Box on my porch

Today I got my first box of produce delivered from Farm Fresh To You. They have lots of options for your order, but all of it is from local, organic farms and is always in season. You can order veggies only, fruit only, or a combination of the two. I started out with the small combination box (pictured above, with Diet Coke-my usual breakfast beverage-for scale comparison). Initially I set it to deliver every other week, but I can see that that won't quite be enough. I think next I'm going to try the next size up every other week. The slightly larger box will also give me more variety in the box.

I have chosen to give this a try for two reasons:

1. To support local, organic farmers. I have always wanted my own ranch. Even as a kid I loved to garden and wanted to raise our own animals for meat, milk and eggs. I was privileged to grow up in an area where I was able to experience much of that. But now I am a city girl. I still have the desire to put on a cowboy hat and go out to herd cattle, but I am slowly letting go of that dream. This gives me a very small taste of what I love, and helps support the people who are doing what I would do if I had another life to live.

2. For the challenge of cooking in season. Every week the contents of the box will vary and I love the challenge of figuring out how to make the most of each box. I am going to get things I have never cooked with, like mustard greens. What on earth will I do with those?! I love that this will force me to not only be more creative, but also will expose my kids to new tastes.

This week I got sweet potatoes...I have not cooked those since I was making baby food! Trying a new recipe for gratin with the leeks that were also in the box. :) (Below are the contents of my box.)

Musings on Kindergarten

Today was a big day for "G", my eldest. She started Kindergarten! The school is about a quarter mile from our house, so we walked there. She was super excited about going, as evidenced by the picture. She lined up outside the classroom and then went in and put her stuff away. Us parents were dismissed shortly after. The two other kids and I went on with a normal day. Gym and then home for lunch and all of a sudden it was time to pick up "G" again. She was happy when I picked her up, said she had a good time.

It was strange to not have her in the house though. So quiet. For those of you who know my middle child, she is NOT the quiet type. But as soon as older sister is gone, she has nobody to fight with or compete with. She totally mellows out. It's nice. And "S" really needs the extra attention. I've never spent much time with her without her older sister. Should be good to get to know her better in the weeks and months to come. She needs that time to find out who she is when out from under her sister's shadow. I'm really excited for where I see our relationship going.

An odd day though. I found myself feeling strangely un-moored sometimes, like a part of me was missing. And thinking about it, I have always had "G" with me, ever since she was born. So many of her moments we have shared. Ever since I was pregnant, and she swam like a fish under my heart, we have been together. I remember when she was just born, and we would head out together on errands. Just the two of us, she my constant companion. Now, for the first time, she starts a life without me. I am letting her go for hours at a time, in someone else's care. Someone else will share in her accomplishments and encourage her through her frustrating moments. In one day, I have become a bystander in my own child's life.

But all these are not dark thoughts. I am not upset. I'm happy for her. Indescribably proud of her. She's so ready for this. Ready to test those wings and learn to fly. And I am happy to let her go. She needs to do this, by degrees, in order to grow up a well-adjusted adult. Makes me think about what it was like for my own parents, letting us go to boarding school. Feels like that would be too much flying too soon...such a big adjustment. And also the home-schooled kids who never have to experience what it is like to be on their own-just a little. This feels right. If I can let her go in small increments, then I hope she will always return home.

Drawings, Haircuts and a Crazy Lady

It's been way too long since I last sat down to write. Summer is rather busy, in a good way. First major thing is that I finished another drawing. These drawings with dots always take me quite a while. My original plan was to draw a pair of okapis for my parents. I would give my mom one on mother's day and then one for dad on father's day. Well, the one I started for my mom I made a big mistake on and there is no going back when it's pen and ink. Besides, I ended up not really liking the pose of the animal anyways. So I figured out another gift for my mom and plodded on with the other okapi. It turned out really good, I was very happy with it. Every time I do a drawing, I have someone in mind. I find that I actually can't produce anything unless I know who it is for. And so they have become acts of love for me. They are so painstaking slow to do, that I spend a great deal of time meditating on the person that it is for. Every dot says "I love you", a million times over. My dad seemed moved, although he didn't say much when he got it. But that's the way my dad has always been-a little mysterious, and I guess that's OK. I thought I would include some pictures of the progress of the drawing, just for fun. I'm not sure what order they are going to appear in...and I still don't know how to remove a picture once I put it up, so here goes:

The finished product!

(My husband helped me out on the pictures. Not very intuitive this blogging thing...)

