A Day at the Farm

Over Columbus Day weekend in October we enjoyed some family adventures. One adventure was at a Fall Festival in Mount Airy, MD at Gaver Tree Farm. They had lots of fun toddler-sized activities made form hay and corn.

We started the afternoon by eating a picnic lunch brought from home.

After we ate, we fed the goats. The girls really enjoyed this and we spent a long time giving the girls each a few tiny pellets and then watching them feed the pellets to the goats.

We saw a ton of other animals, too. The chickens were Theia's favorite. She wanted to go back and see them again and agian. She must have Grandma DeShon's genes. We also saw bunnies, alpaca sheep, pigs, cows, a peacock, and a turkey.

When we'd had our fill of the animals, we enjoyed a variety of play areas made from straw. This was a straw jump. The kids spent some time running and jumping and trying to cover daddy and Aliyah up with straw.

Aliyah and I took a break on the straw tower. The girls climbed up this a few times, but were a little hesitant of the height.

The farm had a couple of tunnels and mazes sized just right for our girls. Theia most enjoyed this tunnel of straw.

Much to our surprise, both girls LOVED these big slides. We thought they would be afraid, but instead they went down again and again. In fact, Theia wouldn't ride down with Joe, she insisted on riding by herself, just like big sister Xandra.

The tricycles were too big for our girls to reach the peddles. Daddy pushed them both for a short time and even tried riding himself. No one was too successful, so we moved on to a more appropriately sized activity.

Joe and the girls enjoyed this obstacle course. He showed them how to do each obstacle and they followed behind. Xandra was able to do most of the things on her own, but Theia was just a little too small to have much success unaided.

Our last stop before a hayride was the pirate ship. The girls were a bit too small to play with much of the ship, but they each enjoyed the slide.

We took a hayride out to the pumpkin patch and back. We didn't purchase any field pumpkins as we had a whole crop of our own in our yard. We did, however, purchase some baking pumpkins: a Long Island Cheese Pumpkin and a Cinderella pumpkin (it looks just like the pumpkin that is turned into the coach in the story).

We enjoyed perfect fall weather: sunny with a hint of coolness. Long after my kids are grown I imagine days like these are ones I will remember and cherish: being together with no restrictions on our time, exploring simple things, laughing, playing with abandon, and being wowed by slides and tunnels made of straw. Days like this make me think: I love being a mom to three little girls and a wife to Joe. Thanks, Lord, for the blessing of this family.

A Cheerio Eatin', Crawling Machine

Aliyah just passed the 8 month mark and she is:

...crawling! She has been rolling and army crawling around the living room for a few weeks now, but yesterday she started hands and knees crawling to cheers from her sisters and momma.

...eating Cheerios and drinking from a sippy cup.

...eating oats and bananas (just like her big sisters) for the first time today. This is big news at our house since this is the breakfast of choice for everyone who is old enough to eat solid foods.

...sleeping 11-12 hours at night.

...wearing 6-9 month clothing.

...showing signs of teething, but not showing any teeth through the gums yet.

...puking on every square inch of carpet that isn't covered with a blanket. She is by far the winner in the spitting up category between our three girls. I've become very good friends with our carpet cleaner and the bottle of Resolve.

...a generally happy baby when she is fed, well rested, and wearing a dry diaper.

...very excited when her sisters give her any amount of attention.

22 and Counting

Theia is approaching the 22 month mark. At this time she is:

...learning her colors. Her favorites right now are blue and something that sounds like orange. When she picks something up she enthusiastically proclaims Booooo or Onge, whether or not the item is actually blue or orange.

...still sleeping like a big girl. In fact, last night we removed the gate on her big girl bed since it seemed to be more of a dangerous obstacle for climbing on than a safeguard for falling out of bed.
...working on potty training. She's very good at peeing/pooping on the potty if you put her on there, but is very inconsistent at sharing when she actually needs to go. She does also get VERY excited when she goes pee pee in the potty, as she yells, "Pee pee," at the top of her lungs when she is successful. She has also learned to chant "Canny, canny, canny, canny!" to ensure that she receives her well-earned candy after her successful potty time.

...highly enjoys playing with little things (magnets, buttons, coins, cards, etc.). She loves to put them in bags or containers and carry them around the house, stopping only to dump them out and put them back again.

...loves to follow big sister around. They pack up their bags with random toys and take the animals and doggies on trips to visit Grandma DeShon or Grandma Mary.

...still loves to wrestle and play rough and tumble.

...is FINALLY growing some noticeable hair on her head.

...says many words but also talks a lot of gibberish. Her favorite words right now appear to be my manky (my blanky), oats, Awiyah (Aliyah), nauwee (naughty), canny (candy), boon (balloon), and pease (please).

...is learning how to pray. She usually spends the entire time someone else is praying chanting, "I pay, I pay, I pay..." Then when it is her turn, her prayer sounds something like this, "Tnk you oats, Awiyah, sss, all done." Translation: Thank you for my oats and Aliyah, Jesus, Amen.

Excellent parenting here.

Not only do we not stop the child from putting plastic bags up to her face, we take pictures.

