Bobby's Sunday Summary

I know I have not written in a long time. The past few weeks have been a bit crazy, and I just didn't feel like spending the time to write down everything that has happened. Two weeks ago I was in California most of the week for work. I am a computer programmer, and I enjoy it. Most of the times I have gone to CA I have been able to at least write something useful while I was there. This time it was all meetings all the time. It was rather frustrating. Especially because on Monday, the day I flew out, I got food poisoning or something. I threw up for the first time, in what I think must be 5 or more years, but I did feel much better afterwards. It was a little bit gross for Susan. I was on the phone with her when I felt the urge and I had to hang up with her so I could go do what I needed to.

The reset of the week went fairly well, except for a few issues. First when I went to go pick up my rental car I got stuck with a Ford Focus Audiophile edition. That would not have been a problem except for the color of the car. It was a puke yellow with a little bit of glitter in it. I don't really know how they managed to get that color because I went to the Ford web sight to try and find a picture of the car to show everyone, but I could not find it so I will have to leave it up to your imagination. That too would not have been too bad, except my boss who also came on the trip and she got this.

Yes, she got a cherry red Mustang.

I got home on Thursday and took Friday off to help celebrate Susan's birthday. We didn't do too much special on Friday, but Alice did find and open up a package.

It was a pretty pretty princes kit. The top picture is Alice dressing herself, and the bottom one is when I helped her put the crown on properly.

That Sunday Susan drove up to Chicago without me to go can peaches with a friend of hers. She didn't get back until Tuesday night late, and came home with 40 pounds of pears to can too.

That week I got a new phone. I have been trying to decide on a new phone for quite a while. I finally decided on a Palm Pre. I really enjoy it and I got a really good discount through work.

On Saturday we went to the temple. We had a good time. While at the temple we went to the Butterfly House.

They have a lot of videos and things about butterflies and also a big greenhouse with hundreds and hundreds of butterflies inside. It was a lot of fun.

On the way back a man on a Harley passed us. Alice said that she saw the Motorcycle, and that Grandpa had gotten her a red one. Apparently, my father has been giving away motorcycles to my daughter behind my back. I may have to have a talk with him on that.

My 30th Year

I don't like to celebrate my birthday on the actual day (something about impossibly high expectations that only meet with disappointment). I generally have more fun when the celebration is spread out. This year, I made a conscious effort to actively celebrate it ALL YEAR. One only lives her 30th year once, right? Here's how I celebrated my birthday this year:

• It started in February with a semi-spontaneous trip to see an older (*wink*) friend in California. We had made plans to visit them almost as soon as we knew they were really leaving, but it takes guts to actually pick a date and buy a ticket and drop in on someone you haven't seen in a year. I'm counting it :)
• I took a class on Entrepreneurial Farming. Veeeeery insightful.
  
• Purchased my own copies of a few books I have loved and lusted after for some time: Story People by Brian Andreas, Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, and How to Grow More Vegetables Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine by John Jeavons. One of these is not like the others :)
  
• That amazing dinner with Heidi at Prairie Fruits Farm *sigh*
• My friend Michelle surprised me with a garden-themed birthday cake at Orpheum Museum. How did she know I like to garden? LOL
• My friend Denise constructed a raised bed for my raspberry bushes AND gave me a nifty square and indoor/outdoor extension cord that has come in handy for numerous projects since then.

Today was my literal b-day and it was just about perfect. Instead of trying to make it "the perfect day", I ended up with a great regular day that I actually paid attention to. I found myself looking at the day's activities as a cross-section of my life. It was AWESOME! Here's what happened:

• Alice was playing with a folding chair when she tripped and fell on it in just such a way that it collapsed on her finger with her on top of the chair. It looked awful, but no broken skin. Big, puffy bruises clustered all around the tip of her finger. She asked for a band-aid, gagged down some pain killer, and snuggled with me on the snuggle chair for half an hour. We dozed a bit, which was nice. I realized that I really do enjoy being a mom. I am where I want to be.
• We were beginning to get ready to meet Kristin, Will, and Kayla for a play date when my friend JulieAnn called to invite us to the park. I hopped out of the shower and my friend Rachel called to wish me a happy birthday. I literally hung up with her (pulling out of my driveway with the cordless phone in my hand, not a cell phone) when my friend Jessica called about canning peaches with her this weekend. I had to turn around and drive home to get better reception :) This flurry of phone calls from friends NEVER happens. I don't consider myself a popular person and most of these people don't call me on a regular basis. The fact that it happened today, when at least half of them were not conscious of it being my birthday, helped me appreciate the good friends that I do have. I sobbed when Michelle left yesterday. It sounds cheesy, I know, but I really felt rich with friends today. Near and far. A good feeling. Better than any number of people at a surprise party.
• My time with Kristin, Will, and Kayla was sweet, too. Kristin made me my favorite pie (pumpkin!) with homemade crust and everything. Wow! Then we spent the morning at the Winfield pool and toy room until the kids got too tired to play together any more. It's a shame when the kids get enough before the parents do. I realized today that it's good to have family nearby. I have enjoyed getting to know the Evanses better and seeing Alice come to love her cousins. These are friendships that will persist a lifetime, no matter what.
  
