Wild Life (Inside AND Outside!)

Today there was another Great Escape, not including Everett, though. It was Archer. Right after his bath, and right before he got dressed, he darted out the front door and escaped before I could catch him. Just as I was catching up, he rounded the corner and slipped back into the house through the garage door, laughing and screaming. Everything's a game with kids in the house! And less than ten minutes later, his face was already covered in food, and Shelly (who also just had a bath) spit up everywhere. So neither of them are clean any more.

This afternoon, before bath time, we worked outside a little bit. I tried out the new electric grass trimmer and I told David it works well, but its not really a good two person tool - Archer insisted on helping so we were able to cut about one blade of grass every three minutes while we both tried to figure out how to hold the trimmer together.

I've been thinking about dividing my patch of daisies to help them spread out and fill in the garden more, but I don't know the best time to divide them, or how to keep them blooming all summer long. Grandma, what's your advice on the best way to do that? Should I wait until fall before dividing them? And how do I not completely destroy the roots when I divide them?

Grandma and Grandpa probably remember when they were at our house last year and I traced out for them my grand vision of landscaping, digging out sod and making a garden walkway with shrubs and ornamental grasses. Needless to say, I've had to scale that back a little, but I would still like to work towards some more plants and things to attract birds to our yard. I'm a little jealous of Mom and Dad's yard witth all the birds, rabbits, and squirrels that are always passing through. I think I've only seen two squirrels in our yard since I moved into this house with David, and never any rabbits. The most wildlife we have is the occassional lost bird and the neighborhood cat that roams around ridding our yard of any real wildlife that might come near.

And now the latest development in Shelly's milestones - she's learning how to type! Actually, at this point its more like she's flailing around and randomly hitting buttons on the keyboard, but you've gotta start somewhere, right? She's really getting to be an expert at getting my fingers into her mouth, though, and I'm improving my one-handed typing.