Green Thumb

Spring is well on its way and I have been playing in the thawed and warmed dirt. This past weekend I spent a lot of time planting flowers and working on my garden. This is the first garden I have grown by myself. My first "grow-up" garden. My dad always had a garden and I would help him, but this one is all my own. My husband built the structure for me, to keep the deer out, but the rest is all me. I used the compost I've been working on for fertilizer. My goal is to have an organic garden. I also used to organic mulch to help with weed control. I planted several variety of tomatoes, peppers, onions, peas, cucumbers, carrots, eggplant, watermelon, 2 blueberry bushes and some herbs.

Liv helped me plant the carrots, so I am starting to see them sprouting up all sorts of spots in my garden. But that's okay, my garden is not meant for beauty or order but to help feed my family and to help teach Liv about where food comes from. I'm also hoping that it will help her eat some vegetables. Tonight we had pierogies, she looked at the green peppers I sauteed with them and she said "yuck, I don't like this" She refused to even try it. I'm hoping once she sees then growing in our garden and gets to pick them right from the plant she might be more likely to try them. I find I am becoming obsessed with my garden. I have such pride in my garden and keep thinking how many wonderful meals I can make from my garden. I even checked out Balls Canning book from the library to preserve some of my harvest. I have very quickly understood why people enjoy gardening. The dirt in my fingers, digging in the earth, the physical labor, being out in the spring sun. I also love learning a new skill. Since being a SAHM I miss the intellectual stimulation from work or school.Gardening, at least for now, has seemed to fill that gap in my life. Even thought my dad gardened and even owns a garden supply store, there is so much I need to learn. First is learning how to garden organic, which is something my dad never did. But all learning how to do it myself. I usually just helped him plant, would water and then pick the harvest. But there is so much more. Crop rotations, how to fight infestation, staking and cages, planting, spacing, even learning what types of varieties there are. I really did not know that tomatoes come in a whole rainbow of colors, not just red. I'm also excited to learn more ways to cook and to save and preserve my harvest. And to taste fresh picked fruit and veggies, straight from the ground or vines. I feel very much like a homesteader or a housewife from the early 1900s, which I love. People with out gardens have no idea what they are missing.

Pee Pee in the Potty

I've been wanting to get Liv going on the potty for a while. I hate diapers and she has been getting diaper rash lately. She is not the type of child that the typical tokens work for. I've heard sticker charts, m&ms and all other sorts of behavior mod to get children to potty train.

For her I knew something very simple would motivate her. Seeing her older cousin in big girl underwear. It worked like a charm. Since their visit Liv has gone pee in the potty every time except at nap and nightime. She is still asking to poop in a diaper and I'm okay with that for now. One thing at a time. I love Liv getting to see children older and younger. With older children she can see where she is going and with younger children she can see where she has been. I think for a child her age, 2 1/2, somewhere in between baby and preschooler it is even more important since so many things are changing and she is growing up so quick. This is one reason why I would love mixed aged preschools. The ability to move around, freedom to be a baby or be with the babies if they need or to be a big kid and practice other big kid things. Since there are no preschools like this I just make an effort to have playdates with kids of different ages. Just because my friend's child is only 18months doesn't mean Liv can not play with her. I have a harder time finding older children since I'm one of the first on my friends to have children, but she does have 2 cousins, one a few months older. I often played with my younger cousins. I think it helped prepare me for being a mom. I also played with my older cousins, but being boys they taught me more about sports and being able to take some teasing. These things helped shape me helped me learn. Big girl underwear, seeing Lily wearing them was all the motivation Liv needed.Sometimes peer pressure can be good. She wants to get wear underwear too. So Liv understands that to wear them she needs to pee in the potty. Simple and yet it works. Nothing else worked before this. I didn't push any other methods too far, since with each of them she pushed back very hard so I just let potty training go for a bit. I'm hoping we keep peeing and eventually pooping in the potty. 1 in diapers is a little easier on my budget then 2.

Screen Free Week

This week is Screen Free Week, a week were you are supposed to turn off your tv, computer, and now the apps and anything else your smartphone can do other then call or text. It is supposed to get kids and adults to do other things. As you can see being online I am not participating. I don't think many people are since this is the first year since its start I have not seen is publicized much. Maybe with all the apps and smartphones we have gone to far for screen free?

