Luke: So you were the first-born in your family?
Mama: That’s right.
Luke: Wow. It’s really funny to think of you being older than Uncle Ryan.
Mama: (thinking this is an obvious comment on the height difference) Oh, why’s that?
Luke: Oh, because you’re a girl.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Perspective
Sunday, April 22, 2012
All Quiet on the Sutherland Front
I’ve been out of the loop recently with social contacts for the most part, because our family has been in the middle of some house projects – most notably getting our garden up and running! Only the Lord knows if it will be a success or not, because this is really my transition from book learnin’ into actual practice. We started most of the seeds inside throughout March and April. It took us about five days of Daddy being off work to get the ground ready, build the boxes, etc. (which really isn’t as bad as it sounds, because realistically with kids, one “day” means “two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon”.)
Also, in the midst of growing little green things, some other notable growth was happening. Matt has been slowly teaching me (mostly by example, but occasionally with some carefully worded reminders and encouragement) about the value of allowing children to work along side of us. I get so uptight about things being done “right” and nothing being “messed up”. But he put it this way, “If you went to Lowe’s at the start of this project and they told you, ‘The materials for this project will cost you $500 if you do it alone or $550 if you involve your kids and there is some resultant waste,’ would you include the children?” Of course I would. And we did. And as it turns out, they are marvelous little workers, and they loved it.
A neighbor who crossed the street to see what we were up to asked all about the boxes and soil mixing (we spent a LOT of time mixing bags and bags of soil enrichers). She said she’d be really eager to see what we were growing. I told her I wasn’t totally sure that we’d be growing anything! She responded (and this has become, in my mind, the summary of the project), “If you’ve got the kids involved, then you are growing something.” I love it. Lord, grant me the grace to see the bigger picture! (Btw, this “growth-spurt” coincided nicely with my reading of “Loving the Little Years” by Rachel Janckovic. Perfect timing, Lord.)
Also, in the spirit of working and helping, here’s perhaps my favorite story from Daddy’s time off. It has less to do with planting and more to do with, ahem, composting. ;-) On Friday, I sent Emma upstairs to tell Robyn that she could get up from her nap. After a while, I realized that I hadn’t heard from them in a while and (with trepidation) went up stairs to find out what was happening. I found Emma trying to button the back of Robyn’s dress. They were facing the wall opposite the door, so I was able to stand and listen without being noticed. Emma was talking to Robyn all about her siblings and how much they loved her and how much she loved them. When they turned around and saw me, Emma told me what it was that had taken so long.
Apparently when Emma arrived to get Robyn, Robyn said that she needed to go potty (which she has been doing semi-sporadically but not at all consistently over the past couple of weeks). However, when Emma checked her diaper, she was poopie, so Emma cleaned her (yes, there was the dirty diaper with about half a dozen well used wipes tucked neatly inside – no mess on the carpet) and took her to the potty. She sat with her, helped her up, put a fresh diaper on her and was in the process of buttoning her dress when I arrived. Amazing. Apparently I should give my kids more credit.
So, for any of you who are interested, here are a few shots of the garden and of the kids getting playtime at the end of the day yesterday. (I wish I had gotten some pictures of the kids at work – hoeing, mixing soil, carrying tools and buckets, etc. but that will have to wait for another time.)
What you see in the background are actually our neighbors’ house and vehicles. The garden beds are to the left of the house if you are facing it from the street. The two frames on the back of two of the beds will eventually hold trellis netting for climbing plants.
The strawberry bed. This definitely will need a bird-net covering. We’re hoping to build a frame for it so that it can be easily removed and replaced for harvesting (yummy)! The strawberry plants arrived from Burpee in a manila mailer. They were in a plastic bag and looked shriveled and rotten. But a few weeks in potting soil in SOLO cups and they’re lookin’ quite lovely! The Square Foot garden can support four per square, but we’ve left room for them to self-propagate with runners (i.e. free plants and a rotation system).
