Weekending

Unlike last weekend, this weekend we stuck closer to home and tried to catch up on all the chores we had neglected during the previous weekend's adventures: doing laundry, rearranging furniture, doing more laundry, gardening--and doing even more laundry. Turns out, trying to do any one of these things with two children in the house takes three times as long as with one child. Someone explain to me the math behind that.

Anyway, the trickiest part was the gardening. Our season here is so short that unless you get your garden planted by the May Long Weekend, you risk not having any harvest, and we were already a week behind. So all hands were needed in the fields--including Colin's. We thought we could interest him in picking up sticks and decapitating dandelions, but the only thing he wanted to do was use the push mower--and his father let him! "So what if he loses a couple of toes, if it keeps him occupied for half an hour"--was his defence. Needless to say, we gave up on "gardening as a family" after this.

Still, we had a few successes. The vegetables got planted before they wilted from neglect. The tomatoes did not get destroyed by last night's near-freezing temperatures. And we finally found a formula for getting Colin to go to bed without any fuss: We took him to the swimming pool for two hours in the morning and to the playground for two hours in the evening. Sadly, we never got both boys to sleep at the same time, so Kevin and I are as exhausted as ever. Any one know the magic formula for coordinating nap times?

This weekend I was loving:

My super-cute yard man, who mows and weeds and moves heavy things even though he hates gardening.

My impish two-year-old, even if he makes it a challenge to get both boys out of the house before noon.

Watching that two year old scale new mountains...

... then promptly falling asleep.

Waking up to the coos of Ian Archer and the birds outside my bedroom window--even if both start the day at 3:00 a.m.