Cruisin’ for a Bluesin’

yeah, the titles are the favorite part of the post for me…We headed up to Tawas on Saturday to catch Leroy McCray at the Tawas Blues Festival.  I thought he was great – more of a rock-style blues, probably akin to a little Lynyrd Skynyrd or Stevie Ray Vaughn.  They wrapped up around 10:30 so we went out with Grant, Amy, and the Shminas to grab some pizza and chat before calling it a night.  I’m glad we went and Sophie got to spend some quality time with her Nana!

Sophie’s been a little clingy lately – I think because of the teeth.  I’m not sure, but it seems like she’s trying to get all 4 top front teeth at once.  She got her left one that’s just left of middle and it looks like the opposite one is getting close but her right middle one might come in first.  All in all, it makes for an inconsistent little baby.

Not much is new around here.  Tom built some nice shelves for the basement so I finished organizing some stuff down there…now I just need to bring some more stuff back from Mom’s…

Garden is going well – in spite of the fact that we had about 5 days of summer.  I’m not complaining too much, I actually enjoy fall weather, but part of the reason I like Michigan is that it usually gives me just enough of summer or winter to make me sick of it and then I look forward to the next season…not so much this year.

Sophie is still working on her army crawl…actually, she only works on it if there is something forbidden out of reach so when I want her to show off her skills I just put a remote or phone just out of reach and watch her go for it.  She might actually be saying DaDa and DaoDao (dog?) because she does make those sounds when Tom or Zeke come around.  Or maybe that’s just her excited sound.

The start of school is just around the corner and it doesn’t look like there’s going to be any openings (but I sort of expected that I guess).  Another year of subbing is not very appealing, but what choice do I have?  I know things will turn around eventually, but I really do wish I could get into my own classroom.

Scoot scoot scoot

Well, the days of the immobile baby are fast drawing to a close!  Sophie is able to get up on knees and elbows and rock (and usually get one good push forward but hasn’t figured out to move the arms) – once she makes the initial push she resorts to army crawl.  She doesn’t go far yet, just far enough to grab whatever toy was previously out of reach.  So my big plan for the weekend?  Moving the shelf into the bedroom, the chemicals into the hall closet, and basically crawling around my house to see what else is going to be a problem!

I had other things I wanted to write about but for whatever reason my brain just went dead today.  Maybe it’s the weather, not sure really.

I need to load more pictures up and maybe some video too if I get ambitious…but that will probably wait until next time.

Oh!  I remember one of the things:  canning is going good and we expect tomatoes soon (that is if we could have a little bit of summer and don’t jump right into fall) so we’ll be even busier but we’re running out of pint jars so if you or anyone you know would like to donate your unused and unwanted glass pint jars, we’d gladly take them off of your hands!

OK, that’s about it for writing motivation at the moment, but I’ll try and get pics up later.

I’m afraid we’re gonna have to put her down…

…for a nap.  Finally.  She really was fighting sleep this morning, which means that she gets over-tired, which means she fights sleep even more.  This seems to be a common problem as she learns something new, and she’s been learning up a storm lately.  First of all, she’s been talking more, which is nice.  The “ba” sound seems to be a favorite right now, though I think she’s actually starting to get the hang of “up”, though she says it after I have her in my arms.  It’s funny, because it’s like she’s saying it to herself, like “I gotta remember this word, ‘up’, ‘up’, ‘up’…”  Sometimes I think she signs “Mom” and “Dad”, but nothing consistent yet.  I probably should practice that more than I do to see better results.  She’s learning other things too.  I help put her legs under her sometimes so that her belly is off the ground and she has been trying to it herself today (just one leg though).  If she keeps trying, I see crawling soon in the future but sometimes she tries something for a couple of days and then forgets about it for weeks.  I guess that’s to be expected when you have SO much to learn. 

Let’s see, what else….  Oh, she has been kind of flicking things with her fingers for the last couple of days.  I think she started doing this because her one music book has parts that pivot back and forth and make noises when you do that so she’s just expanded that movement to everything to see what happens.  It’s funny when she’s on her stomach because she’ll flick her toys further away and then try to crawl to them.  If I put them closer, she’ll push them away again so maybe there’s some intention to it.  She hasn’t been a great eater for the last couple of days.  For whatever reason she no longer likes home-made stuff from the garden.  It’s not a new batch so it shouldn’t taste any different.  Maybe it’s the texture; hopefully she’ll outgrow it!

Max, Lisa, and the kids came up to visit for the weekend.  It was great to see those guys again and hang out like old times.  In between Bid 500 and Guitar Hero we went to the beach and the pool.  It’s too bad they don’t live closer so we could see them more often.

