Seasons

One of my favorite things about summer is the fruit.  I love berries, and peaches, but really only fresh and they taste the best, like everything else, in their season.  I was thinking about that this morning, while I ate one of my favorite breakfasts, pictured below.

I cannot take any credit for this idea, I first enjoyed it at a cousin-in-law's house about 4 years ago and it has been a summer highlight ever since.  Mary B's has fabulous frozen biscuits, slice up some South Carolina peaches (they're better than Georgia ones) and/or hand-picked strawberries, add some whipped cream (cream-top as Ansley says), ground cinnamon, and voila.  It's so delicious. 

So I'm enjoying my breakfast this morning and actually thinking while I eat.  I actually have time for this now on occasion since both boys are nursing.  You see, up until this week, my schedule has been: Feed Graham + Pump + Feed Bennett = 2 hours + 1 hour "break" and then start over.  The break usually involved making something for the other kids to eat, or me to eat, or just managing Silas which is a full-time job alone.  Now it is: Feed Babies: 30 minutes. So I actually have a small amount of time to finish a thought every now and then.  And some days I even have time to write them down.  

Alright, back to my thought:  The train started like this (I didn't promise it was a deep thought):  I love strawberries.  I especially love the hand-picked fresh ones.  I'd like to go pick some strawberries.  I cannot go pick strawberries because I have 5 kids 5 and under and as I have already suggested, Silas + strawberry patch = disaster.  We'll go pick strawberries one day, and it will be fun.  But until then, I am going to enjoy the season of life that I'm in. 

I am going to enjoy my thoughtful 5 year old (he can be very sweet when he's not knocking birds from their nest),

who, yesterday made his sister the last package of cream of wheat and put chocolate chips in it for her (she was also very excited about this because he evidently makes it a little more chocolatey than I do).  He made himself a bowl of Kix (I'm sleeping at this point), poured Silas and me a bowl of Kix, and had the recycling by the door ready to go out.

My sweet 3 year old, who loves her baby brothers and crawls in bed with me every morning so she can "sleep" next to them.

 My high maintenance almost 2 year old,

who is potty training, loves the babies, idolizes his older brother, and provides comic relief during the day to help me stay sane,

and my two precious babies

 that coo and laugh and snuggle and won't be this little for very long.  I will enjoy this season and not rush into the next one.

Baby Birds

So, yesterday Colin & Ansley came running in the house super excited yelling "Mommy! Mommy! We found a baby bird!"  So I went to look for a basket to put it in.  By the time I got back they had found a second baby bird and were just about beside themselves.  So they filled the basket with pinestraw and started the hunt for bugs. 

 
Fortunately, Silas was sleeping, otherwise our story would end here with two dead birds.  Well, I was not exactly sure what to do with these guys.  They reminded me a little of Graham and Bennett, all chirpy crying with their mouths open,

 so I felt like I had to help look for bugs because the search wasn't going so well.  After looking forever it seems, we found one cricket that we cut in half and they had to share.  This was not going to be easy.  Plus, we couldn't bring them in the house and if we left them outside a cat would have got them.  So they spent the night in the laundry room, and then this morning I sat down with the kids to pitch my idea of trying to get them back in the nest.  I had to ask some more specific questions about the location where they found them, did they see a nest, etc.  and this interrogation led to a surprise ending:  Evidently "found" in my five year old's vocabulary is equivalent to "knocked out of the bush because I want a pet bird."  So upon this discovery we had a lecture on how God gave Adam the animals to take care of, not to steal them away from their mommies.  At any rate, the birds now have the ritz-carlton of bird's nests,

we can see them from the kid's bathroom window, and the mommy bird is still feeding them, thank goodness.

As R. pointed out last night, I think I have enough mouths to feed.