Mama Bean projects herself into her parenting (surprise, surprise)

I think I would rather have my child get hit or scratched or pushed than have them told, "You can't be in our group" which is the same as "I don't accept you" which is the same as "You are not loved." (And vice versa, I'd rather my kid hit someone than say something like that.)

Part of this is due to my parenting aptitude. I know, more or less, how to deal with physical hurts. I have a script to follow, and it's a pretty black and white no-tolerance issue. "We don't use our hands that way. That is not okay" etc. etc. I feel like this is the first script of parenting I learned. And it's usually pretty easy to solve the instigating problem - figure out what toy needs to be shared, what distraction will be sufficient, whether a nap or a snack is the solution to all problems (as it so often is.) (See? This is where we learn that food solves problems. Oi.)

I don't have a script for emotional hurts - it's so much greyer. On the one hand, there is the fact that words hurt. On the other hand, it isn't realistic that all children will be friends with all others, and I don't want to force friendship. That would be invalidating their feelings. But how to explain tact and diplomacy and respectful words to a three year old?

I suppose it comes down to separating emotions, which happen and can't be denied, from behaviours, which are choices, and some should most certainly be denied. Physical wrongs are motivated by feelings, too - anger, frustration, envy. The script is not "We don't get angry or upset when someone takes out toy." The script is about not turning that anger into a violent action. So I suppose it can likewise be taught that, though we may not like someone or may not wish to play with them, we don't turn those feelings into mean words or cruel behaviour.

Part of it is my children's developmental status, also. A physical hurt produces a well-identified area of pain, sometimes even a visible mark. They know the word(s) for that pain, they know how to point/show it to me, and they know a kiss and a hug (and maybe a Spiderman band-aid) will make it go away. Certainly time fades all such wounds. But, emotional hurt is still so confusing and nebulous - they don't have the words, it's hurts somewhere strange inside, and a band-aid will not help. Sometimes not even a hug, if it's not from the person who produced the hurt, y'know?

And here I feel my own emotional immaturity is my own worst enemy. I get tripped up in my explanations because I can't even explain these hurts to myself. To me, not being accepted is the greatest hurt. Has been so since childhood. Thus, when my children are hurt in this way, I lose all perspective.

[A lengthy aside: the adopted child is always aware of feeling Other and Outside, and they are terrified of being excluded or rejected. It is the nature of starting in one family and ending up in another; the sense that all relationships are transitory and fragile. I believe this feeling is permanent, that is, it cannot be loved away, and if it is ignored, all the worse. If you know or love an adopted person, the way you love them should acknowledge this fear in them - even if they don't have the words to name their fear.]

Part of it is, naturally, that my children are beloved to me, and I want them to be beloved by everyone. I was thinking the other day that, in this very shallow way, I want for my children socially what I never had - to be part of the In Crowd, part of the Popular Kids. I don't want them to be social outcasts, geeky pariahs, nerdy loners - because that hurts. But let's be honest, I want it all for them, just as we all do - the academic success of nerdiness, the social success of popularity. (And I do know these things are not mutually exclusive, I experienced a strange such mixture in my high school years.)

But life being what it is, the truth is they will be disliked and/or discluded, often. And my parenting strategy (and I'm using that word loosely...) feels like this nebulous mixture of a) hiding them away b) helping them accept and adapt and rise above these hard truths of life c) teaching them to love themselves as much as I love them (or because I love them?)

Hiding them in/with/behind my love is not a complete solution. That is, I feel with certainty it is not enough to respond to social hurts with, "Don't worry, baby, mommy loves you." Because I do want my love to be their place of safety, their place to hide, but I don't want running away and hiding to be their default solution to trouble (of any sort.) I am so prone to running and hiding, and it is maladaptive. How to teach them to stand on their own and fight on their own, when I cannot do these things myself? (And, deeper down, this is not a complete solution because I am human, I will make mistakes, and I will disappoint them; and an imperfect love is small comfort in the face of a cruel world. But here I may simply be projecting. Ha! Of course I'm projecting.)

Accepting an imperfect world is also not a complete solution. Taken too far, it normalizes bad behaviour - what starts as "Oh that's just how kids are" too easily becomes teaching them it's okay to turn a blind eye to injustice, it's okay to ignore (or worse deny) the rights of the oppressed, because "Hey, we live in a crappy world. Get over it!" What a strange dance it is to learn where it's a waste of time to try and where it's a wise investment of one's unique ability to change the world.

And frankly, this notion of self-esteem has been so diluted and distorted, if it offers any solution, I personally cannot parse it out. I know that my love is a foundation for developing their self love. I would never want my love to encourage arrogance. I don't want to deny the reality of The Bell Curve - that we are all simultaneously special stars and also all pretty average. Special average stars of normalcy. But each with, yes, this opportunity to change their own little world. More of this tricky balance! Finding that just-right-amount of confidence, not too little, not too much.

Sheesh, what a lot of words, and I've gone off track. All this to say, life is socially complicated, my childhood was marred by hurts from this, I thought it'd be easier in adulthood but it's not, so I project my social insecurities onto my children, and feel helpless in the face of their social hurts, but I've got to get it together for their sake, if not my own.

Mama Bean is KinderGARDENing - it's Harvest Time!

The other night we harvested our potatoes. We grew three types sold by a local greenhouse as a "gourmet mix" - Norland (red skin, white flesh) purple viking (deep purple skin, white flesh) and Alta blush (an Albertan creation, white to pink skin, and white to yellow flesh). I wouldn't say our harvest was great, only 3 or 4 potatoes per plant, and only the purple ones got large. Papa Bean dug up the plants, and laid the potatoes onto the dirt, where the kids could grab them and put them in the box.

Our harvest would have been better if we'd hilled the plants more diligently. I'd like to build some potato boxes (with layers of planks you add as the plant grows) or else just garbage bins, in the future. It's not really economical to grow them - potatoes at the store are cheap enough. They are ego boosting, though, it's hard to kill a potato plant, and beetles notwithstanding, they just make a gardener's soul happy :) I like growing the "gourmet" types, I really want to try fingerlings next year.

In the box picture, Bean's blurry arm has a blurry worm on it. We found lots of juicy-looking earthworms while digging, and the kids were well distracted by them, having little worm races on the walkway. The worms, alas, did not survive. But their sacrifice helped our sanity survive, and for that, we honour them lol.

This little Sproutlet doesn't meet much that doesn't go into her mouth - green tomatoes, ripe tomatoes, dirt, rocks, acorns, and more tomatoes... She keeps smiling, so I can't see anything wrong with it...

The Prairie Valley City in general, and our family in specific, have been blessed by an amazing apple harvest this year. We've received 50 or 60 pounds of apples from three different sources (!!!) We're going to take about 100 lbs to a local farm that presses them into fresh unpasteurized cider - we'll get about 8 or 10 gallons. Only $5.50/gallon, and they sell their own stuff for $15/gallon. The rest we'll sauce or make pie filling or something. Here's Bean learning to use our peeler. After borrowing a fancy peeler (for over a year, yikes!) I found this cheaper plastic one at Value Village for only $4, and it is awesome!

