Odds and ends

On the home front: Our upstairs neighbors appear to be moving out! I'll admit, I was very startled to see them carrying various pieces of furniture out the door this afternoon. I would have expected to see them leading out a herd of elephants, a road construction crew, six Clydesdales, and the entire cast of Lord of the Dance. I am not kidding. I have no idea how two normal-sized grownups can make that much noise, unless they eat a lot of canned goods and are the two clumsiest people ever. Now, we live on the second floor, and we have a child who is currently fascinated with hopping and jumping, so I can't imagine that living downstairs from us is a real treat either. We're working on that. In fact, the air fairly vibrates with all the cries of "Boy Wonder! STOP JUMPING NOW! There are people downstairs!" However, at least Dragon and I, the grownups, are trying to be courteous by not stomping around ourselves.

On the road again: I took the boys to visit my grandmother, aka Nanny, today. While she watched Baby Boone sleep in his carseat (he wasn't feeling social today, I guess), Boy Wonder and I went to go pick raspberries in her yard. (My late grandfather grew up on a farm and loved to garden. The raspberries nearly took over the whole yard a few years back, but were tamed slightly. Still, there are a lot of raspberry bushes.) Boy Wonder was wildly enthusiastic about raspberry-picking, and I had to supervise him closely (well, duh, he's three; of course I did). I was trying to explain which berries to pick, and finally settled on telling him to pick the ones that were "all the way red" before he stripped the bushes of the pale pink ones. Which led to many shouts of, "Is this one all the way red? Where are some berries for me to pick? It's my turn to pick one!" We didn't pick that many, which may have been a blessing in disguise, because once we got back inside he proceeded to scarf down every single one.

On the home front, redux: Soon, we hope to emulate our upstairs neighbors--not by making noise, but by moving out. Having a second child makes things a bit more crowded than I thought it would, and I think that fairly soon the closet doors will come flying off because they are all ridiculously full. It is Rummage Sale Season around here, and I keep seeing all the signs and saying, "Hey, we should go! Oh wait, no. Where would we put anything else?" So we are sort of in the beginning stages of looking for a house. With a basement.