ultrasound {no, i'm not pregnant}

It's like an ultrasound...for peas!

pool party

Kiddo and I went to a swim party today.  I didn't really want to go, but he did.  He rarely gets invited to birthday parties or playdates, so I often feel like we should make the most of the few invitations we do get.  And I want to encourage him socially, so if he wants to go, I try hard to oblige.  So off to the swim party we went.

It didn't go particularly well.

1.  He is not a strong swimmer, in water or in social situations.
2.  He started to flounder in water that was a little too deep, and the woman who owned the pool jumped in after him, fully clothed.  With her cell phone in her pocket.
2.  He also floundered a little socially - he had a hard time connecting with the other kids, who were busy swimming (well) or having water fights. 
3.  When the other kids noticed him, it was primarily as a target.  But Kiddo doesn't particularly appreciate getting squirted.  Or splashed.
4.  Unfortunately, I think both of those are pretty much a given when you are at a pool party with a bunch of 7-year-olds.

After about half an hour, he was done.  He was uncomfortable and anxious and unhappy. 

"I'm not having any fun, Mommy.  Can we go home?"

(2 years old)

There is a fine line between "enough is enough" and encouraging your child to grow in a situation where he is not particularly comfortable.  But he had stuck it out for a while, and I was ready to go home, too.  I was tired of trying to help him navigate everything, to share, to communicate with the other kids, to stay in the shallow end.  Distracted as I was, I hadn't had a chance to connect with the other moms, either.

I drove home feeling defeated.  Another social situation gone awry.  Nothing really horrible happened, but it wasn't a stellar success, either.  I don't think the other kids even noticed when he left.  

When we got home, we wandered outside, and it seemed like we both immediately relaxed, and the anxiety of the afternoon disappeared.  And as I ambled around the garden, I couldn't help but wish that we could just spend the summer at home, just the three of us, puttering in the garden in our own little world.  

It would be so much easier to play hermit, to stay in this safe place where my child is understood.  Where he can talk about ducks all he wants (even if it drives Mommy and Daddy crazy sometimes).  Where it doesn't matter if he can't ride a bike or throw a ball well.  Where someone will listen to the nonsense songs he makes up, and where it's normal to hear 4- and 5-syllable words coming out of a 7-year-old. 

Easier?  Yes.  

Best?  Probably not.

Sigh.

So tonight, I will take a deep breath.  I will pray for wisdom and patience.  I will celebrate how far he has come.  I will remind myself of the many ways I have seen him grow over the past year.  It makes me want to cry, I am so proud of him.  

I will take him to pool parties and birthday celebrations.  I will help him learn how to swim.  I will walk him through social interactions at the playground at Chick-fil-A and at the park.  I will pick him up and hold him close and reassure him when things don't go as planned.  I will be there for him.  And I will give him a safe and secure place to come home to, where he can be himself, where he knows he is loved just as he is.  

There will be pool parties to navigate, but there will also be a garden to putter in.

kindergardens - week 8 {baby cats, baby veggies, baby cabbage moths}

Fair warning:  this post is going to be long-winded - our garden has been busy over the past week or two, and I'm feeling chatty.

When they aren't being mowed down by pests (more on that later), the plants in our garden are really starting to take off.  This part of the summer is so fun, as it seems like there is something new out there each time we traipse out to the garden patch. 

Unfortunately, Kiddo isn't terribly impressed, as he has recently been distracted by the kittens in the barn next door.  He is over there daily, checking on them and playing with them.  Last night "Mikey" and "Petey" came running when they saw him in the garden, and that was the end of his gardening for the evening.  Kittens are much more fun than boring old plants.

(By the way, if you find a recipe for an organic home-made bug repelling concoction that includes vinegar as an ingredient, try spraying just a small part of the plant first before you douse your entire garden.  That way, you won't end up with crippled, burnt plants that don't like vinegar...like snap peas, for example.  Don't ask me how I know this).

When Kiddo is interested in gardening, we are finding (blurry) blueberries,

peppers,

and snap peas!

Kiddo is joining Miles and Ella's quest to make sure no pea makes it to the house.

"They taste even better when they come from our own garden instead of the grocery store, Mommy.  Why is that?"

We've also got a baby eggplant,

nasturtium blossoms,

as well as baby grape tomatoes, borage (totally underestimated the size of borage - it's huge!), and - cuteness alert - an itsy bitsy adorable little pea-sized watermelon!

We don't really know when you're supposed to pick kohlrabi - I read somewhere that baseball-size is best, but a friend of mine showed me a picture of her CSA loot and the kohlrabi was huge.  Way bigger than a baseball.  We decided to err on the side of caution and went ahead and picked them small this week.

We haven't eaten any yet, but I am collecting some recipes to try this coming week - we'll let you know what we think!