This is the tomato station in my garage, where I'm trying to sort the types. The giant ones on the left are Hawaiian pineapples, in the middle are a mix of green zebra/Bulgarians, and nyagous (black) tomatoes. Then there's the cherry bounty. At the farmer's market, those suckers sell for $3-4/pint, and I've probably eaten about 10 pints already. I love my garden :)

I have a half dozen montages like this, just enjoying the colours of the harvest. It's been a really bright, vibrant kind of year, and I like that. On the other hand, those Hungarian wax peppers (the long orange one) were waaaay too hot, luckily I thought to put them in salsa, otherwise I doubt we'd have used them. The mini brown peppers were cute, but not terribly tasty. Overall, I'm not sure we'll keep growing peppers - it's one of those rare things that don't taste as good as the store (in our experience, maybe I'm doing it wrong) and often our growing season isn't long enough for them to ripen (colour) fully anyway, plus we only get 3 or 4 per plant, which isn't necessarily economical. But maybe I'm saying that because peppers were cheap this year at the store *shrug*

This is a Hawaiian pineapple tomato sliced up. They have the most beautiful colouring, this lovely peachy orange into bright red, and the streaks go throughout. The flavour was amazing - not really like a tomato at all, just vaguely fruity and very (very) sweet. Mild, not a lot of zing or acidity. It was a pleasure to eat, and it was huge, so I basically had this for lunch haha.

Last but not least, yesterday's caprese salad, with black cherries, sweet 100s, and sun golds/sun sugars, fresh basil from my aunt's garden, and bocconcini. I cannot describe how much I enjoyed this. I used the rest of the basil to make walnut pesto (not quite as good as with pine nuts, but at $6.48/100g, I wasn't buying pine nuts) and used some of the pesto to make a balsamic vinaigrette. I also used 23 green zebra/Bulgarians to learn how to blanch and peel tomatoes (it's so easy!) and make salsa (onion, garlic, lime juice, salt/pepper/cumin, cilantro, corn, red pepper, Hungarian wax pepper, and tomatoes). And then today, I had another caprese-ish salad, with green tomatoes to add some zing (they are such bright happy tomatoes, with a lovely sweetness) and the vinaigrette. Smiling smiling smiling...

[Internal monologue: I talked a lot about money in this post, that's weird. I didn't think gardening was about money for me, but then again, we do this because we're Green Misers, environmentally minded when it costs less lol. Also, it's weird to put something some bright and cheery after serious posts about Depression, but, well, that's life!]

Mama Bean is singing Bruce's song again

Bean is such a dear to put to sleep. He gets in bed, we do a ritual, kisses and good nights, close door, walk away... wait 12 hours, good morning!

The ritual involves saying the child's prayer ("Now I lay me...") which was accomplished with a stuffed giraffe that recited the prayer when you pushed its toe, when Bean was an infant, but the batteries ran out, and the toy designer thought it wise to provide no access point through which to replace them. Smart designer. (It's fear-based design, if I had to bet on it. A child could somehow get into the access point - zipper, velcro, whatever - click open the battery cover, pop out the batteries, which would be oh so chokeable AAs or AAAs, and so, in the interest of avoiding litigation, they chose to create a toy that would die. Well, or/also, depending on how attached your child had become, you'd be compelled to frantically source a new, identical toy, with fresh batteries, and someone would make more money, again. Either reasoning works.) We still call that toy Nowilayme, but he lives in another room of the house. 

Sprout was also given a Nowilayme toy, but somehow the voice on its recording sounds wrong, and it creeps me out to listen to it. So we don't play it for her. Beyond the fact that she has no bedtime ritual. No no, what am I saying? Sprout's bedtime ritual is, y'know, that nurse and then rock and then give a bottle and then rock and then gingerly lay down in a pre-warmed crib with the softest of 400 thread count baby sheets and cuddliest of unicorn fuzz and fairy sparkle blankets and fuss and return soother and collapse in bed and wait for her to cry and fuss and return soother and collapse in bed and wait for her to cry and pray she doesn't wake up her brother and just bring her to bed so we can finally gettosleepalready ritual. I'm sure you're familiar with it.

Like I said, Bean is such a dear to put to sleep.

Okay, so we say our prayers, which Bean doesn't really get, sometimes he closes his eyes, sometimes he holds our hands, but usually he wriggles around and waits for us to be done. Then, we run the checklist of bed toys. First, and of utmost importance, blanket. White, satin on one side, soft minkie on the other, lovely feminine blanket. He eschews the more masculine, blue options. Second, handmade stuffed alien-demon Mup Mup. Third, soft hippo-with-wheels. (These latter two, incidentally, both gifts from the same best friend; hi, K!) Fourth, sometimes, a small stuffed giraffe, named Giraffey, identical to another giraffe with the same uber-original name which belonged to Bean's daddy. Fifth, except it's lost right now, a weird Thomas the Tank Engine turn-y toy thing that Bean can play with for many minutes sans interruption. It sounds like a lot of bed toys, I know. I'm not even sure if he plays with them, or is especially attached to them (other than blanket) but, oh well, they're there. Bean sleeps with a t-shirt blanket I made, a blanket his grandma made, another blanket his daddy slept with as a baby, and a fleece blanket given by his great-aunts. It's a very full bed. 

For a little while, Bean would request a song ("Dinkle dinkle" little star...) then say nono when I started singing. Then he'd request another song ("Baa baa" black sheep... the same melody, mind you) then say nono when I started singing. Then maybe a few other requests in there, but not usually. Then he'd point his arm to the door and say Go. Well then! Haven't I been told? lol

This transitioned; I'd ask if I should go, and he'd say nono Stay, and pat his pillow. Awwww, who can resist such commands? So I'd stay and pretend to nap, which involves clutching a "banket" with eyes squeezed shut and snoring exaggeratedly. He likes when we pretend to snore. We'd go back and forth on Go and Stay commands for a bit, and then I'd gently say it was time to go, and off I went.

This transitioned; for a week or two now, he's been going to bed regular time, but super over-tired and hyper. We weren't sure if we should move to an earlier bedtime, so he wouldn't get over-tired, but to be honest, I wasn't ready to risk the earlier mornings that might ensue. When he went to bed hyper, it'd take him a long time to settle (we can hear on the monitor. Yes we still use a monitor, don't judge :S) and then after a half hour or so, he'd wake up suddenly bawling. So one of us would go back upstairs to calm him down, do the songs, a second bedtime.

I think this may be a normal 2 year old thing. I've started calling it Testing the Tether - this sorting out of the radical notion that he is separate from us, that he is his own person. He's not at the I-can-do-it-myself phase, yet. Just testing it out, how far can I go, how far is too far, how do I get back, how do I get them to come to me, it's an exploration. I think he was testing the bedtime tether - where do I go when I sleep? are they sleeping, too? can I bring them back to me? am I still me when I sleep? or when I wake? Maybe it's scary, to him, to fall asleep sure of his self-ness, and wake up in a dark space disoriented and disconnected, and he pulls on the tether, as it were - where are you come back I need to see that you are still you, and that must mean I am still me. Am I over analyzing this? It's fairly heart-wrenching when he starts up with the crying, especially from a child who previously/otherwise goes to bed without much emotion.

When I'd go up to calm him, I lay down and sing Bruce's song. I had not been singing it very often, because he knew the words to request other songs, and so I followed his requests. But it is a lullaby after all, composed expressly to put the children in my world asleep. And now, he requests it by saying moon, because of the first line, "When moonlight falls..." And he covers his eyes, then holds his hands together for "You'll close your eyes/and say your prayers..." It's pretty much the most adorable thing ever. 

He lets me sing the whole song without saying nono or Go. It calms him down, and then I can leave and know he will sleep. For some reason, at the last line "It's time for your lullaby" he always smiles, a lovely soft smile of anticipation, I wonder what he's thinking of... Tonight, he asked me to Stay and sing Moon during the first sleep-summoning ritual. It was effective *knock on wood* as we did not have the half-hour bawling and repeat ritual. So, we're singing our song, again. Makes me feel warm. Makes me feel, surely, I'm doing at least this thing right.

