How does YOUR belly button smell?

 I feel like I may have already talked about this, and I also feel like it should have a may-not-be-suitable-for-adults rating, but my mother is a fan especially of parenting tales, so here goes.

Thing 3, who is ten years old (so tuck that away for future reference), was goofing around at the dinner table. He's developed a habit of holding on to his feet and then smelling his hands, especially while watching TV. Naturally, we correct him when he's doing this and yes, my mind also immediately went to the SNL skit with Mary Katherine Gallagher putting her hands in her armpits when she's nervous and then sniffing them. I keep telling this kid that they're not going to smell any different from the last five minutes (or five times he's tried it). He begs to differ. I don't want to know.

Anyway, he informed our dinner table, "did you know that when you stick your finger in your belly button and smoosh it around and smell it that it smells like poop?"

Some of us at the table thanked our lucky stars that we didn't have company and considered moving to the Yukon. Or Dubai. Or anywhere other than with present company. 

Another of us, who shall remain nameless, thought about it for a moment, checked their own belly button, and then stated, "I have to disagree with that."

So Mom, aren't you so glad you asked?

Please, all of you, send us better conversation topics than "what does your belly button smell like?" Send help!

The great outdoors around Lalaith Havens

 We've had some nights dipping down close to or below freezing, so Dada and I had to hightail it to the garden and rescue everybody who looked like they had potential:

I love this creamy mum out front!

Liam's yellow tree, in morning light.

Zinnias and marigolds. They're very brown and crispy and sad now. I did snip some to dry out and save seeds, though. I noticed at least one bumblethunderbeast who preferred the deepest dark pink ones. I wonder how that works; do they have daily assignments? Do they have favorites? Do they just land on whatever is close? I'm very intrigued. The cute little white butterflies liked the marigolds. These plants are supposed to deter critters from the actual garden plants, but the tomatoes all grew like blazes while these flowers took their sweet old time coming up and took forever to open. I only saw toads and one chipmunk in the garden this year, though we did have a banana thief. Did I already talk about that? We read somewhere that butterflies like ripe bananas, so Dada made me a wire banana hanger and Damon and I hung it on the corner of the garden. We keep an eye out but saw zero butterflies on the banana. Then one day the banana completely disappeared. No peel, no nothing. We repeated the experiment several times throughout the summer and many bananas disappeared. Now I want a trail camera because we either have a team of incredibly buff, nocturnal butterflies who work together to spirit it away, or a raccoon or a weasel is shimmying up the pole and stealing our bananas. Either way I want to see it!

My one lonely bell pepper. All the rest of them had big rotten spots on them. Our jalapeños did very well, but not these guys. You can see how petite he is!

I did see my very first coyote trotting along in this field in the middle of an afternoon (not in this picture). We've heard them, but I'd never spotted any in the "wild", haha, and I was pretty excited to see one!

Okay, you guys, when I go seed-crazy roundabouts February, remind me that I don't need any more than two red currant plants! These guys are so prolific I can't keep up. I had four this year. They're adorable and yummy and cheerful and there's gazillions of them but they are labor intensive to pick and the majority of them rotted on the vines because I couldn't get to them in time, despite eating bajillions!

Autumn roundup

What've we been up to during the radio silence?

This kid turned 15, but that's another post altogether.

The garden went completely nuts with tomatoes so I had to make soup, many times. And since I save chicken bones in the freezer until they threaten to take over, I had the opportunity to make bone broth. 

I also found a red lentil dal recipe with zucchini that turned out amaaaaazing and I can't wait to make it again! Even Zita approved, so that's high praise, hehe.

Yes, we are Those People who've been caring for a sourdough starter throughout the pandemic, and can I just tell you that sourdough pancakes are wonderful?! The boys declared them, "too eggy" and refuse to eat them. Dada is back on a low carb diet, so guess who reaps the rewards of yumminess!? Helloooooo elastic waistbands.

In order to combat the expanding waistline, especially as all I see when I look down is belly because m'boobs are gone, I've been doing a fair amount of indoor cycling, yoga, and, ta-da, I bought running shoes! I know, right? You're all gasping in disbelief. Well, you better sit down for real, because I've actually run four times. Two of those times were by myself! We won't talk about my time or how I plot my route so that someone will find me in case I die, but I'm proud of myself. I am definitely a fair weather runner, though, so who knows if there will be anymore 2020 runs as it is now almost 9:30 in the morning and only 31 degrees. Not happenin'.

We had about four absolutely gorgeous, back up in the 70s, days in a row. I keep lamenting, "why don't we live in a place where the temps are like this all year round?" Dada laughs at me. I can't help myself. It's just so gorgeous and splendid to be able to be outside without the multiple layers that are coming!

