Fresh Air = Happy Baby

When Eddy was a newborn, she wasn't very human-like. She was more along the lines of a puppy, but even more helpless. Of course, having never given birth or reared said human-puppy before, I really didn't know what to expect as far as when she would start acting more humanoid, or what her preferences in life would be, or what baby development even looked like.

When we were preparing for her arrival, we got the standard things like toys, clothes, some furniture, etc. There were a few items that we acquired not really knowing how important they would be in Eddy's early life. Here are the top 5:

1) High Contrast Picture Cards - I had heard that babies like super contrasty black and white drawings because that's all their little eyes and brains can process in the bright outside world in the very beginning. Well, they're right. Eddy has been pretty enthralled by them since a few days into her life and continues to be over 4 months later. Awesome.

2) Books - I am an educator/teacher. So naturally, my child will have an extensive library. But I used to think, come on, how much can an infant enjoy a book? A lot, it turns out. I've been reading to her for a couple months now and she really enjoys the pictures and, I think, our voices reading aloud. She's even now started reaching out to touch the pictures. So. Damn. Cute.

3) Hanging Toys - We got an infant/toddler chair that vibrates thinking it would help with naps. It has, to an extent, but it has now morphed into a piece of entertainment more than anything else. See, it came with a bar of hanging plastic thingies, one of which is an elephant that sings a little song when pulled. At first, even though they were hanging IN HER FACE, she didn't even notice them. Then about 2 months ago, that completely changed. Her eyes discovered them first, and she's steadily been working to grab them ever since. She has just started being able to pull the elephant and start the song herself, which pleases her greatly. We also have another toy that's a bar with a koala and butterfly that just hangs over her while she's laying down which is pretty cool too. So, in conclusion, hanging toys are awesome. Who knew?

4) Crinkly Tag Blankets - A friend and coworker of mine so generously gave me one of these for Christmas. I had never heard of them before but after I opened it I was informed about how amazing they were. I shrugged and took their word for it. I think we have yet to see its full potential, but this is definitely one of Eddy's favorite things. She likes rubbing it on her face and feeling the crinkles in her mouth. Once again, adorbs.

5) NATURE - This one makes my heart swell with pride with feelings of "that's my girl!" Eddy does not like to be cooped up in the house all day. Though the sun tends to be a little bright for her, she really likes being outside. She will sit on our laps for quite a while, content to feel the breeze on her face and watch the tree branches blowing around or listen to the birds do their thing. We have started spending about a half an hour to an hour each afternoon swinging on our front porch waiting for Shawn to get home. Any fussiness can generally be cured by a little jaunt outside. She really likes going on walks too. I salivate thinking about all the different nature adventures we're going to go on.

Babies. They're fascinating, aren't they?

Here comes the cuteness!

She loves sucking on that toucan.

Hanging out outside on 4th of July.

Major giggles for Bubba.

Food-Saving Challenge: Lessons Learned

For Earth Day I embarked on a personal challenge to live the next 30 days without wasting any food. I made some rules for myself to make it a little easier, but to also make it clear what my goal was.

In the name of saving food I did some new things that I would not have done before:

* Eat a bag of super stale crackers.

* Eat a super mealy pear (gross)

* Eat the stem of a super old broccolli but give the yellowed bud portions to the chickens

Another thing I did that I thought was pretty genious was to put some old stale cereal on a baking sheet and throw it into a recently-used oven to "freshen up." Just about 10 minutes in a not-very-hot oven will make any stale cereal edible again. Pretty cool, huh?

Things were going pretty well with the challenge until my grandma came into town. Naturally, this threw our usual daily routine out the window and we found ourselves eating dinner away from the house a lot more than usual. This resulted in leftovers in the fridge being forgotten, and extra food collecting faster than we could eat it. Things have been better since, though, and I've just come to the conclusion that not wasting any food is really hard, but a goal that we should all strive for at all times.

In other news, my garden is totes awesome this year. We've finished the first round of spinach and snow peas, and I finally got around to planting the second round of peas yesterday. The ladies are really enjoying the flowering spinach stalks that I throw into their coop each day, along with the failed (bolted) bok choy and carrot tops. Speaking of which, I've been having fun with my carrots this year. My seeds were from two seasons ago so I didn't know how viable they were. So, since I felt I had nothing to lose, I just dumped them into the soil, thinking the germination rate would be lower. It wasn't. I have a carrot forest now, that I've been thinning slowly over the last few weeks. It's better than if I had thinned when they were seedlings because now I'm getting a bunch of little carrots to eat, plus plenty of greens for the ladies. I've always struggled with the idea of killing baby plants, and now I don't have to do that anymore. :)

Oh, and I HATE aphids. Jerks.

I know this was kind of a sad excuse for a post. Better ones to come shortly. Thanks for your patience.