Bobby's Sunday Summary

To quote Alice about what happened this week "Blugh Nothin", although I think she just doesn't remember. She had her best friend come over this week and they played for 8 hours straight with no fights or problems what so ever.  That was the same day that we had 4 cubic yards of compost delivered.  So our garden is almost don't we just need to put the plants in.  We also have 3 huge 55 gallon plastic barrels that we are going to use to plant our blueberry plants in.  Susan is still deciding where to put them.

Susan also had a very busy week.  She had things in the evening almost every night last week.  So I got to put the kids to bed.  They are getting better with me putting them to bed.  Well that is about it.

Adventures in Eating

SPINACH

Eating dinner the other night, Buddy asks for more chicken, "Mo' hickin?"

"Sure, Buddy. I'll get you more chicken when your spinach is all gone." He puts a leaf in his mouth and starts to chew. Moments later, I hear a happy voice, "Mo' hickin!"

"Good job eating that leaf. I'll get you more chicken when ALL of your spinach is gone."

"Ok."

I turn away to pay attention to something else. Buddy suddenly exclaims with glee,"Ta da! All gone!" and points to the now empty spot on his plate where the small pile of spinach leaves had just been. He had moved them to the other side of his plate.

"Uh, not quite. You have to EAT them all gone." Bobby and I look at each other and bust up laughing.



PETUNIAS
Alice earned a good chunk of money recently, and decided that she wanted to spend some of it today at the Farm Store (I'm looking for ingredients to make an organic/natural/slow release fertilizer for the lawn and garden). What on earth can a kid get at a farm store for a couple bucks?! I was dreading the pack of gum or cheapo key chain that she would settle for in the check out lane. Turns out, we started in the outdoor section and she fell in love with a 4-pack of pink and white striped petunias. Yay! She was going on about how this could be the magic flower when she plays "Rapunzel." I didn't pay much attention to that statement at the time. Alice then asked for a garden "all her own", and I was willing to give her some garden space, but the soil isn't going to be delivered until Friday. She just couldn't wait. We planted the petunias in pots and put them on the back patio. She even let Robert help scoop the soil and water them a bit. Once they were settled in their new home, she promptly picked the only flower and put it in a cup of water. It steeped for a while, then she put the cup to her lips...true to her "Rapunzel" plans.

"Alice! No! Wait! I don't know if petunias are poisonous!" I screamed. The look of horror on her face was hard to decipher. She froze. I couldn't tell if she was more terrified for almost drinking 'poison' or for purchasing and planting four new 'poisonous' plants for our backyard. I quickly rephrased my cautionary statement, "Let me look it up. Some flowers are edible. I just don't know yet if petunias are edible." Her face relaxed a bit and her voice quivered a bit, "You don't know if petunias are edible?" A quick search online indicated that petunias are, in fact, quite edible. Whew. Alice flit about the house with glee. The petunia water didn't taste any different, so she decided to taste the flower itself and found it pleasant enough. Then she started planning play dates where she could invite her friends over to nibble on her flowers. Bobby mentioned later that the flower could have been coated in fertilizers and pesticides from the nursery...oops. He's totally right. We'll see if we get any barfing tonight. Dang it all!



MANGO
Alice and Buddy are fans of mango. The little, yellow Atualfo mangoes looked really good at the store this week so I picked up a couple. We shared them at dinner tonight. Each person got a half that was scored in a checkered pattern and splayed out like a flower:

 

Buddy and Alice were a little disoriented by the new presentation style (we usually cut the chunks off before giving it to them), but not for long. They sucked and slurped and scraped those peels clean with their teeth in no time. Buddy asked for more. I told him that was all the mango we had, but Bobby remembered the seeds. When you prep a mango like this, there's a little bit of fruit left around the perimeter of the seed. It's usually Bobby's treat because he's usually the one dicing mangoes for everyone else. This time, he let the kids have at them. When I put one of the seeds in front of Buddy, his eyes got huge, "*gasp* Ohhhh." Pure delight and awe. Alice was thrilled, too. Buddy bit into it and realized that there was a seed in the middle, but quickly sucked and slurped every remaining tidbit of fleshy mango from the outside. Both kids made quick work of it. I love to see my kids love real food.

Like I Need More Motivation...

My sister Erin gave me The Urban Farm Handbook for Christmas and I ate it up. This challenge just looks like fun. I'm already involved in urban food production up to my eyeballs, and I'm a little late to join in the challenge (it started in February), but I look forward to trying something new every month. Heck, I'm most excited to learn tips/tricks for integrating the different farm components I've already assembled. Chickens and orchards and compost and veggie gardening...they are less work together than they are separately, but only if you can integrate them. I look forward to learning more about that.