While in theory I think it is a great idea one week of taking the screen away isn't going to help if rules are not set about electronics. Most people will go right back to being a tv addict, using their "crackberry" all day long or playing in an ipad any downtime they get. I am pretty anti-tv, but I do let Liv watch some tv. PBS shows are usually what I will put on. I find them simple and informative. And often I will use ideas on some shows for learning at home. Last week we watched a Curious George were he planted carrots and had a hard time waiting for them to grow. We just happened to plant carrots several days before and Liv had not been impressed with our garden so far. But after watching this George it lit a little fire in her. Seeing what will happen over the course of months in a 15 minute show helped her realize that those seeds will be carrots one day. She now get very excited to water the garden and check on our slowly growing vegetables. I really enjoy doing outdoor learning at this age so I often find Curious George and the Cat in the Hat Knows A lot About That are often about nature and will get Liv excited to do more outdoor activities like gardening, feeding birds, picking weeds, composting and other things that usually might be too "boring" or slow moving for a toddler. She learns a little from the show and I re-enforce the learning with actives and expand on it. For a toddler just turning off the tv for a week will not teach her anything about how tv and the internet can be addictive and a huge drain, but placing limits now will help teach her that so hopefully we won't feel the need for screen-free weeks. The APA recommends no more then 2 hours of tv and it is a rare day we even reach that. Some days we watch none and at the higher end we will watch an hour or so. I feel its all about balance. PBS doesn't have commercials for toys or fast food, which for me its the commercials that bother me most about children's programming. Young children are so impressionable at this age. They can not tell the difference often from where the show ends and the commercials begin. This is another reason why I love just getting DVDs from the library. Liv has been asking for Dora. Sad part she realized Dora is a cartoon from seeing her on swim diapers. She asked to watch the girl on her diapers. Commercialism at its best. My 2 year old knows that if its on a diaper its probably a show on tv. So to satisfy her Dora fix I get a Dora dvd from the library so I won't subject her to more commercials on Nick. Props to those who are going screen-free, and then you are probably not reading this anyway. I will keep my tv on, just turned to channel 13 for an hour a day :)

Chalk Art

The Easter Bunny took Liv's binkies and left some wonderful gifts in return. The transition to life with out the binkies has been challenging but I'm am glad to say she is sleep okay with out them. We have some nights and naps that are not great, but it seems to be getting easier. One of the gifts the Easter bunny left was a small chalkboard with colored chalk. This has been a great source of entertainment for Liv and its great for learning. She loves coloring with it, drawing and also cleaning it. I have to say I really forgot how nice it is to color with chalk. There is something so easy about it I enjoy playing with it too.

Liv often tells me things to draw. She learns a lot from observing. She usually doesn't jump into things or just try she watches and watches over and over again till in her mind she thinks she has it then she tries it, usually with great success too. I was not to found of drawing with crayons on paper so it is nice now that I can enjoy drawing while she studies my techniques, or lack there of. But I guess it really doesn't matter much to a 2 year old. She is still working on drawing simple shapes so her watching me draw the sun or moon is teaching her about circles. She also watches me to see how I hold the chalk. Once she gets shapes down better I am planning on using a Montessori method for teaching her how to write her letters. I plan to make sandpaper cut outs of the letters and she can use those to copy the letter on the chalkboard. I am not one to push learning on my young child so I don't think we will start this till the fall, if I think she is ready now. But we do work on letter identification now. I will draw letter and she names them. For the most part our chalkboard is used for art but it amazes me how something so simple could be such a great source of learning for her. Simple really seems to be best when it comes to learning for children and most enjoyable.

For the Birds

Over the winter I sat down and tried to make up a preschool syllabus for Liv. I am not sure if she will ever attend preschool so I wanted to start homeschooling at home. But after working on it for a few months I stopped. Liv is 2 1/2, which around where I live is probably the average age kids go in to preschool. I am not a huge fan of this, especially if it is an academic preschool. I don't think young children are made to sit around and be taught at. They need to experience life, learn with their hands and hearts. So I've been doing an unschooling approach for preschool so far. I just try to "teach" Liv things she is showing interest in. Recently it has been birds.

