21/52: Hands on Your Hips

A random assortment for this week - Peter makes it harder and harder for me to get the camera out because he WANTS it, precious!

My mom planted leeks in the fall and we noticed a few weeks ago that they had started growing scapes. Well, one of them ended up taller than John Paul! I was going to throw them on the grill, per this post but then... The grill caught fire. So dinner ended up in the oven, and I roasted them instead and they were DELICIOUS! I think we're going to plant leeks forever and always and let some of them go past harvest on purpose because these were so yummy!

Andrew was trimming the scraggly forsythia bushes when he found a robin's nest in one of them - I told him to move it and see if they could find it, but he felt badly because it had an egg in it and we already know that predators got at least *one* brood because Cecilia found a poor dead baby robin and its shell out by the fire pit (how sad is that? We buried it, mostly so they wouldn't touch it...). So he trimmed everywhere around it, and then we looked later and there were two eggs! And every day there's been another - we're up to four!

Annoyingly though, we have to lift the kids up to see the nest because it's so high... And they weigh a lot! I almost got a picture of Elizabeth's look of wonderment, but the camera settings were off and it got messed up. So I tried to get *another* picture of her but she kept putting her hands in her mouth. "Elizabeth, put your hands on your hips!" "What are my hips?" Hence this picture, which I love :)

Cecilia's either outside being totally wild or indoors reading - we're starting to fall into our usual rhythm of mornings outdoors, lunch/quiet time indoors, and back outside for the late afternoon & evening. Still trying to figure out where cleaning things up actually fits in there, since usually we do a blitz before I cook dinner, but these days they're outside during that time and I don't want to bring them in! Maybe pre-nap cleaning? I don't know... Changing seasons always makes a mess before it gets better and we settle completely into the new rhythm of things.

Peter spends nearly all of his indoor time being read to. He is obsessed with books, and has a cubby full of his favorite board books, which all end up strewn across the floor by the end of the day. This dinosaur book with the creepy googly eyes keeps making its way to a giveaway pile and then coming right back out because they love it, who knows why...