I'm also incorporating an organic approach to lawn care this year. Illinois soil is some of the best soil in the world. The general idea is if you can keep the soil healthy (i.e. compost, natural fertilizers, proper mowing technique, and some hand digging of weeds), then pests and weeds are much less of a problem in the long run. It also makes the lawn safer for kids and animals (i.e. free of pesticides and semi-toxic fertilizers). I'm not a fanatic about it. I just want to try this method first.

Let's see how things pan out by the end of June when the heat sets in and the weeds REALLY get going :)

Labeled, finally.

So, you know all that farm stuff I do? The gardening, the canning, the hens, etc.? It has a name. It has a movement, actually, and it's not as "weird" as it used to be. I learned this at the low tunnel workshop I attended yesterday. When people ask me what I'm into, I can respond with "urban food production" and they'll...um...raise their eyebrow in a questioning look.  Okay, it's not the coolest name, but it's accurate and slowly gaining respect. It certainly elicits more respect than "I like to garden", which sounds like an old lady hobby ;) and can easily be misunderstood as a flowers and shrubbery kind of passion, which is not at ALL what I do (outside of red dahlias, of course).

So, I'm into urban food production.

Speaking of the workshop, it was loads of fun. I was glad to have my friend Susan there with me to bounce ideas and criticisms off of. We were clearly the youngest of the bunch, by a couple decades. The low tunnel itself was elegant and I learned quite a bit about construction and some nifty tools/hardware that will make my future in urban food production much more efficient and beautiful. I asked the instructor specifically about keeping squirrels out of my garden. He suggested I kill them.

Um...all of them? In the whole neighborhood? 

The tunnel he constructed in front of us has lots of potential, though. It looks simple enough to make it taller for sweet corn, and I could easily use a variety of covering materials to fit my gardening needs throughout the season. It's well-designed and sturdy. It's also affordable. So, will I make one? Certainly. Not sure exactly when, though. I've gotta tweak the design a bit and set up an experimental plot. Maybe Heidi can help me with that this summer :)

Growing fresh greens throughout the winter is an addictive idea. He grows kale, spinach, baby salad greens, and others all the way into February. It's tricky business, and there are several new considerations with mid-winter gardening, but if I could somehow manage to learn it...garden fresh salads and sauteed greens for winter holidays...*gasp*...real, slow, high quality food at the intersection of food and family/friends. Another dream come true. 

Pickies of the Chickies

My apologies to those of you aren't into the farm/garden side of this blog. I will be returning to deep thoughts on life and motherhood when I don't have so much excitement going on in the backyard :)

My fruit trees are springing to life. We aren't supposed to hope for a crop the first year. Apples and peaches may start producing a bit next year, but pears won't be for two years yet. I'm just delighted to see green tufts!

Here's the chicken coop and attached chicken run in situ. The chicks are dark-feathered and still smaller than pigeons, so they're hard to see resting under the coop in this photo.

Close up of the chicks. You'll notice that we again have THREE chicks. Once Katie P. showed me how to fit three full size birds in my bitty coop, it didn't take much more convincing for me to fill the vacancy :) Another one of my urban-chicken-raising buddies let me have one of her chicks that was hatched about the same time mine were. So now we have Agnes (blurry black one perching in the foreground), Edith (furthest back with the silver/grey accents), and Penny (in the middle with the gold/copper accents).

Alice had a tough time deciding on Penny's name. She wanted to stay with the Despicable Me theme, and didn't dare name a second bird "Margo" ("that would be confusing when Margo comes alive again"...we're all about resurrection at this household). She briefly considered naming the new chick after the "mean mommy", Miss Hattie, and lingered longer on the boy names like Gru, Vector, and Dr. Nefario, until Bobby suddenly remembered that there was another little girl in the movie. Penny is the one in Miss Hattie's Box of Shame. Ta da! No more chicks are allowed to die. We're all out of little girl names.

I find the chicks' personalities and behaviors fascinating, but I don't dare share them here. It's one thing to gush about kids. It's another thing entirely to blab on and on about one's newest pets. Like. Anyone. Cares. I care a lot, but only about these birds. The only other pets I seem to care about are those I've personally taken care of at some point (I could chat about the Parents' critters all afternoon). Thus, I'm keeping my birds' antics to myself...after I tell you this much: Agnes does everything first. She's obviously not top chick (as Edith is wont to remind her often), but she just wanders and explores and lingers in ways that indicate she's either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid...I can't really tell. Agnes is just a little bit different. Kids can catch her, for one. She just doesn't seem as nervous about life as the other two.

