Audrey and Isaac

For Grandmas and Grandpas who haven't seen the gem yet. Here she is at exactly 1 week...

We are enjoying this little girl more than I can say. What a nice addition she is to our family already. We will be blessing her this Sunday, then having Isaac's baptism in the afternoon. For all friends and family available, you are welcome to join us for these two special events.

And speaking of Isaac... Here are a few little anecdotes about our freshly turned eight-years-old boy. This kid is in love with animals, bugs and pets of all kinds. His latest run turned into quite an inconvenience, so I had to ban all pets (except Seamus, of course) for a time to give myself a breather.

It started with honey bee collecting. For a couple of days Isaac's, Clara's and Will's every spare minute was spent catching bees. (Will would catch them with his hands and never was stung. Don't know how he did it!) The kicker came when they were adding some to their bottle and accidentally let out about 20 bees in the house. They spent a long time trying to catch them again, and we've been finding bees everywhere. Honey producing project over.

So they moved on to newts. Michael taught Isaac the art of newt catching: Thoroughly soak the ground around the outside garbage can, leave it for a day or so, then move the can quickly and there you will find the prize. (I think they're newts anyway. Crying shame that I don't know for sure.) Anyway, Isaac caught about 4 of them. One had gotten "smeared" a little when they moved the gargabe can, so he had some guts showing. Isaac excitedly came and told me he had fixed the one with the guts problem. "What do you mean 'fixed'?"

"Oh, I just trimmed off the extras that were outside its body!" Problem solved. Needless to say, the fixed newt didn't flourish. It died and stunk, and the newt project was scrubbed.

That evening, as I kissed the boys and put them to bed, I went to open their window and found a piece of strawberry on the sill, pink juice soaking into the paint. "Isaac, do you know anything about this?" With a grin he told me to look closer--the strawberry was food for something. All over the screen wingless little flies were crawling and hopping around. Upon inquiry he said, "Well, I didn't want to have to catch them all over again!" Obviously! Flies were let out to perish on the roof, and a ban was placed on fly catching.

I'm such a wet blanket!

Next came the worst of all. Somewhere (and I really don't want to know where) Isaac found a cache of maggots. I came upon this project a hair too late when I found maggots squirming all over a potted plant on the kitchen windowsill. "ISAAC!!" He said that he had found some worms, and worms are good for plants, so he and Meg had packed as many worms into each of my house plants as they could. They spent the next couple of hours unpotting several plants, cleaning off roots, picking out maggots, then repotting them. Then they decided to go get a couple of chickens to clean up the mess. Maggots gone. Unfortunately, we have had an unusual number of flies in the house the last week or so. Where are they all coming from?

All pets are banned. Maybe as a late birthday gift I'll let him start catching things again. Who knows?