A Nice Day

And now I sit--in bed, lamp on, a laptop being a ridiculous convenience, when you think about it--writing about what a nice day it's been.

Bright and early yesterday morning, we got up, got the kids out of bed, and headed out of town to go blueberry picking.  I love to pick fruit, and have long before I was a gardener and got interested in such things.  It started when I first went blueberry picking about ten years ago (at this same farm, now that I think of it).  Anyway, I always enjoy the picking process, how much cheaper you can usually buy the fruit for, and the absolute bounty you can drive home with.  I love how you can actually be in the position of finding as many recipes as you can to use up your ____ (blueberries, strawberries, peaches, apples...).  There is just something about the surfeit of one type of food that makes you feel like you are reveling in Plenty.  And having a large amount of one item also makes me feel connected to my farmer ancestors, who would have been doing what I'm doing with my blueberries: making hay while the sun shines, if I may use an agricultural expression.  Making lots of blueberry dishes while you have blueberries, then canning the rest, perhaps.

Anyway, I made a blueberry crisp last night (which, my friends, you must make if you ever have six cups of blueberries sitting around--seriously, ten years ago it made me a true blueberry fan), and since it was cooked after the kids went to bed, I let Noah and Jane have some for breakfast.  It does have fruit and oatmeal in it, after all.  Then, I made blueberry muffins and blueberry pancakes.  We had a regular blueberry feast for breakfast!  And breakfast wasn't until 10:00 (read: leisurely morning).

Clara was under the weather this morning, so we skipped church and stayed home.  Throughout the day, there was lots of neatening on my part, kiddie pool time for the kids, and video games for Nathan (his brother, Andrew, stayed with us this weekend).  My kitchen is now ready to face the week.  And I even watched a movie and relaxed a good bit.  I hand-pollinated my cucumbers to make sure they keep producing (I've picked three so far! Hooray!) and soaked some beans so I can plant them tomorrow.

Janey Beth has taken to making nests out of her bedding, putting her stuffed animals in the middle, then sleeping on top of them, pretending she's the mama bird.  It is the cutest thing.  Her bed is a complete mess, but that's nothing new (I even let them make pallets and sleep on the floor all last week). I love to see the sweet, nurturing side of her.  Sometimes I look at her little toddler face and wish I could bottle the cuteness so I could pull it out for a big jolt of joy and love whenever I want.  There is something about those little faces.

Noah has been wanting more of my affection lately.  He is very huggy these days.  And I've been so impressed at what a model of a big brother he's been to Clara this weekend.  While she's in a sitting position on the floor, he'll set himself down in front of her and just chat and play with her.  She loves it, and she is really loving that Noah these days.  He's getting some big smiles from Clara.  Unfortunately, though, he is really into antagonizing Jane.  It's actually beginning to be a real problem.

I can relate to that, honestly.  I loved to antagonize my little brother, too.  Specifically, I tickled him.  He was (and still is) incredibly, incredibly ticklish, and I took full advantage of it.  Tickled him to the point of cruelty.  I probably scarred him for life.  My parents tried everything to make me stop.  The only thing that worked was to make me pay him--first a quarter, then a dollar--whenever I tickled him.  That made me stop, more or less.  But sometimes, oh sometimes, it was worth that dollar.

Well, we'll work with my Noah.  As for little Clara, she is, as always, a sweet baby.  Although her least endearing quality these days is that she is experimenting with her voice.  Actually, she is screaming.  Screaming just for the fun of it.  Screaming with everything she's got.  Screaming so big I can see to the back of her throat.  Screaming until she shakes a tiny bit.  It does not make for an easy dinner conversation, I'll tell you that.  We've also discovered that she is extremely sensitive to mosquito bites.  Each mark swells to the size of a quarter.  It is so awful looking, but it doesn't seem to bother her much, which I can't believe.  I'm going to have to start using the car seat mosquito netting that for some reason I have. 

I finished my last flower square tonight!  I took care that the last square I made was one with a pink flower.  The pink flowers, after all, were the first ones I made and more or less inspired the rest of the blanket.  Now all I need to do is block the remaining squares, join them together, and crochet a border.  Give me a couple of weeks.

Sleep is calling me.  Down goes the computer.  Goodnight!

Crochet: Steam Blocking

Hey friends!

So I've been plugging away at the flower squares for Jane's blanket. It's been slow going, though.  The blanket will be 70 squares total: 7 squares across by 10 down, each about 4" square, which will make it a size that will cover her to her toes now but will also be enjoyable as a lap blanket as she grows.  The small size also makes it nicely portable (great for road trips, maybe?), but it's not as small as a baby/car seat blanket.

