If you ever need proof that the best you can do for your kids is set a kind example, just watch the world of chickens. It's always like this: you put new young chicks into an existing flock and the older ones gang up on them. They become mean. They peck and chase. The little ones are scared and flustered. Eventually things settle down. More or less. As they say, the pecking order has been established. And then, some time later, you add newer younger chicks, and the very ones that were clobbered just months before turn on the new ones and peck and chase and scare the delights out of them. They learned to be mean.
Ed says that this is just a natural ordering that contributes to the survival of the entirety. I have to think he'd never been bullied in his younger years or he'd be as mad as I get at the instigators of the coop warfare. Indeed, this morning -- a brilliant sunny morning...
... I check on the little ones. Cherry (from last year's additions) follows. The minute she sees them, she starts the chase, the peck, the clobber. Ed would tell me to leave them alone, but I never do. So I interfere with the natural order of things. So be it. Cherry chases the Bresse hens, I chase Cherry. It is a loud set of minutes!
Okay, time to settle in for a summer breakfast. And time to bake blueberry muffins! Bake first, eat after.
Time to also celebrate one of the younger kids finally getting a Covid vax! (Three more have to wait a couple of weeks.) Such a long wait! So much relief...
And as every day this week, I roll into a day of play/read/eat with Snowdrop.
In the evening, Ed rides his bike, I meet up with my older girl for a rehash of life's issues. We haven't done that in such a long time! We're trying to make this a regular habit going forward.
And then we have a sports event to go to. The Blue Jays have their first scheduled game -- against the Robins. This is soft ball, not quite at the league level, but still, well coached and with t-shirt teams! That counts for something, no? These girls' teams, ages 6 - 8, have been practicing all spring.
None of us have watched Snowdrop play. She goes to practice with a friend and all we know is what she will report after. Recently she tells us that her coaches like her batting. But of course, what does that mean? All kids need encouragement. So tonight, I am a tiny bit surprised that she actually is good at batting! I remember the bat and ball Ed and I had for her some three or four years back. I'd never seen anyone less inclined to practice hitting that ball. Tonight, on the other hand, she had one miss. Hit the rest.
So often, kids surprise you: you peg them as one thing and it turns out their reach is so much greater...
And these two? Where are they heading in life?
I'm not making any guesses. Sky's the limit right now. For all my grandkids.
Summer nights, summer days. They have a touch of stardust, a touch of the sublime. So easy just to throw on a t-shirt, shorts and head out, in flip flops. So pretty to look this way, and that way, and always find something to admire. And to think the lily season has yet to begin! So many buds out there! So many flowers waiting to bloom for us.