Mama Bean is thankful for happy surprises

This was going to be titled "Mama Bean is having A Day" but then there was a happy ending (not that kind of happy ending, you pervert.) (Oh I know, there are no perverts that read this blog. I have no perverted friends. Not one.) (Anyway...) Do you ever have A Day? Why am I asking, of course you do! We all have those days when everything is Crap and there is no Beauty left in the world, and the sum total of the Universe is things that Piss You Off.

It started with my last patient of a very not-busy morning totally no-showing, and being totally no-apologies about it when my staff called her, when I could have gone home half an hour earlier if she'd had some Common g*dd*mn Courtesy. Then there was Dreaded Traffic. The people of the Prairie Valley City (bless their hearts) are so unaccustomed to seeing someone use a turn signal, they seem utterly flummoxed as to its meaning. Let me fill you in, folks! It means I want to tuuuuurrrrrn maybe possibly into your fricking lane so it'd be superawesomewonderful if you'd leave. a. gap. kthxbai.

Fast forward an hour or so, and I'm changing the Bean's poopy diaper before his nap. I let this change go too long, and it was a soft poop, it sort of mushed around the sides of the diaper and onto his jeans. Not fun. Took about seven wipes to clean up, I should have just tossed the kid into the shower. (Figuratively. We are not about throwing babies into baths around here.) So I go to throw the mess away, only to find a) the bag in the diaper garbage pail has not been replaced since garbage day Thursday, and b) there are about twenty dirty diapers in the bagless pail. 

There may have been yelling. And curses.

I realize I should have just replaced the bag myself when I emptied the diaper garbage (for the fourth week in a row < cough cough >) on Wednesday evening. I realize I should not have piled up the dirty diapers on the change table while muttering good intentions of Getting-To-It-Eventually under my breath. I realize I am not Without Fault in this situation. But I was still pretty mad. NGL, I was mad at Papa Bean.

It's just... I just... oi... I mean... what is so hard... ugh... you know... *throws hands up* The man has a personality defect quirk that makes him put things where they Fit as opposed to where they Belong. Does your man/partner/exasperator do this? Do YOU do this? It's just part of his SP personality that contrasts (muchly) with my NJ personality. In between episodes of frustration, I laugh about it. I have to laugh about it. And then, I take pictures of things he has "fit" places, before moving them to their rightful homes. I should start a facebook album of his creative housekeeping.

Well, so, fast forward a little bit more, and Bean is napping, Sprout is sitting on her mat playing with crinkle toys, and I hop onto facebook. As an IT professional, PB is basically paid to be on facebook all the time, it's really unfair. We often chat during naptime. Here's how our conversation went:

MB: twenty dirty diapers in a garbage with no bag, PB? seriously?? are you trying to make me yell at the air???

PB: lol, i thought you put those in there. I didn't.

MB: ?? really??

PB: really

MB: bean put all the diapers from the change table into the garbage can by himself?

PB: LOL, I bet you Bean did. he was playing in the bedroom when I was bathing Sprout and saying yucky.

MB: BAHAHAHAHAHA that's awesome. and here i was all pissed at you. oh that's funny

PB: oh my MB

MB: well that's a lesson in not jumping to conclusions. and it's gonna be a blog post

PB: i didn't think anything of it, b/c he'll sometimes do that when smelling the frog's feet

MB: GAH our kid is so cute

PB: You really shouldn't think the worst of me. :):) I'm a pretty good guy 99% of the time. ;);) And I love you 100% of the time. :):)

(Word for word, except with bloggy names substituted in, which I realize comes across a little awkward sometimes. Like, it's a lot more endearing when PB says, "Oh my [real name]" We have this IKEA frog hanging in Sprout's room, and apparently Bean plays the stinky foot game with it that I play with him, namely, sniffing his feet and saying P.U. Sooooo stinky!!)

So now I feel simultaneously better about life (because my kid is so cute) and bad that I jumped to conclusions about PB (because he really is an amazing husband who I love to bitzesez) and sad that I reacted angrily in front of Bean (because he might think he did a bad thing now, when really he did a super cute and helpful thing) That's one :) and two :( :( 

Oh well, I probably haven't scarred him for life, right? Bonus happy ending: now the pail has a bag in it, and Bean watched me take all the diapers out, put them in said bag, and replace the bag in the pail, so at the very least, he learned that. Right? /sigh. 

Tomorrow is another opportunity to be my best self. And for everyone else, too. (You hear me, PVC drivers? Learn to drive!)

Mama Bean's hands are Sprout's to hold

 

The golden dappled heady sweet sunshine laden days of summer are drawing to a close. The flowers are gone, the fruit is gathered, and I have stewing vegetables in the ground waiting for harvest. This transition is my favourite time of year, hands down. I like to watch things dry and curl in on themselves and prepare for The Long Sleep. I am always a fan of sleep...

But the passage of time is always bittersweet now, in a way I never thought about before parenthood. This summer has been richer and hotter and brighter and lovelier than any summer of my life, except perhaps the summer Papa Bean and I were falling in love. And every summer is an extension of that summer, naturally. But now, every day brings a bigger Bean with more! words! Every day brings an older Sprout with more! smiles! Every day is another step, a growing distance, between the babies I brought into this world and the adults they will be, the adults who will leave me, to go and change this world in their own Bean-y Sprout-y ways.

This little girl is killing me very slowly with her mink hair and doll's eyes and big smiles and tiny, grabbing hands. She is wringing my heart out with those hands, because they are always looking for mine. And never letting go. She wants to hold my hand when she's nursing - and I want this, too, or else she's scratching with those impossibly sharp nails, laying claim to the b00b with kneading kitten fingers. She wants to hold my hand when she's fighting sleep, as in the picture above (which is actually PBs hand) because it calms her down. When you go to put the soother in her mouth, she latches onto your big hand with both of her small ones, and pulls it to her face. I think she is more interested in the hand than the soother. When she's chilling in a seat or mat, she wants a hand, to know you're there, and nothing more. When she's chilling on my lap while I'm on my computer, she wants to hold specifically my mousing hand - so perhaps there is something more she wants. For me to stop. So I do.

And I feel the blood in her hand meet the blood in my hand, and I know she carries chunks of my Being in her Being, and I feel those chunks drift inexorably away from my Body-self, with Time, always with Time. So it's comforting to know we can connect here. There's still an interface, more human than words (which can divide as easily as they unite), and it's our skin. She won't always want the things I can give her (my words, my "wisdom"), and she will sometimes want things I cannot give her (a pony, her dreams) (Though I will try, you know I will try). For now, she wants my hands. It is so very much the least I can give. So I do.

Look at this big boy! Running! Finding life, finding trees and sticks and rocks and sunshine and so. much. mud. This kid doesn't know how not to express his heart. If it's angry and "nononono" then it's angry and no. If it's cranky and when's-nap-time, it's thrown food and gritted teeth and when's-nap-time. Sometimes it's bonked knees or head and "hug" with kiss-y noises. Sometimes it's gentle (and less-than-gentle) petting of sister's mink hair. And when it's pure joy and look-how-fast, well... well, just look. How fast.

when did summer

my summer

turn cliche

how fast

time flies

beneath the leaves

how fast

so fast

too

fast

Mama Bean and Papa Bean listened to Sprout scream for an hour last night (also, some thoughts on heart pantries...)

