Friday, Aug 26, 2011

Cameron, Darcy and I had a great morning. We had a nice breakfast, got in our bathing suits and went outside. Darcy and I went swimming while Cam went kayaking. He paddled over to the bedrock at the neighbor’s, got out, “parked” the kayak, and explored the shallow water. "No problem," I thought, "he’s done this before"…until he pulled a log about as long as him out of the water and plopped it on the bedrock.

“Uh, Cam…what are you doing? You can’t leave that there.”

“I want to make a pirate ship with it.”

“Cam, that wood looks really heavy and it 's probably full of living things, I think you should put it back.”

“No, I want it.”

I tended to Darcy a bit, as she is swimming more and more on her own. She likes to climb up on the boogie board and let herself fall off.

Cam pulled a smaller, less natural looking piece of wood out onto the bedrock.

“Why don’t you keep the small piece and throw the big one back? Technically it’s illegal to tamper with the bottom of the lake…”

I was trying to encourage him to put back the really big, heavy, dirty, slimy log. He paddled over with the small piece and put it on the grass and headed back for the big piece.

“Angie, I think you’re right. There are bubbles on the wood. I think it’s alive.”

“Ok, so throw it back.”

“No, I want it for my pirate ship.”

He could hardly lift it! There was no way I was going over there in the mucky muck to help, besides I couldn’t leave Darcy alone in the water. Watching him struggle and trying to lean on the kayak for leverage, which just floated away, I felt bad and offered a suggestion. He didn’t use it, but did manage to get the log into the kayak, but then he couldn’t get in the kayak. He finally got in, but with the log on his side it was hard to paddle. When he got close enough I helped him out, took out the log and examined it.

Sure enough it was covering in life. The “bubbles” were little balls of eggs, fish or frogs.  I explained to Cameron that each little dot inside each little bubble is a being and we just couldn’t cause their deaths, I knew he was disappointed that he couldn’t have it, but also intrigued. We agreed to put it under our wharf where we could watch for whatever will hatch from those eggs and maybe in the fall or spring we could pull out.

After lunch we played in the backyard to wait for Cam’s mom.  I poked the bees nest that fell out of the fallen tree and it is finally empty – of bees at least. I found a bunch of mealworm larvae and pupae in it and showed the kids.

Quiet afternoon and evening, but Kevin and I did discover that out 50 year old couch is a hide-a-bed!