Monday

Oh, the pretty side of fall!






You know -- when sunshine plays with yellowing leaves of a crab apple tree, when it's cold, but not too cold. Green and gold cold.






Well, a little too cold for October. Just above freezing. You tend to hurry indoors after feeding the animals.

I do hurry, in part because it's the day when Sparrow comes over early in the morning, to join us for breakfast.






Invariably, he is in a sweet mood then. Most kids are in those early hours, when they've had enough sleep and enough food and are ready for the challenges ahead. Which for Sparrow includes such serious stuff as staying upright!






Oops!






Let's straighten you out a bit.






No grandkid of mine makes it through babyhood without a cuddly moment reading this book:






What do you think, baby Sparrow, is it outdoor weather? Let's give it a try!






And before you know it, it's time to pick up Snowdrop.






Juggling two young kid temperaments can be tricky. Sparrow likes it enough when I read some chapters of Anna Hibiscus to the two of them. He's even okay with the idea that Snowdrop is then eager to set up a dance school, where she is the instructor, Ed is the student and Sparrow is the audience.






And he is joyous at the prospect of being part of a school picnic lunch, with plenty of misbehaving children  --  that was Snowdrop's next inspired idea.






But at some point he let me know that a nap would have been very nice, thank you. Having been deprived of one, he crashes in my arms.

That's okay. Snowdrop entertains me by making up her own lyrics to "on top of spaghetti." (A song that I had been humming for who knows what reason to Sparrow as he dozed off.)






Toward evening, the little girl wants oh so much to tend to the cheepers. Ed was held up on the phone, so she is on her own. The cheepers are excited: another hand to feed their hungry heads.





Lovely day, no? Oh, there were some quirky moments: Ed's sailing gig got canceled (boat owners decided not to show their boat in Florida) and though he was offered another, he decided to give it a rest for now. Then, my mom had a bit of a set back. Too, the loud trucks resumed construction work in the development around us. But as Ed said -- wow! you press a button and we have warm soup (dinner was a reheat of yesterday's bounty). You click another and your furnace starts. Reach into the fridge and out comes a mango. Go to a doc and you get a vaccination for your child so she can run around and tell stories about school picnics where children misbehave.

Yep. All that, and so much more!