Kiddo's beans are starting to climb up his teepee, despite our continued battle with cucumber beetles and a few other unidentified bugs.  And the morning glory house - well, the morning glory house is just plain fun.  We measured the vines as they grew until they reached the roof earlier this week.

Hubby's twin brother was in to visit this week, and Kiddo was very excited to give him the grand tour of the garden and to show off his house.

In the past couple of days, the sides of the house have filled up even more, and we found our first real blossom today!

 

Isn't it pretty?  Can't wait to see what the house looks like when the vines really start blooming!

We continue to battle with pests.  We solved (knock on wood) our deer problem with fishing line, but now we have what we think is a groundhog snacking on peas, lettuce, chard, green beans and corn.  Hellooooo, but there's plenty of corn over there, across the street, in that nice big field...

Apparently our corn is tastier, so we hit Home Depot for some chicken wire yesterday, and within a few hours we had a second fence.

We'll be making another trip to Home Depot tomorrow - we went out to check on things after church today and found some of the sunflowers in Kiddo's flower maze pulled right out of the ground.  Hopefully all of this fencing works.  It is getting more and more difficult for us human folk to get into the garden, so we are crossing our fingers that it will prove to be enough of a bother that the critters will take their dining somewhere else.

In addition to groundhogs, we have also added cabbage worms to our list of enemies.  Last month, I was innocently admiring all of the cute little white butterflies flying around our garden.  And then one day, our neighbor mentioned she had seen several cabbage moths in our garden.  Cabbage moths?  I thought, What are those?  Then we got excited when we saw our first cauliflower head start to form and forgot all about cabbage moths.

As we started to check on our cauliflower daily, we started to notice weird green and black stuff collecting on the heads.  This week I showed it to our neighbor.  "It looks like poop!" she said (well, that's not exactly what she said, but my seven-year-old reads my blog).  "Caterpillar poop!" she continued.  Caterpillar poop?!  I took another look at our plants.  And, what do you know, I found poop-producing caterpillars. 

Those cute little white butterflies aren't so cute now that their babies have hatched ALL OVER our cauliflower and broccoli.  So now I'm squishing cucumber beetles, Japanese beetles (they showed up this week, too) AND cabbage worms (FYI, Japanese beetles are really hard to squish...but fun to drown in a bucket of soapy water.  And cabbage worms are really gross to squish.  They almost pop, and their guts squirt out the end.  Kind of like popping a giant green zit.  Totally gross, and totally more than you wanted to know, I'm sure).

So far, they've restricted themselves to making ugly-but-not-too-devastating (yet) holes in the leaves, and we were still able to harvest our first cauliflower head yesterday.  Hooray!

 (notice the cauliflower is being gingerly held to avoid caterpillar poop contact)

We have been enjoying looking at everyone's fun garden plan "sketches," so Kiddo and I decided to sit down and make one for our garden, too.

It's getting holy-moly-what-are-we-thinking a little big.  Particularly when we have to go shopping for fencing.  But we sure are having a lot of fun, despite all the critters and bugs.

This week I'll be handing the camera over to Kiddo as part of our Kindergarden homework assignment.  Can't wait to see what he finds noteworthy!

Linking up to Kindergardens week 8, where you can check out Kim's post and find out what's happening in other kindergardens this week!

done

Bible School is over.  We finished up our last morning and packed up our pandas and bamboo.  We sent everyone home with popsicle stick crafts and songs stuck in their heads.  And hopefully a few memories and lessons learned as well.

It was a great week.  We had so much fun with the kids, and I honestly had fun helping with all of the planning and organizing and preparation. 

But now?  I am done.  SO done.  Kiddo is, too (who, by the way, was helpful and patient and amazing this week while his mom dragged him to church early and drove him home late and worked on last-minute Bible school details in the afternoons).

So bring on the couch and the Cars video, the snuggles and the sleepy eyes.  Blessed peace and quiet and just time spent chilling with my boy. 

My sister-in-law invited us all over for dinner.  I think I might just kiss her, I am so happy that I don't have to cook, or even think about what we are eating tonight. 

Maybe I'll be ready for real life tomorrow.

kindergardens - week 7 {oh deer}

How to install a cheap emergency I'm-tired-of-netting-all-over-everything-but-my-garden-won't-survive-unless-I-do-something deer fence:

Step 1:  consult gardening friends and collect sage advice.

Step 2:  buy several electric fence posts (Tractor Supply is our new friend).

Step 3:  take a break to head to the house for tweezers to pull out the plastic splinter you got from one of the cheap fence posts.

Step 4:  place fence posts around the garden.  Be sure to grumble about the troublesome consequences of this particular step (we are Hubby is going to get to know our weed-whacker/weed-eater/string trimmer really well).

Step 5:  go to the scary little sporting goods shack up the road which you imagine to be full of gruff-looking, gun-toting hunter folk Walmart and pick up some heavy duty fishing line.

