Chiggers Be Gone

We're waste-deep in chiggers over here.  I promise my little fellas could be 100 miles away from the closet chigger and it would somehow find my sweaty boys. Chiggers equal clear nailpolish applications to places other than our toenails and fingernails. They also equal little boys scratching themselves in awkward places in public and me saying constantly, "Stop doing that!" 

I'm sure a good remedy to our chigger issue would be to stay indoors, but I'd rather you rip off all of my fingernails and toenails with tweezers and then dip them in rubbing alcohol than stay indoors with my two boys.

My boys (and most likely your boys) are loud and proud and rowdy and rough and tumble. My house is not a jungle gym, nor does it muffle sound, so indoors my sanity is stretched and pulled like an overblown balloon that you know is about to pop at any moment. My remedy...we spend most ALL our time outside. We do have a few regulations, a few things that will drive us inside.

1) Rain---not sprinkles, but thunder and lightning

2) Temperaturs below twenty degrees. (This is somewhat negotiable for my little Ethiopian American who prefers warmer temps.)

3) Extremely windy days. (Not real sure why this bothers us, but it does, so it usually drives us inside.)

Outdoors is just better and fun and you can be as loud as you want and run as fast as you want.

It's freeing and open and calming at the same time. I love the smell of the sun on our skin at the end of the day.

When you spend most of your day outside, some challenges arise. Challenges like where to go to the bathroom. I know it makes sense to just go upstairs and use one of the two perfectly good indoor toilets that we have, but my boys don't really think that way. James of course walks around with his own portable potty---his diaper. John Owen though is almost five and doesn't have that luxury. He's the type of fella that can solve his own dilemmas, too, so I shouldn't have been surprised when he nonchalantly said, "Mama, don't watch me do this."

Well, that of course sets off my kid's about to do something bad warning indicator. 

That's James watching my oldest son, my sweet, talkative, incredibly strong-willed and now I can add uncouth son urinate in an empty bottle next to our neighbor's fence. What? Your kids don't do this? I wish I could tell you I jumped into prompt mommy action mode, reprimanding and training him in the proper way to relieve oneself, but I think I took a few pictures and said, "Don't pee outside."

I'm sure I'll have to revisit this issue until we learn not to relieve ourselves where others can see.

Outdoors is great for eating freeze pops---A LOT of freeze pops, maybe more than we should.

The thing I've learned about boys is that they aren't alway free of drama and tears. I do think they cry over different things than maybe girls do. As rough and tumble as they are, sometimes they really do reveal their sensitive side and you get a real sense that they are truly caring individuals. Take James for instance.

These are full on, legit tears, upset, crying because...the icing slipped off of his peach cupcake. It took a few minutes to settle him down and I had to scoop the icing back onto his cupcake. I'm glad to see he has things he cares so deeply about.

This life...I couldn't make this stuff up if I wanted to.