Streaming

• Another windy day.  We've had several days of such fierce wind in the past week that it's just better not to go outside.  My hair whips around my face and practically stands on end.  The wind has battered a number of spring flowers into an oblivion and snapped several flowering varieties in half, including a cypripedium orchid that was getting ready to bloom for the first time in four years.  Boo.
• Schtinky AKA Jamie has started saying "poo-poo".  This morning as I walked into the living room with a diaper right after his bath, he pointed at his pee-spot on the floor (grrrrreat) and said, "poo-poo".  He has also pointed to Truen on the toilet and responded to my inquiry about poop in his diaper with "poo-poo".
• He also makes farting noises and laughs.  And holds objects that look like guns and makes the "pshw-phsw" sound.  Is that the youngest of three brudders or what??
• Diego is going through a huge obsession with the I SPY books.  We read through a few pages on an almost-daily basis.  He love-love-loves finding all the hidden objects.  He has also been using our wooden blocks, tinker toys, duplo blocks and little tidbits around the house to create his own I SPY scenes.  Some of the stuff he's come up with is quite well thought-out.
• Truen's current obsession is my jewelry boxes.  Last Friday, Schtinky attempted to climb our bedroom dresser using open drawers as a ladder.  I don't know how he survived unscathed, but he did.  (And nothing broke!)  Everything came crashing down, including a whimsical "jewelry tree" that Squeeze made for me a couple of years ago (an arty-looking tree branch stuck into brown aquarium-rock in a vintage plant-pot).  Ugh . . . the horrors.  We had weekend guests coming, so I did my best to pick up all the small pieces, but then had to move on to more important messes.
• So yes.  The jewelry.  I've never thought of myself as a "jewelry girl", but I have quite a lot of it.  It has been sitting out within reaching-distance on Squeeze's grandma's buffet in the living room, much to the interest of my little "Truby-ruby", as Diego is calling him these days.  Both my jewelry boxes and the box of my great-grandma's cheap costume jewelry bequeathed to me by my grandmother.
• He has to sit at the table to go through it all and puts all the necklaces and bracelets on by turn.  With a gleam in his eye.  "I'll wear this and this when I go out in public," he says, showing me his arm and chest.
• Truen has also been getting upset by being smaller than Diego recently.  He doesn't like that he is littler, that Diego will always be bigger, and will work himself up into tears, wailing, "and I am always getting hurt!".  Which is true.  He gets hurt with unbelievable frequency.
• His current injury is a scrape to the side of his right big-toe knuckle.  If you can follow that.  Diego basically slide into him while they were playing on the front walk, causing him to scrape that spot on the inside of his foot a number of inches on the cement.  It is a DOOZY.  Very nasty and hard to heal because it keeps on getting re-injured.  I've finally insisted that he wears socks and slippers inside and socks and shoes outside.  Enough already.
• Shifting gears . . . with our gardens completely planted, our focus has shifted to weeding and watering (especially with this hot, wicked wind blowing).  Soon we will be paper-and-strawing, though I am lobbying for just "strawing".
• The moths have been un-un-un-un this year.  They are everywhere.  If something hangs out on the line overnight, a dozen moths will be hiding under it.  Every time I open the garage door in the morning, a couple dozen moths fly out at me and make me squawk as if it were Hitchcock's The Birds.  It is getting down-right oogie.
• We found two baby blackbirds that fell from their nests last Friday.  The first was big and strong enough to put back into the tree so it could hop back up to its nest.  The second was too young, very fuzzy and just starting to get its feathers.  The boys have been begging to raid bird nests to get a "pet bird" (right, like that is ever going to happen), so this was the perfect opportunity for me to satiate that desire.  I reasoned that even if it ended up dying, it wouldn't have made it anyway. 
• Oh, they were thrilled.  So thrilled.  We found a wind-blown nest and Diego made it a soft bed of fresh grass inside it.  They fed it moths and worms and softened catfood (yuck).  They learned to tap the side of the nest so it would start peeping and begging for food.  They held it and fussed over it.  At one point I found Diego sitting alone, holding the nest and staring off with dreamy eyes.  "I'm just so happy," he said, smiling hugely.
• And then it died.  The third day. 
• Our theory is that it got too cold in the night (a storm blew through) and that it waited too long to eat that morning (the boys slept in due to late nights and all the thrill of our weekend visitors).  Saaaaad.  Diego cried (Truen seemed less affected).  The 13 year old girl who was staying with us brought it in the house as it was breathing its last, barely able to lift its head.  Oh, it was terrible.  Just terrible.  We were all sad. 
• But even then, I was amazed how quickly they got over it.  It was a good experience for the boy-ohs, though I do wish we wouldn't have let the little guy down.