Whacking, romping, hobbling

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Let's start out with some sunrises. July has had such beautiful skies! (You can click on these pictures to enlarge them, I should mention.)

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• We have some cute little boys in this house, I must say. Their sisters like to dress them alike.

• Someone discovered that Baby Gus likes to hold a stick in his little baby hand and WHACK things with it. Unfortunately the children take great delight in this and any child who takes care of Gus now takes great pains to always give him his "whacking stick." I hear phrases like "Where is Gussie's whacking stick? He wants his whacking stick!" floating in from the other room. The results of all this whacking are predictable: lots of laughing and giggling and loud banging sounds, punctuated with "Ow! Gussie!" every so often.
(He is not, I'm sorry to say, the only baby to take great pleasure in whacking things.)

• He also grabs toes.

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• Our kids love to read on the porch swing. Even Ziggy. Here he is reading A Woggle of Witches.
• My brother Kenneth and his family came to Utah for a funeral, and we got to spend an evening together on Lucy's birthday. Kenneth and Abe were banished to the "kids table."

• When my mom brought out Lucy's birthday cake, Ziggy gasped and yelled "It's my birthday!" After that, who could deny him the chance to help Lucy blow out her candles?

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• There's always some sort of elaborate game going on around here. One day it was a pretend birthday party for Daisy, who had been sad for some reason.
• Another day it was three-legged races.

• Another day it was old-fashioned children like in All-of-a-Kind Family. They had aprons and pinafores and Daisy was old enough to wear long skirts and her hair up. And Teddy had his shirt pinned to his shorts. It was darling.

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Oh, Ziggy. He is still wearing whatever he finds, however it takes his fancy.

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We watched fireworks with my mom on the Fourth of July. I always like kids' faces watching fireworks.

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I mentioned that poor Teddy broke his leg going down a slide. He's such a little sweetie! He had hardly a complaint, though he did cry long and hard when it first happened. But he bore the pain so bravely all through the night and most of the next day before we even made it to the doctor. Then, he had millions of questions and comments during the x-ray and the splint-setting. I thought he'd be really excited to ride in a wheelchair (he'd been carried piggyback everywhere up to that point, since he couldn't walk at all) but when he got settled into it he had a sorrowful look on his face. The nurse asked him what was wrong and he said softly, "I just feel…sort of…like…a baby." We had to reassure him very earnestly and repeatedly that all SORTS of people ride in wheelchairs…and they are NOT the same as strollers. By the time he reached the x-ray hall he had to admit that he DID quite like the ride.

It made me remember when he had to get stitches back when he was almost three. They swaddled him onto a board so they could stitch up his chin and he was so offended about it. The indignity of it hurt him worse than the actual pain! Poor little man.

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Anyway, he has had plenty of good care since he got hurt. He told me "Mommy, I think I like being 'spoiled.'" (He put that in air-quotes when he said it.) Our neighbors made him a little activity book, Junie and Goldie made him coupons for fun activities like having stories read to him and games played with him, and Daisy crocheted him some tiny little bunnies he could keep in his pocket. Gussie helped him play with the special robot legos.

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After about a week in the splint, where Teddy had to drag himself around the house on his bottom (and he got quite good at it), he got a real cast on. He had the hardest time deciding on a color. His favorite color is green and everyone assumed that's what he'd choose, but when we got into the doctor's office he seemed to have a crisis of confidence about it. "I'm just afraid it won't LOOK very good!" he kept saying. "I don't think people really are supposed to have green casts." I think he may have been thinking admiringly about a teenage boy we saw in the waiting room, who had a grey and black sort of knee brace on. Anyway, after a lot of serious thought and discussion, when the lady came in to put the cast on, Teddy said he wanted black. Then, midway through her putting it on him, she asked conversationally if black was his favorite color and he said in a very small voice, "No. Green is. And I wish I had CHOSEN green." So then she very kindly made him a green stripe down the outside of the cast—which I think was rather wonderful of her, don't you?

After getting the cast on, we stopped on the way home for frozen custard, and Teddy got a raspberry shake ALL TO HIMSELF. I think that is the first time in his life he hasn't had to share! He felt quite special.

We were very pleasantly surprised about the cast. It leaves his foot free, so he can walk! It's kind of a funny hobbling walk, but he's gotten really good at it. And it's waterproof, so he can bathe and even swim in it. I even found him climbing up a net on the playground the other day! So, honestly, the cast is barely an inconvenience. And it only has to stay on for 4 weeks.

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We like to let Nutmeg out into the backyard to play when it gets cooler in the evenings lately. He's so cute romping around in the grass. We all love to play out there with him. He is remarkably patient about being chased around by babies and children, and even lets himself be caught and petted with some regularity!

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• For home church we were learning about the Rameumptom, and we had Daisy get up to demonstrate the Zoramites' prayer. Before we knew it Ziggy had hopped up there with her. I guess the top thereof would admit two people after all!
• We gave our beloved gold couch to D.I. and it was very sad. It was in such bad shape we just couldn't keep it anymore, and I even looked into getting it reupholstered but it was terribly expensive. I love this couch—my mom got it when my older brothers were babies, so she could rock Karl while she read to Kenneth. I've known it my whole life and I'm sad that WE were the ones who finally did it in. That seems to be a pattern…my mom gives us something she's had for forty years and we proceed to ruin it in five. Sigh. Anyway, the kids said a sad goodbye to the couch once it was loaded into the van—all except Ziggy, who seemed to have a vague idea that the couch would drive off with him on it, and refused to go near the thing.
• We can't get enough of the "Helados Mexico" popsicles from Costco. Mango is the clear favorite, but strawberry is a close second, and we all feel bad for coconut, which would be amazing if it weren't in competition with those other two.

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At a playground. There is something about Zig's facial expression here that I find particularly funny.

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More playing with Nutmeg in the backyard, on a beautiful night where the clouds just kept getting prettier and prettier. That little patch of flowers in the middle there is Daisy's "bit of earth" which she has planted and cultivated herself. She and Junie also had sugar snap peas which we all enjoyed.

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• I love the long summer nights, but the children never do seem to go to sleep. Here they are not going to sleep inside.

• Not going to sleep in the playhouse.

• And not going to sleep on the grass.

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• Baby-Gus-holder is still pretty much the most desirable position around here. 

• He was put into a doll bonnet for Pioneer Day.

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• Teddy made a little fort for him and Gus. Ziggy horned in on it.

• One thing Teddy LOVES to do, and has loved for a long time, is to take out all my pens from their case and organize them. He usually organizes them just like the picture on the case, but sometimes he varies it a little. He takes this job very seriously and often sits next to me doing it while I read my scriptures. I love it.

• Ziggy decided this bike pump was his "bwi-sickle" and dragged it all around the yard (scraping it up  rather severely in the process). My favorite part is the "glubs" he's wearing.

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And lastly…Daisy and Junie up to their usual tricks:

• Dressing alike.

• Reading the same book at the same time (all tangled together on the couch…this is a very typical sight to see with these two)

• Walking on can-stilts