Bonus Post: Garden Things

My raspberries are languishing.  Drowning, really.  In fact, at this point they can be considered all but completely lost.  Our exceedingly wet early summer did them in, and what were once seven thriving plants (complete with some early berries!) are now reduced to a dozen little brown stumps surrounded by thriving weeds.  :(  I've tried explaining to Olivia that the berries she was so excited for are never going to come, but I'm not sure she understands.  The best we can hope for at this point is that the plants decided that all of the moister meant it was winter and will come back next spring.

My broccoli started out looking fantastic, but then it caught caterpillars.  :(  I bought a mild pesticide that infects caterpillars with deadly (to them) bacteria but doesn't affect good bugs or people.  The caterpillars heard that I was coming for them, though, and cleared out before I had to use it.  The rain might have had something to do with that.  After the caterpillars were scared away, my broccoli flourished.  Of course, we left town at a critical time and when we came back, two of the three heads had flowered.  :/  I picked the last one and we steamed it and ate it with dinner.  It was delicious.

Next to my broccoli plants are carrots, beets, lettuce, and spinach.  The broccoli shaded out the spinach pretty well, so I haven't gotten any of that.  One lettuce head came up and is doing great.  We don't eat a lot of salads, though, so I'm not sure it's worth it for me to plant lettuce next year.  The rabbits ate all my beet leaves, so I finally picked the no-longer-growing-due-to-lack-of-leaves beets.  They're inconveniently adorably small and we will finish them in one bite when I get around to cooking them.  The carrots are still in the ground, awaiting judgement.

My two peppers are underwhelming, as usual, but its early.  Perhaps they will surprise me later in the season.  The two zucchini plants are flowering nicely, so I expect great things from them.  Hopefully I'll get a good harvest before the squash borers find them.  I have six tomato plants and they all have little (or big!) green tomatoes on them.  Olivia is anxiously waiting for the tomatoes to be red.  She doesn't like vegetables, but she seems to be very excited about the process of watching the garden grow from nothing into recognizable somethings.  I'm counting it as a small victory.  :)

The second bed is more of an experiment.  I have some usual crops: green beans, peas, and cucumbers.  My green beans caught me completely by surprise, just like last year.  I seem to have trouble spotting them until there are dozens of fat beans ready to be harvested.  Olivia and Gretchen helped me pick them; Olivia is pretty good at finding and picking beans, but Gretchen mostly picked the tops of weeds.  I only got a handful of peas.  I think the summer heat just does them in.  The few that I picked were eaten immediately (and they were delicious).  I'll have to put a few more in the ground when the weather cools down again.  This is my first year growing cucumbers, so I only planted two seeds.  One of them never came up (I think Bryan squashed it when he put the trellis in), but the other is taking over the garden.  It's all over both trellises, invading the green beans on one side and poking out past the peas on the other side.  There are a few good sized cucumbers on the vine already and lots of little spiky ones that we're keeping an eye on.  :)

I planted some pinto beans and black beans just to see what would happen.  I sprouted them on the window sill first since I was using store bought beans and didn't know what to expect.  When they sprouted fine, I stuck them in the ground.  :)  They turned out to be the vining variety, but I didn't get stakes up in time, so they're climbing my cornstalks.  I'm ignoring them until the seeds dry up, and then I'll harvest them to add to my dried bean stash.

And speaking of cornstalks, I have some.  Four, to be exact.  Corn only produces one ear per stalk, but I had a little extra space in my garden and some corn seeds, so I planted it anyway.  If it goes well this year then next year I'll dedicate a whole 4x8 garden bed to corn.  I sprinkled some wheat seeds in my experiment garden also, although so far it just looks like grass.  I now understand the parable about letting the weeds grow up with the wheat, because I can't tell them apart.  :)  If the wheat does well, it will also be granted its own bed next year.

The last thing in my garden is pumpkins.  Bryan requested the chance to choose one of the things I planted and he finally settled on pumpkins (although cantaloupe almost won).  The three pumpkin seeds I planted are vining out nicely and flowering well.  I expect that soon they'll be challenging the cucumber for the dominant species title.

Bryan tried planting some trees in pots by picking up seeds from the ground and putting them in dirt.  None of them came up, but I did find a sprouting apple seed on our counter after lunch one day, so I put that one in his pots and we now have a teeny tiny apple seedling.  We'll see if he can manage to not run it over with the mower once he transplants it.  :)

Pictures:

July 19-26

I went to a conference last weekend.  It was a Catholic homeschooling and parenting conference that's much smaller than the humongous fundamentalist homeschooling convention that I have also been known to attend.  I like conferences because I go with friends and listen to adults discuss things.  Bryan likes that I go to conferences because then he can have the following conversation: "Where's Johannah?" "At a homeschooling conference." "Oh, are you guys going to homeschool?" "No, she just goes because she likes them."  Apparently the reactions are amusing.