• Alice and I stopped at KFC/A&W for a special lunch treat. This activity was hard to find any significance in. I don't think I'll try.
• Quiet time at home...I relaxed on the couch while Alice played naked in her room again. She is a neat little personality to have in our home. I am a mother.
• The Jarvies came over for a little play date. We picked the rest of the green beans in my garden. Actually, Marianne did most of the picking (9.5 months pregnant and all) while I wrestled with an exhausted Alice. I shared some beans and portions of my CSA produce with her, which reminded me how much I love to share things I love with people I love. Alice was fighting every vegetable gift I gave, wanting to hoard the rest for herself. I peeled her a medium cucumber and she ate it whole. Then she ate a raw patty pan squash just because I was giving them away so freely. Then she ate a baby carrot from our garden. It balanced well with the french fries, Teddy Grahams, and lemonade she ate for lunch :D
  
• Alice fell asleep in the car while I ran an errand about 6pm. I toyed with idea of waking her up and wrestling with her sour mood for another hour until bedtime, but then I got smart. I put her straight to bed. She barely stirred. Heck, if she wakes up early tomorrow, Bobby will be around. This experience revealed how I like to make decisions for other people sometimes (mwah ha ha haaaa).
  

Technically, my 30th year ends this week, but I've extended it to the whole 2009 calendar year. It took me some time to build up the courage to actually start doing these things. So! Here's what's in store for the rest of this year's celebrations:

• "Introduction to Genealogy" course through Parkland College Continuing Education
• "Building Your Home Green" course...a bit of a fancy of mine
• A more mature wardrobe (i.e. shirts with buttons or some sort of shape to them, maybe a pair of Sunday shoes that will actually fit)
• TWO operas with my opera buddy, Julia: The Merry Widow and Tosca
  

CSA Share---August 12th

Big, big haul today. Enough to freeze for later and attempt making pickles.

6 ears sweet corn
9 summer squash
2 large cucumbers
4 pounds green beans
1 large bell pepper
1 large sweet and spicy pepper
1 small bunch red leaf lettuce
1 large bunch green leaf lettuce
1 huge Italian eggplant
1 medium bunch of fresh dill

Alice snarfed one ear of corn on our way to the restaurant for dinner, then she started rooting around in the bag for more. She discovered the corn silk and asked me what it was. When I told her it was "corn silk" she promptly shoved it in her mouth and almost gagged herself into vomiting. When I opened her door to get her out at the restaurant, there was corn milk dried all over her face and hands, and she was covered head-to-toe in corn silk. She handed me the fistful of soggy corn silk that almost made her barf and stated, "My no yike it."

Squash may get frozen for minestrone in the winter. The cukes and dill will suffer my first attempt at making homemade pickles. Peppers and eggplant will definitely be chopped and frozen for fajitas and/or Indian curry later this year.

Girls Night Out

Alice treated me to a surprise "girls night out" this evening. After we picked up an enormous load of produce from our CSA (to be posted next), she directed me to Noodles and Co. where I cashed in my "Free Birthday Meal" coupon for a surprisingly tasty Bangkok Curry with beef. Alice opted for the mushroom stroganoff. She pointed out all the most exciting features of the restaurant: lighting, exposed pipes on the ceiling painted burnt sienna, table condiments ("Spicy! No spicy."), the soda machine, plastic lids and straws, and the restrooms. She almost ate her entire meal, which surprised me to no end.

We came home, mixed up a batch of brownies (partly to rid the kitchen of that rotting produce smell I have generated with all my silly compost scraps...ugh), and, throwing caution to the wind, we licked the bowl clean. Coated in chocolate ("cah-coh-yit"), it was obviously bath time for Alice. I put my feet in and she washed them over and over again, which is *almost* like a pedicure, right? ;)

The brownies were done by the time she got out of the tub. We played and talked again over chocolate and milk. It was there that she shared her innermost feelings, "C is for cookie. D is for Daddy. B is for baby. A is for A-yiss. Eth is for 'nake."

She says my name with a lisping "s" like "Thoo-then", but she completely drops the "s" sound from the word "snake", which makes it a very interesting word to represent that letter's sound.

Toothbrush, snuggle, story, and a couple songs later, she went to bed. Now I'm off to do a little more family history research. I had a recent breakthrough with one of my most interesting mysteries so I'm itching to move ahead again. Woo hoo!

Going to School

Alice and I read a lot of books together. Many of them get read over and over and over again, sometimes several times in a row. Today we were reading a very boring book *again* and I started asking her questions after each line. The book reads one line per page, "I go to school. At school, I learn to read. Sing songs. Eat lunch." The illustrations are severely lacking as well. This was not an "easy reader" book, either. I am convinced that children's books from the 70's were never written for kids ;)

Anyway! My questions went something like this and Alice had answers at the ready:

"At school, I learn to read. What is he reading, Alice?"
"ABCs!"

"Sing songs. What song is he singing in school today?"
"Row Row Boat!"

"Eat lunch. What's for lunch?"
"Yummy food!"

