TWENTY-THREE

Helping Mama and Papa shell fava beans for soup. This soup. It is one of my favorites and worth the effort of shelling fava beans. But it's not really effort when we're all at the table talking and working together, right?

 2016 week twenty-three

We're settling into summer by making pounds and pounds of jam. I can't be stopped. I also cannot jam without listening to Little House books. It's probably impossible. Those two activities combine in a cinnamony warm cosy feeling of putting up stores for the winter. I think of every moment in books where the people put up food. I think of Anne making preserves with Marilla. I wipe my forehead and imagine Meg in her blistering hot kitchen trying to be domestic putting up preserves when her husband suddenly drops in with a colleague for dinner. I see Ma making hulled corn and head cheese. And I ache for the mountain of stewed pumpkin followed but crisp apple pie slices and a night cap of popcorn and milk like Almanzo. These are my favorite moments, and my favorite feelings, and my favorite fizzly crinkly happiness in my heart of taking the bounty and turning it into little jewel tone jars that fill my cabinets. It's the happiness of being able to just grab a jar of fresh blueberry jam and giving it to a friend on her way out the door. It's the smell of cloves and nectarines and the sweetness of my baby girl's sticky cheeks begging for one more apricot and one more tomato with her lunch. It's the unfolding of the beautiful summer of perfect fruits bursting with juice and sweetness. Every season is my favorite in it's peak of beauty, and summer's peak has only just begun.

Frida got one of Vera's socks and was circling the blanket with it streaming like a banner behind her while Vera screamed in fruitless protest.

Theo desperately wants the dogs chew toys. He found her little antler (that she hates) and happily gagged himself for several minutes. 

Theo's first bike ride! He was so excited but quickly changed his tune when a huge fire engine roared passed.

V helping me feed Theo while I fixed her lunch. She took more bites of his sweet potato than she fed him. She would just stick the spoon in his mouth and pull it out full of food and pop it into her own mouth. 

Sticky watermelon lunch outside.

Whenever he was between pieces, his delicious double chin would stick to his watermelon glazed chest. Poor boy is going to have a complex, I can't help but coo about how handsome he is at all times.

Handsome boy is TROUBLE though. He screams through all diaper changes bucking and banging his head against the ground twisting and trying to crawl away. He knocks over every basket/bucket/bowl/box and empties it's contents. He splashes in the dogs water bowl and steals her chew toys. He barrels into anything sister is building with blocks and kicks and bucks if you try to make him sit on anything (highchair, lap, bath tub, bumbo, toilet. etc) He spins in his sleep and finds at least 8 different positions at night (I love to sneak in and check on them). He sticks his legs through the bars of his crib and just pounds and kicks the walls laughing and shrieking. He is a different breed than Vera, this much is clear.

Few things are truly perfect. This is fine. This makes them so longingly special. A perfect fruit or dinner or dessert or dress or song or book or poem illuminate the moment and make it worth remembering. Few things are so achingly perfect you feel close to tears. I'm about to tell you about a steak. A steak I didn't eat and didn't buy (anyone have an extra $140?) a steak I didn't even touch. Just a steak I looked at through a butcher market glass display case. Some people might find this gross. I was looking at a raw piece of meat. But the meat was the finest quality, the most perfectly cut. It could have been painted. It was just one of those things that was perfect. For a steak, it was a perfect one, so whatever your thoughts on raw meat or meat consumption, we can all appreciate the perfection even if it's not to our taste. The butter colored veins of perfectly marbled fat drew my eye instantly. The butcher laughed and said, "I know what you're looking at." It sounded less like Galadriel's "I know what it is you saw," but we had the same almost magical mental connection. He knew it was perfect, he knew I knew it was perfect and he pulled it out just so the two of us could admire it and talk about it.  He knew I wasn't buying it. But we looked at the steak, admired the thickness and light pink color (because of all the marbling) and I sighed and said it almost brought me to tears.  He said, he knew exactly how I felt. Of course he did. Perfect things can do that to you, no matter what it is.

Brown bug in her new swimming pool. 

Second bike ride this week to a secret park, this time not so horrible to Theodore.

Our local Chick fil-A had a stuffed animal sleepover. Vera brought Glam and Wild Cat and they jumped in the bounce house, read books for story time, then she tucked her animals into bed and got milk and cookies and a decorated pillow case that she insisted upon sleeping in that night. The next morning we went to pick up her animals and there were photos of all the fun things the animals did all night: watched a movie, ate chick fil-a for dinner, did make up, told scary stories, tp-ed the play area, cleaned the tables, etc. V thought it was magical. 

Her favorite part was the "Person Cow." She kept asking all about him. And when he wasn't there in the morning she was really disappointed. She just wanted to give him more high fives and hugs. I didn't even hint at any reason that she should be nervous about a person in a huge costume and she saw nothing odd about it. Me at three though would have been out of my mind freaked out about a person in a huge cow costume. She however just said, "When I get bigger I can wear the cow costume and then I CAN BE THE PERSON COW!" Then she played dress up as a cow princess for the rest of the day. 

Quotes

V found a yellow stain on a towel, "This towel has sunshine on it!"

V- For your birthday I will push out a poop on your head.
Me -I will not like that.
V-Then I will shoot poop at you.
Me- That's gross. I will not like that.
V- Ok. I'll just shoot pee at you.

"I'm making my bed, at this point, ever." It's cute how she combines as many adverbial phrases of time (I had to look up what this was called) as she can think of at a given moment. The more the better, right?

"I use seal arms off an on."

She picked a flower on a walk and it started wilting rather quickly. She was sad about it and said, "I just don't like it when my flower melts."

She thinks it's called "The North Pool." She likes to pretend to go there. "Look, I'm swimming in the North Pool!"

She likes to use made up gibberish words and give them really long definitions.
V- You are the mama of Ishmael.
Me- What does that mean?
V- It means Ishamael is diarrhea after you wake up from nap but you need to use the toilet before snack.
Me -I'm the mama of diarrhea?
V- Yes.

"Wild cat is so scary but she cant destroy us because she's pretend."

"That girl was such a big kid. Her legs were SUPER long!"

"I'm growing so well. Look at these long legs and long arms. I'm getting so bigger."

She calls the grass her garden or her plants. When she was playing in the pool she was watering the grass with a cup. "Looks like they're growing so well, Mama."

"The flies and the bugs are all sisters to me. That is why they are so nice to me. Here fly friend! Where are you? Come here my fly friends!"