The Love Songs Make Me Cry

The other night as we were outside cleaning up the driveway full of toys, at such a random insignificant moment, Kiefer says to me, "Mommy, the love songs make me cry." 
"Which love songs?", I inquire.
"The Veggie Tales ones.  The ones Junior sings....  I wish he didn't sing them...."

My heart melted.  Junior is the tiniest asparagus and he has a really sweet singing voice...but that these sweet songs make him cry, nearly made me cry.  I'm so thankful to have such a tender-hearted boy who cries at these sweet love songs to God. Sometimes it takes the faith of a child.


I tried to reassure him that it's ok to cry as I'm picturing him up in bed at night listening to bedtime music wiping tears from his eyes.  Then he asked, "Like the mommy in the Peter Pan movie cried?  Why did she cry, Mommy?"


"You mean because she was happy when Wendy, John and Michael came home to her?  Why did she cry then even though she was happy?" I ask to clarify.  "Yeah?", he says as we're still picking up toys in the garage.


"Well, you can cry happy tears, too!  I cried when you were born because I was so happy!  I cried when each of you were born because I was so happy...  Sometimes the love just overflows and you have to cry."

The next day while driving in the car I listened to the words Junior sang more closely and my eyes welled up... "I know that God loves me, I know that he cares, when I'm feeling lonely, I know he'll be there. I like loving him because he first loved me.... I like feeling special. I like being me....  And I like to give God's love,I want to live by giving love,  I want to love my friends an family so they will know that God is love."

and "Oh, how I love Jesus...because he first loved me."


Now the love songs make me cry!!!  Thanks for the refresher, Kiefer! I love that little boy!  (all of them, of course, but especially the way the love songs make him cry.)

Kiefer! Lives with his heart!

Chasing two butterflies

Inside the deck "helping" Daddy do a boy's only project

Birds of a Feather

So the Mama Robin is back.  She nested in our blue spruce tree outside the living room window this time last year.  This year, she tucked her nest up in the pear tree outside our sunroom window.  It was Griffin who noticed her nest for the first time this year.  It's quite camouflaged up there, by design.  But sometimes it takes a two year old to notice the little things.  So we watched her from the sunroom as she snuggled into her nest. Then we got the arial view from the upstairs bathroom window.  I cranked open the window to try to get a shot of her nest and only then did I realize how quickly one of my birds could fall out of the nest so I quickly cranked it back shut and told them the view was better through the window.  For the last few weeks we've watched her sitting there as I reminisce about this time last year... she and I were both waiting to hatch.  I remember last spring I would serenade her on the piano while she sat atop her living room view nest.  Then we could see hungry little mouths crank open at 90 degree angles waiting for their mama to return.  We talked about how their daddy had to go to the grocery store early in the morning for fresh worms and we'd watch the mama and papa take turns feeding their babies.  About this time, her serenades stopped as I was the one doing all the baby feeding around our nest with our new baby bird.

Just the other day I looked up into the tree from the porch below and asked her if she was ready for four babies?  Four can be a nest full, you know.

Just by chance we peered out the upstairs window this morning and instead of seeing her collection of bright turquoise eggs, we saw three pink puff balls and one remaining turquoise egg.  I've never seen such tiny creatures!  They must have just hatched! But their mama was anxious to see us so she took off to try to distract us.  Instead, we had more pointing and peering as my three oldest baby birds take in the science lesson right outside our window!

 I hope her last egg hatches soon!  Maybe it will be a blue puff ball? We mama's of four have to stick together!

See it?

See the nest?

"It's right there!  I see it! I see the nest!"

Don't fall out the window!

See the turquoise eggs?

How Griffin noticed this is hard to understand!

Now we see the puff balls!

See the pink puff balls?  One egg yet to hatch

Last summer she made her nest outside the living room window

Here's Carter watching in the morning

There she sits on her living room nest 

Ding Dong Ping Pong

So on the second full day of summer vacation I'm pulling out all my tricks of the trade.  I had learned that my good friend Joni's discipline model was more of a reward system.  Catch them doing good.  I'm all about it.  So she uses ping pong balls in a fish bowl for each of her children and each good thing they do they "earn" a ball. When their jars are full, they trade in the balls for a treat.  Ok, so I have boys and she has  three girls and one boy (so far!)  So, today, day two of summer,  I pull out my plastic canisters with each child's name on it.  Why even go down the path of a glass fish bowl?  I have all these golf wiffle balls in one large container and explain the concept of "earning" the balls with good behavior to my wide-eyed crew.  Fast forward about twenty minutes when I have the pleasure of entertaining an air conditioner repair man in my kitchen while he gives me the not so good news that my AC unit is fried and most likely needs to be replaced... "blah blah blah, freon's leaking..."  Out of the corner of my eye I now see a wave of wiffle balls bouncing around the kitchen making that distinct ping pong ball "pinging" sound as they ricochet off my bar stools, under the kitchen table and around the AC dude's legs.  He tries, unsuccessfully, to keep a straight face and I laugh and tell him there goes my discipline model for the summer as I retrieve the half full canister (not half empty!) and put it on the highest shelf of the pantry I can reach!

What will day three hold?