At the beginning of March, I calculated that if I completed two squares every evening after the kids went to bed, I could have them all done by the end of the month.  They take me about 20-30 minutes each, depending on how engrossed I am in whatever's on TV. :)  Well, there's just something about running after three small children all day that makes you want to crash on the couch at 8:30 without the energy even to pick up a hook and some yarn.  So here it is, June 15, and I am still working on it.

I only have seven more squares to go, though!  I'm excited about that!  I'd love to get them done this weekend.  We'll see if that works out.

There's one thing I've been worried about, though, and that's how much they curl.  I created this pattern myself, and it's a five-sided flower that converts to a four-sided square, and I'm pretty sure that accounts for the extreme curling.  Now, don't shun me, you experienced crocheters and knitters, but I've never blocked anything before.  I've always heard it helps to shape your work and make it lie flat, but I've just never felt the need to do it.  With this particular project, though, I started thinking to myself, "Oh my gosh. If blocking doesn't help these, then I'm going to be in a pickle."  All that time wasted would have been a real blow.

My curly squares:

Thanks to Pinterest and some blog hopping I've been doing, I've started following some crochet bloggers.  One of them is Lucy at Attic 24, who recently wrote a post on steam blocking.  Although I've also seen another method where you pin your squares, spray them with water, and let them dry in place, I decided to give Lucy's method a shot first.

Oh my goodness.  I am a convert.  Blocking is amazing.  Just look at the difference!

I don't quite understand why letting the steam hover over the yarn has this effect, but it not only straightens out the pattern (thanks to some strategically placed pins) but also makes the yarn lay with a lovely drape that it didn't have before.  It somehow makes it relax and makes it softer.  I'll be tempted to steam every project from now on--whether it needs to be shaped or not--just for the drape it gives the yarn.

It only takes about 10 or 15 seconds of steaming per square, but I found that the laying out and pinning of each block was taking a while, so I got smart and blocked a bunch at once rather than steaming one at a time.

Having gone from this

to this, how can I not feel pleased?

Noah T.

On the Menu

I must go grocery shopping.

We had to get some emergency milk today.  As in, we-ran-out-of-milk-and-I-won't-have-time-to-properly-grocery-shop-until-tomorrow milk.  This isn't normal for us.  Usually, I am a better planner, but right now the pantry and fridge are pretty much empty of easy-to-grab food (like our usual almonds, etc.) and real dinners.  We are down to peanut butter sandwiches or eggs + pancakes for dinner.  That's all fine and good for a few days, but Mama's got to stock up tomorrow.   At the moment, I'm making my grocery list and menu for the week.  Because it's so completely riveting, I'm sharing the week's dinner menu with you:

• Avocado and cilantro red quinoa (recipe on the back of packaged red quinoa from Trader Joe's)
• Roasted fish, red potatoes, and onions (a family favorite--Nathan calls it "hobbit food")
• Cream cheese chicken
• Savory tomato cobbler
• Tilapia sandwiches with slaw + cold pea soup
• Rotisserie chicken with squash rice casserole
• Orange scented spiced couscous with chicken
• Ploughman's platter

I'm hoping this redeems me this week.

Until later!

This and That

I'm thankful that Noah and Jane love their baby sister.

Wondering what Noah's up to now that school is out?  This should give you an idea of his everyday adventures in Inventionland.

A blush of color in the garden.

Which became this:

Nathan taking Clara for a swing one evening before bedtime.  It was her first time, and she very much enjoyed it.

She wore such a pleasant smile the whole time.

See?

 

 And my Clara playing Peek-A-Boo in the cart at IKEA about a month ago. :)

Where's Clara? from Lauren Benesh on Vimeo.

Nine Months Old! And a Trip to the Park

Clara is nine months old today!

Is she not precious?

I love her.

Her nicknames: Clarabelle, Littlest, Dear One, Baby Doll.

Clara Loves: her family, her paci, fruit, and Cheerios.
She is just about crawling--army crawling and getting up on all fours and rocking.

Yesterday, we took a little walk to the park. 

And Clara got to swing for the first time.

Janey, I promise you are too big for the baby swings now.

Jane required that her pigtails were sticking straight up on the top of her head. Also, they are "pinktails," not "pigtails," she informs me.

Noah played his part of Good Big Brother and pushed his sisters on the swings.

"Ugh, Mom, I'm hot."

