Mulch, mud, bruises and bears

Caleb crossed the final frontier today:  he went to church without a diaper on.  I loaded him down with four sets of extra pants in his bag *just in case* but was somewhat surprised to collect him from the nursery wearing the original pants!  The nursery worker said he went for her no problem and "even got most of it in the potty."  Sweet success!

Maybe this experience will help him recover from the trauma of the planned fire drill two weeks ago.  Here he is with his classmates, being wheeled out in an evacuation crib:

I think they definitely could've fit another dozen babies in there, don't you?  The other nursery room also came out with a cribfull so it was a regular baby parade.  I don't think the little ones quite appreciated the adorableness of it, what with the sudden blaring alarms and all.

Being the rebellious and stubbornly contrary homeschooler I am, we school year-round.  We have about a month left for 3rd grade and kindergarten.

Here are the girls playing with math toys.

Sadly for Caleb, he was not invited to participate.

He's better at cars.

"Little Guys Rule."

Indeed.  Here he is at the park, getting ready for a serious ride.





Oh wait, that's not him.  Here he is:

Here's a typical day of frustrating chaos educational lesson with Lizzy scribbling on Jeddy's work, Caleb with his hand down Lizzy's back, Ada trying to make everyone behave, and Jeddy inexplicably distracted from his division problems.





The weather has been great for waiting out Jed's piano lessons at the park.

This park has it all--slides, swings, monkey bars... and mulch.

Look what's growing in the (former) garden!

If this were my childhood, my mother would probably say they're blooming idiots, but we modern moms can't say such politically incorrect things.

The mud pit really adds to our property value, at least in the eyes of the neighborhood kids.  I wonder how the neighbors feel about their kids coming home from our house consistently covered in dirt.  We had one child knock on the door and ask, "Can we play in your sandbox?"

Here's Lizzy this week.  I couldn't get a good picture of Caleb's black eye.

In the space of about four days, Lizzy dove headfirst behind the couch (lump over right eye) and fell onto the metal strip under the front door (left eye); and Caleb got pulled into the coffee table by Lizzy (lump on left side of his head), fell down the stairs again (forehead bruise--thankful not broken neck), fell into the corner of a plastic set of drawers (black eye), and fell off the couch onto the coffee table (lump on right side of the head).


I sure wish I had something to do around here.

Playing with counting bears.  Caleb stuffs them in a tube.

Lizzy sorts them.

And Ada creates a segregated bus.

Oh dear.  

(Wouldn't racism get more ridiculously complicated if we humans came in four distinct colors?  Four water fountains, four bus sections.... Maybe Ada's bus is more along the lines of the caste system: yellow bears are Brahmins, red are warriors, green are farmers, blue are laborers.  I guess the untouchables aren't allowed on the bus.  They'd be the bears that Caleb slobbered on.)

Here's hoping the next post has fewer bruises and prejudiced bears.