My questions got her thinking about school quite a bit. She was excited by the notion that she, too, could eventually go to school. She ran through the house looking for an appropriate lunch box to prepare a lunch for school. It was dinnertime anyway, so I played along. We made a PB&J sandwich, packed some green beans, a hunk of cheese, and a sippy cup of milk. She zipped up the lunch bag and stood at the door. She said we were going to walk to school and we would be late if we waited any longer. Curious, I quickly made myself a sandwich for dinner and we headed outside.

She led me to the right so that we were walking up our street, barefoot, in the drizzling rain. In one hand, she carried her lunch box. In the other hand, she held on to my finger. We walked for some time and stopped at a random driveway to eat. She said this was not the school, but she was hungry. We ate. Kids came out of the house across the street and asked her if she wanted to play. She said we had to get to school, so we kept walking. Then it was obvious she had to use the potty. I told her we could go back home, but she wanted to go potty at the school. There were no public restrooms the way we were going. The playing kids came by again and they asked her to play. This time she liked the idea. The kids followed us home on their bikes so Alice could use the potty and get her bike, too.

When we came out of the house, the kids were gone. Alice and I went to look for them. Then we heard one of them shouting from their screen door, "We're not allowed to come out anymore cuz' we can't go to other people's houses." I think they got in trouble for following us home. Oh well. We'll play another day, then.

We never did find Alice's school. I'm curious to explore this thought of hers further. Was she going to a pretend school? She pretends all SORTS of activities like that all day. Or did she think we really could just walk to a school right then where she would learn to read and sing songs and eat lunch?

Lonely?!

I found myself keeping Alice up way past her bedtime tonight because I wasn't ready to be alone yet.

*sigh*

I gave a presentation for the Champaign County Genealogical Society tonight while Alice played at a friend's house. When I picked her up, the first thing she noticed was how dark it was and the first thing she said was, "No night-night yet." Tonight, of all nights, the first time in my mothering history, I actually agreed with the girl about postponing bedtime just a little bit longer.

We came home and Alice went straight to the kitchen for a drink. I opened a birthday card from a very thoughtful sis-in-law and that caught Alice's attention. She asked what it was, I told her that my birthday was soon and Laura had sent me this nice card. Alice told me with great joy that her birthday was going to be on Saturday! Then she asked where HER birthday card from Aunt Laura was.

Uh.

Fortunately, she started talking about cake and candles before I had to remind her about birthdays happening only once a year. I realized at that moment that we had all the appropriate materials for a proper b-day candle-blowing session in the kitchen right then. Why not celebrate? I pulled out a couple pieces of cake and a handful of candles. When asked how many candles she wanted for her teeny piece of cake, Alice replied, "Yots!" Her cake fit only four, but she was satisfied. I put six candles on mine and lit our plates on fire. We sang "Happy Birthday" to each other and Alice giggled when she heard her name in the song. Then we blew the candles out! It took Alice a couple tries, but she did it without spit and she didn't catch her hair on fire. Woo hoo! She beamed with pride when they were all out...wish my camera weren't on the fritz again :(

We talked and laughed some more about birthdays and milk bubbles while we ate cake. I still wasn't ready for her to go to bed yet, but I knew it was time. I gave her a new choice in the bedtime routine tonight. Usually she can choose between 2 stories OR 1 story and 1 snuggle. I gave her the additional choice of 2 snuggles tonight and she grinned right away. She's a snuggler. No doubt. Besides, we had read a million books earlier when she thought she was postponing "quiet time."

We're missing Bobby quite a bit this time.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

Sorry about being such a slacker last week. The last two weeks have felt a little crazy with work, and all. Last week Susan spent tree nights helping out at Girl's Camp. She would leave a little after dinner and not get back until after midnight. This was offset by her being a bit short handed at the family history center and worked 3 mornings there. By the end of the week Susan was completely exhausted, and Alice was feeling a little bit needy.

Work has been a bit crazy this week. I had to take over some of the responsibilities of one of the guys I work with this week because he was on vacation. Everything worked out just fine, I just ended up having a lot more to do then I normally do. In addition to that I gave a talk in church today, so it has been rather hectic all around.

CSA Share---August 5th

3 big cucumbers
4 small eggplant
1.5# green beans
7 small squash
1 bell pepper
1 hot pepper
7 tomatoes
5 sweet corn

Alice has taken to eating the tomatoes like apples. Knowing the corn was organically grown, I figured we would find a few corn worms inside. I got Alice all excited to find some caterpillars. Much to her dismay, it looks like the caterpillars had time to mature and fly away before we got the corn. Every cob was eaten at the top, but not one worm was found. That's the second time I've tantalized her with the idea of finding caterpillers under the husks and failed to follow through. Poor girl.

The corn was WAY underfertilized, by the way, so we got stubby little cobs with streaks of unfertilized kernels.

Squash, squash, squash. I will never need to grow this in my own backyard. Eggplant intrigues me. I WANT to like eggplant. I've liked it in the super-fancy dishes I've tried it in so far. Alice has taken a couple bites of it (again, like biting into an apple) and told me it's "not very good." Hmmm.