Kaitlyn rolls over!  She spent last Friday attempting to roll, finally made it on Saturday, and has been happily flipping herself onto her stomach this whole week.  Unfortunately, she doesn't like being on her stomach as much as she likes the process of getting there, so after about five minutes on her tummy she grinds her nose into the floor and hollers for help.

Olivia has made a small amount of progress in her speech: she now has the letter "v."  We spent some time working on it, and now she calls herself "Oleevia" (as opposed to "Oleebia").

I've heard that if you leave them alone, kids pretty much potty train themselves.  I haven't had a chance to experience this since we worked with Olivia after she developed a persistent rash.  Now, given Gretchen's proclivity for diaper removal (as well as the beginnings of a rash), I've decided that it's time for Gretchen to be potty trained as well.  On Friday I sent Olivia to visit the Weys, borrowed a stand alone toddler potty, and let Gretchen roam around the house and yard half naked.  We achieved a good set-up on a towel for indoors so that I didn't have to worry about her anointing every surface in my house.  The jury is still out on whether or not we achieved anything worth mentioning.  :/

I lost the two jars of cantaloupe jam that I made.  :(  We came back from five days in Sidney to a funny smell in the pantry and I discovered that my cantaloupe jam was climbing out of its jars.  I am open to suggestions about what might cause this.  A warm pantry?  I don't think it was a headspace issue since the one jar climbed about an inch above the rim.  Mom thinks maybe it fermented.

Pictures:

July 12-19

We visited Cleveland last week for Rudy's baptism.  The girls were very excited to meet their new baby cousin.  Olivia has of late been quite concerned with babies in bellies, and she is wondering when Aunt Justine's baby will come out.  She also spends large amounts of time going through lists of everyone she knows and asking whose belly each individual came out of.  We had an interesting talk about adoption based on this curiosity.

Gretchen is worried that her hair is going to fly away.  Whenever we walk in the wind, she grabs her hair and holds it onto her head.  It took me a while to figure out why she was constantly grabbing her head when we walked outside.  I asked once, though, and she told me that she didn't want her hair to fly away.  No amount of explanation or coaxing will convince her that this is not a very real and present danger.

Olivia always makes sure that people know daddy is a boy.  When we are out in public, we are invariably asked if Kaitlyn is a boy (interesting side note: people always assumed that the other two were girls based on their amount of hair, but now that we have two older girls the default guess is boy).  When I reply that Kaitlyn is, in fact, a girl, the response is something along the lines of "Another girl.  All girls."  This is when Olivia jumps in with, "We have a daddy.  He is a boy.  Four girls and one boy."  This conversation is so routine that when one cashier didn't ask, Olivia proceeded to inform her that, "Kaitlyn is another girl, but we have a boy daddy."

We've had a lot of talk about sisters and daughters in our house these past few months.  Olivia and Gretchen are constantly helping their sisters and putting their daughters to bed.  Sometimes the mothers are holding the daughters, sometimes the sisters are crying, sometimes the daughters are not listening...  All the dolls, barbies, and princess action figures (is that an oxymoron?) in our house get used regularly in one role or another.

Thursday was a big day because we switched began the process of switching our cell phone network from T-Mobile to Verizon.  T-Mobile just wasn't working out for anyone, with the possible exception of Josef.  So we all went haring off to Verizon (some hared faster than others, with everyone finally arriving 48 hours later (I'm sure Justine has more to say about THAT)), and only about a week too late for Jacob's taste.  The hope is that our phones will now work as phones again.  :)

Pictures:

July 5-12

Saturday was a Fourth of July party with Bryan's family.  See below for pictures of Olivia and Gretchen in the sprinkler.

This week I made blueberry jam and apple jam to go with my already made cantaloupe and strawberry rhubarb.  It's not actually all that much, because I only have two pints of each kind.

I started making crazy quilt squares.  I have four done.  Pictures next week.

Kaitlyn experienced both a bumbo and her flying saucer for the first time on Friday.  She is accepting of both of them but prefers to have someone talking to her while she uses them.  She's also begun trying to stand ALL THE TIME (which makes the bumbo a little more difficult) and we've heard about three laughs.

