Friday, May 29, 2009

A Day At the Farm




My son and I spent the afternoon at a farm. It's the childhood home of my best friend from elementary school; she and I fell in love over My Little Ponies in third grade at Catholic School. In the barn, there is the sweetest little black calf named Henry, who was abandoned by his mother and is being fed by bottle. We were able to give him his 1:00 feeding, and my son was thrilled! Hands-down the cutest thing I've seen in a long time - my happy little boy feeding a fuzzy baby cow a bottle of milk.

In the pasture, there's a pond where we used to swim with the horses on hot days when we were young. The kids splashed and caught tadpoles and filled their boots with water, while the dogs dove after a rubber ball. There is also a box full of kittens tucked into the hay in the barn and a foal that we watched nurse from his mother. Later, while I watched him climb on a tractor, play
in the sandbox, and savor a grape popsicle, I knew I would be dragging a reluctant toddler to the car when it was time to leave. Just a very simple, storybook kind of day. :)



Thursday, May 28, 2009

Three Things That Happened Tonight

And I only liked one of them.

  1. My son kissed me and smeared grape juice all over my face.
  2. I wondered why my printer tray was closed, and when I opened it, found it stuffed with Tonka truck puzzle pieces.
  3. Our puppy peed on the tire of my kid's plastic ride-on dune buggy, which is a toss-up between hilarious and infuriating. Mostly infuriating.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Memorial Day Flea Market

There is a fun flea market filled with antiques, plants, flowers, and dusty junk at Burley Park in Western Michigan. My mother and I went together on Memorial Day, and I stuffed myself with carnival food: elephant ears, corndogs, and gigantic paper cups of watery soda. My magpie mother immediately ditched me and bought a little ceramic cat and a brown enamel pitcher with mushrooms on it. I found a cute side chair with aviary print fabric for $8.00 and filled a bag with vintage Fisher Price Little People toys for my son. I think I spent more on the food than I did on my finds...

Monday, May 25, 2009

Oakdale Farm.

Looking out my bedroom window tonight, I'm enormously grateful that we chose to live here. The wind is blowing through the branches, rippling the water in our ponds and my son's new inflatable pool, and I can feel the breeze on my bare feet through the gaps between the wide pine plank flooring. Our barn looks romantic through the wavy glass of the window, charming with the slight sag in the center of the roof and the sign that reads, "Oakdale Farm.", as though the name is by itself a complete sentence. For me, I suppose it is. :)

I walk down the stairs with every third step creaking my descent, and see my son still playing in the backyard, driving his small cars in the dirt where I filled in a hole that his puppy dug so deep that I had to use dried leaves and grass clippings to help fill it in. My husband asks if he should bring him inside, it's way past his bedtime, and I look at my boy, so happy in the waning light, with
the fifty-year-old white hydrangea swaying behind him and the almost-hatched peonies near his face, and I say, no, let him play.