This morning the peonies are blooming and the birds are chirping and those @#$ squirrels are eating my birdseed again.  Overgrown rats, that’s what they are.

Moving on from the squirrels…there are many other enjoyable aspects of being an early bird today.  No, it’s not my nature to be up and at ‘em like this—you know I like to milk the morning for all I can—but today I’m here, tea in hand, listening to the outside world.  As always happens on mornings like this, I’m surprised by the volume of sound  the birds and frogs and other creatures out there produce.  They’re small, but not silent.  Amidst the daily cacophony of football and capture the flag, these sounds are drowned out, and it’s lovely, just now, to sit and listen to them in their loud glory.

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Yesterday morning, the boys rode their bikes to the library while I got organized.  They returned, books secured, and, still on bikes, we headed to the Farmer’s Market.  The boys headed straight for the bakery stall – the cinnamon rolls were calling them.  Then we bought what turned out to be the best strawberries I’ve had in years.  It makes me want to move to a tropical climate, where fresh fruit can be in season, locally, all year long.  Think that will happen?  Yeah, me neither. 

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As the boys played at the beach the other day, I had such a sense of their similarities and differences.  I watched them brave the cold water (68°), one tiptoeing, one running full on, one torn between the two.  I watched them splash and dive and laugh.  And later, when they’d had their fill, they quietly went their own ways.  One settled down with a warm towel and a book; another stayed in the water, challenging himself, as always, to brave more; the third dug with the little metal shovel for hours, hours!, until he completed his lengthy river through the sand.  I love these moments:  boys together, boys alone, everyone content.  They come too infrequently for me, never often enough, and they remind me of the pure joy of raising these boys.