Fallen Leaves

The past weekend was lovely, warm and sunny, and we all got outside as much as possible. We also had a fun visit with BrentandJanelle, where all the adults ate tempura, wine and chocolate and Mojo and I spilled as much wine as we could, ensuring that we'll never be invited back again.

Oops.

Saturday Mojo and Missy had fun with Missy's new "Cheap Chinese Restaurant Lantern" style hair pretties. Missy has learned that she's ready for her close-up.What a cutie!Here the girls are admiring their handiwork.I should note that this is all part of the Missy Bedtime Ritual, which MUST include tub, stories, cuddles and then bed. Tub with Little Miss must ALSO include the Attack of the Naked Baby. This consists of me drying her off and hoisting her up to flick the bathroom light switches on and off a couple of times. Then she signals her readiness, and I put her down to scamper off down the hallway as I intone in a rising roar: "Here...comes...the...Naked...BABY!!!" - which is Mojo's and Peeper's clue to shriek and act afraid, during which time the Naked Baby gets to chase them around the living room and jump on them.

Good times.

Sunday morning Missy was a cute little maniac, racing around and generally being a nut. At one point she decided that Mommy needed to be towed around the central wall of the house by her b-robe tie-tie.Towing mommies isn't as easy as you'd think, right, little girl? And Khufu's slaves thought they had it bad...Okay, so: wierd story about how things get done around the Fire Direction Center. Rolled the trash and recycling bins out to the curb, since Monday is trash day in our little part of North Portland. Happen I noticed in so doing that the neighbors, who pay more attention to stuff like that, have their green "yard debris" bin out, too. Well, damn, most be the bimonthly "Yard Debris Day". I look in our green bin. Nothing. Well, crap. I figure I might as well fill it. I trundle it around to the front yard where the dogwood has shat about a pickuptruckbed-load of leaves in hopes of settling accounts with what little grass remains and rake them up, filling the bin only about 2/3rds full.

Well, damn, that can't be right. I trundle the big green bin around to the side yard and start raking. Mojo and Peeper are out washing her bicycle and the Peep wanted to help. So he got a set of post-hole diggers to load leaves into the bin.

But the bin was full! So we hauled out the paper yard litter bags and started filling. Missy, who had toddled out to the sandboxes to dig and watch Fat Nitty use them for a litterbox, came over to help by lying in the piles. Slowly the piles grew and then shrank as more and more bags were filled. Everyone enjoyed working and/or playing in the sunny November afternoon.Mojo, having put her bike up was closely involved, as always, doing something she informed me was known as "supervising".

Hmmm.So by pure accident we managed to rake up ALL the leaves in the yard, thanks to the help of our littlest campesinos. Next year I should see if we can pick up some coin hiring them out picking cherries or something...Enough of this domestic life! What is this, some sort of Daddy-blog? Are we all supposed to sit around looking at cute kids, smelling the flowers and singing Kumbaya? Where's the politics? Where's the soccer? Well?

Okay: so next up: Beauty, Beastliness and Pirates of All Sorts. Yaaaarrrgh!!!