{It WAS hot.  It was 100 degrees.}
{And that is such a Noah face right there.}

But he kept plugging, anyway.  He's the best.

Happy nine months, Clara!

Now a Kindergartener

My Noah has finished his very first year of school.  He's very excited to be able to say that he is now a kindergartener.  So excited that every grocery checker we've seen in the last two weeks is well aware.  (They are also aware that Jane is three and had a princess birthday party with a princess cake.  This is her standard conversation starter nowadays.)

Here he is on the first day of school.

(How can they be so little?!  This was not that long ago!!)

And on the last.

Wow.

It was not the easiest year for us.  Like any major challenge or change we've had with Noah (potty training comes to mind--ugh), the obstacles reveal personality characteristics that were either latent or went previously unnoticed by us.  After school started, we discovered that Noah is 1.) very smart and 2.) very distracted.  His distractability and difficulty focusing made it hard for the teacher and for his co-teacher (me!) to move him along through his tasks every day.  However, although he may not complete his worksheet because he was making his pencil into a rocket or daydreaming while looking out the window (probably planning his next invention or science experiment), the remarkable thing is that he does know all the material.  All this jogged Nathan's memory, and he remembers being much the same when he was a child.  And we all know he turned out okay (hello, Harvard Ph.D.--it's not me, so I can brag a little, right?  Right??), so here's hoping Noah follows suit.  I will say that he is a little sponge when learning something he's passionate about, like various nature and science facts.  The kid explained photosynthesis to me the other day in far more detail than I expected.

Some other things I learned about my son this year:

~He loves being read to.  I knew he liked it, but it is amazing how such an active kid really can sit still and listen for a long period of time to a chapter book.

~He does not like math.  I'm hoping this is because he doesn't feel confident yet; it'd be unfortunate to love science but not math.

~He has a gift for rote memorization.

~He is a kind friend.  In the yearbook, the Pre-K teachers were asked to give an adjective that described each child.  I was surprised to see that Noah's was "gentle."  And he got an "exceeds expectations" grade on his final report card for Courtesy and Politeness.

~All year, every day, when I picked him up from school, I'd ask him, "What was your favorite part of the day today?" And he invariably said, "Lunch."  Now, I will say, his school does do an excellent job at lunch.  The head of school reads from a chapter book, involves the kids in it, then celebrates birthdays.  But come on.  Lunch was his favorite thing?  Every day?  Yes, folks.  It was.

Here's my boy at his seat on the very last day of school.

My dad was able to come to the Closing Assembly, the event that ends the school year.  It was special that he was there.

This absolutely cracks me up, because it is our year in a nutshell.

Except that he is actually terrible at drawing people, God bless him.  And I have no idea when he decided he wanted to be a police officer.

He also made me a card:

Translation: "Dea[r] Mom, Thank you for teaching me.  Love Noah."

Oh my gosh, be still my heart.  He is so precious.

I sure do love that kid.

Six, Seven, Eight Months Old

So even though I am failing miserably at getting pictures up on the blog and documenting our little lives in any semblance of timeliness, at least I am taking the pictures.  I always figure I'll sort it all out later. 

But since Clara will be nine months in a couple of days and I have neglected to put up a monthly picture and update (which I did with my other kids--hello, busy household), I wanted to catch up a bit by posting the pictures I took of her on her six, seven, and eight month birthdays.

~~~

Here's my girl at six months.

We were headed out on a walk around our neighborhood one evening, just her and me.

I love her little happy smile.

 Twenty minutes later, we had this:

 At six months, she did begin to sit up, but only with support.  It took her a while to be able to sit without support, which worried me for a while because I couldn't remember how my other kiddos sat--with support?  without?  for how long?  were they placed in a sitting position or did they get there on their own?--and then I just quit worrying, because I realized I probably do this with each kid on some issue that is completely pointless.  Like fretting that Noah didn't get teeth until he was nine months old.  Like it matters.
  Anyway, all that to say that despite my fretting, Clara seems completely normal and up-to-date on her developments. :)

~~~

On her seven month birthday, Clara got a cake and her first two teeth!

 She is such a happy girl.

Please note that this is my first child who got a cake on her seven month birthday rather than her six month birthday.  I spy a trend here....  (I don't actually let them eat cake until they're a year old, but I do make one so the rest of us can celebrate the baby.)

And feel free to be really impressed on that frosting job.  I'm kind of on a roll in that department.

~~~

And this is my girl on her eight month birthday.

She's just all smiles and joy.  She both brings them and elicits them.