When my kids are happy, and being cute, my love for them is right at the surface, it's "easy." I don't have to dig too far into my psyche to feel it. I just look at their smiling eyes, and it's right there, reflecting back at me: Pure. Love. And those moments, oh how they feed a mother's soul, am I right? We store those moments away, in the heart's pantry, for a rainy day... ("the heart's pantry"? Did I honestly just write that?!)

Ooh those rainy days. When my kids are unhappy, or being less-than-cute, I have to dig a little deeper. I have to look down, past the (mis?)behaviour and the feelings, and really pull up on my love for them, and heave it up up up to me, and sort of internally inhale. Re-oxygenate my mothering soul. And then exhale (slowly slowly) the frustration and the exhaustion and the mother hurt.

Okay, examples. Bean has lately discovered spitting out liquids. For fun. He dribbles water onto the floor, onto his lap, onto his parents, whatever. He doesn't find it uproariously funny or anything, he's just kind of... exploring? Seeing what happens? He's being a(n almost) 2-year-old. I don't really think he's doing it for a reaction, and we're trying not to give him one, but it's so ugh. Like, I can handle pee and poop but for some reason saliva makes me squiggy? I'm weird. And I'm trying to go all Positive Parenting about it, and look for the underlying reasons or feelings or unmet needs or whatever. And I'm thinking, as I wipe it up, that in this moment, that Pure Love reflection is a little clouded, a little slimed, y'know? I have to dig down and pull up...

Last night, Sprout screamed for an hour before falling asleep. We don't know why, maybe burps, maybe farts, some incarnation of the Eeeeevil Gassesses. She hasn't had a bad evening for a long time, and this time definitely felt like one of the most (if not The Most) intense. She gets so upset, she chokes on her own teary mucus :( We tried swaddling and not swaddling, soother and no soother, upright and tummy and laying back and in between. I gave her a tummy massage. Mostly, we just held her until it was over. We all have evenings like this, right? And it was hard, to dig past the frustration and the ugly thoughts and the please-just-be-quiet, to pull up the love...

Have you ever been the jerk that tricks someone into pulling and pulling and pulling on something and then suddenly letting go, so all their effort rolls over them and they fall backward with the force of it? I have older brothers, so this happened to me a lot. Or that trick where you push your arms against a door-frame and hold hold hold and then suddenly step out and your arms float up involuntarily with incredible weightlessness?

When I carried Sprout up to bed, and marveled at how her long body no longer curls against my body, but rather curls around me, so big and stretched out and five-months-old (gah!), it was like whatever I was pulling against suddenly let go, it was like stepping out of the door-frame. All the love I was digging down for just rushed up and smacked me in the face and soul and heart (and yes, even the heart pantry /sigh.) I nursed her and brushed her sweaty hair from her face until her dark eyelashes rested on her cheeks again, and thought about the calm after the storm. The clarity. The Love Rush.

We always love our children, but we don't always love parenting. When I complain about some parenting thing, and some status bubble burster comes along to remind me to "cherish every moment" I kind of internally scream (or externally, Papa Bean can definitely attest to some external screaming...) Because, like, yes of course I always cherish my children, but sometimes this parenting gig is not all that cherishable.

And we already know this from all our other relationships - from our family and friends and spouses. I always love my husband, but I don't always feel it. When PB is being sweet and handsome, my love-y feelings for him are very immediate and present and right there, at the surface of my smiling face. But when I'm tired and out of resources or patience and I'm annoyed with him, oi, those bad feelings can really cloud over my decision to love him.

But I do think it's different with children, the effect is maybe more pronounced, because my relationship to them is so much more permanent. As in, there is the possibility within the universe that PB and I could decide not to be spouses anymore (it's a microscopic possibility, don't worry ;) but no matter what, my kids are my kids. So that undercurrent of love, whether surface-immediate or sunken-deep, has a unique constancy.

I hope you're having a bubbly, happy kind of day, but if you're not, if you're having a dig-deep, pull-up kind of day, well... I hope you get to step out soon, and stop hold hold holding, and feel the weightlessness of Love lift your arms, and make carrying your child (physically and metaphorically) easier. Soon.

Mama Bean is all Reinforcement-ed out

My Intro to Psychology course taught me that Reinforcement is the way a person's reaction to a behaviour encourages repetition of that behaviour - it reinforces continuation of the behaviour. Basically, we all like to get a reaction. And when we do, it encourages us to keep doing That Thing That Got The Reaction.

(For example, when I blog, and you write a comment, I like getting that reaction. So I keep blogging! Now hopefully, when you comment, and I keep blogging, you like that reaction, so you keep commenting. Reinforcement can be Reciprocal! W00t :P)

There are different flavours of Reinforcement, Positive and Negative. Positive Reinforcement is when we react to things we like, to encourage continued performance of things we like. (See above re: blogging and comments.) Negative Reinforcement is when we react to things we don't like, which encourages performance of things we don't like, and that's why it's Negative and Bad.

And so Behaviourism 101 tells us: react to things you like to encourage things you like (Do Positive Reinforcement) and don't react to things you don't like, so you won't encourage things you don't like (Don't Do Negative Reinforcement.)

Reinforcement has turned this momma upside down! It's this weird parenting reinforcement paradox around here, and it makes me want to scream, except I can't because that would probably negatively reinforce something-or-other-idontevenknowwhat!

I cannot be the only parent going through this.

On any given day, I am going out of my mind with excitement for things that, in the Real World of Adult Interactions are normal and natural and nothing to get excited about. I'm going cuckoo for Pleases and Thank-yous. I'm going gaga for Sharing and Not Hitting. I'm jumping up and down and all around for Listening to My Words and Using Your Words. I am cuckooing and gagaing and jumping up and down because I want to Positively Reinforce all these lovely behaviours from my Bean. And it's become so ingrained in everything I do, I excitedly positively reinforce things from Sprout, who understands few motivations more complicated than, say, Hungry and Tired. So I'm grinning and mugging for Good Nursing or Sitting Quietly While Mom Makes Dinner.

And on the flip side, I am quietly and carefully having internal fits over things that, in the Real World of Adult Interactions are not normal or natural and are forsure something to get excited about. I'm calmly providing food to a mouth that Spits it out or Throws it on the floor. I'm placidly wiping poop while legs Continually Kick Me. I'm oh-so-gently carrying the Cranky and the Crying and Won't Go to Sleep up to his bed to sleep anyway. Without reacting. Because I don't want to reinforce these less-than-lovely behaviours. And again, it extends to Sprout, so that I suppress my reaction to anything unpleasant, like the poop explosions or the fussypants or the spitting up down the back of my nice shirt that I just changed into for going to work, even though she has less than zero concept of what Reinforcement is even about.

It's like living backwards, amiright?

This is the kind of thing that makes me feel like I gave up half my brain when I gave birth. Sometimes I find cynical thoughts running through my head, "I have a university degree. I have a doctorate! People rely on me to make life-changing decisions about their health! Why am I dancing like a clown because he ate two more bites of green beans than he ate yesterday? Why am I crowing in victory over unintelligible "words"? Why for the love of Pete am I pantomiming for this tiny tiny human tyrant?!"

Oh right. Because I gave up half my brain and gained a couple extra pounds of Heart-bursting Love. /sigh.