Fuh-reakishly excited about this

Can't wait, can't wait, can't wait! So glad I happened into the co-op this morning and found a flyer announcing this workshop:

Backyard Winter Gardening: How to Build and Use Low Hoop Tunnels to Extend Your Growing Season

I've been thinking for some time about a multipurpose 'structure' around my garden beds to reduce damage due to malicious squirrels. I've even created plans for a 10-foot-tall enclosure built of 2x4's and chicken wire...a bit like a greenhouse, but designed exclusively to keep those corn-slaughtering, tomato-stealing, sunflower-ravaging, fluffy-tailed rats out of my garden. A structure that huge would certainly be unwieldy. 

Inflexible. 

Aesthetically lacking.

100% permanent.

It's something I don't think my neighbors would ever understand, nor forgive me for. They've taken the chickens in stride...don't wanna push my luck so early in the game.

So, I've begun looking into low tunnels, recently. Those are small 'hoop houses' that fit over the top of each garden bed. Like this:

Dreamy! Most people use them to extend the growing season, but I would be using a few different materials on the hoops themselves: thick plastic for season extension, light fabric to keep cabbage worms off of my broccoli, and wire mesh to keep squirrels off of my ripening tomatoes. Low hoop tunnels are perfectly modular, customizable, and much more aesthetically pleasing than the 'prison yard' feeling of a framed garden cage. There are so many variables, however, that I'm completely overwhelmed with my options. Enter the free, local workshop co-sponsored by my local extension office and the Master Gardeners *sigh* It's a dream come true. We will actually construct a low hoop house and one of the attendees will get to take it home as a door prize. Oooooo!

Of course, this means I will have to miss a stake Relief Society conference on Saturday, which is a serious bummer, but my heart is sending me outside this time around. 

Speaking of outside, my chicken coop and attached run is finally in working order. The chicks are sleeping in it tonight. Overnight lows look to be in the 40's, so I stuck the heat lamp in the coop with them. It's sure to attract oodles of flying insects, which I hope my little ladies devour with glee. Mwah ha ha haaaaaaaaa! Buddy and Alice joined the chicks inside the chicken run for the first few minutes. Robert tried to climb the gangplank into the coop and burst into tears when I told him the coop was just for chickies. Poor fellow.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

Well a lot of this week felt like a fairly typical week.  On Thursday Alice's preschool had an Easter program.  It was mostly kids singing. But Alice was especially excited because she invited some guests that came.

Buddy came too.  I asked him to make a silly face, and this is what I got (I love our goofball).




Also this week we put together Buddy's big boy bed.  It is a toddler bed, and he is not completely adjusted to it.  He still likes to sleep in his crib, but he is getting used to it.

Flour Bucket

This bath brought to you by two unsupervised kids, a 5-gallon bucket of unbleached flour, and 3 minutes. Only about 1 gallon of flour was lost in the process. I didn't dare take a picture of the whitened kids or the powdery kitchen, for fear of giving them the wrong impression. Yet another lesson learned on my part: Alice is NOT an appropriate supervisor for all activities, even if she has ample experience with the limits of said activity (she's played with flour many, many times). She keeps the limits herself and has no tools for enforcing them on Robert. I had set the limits with Robert early on ("Keep the flour in the bucket, Buddy."), but was not available to enforce them. My bad. Buddy needs more enforcement than I remember Alice needing. Then again, Alice didn't have a choice but to be supervised all the time ;) Pbbsh.

Bobby's Sunday Summary (2)

Susan reminded me that I neglected to mention that Saturday we moved 4 cubic yards of mulch into our garden, and around the fruit trees.  That was a significant part of Saturday.  While we were doing this Alice was making money.  She collected 50 lb. of rocks from our neighbors yard, and moved them to another neighbor's yard that wanted them.  She made $5  and was ecstatic about it.

Today we had Buddy's birthday party. I realize that many of you don't get to be with us out here so I have included one video that will hopefully give you the flavor of how life is here.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

Well, this week has been a bit of a whirlwind.  As some of you may have heard on Tuesday there was a large layoff at work.  I am fine, but there are a lot of changes coming.  In fact I am likely going to be traveling to India in a few weeks as part of this.

We also had Buddy's birthday this week.  He is now two years old.  We have not had his birthday party yet.  That is happening tonight as part of our Easter dinner.  But with easter so close he has had two easter egg hunts already.  He doesn't completely get it, but likes eating the candy afterwards. Oh and he is a bit of a goof.  I wonder where he gets it.

