Jim helps with furniture, part 2.

So we had this elderly and well-worn but sturdy dresser. (keep looking, it's behind the cute baby)


Jim helped me sand it so it could be stained.


Lottie tried to help too, but she lost interest quickly.


She was more interested in admiring her reflection.


Fortunately, Jim was on the job.


The finished product.

How Lottie Became Afraid of the Kitchen Floor

So one morning this week, the kitchen floor was mysteriously swarming with fire ants. I have no idea where they came from, or why, or how. So I put the kids out of harm's way and set about spraying all the ants with bleach water so they would die and we could have breakfast in peace.

Naturally, halfway through the cleaning process, Lottie came charging in, slipped on the wet floor, and fell into a swarm of not-dead fire ants. Obviously she absolutely lost her poor little mind. I managed to scrape them all off her before she got more than a couple bites, but she was so scared she just stood there shaking and whimpering.

We went out for donuts instead of breakfasting at home.

Fast forward several days, the floor is ant-free, we're about to go visit the relatives, and I've foolishly packed the high chair before having lunch. No big deal, thought I. Lottie can just sit on the floor and have hers as a picnic, which she usually likes. But the second her little feet touched the floor, she went completely rigid and started screaming. Picked her up, calm and jolly. Back on floor, completely petrified.

So Lottie now has kitchen floor PTSD.

 (Sorry this post has no pictures - I foolishly neglected to reach for the camera when Lottie was flailing about covered in fire ants)

A ruckus.

A pose before the concert begins.


No one can accuse him of being lacking in enthusiasm.


I wish you could hear him shouting "Dance, Yottie, dance!"

Guess what Jim found!

Is it a cheesecake? Hulk Smash? Somebody's spare shoe? Fine, I'll show you.


One of the parks near us has a little pond with a gazebo over it.


The view from the gazebo looks like so. If you look down, though...


Turtles! A whole herd of them! There was a muskrat, too. Those critters are a lot faster than I thought.


Jim was nice enough to show baby sister.


She was more interested in using my leg as her own personal jungle gym, though.


So Jim helped her find her way back to the main path to head back to baby-attracting things like pine cones and gum wrappers.

What we do while waiting for Jim's swimming lessons to be over.

Stand outside the Y and collect compliments from entranced old people, of course. Hit it, Lottie:


She likes to play it up when she senses an admiring public.


But she's not too proud to come racing over when she needs an explanation for some fascinating thing like a piece of bark.


Try as she might, she's not quite big enough to hurl herself into the fountain yet. Don't worry, Lottie. Jim's got the constant-peril part of the family covered.


She's got the being-charming thing covered, though. Read her lips: "Hiiiiiiiii!"

And how are Jim's swimming lessons going, you ask? Great! He loves them, except that they leave him a little chilly. "Too cold for Jim," says he every day. According to his teacher, he's kind of alarmingly fearless in that he won't reliably hold on to the rail, which is why he needs to stay in the ultra-beginner class where they have one-on-one supervision. Other than that completely expected character flaw feature, he's doing really well. He can swim 5 yards on his front or his back, float in the water, make his way to the edge and get out without assistance, and do a pretty killer cannonball. That's all you can really expect from a 4-year-old, right?

Did I tell you about my cat?

What's that? There are living creatures besides children in this house?


Looking plaintive after nudging his cat food out from under the counter.

Oh yes, there are, and one of them recently had surgery. Some of you may recall poor old Bruce and the saga of his swollen, scabrous face. What we thought was a bad food allergy turned out to be pretty savage allergic reaction to his own tooth decay. So, off he went to the vet this week to have most of his remaining teeth extracted. Poor guy only has ten teeth left, but on the up side, his face looks a million times better, and he's got more pep in his step than he's had in a year.


He didn't appreciate me taking a picture of his shaved leg.

Miniature golf.

Well, it didn't go as well as bowling. But it was still fun, I'll give it that. Jim loved the idea, and all of us were ready for an outing. Alas, we had the bad idea to go at like 11 am, when it was both hotter than Venus and dead smack in the middle of Lottie's naptime. Also, Jim's excitement wore thin pretty fast and he started looking for alternate ways of amusing himself. Four-year-olds are good at that.


Most of the day looked like this, with Ilya painstakingly trying to instill good golfing form in a semi-cooperative but mostly uninterested Jim.


But look, it's almost like he knows what he's doing, right? Temporarily, anyway.


Lottie could only shake her head in dismay.


Don't let the expression of good cheer fool you. She was a raging tyrant by the seventh hole.


Even getting to push the stroller didn't appease her for long.

Long story short: We left after the ninth hole so that the baby could take a nap and the rest of us could recover some sanity. Oh well. Maybe next year.