On Mother’s Day, I was taking some time to catch up on my own reading, and Ezra here built a “reading fort” of his own with his dad. One of my favorite things about Ezra’s bed is how easy it converts into a variety of forts, but making it a reading fort? That might be my favorite use yet.

So the kid and I snuggled in and read for a bit today, and tonight he was back reading again. The window placement is so nice for natural light in this fort, as opposed to the dark forts I made as a kid. I must admit, I’m a little jealous of this space.

This week I was hoping to plant most of our starter seeds and to move our plants back outside… but it looks like we might have a freeze this weekend. In May.

I mean, how much are we supposed to take? This virus? Murder Hornets? Freezes in May? C’mon universe, cut us some slack!

Anyway, this is a succulent that Ezra picked out last year for our porch plants — isn’t the color fabulous? It was this magenta when we bought it, and then last fall it turned a dull green. I watered it a little all winter, and last month the color came back (thank goodness!).

I guess it has a few more weeks inside with us before we take it back out into the wild.

So yesterday, I brought out the enormous bubbles.

We’re heading into some much cooler weather this week, and I wanted the kid to have some more fun outside. And yeah, this was a huge hit! And it was super fun to shoot photos of as well!

That photo up there? My kid took it. With my fancy camera.

I mean, I set the camera settings (which we all know is the hard part), but the child ASKED me to teach him how to take “real” photos with MY camera, and he wanted to take photos of dogs.

I mean, excuse me while I try to scoop up my melted insides from the floor, ok?

So this lesson was about focus and about working his angles. And of course I took a photo of him working it (that was shot with a phone though, so don’t be too critical).

Here are his images. I am one proud mama over here. And this is the kind of preschool teaching I can DO.

I caught these two snuggling in my bed this morning, so I had to nab a photo.

There have been far fewer images of Magda on the site lately, and please believe me that it’s not a choice I like to make.

See, this girl is not doing so great with all of us home all the time. I think she really benefits from a few hours of quiet in her crate each day, and now that all of us are at home all day (and let’s be real, Ezra and Hazel are both extremely high energy for much of that time), poor Magda has taken to hiding.

She just wants some alone time, and that can be tricky. So when we want to find her, we have to look under beds and in closets, in the basement and behind doors. It’s almost like having a cat!

I’m trying hard to respect this choice of hers because on the rare mornings that I’m the last one in bed and the bedroom door is closed, she will crawl up and snuggle in with me. Which she also did with Ezra today (and I had to capture it). In the meantime, we’ll give this love her distance until she’s ready. Even though it’s the last thing I want to do.

This weekend was full of even more Harry Potter.

We finished reading book 2 (I know I said we wouldn’t start it until the kid’s birthday, but lemme tell you, rules go out the window when there’s a pandemic and you’re trapped inside and your kid is begging you in the sweetest manner). So we finished the book, which means we then downloaded the audiobook so the kid could listen AGAIN (which he did — and which he finished). So for those of you keeping tally, we read book 2 twice this weekend.

There were a lot of questions, but I would be lying if I told you my dream quarantine didn’t include deep discussions about Harry Potter with my child.

This photo is of Ezra listening to the book with Hazel at his feet, as usual, in his fort of a bed.

It was a good weekend, indeed.

The weather has warmed back up again (thank God), and so yesterday Ezra wanted to have a water gun fight. Of course I grabbed my camera.

We had a great time chasing each other around, until I finally ran inside and just got shots of him spraying the storm door (which are my favorite photos of the bunch — so magical).

Besides water fights, our days have consisted of watching a cocoon in our backyard (it hasn’t hatched yet) and reading SO MUCH Harry Potter. Which I’m exhausted from reading aloud, but also treasuring as I’ve told him after book 2, he has to read the rest on his own. Can you say motivation?

On Tuesday, it rained all day. And Ezra couldn’t wait to go for a walk in his new rain coat (which I selected) and his new umbrella and rain boots (which he selected, telling me my color choices were too boring).

We made it about a half a block before he turned to me and said it was too cold and windy, and we should go home and eat mac’n’cheese instead. Right on, kid.

But I do love these photos. The one up top was a mistake shot, but I love the way his hair is whipping in the wind and how you can barely see my own umbrella along with the rain drops. Below are a few more. Enjoy!