...no longer sitting in the highchair. She moved to the booster seat at the counter next to Xandra last month to make room for Aliyah in the highchair.

...enjoying sharing a room with big sister. They play and play at wake up time and sometimes in the middle of the night.

...definitely approaching the twos. She has some very real ideas about the way the world ought to be and is not hesitant to share those ideas with us.

...a joy to parent, and brings lots of laughter and joy to our home.

A Fancy Cardboard Box

A few weeks ago I spent almost an entire week organizing, moving, and storing the girls' clothes. It involved moving Theia's clothes into Xandra's closet, moving Liyah's clothes from the sunroom where she had been sleeping to the nursery, changing all of their summer clothes out for fall/winter clothes, and organizing the bins of clothes in the attic that are currently not in use. One morning while I worked and Liyah played on the bed, I found the girls playing in the hallway like this:

Thiea refused to look at me so I could take a picture of her.

Xandra informed me that they were boats. They both had animals and blankies as well as a sack of cards. I've no idea where they were going, but they were having a grand time going there. Eventually, they were forced to abandon their boats as I needed them for the closet shelves. I guess an old-fashioned cardboard box, or plastic rubbermaid bin as it was in this case, is still a childhood favorite.

Scissors, Glue & Playdough too

One of the older girls' favorite pastimes lately has playing with playdough at the kitchen counter. They roll them into worms, make letter shapes, cut them out with cookie cutters, use butter knives to chop it up, and Theia, of course, likes to try and eat it.

When they're not playing Playdough, they love to color with crayons and markers. They aren't too selective about what they use their markers and crayons on, either...paper, coloring books, reading books, bellies, arms, faces, fingernails, clothes and carpet all seem to be fair game. The glue stick and scissors have also recently been introduced to the scene. I try to hide these things, I really do, but somehow my three year old always finds them. Not only does she find them, but she knows exactly how we ought to be using them. Hopefully we can be more successful at instilling careful use with scissors than we have been with the crayons and markers.

Update: I came home today to a report that Xandra had decided it was time for her to have a haircut. She snipped a small piece about two inches long from the side of her face. I guess we weren't so success with that whole "careful use" thing. We're giving up on instilling carefulness in our children. The scissors are now hidden away until she's 16. It'll be a big year for her, she'll get to play with scissors, ride in a car without a car seat, and be given a license to operate a motor vehicle.

The Hood

It seems our neighborhood is being overrun by troubled youth:

I found these two standing at the end of my driveway a few weeks ago. I'm not sure what they were doing, but they had to be up to no good. Just look at them, hoods up, bling around their necks...clearly troublemakers.

In Farmer Joe's Garden: The It's November and Stuff's Still Growing Edition

Am I the only one that finds it strange that we are bringing produce from the garden into our home in mid-November? Joe has slowly been bringing the last of the crops in this week. The weather has turned colder and it appears that the end of the growing season is finally here.

This morning he came in with four beautiful green peppers. With more time they would have turned red, but they still made delicious stuffed peppers for dinner.

This weekend he brought in the last of the hubbard squash - some small, green and warty, and others large and pumpkin-orange.

The pumpkin crop was plentiful in numbers, but small in size. We only had one baking pumpkin survive. We'll see how it tastes in some bread and pie in a few weeks.

Another pumpkin of note is the one wedged in our trellis in the backyard. It has literally grown itself into the trellis. I'm not sure what measures Farmer Joe will take to remove it from the trellis, but it's sure to be interesting.

He's already at work on next year's garden as we recently purchased some different varieties of baking pumpkins at a Pumpkin Patch. We've already been enjoying the pumpkin in a variety of ways. We'll see how the seeds hold up through the winter and spring.

The final analysis from this years' garden is a mixed bag. We enjoyed a TON of good produce from the garden. Lots of tomatoes (some are in my freezer now), lettuce, carrots, green beans, field pumpkins, and two varieities of squash. We would have had a good amount of spinach, but I'm pretty sure some Farmer pulled up the spinach seedlings before they could have a fair chance. A few plants did survive and produced delicious spinach.

In addition to small field pumpkins, we seem to have a few other problem areas: slugs in the lettuce, only a few peppers despite several plants and lot of babying, cucumbers have not done as well as we'd hoped, two varieties of peas over two summers have produced almost no peas, and melons and baking pumpkins were also limited in production.

Herb growing has not gone well, either. It seems the person responsible for the herbs has a habit of planting the seeds in early spring, and then forgetting about the herbs until July. When she finally makes her way out to check on her herbs, all she can find is a weed patch where her herbs were supposed to have been. Curious, very curious.

Farmer Joe will have the winter to scratch his head over what's in store for next year. While he plots, we'll still be enjoying some squash and tomatoes from the freezer in our soups and stews. Aliyah is working on the last of the pureed carrots and soon we'll get to work on cooking up the pumpkins. Before we can start on the pumpkins, however, we'll spend a weekend or two raking the 1,000,000 leaves in the yard and finding places to composte them. One thing is for sure, if Farmer Joe could grow produce like our trees grow and shed leaves, he could quit his day job and we'd be in business. Until then, I'm off to find a rake.