Peanut Butter Toes

Those last few months when our house was on the market were tricky.  How to keep it clean with a crawling, sticky, dirty little boy who likes to leave piles of chaos everywhere?!  I found myself constantly cleaning up and cringing when Mc would pull things out of the kitchen cabinets and leave them strewn across the downstairs (or splash in the dog bowl, or pull all of the records and CDs off of the shelf, or ..., or... or......).  And that's not the kind of mom I want to be.  Instead, I want to encourage his curiosity and let him explore, play, learn, and discover.  So a couple of weeks ago, we went outside and played with peanut butter.  Our intention was to make one of those bird feeders you probably made as a kid - you know the kind, with a pine cone, peanut butter, and bird seed - and we eventually got our mission accomplished, but it was the playing with peanut butter that McCord enjoyed so much and what made me feel like I restored my sense of motherhood.

Our birds like Peter Pan peanut butter.
We found this pine cone a couple of months ago when we vacationed at Mansfield Plantation.

Here we are getting excited about peanut butter - Rocky of course wanted to be a part of this project!

And how peanut butter ended up on his toes, I'll never know!

We hung the feeder right outside our kitchen window.

 It took our birds about 2 weeks to find it, but when they discovered it, the feeder became quite the hangout.  We learned that the little birds preferred it over the regular feeder.  We had Carolina Chickadees, Tit mouses, and Wrens.  What a joy it was to watch these birds.  McCord - as busy as this little guy is - would immediately quiet down and get real still when watching the birds.  He enjoyed watching so much, I would pull his highchair in front of the window so he could sit and watch while he ate. 

Update on our house:

We've been packing!  The official move date is IN TWO DAYS.  The washer, dryer, and fridge are coming tomorrow, and we've already had Terminix and a maid out.  Bo's been taking loads of boxes to the house every night. The painters came yesterday and did the first coat of paint on the walls, and I can't wait to show you the before and afters.  Pictures soon, promise!