Speaking of my father, a few months ago he asked me to design a logo for him. He is going on a 40th anniversary bike ride with some friends of his. They took this ride in 1969 together and are doing it again in 2009. He wanted to make a custom jersey for them all to wear. This is what I came up with:

I drew the initial design and my husband scanned it in and went over it with a drawing program. We decided on colors together and he put it all together. Took us longer than we wanted it to, but it ended up being a fun project to work on together. Shared creativity can be fun. :)

Just to follow up on M's glasses and how that is going: He is doing very well with them. I figured we would have weeks of putting them back on every time he took them off. But within a couple of weeks he pretty much left them alone. Now when he is tired or frustrated with something he tends to take them off. But for the most part they stay put. And it's been really neat to see his eyes straighten out. The glasses really do the job. And I feel much better about them too. I'm getting used to seeing them on him, so much so that he looks odd without them. And I'm OK with the fact that he needs them too. I think it helped to realize that many parents deal with things far greater than vision problems in their children. Putting things into perspective was good.

Another big change for the month has been joining Weight Watchers (ww). M is over a year now and I wasn't losing any weight. People told me that the weight would start coming off when I stopped breast-feeding, but that really didn't happen. I tried dieting on my own over and over again. So I decided that there were no more second chances and I wasn't ever going to look back. And that involved spending $40 a month on the program. (I figure I will be eating less and we should save at least that much on groceries...) So far it's been a worthwhile investment. After 3 weeks I have lost 6 pounds, more than I had lost in over a year of working my ass of at the gym (aforementioned ass not coming off at all though...). So, I am quietly proud of myself and the program has been very good so far. They have the best website ever too. I can enter the ingredients for my own recipes and it will spit out points values for what I cook. Just love it! I'm not sure why, but I have not told many people about joining the program. Perhaps a part of me is still afraid that I will fail again and I don't want people to know about it. Perhaps I want to be able to casually say "I lost 30 pounds", and for them to have no idea that I had been working that hard. I like to think it's the latter, because I'm not going to fail at this. :)

Also cut my hair for the first time. Well, I didn't cut it myself, I paid a professional to do it. :) The shortest hair I have ever had. My father always liked long hair, so I never cut it when I was growing up. Then I married a man who also likes long hair, and it has stayed long for my entire life. But this year I wanted to try something new. I've been feeling like my face is very boring. I'm not a make-up person, I hate to wear it. So I wanted some interesting hair, something with a little style. I loved my long hair, but wearing it down was a pain. It always ended up in a ponytail, no bangs. Very boring. Plus, when my hair was down I was super hot, even in the winter. So off it came, enough to donate-which was fun. And I really like it, I'm having fun learning how to do different things with it. And I'm even using product...those of you who know me know that is a big step! :)

New haircut. Looks a little curlier now that I've washed it.

Storytime: I was in my Weight Watchers meeting the other day, listening to people share, etc. In the process of the discussion, someone mentioned that they had walked there. Probably a good 3 miles. So after the meeting I offer to bring her home, she lives not far from me and it's going to be dark soon. She accepts and seems happy about not having to walk. As we are going out to my car she says, "You know, I knew you were going to ask me if I wanted a ride. I just know things before they happen. Does that ever happen to you, that you just know what someone is going to say before they say it or that something is going to happen?" Right then I knew that I had invited a crazy person into my car. Oh joy. She gets in the car and looks behind her and just stares. I decide to fill her in and tell her that I have three small children, thus the carseats. That they are at home with dad. She then launches into a story about someone she knows who has kids and how horrible they are and how being a parent is just the worst thing ever. I didn't have much to say about that, I rather like being a parent and my kids are great. Every once in a while she would look over at me, but it was really strange. She had this 1000 mile gaze, like she was looking right through me and into the cosmos. All of this was not helped by the fact that I had a killer migraine over my right eye-all in all it was kind of a surreal experience.

Well, hopefully I will be better about updating here. I think that's all for now...

Missing this...

I've been so busy nowadays that I just have not had time to sit down and put a few thoughts here. I often find myself composing entries, only to run out of time by the end of the day. Life has been good though, and I hope to stop in again soon.

Specifics about the Specs

This is my little guy, trying on glasses in the shop.  After one of his well-checks, the pediatrician recommended that we see a pediatric opthamologist.  This is because "M" crosses his eyes a lot and often one eye will go inwards while the other looks straight.  All babies cross their eyes, so we didn't think much of it.  But then it wasn't going away.  

Turns out he has accomodative esotropia.  I'm still learning about it, but it has to do with his brain trying to focus his eyes.  When he tries to look at something up close, his eyes cross instead of focusing.  I guess that also makes him farsighted.  Glasses are supposed to fix the problem and help him see better.  Supposedly surgery is an option down the road as well, but is not always effective.  If not treated soon, the long-term damage would be loss of vision as his brain gives up trying to send signals to the eyes when they don't respond properly.  

