My life with 3 rambunctious boys (4 if you count my husband), a crazy dog who eats anything she can reach, and more legos than I can count.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
QOTD
*I had to cut Preston off from eating grapes because I was afraid he was going to make himself sick, so that was the "logic" behind that portion of it. He spends many hours contemplating the extinction of dinosaurs!
My weekend
This weekend I had my first solo canning session. I've helped my mom can countless times (probably ever summer from the time I could help until I got married, and then a few times after that as well!), but this was my first time actually doing it without help. Turns out, it's a bit more difficult to do the whole process alone. Who knew?! It could've been slightly complicated by the fact that I was attempting to juggle 3 boys as well (or 4, considering John was home). John helped me a little, but it still seemed like a LOT of work. Either way, my pantry now has some freshly canned green beans and peaches in it! I'm hoping to do some more green beans since the boys LOVE green beans, some tomatoes and salsa, and possibly some other kinds of beans - we'll see how ambitious I am.
My main motivation for canning started when I read that BPA leaches into canned tomatoes quite a bit due to the acidic nature of the tomatoes. Totally logical, but it never really occurred to me that there would be higher amounts of BPA in tomatoes than other canned items. We eat a TON of canned diced tomatoes as well as tomato sauces, etc. I buy spaghetti sauce in glass jars, but the other tomato products don't seem to be readily available in glass jars. So, I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my tomatoes hurry up and ripen before frost! We woke up to low 40's today (and a high of only 60 today!) and I'm concerned that our first frost might be right around the corner. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
Unfortunate Friday
So, the events of the day.
All 3 boys are sick. Archer started it off on Tuesday, and now they all have varying degrees of the sickness. Thankfully, Archer is mostly recovered, and the other 2 are shortly behind him. Either way, I haven't gotten sleep all week. And I don't have the luxury of sleeping through the panicked cries of "I can't breathe! I can't breathe! There is snot in my nose!" like the other parent does.
This morning I had to drag myself out of bed. I was irritated from the start (no surprise to anyone that lives - or has previously lived - with me...I need 8 hours of sleep and I haven't gotten 8 hours of sleep in WAY.TOO.LONG) and things kinda went downhill from there.
The boys ate breakfast and John went to work. I had coffee. I realized that it was not a wise decision to feed Archer peaches and toast with honey on it for breakfast. Nasty sticky mess. Jasper helped clean it up while I changed Archer's diaper. Hmmm...a small poop. I was sure there was more to come so I opted for a disposable diaper instead of cloth (yes, I try to time it so he has a disposable diaper on when he poops!). Put Archer down in the playroom to continue cleaning up breakfast.
And then I hear...
"POOP! MOM! POOP! THERE'S POOP ALL OVER!"
Of course I rush to the playroom to see what was happening, and find that Archer had in fact finished pooping...while riding on the rocking horse. Oh not good. Not good at all. Oh my goodness. Rushed Archie upstairs for a hose-down in the tub while Preston and Bryton are completely freaking out (for boys who love to play in the dirt, they are seriously poop-a-phobic). Get Archer cleaned up, cleaned the bathtub (and decided that I might as well clean the rest of the bathroom while I was at it), cleaned the changing table, and then decided that I had to tackle the horse. I took it outside to hose it down in the yard, meanwhile getting completely soaked because Jasper decided to use the hose as a chew toy and made it into a sprinkler. And it was cold today.
While I'm doing this, the boys are fighting of course, because they like to take advantage of me being covered in poop. So I'm running in and out of the house, getting soaked, and covered in poop. Argh! Got it sprayed down, scrubbed with vinegar, sprayed off again, set in the sun to dry...DONE!
Go inside, and Archer decides to take a dive off the train table onto the drawer of the table which he had pulled out to use as a ladder to climb up there in the first place. SMACK right on his head. Of course.
All of this before 8:30 am.
The rest of the day didn't go much better, but fortunately it didn't get much worse either. I was so proud because I had gotten the older boys down for a nap, did a massive amount of cleaning, and finally got Archer to sleep. I sat down to read...and...the doorbell rang. My peace and quiet shattered. 2 boys awake.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
The Garden
We have a pretty small lot (.2 acre) so we don't have a whole lot of space to work with, but here is what we have planted so far in our "permanent landscaping": hardy kiwis (2 females, 1 male), grapes (4), blueberries (10 or so?), red raspberries, black raspberries (we have 1 shoot that survived a Jasper massacre that we are currently nursing back to health), blackberries, elderberries (2), lots of strawberries, cherry bushes (3), wintergreen (ground cover), 2 semi-dwarf apple trees (Fuji and Honeycrisp), a semi-dwarf Cherry tree (Stella), a dwarf peach tree, a dwarf "fruit cocktail" tree (nectarines, peaches, plums, and apricots), and a dwarf 5-in-1 pear tree.
Our 5x5 beds, along with a couple of new beds and some containers, are reserved for the "non-permanent" items (mainly just tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini, peppers, watermelon, and pumpkin - which won't be for eating due to John's pumpkin seed allergy...but we're hoping to have a few pumpkins for the boys to carve for Halloween!). Eventually we'd like to expand our permanent items to all but the 5x5 beds and some containers. The boys love berries more than anything else (they have blueberries seriously every.single.morning with their oatmeal/granola/5 grain cereal, but they will take pretty much any other berry as an acceptable substitute!), so it makes sense to grow more of those (especially since we have an extra freezer!).
Here are a few of my favorites...these were all planted in Spring (late May or so).
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Popsicles & Friends
QOTD
"So, Bryton, how old are you going to be on your birthday?"
"THREE!" (holding up 2 fingers)
"That's only 2 fingers, silly!" (help him put up his 3rd finger) "There ya go! So how old are you going to be on your birthday?"
"This many!" (holding up 3 fingers)
"And how many is that?"
"SIX!"
Friday, August 20, 2010
Pirates!
Arrrrrrrrr!
Thursday, August 19, 2010
She couldn't wait...
This is what is left of Preston's shoe, courtesy of Jasper left outside for about 15 minutes unattended.
Come on, Jasper, couldn't you have waited another month until summer was over?!
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
QOTD
(Preston started calling me "Mom" a few months ago, and Bryton has picked it up...ugh! I'm getting OLD!)
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
This was Preston's first time down the fire pole completely unassisted! He didn't want me anywhere near him...direct quote: "Mom, go over there away from me and take my picture!"
Monday, August 16, 2010
Water
Did you know that rainwater collection is ILLEGAL in some states? Crazy. I just read this article about how certain states put restrictions on the collection of rainwater! WHAT?! How is that even possible? Apparently it is better to have all that water go to waste than to have people put it to good use in their gardens.
Ridiculous.
We have a walker
I don't think walking will make him any more mischievous though. He is a climber through and through, and does his best to keep up with his big brothers - crawling, climbing, or walking!
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Camping
Thursday, August 12, 2010
And...
It'll probably take me a while to get things set up around here, but all of my posting will be here from now on!