On Sunday the three of us took a nice long walk around Fresh Pond Reservoir, it’s one of our favorite places to go. Monkey absolutely loves all the dogs we see on our walk. He tries calling every single one of them over as soon as he spots them. The constant “‘mere, ‘mere, ‘mere, ‘mere” becomes background noise to the long talks Duhdee and I have. I never thought I’d be one of those moms, tuning out their child, but I so am.
After our walk, Duhdee had to go grocery shopping so Monkey and I hung out. We live on the 2nd floor of a two family and we have a nice deck on the back of the house which Monkey just loves. I decided to clean up the deck a bit because the pollen has been out of control this spring and everything had a fine layer of pollen on it. Once the chairs were wiped down Monkey sat and watched me sweep the deck. I realized that I really don’t sweep very often, we pretty much just vacuum or Swiffer, so Monkey found sweeping to be very interesting. More than just interesting…he found it HILARIOUS. He sat on the porch for 15 minutes laughing the deepest belly laughs as he watched me. I’m glad he’s so easily (and cheaply!) amused.
Later in the afternoon Duhdee’s parents came for a visit. They’ve been making it a point lately to come and see Monkey on his own turf where he’s most comfortable and it’s REALLY paying off. He was quite a lot of fun during their visit. It used to be a major coup to get him to stay in the same room with his Grammy and Grampy but now he’ll sit at the table with us and eat like it’s nothing. He sat next to Grampy this time and after dinner he was showing off for them. He was full of giggles and jokes, it is so cool to see him open up with them. Now if I could just get MY family to come visit!
On Monday we had a neighborhood cookout. It started out with our house (including Great Grampy who lives downstairs) and the next two houses but ended up including quite a lot more people. We live in such a great neighborhood and we’re blessed to have some neighbors who’ve lived here for decades. It was a really nice multi-generational gathering. The youngest was 8 months old and the oldest was 80 something (honestly I’m not sure who the eldest was, I’ll have to ask Grammy…she grew up in this neighborhood and will know!) We all had so much fun. We started setting up around 1:30 and the last folks went home around 9/9:30.
Last year Duhdee and one of our neighbors replaced the fence between our yards and in doing so they installed a gate in the back corner so we can move from one yard to the next without having to walk around. One of the neighbors called it a “friendship gate” which I love. I think it says an awful lot about what a great place we live. I hope some day someone moves in on the other side (it’s a rental so turnover is high) and stays long enough so we can put one in on that side too.
Friendship gate! I love that too. We removed a piece of the fence between our property and the neighbors. It allows us to borrow us each others ladders, lawn mowers, etc and to visit without looking like Tim Taylor. I feel the same way about our neighborhood. I may live in a cracker box but it’s surrounded by good people.
That’s exactly our situation. We have 1200 square feet which is tight for 2 adults, 1 child and 2 dogs and our yard is not nearly large enough for my tastes but we’re surrounded by great people so it’s workable.
We also put a gate on our fence so that we could visit with our neighbors. I love it when she calls me on the phone and says, “Meet me at the fence, I’ve got something for you.” It’s usually something such as cookies or fresh pineapple. We’re moving a few miles away soon…gonna miss our amazingly wonderful neighbors ):
The most common pass throughs on our friendship gate are ladders and other tools. Maybe I should remedy that!