Teeth and other happenings

Hemi got his first tooth, at the ripe old age of ten months. He has seven more looking like they're about to burst through. Meme and Pepe, my husband's folks, get here Friday. The house looks well lived in. I let the boys have an old catalog, then there are blocks and Hot Wheels cars everywhere. Hemi overturned the wastebasket in the computer room again and Beau helped by throwing all the paper all over the room. I've got a pile of ironing on the chair in the other room, getting worked on between other projects. Oh, well, they've visited before, and Meme and Pepe always had foster children in addition to their own four, so I'm sure they'll survive the intermittent messes. Meme is nearly compulsive about cleaning, so the real trick is to get her to relax at all when she visits.
I planted my garden plants a week ago, and many of them have already sprouted. Beau and I were just checking them out in their peat pots, and he commented "Smell, Mommy!" I can't tell if he means that he likes it or dislikes it, but I like the smell of wet earth. I've got a dozen tomatos, which have sprouted, six peppers, which haven't, and assorted herbs and flowers. The growing season's pretty short here, but I'm going to plant the veggies along the south side of the house, so I should be able to transplant them in late April or early May. (For the record, the latest killing frost date I remember from childhood is June 22nd.)
It's been a dry winter here, and the legislature is already working on the water battles. Or maybe that's still working on the water battles, I think the current fuss is some years old. We didn't get nearly enough snow this winter, and of course we could still get more, but I'm not holding my breath. I wonder how many drought years we're going to have before they decide this is normal, and the few normal water years are unusually wet. Talking with a friend, we agreed that '98 was the only non-drought year we could recall. Memory is fallible, of course, and I haven't looked up the official statistics. Still, this year seems to be unusually dry, and I expect a bad fire season. People will keep building up on the hills, and leaving the junipers (or cedars, they're also called) around their houses. I understand the liking for native vegetation, but it's kind of like putting rags soaked in kerosene around your house!
We found the Jump Start discs on sale at Walmart and got Beau the preschool disc. He really likes it. I don't know if he is learning much, he seems to be deliberately doing things wrong because he likes the characters' reactions. He doesn't like to wait to listen to the instructions, either, but he has mastered the connect-the-dots books on the easiest levels, so I'm pretty sure he's solid on 1-5 and A-E now. He has the letters up on the wall, too. He loves the computer, and Daddy's promised to teach him programming as soon as reads well enough. Probably at least two or three more years. Being able to really make the computer do what he wants is going to be a good motivator once he understands.