Step 6:  Attempt to string it around your fence posts while tripping over an amorous, attention-seeking barn cat.

Step 7:  stand back and admire your handiwork while you still can, for you will go out in a few days and find one of the lower lines snapped and your peas and lettuce decimated.  Scratch your head (it was 50-lb fishing line, after all, and the top line was still intact) and consult with neighbors for possible suspects.

Step 8:  replace/repair snapped line and begin researching additional deterrents for groundhogs.

dark

It's dark (and kind of stinky) when you're sitting in the belly of a great big fish.

(Story of Jonah during Vacation Bible School this week...our amazing volunteers made a classroom-sized fish belly out of large sheets of black plastic, duct tape, box fans, and a can of sardines).

fathers day crafty gift 2011

1. Paint.

(On the carpet.  Yes, I know.)

2. Stick.

3. Insert picture and be pleased as punch.

 

4. Give to Daddy two days early because you can't wait to show it to him on Father's Day.  

5. Forbid him to take it to work to put on his desk, since you like it so much and don't want it too far out of sight.

6.  Make Daddy's day anyway.

kindergardens - week 6

It's rather ironic, I think, that Kim's kinderGARDEN post this week is about pests in the garden.  In my humble opinion, we've had more than our fair share this week.

You can read about our latest adventures with the deer earlier this week here.  That problem has been temporarily solved with bird/deer netting over anything remotely attractive to deer.  We've got it draped over everything, including the sides of Kiddo's morning glory house:

(which, as you can see, is recovering nicely a mere five days after being ravaged by said deer.  Here Kiddo is measuring himself against the morning glory - he is temporarily taller, but by tomorrow night the morning glory will have surpassed him).  We originally had the sides of our nets pinned down with earth staples, but the plants were getting cramped, so now the nets just sort of float on top.

1.  floating net over monster broccoli and cauliflower that aren't producing heads yet
2.  weeds - particularly the evil ground ivy - that are threatening to take over the world
3.  a barn cat (of course)

So far the nets have worked, but we're hoping to use some sort of deer repellent or CHEAP fence soon (Shayne's fishing line fence is a possibility).  One half-tempting solution?  A dog.  A big dog.  Actually, come to think of it, that would probably take care of the barn cat problem, too.  Hmmm...

We had a horrible problem with cucumber beetles last year, and they also showed up again this week.

 

Apparently they like hyacinth beans in addition to cucumbers, melons, pumpkins and squash.

We don't have many yet, so I am trying to control them without spray if I can.  I am surely probably being optimistic, but for now I am just hand-picking them and squishing them to death.  It's disgusting, but strangely satisfying.  The problem is they are speedy little buggers, so they are hard to catch.  Enter the dishsoap.  Does anyone else use this trick?  I fill a bowl with water and dishsoap and stir it up until it is nice and sudsy, then head out to the garden.

 Then I look for the enemy.

Once I find one, he gets doused in suds.

I don't know all the science behind it, but they can't fly when they're trapped in the bubbles, and they seem to get pretty confused trying to crawl, too.  So they get squished (I didn't take a picture of that part.  Sorry).  We'll see if this method works, or if we eventually have an epidemic like last year [groan]. 

Despite all the pests we've dealt with this week, not all of our visitors have been unwelcome.  We are having fun hunting for our goldbugs:

And this cute little guy showed up yesterday.  For all I know he could grow into a menace with a voracious appetite, but yesterday he was innocuous and cute.

And, probably to someone's shock and dismay, I planted our parsley half-hoping these guys would show up:

For a caterpillar, they are kind of pretty, and we love watching the swallowtail butterflies later in the summer (now someone will comment about what a terrible scourge they are and I will regret my naivete).

Besides lessons in pest control, this week we have also learned that 8- and 9-year-old seeds that you happen to find buried in the back of the shed (with mouse-y teethmarks on the corners of the packets) probably won't germinate.

We got some much-needed rain this weekend (much to our neighbors' dismay, who were trying to hold a wedding reception in their backyard).  I love our garden after a good rain - everything is so green (and the weeds are easy to pull)! 

We are hoping our garden really takes off as the sun comes back out this week.  Unfortunately, I probably won't get to see much of it, as I am frantically trying to get things done before Kiddo is out of school (Wednesday) and our week of Vacation Bible School starts at our church (next week).  Hopefully there will be time to run out and at least pick some lettuce for dinner - and squish a beetle or two while I'm at it. 

P.S.  Speaking of lettuce, we still haven't learned the concept of staggered planting, which means we have four rows of lettuce, all ready at the same time.  So if you need lettuce, feel free to come over and grab some....please? 

(linking up to KinderGARDENS)

uninvited guests

Deer are a product of The Fall.  I'm sure of it.

(I guess goldbugs aren't the only ones who like morning glories).