Anyway, it's not that it's so so infuriating, more like a disembodied feeling at the end of some days, when I feel like I actually have not Been Myself, because instead I've been participating in this parenting paradox of Reinforcement Win. And I know it's all worth it in the end, that eventually they will do the Pleases and Thank-yous and Sharing without needing a Cheering Section. And they will learn to self-regulate negative behaviours, too. And by then we'll be trying to cheer them on in more sincere ways and they'll be adolescents who no longer care about our opinion lol. Not to mention, by that point, solving negative behaviours will be so much more complicated than simply quietly ignoring them ha!

Oi. Parenting. Please tell me about the silly things you go crazy about to positively reinforce - or, even better, tell me what you've been trying to ignore to avoid negatively reinforcing it.

Mama Bean had an Icelanditacular day!

It's a good thing I had Papa Bean pack the diaper bag the night before...

Sprout has "forgotten" she likes to skip the middle-of-the-night feeding, and has instead started skipping the middle-of-the-day feeding. Thus, we have fitful nights. For everyone, since her restlessness somehow translates to Bean, who sleeps on an entirely different floor, and makes him restless, too. Morning came early to the Bean household.

So we hit the road. We went to the annual Icelandic Festival at the lake community just north of the Prairie Valley City, about an hour away. We had planned to meet up with friends summering up there, but worried they might be too ill. However, upon arrival, lo and behold there they were, so we went about our merry Icelandic ways together.

Truth be told, we didn't participate in any of the Icelandic stuff. I know boo, hiss but, well, we just followed the toddler(s). (t)He(y) rule(s) the roost, you know :) We strolled the farmers' market stalls (I bought some cute earrings, and some flavoured honey sticks for a treat) then checked out the murals along the harbour/pier. It was nerve-wracking having an excited toddler so close to the edges of the docks, and of course, that's exactly where Bean had to be, so he could throw rocks into the water. oi. But fun to watch him have fun, of course.

Bean and M held hands along the painted walkway. This was much more preferable to being on the edges of the docks by the water :S

I was glad to leave the docks and meander down the beach and boardwalk. L is an extrovert's extrovert - she meets friends old and new every twenty steps or so, which suits the pace of toddlers walking just fine. We watched a woman pole-vaulting on the beach, she was trying to beat a provincial record, but didn't quite make it. The physics and physicality of pole-vaulting are quite something to behold, in real life.

This lake is basically a really really big puddle that collects from the various rivers of the province. In typical years, because of farming chemicals, it is prone to algae blooms, and other nastiness. The high floods in spring and the high temps this summer have conspired for a beautiful year of warm water with relatively little algae (I don't know why.) Bean found the waves to be Most Awesome :)

Bean loves to discover a new playground. This one was roasting from the hot sun. But you can't beat the view, even if your hands and knees are burning from crawling around!

Bean also loves to smash sand-castles, which would have been bad for the sand-castle competition taking place. One pour soul was being fried to a crisp, pretending to be eaten by a sand shark.

From the beach, we walked to the midway taking place at the park a few blocks away. Bean was too small for any of the rides, but we enjoyed some french fries. Long weekends are for unhealthy eating! That's my philosophy lol. We were disappointed at the lack of authentic Icelandic grub, we may have come on the wrong day of the festival for that. Next year!

Papa Bean looks like an Intrepid Viking of Parenting Win in this photo! Don't tell him I said that, he'll get embarrassed teehee.

Bean doesn't meet a splash park he doesn't like. He got quite adventurous in this one, running through some of the sprayers, instead of just running around things and stomping in the puddles. I'm glad the kiddos (and adults) had this refreshing hiatus, because it was really getting hot. Bean's little cheeks get so red in the heat, and he wilts, poor thing.

We wandered back to town, and should have gone home, in terms of preserving nap time. We went to get lunch in town instead, and here the afternoon got derailed by the crowds - I (stupidly) ordered shrimp and chips. It took forty-five minutes. Forty-five minutes. I know, I know #firstworldproblems. It's only that, if I'd known, I would've had ice cream for lunch, as originally tempted (L had the right idea here!) Anyway, it tasted good. But I'll never go back there again.

On our way out of town, we bought Papa Bean a birthday present - a large framed picture of a moose in a snowy birch forest. The kiosk was selling everything for more than half off, it was a good deal. We weren't hopeful Bean would nap in the car, so late from his normal naptime (we left town when he'd normally be waking up) but a few verses of The Wheels on the Bus calmed him down (miracles!) We drove into a neighbouring area to the west of the city, where Papa Bean has lately been cycling (on his spanking new road bike - a birthday present to himself.) We went to cruise the big houses out there, which he'd been cycling past, and then just kept driving to the provincial park at the end of the road. It was amazing to see how high the water remains on the river - the walking trails around the provincial park are all closed because they're underwater. We took a brief stroll down a dry part of the path, it was lovely dappled and breezy and free of bugs, which is another miracle of this summer.

I can't believe how much we packed into the day. Poor Bean suffered a bit, his sleep has been disturbed, it will take a quiet day or two to reset it. We never did this much during Bean's first summer - I felt inept, unable to leave the house and keep us both alive for more than a few hours at a time. Plus, he was a major schedule baby, he wanted his swaddle and his suck and his bed at very prescribed times. And I was not a mom who nursed in public well, then, probably because it always involved a nipple shield for him, and that was always so messy.

I'm much better at nursing in public now, though Sprout doesn't like it much. She prefers to be on her familiar pillow, at a comfortable temperature. The summer heat, laying on her diaper bag as pillow, with a nursing cover over her head, makes her fussy. She is not so much a schedule baby, mostly in the way she can sleep anywhere (but sleep she does in a schedule-y kind of way). And mostly we go out and do more now because Bean is bigger and needs to go out and burn off steam and be smiley and stuff. It's kind of gratifying, to see the trajectory and think, hey, we're actually getting better at this! I'll keep that in mind when I'm dredging through my next day of feeling like a Parenting Fail. Oh the highs and lows, friends. Today was up there :)

Mama Bean, Papa Bean, Bean and Sprout went to the zoo.

And we saw some animals :) Top row, L to R: a heron in the duck pond, which was drained for much of the spring, so the bird population is low this summer; the ugly handsome hornbill, these guys always hang out at the front fence of their enclosure, I think they like showing off for people, so I call them handsome while they preen, even though their beaks are actually pretty freaky looking; a gopher, because the best wildlife isn't in the cages; and the birds of paradise (I think?) in the new tropical house. Bottom row, L to R: a baby markhor, one of twelve in the herd this year, we watched them being fed, all their little wiggly rumps in a row, it was pretty adorable; a pelican all turtled into himself, resting in the duck pond; a reindeer drinking; and a baby-wearing momma ape (?), I love how he's just hanging there, hugging her tummy and letting his arms chillax.

These are the many faces of my little monkey :) We had snack time by the monkeys, and he showed us his teeth and his eyelashes and his sweet sweet toes.

This about captures the goofiness that is my son. Just prancing around, not a care in the world except his careful grip on his snack cup (heavens preserve the precious snack cup!), cool guy shades on top of his hat, instead of under the brim where they belong...

Baby girl fell asleep just before snack time. We don't want to spend the $90 dollars (srsly) for the sunshade that goes on the rear toddler seat, so we've been draping my nursing cover over the handlebars for a quick hack, but it's not perfect (let's a lot of sun in the sides, blows around in the wind) so I'd like to sew something similar, that attaches with velcro, out of something heavier and maybe even a little water resistant.

