Tuesday

This morning Chris told John he was a big enough boy now to use the family binoculars. This provided quite wonderful occupation today, as I could suggest John run to the window with the binoculars and he'd race over to observe squirrels and birds while I did a chore.

Then we had a big morning of errands: the hardware store, the grocery store, and voting in a local election. (Try answering a two-year-old's question, "What is voting?" After much philosophy, we settled on that it had to do with pushing buttons and pulling levers.) After lunch and naps, John wanted to make "leaf chickens," which was an idea he'd picked up on television. We had previously collected leaves and left them to dry off. I wasn't really sure what a "leaf chicken" looked like, so I drew a pathetic-looking bird on a piece of construction paper and let John glue leaves to the page. He loved the process!

In the late afternoon we did some gardening and outdoor play. I ripped out our summer annuals and trimmed some dead shrubs. The children had tremendous fun running through crunchy leaves and drawing with chalk. Mary just loves chasing her big brother to and fro, it is adorable.