Oh I guess he gets it from us.

Chicks and Egg Hunt #1

The chicks are getting far too big for their box. I don't have a larger place to put them right now, though, so the box is where they'll stay. I did install a 'roost' for them. They like to perch. Sometimes, when we're in the kitchen or hanging out in the living room, we'll let the flaps down on the sides of the box and the chicks will fly up to sit on the edge.

They watch us for a while, perch, and hop back down to the warmth, food, and water. The chicks are fully capable of flying out of the box at any time, actually, regardless of the flap position, and they know that, but they haven't tried to escape...yet. On warmer days, we've taken them outside to explore. They're pretty nervous outdoors. They're also fantastically interested in little seeds and bugs and will fight each other to gobble them up. Alice loves picking up Agnes and putting her in new places (Edith won't let Alice catch her). Robert points out all the poops they leave behind with an "uh-oh, poop!"

Buddy does wear pants sometimes, I swear. Maybe I just find him more photogenic when he's less formally attired?

All the kids had school off for Good Friday. My friend Natalie and I put on a little egg hunt. Natalie has the PERFECT yard for hunting eggs: so many nooks and crannies and wild bits to search. We hid 120 eggs for 13 kids to find, then Natalie kept re-hiding some more for the littlest kids. I tried something new this year with wooden eggs. The kids collected the eggs and turned them in for a treat/surprise bag. We played other outdoor games, too, like egg and spoon racing and freeze tag. When we took a break for cupcakes, the kids sat down in a strangely segregated way:

See? Robert has pants!

Alice dressed herself extra fancy for the party and insisted that she would not be cold in short sleeves, a skirt, and flip flops. She was completely comfortable running, jumping, climbing, dancing, chasing, and racing. I like a girl who knows her own needs.

My co-hosting duties kept me from taking pictures of everything, but they didn't rob me of valuable chat time with friends. It was a good balance to strike and I would throw another party like that any time.

Edith's snack

We caught a spider in our house tonight and put it in the chickens' box. The 'girls' tracked its every move for a few seconds before BAM! Edith snaps it up in two bites. The image of spider legs hanging out of her little chickie beak is forever burned into my memory. Horrifying, and yet I'm filled with a certain pride for my little birds' development.

[Later: We find another spider in the house and Alice can't wait to throw it to the chickens. Edith doesn't take more than half a second to snap up that juicy arachnid and then scratch around in the litter to find more. Alice shrieks with glee and turns to me with a big smile, "For their birthday, can we give them a whole jar full of spiders and they can just 'armph, armph, armph' eat them all up?!"]

Secret sickness {Backpost: written Feb 23rd, published today}

[This post was written when I was in the thick of morning sickness at the end of February. For about 5 weeks, I laid on the couch trying not to throw up. There were better days and worse days. This was on one of the better days when I felt like figuring something out, but it was so early in the pregnancy that I didn't dare post it to the blog then. I have since decided that if I ever feel this terrible again, for whatever reason, I'm not going to keep it a secret. For my family's sake, and my own sanity, I'm gonna get some help! On to the blog post:] 

I haven't been able to look a pregnant woman in the eye for a month.

One of my close friends has just given birth to her fourth and final child. I can't bring myself to visit with her for more than a few seconds. I didn't even want to see the baby. And when my friend finally took me by the hand and dragged me to the sleeping 2-week-old, I didn't dare get too close. I didn't know what to say. I knew what I *should* say. I knew what I had wanted to hear about each of my newborns. I wanted to hear how beautiful and sweet and perfect they were. I wanted everyone to adore my baby as much as I did. Looking at that baby, though, all I could feel was dread, avoidance, and the weight of responsibility that newborn life demands.

I thought about the baby I was secretly carrying, knowing that this would be my lot in 32 weeks or so.

I've been sick. Nauseous, exhausted, and even more nauseous. One day, Robert was wandering around the house in a diaper that was heavily leaking through his pants. I saw it from my perpetual bed on the couch and I didn't have the energy to change him. I literally caught myself wondering if I could just throw him in his crib as-is for his nap. I did eventually change him. It still brings tears to my eyes realizing how close I was to ignoring one of my own children's basic needs. No, my kids aren't starving. Yes, I am heavily dependent on Bobby to keep the house workable. I am tired of being so sick. Tired of having to "hide" my fragile state from friends and family because it's so early in this pregnancy and things can still go terribly wrong.

It took me a long time to be okay with the idea of having another child. After Robert's birth, my sanity depended on this mantra, "I never have to do this again." Each diaper change was one step further from the baby life and back to normalcy. There was a time last summer when I thought I might be pregnant. That was a terrifying and helpful experience at the same time. I knew I wasn't ready. And that was okay. If I never was ready again, that would be okay, too.