Gretchen takes her diaper off routinely now, so I tried setting a timer and putting her on the potty every half hour.  After three days of constant potty-sitting but no actual potty-going, I got frustrated and turned the timer off.  Clearly I'm going to have to find a way to get her to realize how to put something in the potty before we go back to the timer.

This weekend we're in Cleveland for Rudy's baptism.  Did I mention that we have a niece?  Bryan's sister, Keshia, had her baby.  Olivia and Gretchen are very excited to meet Baby Rudy.

Pictures:

June 28-July 5

The bunk bed seems to have helped solve several of our sleeping woes.  All three girls now take nap/quiet time in the bedroom, which is nice for me.  The bunks keep Olivia and Gretchen in their own beds rather than running around the room, Kaitlyn is useful in keeping the older girls quiet since they don't want to wake her u, and the presence of her sisters is enough to keep Gretchen from napping unless she really needs to sleep.  Bedtime has also become a smoother process, partly because Gretchen is regulating her naps better and partly because the bunks keep the girls from interacting as much as they used to, so they don't keep each other up.  All in all a good thing.  :)

And speaking of good things, Kaitlyn has been doing at least one eight-hour night a week for a bit now.  Usually she still sleeps in chunks of four to five hours at night, but once or twice a week she'll throw in an eight hour segment (and once she did ten!), which keeps her mother from getting too cranky.

Our rainy season is finally tapering off (at least, that's what we hope!) and we've had enough sunny days in a row that the swingset and trampoline dried off.  The water in our new wading pool has warmed up, too, so Olivia and Gretchen have been outside a lot.  The downside to the pool is that I can no longer just shoo them outside by themselves since Gretchen is drawn to the water like a moth to light.

Kaitlyn has mastered the art of grabbing things.  She has not, however, figured out how to let go voluntarily, so she spends a lot of time accidentally attached to things.  Usually it's not a big deal; she just hangs out, pretending she's holding on for a reason, until her hand happens to let go.  Once, though, she grabbed her own hair.  She pulled furiously, trying to get her hand away from her head, all the time yelling about the awful person who was mean enough to pull her hair.

Bryan discovered the wonders of siphons this week.  The entryway to our basement was full of water so that every time it rained water was getting into the basement under the door.  Such polite water we have here, entering through the door rather than seeping up through the floor.  However, even polite water is unappreciated in the basement, so Bryan set out to dry up the little pond under our basement stairs (and found a very large toad in the process!).  He decided on a siphon and sent the water running through a clear hose over the door jamb and into the sump pump.  Physics is so cool.  Since solving that problem, he's been using the siphon to empty the pool periodically, which is much easier than trying to tip it over.

Elesha and I have been running several days a week and yesterday we ran in a local 5k.  Our time was only 28:15, but we had a good run anyway.  The highlight of the run, though, was actually on the way back to Elesha's house to pick up my car.  We passed a garage sale and I got a Cinderella Barbie, a doll baby carrier/carseat, some muslin, and two bookshelves.  My mom is so proud.

Pictures:

June 21-28

Two weeks ago we spent some extended time with my family in Michigan.  Mostly just hanging out, although we did go to half the Cubs/Indians game in Cleveland on Thursday.  Dad, Jillian, Bryan, Kaitlyn, and I made the trip down but left when there was a rain delay in the 5th.  The game was tied at 3 when we left, so it was at least an interesting first half.  Kaitlyn was in the wrap and got called a papoose at least twice.

Olivia and Gretchen got a new bed.  Mom and I took the kids to Ikea and purchased a Kura loft bed.  Then Bryan put it together and we put a mattress on the floor for Gretchen.  It's a nice, short bunk and we've been slowly adding to it to make it more fun.

Kaitlyn and I visited Jacob at Albion yesterday to begin the psalm recording project.  It was decided that the oldest six Fenton children would probably never get together long enough to actually accomplish any recording, so Jacob and I started without everyone else.  Hopefully we'll be able to add in voices one or two at a time in order to still obtain a full sound.

I made three pints of strawberry rhubarb jam.  :)  Next up is cantaloupe jam with vanilla.

Kaitlyn is three months old.  She smiles, tries to roll, makes cute baby noises, and blows fabulous spit bubbles.

I thought I had more things to mention, but it is too late for me to remember them.  If you know of something, leave a comment so that I can put it in next week's post.  :)

Pictures:

Bonus Post: Sound Bites 4

Olivia: This crown is hurting my head.
Me: Then why are you wearing it?
Olivia: Because it matches my dress.

