Xavier Meets a Katydid
Greetings to all.
Last night, in the cold drizzle and wet grass, Xavier and I played hide and seek, a game he has come to like quite a lot.
As he hid in the hedge along the newly raised fence and I pretended not to see him, something dropped out of the tree near where I stood.
After seeing what fell, I called Xavier over, asking him if he wanted to see a katydid. Of course, he did. Some weeks ago, he and I spent quite some time outside with flashlights looking for chirping crickets and clicking katydids. Now, we had one!
We examined it for a while, but it was too cold for it to move around much. When it warmed up sitting on our hands, it moved and sometimes flew off, but always succumbed to cold air again. We decided to give it a home in a little sand bucket with some leaves from a cottonwood. Xavier made a little house out of Tinker Toys and set it over the bucket, then we went in for the night.
Today was a much nicer—and warmer—day. Xavier and I fixed a problem with the newly hung gate, then checked out the katydid.
I was gone!
We did find it soon enough, however, as it tried to find its way closer to the warmth of the house walls. More active today, the insect gave Xavier more than an hour of amusement.
He moved the katydid all over the yard, watched it climb over grass and up tree trunks. At first he did not like it climbing on his arm, but soon got used to it—so long as it stayed in sight and never went above his elbow. If it did, he got more than a little nervous.
We ended up putting the katydid back in its house, where it remained the rest of the day. Sometime in the night, it left, probably to find greener pastures and higher trees.
Fence Building
Greetings to all you Xavier fans!
We tore down a sagging fence in July and have over the course of several weekends built a sturdier one in its place. Xavier has been a part of this from tearing it down to digging holes and setting 4x4s to nailing up pickets.
His Grandpa Danny gave him a pair of leather gloves two years ago in his Christmas stocking. This year Xavier finally grew into them (though he has worn them on and off these past two years). These he wore most of the time we handled the lumber.
While Dad used his four foot level and pneumatic nailer, Xavier used his Home Depot toy level and toy hammer. He even used the drill his Aunt Kathy gave him this past Christmas. (that night, after cleaning up, we had to build a nailer and an air compressor out of Tinker Toys).
Indeed, he did help out quite a bit. He was not in the way most of the time, and he assisted in needed ways at times.
At a recent birthday party, themed as a mad scientist party, Xavier obtained a pair of safety glasses (though I do not think they are OSHA certified). Now he could wear his own glasses just like Daddy.
He no longer had to stand "way over there" and watch while the nailer was chugging along the fence pickets, or watch from a distance when the compound miter saw cut pickets to length.
At one point as we worked on shaving down the gate after it swelled from a recent downpour, I asked him to move out of the way (I needed to open the gate and he was blocking me from doing that).
"I don't need to go over there anymore, Daddy," he informed me. "I'm wearing my safety glasses."
I tried to explain the glasses might protect his eyes, but not his face if the opening gate smashed into it. I do not think he understood.
2017 Harvest
Greetings to all.
This weekend Aunt Chelle drove down from Fort Collins to watch Xavier. Mom and Dad needed a getaway, and Steamboat Springs called to us.
The afternoon, when Chelle arrived, grew overcast. Xavier's garden patch had seen its better days. Time to harvest most of what it grew for him. Before jumping in the car and heading to the mountains, we spent some time helping Xavier bring in his bounty. We wanted some time with him before we left.
We targeted the pumpkins first. Twenty were ready and five will be ready in a few weeks if the weather holds. The stems proved too tough for Xavier's strength; Mom stepped in to assist.
In all my years of growing pumpkins, I have never seen vines so fecund. Many of the pumpkins weigh over twenty pounds. Snails (which plagued our gardens this year) covered the bottoms of all of the pumpkins. Fortunately, they did little damage. We flicked them into the street, then brought the gourds onto the patio.
After the pumpkins, Xavier helped with the butternut and spaghetti squash. However, he did not have the same exuberance in harvesting them.
All in all an extraordinarily productive garden this year. Who knew the soil a forty-five year old Blue Spruce tree had grown in would make so fertile a planting area for gourds? The pumpkin vines are still producing flowers and fruit; we're likely to get five or six more pumpkins this year.
The squash survived the plague of snails also, and there are many more of each kind left to harvest. The vines supporting these, however, have all but died back.
We moved the squash and the corn stalks from Rebecca's garden onto the patio with the pumpkins. Rebecca and Xavier have plans to use many of these in decorating the front yard for October.
The day's harvesting finished, Rebecca and I left Xavier in the very capable care of his Aunt Chelle and headed to Steamboat Springs. Xavier spent the rest of the weekend not feeling prideful over his harvest, but pining for his parents so far away.
Xavier's New Office
Greetings to everyone.
Xavier's room has become cluttered, and Middle Earth something of a mess most of the time. The clutter and strewn-about toys in Middle Earth were (mostly) tolerable, since we decided that was Xavier's main play area. His room, however, was a different matter altogether.
Rebecca invested in two translucent storage containers as a test to contain Middle Earths creeping dishevelment. We also decided to move Xavier's table out of his room. He never used it and it was a breeding ground, perhaps the wellspring of all the clutter in his room; certainly the inspiration for it at least.
We thought to move the desk and chairs to Middle Earth and move his toy bins and new toy containers into his room. Then we had a different idea, one I was hesitant to agree to.
We thought move the desk and chairs to my office. There Xavier could play while I worked. It was an intriguing idea, but my office was already cluttered to a threshold of annoyance—and the desk would mean tighter space.
We moved some things around in my office, got rid of the large CRT taking up space in a corner while harboring spider nests and rearranged two pieces of furniture. His desk fit in perfectly.
Instantly, Xavier loaded his desk with two items: a computer-looking play and learn toy and a ten key calculator with paper roll. The ten key was his version of the printer to the right of my computer.
He often sits there while I work. He writes bills and prints me out numbers on his printer. While the roofers were working, we had a rain storm and the unfinished roof leaked above his desk. He sat down (after we cleaned up the mess) and wrote out checks to pay for the roof leak, just like Daddy sits and writes checks to pay other things at his desk.
When asked at school what he wanted to do when he grew up, he responded with "I want to grow up big like Daddy and have fun and work with him in his office."