Garden Tales

Because I was 7 months pregnant during planting season, I haven't put much effort into the garden this year. John has been pruning the blackberry and raspberry canes and gathering a bumper crop of berries, but I've hardly set foot in our little plot this year.

Elias, on the other hand, loves going outside with Daddy to help pick berries. He gets his own cup (a quart-sized yogurt container), but it usually ends up on the ground, empty, as Elias claws his way through the overgrown berry patch ("the woods", in Eliasese) stuffing raspberries in his mouth. We also have a small strawberry patch this year which has only had a few berries. I made the mistake of pointing out an immature strawberry on one of the plants to Elias, and he snuck over, picked it and popped the white fruit in his mouth, declaring that it tasted "yummy". Since that incident, John has been particularly watchful when Elias gets too close to the strawberry plants, warning him sternly DO NOT PICK THE BERRIES. So Elias just leans over and bites the ends of the berries off without actually removing them from the plants. He's either very naughty or overly literal, you decide.

But back to our neglected garden. Luckily my mom was here during June and July and couldn't stand to see the ground lying fallow, so she went out and threw some seeds down. You've already seen the 10 foot tall sunflowers she planted (did I mention my mom's green thumb is about the size of the Statue of Liberty's?).

While she was here, she planted some watermelon seeds, which of course sprouted and spread vines prodigiously. As of this past weekend, we had about 5 or 6 little melons growing. One had reached about 8 inches in diameter, which is the appropriate size for a mature Sugar Baby watermelon. The melon sounded wonderfully hollow when thumped, and though the tendril nearest the melon hadn't dried up (a secondary sign of ripeness), we decided it was time for the harvest.

Grandpa John - in Pennsylvania with Grandma Linda for a weekend visit - helped Elias carry it back to the house and into the kitchen:

Elias was so excited to have fresh watermelon, he ran into the dining room and climbed up into his booster seat to await his bounty. Alas, we cut the melon open and found the flesh was still a milky white, with only a hint of red around the seeds:

Because Elias was still waiting patiently for his melon, I had no choice but to cut a piece of the unripe melon and serve it to him. He bit into it and made a funny face that was a cross between disgust and betrayal - "This isn't watermelon," he spat, putting it down on his placemat. While I could've disagreed with him on technical grounds, I apologized and we went to play with his trains.

new photos

Some new photos of the kids are up. Be sure to check out our 10 foot tall sunflowers!

Our Boring Week

Not much of note to write about this week, but here's a summary of what the kids were up to.

Elias had school again on Tuesday. Despite having to run the gauntlet of crying children clinging to their parents in the hallway leading to the classroom door (apparently not everyone has adjusted as well as he has), he went in cheerfully and willingly, and didn't even ask to ride the schoolbus on the way home.

On Wednesday the three of us went to Longwood Gardens to see the awesome garden railway set up there each fall. Before we reached the trains, we meandered through the gardens. As we got close, I asked Elias if he could hear the noise. He stopped his incessant chattering long enough to hear the distant "chug chug chug" and a long, low "Woooooooo Hoooooooo". He yelled "Engines!" and scrambled off to find them. It was an excellent display, with a circus train carrying all kinds of animals, a passenger train (which Elias decided was the express, or "press" in Elias-speak), an engine hauling hopper cars full of coal, and even Thomas the Tank Engine pulling Annie and Claribel. He spent a full hour circling the display, pointing and laughing. Immediately after that, I spent close to a full hour trying to wrestle a screaming, crying Elias back to the car so we could go home and eat lunch.

School again on Thursday, at which he made his second art project, and his very first using glue!

Showing his artwork to daddy and Graham:


Masterpiece #2:


Saturday was the start of the new session of swimming classes at the Y. Elias's passion for swimming runs hot and cold - though he's usually excited about it before we leave the house, once he's in the water with daddy he's not always so enthusiastic. Saturday, though, was a good day - he kicked his feet, reached his arms out to paddle, & even blew bubbles. He still would not put his head under the water, despite his teacher's best efforts. She held a pole for him to climb, the idea being that he would slide back down the pole and dunk his head under the water. He eagerly scrambled up the pole, but then waited for daddy to lift him off. Oh well. He ended his trip to the Y with one of the Amish-made oatmeal whoopie pies we buy during the summer when the West Chester Grower's Market is open.

While Elias does all this fun stuff, Graham tags along, usually strapped to mommy in a baby carrier. While Elias was in school Graham did two 2 mile walks around the Y's indoor track. He also enjoyed the sights and sounds at Longwood Gardens, and he went to the growers market and helped pick out vegetables. While he starts out each trip with his eyes wide open taking everything in with interest, after a few minutes of walking, he invariably falls asleep.

Graham Update

Elias seems to be getting most of the attention here (which is natural, as he's much louder than Graham and awake for more hours of the day), so I thought I should give a little update on what Graham has been doing lately.

He's been smiling for a few weeks now, since he was about 8 weeks old. He smiles more at strangers than at his mommy, I guess he knows she already loves him and he doesn't need to charm her any more than he already has.

He also has been making new noises (i.e., other than crying) the last few weeks.

His neck is very strong. If you hold him in a sitting position, he can hold his head up pretty well for a few minutes.

He's discovering his hands. He likes to suck on them and use them to bat at the animals hanging above his vibrating chair.

He has his nights and days sorted out, though this doesn't mean he sleeps through the night. I feed him when I go to sleep around 10:30 and when I wake up around 6:30, and he wakes me up once during the night to eat.

He loves his nightly bath and spends the time kicking and waving his arms, splashing and pushing his feet against the end of the baby tub to lift his body up out of the water. I think if he were capable of laughter, he would be giggling uncontrollably through the whole thing.