Olivia: I have a twinkle in my eye.
Bryan: A twinkle in your eye?
Olivia: Yeah.
Bryan: It's very pretty.
Olivia: No, I do not like twinkles in my eye.

Olivia: We've been here for miles.

Olivia: My belly hurts.  Probably you should let me watch cartoons on the couch until my belly feels better.

Olivia: Am I three or sick?
Me: You're three and not sick.
Olivia: But after I am five I will be sick.
Me: You will be SIX.  After four and five.
Olivia: And then I will have to go to the doctor because I'm sick.
Me: Six.
Olivia: Because I'm six.  Then I will go to the doctor?
Me: No, you won't have to go to the doctor because you're six.
Olivia: We don't go to the doctor when we are sick?
Me: We go to the doctor when we are sick, but not when we are six.
Olivia: Oh. But now I am three.

We stopped at a red light behind a man riding a Harley and wearing a bandana.
Olivia: Why did the pirate stop?

Gretchen: I'm driving!  Goodbye!  See you in the morning!
Olivia: Bye!  Come back on Friday for dinner!
Gretchen: Okay!

June 14-21

I don't see words happening for this post.  Pictures only; explanations next week.

Pictures:

June 7-14

Bugs are Gretchen's kryptonite.  They are the most terrifying creatures on the planet and render her completely immobile.  Take, for example, our recent car trip to Toledo: As we were driving through a construction zone (fewer exits and no shoulders to stop on), Gretchen began freaking out in her carseat.  I asked her what was wrong and she managed to squeak out, "Bug on me!  Bug on my arm!"  Glancing in the rear view mirror, I spotted a small fly on her arm.  I told her to move her arm, I told her to blow on the bug, I told her to wave the bug away with her other hand...  Gretchen continued to sit in petrified terror, making movement with nothing other than her increasingly panicked vocal cords.  Nevermind that the slightest twitch on her part would have taken care of her bug problem.  I attempted to calm her while waiting for a place to pull off the road.  Finally we found an exit, pulled into a gas station, and stopped the car.  The bug may have given up by this point, but I got out anyway and made vague waving motions in the direction of Gretchen's afflicted arm.  We spent about five minutes attempting to lure the fly out of the car, but it buzzed around happily, deciding it liked the infamy that accompanies the prestigious title of Terror of the Van.  Finally we opened all the windows and continued on our merry way, making sure to wave our arms periodically to scare off any bugs.

One night a few weeks ago, we heard Olivia crying over the monitor.  This is an unusual occurrence, so I went to check on her.  As I walked to the room, I guessed that she had fallen out of bed and simply needed someone to cover her back up.  Sure enough, her blankets were on the floor and she was sitting on the edge of her bed.  She was still screaming, though, which seemed odd.  I looked more closely and noticed that her nose was bleeding.  Fantastic.  She bloodied her nose falling out of bed at 2 in the morning.  I hurried her into the bathroom and began the process of cleaning her up.  Unfortunately, she does not handle nosebleeds as well as her cousin, and she violently resisted my attempts to stanch the flow of blood.  According to Olivia, the correct response to a nosebleed is to flail all your limbs while screaming bloody murder.  Mom is probably definitely trying to murder you by holding that cloth over your nose.  She took to tipping her head back with equal grace.  :/  Despite it all, we managed to get the blood stopped and she climbed back into her newly stripped bed while I found clean blankets.

Gretchen has a distressing habit of removing all of her clothes at night, including her diaper.  Cloth diapers are trickier to remove than disposables because of the snaps, but she's got those figured out now.  I tried putting a cover on backwards so that the snap angle was worse, but that didn't slow her down at all.  She spent a few nights gorilla-taped into her diaper before we reached an understanding and she stopped removing it before falling asleep.  Pajamas, yes, diaper, no.  On Friday morning she appeared diaperless in my room (having removed it after waking up) and I was just rolling with it until I discovered the puddle on the playroom carpet.  Back to the gorilla tape.

Kaitlyn is officially in 3-6 month clothes.  Her toes have been looking a bit squished in her sleepers lately, so I got the new boxes from the basement and switched out her entire wardrobe on Thursday.  Her legs look more comfortable, but now I have to roll the sleeves up about an inch.  :)

We're coming up on a busy week.  Today is Keshia's baby shower, then we're going to Michigan to visit my parents for a week.  Saturday is the parish picnic at Bryan's old church (where he can catch up with all his friends from high school) and then next Sunday we're in Toledo for a baptism.  That said, the post may be late.  :)

Pictures:

Bonus Post: 30 Before 30 Update

A record of my 30 Before 30 progress thus far.