Enjoy the pics.  I’m working on getting them up to Kodak.  I need a rainy weekend with nothing planned!  I really like this one of Zeke.  He’s been such a good boy with her – he always lays by her when I put her outside (but he might just want to steal the blanket!)

 

Sleep, sweet, sweet sleep

So Sophie hasn’t been what I would call a “good” sleeper lately.  It’s such a shock to the system because I got used to the great sleep we were getting for months.  Her routine is changing now though and last night she slept through the night again.  When I went in to cover her up before bed (usually pointless before she’s asleep because she likes to kick, kick, kick the blankets off) she was laying on her side with her little arms folded next to her.  It was so cute – she looked so big and so little at the same time.  This morning she started making noise around 5:30 (did Tom’s alarm wake her? sometimes I wonder) so I went in there but she was on her belly with her head down and put herself back to sleep so I just covered her up.  She stayed asleep until 7 or so – perfect!  This night of sleep was much-needed though since she pretty much screamed non-stop Saturday night.  I think she’s going through teething issues again and was chewing her fingers a lot on Sunday.

More harvesting from the garden – this heat should really help the tomatoes.  Corn is coming along nicely.  Lots of plans for next year.

Took Sophie swimming again…she absolutely LOVED it.  It was funny because she’d just be kind of sitting there and you’d say “swim” and she’d kick and kick and move her arms.  If you leave her upright, she likes to splash too.  She’s big into the leaning/reaching for something so in the pool that means going for more water.  She’s definitely a water baby – I wish I would have had my camera to capture it.  Maybe we’ll be lucky and summer will continue for a few more weeks and we can go again!

Let me know what you think of posts/pictures/and the new format.

Savor the moments…

I was going to write this post anyway, but in light of the events today it takes on a new meaning…

When we were golfing today, I was struck again by how short life is and the fact that we only get to do it once (that we know of at least).  If you only had a year, a month, a week, or a day left to live, would you live it like you currently are?  Would you change your life?  Sometimes you need to take stock and savor the moments and make sure that you can live a life free of regrets.

Some of my savored moments today:
- sharing a joke with Tom
- watching the reeds blow in the wind
- marveling at Sophie’s hands

No pictures this time…

Wow!  What a couple of weeks!!  The Pirate Fest went off with only a few minor hitches (but hey, who can control the rain??)  It was a great event – I can’t wait to see how the numbers compare to years past and think of ways to keep getting better.  Pictures will be up soon, but I’ve got a few other things to catch up on first.

Sometimes I have to just sit back in wonder at Sophie and how much she’s changed in less than 7 months.  She went from hardly ever opening her eyes to sitting up and smiling and laughing.  Still not much of a talker (nothing discernible, but it does sound like she says “ball” when she’s chewing on the ball).  She likes to make noises with the toys in her mouth more than just trying to copy me.

Her palate is expanding as well.  Now that she’s figured out how to eat pieces of food, we give her little bites of just about everything.  So far, she’s liking most everything.  She really likes the yellow squash from the garden – which is good because we’re gonna have a ton of it.  I pureed some the other day when I was on a baby food-making kick and she ate it right up.  I also pureed some blueberries that were left over and as a bonus could save the water as blueberry juice to give her to drink or to add to cereal.  Did the math on blueberries; they have to be $3.00/quart or less to be cost effective.  The stuff that comes from the garden is obviously worth converting, but when buying stuff I want to make sure that I’m actually saving money by making her food because if I’m not then I’ll just save the time and buy the jar.

Harvested again yesterday.  Pulled the rest of the green onions – just chopped and froze most of those for next year.  We dug up a potato mound because it looked like one of the plants was dying and most of the potatoes were large and ready to go.  Need to read more about potatoes though because I still don’t know much.  Thinned out carrots again and brought a bunch home…going to make chicken and dumplings today with the carrots and potatoes.  All we need to do now is raise some chickens and it’ll be a really homemade meal!  For this round of squash I just sliced it, blanched it for 3 minutes (and then threw it in an ice bath for about 5), and through it in a bag to freeze.  I don’t know how long Sophie is going to like pureed foods so I don’t want to have a bunch that I can’t use.  I can always put this bunch in the food processor or I can just heat it up and cut it into chunks for her to eat like that.  Tomorrow I’m going to try a new recipe for the squash:  fry it in EVOO with onion (from garden), green onion (from garden), green pepper (from garden), and snap peas (from garden) and some seasoning.  I’ll have to check and see if we have any fresh parsley – that’d go good with it.

Well, enough of a break!  Back to the monster list that I’ve created for myself today.  Hopefully I can get through most of it!