Little by little

Small slept last night! He's been so incredibly itchy, up scratching, crying, rubbing, getting more Zyrtec, more bandages. The poor kid. His poor parents! We are not at a good age to deal with sleep deprivation, there is a reason why it's a form of torture.

We had many days of hot, humid weather and rain. This picture was taken at our annual block party, which the kids loved almost because of the rain and the parents tolerated on front porches despite the rain. Small refuses to wear shorts, even on 90 degree days. The backs of his knees are in such a bad state, he wants them covered so it's not so easy to itch. And I imagine it feels better to have a covering than to have wounds exposed. So, I tried shopping for light weight pants like these seersucker ones. No luck. Shorts and jeans, fall stuff is coming into the stores. I ended up spending $20 on a pattern and fabric to make him four pairs of cute pants in lightweight cotton.

It would be great of Small's face could clear up for the big dance recital this weekend, but I'm not sure it will. All the harmless looking bumps on his arms have turned red and angry. His costume is now leggings and a t-shirt. All the girls will be in white tank leotards and he'll be in black. Very cute little kitties, if we can get the ears to stay on.

In anticipation of Grandma coming, we used the excuse to get the kids to clear out toys from the sun room and a little bit from their rooms. Three huge garbage bags of toys were donated to Goodwill yesterday. This airplane was donated to the top of Aphrodite's cage. She loves the thing, plays with it's wings using her beak to move it and enjoys sitting on it. She's also discovered the guinea pig upstairs and is trying to befriend her. For the first month, she confined herself to the living room. Now she regularly heads upstairs. We have to remember to turn off the ceiling fans in the morning. Yesterday she spent most of the morning with the kids in the sun room and tried to get the rabbits to notice her while they were on their exercise jaunt. The rabbits were far more interested in the crumbs around the dining room table to notice.

Aphrodite has taken her time to warm up to us, but will not occasionally willingly get on our fingers or heads. I think she was probably abused in her former home, she's a little skittish. Lovebirds can be fairly aggressive with other birds and there was an indication that she had pecked out some other birds. She likes being in the thick of things with us. I'm hoping she'll teach Small a thing or two about sleep. We cover her cage and she's almost completely quiet for 12 hours or so. We do hear her sometimes when Small is up and crying, maybe it's a comforting chirp or two.