1. Genuinely surprise Bryan at least once. February 15, 2014
2. Record the psalms.  --Siblings, when are we going to do this?  --Jacob and I are going to try to do some recording this summer.  Josef and Jillian, are you in?
3. Run a sub-2:00 half marathon. April 6, 2014.  1:54:30
4. Sell at least one thing I've made (at the Farmer's Market or on Etsy).  --May 17, 2014.  Steph and I set up an Etsy account and my first order was for the matching squares that I made William for Christmas.
5. Learn Spanish. --I listen to Spanish CDs while I run on the treadmill, so I'm making progress here.  --Progress has slowed since my race in April ended my daily treadmill runs.  I need to get motivated to keep learning.  --Progress has picked up again, thanks to smartphones and the duolingo app.  --Progress has slowed again.  I need to just start using Spanish for a set amount of time each day.  :/
6. Record all 6 cello suites.
7. Sew Christmas and/or Easter dresses for the girls. --I have patterns! I'm waiting until the girls are bigger to make them.
8. Minimize (eliminate?) the need for disposable products in our house.  --Jacque says I've made it.  The only disposable product we use consistently is toilet paper, and I'm okay with that.  Every now and again Bryan feels the need to buy paper products for when we host a party, and I'm okay with that, too.
9. Have a compost pile.  --We have a bucket that we've begun collecting scraps in and the pile is growing.
10. Play with at least 2 professional orchestras.  --I play with Lima, and I'm looking for auditions with other orchestras.  --I was contacted by the Hamilton-Fairfield Symphony Orchestra to play with them.  Unfortunately, I'm already busy the days they need me.  I'm hoping that this means they'll contact me again, though.  :)
11. Go 7 days in a row without letting my temper get the better of me. February 14-21, 2014 I'd gotten 6 days in a row a couple of times and then finally made it 7 (nine, actually). I'm finding it easier to take deep breaths and move on, and I have a chart to keep track of my progress. Next goal: three weeks. That's how long it takes to form a habit, right?
12. Make an honest attempt at clean eating/real food. I've done some research and tried some substitutes and reached a comfortable point. Do I care enough to use butter instead of margarine? Yes. Do I care enough to buy coconut oil regularly? No. Whole grain noodles and brown rice most of the time? Yes. Completely eliminate sugar? No. Homemade bread? Yes. Whole wheat bread? Sometimes. But often I appreciate the airiness that I can only achieve with a little bit of white flour.
13. *Skipped because knowledge by some of my readers could skew the results.* April 5, 2014
14. Go on an overnight vacation with just our family.  --We're thinking next summer.
15. Grow a garden.  My garden is progressing nicely, although technically we haven't seen any actual vegetables yet since they still have a month or so before they reach maturity.  The leaves look beautiful and healthy, though!
16. Write a book.
17. Sew a skirt that becomes my favorite.
18. Volunteer to host campout. --We tried to do this for 2016 campout (and even thought we'd succeeded), but apparently we didn't tell all the right people, so someone else is doing 2016.  We will be trying again for 2017.  :)
19. Go through RCIA. Edit: Arrange to talk to a Catholic priest several times.  RCIA won't answer the questions I have.
20. Attend Seekers' Group (similar to RCIA, offered by the Orthodox church in Lima).  --Bryan and I are attending this every Tuesday and I have no reason to believe we'll quit before it's finished.
21. Complete at least 3 things on my (ever growing) Projects List.  --I think I finished one, but now I can't remember what it is!
22. Start a soup kitchen.
23. Make pectin-free jam. Make up the recipe.  --August 18, 2014.  I made peach jam with almond and nutmeg.
24. Go on an overnight vacation with Bryan -- no kids. --September 25-28, 2014
25. Use up all the coupons Bryan gave me (I still have some from when we were dating). --Slowly but surely coming along.
26. Learn one of the 3 big concertos. --I have music for two of these. Now I just have to practice.  --Practice is not happening as much as it should. at all. :(
27. Arrange a regularly recurring get-together with the Lima folk.  --Second Thursday of each month is "go to Lima" day.  We've successfully done this two months in a row, so I'm crossing it off.
28. Have a religious conversation with Bryan that doesn't end in tears.  --July 27, 2014.  Nothing was solved, but I didn't cry.
29. Make a new friend.
30. Improve a stranger's day.
31. (Because I thought of one more and it kind of fits in with several of the above goals) Join a co-op.  --It turns out that I AM a co-op.  I organize the buying of bulk foods and distribute them to others.  I'm counting it.