Art

This is my Grandma's most recent painting. I'm so jealous someone in the family has already claimed it. I love the rich colors. My grandmother paints in color streaks. For a long time all of her more artsy paintings seemed to be pink and blue, with a lot of pink. I always thought it kind of odd, because if I remember correctly, Grandma Jan distinctly used to not like pink. Lately, however, there have been more rich, brown and rust colors, which I really like. I keep trying to convince her to paint an abstract with a lot of plum color, but I suspect she is not a plum person. Maybe she'll grow into plum and have a plum phase.

Grandma Jan

This is my Gramma Jan, one of the best, most eccentric grandmothers you'll ever meet. She's a staunch liberal. She's nocturnal. She drinks tea with a swig of gin (she says only in the late afternoon). She paints abstract paintings (nude people, strange shapes, tubes of toothpaste that turn into dismembered body parts, etc.), and she's explored a variety of topics including astronomy, photography, gardening, sculpting, and CB radios. She owns more books than you could ever count. Growing up across the driveway from her, on the same farm was always an adventure. She does not smell old, nor does she have typical old lady handwriting. She has false teeth, but you'd never know. She's a modern grandmother who surfs the internet and reads any kind of online newspaper she can find. She furrows her eyebrows over crossword puzzles. She hates sunlight and rarely goes outside, but we forced her out when we were in North Dakota last week. I couldn't stop taking pictures of her . . . I must have 30 or fourty, but these are my favorites. She's one of my most missed people from North Dakota while I live in Wisconsin.

Ultimate Coolness

Gus, Easter Sunday.

The Love of Puppies

Gus loves puppies. He has eyes that can spot a puppy blocks away when he's in the stroller. His ears pick up puppies barking across town and he drops whatever he's doing so that he can dramatically sign PUPPY with both of his hands to make sure that I notice he's noticed a puppy.

When we were home to North Dakota for Easter, Gus was in his element. At Grandma Kathy's house there lives a mangy canine beast by the name of Katie. Katie once was a hunting dog. Now she's a farm dog in the end stages of her life. She wallows around, runs away a lot, goes swimming in the slough and comes back dripping wet, full of enormous wood ticks. She has long, brown matted fur in every stage of disgruntlement. Most of us adore her from a distance, avoiding a lot of heavy duty petting. Gus, on the other hand, fell in love with Katie. He'd go outside and follow Katie whereever she meandered. He'd give Katie hugs. He'd give Katie kisses on her nose.

On Easter Sunday one of the guests for dinner also brought a little black mop of a dog that came complete with its own water dish and puppy chew toy. Gus wasn't fast enough to give the little black mop kisses and hugs, but he did discover the chew toy, shaped like a puppy that he cuddled for a great length of time, and he had a fantastic time playing with the puppy's water dish.

Flower Blocks

These are some of my favorite toys in our house. I actually bought them when I was pregnant the very first time at a garage sale because I thought they were so . . . wacky. I knew right when I saw them that they were the kind of toy I wanted my kids to play with. They are so unconventional that you can't help but to be creative in what you build and even more creative in what you decide your construction actually is. Some of the blocks are shaped like a daisy, and so for several years now, when we take them out on rainy, gloomy days, Ms. Crazy Preschooler has called them flower blocks. Gus likes them too. We've built instruments, space ships, zoos and all kinds of creations with them.

I was excited about these faceless pictures I took the other day. I like the bright colors, although I'm always disappointed that they don't turn out so bright on my blog.

After a Walk

This is my handsome little guy after a walk in the stroller. Last Sunday the weather was amazing and he and I took a stroll down one of my favorite streets to look at Victorian mansions. He got a little bored, and on the way home the sun was right in his eyes. Voila! Sleeping child! And the other resident of our household under four feet tall happened to be off picking up a pizza with Dad, so I had a few spare minutes to sit BY MYSELF outside.

Moss on the Patio

All winter long, the dryer vent and the exhaust from our hot water furnace keep the backyard patio next to the house warm and moist. The snow melts a foot from the house, and as it warms up slightly in the spring to around 32 degrees, moss flourishes. It might creep some people out. (Dr. Pediatrcian likes to scrape it with his shoes.) Yet, each spring that we've lived here, I have taken joy in this first green sign amid all the brown mud and gunk in the rest of the yard. I love watching it grow and sprout little red "hairs." What an interesting creation, that can grow right on top of plain old bricks. Each spring Ms. Crazy Preschooler and I scrape some of it off the bricks and plant it in a flower pot and call it our moss garden. The crazy thing about moss is that it looks like it shrivels and dies when the weather gets warm and dry, but if you just leave it alone, there it is again as soon as things moisten up, bright green and cheery.

Flowers!

On the north side of my house there are a few tiny crocus plants. Yesterday Ms. Crazy Preschooler and I noticed that they were blooming! I know very little about flowers and I'm not really great at growing them, but I do have a list of my favorite flowers, and crocuses happen to be on the list.

My favorite garden flowers in no particular order:

1. Iris
2. Tulips
3. violas
4. crocuses
5. A certain kind of lemon yellow daisy that I can never remember the name of
6. Daffodils

I am really excited about how these pictures of the crocuses turned out. The lighting was really interesting and I really like how it brings out the purple on my computer monitor. (They probably won't look nearly as good on this webpage, though).