Well, of course, this is Ohio, thus we have a screwball day thrown in there, too. 

So we've been up to a little of this, (see Damon?)

which led to a lot of that.

Damon was cajoled into dragging many, many tarp-loads of leaves to the curb with the excuse that he could count that as phys ed minutes for the log he's supposed to be keeping. Our teachers declared that since everyone is spending so much time online, they'd prefer special classes to be outside or otherwise offline. So we've done yard work, yard work, and more yard work. I'd much rather rake leaves than shovel snow, though I know that's coming. Most of our days working out there yielded tarpfuls of crispy, crunchy, light, dry leaves, for which I was thankful. There was still complaining, but less than there would have been otherwise, for sure, by all parties involved!

School has been chugging along with the expected good and bad days. Our district has been remote from the get-go and decided to stay that way for the indefinite future. A certain someone got ahead and then "forgot" to check their to-do list for three days and unsurprisingly ended up behind, someone else has had multiple close calls with due dates for projects that hadn't been thoroughly inspected before the due date and thus causes panic on the part of the parents. I don't know why, as it's not our grades, but I think that's been so deeply ingrained by this point that there's no turning back. Another certain someone is aggravated that nearly identical projects are being assigned for both art classes though one had been described as the end-all-and-be-all of art classes and deliberate scheduling had been taken all four years to get into said class. And so it goes. As Anne of Green Gables mused in a letter to Marilla, "the sun will go on rising and setting whether or not I pass geometry," or something very, very close to that. 

 

Another 15 year old in the house

An artist friend of ours, the talented Heidi Jacobs, created some terrific Halloween pieces. I showed Liam the photos on facebook and told him we'd get him one for his birthday, so he chose "the batty bat mug" and is delighted by how much hot cocoa it holds. Thank you, Heidi! 

This photo is so you can all marvel at his humungous feet.

And this one is so you can marvel at how much hair he has. I sent this picture to Zita to see if he has as much hair as Nina!

Liam has a favorite tree because of its humungous yellow leaves. I don't remember what kind it is, but he makes sure to hug it every year, haha. His favorite colors are still yellow and gold, just like when he was a baby and adored his stuffed yellow giraffe, Geoffrey, who is still in his bedroom somewhere.

We measured him a few weeks ago and he was 5'7", making him officially taller than me. He's probably crept past that now.

 Mister Minty had himself a birthday. He still requests all things mint: mint chocolate chip ice cream, peppermint sugar cookies, "minty circles" (otherwise known to the rest of the world as Lifesavers), Thin Mints, minty hot cocoa... it's hard to keep mint extract on hand around here. So these were a big hit from Grandmama, and I haven't had a single one yet!

He also may be a little Lego obsessed.

 I asked what he wanted for his birthday and he chose mint chocolate chip cookies. As I'm rummaging around in the pantry for the bag of Andes mint chips that I knew I had in there, he strolled in and asked what I was looking for.

"Oh, I ate those a long time ago." 

I did smack my forehead and not him, thank you very much. 

Regular chips with a brand new mint extract it is! And eyeballs, because I used pumpkin, ghost, and moon cookie cutters. Everything turned into blobs as chocolate chip cookies don't behave the same way as sugar cookies, but that didn't change their deliciousness any.

And Dada found some high-end minty cupcakes!

You probably don't see anything in this picture, because Liam is standing sideways and is therefore invisible. Pretty sure he hasn't even hit 100# yet. (The baby gate keeps the dogs out of the kitchen, in case you're wondering.)

I came downstairs Halloween morning to find Liam, caped and perched gargoyle-style on top of the ladder in the sunroom. The ladder was up because Dada was kindly installing plant hooks for my ferns. There's a low rumble from above, "the birthday boy sits upon his throne." I do believe I snorted. He is in every respect a Halloween child.

We skipped trick or treating this year. It just didn't seem like a good idea given the germs floating around, so we dressed up the dogs instead. Honey is wearing a pumpkin bib and Bos is a hot dog, haha!

At this point, wearing real clothes feels like Halloween for the boys as they've been the pajamas the majority of the time since March. Anytime they're told to put on real pants these days they are automatically suspicious because with the remote learning they're doing there are no actual people being seen or being seen by. Think Khan Academy but dryer. Damon has the occasional Zoom meeting but Liam has zero, hence the pajamas all day, every day. By the time we get back to street clothes, nothing Liam owns is going to fit because he's growing so fast. We tease him regularly about being Groot from "Guardians of the Galaxy", especially when he rumbles some reply to us. 

His braces will come off on Tuesday, so he is very much looking forward to devouring his favorite candy bars that he's been very responsible about not having. We got him a decent supply of Twix, so that should last him an afternoon or so. 

Overall, a pretty fun kid. I think we'll keep him.