Slippin' 'n' slidin'

I guess the "5 and up" age limit might not just be about safety. At 5 do you understand the concept of flinging your body onto the slide? We couldn't explain it to Anna, even after I demonstrated.

She found a way to have fun though--

4:45 AM

5 minutes after getting everyone back into bed, with dry sheets and jammies...

Anna: (yelling, from hall) Mama! I have to go to the bathroom!

Betsy: (eyes still closed) OK, you can go by yourself, you're a big girl.

Anna: (still yelling) I will go in this bathroom so I don't wake you up!

Betsy: Thank you, Anna, that's nice.

The lonely garden

--or--

So that's why pickles were invented.

--or--

So that's what tomato cages are for.

I finally went out and spent some time in my poor garden today. With all of the rain, I haven't needed to water, so it's been neglected. The weeds made a fence around the whole thing and it's work just to get in.

The zucchini seems to have given up, crowded out by the massive tomato plants.

The yellow squash is fighting valiantly back, I think I'll have another 15 squash later this week.

The cucumbers, who've mixed with the cantaloupe, are all over the place and producing zillions of cucumbers. I don't even like cucumber.

The tomatoes, sans cages, have grown wild and taken over yards of garden, but they're sprawling and thick and so no light gets to the little tomatoes, and they're perpetually green. And nibbled by bunnies.

The cantaloupes, which did look so good, now look like an elephant came and stepped on them, or like vampire bunnies came and sucked all of the insides out. I really don't understand what happened there.

The watermelon still seems happy. When should I pick him?

Here's the bounty for today. Some of them look too big to be good to me. Does that happen? Do they get too big to be good?

Girls Day In

Today Anna and Mama ignored the messy house, forgot about the unfinished classroom, and threw all responsibility out the window and spent the whole day in Mama's bed watching the Olympics and building things out of pillows. It was lovely.

Time to get back to it!

Go World!

A safe snob, maybe?

Adding the copyright at the top of the blog makes me feel like a snob, but after reading sweet/salty today (warning--a naughty word or two, she's angry), it seems like a good idea, at least.

Belated Birthday Wish

This is late--for Chelsea.

We may be getting older, but take comfort in the fact that on the fridge on 5th St, we'll ALWAYS look like this.

Happy 30th Birthday!

Farm Girl

Tonight I prepared and froze zucchini and yellow squash from my garden. I feel like a real farm wife. I signed up for this "Fix it Fresh" mailbox course from my extension agent, and it has instructions for doing all sorts of things with produce. My yellow squash and zucchini have been doing really well, and we don't eat here at the house very often, so I wanted some way to keep it. It was pretty easy and fun.First I chopped it all up. That was fun because ever since Sarah taught me how to dice things, it's lots of fun to do. I had about 18 cups all together. I can't remember how many yellow squash and zucchini I cut up.

Then I boiled a lot of water in a big pot. (the instructions say 6 cups to a gallon of water) I put 6 cups of vegetables into the water and boiled them for 3 minutes.

Then I drained them immediately and cooled them off with cold water and ice cubes. Rinse and cool for 3 minutes, drain, and transfer to bags. I did three batches.

It was pretty fun and didn't take too long, except the waiting for the water to boil. That took a long time.

I don't know how the rest of my garden is going to do. I didn't get tomato cages on my tomatoes and so they're all spread out all over the place. The lettuce I picked but haven't eaten yet. The peppers I accidentally got look good, but I have NO idea what I'm going to do with them. Anyone know about banana peppers? The cucumbers and cantaloupe have grown together in a tangled mess I only noticed tonight, so I don't know about them either. The watermelon's looking OK, but I've never grown it before so I don't actually know.

Fly on the wall

Tonight Anna and I had dinner with Linda at Quiznos. Anna noticed a fly on the window and Linda commented that the fly was crawling instead of flying.

Anna (delighted): That fly is pretending to be a cat!

Dog Days of Summer

Check out Matthew's post about what happened here tonight.

Not a conversation I ever envisioned having.

4th of July

Anna and Lucy. Two good friends. Too too cute.

We Alsops like doing quiet fireworks. Snakes...

Smoke bombs...
Snap 'n' Pops

The whole crowd watching from the front porch.

This year Matthew was harvesting, so I did the meat all by myself. Delicious.

We also figured out Mom's Potato Salad, which was very exciting.

It was a good day.

My Mama

Rita Alsop

September 23, 1951-June 18, 2008


Service Times:

Vigil @ St. Dominic Church 7:00pm Friday, June 20, 2008.
Funeral Mass with Dinner to follow @ St. Dominic Church 10:00am Saturday, June 21, 2008.

