A Bird In the Hand

We are in the midst of a perfect week here weather-wise, so today, Ted picked up Joe on the bike and Julie picked up Clara Jane on foot. The Birds stopped in the Starfoxes on the way back home and got an iced tea lemonade to share. They held hands except for when they were passing the drink. Sweet times. They saw plenty of birds on the way home which prompted Julie to say, "I've got a Bird right here!" Clara replied, "I'm a Bird, but I don't fly. I'm just called Bird. I'm a Bird, but I don't fly because I have hands, not wings, and I wear clothes. Wild animals don't wear clothes."

Impetigo Is For the Birds

Birdie Brigade, the source of Our Birdie's incessantly running left nostril has been deemed impetigo, one of the illnesses that seems to be coincide with the advent of spring in your preschool hot zones.  She had a sore in the corner of her mouth (that actually cleared up) that was all part and parcel of the same. Strep was on a tear in the preschool rooms and we were reminded that impetigo is a close cousin.  Birdie is on penicillin for it and after just the first dose even seemed so much better--her nose has stopped running, she's less cranky, and she just looks better, you know? Ted took her to the doctor this morning, but the old split-the-day trick where whichever parent was home in the morning goes to work in the afternoon while the other parent does the reverse did not work since both Julie and Ted needed to be at work in the afternoon.  So we did the oh-didn't-you-know?-it's-bring-your-child-to-work day! trick. Ted dropped Clara off with Julie around two-thirty, and Clara spent an hour and a half quietly looking at books, coloring in her new Princess Sofia coloring book, examining the rocks from Orient Point on Julie's desk, eating a chocolate chip cookie and, as it turns out, three wint-o-green Lifesavers--at one time.  She said they were "spicy." Clara was not a fan of the commute home.  Julie really couldn't blame her; it is a total drag. Julie thinks it was mostly the commute that caused Clara to start bellowing about five blocks from White House what turned out to be "I'm going to cough all over the floor," by which she meant vomit. Julie figured this out after pulling over, throwing on her hazard lights, getting out of the car, and opening the back door nearest Biride.  Julie somehow realized that Clara didn't have the word vomit and was trying to communicate with the words she did have.  Clara did, in fact, cough all over the floor, only it was really into Julie's water cup because Julie figured out the code in time.  Julie was car sick not infrequently as a child and today's commute was rather stop and go, so it could have been just that. Or the antibiotic.  Or the three wint-o-green Lifesaves.  But at any rate, Our Birdie appears to be on the mend.

Joe Looses His First Tooth!

But the biggest news of the weekend is not the catastrophe of the dropped paint, the triumph of the lemonade stand, or the triumph over the stump. The biggest news of the weekend is that Our Hero lost his first tooth! And we don't have it. It came out when he was playing football with Eli in Eli's backyard after dinner. He left it on the field of glory, Fans. He left it on the field of glory.

The tooth fairy has tucked a $5 spot under Joe's pillow. Now that might seem spendy, Fans, and we are with you. But here's the deal: a week or so ago, Joe got an Avengers-branded watch with his own money, after having seen it in Target weeks earlier and apparently having tucked away in his secret heart. And in his zeal to get it out of the package, he was hacking away at the packaging--and hacked right through the flexible plastic band. Oh Fans. Oh Fans. The heartbreak. Accidents happen. But Ted noted that this was not the first time that Our Hero had damaged something because of overly enthusiastic package hacking and the Avenger watch hacking became a Teachable Moment.

They can be such a drag, Fans, right? Especially when what follows in their wake is the carefully taping of an Avengers watch band with black electrical tape multiple times a day for many days after the Teachable Moment.

So tonight, Julie said that she thought the Tooth Fairy should leave $5 for Joe so he could get a new watch, under the managing-expectations-guise of it being the first tooth which scores one a bit more than those that follow.  And so Our Hero is sleeping right now on a fiver. We can't wait to see him in the morning.

While the Lemonade Stand Was Being Made. . .

Perhaps more impressive than the lemonade stand is the stump from a dead lilac that Julie and Ted (mostly Ted) managed to pry out of the ground from the area pictured above.  It was right about where the large green hosta in the front of a row of three coming down the slope now is.  At the same time that the slickest lemonade stand ever was being built, Julie was out back tearing out purple loosestrife and ditch lilies in the same picture above, from the lilac in the picture on the right, on over to the fence, and then transplanting most of what you see there now. When she started, she thought she's leave the stump, but in attacking the loosestrife, she dug up a lot of the dirt around it anyway and one thing led to another, and now we have a big stump on the patio to get rid of, but also a beautiful new slope! We'r getting there, Fans.

So now you know how we spent most of this Memorial Day weekend--that is, covered in sawdust, paint, or dirt. But it was fun, as was winding the weekend down with Joe and Clara's friends Eli and Emma and their parents, Molly and Joe.  Who would have thought two weeks ago that Memorial Day would bring out the bathing suits and wading pool?

Joe's Lemonade Stand

What you see here, Fans, is a pretty slick lemonade stand, staffed by Our Very Enthusiastic Hero and his Erstwhile Sidekick Birdie. Of late, the bambini have been watching a Curious George DVD some evenings before dinner, and there is maybe an episode in there in which George makes juice? Possible to sell? At a stand? We can't say for sure because the Curious George DVD is enough to make one long for a certain tree house down a sunny dirt road deep in Bear Country so this reporter at least has come to all but tune it out. But we can say that after watching Curious George, Joe is always writing down juice recipes (that seem to always contain the juice of one radish--secret ingredient) and in the past week, he has made at least three booklets about how to make lemonade. So: a lemonade stand.

Long time Fans may recall that Ted is himself a long time This Old House Fan.  That's a mercy, as is the fact that he is a trained engineer. He is also very kind. That doesn't make lemonade, but it does make for the sort of dad who goes to the interwebs and finds instructions for making a five-piece lemonade stand that slides together and then apart so that it might be stored flat and makes a dream come true, Fans.

Now, there was a hiccup along the way to realizing the dream.  Joe, in consultation with Julie, had selected two citrus shades for the lemon stand: a bright orange whose name we do not recall, and a pale green whose name we do (Honeydew Melon) because Joe took the shaking of that quart a little too far and dropped it on the driveway.  Now we can say, "Accidents happen," but it will perhaps not surprise you to know, Fans, that something different was said in the moment.  At least the paint that was dropped was the green, and the green was pale. It sort of looks like leaves on the driveway.

By Saturday's end, the stand was ready, and so was Joe. Excitement was high. Scattered thunderstorms were predicted with 60% probability, but they never materialized.  What did materialize was a lot of foot traffic on 39th which is a main drag through the neighborhood. (As soon as the new sidewalks go in next month, we are talking prime lemonade stand real estate on our leaf-dappled driveway.). Our Hero sold lemonade in a cup for 25 cents; cans of soda or bottles of water or Gatorade for 50 cents; and snacks packs of things like Nutter Butter cookies for 50 cents. The available sodas were Sun Drop, Sunkist, A&W root beer, and when the pickings got slim, Dr. Pepper 10 and coconut LaCroix.  Fans, Our Hero took in about $16 over the course of about six hours! You should have seen him out there calling out hello to people and asking if they wanted any lemonade and reading his book during the lulls.  He drank and ate a fair amount of his inventory, but hey, that's your prerogative when business is booming and you're the boss.