Lilly's Pets

Lilly has a fascination recently with any creepy crawly thing. Her very favorite right now are worms. She spends much of her outside time digging for them in the garden in the attempt to gather a little worm farm. While I was planting beets on Saturday she kept putting something in my hair. I was otherwise distracted so I did not take the time to wonder what it was. Then she told me "I am putting worms in your hair." I didn't take this news well, and Lilly seemed surprise by my disgust. She just shrugged and said "What? It tickles." She also loves ants. On Sunday I gave her a brownie, which she took down to the stair landing (ant heaven at our house) and fed it to them. When I swept up the crumbs along with the ants she had attracted she was besied herself. I felt bad, but I couldn't just leave them there. The one exception to her love of bugs are spiders. She wants nothing to do with those. The other night she was crying because there was a spider in her room. She led me to her room to show me. What she thought was a spider turned out to be a plastic little hair comb. Her hysteric tears turned immediately into hysteric laughter as she told me "Hey, that's not a spider!" Lilly is our future animal biologist.

Although it has not been particularly warm so far this spring, we have had moments of real sunshine. Nearly every day after breakfast Rachel asks me if she can go outside. My answer is always "Yes! Please go outside!" She would spend every moment outside if she could keep Lilly and Carson there as her entertainment. Shelby has become Rachel's best friend. Anytime he is outside doing yard work, Rachel is out there too, doing what she can. She is our future plant biologist.

Another Rachel thing, we registered her for kindergarten last week. I cannot believe my baby is old enough! I asked her on the way to registration if she is excited, and she told me she is actually a little scared. This surprised me since kindergarten is all she has been talking about since Brady started kindergarten two years ago.  I asked her why she is scared and she told me "because I am afraid I won't know enough." I assured her she does, and whatever she does not know, they will teach her. But to ease her fears, we have been spending our car rides going over numbers and letters. She is one smart kid.

Carson says a pretty decent "please" when we ask him to. He also uses "yeah" as an appropriate answer to questions. He uses "no" but a little less appropriately. He says "mom" a lot, but when he says it, it sounds like the urgent howl of a wild dog: "Mooommmm!" What he means is "pay attention to me!" Car rides are the worst because every two seconds he is distracted by something he wants me to see. It is a constant stream of "Mooommm!" "What Carson." "uhh (as he points to something)." Outside of the demanding way he says my name, Carson is delightful. He is amused by absolutely everything. And he still loves to cuddle. His favorite mommy and me time is when I am at the computer. He climbs into my lap and points to the screen, which by the way means he wants me to put some music on. Then he leans back and watches me do whatever. Occasionally he points at the screen and says "uhh" I think to show me that he is paying attention.