a couple days

Yes, it was her birthday yesterday, and Jay bought these tremendously festive cupcakes to celebrate.

See how the bakery even packaged them in diagonal rows of juicy, bright colors?

Here are some kids having lunch on the patio.   Mom and I made the mac and cheese she brought.  Usually some sister/auntie mixes it up, so the exact ratios of butter, milk, and powdered cheese were experimental.  We improvised and nobody complained.

This little guy likes to sit up and see, and he enjoyed the stroller for a long time.  I forbid the little crazy ones to push him around.  We don't need that much excitement.  He's small.

 Brothers, eye to eye:

My mom listens to Tim read and she's patient, patient, no rushing in her voice, never.

She's learned about dyslexia along with me, and has seen this through from start to finish numerous times.   It's tedious at this tentative point, somewhere between catching on and fully capable reading.

She said today too, the freedom from worry is very liberating.  It's all good.

Dyslexic people take more time becoming fluent, but it all turns out better than fine.

And that was today, pretty much.   There's a lot of action and it's actually hard to take any pictures.

This is funny though--first thing this morning between this guy and this girl, we had his flagrant attempts to push her down and her equally unremorseful pulling him by the hair.

I put my hands between them and said, "No, no, now. Cousins are nice."

They both glanced at me and then reached out their feet across the space and kicked each other.

Me:  "Okay, now!"

That's when I turned to my mom, who was hugging the baby, and we both laughed our heads off.

Crazy babies anyway.

Onward.  Tuesday is almost over, and Wednesday approaches, and life is good.

love you monkeys, Grandma, and Great-Grandma too.