Jensenisms: Tales of Boys and Busdrivers

Having this little girl tacked onto the end of our family has been pure joy. She has the gift of making me laugh every day, and one of my favorite things about her is that she loves to hold my hand. The wonderful thing about that is that she is very adamant that my hand is tightly and securely grasping hers -- no fish hand. She often reaches over with her other hand to wrap mine around hers the way she wants it. I love it. None of my big kids will hold my hand anymore, and I dread the day that Jensen thinks she is too old to do it.

Another thing I love about her is that she is a thinker. She is constantly stringing these very grown-up thoughts and words together, and sometimes they come out very, very funny. This week, she and I were walking through WalMart near the pharmacy, and we passed an end cap that had a diet pill display. Right at her eye level on one of the boxes was a picture of a pudgy woman, and next to her the same woman, only thin. Jensen said, "Mommy, if you want to skinny up, then you really need these." Then, she poked at her own belly and said, "I think maybe I should skinny up."

Today she came home from school and said that she had so much fun playing at recess today. I turned to listen carefully because this is the first time she has said that. Recess is her LEAST favorite part of school. When I inquired as to what had made recess so fun today, she said she had played "boy tag." Boy tag?? She explained that she had gotten a girl who doesn't usually play very much, and they had chased Isaac, Dillon, and Jacob all over the playground today. Oh wow. Should I be happy about the fact that she had a good recess, or should I be worried about the fact that she is chasing boys?

On about the third day of riding the bus home, Jensen got off the bus and told me that her bus driver made her change seats on the way home. What? Why make a kindergartner change seats on a bus full of kindergartners? Evidently, she got in a bit of trouble. I automatically kicked into cub protection mode, and I asked what happened. She said that the boys behind her were throwing "trash with slobber on it" at her and Ellie, and they were just throwing it back. EWWWW! I'm assuming "trash with slobber on it" translates to "spitballs," and picking up someone else's spitballs is soooooo disgusting. Jens said the bus driver wouldn't listen to her try to explain and just made her move anyway. I wasn't thrilled with the bus driver. Oh well. At least I can be grateful for this: (the miracle of hand sanitizer. . .)

Finally, this week Jensen asked me if I knew what her favorite holidays were. I had an idea, but I went ahead and said, "No. Tell me." Her response made me a little melancholy, "Christmas, Easter, and the day Dalin comes home." Is that perfect or what? I love that little girl.

You Reap What You Sow

This year my brother and sister-in-law, Cash and Marisa, ended up with a bunch of fantastic produce from their little garden planted along the whole length of their back fence. It's nice for me because I get some of the leftover stuff when I happen by, which I should have done more often in the last month. We have a harvest at our house, too, only it's not nearly as useful as the Hill's. We grew baby birds this summer. Well, we didn't really do it on purpose, but it happened on our front porch, nonetheless. I wish I could say I was thrilled with it all, but there is a big fat downside to a nest built directly above the first step up to your front porch. It looks like this:

Yep. We have been sidestepping and spraying away bird poop all summer. While we were enthralled watching the swallow parents construct a nest on the 1/2" lip on the underside of our porch cover, we didn't stop to think what would happen when mommy and daddy swallow perched on the edge of the nest to feed their babies. Birds poop a lot. A whole lot. I think one of the reasons Dalin was so excited to go to school was that he wouldn't have to spray the poop off the porch everyday. Now Brent does it -- hee hee.

Ok, it was pretty cool seeing the tiny eggs in the nest and watching the ugly little swallow babies poking their heads and gigantic beak mouths up to be fed, but when the babies flew off in July while we were on vacation, we didn't cry too much. Unfortunately for us, we didn't take the nest down, and guess what? The mommy and daddy were very prolific this summer and deposited five more eggs in the nest. You can't take a nest down when it has eggs in it. That would be like abortion or something. So we suffered through round two. The funny thing about this batch of babies was that they weren't afraid of us. Where the first batch would hunker down in the nest whenever they heard the door or a car, these dumb babies poked their heads right out and stared at us. It was a little disconcerting and a bit creepy, to tell the truth. Not to mention that the swallow parents scolded us all summer whenever we opened the door and disturbed a rest or a feeding.

Moral of the story? As soon as you see a cute little swallow couple building a nest anywhere close to where you step, take it down. When you're a bleeding heart, you reap what you sow, I'm telling ya. It's best to watch the whole process on PBS.