of nature that as Spring finally emerges from the gray palette of winter that the daffodil, and this is perhaps why it is so beloved of those watching out for dark days breaking through to light, is one of the first to raise it's bonny-buttery, yolky yellow sun shine head to the sky and proclaim SPRING!!!! In it's yellow glory. So bright, so vivid, so well, laughable. How can anyone fail to smile at a row of daffodils waving their over-heavy heads, rather gaily and if perhaps not elegant they certainly charm the pants off where others fail. This week and last has been a slow unfurling of us and everything outside seems to mirror us (or is it us-them?) - this lengthening of the spine and tipping back of the head, the in and out breathe catching glimmers of warmth and damp sensual growth. Life is happening and we are in the middle of it, are it, it is us... and so being outdoors has become again a part of our lives, the outdoorness that seemed lost in the endless days of winter but not quite forgotten.



Swinging leisurely hours away on the swing, gazing at tiny white buds above.

Digging in the sand in t-shirts feeling the warmth of that milky first sun.

Walking early in the day rather than late.

Sitting on a sun warmed step (yes it's true! the sun actually warmed it up!)

And enjoying every split second of sweeping away of dead leaves for the compost in the gentle breeze.

The pulling of a heavy child along wheels on sweet new grass.

Smiling and savouring the baby's first experiences of touching and feeling the outdoors.



And the daffodils. The daffodils. Sweet sign and reminder that all life forgotten will be reborn, re nourished, strengthened, returned to us. Endlessly. Repeating, wonderfully. And of our job? Ours is only to be fascinated, in that every-day way and seep ourselves in the undergrowth, the lime-new leaves, the trinkle of the water, the murky, the fresh, the dank, the joyful. And of course the daffodil. Simple, easy, slow, joyful.

Skip skip

Isaac has learned to skip. He mastered it in about two days of picking up his new rope. I bought him a rope a year or two ago and it was tossed aside after a tangled falling over attempt. But now, his new height and that extra year or so of growing into his body has readied him for skipping! It looks so gleeful. I only wish I could remember some rhymes from my own playground skipping games! I know they are in me some where, maybe I need to skip for them to come out? Well er, perhaps I'll give it a go.... Remember any rhymes? Tell me them!)





Felix getting jiggy and er, having fun if not actually skipping. Well he skips but not in time with the rope :)



Can't resist adding this other play but non-skipping pic; as you can see he is deep in the amazon jungle in his one man canoe....

Seaweed and Eat it

... Is the title of this book I just bought. It's not the first time I have read it, I had it on loan from the library ages ago and with wild garlic and nettles and dandelions just shooting up around me (and no doubt sooo much more I can't even identify), I remembered it and thus another book purchase was made (honestly? I couldn't have one of those sidebar bits showing what I am reading or have recently bought to read because it would be ridiculously long). So this book is Good. Buy it. You'll be right in time for the first chapter - Wild Garlic and Nettle, how to identify, and then what culinary uses to put them too. Actually nettle is not a new one for me, this will be my third year of making nettle soup (although no one ate my first year's attempt as I didn't liquidise it, yeah, you can imagine) Isaac saw new nettles peeping through the undergrowth and ran to tell me with glee that soon we would be having nettle soup! He is not a leaf crunching vegan who has never tasted sugar either, um, no, certainly not quite, which just goes to show how tasty nettle soup can be.





Just a few mere steps from my front door we have so much wild garlic that I'd never manage to make a dent in the volume of the stuff no matter how much I picked. Yesterday I persuaded Isaac to help me pick a good few heavy handfuls and I made a garlicky soup loosely based on the recipe in the book, oh so simple:

Wild Garlic Soup
2 large sweet potatoes and 2 large carrots, chopped
2 leeks and 1 onion, chopped
wild garlic leaves (3-4 handfuls)
stock - 2 pints
sea salt and pepper

~fry onions, leeks and veg in oil until soft, then add the washed wild garlic leaves. When they have wilted, add seasoning. Then add the stock and simmer for a while. Liquidise and adjust seasoning.

It feels pretty comic to see the veg beds we tend, weeding and putting our backs into growing these alien vegetables and right there in the hedgerow and waste areas of garden (and yeah, right in my 'lawn', if you could call it a lawn) there are masses of nutritionally superior weeds, growing there without any input or effort on our part. We walk by them constantly on our way to the shop (or car) and buy packaged spinach and salad leaves and spring greens in cellophane and here, right here, under our noses we have wild free superfoods mocking us and waiting patiently to be noticed. My food bills are sky high. It sends my dh into dark moments I think when he contemplates the food that passes into our home and how much we (ok, he) pays for it. I give him lists of items to pick up on his way home and he does, willingly, and he never buys non organic if he sees an organic option, but still, I think he despairs. Isn't everyone right now? So I am claiming back some of that massive outward expenditure of energy both physically (shopping with children is gruelling) and financially. Ok, a few bowls of nettle soup isn't going to snip my food bill in half, but it feels good, I am sure my garden has more than our cultivated little plot in food-worthiness and my quest is to find it! Grandiose I know. But like some famous person said 'a thousand mile journey starts with one step' or something like that. I think it's true. In this case. The soup was last nights meal (made with the tomato bread in my last post). Right now I have little baby potatoes steaming to make a big Nicoise salad for dinner; olives, tuna, sliced eggs, potato..... and the wild bit? Dandelion leaves, freshly picked and for once not stuffed into the guinea pig run, but lying on a chopping board in the kitchen for the humans supper. I might not tell my dh until after he's eaten though :)