Finding glasses for him proved to be more difficult that I thought.  I called a number of places and they all said that they don't provide the type of frames that we needed for him.  The frames are almost like goggles in their soft-ness.  Very flexible and almost indestructible.  And they have a soft cord that goes around the back of the head.  My husband happened across a website for a company that specialized in children's eye wear.  People fly in from across the nation to pick up glasses for their kids.  Turns out this place is just about a half hour from where we live.  So we headed out there and were able to chose from a bunch of colors, etc.  The ones in the picture are the ones we decided to get.  He seemed to enjoy trying them on.  He likes to be the center of attention and loved the laughs he got for his goofy glasses smiles.  Keeping them on him at home is going to be the real challenge.  That same day we dropped them off at a more local place to get the lenses put in and in a couple days he'll start wearing them.  

Here's the thing, though.  I'm still trying to get used to the fact that he even needs his eyes to be corrected.  In my family only one of us siblings wears glasses and that started in high school.  My parents do, but they are in their 50's.  I think I somehow see the need to have vision corrected as a degenerative problem.  And now "M" is not as perfect as I see him.  In my mind he's starting out life fresh, with no health problems.  But now there is this.  I know that many parents face much worse health problems with their kids.  In fact, we have faced worse as well.  But it kills me to think of him starting out behind, if you will.  

I do want the best for him though, of course.  I want him to be able to see small things when he holds them instead of having to move them back and forth in order to focus.  And all the positive feedback from friends and family about how cute he looks is helping to sugar-coat how I feel.  But I guess I'm still working through it, but something inside hurts when I think about the sentence of glasses for life.  

High Chairs and High Jinx

So, "M" has figured out how to get out of his high chair.  This is partly my fault because I have cut the straps off of it.  His sisters used the same high chair for over two years each and I never once had to strap them in.  They just didn't climb out. And since the straps just got in the way and all full of food, I lopped them off.  Well, along comes "M" and it takes him just under 10 seconds to escape.  So, time to go out and find a cheap high chair.  This is apparently easier said than done...

My inital plan was to go to Ikea.  I know that they have one for $25, in stock.  But Ikea is a 30 minute drive away and I decided to investigate some more local options.  

First we went to Sears, because they supposedly had a $20 one.  It was pink, but oh well, I'm cheap.  Turns out they don't actually have it.  

Next we went to K-Mart (I think one store owns the other, the websites were rather connected...).  K-Mart had just the one I was looking for.  Nice and cheap, would probably fall apart in a month.  I could see the display one, but not the new one in box.  Had someone call for a sales person to come give me a hand.  After a bit of a wait, this lady shows up.  She is on a bluetooth headset, talking to someone on the phone.  She proceeds to try and help me while staying on the phone.  This makes for rather awkward conversation, since I'm never sure if she is talking to me or the person on the phone.  Finally she says "You know, I should probably get off the phone".  You think?  

OK, so I tell her what I need and she takes about 5 tries to comprehend what I'm trying to tell her.  Now, this is not a person who has difficulty with the language or anything.  Neither is she a young person.  Probably almost old enough to be a parent for me.  In the middle of this confusion she turns to me, rather abruptly, and asks me a question.  "Do you think I'm beautiful?", she asks.  Um...what?  Now, what to say?  She is perhaps one of the most hideously ugly women I have ever seen.  Bed-head hair that is dry and crackly and some unhealthy, malnourised color.  Lots and lots of caked on make-up that looks like she has put it on in the dark.  Clothing just falling off a super skinny frame.  I have already called the kids over to me, real close.  And now I have to tell her if I think she is pretty?  In what universe is this even remotely appropriate?  So, after a pause I say "Are you not going to be able to help me?".  This seems to make her snap out of it and she starts to say sorry...lots of times.  And then she tells me that the person on the phone had asked her to ask someone if she was pretty.  Oh my.  After leaving, she comes back again only to tell me that they don't have any more of that high chair in the back.  And I can't buy the display, so I'm done at K-Mart.  

Next we head off to Wal-Mart.  Only the $80 high chairs there.  

Next is Target.  By now we have been out for about 2 hours in the late afternoon and I'm astonished at how well the kids are behaving.  The girls are totally engaged in trying to find the high chair and "M" is just hanging out.  Nothing at Target either, though.  

Target was my last local option, so I head over to Petsmart.  Not because I think they have high chairs, my day has not been THAT long.  My husband has decided that he wants to try eating waxworms...with the kids...kind of a family activity.  Hmm.  Anyways, I go in to see if they have any and turns out they just sold the last of them.  Bummer...  

So, looks like I have to go to Ikea after all.  

Carrot hug

Tonight I made some rice and then zucchini and carrots from the garden.  The zucchini are called 8-balls and are rather cute.  And the carrots grew in this really fun shape that I'm calling a carrot hug.  They both were very tasty...just love eating from my very own garden!  

(I still can't get these pictures to go where I want them to.  It's like they just randomly appear and then I can't move them.  Kind of frustrating, but I'm trying to see it as an adventure...)