Genius, Work Day, and Nuk Wars

Genius: I forgot to tell you that Little Man is a genius (obviously). The other day we were outside kicking balls - he was kicking the Thomas ball and I was kicking the Pooh ball. He said, "I have one ball." And I said, "And I have one ball. Together, how many balls do we have?" "Two!" Genius, I say.

Work Day: Today we had a very productive day. The weather here is unpredictable enough that we can't plant outside until mid-May. I'm not organized or forward-thinking enough to start seedlings inside, so every mid-May we rush to get seeds and starters in the ground.

Here T. spreads our very own, homemade compost onto the garden. This is the first year we did not buy any topsoil or compost to supplement our compost.Worms like compost, too.

Then, T. uses the rented tiller to loosen the soil and work in the compost. I don't think most people rent a tiller every year, but it's very satisfying (it's also satisfying to document the process, as you can see).And voila, the soil is prepped.Oh, but this year we got a little ambitious! Our fence is a few feet inside our property line, which is annoying but there are utility wires running under our property. So we have this patch of unused, weedy land outside of the yard. We decided to till it and plant some flowers. Eventually we'll work on perennials there, but for this year we spread a bunch of seeds and called it a day.

Before:And After:Little Man helped scoop the mess from tilling back into the garden.
And (elapsed time several hours as Little Man and I had to go buy more seeds and tomato stakes, then I had to plant), here we go! The finished product.
We're having dueling tomato stakes this year. Trying something new with the tomato spirals (which will require us to stay on top of the pruning), and re-using one circular cage from last year (which didn't actually work for the full season). This year we reinforced it with a metal stake.

We planted: Tomatoes (3 plants, 3 different varieties), peppers (2 varieties - sweet red and ancho), cukes, zucchini, yellow squash, red potatoes (that's new for us), and beans.

T. also switched out a defective light switch today, so now we can turn our front porch light off (it's been on since Tuesday morning).

Nuk Wars: We've decided it's time to wean LM from the Nuk (pacifier). Luckily he's not much of an addict these days. He has it for home naps (not school naps), in the car, and occasionally at home when he's taking a break in his room with books and music. We just made the Nuks disappear. He's been pretty easy to distract. It takes him a little longer to settle down and has made his bedtime routine extra important (he used to have it while we read our bedtime story), but we've managed. Until today.

I knew that home naps would be where I, I mean he, really missed the Nuk. And indeed, today he didn't nap. He didn't cry for the Nuk at all, actually, he just couldn't calm himself down. He uncovered himself and cried to be covered, then he cried 'cause he pooped (not really his fault). Then I told him that was it, I wasn't coming back. 45 minutes later when T. checked on him he was flying one of his shoes like an airplane. But he was quiet. For the moment.

In the end, I think he probably slept about 30 minutes. And he is GRUMPY this afternoon. I'm considering whether 2 hours a day, 2 days a week of Nuk would do any harm, really.

Spaghetti and carrot sticks with Ranch for dinner tonight: