Notes from Away

Since my mother stay with us last summer, I’ve been into cooking more and more. She was great about showing me how to make lots of good, tasty meals and I’ve been expanding that with a crockpot and some creativity.

Although Ted is a picky eater, we are raising Bridget to eat or at least try everything. Right now, with the exception of mangos, she does eat everything you offer her. (Turns out she’s allergic to mangos) Her favorite food is broccoli so we do let her eat it whenever. She also loves berries with all her heart and would make a full meal out of broccoli and berries.

This afternoon at the grocery store, she walked right up to the peaches and said “Apple”. Not the right fruit, but not bad for a 13 month old. She eats both so who knows what she was thinking. (Prefers apples as sauce, but peaches just sliced)

Now I have to find some recipes for eggplant and cherries. I think I’ll start by roasting the eggplant and see how she likes it. Our cherry tree is loaded this year and they are almost ripe, so I’ll have a ton of cherries to bake with.

Yum..

Today is my one-year anniversary of being a working mom. I definitely feel like I have hit my stride and found a balance that works 70% of the time.

Today I am also home with a “sick” kid. Bridget spiked a fever at daycare yesterday and although a trip to the doctor’s didn’t find anything wrong, we opted to keep her home today. She is having a horrible time with this round of teething which we suspect is the culprit of the fever, crabbiness, tiredness and other issues.

She only has four front teeth, but somehow she is popping her pre-molars through now. She’s going to look a bit weird with so few front teeth and some back teeth. Oh well, she’s doing it the Bridget way.

I give Ted a lot of grief about the house. He owned it before me and although I think it is a perfectly appropriate size, I dislike the layout. It just doesn’t flow as well as I’d like. As much as I may dream of a more perfect house, this is our house for now so I try to focus on the highlights.

By far the best feature is the yard. For our area, we have a very nice large yard. I love our yard but when I first moved in, it was in desperate need of TLC. Most of the work occurred last summer and we are now reaping the benefits of our hardwork.

The first thing I did was convince Ted to tear out the shrubs in front of the house. These ugly things were replaced by lovely two tiered garden beds built by Ted and my dad and planted by my mom and I.

After the success I had there, we focused on the awful alley fence. The two fences were torn down and slowly but surely we replaced it with new panels. It took us a long time to do it but our neighbors assure us repeatedly the work was well worth it.

I also added a nice garden along the fence line, which I then extended this summer. One small garden was planted under the lilac tree last summer and we planted another small garden in between us and the neighbors this summer. This new garden has a blueberry bush which we have high hopes for.

The final garden was a raised bed vegetable garden in the backyard. It ended up being double in size and we are discussing expanding it next summer if all goes well.

Our goal is to maximize the play area for B in the backyard. The recent vegetable garden addition was a distraction to her so we spent this weekend looking for a playhouse. We found one for free on the side of the road and after cleaning it up and reassembling it, B is now a home owner. She is very happy in her play area as we relocated the sandbox to next to the house.

Now I just need to curb the desires to expand another garden.

A few weekends ago, we enjoyed our first camping trip of the year. The weather was amazing. It was even warm enough to go swimming in the lake. It was a great adventure for all of us.