Happy Birthday!

I can't believe Kailin turned four today!!

I'm really hoping she had a good birthday. I let her have "tiny cookies" cereal for breakfast, then we headed off to the county fair (she liked the animals okay, but Colby fell IN LOVE with the pigs and was nearly equally enamored with the sheep and only slightly less so with the horses. The cows fell out of favor for pooping everywhere....) where our little daredevil rode the rides, squealing with joy no matter what kind it was - the wilder the better! After a cat nap in the car, she tooled around in her new Fisher Price Power Wheels Arctic Cat for a little bit, enjoyed a showing of "Letter Factory" and then was surprised with a giant bounce house (we rented it for tomorrow's birthday party) followed by the coup de gras - dinner from "the Big M supper club" and then more bouncing. She is SOUND asleep now as I write this.

I have a lot of reflections about this past year, but they're mostly the same old Mom reflections about how she's grown and all the new things she can do that she couldn't manage last year - and there are a lot of them. But mostly this year as I tucked her in and listened to her giggle insanely in her overtired state about "don't let the bed bugs bite, bite, bite" I thought about her birthparents. I always do on her birthday and on our adoption day and sometimes on holidays. I thought about how her laugh would be the same if she were living in China, but I wondered what things her birthparents would have taught her that I haven't and what I might've taught her that they wouldn't have. And maybe some things are the same. I like to hope that they'd have taught her to love and respect her family and to care for others and be thankful for all that she has. I hope they'd have been patient and kind with her (even though I don't always feel that I am). And I'm sorry for the system that means they can never know this wonderful, fiery, fiercely loyal little girl who I have the privilege and the blessing to call my daughter. They gave me such a gift on this day and for that I will always be deeply indebted to them.

Biscuit on, tootie too

Kailin's been singing a little song for about a week now. I'm not sure if she heard it somewhere or if it's an amalgamation of things she's heard or if she truly made it up. It is simple - "Biscuit on, tootie too" and it's sung as if the tootie too is a result of the Biscuit on - similar to "Fish on! Reel it in!" but much more gentle. So I'm not sure if it's "tootie two" like two tooties or if it's "tootie too" like tootie in addition to the biscuit being on. On what? I don't know. Just on. I'm not inclined to ask her about it because I'm a little afraid she'll stop singing it if I do. It's a sweet little song and I enjoy hearing it when the mood strikes her. Of course I'm just as likely to hear Jingle Bells or We Wish You a Merry Christmas, but I'll take what I can get!

I'm going to count to ten....

Colby counted to ten last night at dinner! It was out of the blue and sounded like this.....
waaaaaaahhhnnnn, tuuuuuuuuuuuue, feeeee, fo, fi, six, semmet, eight, niiiiii, TEN!

We were both surprised and amused by it and I wanted to jot it down before I forget when it happened.

In other numbers news, we have about nine little tiny zucchini on our plant, one teeny tiny little pepper, and our first pea blossoms! I'm such a proud veggie mama. Ha ha ha. The tomatoes are really starting to take off as are the beans. I'm so excited for our garden and for all the yummy fresh produce we'll have in the not too distant future!

Hi, Morny!

Colby's still making us giggle on a regular basis with his 2 year old outlook on the world. I love nothing more than to be greeted by the endearing phrase, "Hi, Morny!" when I go in to get him from his crib. I really wish I could let you hear it because he says it in a very particular way. It's not "HIGH Morny!" in an Irish and sort of descriptive way. It's almost as if he's talking to the morning instead of me - "Hi, morny - nice to meet you!" would be a better way to think of it. Of course in typical mom fashion I've ruined it all up for myself by making him say it 900 times a day in an effort to share his cuteness with others. You'd think I'd have learned my lesson with "meats" but I guess not and now it is much rarer to hear him say it as the greeting of the day.

Meats have evolved a bit (and no, this is not a culinary post). He's (somewhat sadly from my point of view) now able to say pants, but apparently "pants" is just to plain for him. Instead, he's determined that any item of clothing applied below the waist (other than socks or his diaper) are "pants on". However, it doesn't just apply to putting the pants on. For instance, if you were taking them off then you'd have "pants on off". It's really more of a one word thing - "pantson off". Only logical, right?

Colby is his sister's shadow these days - and I mean that to the fullest extent of the word. Tuesday they were both sitting on the porch for disobeying us repeatedly. Steve and I were about 6 feet away spreading the last of the mulch into our established flower bed. Kailin (in her infinite repertoire of inventive ways to try to outwit us) got up to come over and ask if they could get up yet (because obviously walking over would lead us to believe that "oh heck, she's up already anyway, sure, go ahead and get up"). I told her now and she returned to her seat. Having heard the answer, but being unable to overcome his need to do what she does, up popped Colby to ask the very same question. What made it cute is that he already knew the answer, so immediately after the question left his lips, he did an about face and went back and sat down. Steve and I couldn't stop laughing and we let them up and off they went.

