The light slants golden, and all the colors swell in one last hurrah. October has always been my favorite month, though now that I'm older, I can become heady on wind and wildness one day while dreading cold and dark the next.
Taking each day as it comes is better than craning down the path. Full-bellied as I am, perhaps for the last time, this advice serves well. Sink into the joys of each day and don't linger too long over the sorrows. Each new day will have its own.
_________________________________________
Any snapshot marked thus ** underneath was taken by Mildred. Yup. I stole all the best pictures from my daughter, but, hey, I haven't been picking up the camera much, but I still want shotsnaps to look pretty, so I do what I must.
Oh, we love her to bursting. As many times as I said that Skylark made the best last baby, I'm glad she's not the end of the line. Now she has the chance to vie for Best Big Sister Award. Soon!
Yesterday Lark turned three, and we started the day with her birthday breakfast. Piper, Luci, and Zeke had stayed up the night before and decorated the whole downstairs with paper chains, paper snowflakes, and garlands, and then they spoiled her with All The Attention until breakfast was ready, so she would have been flying high no matter what food we placed in front of her.
They even made her TWO birthday couches!
Anyone who knows John knows of his fervent love of tomatoes and his super-heroic ability to eat 15 pounds of raw tomatoes in one sitting. Skylark is his girl!
Video proof.
Lark's cake request was one of my favorites so far, and I posted that video so you'd understand why she asked for a pink cake with "peanut butter on the bottom and tomatoes on top." Oh, man. That's a flavor combination made in heaven! And dinosaurs. Of course dinosaurs.
Even though she was envisioning the real thing, I heard no complaints that the tomatoes were made from fondant. The cake and peanut butter filling were both peanut-buttery enough to satisfy.
She didn't even seem to mind that the dinosaurs were plastic,
...though she did rearrange them to her liking.
Then she had her happy birthday supper with Joel, Grandma J., Debbie & Rundy and the boys, followed by a pink peanut-butter-tomato-dinosaur cake. I can't think of a better way to turn three.
Last week's ultrasound showed that Sunbeam had flipped and is all positioned for a grand entrance into this big world.
This propitious flip that took Sunny out of transverse position also gave us the first view of his or her face-- a face still demurely hidden behind an arm but no less sweet.
...the shelves, not the children. The children are always nice
I still haven't organized the school supplies and school shelf, but before h'learning began, I did sort through the storybook shelves and the library bookshelves. Two hundred books passed along later, we could finally fit *almost* everything on the shelves again.
Millie was due to get a new bunny a few weeks ago, and I had promised to build a proper hutch if she'd buy the lumber, so once she pulled through with the funds, I had no choice but to design skilled and highly technical plans for a two-story hutch.
Yes sirree, skilled and highly technical.
The day before the bunny was due to arrive, I conscripted Annika to do most of the labor (she's gonna honestly earn that 1/4 credit in Carpentry this year). She did a great job, and with Millie pitching in for a few hours late Friday night after Annika fell asleep on the floor next to the hutch (true), we finished it the next day just in time for the new bunny's arrival.
After holding my breath for two days while we winged just about everything, it turned out better than we'd hoped, with minor flaws but no major ones, and it's sitting in our sunroom waiting for Someone to clean the basement so we can move him downstairs. We'll weatherproof it in the spring so we can move him outdoors, but for now, he's cozy and blissfully unaware of how spoiled he is.
So here's a formal introduction to Thimble (Tristan), the handsomest baby bunny we've ever seen.
As you can guess, Millie's got more little people clamoring after him than she'd like.
Millie used their adoration to her benefit and did a mini photo shoot while I was at a doctor's appointment. She'll post all the pictures to her blog soon, but I stole three of my favorites to end this post right.
