From the First Day of Spring

It's 2 am.  I am blogging.  I am still awake and it's not typical, but once you start the process of boiling down sap, you're committed until a dark and viscous liquid is sealed tidily in jars on your counter.  The jars are situated empty next to the stove right now and we're all just waiting, the jars, my boy, and I.  We're waiting for the liquid to turn a little darker and run a little thicker so we can call it syrup and plop our weary bodies in bed.  Until then, I'm telling about the week at 2 am.  Forgive me if my mind is more jumbled than usual. 

So Monday.  A boy came off the bus and found a place next to his brother to unwind in front of a mind-numbing show.  I was out doing something in the kitchen.  A few minutes passed and the boy reappeared with a goofy smile on his face.  "Guess what, Mom!  Look!"  He held his open palm up so I could examine the treasure he was grinning so wildly about.  It was the tiny white tooth that had been wiggly since before Valentine's Day.  He shoved his tongue through the gap in his mouth and opened wide so I could admire the bloody hole.  It was his first lost tooth.  We marked an envelope for the tooth fairy and placed it under his pillow.  The next day he got off the bus all excited to tell me that he could feel the adult tooth coming in already.


These paper-maché eggs full of sweet treats appeared in the mailbox one afternoon, one for each kid from their kind and caring west-coast grandparents.  It was a fun surprise.  Cracking the eggs was the perfect activity for three children who thrill at the prospect of destruction.  Consuming the candy was the perfect activity for the three sweet-tooths that they are.


I do my weekly grocery shopping at Wegmans.  It is a unique grocery store.  I think every shopping experience after you have come to appreciate the offerings of Wegmans is bound to be somewhat (or maybe a lot) disappointing.  One of the many things I love about Wegmans is their produce selection.  I never fail to discover something new when my eyes are open.  This week it was purple potatoes.  I bought two of each-- red, butter, and purple-- and made a mashed medley later in the week.   The red and butter potatoes, though colored on their skin, both had white flesh, but the purple was oozing an even richer hue on the inside.  So the mashed potatoes ended up being light purple.  

We are dog-sitting, house-sitting, horse-sitting, cat-sitting, and chicken-sitting while my parents are out of town.  It's a big job.  Our favorite part is hanging out with our old pal, Cocoa.  She visited our house and made herself comfortable in Gerret's bed with an adoring girl who couldn't hold back a string of clearly excited,"Cocoa! Cocoa! Cocoa!" (The girl's newest identifiable word)

As previously mentioned, our collection of sap was (and is currently being) reduced to a much smaller collection of maple syrup.  We are still learning to be the most efficient that we can be, which is why it's 2 am and we're still awake.  We have more to learn, obviously.

Earlier this week, Nolan and Gerret colored a printout of the Easter bunny to be entered in a contest at a local drug store.  Gerret was pretty quick and careless about his effort.  Three colors scribbled all at once over the entire page and he called it good.  Nolan conversely spent well over an hour researching, detailing, and creating.  His was a master piece, the finishing touch being a bright, beautiful rainbow arching over the scene.  I hoped his hard work and ingenuity would be acknowledged, but there were a lot of entries and I knew some would be from older kids.  We stopped in the morning of the contest to see all of the entries displayed on the wall behind the counter.  As suspected, Nolan's definitely stood out, but there were also a handful of others that could draw one's attention.  The wall was covered in smiling bunnies decked in brilliant color.

I came inside from our sap boiling fire for a minute this evening and just happened to be near my phone when it rang with a T-burg number.  It was the manager from Kinney Drugstore.  After identifying me as Nolan's mom he told me Nolan's picture had been selected as the winner.  His prize was $5 to the store.  You can imagine Nolan's elation and Gerret's deflation when I relayed the news.  We re-inflated Gerret and took at trip to the store to claim Nolan's prize.

And so all is well here in NY where Spring finally made an appearance today and just in time for our long day out stoking a fire.