Another Reason to Watch PBS

Today Elias, Graham and I were sitting in the family room watching the movie Thunderbirds on TV. Actually, Elias was the only one watching the movie - I was watching Graham, and Graham was watching something on the ceiling.

Elias was happily chattering along with the movie - "Monorail!", "3-2-1, Blastoff! Blastoff!", "Rocket ship!" etc. During one of the commercial breaks, his carefree chatter was suddenly interrupted by a howl of dismay. I looked at him. His mouth was frozen into a exaggerated frown, his eyes were huge, and tears were running down his cheeks. He was repeating something over and over, it was nearly unintelligible but sounded like, "I didn't mean to crash into it. I'm sorry, I'm sorry"

At first I thought he had hurt himself, but the cries were low and guttural, not like his high-pitched pain cries, or even his phony tantrum cries. He was still staring at the TV, so I realized it must've been something he saw in one of the commercials. Luckily, we have TiVo, so I rewound through a couple of ads. One had elves in it (a la Tolkein, not Keebler), and he didn't seem too bothered by that. Neither did a Best Buy commercial phase him. But in the middle of a Pillsbury Toaster Strudel spot, he began sobbing with renewed despair. I rewound to the beginning of the commercial and watched as the Pillsbury Dough Boy was launched from a wooden spatula up into the air. He flew across a kitchen and crashed into a pile of pop tarts built up like a house of cards, knocking them down. Elias howled again upon impact.

My poor sensitive child. I rewound the commercial to the moment just before the house of pop tarts was destroyed and froze the image. "Look, Elias. They built it back up again, its ok!" He sniffed and looked unconvinced. But he seemed to momentarily forget his trauma, and before he noticed the Pillsbury Dough Boy suspended in mid-flight inches away from the pop tarts, I rewound the movie to a scene with a monorail car and lots of rocket ships.

Schoolbus Tied To A Stick

At "school" today, the kids drank water out of cups (not sippies or straw bottles, but honest to goodness cups) and listened to a story about crocodiles (if Elias is to be believed). They also made their first craft project.

Here is Elias proudly showing off his masterpiece:


Here is a closeup. He calls it... "Schoolbus Tied to a Stick"

Graham's Two-Month Checkup

Graham went to see the doctor today for this month's checkup.

Here are his stats:

Weight: 11 lb, 10 oz (47th percentile)
Height: 23.25" (61st percentile)

He was 10 lb, 2 oz and 22.5" at one month, and 7 lb, 10 oz and 21" at birth.

For comparison, at two months, Elias was 12 lb, 1 oz and 23.25" long.

whispering

Near the end of his bath tonight, Elias started whispering.

"Goose is barking."

"He is? I don't hear him."

"Be quiet. He's barking."

"Oh."

The rest of his bath and all before bedtime, he barely spoke above a whisper. While he put on his PJs, we pretended that Graham was sleeping and we had to be quiet, and while we read books I whispered the words to him while he mumbled to himself. He didn't even cry out when it was time to turn out the lights. It was a very nice, quiet way to end the day.

bad parenting 101

Well, maybe not, but we have slipped carelessly into the oft foretold Valley of Second Child Neglect. In the soft sense, anyway.

Let me clarify: Yesterday was Graham's two month birthday. This was announced in our house but followed with no fanfare or celebration, not even a photograph or a lame blog post. Poor Grahammy.

Anyway, in belated celebration, this is the aforementioned lame blog post, and here are five recent photographs of Graham, including three from this evening. Elias muscled his way into two of them, but he is easy to ignore if you squint your eyes just so.

First Day of School

Today was the day - Elias's first day of school! Actually, it's only a pre-preschool program at the local Y. Introduction to Preschool I, as it's formally known, is a twice weekly, hour long class during which two teachers lead a group of 15 two-year olds in songs, games, stories, and craft projects... all without mommy or daddy in the room. Like most of the other kids, this would be Elias's first time in a somewhat structured classroom setting without a parent in sight.

It did not start out very well. Elias, who is getting his two-year molars and as a result has been extra crabby lately, refused to cooperate in getting dressed this morning. I tried to cajole him with promises that he would be "going to school, " but this only resulted in him screaming the entire car ride to the Y, "I want to ride in a school bus!" Graham was happy to join in from his carseat with hysterical cries of his own.

When we got to his classroom at the Y, some of the other kids were milling around, reading books or playing with toys and puzzles. One girl was hiding under a table screeching. Which example would Elias follow? Luckily, a blond teacher named Miss Liz quickly pounced on him, asked him if he liked to read, and handed him a book about robot cats. He sat down, started reading, and I slipped away.

A few minutes before the hour was up, I sneaked up to the classroom and spied on him through the window in the door, along with a half dozen other apprehensive parents all peeking in to see how their own kids were doing. Elias was happily sitting at a table eating cookies. When he was done with his snack, he got up, walked over to a shelf, pulled out a truck and started playing, all with the casual confidence of someone who had been in this classroom a hundred times before.

When class time ended the teachers opened the door, and amid joyful cries of "Mommy!!", a gaggle of relieved kids poured out of the room back into the waiting arms of their mothers. I waited for a bit, but Elias did not appear. I stepped into the near-empty room and found him playing at a toy kitchen set-up, moving plastic grapes around with a spatula.

"C'mon, Elias, its time to go"
"No!"
"You can come back on Thursday"
"No! I'm cooking!!"

Finally, with the teachers' help, I was able to coax him out of the room. Of course he screamed the whole way home, "I want to go backwards! I want to cook!" and again Graham joined it. I'm happy it all went so well.

Welcome!

This is it, my first foray into blogging. I'm just going to be posting the little, seemingly unimportant things that go on in Elias and Graham's lives... and occasionally the big happenings as they occur... Still, even the major events will be things that only grandparents and other close relatives might be interested in. I hope you enjoy!