Alison Hodgson

Expert on the etiquette of perilous times.

Would whoever took June tell me what you did with it? I don’t want it back, I just want to know where it went.

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This was taken several weeks ago.  Don’t you love all the pinks and mauves?  This is why I garden: so that little girls can pick and pick and pick to their hearts content.

Here are the little crazies who did the picking.  Ren is wearing Eden’s bikini.   The bum needed to be rolled up to keep it from falling off hers.

The pool wasn’t open at that point so we turned on the sprinkler.

Wowza!  Look at that mouth.  
Mothering, wifeing, aunting, sistering, gardening, pooling and reading (always!) have trumped blogging for a while.  With the holiday, birthdays and a workshop I’m attending, posting will probably be light for a bit, but I will when I can.  I still owe Canada pictures of the Wizzle stealing popcorn.  I remember.

Can’t you feel the love?

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Eden loves to hold her baby cousin.

Eden’s joy is palpable and yet I’m sensing a reservation on Willa’s part.

Since she can’t talk, she didn’t actually say, “Is this such a good idea?” but I think it’s implied.

Ren hopped into the picture while Willa tried to climb out.

“Scuse me…a little help.”

Health Watch

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“Do you know what Catchy Petunia is?” Eden asked.

“No,” I said, “I don’t.”
“It’s a kind of sickness you can get when it rains and you can die.”  She said.
“Catchy Petunia?”  I said it myself and then something shifted and clicked and I remembered Lydia warning the Legumes about catching pneumonia just the day before.
Mystery solved.
“I don’t want to die.”  Eden said.
Nobody wants that, Sweet Bean.

A Little Legumage

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No baby yet, at least out here. She’s warm inside. I can’t blame her, I mean we’re talking January in Michigan…tough sell.

Torey and Ren have been coming over the last couple days. This afternoon almost everyone was in the kitchen while I made dinner. I was chopping an onion rather vigorously and a big hunk of it went flying off the island. Normally, anything that hits the floor is fair game for Jack and he knows this; within a second of the onion hitting the floor I heard the scuttling of his nails. Before he was able to swoop I grabbed the onion. Allowing Jack to it, just didn’t seem prudent. Torey read my mind.

“Can you imagine his gas if he ate that!” She asked.

“Ren, Jack’s farts are revolting.” Eden said.

“Oh, what do the smell like?” Ren asked with the convivial tone of a gossiping matron.

“Like dog poop.” Eden said.

For which no one can fault him.

P2

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My sister’s baby is due tomorrow and I will be surprised if Torey goes much past that. She’s ready. We’ll see if the baby is too.

When she and her family lived with us we got in the habit of referring to the kids obliquely as “H1, H2, H3 and P1” It worked for some time since Christopher (H1) is hearing impaired and Eden (H3) and Ren (P1) were oblivious, but it was only a matter of time before Lydia (H2) cracked the code. We weren’t really trying to keep it a secret; mainly we used it to draw attention to something hilarious that one or both of the Legumes was doing without attracting their attention.

P2 was referred to before she was even conceived. We’ll never get away with calling her that as an aside, because the girl has been having that yelled at her by the Legumes since she had ears to hear. Soon she will be here and have her own name, but I know the nickname will, if not stick, surface from time to time, and I wonder what memories it will stir for her.