stepladder babies

This is no ordinary hanging flower.

It is a hanging flower dying for water. (But that is not why I'm posting it... I kill flowers. If it weren't for Matt's mom, my mom, and Shaina, ALL of my flowers and ferns would have died by now. It's kind of my thing... killing plants.)

Do you see what's special about my thirsty flower?


Let me give you a closer look.

Aren't they cute... you know, in an ugly sort of way?

A Mommy Robin came and laid her eggs in our hanging basket maybe about a month ago. (I don't really recall when those pretty blue eggs appeared, and I wish I had gotten a picture of them.) There were originally three baby birds, but one didn't make it, and I guess the mom removed it from the nest, because one day it was there and the next it wasn't. It made me sad for her as a mom. Maybe that's silly to feel sad for a bird, but I did. I wonder if she felt the loss.

Anyway, I thought it was so neat that we had baby birds right on our back deck for Jonah's very first spring/summer. We kind of have this morning tradition where he gets up, I change his diaper, and put him in his vibratey chair while I eat breakfast, do dishes etc. During this time I open the screen door to our back deck (while it's still semi-cool), so that we can hear the chimes and pretend we are outside. Anyway, when the babies were out there, we'd always know when Mommy Robin was bringing worms because they would just go crazy chirping, and I would always tell Jonah that she was out there feeding her babies.

I just think it's really cool that we had them with us for a few weeks. And I like to think that God and Gabe had a little bit to do with it, because of how much joy it brought me, having to stay inside all the time (which is not my favorite thing).

But what makes it even cooler is that just a few days before the nest appeared, I read Jonah this book:

This was my all-time favorite book as a kid. I LOVED it. And my mom must have read it to me a million times (which I appreciate so much more now, because sheesh, that book is long and has LOTS of words... it took me two days to make it through it with Jonah... and it had just as much to do with my laziness as his short attention span.)

And the really neat thing is that this book was given to an old neighbor of mine by his aunt and uncle in 1949 (not sure of the copyright date on the book itself), and then was passed on to our family.

I love so many things about the book. It has so much character and beautiful illustrations. And only some of them are in color, which makes those just pop even more. I love old books. They just don't make them like they used to.

And in the style of "See Dick run," the main characters are Billy and Ann. So simple. So perfect.

Here they are in their little polo-shirted, jumper-dressed glory, with their faithful dog (Fido?)

of course. "They were careful not to make a sound as they hurried along on tiptoe." (My, my, how times have changed.) I think for most of us this would read, "And completely ignoring "mother's" request, the kids came careening down the stairs, sliding down the railing, kicked the dog out of the way, slammed all the doors as they ran through the house, and then said to "mother," "What do you want, Mom? We're missing SpongeBob."

The book is about a robin who comes and lays her eggs on Billy and Ann's stepladder out back. I had JUST read it to Jonah when God blessed us with our own little hanging plant babies.

Funny ending though, I took the pictures of the babies one day and wasn't so happy with them, so the next day I stood on the chair by the hanging plant to try again, and one of the two took off. I about had a heart attack. He flew about half way across the yard and landed in the grass. And then I looked up and Mommy Robin was standing on the fence staring me down with a worm in her mouth. And I got really sad wondering if I had scared him out too early (and a little freaked out that I was about to get attacked by a psycho-mommy bird), but I looked about five minutes later, and he was gone. And by the next day, Baby Number Two had joined the "I'm too stinkin' old for this nest" club and was gone too. And just like that, no more birds.

Anyway, you guys told me to post about nothing, so there's some nothing for you.

And just so you don't have withdrawal, here are a couple cute photos Shaina took of Jonah yesterday. She's been a big help the last couple days with dressing change, and I still attest that she's the coolest, most mature, most selfless 14-year-old I've ever met. But that's a whole other post.

And from me to you, your Jonah fix. (We got him down at 10:00 tonight... a new record. And here I am still working on this post at midnight. Good grief.)