Then one day, several months later, Robert was 18 months old and I wanted to pray about kids again. I had decided it would be okay to try for a third child. I actually wanted one. In answer to my prayer, I felt a warm, yellow light in my mind. I was actually ready now. And that was okay, too.

The surprise was how soon that baby came. We tried for 9 months to catch Alice, then 11 months to snag our Buddy. This baby, well, caught us. And I know I'll get in trouble for saying this, but I think this one is something new. Our "please bless the baby" prayer has expanded to include the term 'a good listener, conscientious, and a peacemaker': "Please bless this baby to be healthy, strong, wise (those came from my pregnancy with Alice), valiant (my pregnancy with Buddy added this one), a good listener, conscientious, and a peacemaker." Despite the day-to-day illness and newborn adjustment/chaos/trauma to come, I'm actually looking forward to this little person joining our family in October. I want to see him/her snuggle into our family and find his/her own place here, filling out this crazy little posse of ours as we figure out life together.

[So, by the end of these ponderings, I had figured out that my avoidance of newborns and pregnant moms was because I knew how much work was ahead of me and how much that work would change my currently comfy life, routine, and personal identity. My avoidance was not a result of my feelings for the baby itself (which I had initially concluded, and dreaded, and felt guilty for). The child itself is actually a welcome addition to my life. I feel ready for this new person. I'm just dreading the prenatal/newborn gauntlet from now until 18 months of age :D and that's okay, too.]

First Prenatal Appointment Today

It was supposed to be an appointment exclusively with the nurse for paperwork and blood draws, but I happened to ask an innocent question that inspired them to look a little bit closer. The nurse pulled out the Doppler for a quick check and found the baby's heart rate was good and strong at 130bpm (normal range 110-190bom). I asked the nurse to see if she could find two heart rates, fully admitting that I've been paranoid about twins with all the additional sickness and fatigue going on this time around. She said it would be easier to check for twins with the portable ultrasound, and since we were way ahead of schedule (i.e. they didn't need to draw blood for another 50 minutes), she decided to wheel it in and give it a try. Wahoo! There is obviously just one baby. Whew. It was not a very high resolution ultrasound thingamajigger, but this kid clearly has an enormous noggin, fetally-proportional body, and at least one bitty hand. It moved a bit, too, but I couldn't feel it for myself yet.

Heart beat. Movement. Just one baby. We're good.

I thought knowing the baby's gender wouldn't be that big of a deal to me this time around because I've got "one of each", but I was wrong. Gender matters a lot to me. No matter how much my crunchy granola feminist side protests, I do care. I do actually believe kids come programmed with their own personality and gender-specific talents/abilities. I like to be prepared, informed, and unsurprised as possible :)

And now that I've seen an actual baby floating around in there, I'm thinking about sibling interactions more...so unpredictable. Alice will be 5.5 years older than this baby, so will they ever really have a chance to connect? Or will the distance actually make the relationship easier (i.e. less direct competition for toys and age-appropriate activities)? Boy or girl, will Robert play better with an older sibling or a younger one? Will a younger sibling turn him into more of a leader? Age and personality matter a lot. Personal interests will also vary as they grow up together. There's nothing I can do about it at this moment, but it's something I'm excited to watch unfold over the next few years.

Alice's Dinner

Alice wanted to take a picture of her dinner.  Robert decided that he needed the same honor.

Bobby's Sunday Summary

This week was actually very busy.  And I have a lot of pictures to show you.

Older:
This is a picture from my birthday party.  It is a little olds. Please excuse the lack of clothing.

Friday:

Friday was the Fairytale ball at the Public Library.  Alice got all dressed up to go and Buddy decided that he wanted to get dressed up too.  You cannot see very easily, but Buddy is wearing two pairs of pants.  One of them is correct and the other is kind of twisted.  He put them both on by himself. and waddled around like that until it was time to go.

He decided that he also wanted a "Hat" like his silly big sister (2 pictures up).

There was a puppet show.

And dancing, although this action shots in bad lighting is kind of fuzzy.

Saturday:

On Saturday we worked outside in the yard.  It was wonderful weather.  We finished putting together the raised beds.  We put in a border around it to hold the giant pile of mulch that is blocking our driveway.  And we planted 6 fruit trees, 2 peach, 2 apple, and 2 pare.  Our soil here is very high in clay, so we bought 480 lbs of composted cow manure and top soil to help give the trees a good start.  The yard is starting to look good.