It seems that the two of them are either at each other's throats lately or being so sweet to each other that I can hardly stand it. Either way I love seeing their relationship blossom as they are able to do more things together.

Oops!

Well, not oops really. I wanted to post some pictures of my finished vegetable garden, but I thought the last post was a little picture heavy, so here they are. Finished without the trellises and then finished with trellises (for tomatoes, squash, peas, and eggplant) installed.

I'm hoping to use this as a photographic journal of our progress, so skip the garden entries if you're only interested in news about the kids. Ha ha ha.

It turns out that a few friends of mine are also trying square foot gardening this year, so that was a fun thing to find out. I also learned that a friend of a friend has done it for 9 years and loves it, so that was very heartening to hear!!

Square Foot Garden

I've been dying to put in a vegetable garden ever since we owned a house and got as far as buying the seeds when we lived in Brown Deer, but then we moved and then we had Kailin and then and then and then. Enough! So this was the year!

We planned to do an inground garden initially and then decided to do a raised bed garden and then just before we began construction, my sister-in-law told me that they were also doing a garden and were following the Square Foot method. I did a little reading and fell in love! There are lots of things I love about the method, but the ones that I find the most appealing are the logic of not planting in rows, the seed saving technique of planting just a few seeds at the appropriate spacing instead of planting all along a row and then thinning out 80% of them. I like that I can grow lots of different things in a smaller space and stagger the planting so that I don't have too much ready at one time. I also love that it doesn't use soil (not that I object to soil in general), but instead uses a mixture of vermiculite (a naturally occurring mineral), compost, and peat moss. The effect of this mix is a great environment for plants and seeds to grow, but also one that remains loose and friable. So no tilling - ever. AND no weed seeds in the soil (to begin with), so the only weeding you should have to do is from whatever blows in to your garden (although here, that could be significant... ha ha ha).

The kids got into the act and Colby helped Steve build the boxes - 6 4'x4' cedar boxes. Both kids helped to dump and smooth the "dirt" and Kailin was VERY excited about helping me plant!! Our plan is to grow beans, peas, tomatoes (6 varieties of Heirloom tomatoes and 2 varieties of cherry type tomatoes (one red and one yellow)), peppers, eggplant, acorn squash, zucchini, yellow bent-neck squash, patty-pan squash, beets, swiss chard, cucumbers (slicing and pickling), and some herbs. I think that's it, anyway. Sounds like a lot when it's all written out - and I'm okay with the idea that we may not have success with all of our crops, but I feel like it's manageable since I don't have to be out there weeding every day. We'll see how things go!

Mr. Green Jeans

Okay, maybe not Mr. Green Jeans....we have undertaken some gardening and lawn beautification projects this year. We've been meaning to add a bed along the front of our house for some time and now that we're officially staying here for the foreseeable future, this was the year to do it. I spent some time mapping it out on graph paper and choosing and ordering plants. I okayed it with the boss and then we got rid of (er...LET the kids have a visit with Steve's parents) for a weekend and set about removing the sod from the new bed area. Let me just say that I thought it was a lot of work to get grass to GROW on our lawn - well, removing it was 10 times worse!! Luckily for me, I only had to actually remove the sod a couple of times while Steve was running a load of "waste" to the local mulch/soil supply yard. I did get the job of loosening all of the soil, though - and that was no fun task, either. It was fun, though, to have muscles aching from use and know that I'd done an honest day's work!

We were very blessed during the weekend - first by some friends who graciously loaned us their trailer which allowed us to haul our topsoil and mulch ourselves -saving us a couple hundred dollars in delivery costs, and then by a neighbor who mentioned that they'd gotten mulch pricing from a local place that was very similar to the price we'd gotten from a place 20 miles away and finally by the the owners of the local mulch place who very very graciously allowed us to dump our sod in their dirt pile when we learned that the village recycling center (which does normally accept yard waste) didn't want it. When we went back 2 weeks later to get the field stone for the border, we saw an old stump sitting up on a wall and inquired as to whether or not they'd sell it to us. We have an old piece of driftwood in our other bed (not in the picture) and thought the stump would make a nice complement. To our surprise, they called to let us know we could have it! They got a batch of cookies for the sod and a batch of brownies for the stump. I think everyone ended up happy!! Unfortunately, I think we'll have to wait til next year for a "finished" picture since most of the plants I ordered are just babies and will need a year or so to reach their full glory, but I'm very pleased to say that thus far I think almost everything I planted is either growing strong or has emerged (I put in a lot of lily bulbs). It was a really fun project all in all and I'm really excited to see everything start to come up and even more excited for next year when I can figure out where we have gaps and fill them in with new and interesting plants!