Tomatoes and peppers are in this bed. We planted three varieties of tomatoes: a slicer-sized one, a roma-sized one and a cherry-sized one. But I love the names: Big Boy, Little Mama and Sweet Baby Girl. Perfect. Now we just need tomatoes named for Foofie and Henry!
Squash (back left) and bush beans (direct-sow in the back right) and Jalapenos.
This is the front border with the new box we built for it (to replace the rotting landscape timbers). In the foreground you can see our blackberry bush flowering. As this is the second year, we’re hoping for some fruit! (Just have to get to it before the birds do, I guess!)
This is the grapevine (also from last year) right in the middle of the front border. We added the wires on hooks attached to the frame and porch and trained it to grow up onto the porch. Are we naïve to think that we’ll be able to sit in our lovely porch chairs and pluck grapes? Maybe so, but it’s fun to imagine! Also, you can see that we took down the white lattice that covered the space beneath the porch. We are hoping to build hinged frames to put it on so that I can lift the frames and have access to the plants from the back for weeding (which is really hard to do by leaning across a three-foot-deep bed).
This is one of the two blueberry plants, another tomato plant (under the mason jar) and the raspberry bush. (You can see the white lattice laying in wait under the porch for its forth-coming frames.)
Marike Mericle gave me this idea. I put the little seedlings under a mason jar so that they’d have a chance to get a good hold in their new home, especially considering all of the rain and wind that was in the forecast for today.
While Mommy finished up the fine-motor-skills gardening jobs, the kids played in the sprinkler and then flew a kite with Daddy.
It was almost windy enough. Rather more comical than technically successful, but what does it matter. They had a grand old time!
A few more pics and the video of Luke being knocked over by the kite can be found by clicking on any photo.
Well, we’ve been out of the loop, but we’re back!!
Also, in the midst of growing little green things, some other notable growth was happening. Matt has been slowly teaching me (mostly by example, but occasionally with some carefully worded reminders and encouragement) about the value of allowing children to work along side of us. I get so uptight about things being done “right” and nothing being “messed up”. But he put it this way, “If you went to Lowe’s at the start of this project and they told you, ‘The materials for this project will cost you $500 if you do it alone or $550 if you involve your kids and there is some resultant waste,’ would you include the children?” Of course I would. And we did. And as it turns out, they are marvelous little workers, and they loved it.
A neighbor who crossed the street to see what we were up to asked all about the boxes and soil mixing (we spent a LOT of time mixing bags and bags of soil enrichers). She said she’d be really eager to see what we were growing. I told her I wasn’t totally sure that we’d be growing anything! She responded (and this has become, in my mind, the summary of the project), “If you’ve got the kids involved, then you are growing something.” I love it. Lord, grant me the grace to see the bigger picture! (Btw, this “growth-spurt” coincided nicely with my reading of “Loving the Little Years” by Rachel Janckovic. Perfect timing, Lord.)
Also, in the spirit of working and helping, here’s perhaps my favorite story from Daddy’s time off. It has less to do with planting and more to do with, ahem, composting. ;-) On Friday, I sent Emma upstairs to tell Robyn that she could get up from her nap. After a while, I realized that I hadn’t heard from them in a while and (with trepidation) went up stairs to find out what was happening. I found Emma trying to button the back of Robyn’s dress. They were facing the wall opposite the door, so I was able to stand and listen without being noticed. Emma was talking to Robyn all about her siblings and how much they loved her and how much she loved them. When they turned around and saw me, Emma told me what it was that had taken so long.
Apparently when Emma arrived to get Robyn, Robyn said that she needed to go potty (which she has been doing semi-sporadically but not at all consistently over the past couple of weeks). However, when Emma checked her diaper, she was poopie, so Emma cleaned her (yes, there was the dirty diaper with about half a dozen well used wipes tucked neatly inside – no mess on the carpet) and took her to the potty. She sat with her, helped her up, put a fresh diaper on her and was in the process of buttoning her dress when I arrived. Amazing. Apparently I should give my kids more credit.
So, for any of you who are interested, here are a few shots of the garden and of the kids getting playtime at the end of the day yesterday. (I wish I had gotten some pictures of the kids at work – hoeing, mixing soil, carrying tools and buckets, etc. but that will have to wait for another time.)
