Friendly Fire

"Why did we have a baby?" Luke asked me the other night when he was getting ready for bed. "We had a baby so that you could always have a friend," I told him. I sure pulled that out of nowhere. But he must have internalized it somehow, because he's been introducing Zach that way.

"This is my baby brother. We had him so that I would have a friend," he has been telling everyone.

I probably should have said, "So that you could have cannon fodder," or "So that you could have someone to use as a target," or more simply, "So that you could have someone to blame." I love watching them attempt to play together during this early stage when Zach still doesn't have much to say. They still find a way to argue. "He called me a ball," Luke complained the other day. (But that's the only word he says!)

In the afternoons we've been hanging out in the backyard and Luke wears his whistle around his neck and announces that he's the "voss" of the backyard. "I need this whole area cleaned up," he'll say, and he'll blow the whistle for extra emphasis. "Zach, you have to put all of these things back in the bucket." Lucky for him, Zach's second-favorite thing in the whole world (after playing with balls) is putting things into a receptacle.

Yesterday we filled the little plastic pool and instead of pretending to shoot Zach with a cannon, Luke was able to shoot Zach for real with a squirt bottle. My protests went entirely unheeded because Zach thought it was the funniest thing in the world.

Side note #1: Zach has sorta started pointing at things. Dave discovered this because he took the boys out for a walk and Zach kept pointing up at the moon and saying "Ba! Ba!"

Side note #2: Yesterday it was broiling hot outside, I had both boys at home, and Dave was out the door by 8:15. So...I took our little crew on a field trip to the wildlife rescue station, then to the farmers' market, then back home for pool time, then to the big kids' school and for a walk around the neighborhood, then to chat with our neighbors, then back to the house to make dinner and have a welcome home sign ready for Dave by the time he got home at 7 pm (!). "You're like a mommy machine," Luke said to me this morning. Yup.

Side note #3: I just noticed that on Dave's nightstand there are a pair of salad tongs, a whistle, and a toy chainsaw. Good thing the people who help us clean our house know us very well - otherwise they'd really wonder.