Garden Update

From the Farm: It has been pretty exciting these past couple days seeing how much everything is growing and eating from the garden and fruit trees. Chloe and I spent the morning picking 4 1/4 lb of plums off the two trees to the right of the "gap in the fence". They are the yellow ones and the first to ripen. I've seen the two red plum trees starting to turn colors too so we should be getting more in the next little bit.

 

 Chloe holding the basket of little yellow plums. I froze them so I can make jam when the other trees are ripe. There wasn't quite enough to make all the cooking and canning worth it so I decided to wait

 Blain by the vining plants. All are looking good and haven't been eaten by anything since I put down those egg shells around each plant.

 The cauliflower is finally starting to grow!! The plants have been looking big for such a long time now that I thought we wouldn't be getting any cauliflower, but here it is! Several of the cauliflower plants have the starts of tiny little heads deep down in their leaves. I'm so excited, I hope they get big!

 A little more than half of the tomato plants have little green tomatoes on them. I messed up the marking system so I'm no real sure which varieties are which, but either way we're getting tomatoes! I think it will still be quite a while until any are ripe but it's a start

 The carrots that I planted a bit ago have sprouted, way better germination than the first batch. We've eaten a couple of those and they are about 3-4 inches long and nice and sweet! Notice another deer print :( Nate has put up all the posts and started on the fencing but has been taking a little break for the last week. Hopefully we get it up soon before the other vegetation dies down and they really start to notice our garden.

 The zucchini looking big - I thinned it to 4 plants on the hill, but will probably do one more to make it 3 so we don't drown in zucchini :)

 I am still able to pick lettuce and kale anytime we want it in a salad or burgers. I should probably pick an onion or two to see how big they are. I want to use them when I make salsa so hopefully they don't mind sitting in the ground that long.

Avenlea 10 months: We had a double appointment at the beginning of the month and the doctor said they are both looking great. We took Avenlea to an eye specialist and he will be doing her eye surgery to unclog her tear ducts on August 6th. It was actually supposed to be today but the surgical center doesn't take our insurance so they rescheduled her at the hospital in a week. She can stand up on her own from the floor and has taken one tiny step without falling. She's more in the lunge stage but it's so fun to see our tiny little Avenlea standing and trying to walk :) 

Avenlea is still sleeping very well through the night and taking two naps throughout the day. She is babbling (mostly dada) and likes to stick her tongue out. She loves to eat cream of wheat, pasta, cheese, and watermelon. She has 4 little teeth and is hopefully done teething for a while. She loves being able to crawl and is much more happy now that she can get places on her own. One more month til her 1st birthday!!

 Sweet Avenlea

 Smiles

Blainito: My big 3 year old is so much fun. He is still really into vikings, swords, dragons, bugs and of course his blue blanket. He continues to impress us with his vocabulary and I notice he likes to use alternate words when he's talking, like "large" instead of big or "quick" instead of fast. He likes to talk about how tough things are and what is tougher than other things ("vikings are tougher than dragons, but pirates aren't tough")

 His potty training is going really well. I take him to the potty every hour or two and he is almost always dry all day and night. We've had a couple accidents here and there but he has even starting telling me when he needs to go which I am very happy about.  We've started having to wake this good sleeper up from his long naps as they were verging on a second sleep (1- 5:30 or 6) so we wake him up at 4:30 and hope maybe he will start sleeping in past 7 like his siblings have been doing, even if it's only til 7:30.

 Fun Blain Story: One our way home from Yellowstone we were walking along a bridge and Nate gave Blain a big black crow feather to hold, telling him it was a "magic feather" like Dumbo had. Well Blain was walking along an edge and slipped a little. Without missing a beat he says " it wasn't magic" looking up at Nate. We all were laughing really hard.

Another Blain story that makes me happy: I was in the kitchen cleaning up from lunch when Blain rushes into the room and very seriously tells me "Don't touch me, I'm so magic. I have magic eyes". When I was that age I would tell my mom "don't touch me I'm very magic" so it makes me smile thinking that me and Blain are a little bit alike in our thinking :)