If You Carrot All For Me...

...My dear, we cantaloupe, lettuce marry!  

We are just having the most bountiful garden this year!

It's such a wonderful blessing, after a couple of dry, lean summers.  

But if I think about it too much, I verge on a panic attack.  There's just so much to do to get the harvest in AND take care of house and family.  So I try not to think about it, take it one task at a time, and keep refocusing on enjoying the summer and my sweet, funny, little people.  And fall into bed aching and well-tired at night.

I have to say, the garden is so much more enjoyable now that I have kids to enjoy it with.

They just love to be out with me in the garden.  They're happy to work along side me, however helpful or not helpful that may be.  It really is delightful (most of the time) to have them with me, so excited about everything they find.  And it's just so much less intense and more peaceful outside than inside.

They're even more happy to eat all our pickings.  The boys are just overjoyed at the nearly unlimited apples, carrots, cucumbers and green beans they get to eat these days.  The other night at supper, I actually heard Nathan tell Evan to stop eating so many cucumbers and eat some on his main dish.  What kind of crazy parents are we, anyway, that we have to tell our kids to STOP eating their vegetables?  They could happily make a meal of sweet corn and fresh milk.

As tempting as it is for me to let them live on green beans and dropped apples, I realize that they actually need some protein from time to time, thus the panic attack when we come in from the garden at 6:18 and there is no supper yet.

And then there's this sweet little apple dumpling whom I can pretty much characterize as "negative helpful" but that's okay, we love her an awful lot anyway!

And lest you should (for some strange reason) think that all is perfect in paradise, here is a picture of my herb bed.  Yeah, what herbs?  I weeded it quite soundly a month ago.  But then I got busy picking beans and making pickles, and when I turned around again, I couldn't find the herbs.  It's pretty disgusting, and I need to stop thinking about it now before I have to go find a paper bag to breath into.

Blueberry Eyes

Ten

Nathan and I celebrated our tenth anniversary yesterday!  It felt like such a remarkable milestone, so we marked it with a little mini-vacation to the beach!  And how appropriate to celebrate our first decade of marriage with our newest baby in tow.

What a sweet and blessed ten years it's been, and we pray for many more!

Better Watch Out

Imagine you're just lying around, minding your own business, looking cute, as usual.

When suddenly, out of nowhere...

You're attacked!  By a sweaty, four-eyed, baby-eating giant!

But you're used to it.  So it's okay.

Ripe old age of 3

Evan turned 3 yesterday!

Rather than buy Thomas the Tank Engine trains for the top of the cake (okay, I sorta forgot...), I sculpted trains.  That's right, in the midst of a mile-long to-do list, I spent an afternoon making the train decorations out of peanut-butter dough.  But you knoe what the say about all work and no play.  It was kinda fun!  And Evan loved having an edible train on his cake.

Of course, his little brother was right there the whole time because it's good to  have help turning three.

His presents  included a big set of construction trucks, which are wonderfully engrossing for all three boys and it's nice that there are plenty to go around.  Hooray for less fighting!

(But boo for Mommy's bare feet that have already found a number of tiny construction cones.)

Three is a good age.

Maybe I was born with it...

Today is has been a sun-shower day. One of those changeable days where the sky pours buckets, and then the sun comes out.  It's glorious, but it turns my world into a hot steam-bath.

Also mind-bogglingly metaphorical for my life right now, but perhaps I'll save that perusal for another post.

We were able to work in the garden this morning in fits and starts according to the will of our tiny mistress who currently dictates our daily routine, or lack thereof.  Yesterday, she was excessively demanding and needy, so today, I was just crazy to get out in the garden and move around according to my own will for a change.  However, Eleanor still wouldn't stay asleep in her bed for any length of time.  But whenever she was, or with her strapped to my chest in the baby carrier (hey, what's a little extra sweat?), we donned our boots and headed out into the sun and mud.

Ah, yes, it is challenging to maintain this level of high fashion.

Sometimes, pulling weeds can be so therapeutic.  Most of the time, actually.

Andrew was entertained for at least a solid 15 minutes trekking back and forth between me and the chicken run, carrying little handfuls of weeds to feed the chickens.  I was amazed at how cheerfully occupied he was, and I might have even been patting myself on the back a little for my mother-genius. Then I wasn't looking and he took his "help" in a different direction and pulled out eight cucumber plants.

Yesterday, Eleanor had a high-need day.  (And I try to remind myself when I get frustrated that a day is nothing when compared with months of high-need I faced with the boys as newborns.)

I couldn't seem to set her down for even a minute without immediate crying, until I set her on the floor by the train track.  She lay there quite happily for a good 10 minutes watching the little boys play.  Silly mommy, she just wanted to see something different and have a little fun for a change.

Of course, I didn't dare get very far away from her for fear she'd be trampled in a toddler-brawl or something.

She really loves a good, tight swaddle, but it's been so hot that she quickly develops a heat rash, even with a very light swaddle blanket.  So then I had another stroke of mother-genius:

I just pulled her arms inside her onesie.  It's not quite as good as a tight swaddle, but it has essentially the same effect and she calmed down quite a bit.

Nathan laughed when he saw her like that after he came home, but I just congratulated him on finding such a smart woman to be the mother of his children.

My other stroke of mother-genius (hey, I'm on a role, here) was yesterday when I might have sort of threatened Evan with No Birthday until he starts pooping in the toilet.  I'm so fed up with the poopy underpants routine and I've tried every trick in the book to no avail.  Desperate times, desperate measures, etc., so no birthday for you, kiddo.  It was a risky deal, for sure.  But he WANTS that cake.  He was really into the idea, so I said, "Hey, if you poop in the toilet, I will march straight to the kitchen and bake you a cake no matter what day it is!"

So.  Guess what we had today?  CAKE.  (Actually, brownies, but he doesn't know the difference.)  That's right, he nonchalantly went into the bathroom and took care of business all by himself.  Heck, he's probably just been waiting for me to "sweeten the deal" sufficiently.  "M&M's?" he thought to himself, "Nah.  I'm going to hold out for CAKE, baby."  Everyone has their price.

And it's a price I'm certainly willing to pay.  Hey, I got chocolate out of the deal, AND no poopy underpants.  We skyped Grandma to tell her the news and made a BIG deal out of being a big boy now.

And now that I've bragged it up on the internet, I'll await my great cosmic smackdown tomorrow.  Because every piece of mother-genius carries one.

Summer, Baby, Happy!

It's the first day of summer, and a lovely, perfect one at that.  Not too hot, breezy, sunny, gorgeous.  My three littles all napped at the same time while Jonah and I made 20 pints of strawberry jam.  If all goes well, there will be ham and veggie quiche for supper and strawberry-rhubarb pie for dessert.  It doesn't get much better than that.  (Obviously, I am feeling considerably more alive and well this week!)

It also happens to be Eleanor Carolyn's one-month birthday!  

She's sweeter than that strawberry jam, I tell ya what.