dead spiders and newborn kittens

 If anyone needs us, we'll be under the deck talking to our five new kittens. And by "we" and "us" I mean my two little boys who race to the back porch every morning before breakfast to watch the kittens fumbling around the back yard with their mama before retreating to the shade and quiet of the back deck.

 

 

The timing for kittens is providential, because we finished reading Charlotte's Web together last week. My four-year-old looked at me in horror when we reached the end and said, "Charlotte DIES?!" 

 

Thankfully, though, there's this week, where new kittens are helping to make spider deaths more bearable. And as a result, the two big kids are doing a lot of pretending to be Charlotte, Templeton, and Wilbur throughout the day, with a fair amount of "My name is Zuckerman, and I'm going to chop you up into bacon, Wilbur!" tossed in for good measure. 

 

Side note: If you haven't heard a three-year-old sing, "Fine swine. Wish he were mine. What if he's not so big?" thirty times in a row, have you really lived?

 

 

Watching my daughter swing in the front yard while chatting with herself, one of her favorite things to do, brings back memories from my own childhood where I spent a lot of my days . . . swinging and chatting with myself. Yesterday she told me excitedly that she found Charlotte and pointed to a spiderweb and spider hanging from the tree. Then she asked, "Why is she not talking to me though, Mom?" only to be told by her brother, "Animals only talk to animals." 

That settled that.

So if you stop by our house and are referred to as a pig, a goose, a spider, a rat, a Lurvy, a Fern, or a Zuckerman, please don't take offense. We're all animals all the time right now, and for farm kids, I can't imagine anything much better.