Of course, we didn't actually go to the zoo to see the animals! Naturally, we went to see the construction equipment!! It's too bad we didn't see this until we were ready to leave - because there was a mini-meltdown getting him back in the stroller and away from the backhoe. Nothing like seeing a Real. Live. Backhoe. Aaaah, such a boy :P

Mama Bean is KinderGARDENing (13)

We're taking a trip to the garden! Wheee! We've got our bucket of tools, and our bucket for gathering, and our sunglasses and hats, and our shorts and sandals, and a truck to keep us occupied *please keep him occupied* and we are going to GARDEN! See? This picture shows us following daddy to the garden. (Alternate interpretation: this picture shows us picking up rocks and clods of dirt and meandering everywhere except towards daddy and the garden.)

We're at the garden! Wheee! We've got our mosquito net and our blanket shade against the sun, and our hat and soother, and we're ready to relax and watch the FUN! See? This picture shows us sitting happy and sleepy in our bucket. (Alternate interpretation: this picture shows the calm before the storm of fussing and cranky whining between repeatedly spitting out my soother, before napping eventually in the sweet sun and wind, and mosquito free wonderment.)

We're picking radishes! Wheee! We're gonna pick them ALL! See? This picture shows us plucking beautiful orbs of perfect radish loveliness from the earth. (Alternate interpretation: this picture shows us barely beginning the 60 or so foot harvest of unthinned radishes, along with stunted cucumber plants and a ridiculous number of weeds. Please please ignore the weeds. I know I am...)

We're putting radishes in the bucket! Wheee! We're listening to instructions and gently placing radishes in the bucket, which is rapidly filling up after only the first 10 feet, and daddy has a meeting in less than an hour, so my helpfulness is really APPRECIATED! (Alternate interpretation: this picture may in fact show a radish being pulled out of the bucket, and it definitely shows the moment before said bucket being dumped over, and radishes rolling out, much to Bean's amusement. Not pictured: tools and gloves scattered throughout the garden after being pulled from the tool bucket. Also not pictured: ignored. toy. truck.)

We're almost done gardening! Wheee! I am sitting calmly while mommy starts to panic about having three shopping bags full of radishes that she doesn't even really like to EAT! This picture shows me pulling up weeds. (Alternate interpretation: he's not pulling up weeds. He's just... pulling up whatever's in his reach lol. But, it was keeping him happy, and the current condition of our garden ensures that almost everything within his reach is a weed, anyway. No harm, no foul. I wouldn't even have minded if he started pulling up kohlrabi, because it needs to be thinned.)

We're done picking radishes! Wheee! This is the perfect time to play with my TRUCK! This picture shows a few radish plants remaining, because lord know we need to leave a few for radishes down the road, in case we RUN OUT! (Alternate interpretation: I don't know why we left some plants, I think I told myself we were just thinning the rows, instead of decimating them to make room for the cucumbers, which are stalwartly refusing to grow taller than six inches. Also, I'm sorry to show so many pictures of the greens being wasted. If we'd kept the greens, we would have needed three garbage bags instead of shopping bags to get it all home. One bag went to friends, half a bag is in our fridge, and two other bags went to the local food bank this morning - 14.4 lbs to add to Kim's Grow to Give tally!)

This week's KinderGARDEN assignment is about colour - go check out everyone else's contributions to the rainbow. I am mostly proud for having pictorial proof that my kinder(s) came out to the garden plot and did things sort of garden-y while we were working, because for most of this year, we've been gardening alone, as in, one of us alone goes out and does garden work while the other stays with the kids. It was a nice exercise in building parenting confidence to see that we can indeed kinderGARDEN without major meltdowns or terribly destroyed plants/harvests. All in all, a successful week!

Mama Bean has (at least) 25 things that make her feel good

Papa Bean invited me (that sounds better than dared me, right?) to participate in something he picked up from Twitter, a meme, a sort of Self Care exercise (oh I mentally composed a doozy of a sarcasm-riddled post on Self Care last night. I'll have to re-muster it from the haze of genius-posts-that-happen-as-I'm-falling-asleep one day...) okay sorry, too many brackets, this meme, where I list five things for each of the five senses, that make me feel good.

In turn, I dare invite you to do the same!

Things I see that make me feel good:
- My son's velvet eyelashes against his cheeks or backlit by sunlight as he stares up with joy and love at my husband (or me or a truck or whatever)
- Tree branches bending low, dripping leaves into the river
- My clean white counter after doing dishes
- Tomatoes turning colour so slowly (too slowly) on branches so densely grown, I can barely squirm my fingers in to pick them
- My husband's epic farmers' tan

Things I smell that make me feel good:
- Onions and garlic (in general) being sauteed in butter (real butter, in specific)
- Baking (in general) banana bread (most recently)
- My daughter's hair
- My husband's hair
- Coffee

Things I hear that make me feel good:
- Bean saying "ee-oowh, ee-oowh" in response to "What sound does a cat make?" (well, hearing him say anything vaguely reminiscent of a real word is pretty awesometacular)
- Sprout's happy noises, especially the coos of amazement ("Oooo my toes, Oooo b00by, Oooo Daddy's nose, Oooo brother's face kissing me, Oooo...")
- "Goodnight I love you" from my husband for the gazillionth night in a row. Every night, never fails.
- Tracy Chapman's "Fast Car" (this is just the feel-good song that popped into my head, but we can't go too indepth into songs that make me feel good, or we'll be here aaaaaaall night)
- Silence on both baby monitors, oooh mama yes...

Things I taste that make me feel good:
- The afore-mentioned tomatoes, sun-warmed
- BBQ anything, in particular, today's salmon (though in general, I have renounced fish)
- chocolate-mint squares from the bulk bin at Superstore, my newest cocoa obsession
- homemade strawberry jam
- kisses from the three people I love most in the world

Things I touch that make me feel good:
- The afore-mentioned daughter's hair
- Also, the chubs of her schenkelbeins (she is born Mennonite, while I merely married into it, but I can still use that word, I'm allowed lol)
- Lambs' ears leaves
- Patients
- Papa Bean's shoulders (for example...)

Mama Bean wonders why she keeps going to bed so late

I didn't sleep last night. I went to bed with six hours of available sleep. Well, you know what happens as soon as you've put a number on it; your brain dutifully keeps you awake doing the math to count down the minutes you've already lost trying to fall asleep instead of actually sleeping so that you can do some more math and find out it's fewer minutes of sleep than the last time you tried to do the math but is it the right math because you're just so darned tired but yes that was the right math oh wait it's a new time, now I have five hours of available sleep.

Who thought it was smart to set her own clinic hours at 8 am on Fridays? I mean, isn't the perk of being your own boss that you set hours you can like live with? So I chose this 8 am crap? Weird.

Although last night was blessedly cool (less than 20 degrees) it was hot in my house, which made my baby wake up, which made me wake up (but not my husband, who's sung that song before?) but in a perfect world of temperature controlled living space (What's that? You say I live in such a thing?) she technically went more than six hours without eating. So, y'know, six hours of available sleep. But I didn't sleep last night.

Work took a long time.

What is it about being a 13 year old girl that makes it impossible to talk coherently with adults? I remember 13, I remember I was chatty and loud and tactless at the best of times, with my peers, but I was positively mute in the face of most strange adults. Why do the parents of 13 year old girls think this is a good age to start sending them into my treatment rooms solo? I mean, ok, confidence building exercise, maybe, but no one is winning in this situation. It's just awkward and... awkward. You know, when I was in Chiropractic college, I was worried I wouldn't be able to handle the babies and the toddlers. But I'm good with the wee ones. It's the long and gangly ones I have trouble with...

I got home in time for nap time, but I didn't nap. That was dumb.

We went and picked strawberries. I don't know why we can't figure it out that strawberry season is July. The fields were practically stripped bare, and the berries we got are small. They're perfect for jam, which is their intended destination, but still. Pain in the butt to pick. Other than the lateness of the season, we picked a great day for, uh, picking. It was overcast and windy - didn't overheat in the sun, no bugs. Bean's hands and mouth and hat and shirt were covered in mud and red juice. I shudder to consider which he consumed more of - berry or dirt. Either way... Actually, I was kind of blown away at how well-behaved he was. I expected one of us would do the picking and the other would chase the Bean around the rows, but he followed us, more or less, picking his own berries, and then picking the stem/leaves off by himself before munching them. It was so cute! Sometimes (mosttimes) I feel like he is learning how to do this thing called Life on his own, because I'm too clueless to see what he's ready to learn next, so he just sort of picks it up, and I shake my head at how big he's getting.

It's been awhile since Sprout had a cry-fest bedtime, so I suppose we were due. To be honest, it's nothing like those Delirious Early Day Pseudo-Colic Hormone-Blitztasticular cry-fests where we both end up with wet cheeks and snotty... everythings. She just had some 'bubbles' and she wanted to tell me about it. Once successfully swaddled and soothered into oblivion, we watched How to Train Your Dragon, which was lovely. Huh. Two nights in a row, who'da thunkit?

Tomorrow's plan is jam.

Mama Bean is KinderGARDENing (10)

This week's post should be called Please Pardon Our Dust Weeds, because we just got home from a ten day vacation. I actually dreamed about what our garden was doing while we were away and how it would look when we got back - oh, to be gone during such exciting hot summer days of sprouting and growing and wonderosity! - so I rushed out to take a few pics for this week's KinderGARDEN post without tidying up first. And now you'll all know the weedy truth...

This is a collage of our large garden plot. Top left is our pea shoots pushing against their trellis. Bottom left is our potato patch, which is truly hard to distinguish against the weeds. There are also corn plants about a foot tall at the very back, and then our north neighbour's thistle patch. Of course, your neighbour's weeds are your weeds... Centre pic shows our rectangle of radishes around two squares of cucumbers plants, which are quite small. I hope we chose short enough season plants for them to mature to fruit before cold weather comes. We don't really like radishes, but, as I have commented on others' posts, they are wonderful confidence boosters, and in this case, I want them to cover some ground until the cucumber vines mature and take over. You can see some of the grass mulching we've been brave enough to try at the community garden, at the risk of others calling us crazy. Top right are barely distinguishable bean plants against a weedy quack grassy backdrop. Bottom right are a few stands of potato and zucchini plants. They grew the most - cucurbits can be real confidence boosters like that, too. Big seeds, big sprouts, big growth. But they take awhile to sprout, and successful fruiting depends a lot on weather and pollination, etc. At least in my short three years' experience :) I am excited by those zucc plants. I'm not gonna thin them, I'm gonna transplant them!

Our little Bean seemed quite pleased to be back in his own domain. Our home garden went crazy cakes while we were gone, it's wonderful! Top left is how far our compost volunteers have progressed. Bottom left are crowded cabbages, which will be thinned tomorrow (I thinned them right before we left!) and treated somehow (salt and pepper?) because I saw the telltale white butterflies around them today. Centre pic shows our tomato jungle. Srsly. We've never had tomato plants that actually required the recommended spacing, so we just crammed our six plants in there /sigh. Bean is about 3 feet tall, so the plants are about 5. I know indeterminate types can get much taller, but I've just never had to deal with it before lol. Top right is our lettuce, which was also just thinned, and will be thinned again in the morning. Bottom right are some of the hundreds (no exaggeration) of tomatoes we have brewing. /rubs hands with glee.

I'm excited about Kim's assignment to do some upclose photography. I love pushing that little macro setting on my point and shoot. If all goes as planned, I'll be getting a new dSLR by the end of the summer *drool* and then down the road maybe a real macro lens. /more hands of glee.

Mama Bean enjoyed the picnic very much

The Sunday before our vacation, we had a church picnic at the park where Bean's playground is located. They have a little steam train in the same park, which passes over the bridge by this gorgeous little pond, and that's where we set up our picnic! We are blessed to have a professional chef in our church family - mmm, mmm, pulled pork sandwiches, coleslaw, traditional church potluck salads (think Waldorf and potato and taco and yumminess), chips, unlimited pop (oh my aching pancreas!) and more (MORE!) As can be seen, Bean had a ridiculous amount of fun. Our guest preacher for the morning brought the family dog, which Bean loved. Our friend brought a Bean-sized chair, which Bean loved. Someone brought watermelon, which Bean loved. Someone brought ketchup potato chips, which Bean loved. Actually, I think that was us. He basically had watermelon and ketchup chips for lunch - it's so hard to feed him when there's so much Distraction around, and no high chair or booster seat or something-with-straps-for-the-love-of-Pete in sight. In that one pic where he's looking all sly, he's taking another chip off the table after we'd told him to stop. In that other pic, he's crouching behind a tree eating a seventh or eighth piece of watermelon, which he slyly took off the table in similar fashion, after we'd told him to stop. Clearly, this was a day of Choosing Our Battles. Whatever. He ate. 'Twas good.

Also, this ridiculously cute baby wore a ridiculously cute dress, with a ridiculously matching barrette. Yeah, that totally happened. Her expression is so fierce in this pic! And the toes - the Toes! I can't handle it, I nibble on them every day, if she makes it toddlerhood with all her toes intact, it will be a miracle. Srsly.

And then she took a nap. All cute style /sigh. It was a really lovely day, full of sun and food and green and happy happy hearts.

Mama Bean is KinderGARDENing (9)

This little Bean likes to help us water. It's his new favourite game. We're still working on getting the water onto plants, instead of the sides of the box, the dirt/mulch, or the front of his pants. But it's progress. And 'helpful' :) Whatever keeps him smiling while we're out in the yard is something I am happy to do.

I sort of suck at thinning plants. I just hate the thought of taking something living out of the ground, that grew from a seed I purposefully put there for it to grow. I know it's good for the plants and will improve things overall, but sometimes the gardening big picture is just too big and I get caught up on the little seedlings I'm murdering. On the other hand, thinned lettuce is so darn tasty! I call this picture "Still Life of Gardening with Toddlers"

We thinned the lettuce in the morning, partly because, as good smart gardeners (ha!) we know that's when the lettuce is full of water and nice and sweet. And partly because that's when Bean wakes up and we (he) hit(s) the ground running. And running. Here's the dew beading on my (also thinned) cabbage. I will need to start thinking how I want to protect these guys from the moths.

There's just something about peonies that says 'LUSH' isn't there? I'm so glad the previous owner of our home loved peonies as much as I do. The lighter pink variety used to be even whiter, but this year's blooms are significantly streaked with bright magenta. Do peonies blend this way (like roses)?

This is the edge of where we put down the sidewalk blocks for our makeshift BBQ pad. The compost that used to live here has offered up some volunteers - they look like cucumbers, right? Or some sort of cucurbit, cucumber seems the most likely. We're gonna leave them to grow up and around the rhubarb as best they can and see what fruit they provide :) We have another volunteer bean plant growing out of the compost pile where they were moved to, also. I'm increasingly aware how vegetable gardening does best with a bit of flexibility, because you never know what's going to pop up. And I'm fully aware I couldn't/wouldn't have had that flexibility our first year, because I wouldn't have known the difference between a cucumber sprout and a weed. So it's kind of gratifying to see this stuff happen and feel all smart-stylez because I like know a little something (ha!)

This is Papa Bean, holding Sprout in my sling, while Bean played in the beach part of his playground. Not strictly speaking a gardening picture, but I wanted to point out a) how great he looks with that sling on and b) how much I appreciate growing a life with him, in our garden and otherwise. We recently celebrated 10 years of being together (i.e. from when we started dating) and it was Father's Day a few weeks back, and it all got me thinking how thankful I am for him, and all the hard work he does, again, in our garden and otherwise.

We're meandering around the prairies, and it's killing me to be away from the garden, just as everything was starting to sprout. I hope there's enough rain to sustain things, because I didn't arrange for anyone to water our plants, aie. Though, it is kind of fun to wander off for a bit, because it's such a surprise how things burst to life (weeds included /sigh) When you're out in there (several times, chasing a Bean) every day, the changes are more subtle to catch, but it's blatantly obvious after 3 or 4 days how much progress has been made. It's pretty humbling, too, realizing how little I actually have to do with it - the plants are just following the code, doing their thang, being all green and grow-y. I like it. Hope you do, too. Pop by Kim's to check out the other KinderGARDENing action - everyone's showing off the pics their kinders took in their gardens, it's quite impressive!

Mama Bean is KinderGARDENing (8)

This week at KinderGARDENs is the Kids and Cameras assignment. Alas, little Bean still hasn't totally grasped the camera concept, though he does like to look at the pics on the little screen at the back, and he recognizes himself now, which is pretty adorable. Anyway, I thought I'd just put in a bunch of pics of him around the yard lol. This little corner by the lilac is his favourite spot back there, I think because we leave him to dig and mess around and don't say 'No' the way we do everywhere else :) Note his little weed patch there haha. We actually didn't even know this bush was a lilac, it didn't bloom the last two summers we've lived here. Everything seems to be going bloom crazy this year, on our flowering shrubs and in the neighbourhood, it's quite beautiful. There's a grapevine on a fence we walk by often, and it is covered with teeny tiny grape clusters, it's so exciting! Not sure what confluence of factors (weather, etc.) conspired to make it that way, but I like it!

Bean does like to dig around everywhere else that we do say 'No' Here he is by our tomatoes and peppers trying to thin the cabbages. Note the handy dandy whirly-dos that label the rows, they were like 6 for a dollar or something at the garden store. We have tomato, pepper, carrot, peas, and onion ones, it's fun. In the week or so since this pic was taken, the tomatoes have like mutated into Huge Plant Beasts. They have outgrown their cages, I don't know what to do about it. I hope the flowering they're doing means they'll soon be putting more energy into fruit production than branch production. I've seen more bees this year than last, which is so encouraging. They must be happy about the extra flowering I've noticed, too.

At the other end of the home garden bed, we have our onions and lettuces coming up. I want to thin the lettuces, they're a hearting variety, so I need to give them room to actually heart. In the rest of the bed, I've added a little eggplant uh plant in the midst of our soybeans. Only four came up, but I'm thankful for those four! Edamame, here I come! One package of lettuce seeds seems to have died over the winter, so our third row of lettuces needs to be replanted with the seeds that lived. It's kind of convenient how this turned us into succession planters lol. We've always wanted to be the kind of people who use things like Forethought and Planning to do succession planting, so we don't have like forty lettuces maturing at the same time, much faster than we can eat them ourselves.

I thought Bean would be more enamored by the peonies actually, being such large blooms and so accessible to his little hands, but he seemed satisfied to (mostly) just look. A heavy rain has hastened their wilt-age. I wish peony blooms lasted all summer, they smell so beautiful. The irises are already done for the year :( I'd like to start pilfering some of the other colours of irises I see around the neighbouhood. How do y'all ask people for plants? I know most gardeners are probably pretty generous about it - well, I can't say that. I know my mom and Papa Bean's aunts have been very generous about donating plants and seeds, but I don't know about perfect strangers. But if someone walking by asked me for some of my irises, and I had some that'd be easily divided, I wouldn't hesitate to share. There are some very very dark purple ones a few houses down that I'd love, and there are several houses with all yellow ones that I've never seen before, very unique!

I planted seeds for a number of cucurbits at the big garden: white marrow, yellow zucchini, green zucchini, acorn squash, cantaloupe, and butternut squash. I planted them in circles (like the packets always suggest) instead of rows (as we've done in the past, only to have the vines run out of room) and with some of the seeds being from last year, I worried it wouldn't all come up. But I have six little circles of sprouts just like the picture coming up, so I guess the seeds remained viable. It interesting to see them all so close together, I always felt their sprouts all look the same, but they actually have (subtle) differences, and it's a nice learning experience. I realize there are waaaaaay too many sprouts in the circle pictured: I'll thin it down to about three plants. I may even transplant some of the extras, because I fear there will be bald areas in our big garden. None of the beans appear to have germinated (!!) and I have four rows of them... I don't know why I thought we needed four rows of beans, other than to fill space, but I also don't need nine plants of zucchini LOL. And I think it's easier to give away beans... everyone gets sick of donated zucchini in a few months. Have you heard people joke about Ding-and-Dashing their neighbours, leaving zucchinis on the steps? We may have to resort to that.

We also have a pumpkin plant and a giant pumpkin plant. There'll be many viney-vines out there this year! Hope we can coach them to stay in our plot and not encroach on our neighbours' plots. One part of community gardening we've really enjoyed is watching how other people do things. There are some garden superstars who have the cleanest (weed-free-est) plots with plants that look weeks and weeks ahead of anyone else's growth. There's another woman who mulches aggressively with grass clippings. All the superstars call her Crazy Grass Lady, which is sad. As you can see, we mulch with grass in our home plot, and it is wonderfully effective at keeping weeds down. But we bow to peer pressure and don't really use it at the big plot, we don't want to be called crazy, too... I do admire Crazy Grass Lady for sticking to her gardening guns and standing up for her techniques. On the other hand, she really over waters, and I don't like seeing her waste that resource.

I've conveniently labeled the last pic to show where the actual potato plants are, because it's understandably confusing when there's so many other green things around. Blasted weeds. This is a pictorial representation of how overwhelming the weeds get at the big garden. This is why grass mulching (or any kind of mulching really) would be such a good idea out there (yet still we are chickens...) I spent about an hour pulling up just the biggest thistles to get this area cleaner. I'm getting so tough, I don't even wear gloves for the thistles anymore - RAwR! See me be TOUGH Mama Bean! I'm really digging (heehee punny) the take-off of summer - spring can be such a looooong exercise in patience; waiting for them to mark out the plots, waiting for it to dry up enough to till, waiting for the guy you're paying to till to actually till it, waiting for magical days when one spouse can watch the kids while the other goes out to frantically plant things, waiting for the things you've planted to germinate, waiting to get to the store to buy more seed because you woefully underestimated how much you'd need for your giant garden, waiting waiting waiting. This is what gardening is about, right? But now that the heat is taking off and there are actual green things coming out of the ground, now is lovely and exciting and fun! There's just one month of this until the crazy superfluousity of August arrives, when the plants and weeds are huge and the heat is intense and everything sort of starts to mature way too quickly, and it's the opposite of waiting, it's everything piling up at once. I like August and everything, it's just a little stressful, in the opposite way that the waiting of May and June is stressful. So this little pause in July, when everything's just starting and revving up and is beautiful, this is nice. This might be my favourite time of summer :)

This is a long post for KinderGARDENs, sorry! Check out Kim's blog for everyone's Kids and Cameras assignments - I'm excited to go read them myself!