What you see in the background are actually our neighbors’ house and vehicles. The garden beds are to the left of the house if you are facing it from the street. The two frames on the back of two of the beds will eventually hold trellis netting for climbing plants.
The strawberry bed. This definitely will need a bird-net covering. We’re hoping to build a frame for it so that it can be easily removed and replaced for harvesting (yummy)! The strawberry plants arrived from Burpee in a manila mailer. They were in a plastic bag and looked shriveled and rotten. But a few weeks in potting soil in SOLO cups and they’re lookin’ quite lovely! The Square Foot garden can support four per square, but we’ve left room for them to self-propagate with runners (i.e. free plants and a rotation system).
Tomatoes and peppers are in this bed. We planted three varieties of tomatoes: a slicer-sized one, a roma-sized one and a cherry-sized one. But I love the names: Big Boy, Little Mama and Sweet Baby Girl. Perfect. Now we just need tomatoes named for Foofie and Henry!
Squash (back left) and bush beans (direct-sow in the back right) and Jalapenos.
This is the front border with the new box we built for it (to replace the rotting landscape timbers). In the foreground you can see our blackberry bush flowering. As this is the second year, we’re hoping for some fruit! (Just have to get to it before the birds do, I guess!)
This is the grapevine (also from last year) right in the middle of the front border. We added the wires on hooks attached to the frame and porch and trained it to grow up onto the porch. Are we naïve to think that we’ll be able to sit in our lovely porch chairs and pluck grapes? Maybe so, but it’s fun to imagine! Also, you can see that we took down the white lattice that covered the space beneath the porch. We are hoping to build hinged frames to put it on so that I can lift the frames and have access to the plants from the back for weeding (which is really hard to do by leaning across a three-foot-deep bed).
This is one of the two blueberry plants, another tomato plant (under the mason jar) and the raspberry bush. (You can see the white lattice laying in wait under the porch for its forth-coming frames.)
Marike Mericle gave me this idea. I put the little seedlings under a mason jar so that they’d have a chance to get a good hold in their new home, especially considering all of the rain and wind that was in the forecast for today.
While Mommy finished up the fine-motor-skills gardening jobs, the kids played in the sprinkler and then flew a kite with Daddy.
It was almost windy enough. Rather more comical than technically successful, but what does it matter. They had a grand old time!
A few more pics and the video of Luke being knocked over by the kite can be found by clicking on any photo.
Well, we’ve been out of the loop, but we’re back!!
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
That's Emma
Emma is playing house in the little tent/fort she’s set up for herself. She came over and said:
“I have a schedule all set up for my family. And every day we do it and we don’t miss. I have a little pencil and a notebook next door of my house for whenever I want to write notes down. And I have clothes laid down and a hat and a purse.”
Fiction doesn’t so much imitate life, but she role plays what I aspire to be some day! J
Um ... OK?
Foofie: We haven’t been dead for 51 days.
Mama: Oh? What does that mean?
Foofie: Well, it just doesn’t make any sense because we haven’t been dead for 51 days.
Mama: OK, but I want to know more about what you think about that.
Foofie: I just wanted to tell you that. Guess what’s the biggest number? 99 is the biggest number. Ah! 20 is the biggest number.
Mama: So is 20 bigger than 99?
Foofie: Yes! (wanders off to listen to Emma read “Caps for
And there you have it, folks.
Monday, April 02, 2012
Movin' and Shakin'
This morning Henry was up early before all of the other little people in our household. Mama would have rather been asleep, but it proved to be a good opportunity to capture his new moves. Just within the last week he has added a bunch of new skills to his repertoire. He can now roll front to back or back to front at will. He can go from tummy or all fours to a sitting position and back. And, he can crawl … kinda. Here are a few short videos mostly recorded for posterity, but available for you to check out if you wish. (Warning: These are probably way more interesting to Henry’s Mama than to anyone else on the planet, but if you’re willing to risk it, you can click on the still shot above to link to the videos.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)