She was asking me what type of bird that was one day. Luckily I knew it was a blue jay, but there was so much I didn't know so I though what a perfect way to teach her about natures, categorizing, her colors and so many other skills that I probably don't realize. So the first thing I did was go to the library and get a bunch of books about birds, bird watching and how to attract birds to your yard. Blue jays are blue, cardinals are red, Baltimore orioles are orange and black. We spot these birds in our backyard almost daily and I go over their colors with her. We put out different feeders and seeds for different birds. She is learning which birds eat seeds, and how other like suet. We watch robins in our lawn pulling worms all day. Today we sat in our bathroom and spied on a cardinal singing for a mate. In addition to learning bird calls and how they attract each other she is learning how to be quiet and patient while watching these birds. Teaching a 2 year old to whisper and be still is hard, but when the motivation is watching a beautiful bird she does much better. Sometimes we listen to bird calls in the car. She loves it. She is learning all different types of birds, about the seasons, where they live, what they eat, what songs the sing, how baby birds come to be, about migration and so much more. So of this goes over her little head, but I know she is absorbing so much from just watching the birds and looking at the books with me. This also keeps us outdoors. We will go out and fill the bird feeders every couple of days so she is gaining a sense of responsibility too. This is just one thing I have been doing with her, but right now it takes a large part of our "schooling" since the birds are flocking to our yard and we often just stop and sit to watch them. She really enjoys looking through the bird books too. I love watching her get all excited about learning and wanting to know more. I hope this helps instill a life long love of learning. We are also working on a garden, but it is very early in the season for to be taking up too much time of our day. We have a nice weekly routine of activities but when ever we have nothing to do or a empty spot in our day I go to my some of my unschooling ideas to keep us occupied in a fun way.

6 months is enough

My newborn is no longer a newborn anymore.

In way you look at it 6 months is way out of the newborn stage, yet in many ways I feel I have been slacking like I'm still dealing with a newborn. I still take naps most days (with Ev) my excuse has been well she is not sleeping through the night. I am often in sweats, partly because I still need to lose some weight so I have a limited amount of clothes. Our routine is lacking, the tv is on more then I like, meals are done on the fly and I just feel like a general slacker. I decided 6 months is enough. Today Eve is 7 months so for about 2 weeks I've changed things up and am slowly starting to get back into a routine. I'm not jumping in head first, I'm slowing adding things back into our days and week to get us motivated, keep us happy and productive. The first thing I have done is eliminated my morning tv time. It just started the day off wrong. When Eve was waking several time I needed to sit and watch some morning news, that would role into some tv time for Liv then aroun 930 10 our day would start. We were still in our pjs and got nothing done. I've got Eve sleeping better and am trying to go to bed earlier so now its breakfast then right upstairs to get dressed. Some days I will let myself be in sweats, but I'm trying to limit that too. Its not possible 100% since I still don't fit in lots of my clothes, but I'm getting there. 10 more lbs and some toning and I will be at pre-baby weight. That is another reason why I wanted to get back into a routine. To fit in exercise time. On nice mornings I get everyone dressed and we go out for a walk while Eve naps in the Ergo. For our week we are now doing: Monday-market, grocery shopping in the morning afternoon-free Tuesday-storytime in the morning at a local library, then park afterwards if nice afternoons-free Wednesday-laundry day, outdoors garden day Thursday- cleaning day/errand day Friday-playdate, park day Sat-free Sunday-church I am trying to incorporate some more activities in our day so we don't depend on the tv anymore. I would love to get tv time back down to 1/2hour. Some days we are as high as 2 hours, most closer to 1. Right now Liv is loving birds so its taking up lots of our time. We bird watch, listen to bird calls in the car, identify birds from books, make sure there is food for them and try to listen to bird calls while outside. I'm trying to get some of myself back. Dressing nice, doing my hair or make up daily, knitting or reading in the evenings, yoga and pilates some nights to help get back in shape. I think 6 months is enough time and time to move on out of being all about the new baby. Spring is here so its the perfect time to refresh and get back to living life the way we enjoy.

St Patrick's Day

I just love St. Patrick's Day. I worked at an Irish pub for years and even though it was a crazy busy day it was filled with good food, good friends, dancing and music. Now with young children I plan to keep some of our Irish heritage alive on this day. In the morning I will start an Irish stew in the crock pot for dinner. We will also make Irish soda bread to have with dinner. Then on to some crafting. Since Liv is only 2 we will just do the simple craft of dipping a pepper in green paint to make shamrocks. When they are older I will explain who St. Patrick was and how the shamrock is often shown to explain how the Trinity works, 3 leafs but really it is all one. There is so much history behind the story of St. Patrick, but much of this will go over their heads. Right now I just explain how St. Patrick was a very important person in Ireland because he led so many people to believe in Jesus. We will listen to some Irish music and sing some old songs. I will also show Liv how to do the Irish jig. I may also let her watch some of the St. Patrick's Day parade. Hopefully one day we will go get to go see it. I did in my younger days, but being 22 I was doing it more for the drink then the entertainment. When they are older I plan to take them out to some places that have Irish step dancing and bag pipers, but at their young age it is just too much for them right now. At night when they are asleep I will enjoy a drink with my husband. Happy St. Patricks Day!