Happy Birthday, Irish

I was in the church nursery during the service with Yali. It was my shift again, and we had a record-breaking four kids in the room that morning. But Yali was a little more interested in slicing wooden lemons and oranges than he was in participating with the other kids. After awhile, he transferred to stacking blocks. But the tower just wouldn’t hold.

Crash!

Yali’s face contorted into one dramatic frustration. “DANG IT!”

Clearly, he has been spending too much time around his big brother.

The Big House. We were celebrating Irish’s 19th birthday about a week late. And there was some downtime before a three o’clock “lupper”, as Dad always called it. This allowed Grandma the opportunity to open a recent shipment that Carrie-Bri had discovered for her – a 1930’s lunchbox – just like the one she had back in the good old days.

“This is what I used to hit little Clifford over the head with,” she explained. “We were just playing chase. So I whacked him with it. Well, probably a couple of times. And there were a lot of times I missed.”

That was one serious metal lunchbox. I’m sure “little Clifford” enjoyed a few welts from those chases around the schoolyard back in the day.

Irish raked in the goods later that afternoon before celebratory brownies, including moccasins, t-shirts themed in Tesla and tornadoes, bento box cookbook, etc. Then Elmer led the whole group in another famously off-key version of “Happy Birthday”.

Meanwhile the afternoon had been so balmy that Rose and I sat on the roof for awhile in the autumn sun.

When we got back that evening, Yali began bellowing for “agua” in his signature ear-splitting yell, “AH-GOO-WAH!!!! AH-GOO-WAH!!!!”

By his desperation you’d think he’d just walked across the Sahara.

Awhile later Puck walked back inside from prowling the grounds.

“I’ve got a lot of good news, Mom!”

“Well, tell me, bud.”

“First good news – my boomerang fell out of the tree. Second good news – we’ve got bamboo growing in the yard.”

He held up a leafy branch for me as evidence.

“I’m not sure that’s bamboo…”

“And third good news – I got all those metal poles out of the garden.”

A productive evening. Puck disappeared outside, then returned thirty seconds later.

“And… my boomerang’s stuck in the tree again.”