1 Thessalonians 5:18

In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. (KJV)

Mom's cancer didn't go the way we'd hoped, but there are things to be thankful for.

• Hospice is a great organization, they're helpful and efficient and unfailingly kind.
• It's summer, so I can be home all day, every day, to help out and squeeze in every moment of time available.
• Anna has so many friends and so much family that she just thinks she's getting to do lots of fun fun things. I already have her scheduled through Wednesday.
• It's summer, so every day the three Alsop girls can go to the pool when Dad gets home from work, and then go for sno cones.
• I'm married to Matthew, who'll let me spend every day, all day, at my parent's house.
• Susan gets to stay home another week.
• I really like Father Wesley.
• I have a lot of friends who love me.
• We get the chance to say things many people don't get to say.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Gatorade

Since Matthew's pretty much on his own these days, I like to throw in little bits of helpfulness where I can.

Tonight I made 260oz of Gatorade in about 10 minutes.

Here's the (over?)simplified recipie.

1 packet kool-aid

2 T lemon juice

3/8 tsp salt

1/2 c. sugar

2 qts water

Mix it up, pour it into saved bottles from the real stuff, and you're good to go!

Public Service Announcement

Even if it's a really good prize for going in the potty, even if it's cute....

It's never a good idea to give a 3 year old a harmonica.

yea/yeah/yay

I've seen much confusion in the blogosphere about the appropriate use of these three words.

On Friday, Matthew's daily calendar of "random things people say incorrectly and how to correct them" (a wonderful gift that we really enjoy, because we are nerds) addressed this very issue!

Here is the answer:

yea/yeah/yay

"Yea" is a very old-fashioned, formal way of saying "yes," used mainly in voting. It's the opposite of-- and rhymes with--"nay." When you want to write the common casual version of "yes," the correct spelling is "yeah" (sounds like "yeh"). When the third grade teacher announced a class trip to the zoo, we all yelled "yay!" (the opposite of "boo!"). That was back when I was only yay big.

Thank you, nerd calendar. And Katrina, for knowing us for who we really are.

Pickles, jam, rocks, and hard places.

I did NOT see this coming.

Today, after the 3 accidents before 10:00am...we had no more accidents, and also, no successes. She just didn't DO anything. (we were in the pool for a while, so I guess I'm hoping she did there?) I am hydrating the child! I'm really confused.

Tonight, when she really really didn't want to sit on the potty, I thought, OK, so we're not there yet, no biggie, and explained that if she didn't want to use the potty, we'd need to put a diaper back on. But no, she doesn't want to wear diapers, they're for babies. She wants her soft panties. She doesn't want to get the panties wet, she doesn't want to sit on the potty. She, apparently, wants to not release anything from herself in any way.

I'm so glad we started potty training! Before I felt bad just because she was 3 and in diapers...now I can worry about her actual physical and emotional health too! Yay!

Bored yet?

Day 2

Woke up dry, then three accidents, then our last visit from Parents As Teachers *sniff*

She did her "chore" (putting away the clean silverware) in record time and without complaining, so when she said she wanted to watch something, I thought that would be fine. Once again, watching TV on the potty.

I think we'll get some pull-ups in town today.

End of Day One

No more accidents, one more success. We were playing in the pool when Anna suddenly said "I need to go potty!" We ran in. Panties have stayed dry since.

I passed parenting duty off to Matthew when I got home, so they're in the bathroom together now.

My fortune from tonight's dinner:

"Your short term goal will soon be realized."

So I'm expecting smooth sailing from here on out...

continued

After the third accident put a temporary end to the plastic panties, I just plopped her on the potty in front of a movie. (Not a Mama's finest hour)

1 hour later, we have contact!

Now we're off to the pool.

Potty Training...The first few hours

Anna had a terrible start to the morning. She woke up at 6:30, and stumbled, crying, into our room. She was still exhausted, but it was light outside, so she thought it was time to wake up. She crawled into bed with us, and instead of falling asleep, she cried and kicked us, so she was sent back to her own bed with many tears. I finally went in to talk to her, and ended up falling asleep with her in her bed. We woke up a few hours later.

I had been thinking that if we could just get a good start to the morning, we'd start really trying to go on the potty. Today I thought, we're never going to have a good opportunity to do this, so we might as well just start now.

We've been wearing panties and sitting on the potty every 15 minutes, and we've had two enormous accidents accompanied by tears (Anna's) but nary a drop in the potty itself.

Hmmm....