June is busting out all over!

Rachel just got home from babysitting (at 10 til midnight—and a good thing, too, because in Georgia 15 and 17 year olds can't drive between midnight and 5 am), so I suppose it's a good time to disclose how much of a secretary I feel like lately!

My phone has been off the hook with requests for my kids to puppy-sit, plant-sit, and babysit. Not to mention tutoring. And Benjamin's trying to start up a garbage can washing hustle.

"Can Zoë come over tomorrow at 2 to tutor?"

"Can y'all do puppy duty Monday and Thursday this week?"

"Any chance one of your girls is around on Saturday afternoon and wants to babysit?"

It can be a little chaotic to coordinate everything. Throw in daily swim practices and weekly swim meets (we just got home from the swim meet at 10:45 this evening), girls' camp (which Rachel and Miriam just got back from), music lessons, and the fact that Andrew has an actual job and I have some writing projects to finish up before the school year starts and...it's a real circus over here!

I thought I would share a few pictures of the more ordinary parts of our lives. The pictures are in reverse order (newest to oldest) because that's how they showed up when I imported them and I...don't want to take the time to switch everything.

My corn is flowering!

I was really afraid it wasn't going to because it tasseled a while ago but never developed silks. But I was checking on it today and noticed that several stalks have silks and my tassels and still tasseling, so Alexander and I spent some time hand pollinating. With any luck we'll get some actual corn this year!

I planted a bunch of gladioli in the spring, and had some older corms reappear, of course. Several of the newer bulbs put out greenery and then shriveled up and died, which was...sad. I'm not quite sure why. But this little guy blossomed today:

I don't think I'll be winning any ribbons for my flowers any time soon, but they do make me think of my grandma (and are also just beautiful besides that). Fun fact! In Canada (and New Zealand and Great Britain), red ribbons are for first place and blue ribbons are awarded to second place. In the US, of course, blue is for first place and red is for second. Both the US and Canada use white for third. Just another way I sometimes get confused about things...still.

Phoebe caught a red-legged buprestis beetle at the pool on June 14. It was still alive and well on June 20 during family scripture study when she got it out to play with. She keeps it in a plastic case that a pair of goggles came in and loves it so much. She sleeps cuddling this little plastic case with the beetle inside of it. And...I'm sure it will die one day but for now it seems perfectly happy inside the case with some wood chips and leaves and lots and lots of love.

Zoë was trying to see how close she could glide to the bottom of the pool—turns out she can get pretty darn close! She was having a great time...until she scraped her face along the bottom of the pool. She kept picking at the spot on her forehead (you can see she also banged her nose and her lip) so I asked her to put a bandaid on and she chose this one:

It says, "Do thou amend thy face, and I'll amend my life," which is a line from Shakespeare's Henry IV, part I. She thought it was apt. 

Kelli sent us a box of bandaids with Shakespearean insults. 

The kids think they're hilarious.

*****

Not only is my corn growing but my sunflowers are as well!

I'm excited to see how how they grow.

*****

Alexander lost his first front tooth on June 13 and his second one on June 16 (while we were at Grandpa and Darla's house for dinner; he lost the tooth on the way home from their house...but Daddy found the tooth today...so all is right in the world):

He's crying in this picture because he realized he didn't know where his tooth was...but I asked him to smile for the camera anyway. I'll get a happier picture of his gappier mouth later.

*****

Phoebe is super into chalk lately.

When Benjamin saw her colouring in the outline I'd made of her he said, "Nice person!"

She said, "That’s not a person! That’s me!"

"Aren’t you a person?"

"No."

"What are you?"

"Me am a puppy."

"I see. Nice puppy, then."

 

"Thanks! Me drawing pyjamas for mine puppy!"

That was on June 12. Since then, Phoebe has been using an effort to us "I" instead of "me," to the extent that she overcorrects sometimes and says things like, "I too!" instead of "Me, too!" 

But it sure is strange to hear her say things like, "I need some more watermelon!" because she's being using the me-construction for so long. "Me need some more watermelon!"

Everybody's got to grow up some time, I guess.

Since we're moving backwards, here she is playing with bubbles before getting all messy with chalk:

I don't really have much to add here, aside from pointing out how much she loves bubbles. I purchased some concentrated solution earlier in the year and it's still going strong (we just mix up a new batch by adding water to whatever amount of solution).

We've been going on many firefly sunset walks...

And even stopped to pick some bramble berries one evening.

Here's Phoebe with a firefly she brought inside to show Daddy:

And randomly, here's Benjamin with a dead bee:

It's hard to believe that June is on its way out!