big brother and mud puppy

I'm at a writers' conference in Tennessee, having a lot of conversations in a lot of rocking chairs on a lot of stone porches with a lot of poets and novelists. I miss my kids. In my absence, Evan is the man of the house. Sonja sent this pic, which I look at every 17 minutes:

Also, this one. The daily application of mud, it turns out, is Sage's secret to looking so young: