Time flies...

Where did June go?

We've spent a lot of time in the garden. We picked out first 3 strawberries this morning. One even looked like it could have come from the store! we have tiny pea pods, tiny green tomatoes and microscopic zucchini. The flowers are awesome this year--or at least more awesome than I've been able to make happen in the past--so if you live near me you might find some on your doorstep! I finally got the herb bed dealt with as well and while my purple basil died, my neighbor gave me some great plants and I have an amazing lime oregano and pineapple sage! Pineapple sage actually smells like pineapple! I'll post the before and after photos next time.
Princess had her first real dance recital this week. The wore a white satin and sequined tutu and had a great time! I had a fiasco while trying to shop locally and order new tights so she wore the old ones with a huge black (irremovable) spot on the knee. We took dinner to the studio staff for the dress rehearsal and that was fun. Tuscan Chicken Salad, fruit salad, fresh rustic bread from Costco, chocolate and lemon-strawberry cupcakes Princess helped make and mints to deal with the after effects of the garlicky meal. Princess played hostess and gave everyone mints and drinks and it was cute. She performed Thursday and the show went smoothly and was lots of fun (even though we were close to late because I lost the tickets--a nice man let us in anyway thank heavens). Friday night I went to help backstage during the show since I didn't want to miss seeing Princess on Thursday but still wanted to help. The most polite thing I can say about that experience is that is didn't kill me. I frankly have no clue how the Gosselins manage six 3-year-olds . . . but it wasn't (as usual) the kids that were really the problem. My friend Joan P. came to see the show and I really enjoyed having her there. Bear slept for that last hour but really seemed to enjoy it until we hit bedtime. No screaming and no removing him though! How's that for a miracle?!

I love my new massage therapist and finally am making really good progress again! She has two kids about the ages of mine, and she's good at her job and a lovely commiserator and problem solver when it comes to parenting. Some people prefer silent massages--I've been blessed with MTs who like to talk as much as I do and we have a ton of fun! I leave feeling physically better and mentally refreshed. Maybe after I finish the treatments (probably before the summer is out) we can meet at the park with our kids!

Father's Day was pretty mellow. My husband got cards from me, the kids and the cat, pajamas (his request), and photos of me with the kids. I voluntarily get photographed maybe twice a year. Christmas with the whole family and Father's Day with the kids for my husband. This year my quota is already filled because of the 4-generation photos we took in Boise with my mom and grandma, so if I'm going to be in the Christmas card I'll need to buck up once more.

Baby bear has been growing like crazy. He has 8 teeth and is working on more, is walking by himself a good 6 steps at a time, has massively increased his hair output and had his first all-kid food meal for lunch today! Sliced penne noodles (so they look like cheerios), mozzarella cheese and peaches. He thought it was quite novel and ate a lot once I took the way-more-fun-than-eating bowl away from him.

Bear has also managed to tear down the horrid vertical blinds in the living room and escape repeatedly. This has caused us to get new blinds that we can actually raise high enough for him to not destroy and rearrange the baby gate configuration. I was not happy I was going to need to buy more and then the same day I was going to go get them, a lady posted on freecycle that she was giving away the exact gate I needed in the exact size I needed!!! When I emailed her she had offered it to someone else and I was sad, but then she sent me back a note saying the other person had declined! So I got a brand new one of these for free! This has allowed us a safe place for the Bear again since we have enough gates to block off both exits from the living room now.

This week Princess started swimming lessons! She's like a little fish and just loving it. She's going to the city pool twice a week in the morning and is in a class with about six other kids. Bear and I sit and watch--he's fascinated and sleepy from the heat so he's quiet. I look over my list for the day and smile, wave and give the thumbs up sign as needed.

Yesterday we went to a local historical working farm for an arts, crafts and animal feeding class for Princess. It was a gorgeous day and they had peacocks roaming the grounds and Bear and I just walked (yes he walked a lot of it) and enjoyed the sun while Princess did her thing. There was this amazing white peacock trying to dig herself a shady hole in the ground. Weirdest thing I've seen in awhile--it looked like a cat wanting its tummy rubbed!
We've also made Jell-O jigglers, toilet paper butterflies, tried out a local church playgroup, been to the library a lot, played a lot of dress up, and enjoyed our brief moments of sunshine. All in all, it has been a busy and lovely month!

A late dinner of pizza & rootbeer floats

It all started a few months back, while I was still pregnant. It was a normal weekday morning, which meant my nauseous & exhausted self was sleeping in and the 3 1/2 year old had free reign of the domain. Before he left for work, her papa had made sure anything dangerous left out the night before (like an open package of Oreos or writing utensils that could be used to tag the furniture with permanent ink) had been put away and sat her down in front of PBS kids programming with a bowl of cereal.

I was woken by the princess shaking my shoulder and insisting that I come "fix" the TV. Usually when this happened, she'd pushed a button on the front of our old TV and switched it off the channel that the cable comes through to grey fuzziness, which freaks her out. I moan, I groan, I turn over, and then I get up to rescue her from static oblivion.

After a few minutes of punching buttons, I notice that much of the television appears to be damp. And smells faintly of oregano. Even in my sleepy state, this sets off an alarm, but it's a quiet one. I tell her she'll have to wait for papa to get home to fix it, get out the play dough (yes, my kid gets to play with play dough unsupervised), and head back to bed. I get up for real a couple hours later and inspect the set again. This time, I recognize that vaguely spaghetti-sauce-smelling smell: Sol-U-Guard.

Last summer I got talked into trying (joining) the MLM giant Melaleuca - only as a customer, not as a salesperson - and surprisingly, I've found I really like many of their products. I prefer cleaning products that are not horrifically poisonous to my family or the planet and it's hard to find them reasonably priced, even in the environmentally conscious (obsessed) hamlet I live in. Sol-U-Guard is their botanical disinfectant and it's great stuff. It's pretty non-toxic so I keep a bottle on the kitchen counter for clean up, and apparently the princess is now tall enough to reach it.

When confronted with the evidence, she admitted to helping me clean up the "dirty old TV" with dish towels (which she hid in a pile behind the couch) and the spray from the counter (which she put back). I thanked her and we had a discussion about asking mama or papa for the correct tools to do a cleaning job next time since different jobs require different things to clean them (i.e. do NOT spray wet stuff directly into the control panel of an electronic device).

We waited a few days for it to dry out, but the wires didn't recover. The box was ten years old, so we felt we got good use out of it, but the idea of spending ten times more than the $60 we bought it for in order to replace it made us pretty unhappy campers. I was ready to go to Wal-Mart and buy whatever was on sale and big enough for me make out the picture while sitting on the sofa. I'm pretty irritable when my television (or my Internet connection) isn't working right. My husband remained level-headed and spent a week researching the best options in flat screen home theater systems. When all was said and done, we had 5.1 surround sound and a TV that could be mounted on the wall.

Fabulous! But we really weren't wired for all that, and none of the new stuff would fit in our old entertainment center... so we now have a living room theater with so much extra furniture in it you can't walk without tripping, and enough wiring strewn about to string up a suspension bridge (or alternately trip and break an ankle on). We've tried selling the furniture on craigslist, but despite the fact that it's nice stuff, no one seems to be in the market for it.

So yesterday, the guy who helps us with home improvement projects beyond our capabilities (which is most everything) came to drill holes, get the cables off the floor and start work on remodeling the shelves that will be on the wall that the TV will be on when we get the furniture gone and can actually put it up. S helps him out and finally we think of dinner at about 7:30pm. It would have been earlier except Mr. Fix-it brought his daughter and she was playing out in the backyard distracting the princess. I was feeding baby bear & folding the mountains of laundry which cover almost every surface at this point.

Through the open window I heard the neighbors ordering pizza and lost no time ordering some up myself. I went to pick it up and swung by the store to pick up root beer (Hansen's all natural was on sale and I feel way less guilty when I buy that instead of the "unnatural" varieties lining the 2 liter shelves) and vanilla ice cream (Breyers, with the little black vanilla specks in it, also on sale, so I stocked up). By the time we were eating it was after 8pm, and we finished around 9pm, just as Mr. Fix-it left.

Now, I could have prepared pbj sandwiches for everyone, mixed up some frozen lemonade and left it at that... but some days you have to let the magic in. Eating pizza and root beer floats with my daughter in the warm summer dusk, way past bed time, is one of those moments that I'm glad I didn't let pass me by. There will be plenty of nights ahead for sticking to routines and creating order out of the chaos. Yet as I write that last sentence, I realize that last night was something I want to make sure is part of our lives on a regular basis. I want "order" to mean joy amid the chaos and I want the ability for spontaneity to be "routine" in our lives.