Oh, Mr. Sun

A few quiet minutes here to post and so I thought I would mention this interesting bit of sun and sunscreen information I came across during my perusing of some favorite blogs.

Ashley, over at Small Measure, posted this EPA research on sunscreen. She also provided this link, from the EPA, detailing their best and worst choices for sunscreen. Really helpful information, especially as we're all gearing up for lots of sunshine in the coming days!

And then I'll say here- it always makes me sigh when I see a new list like this one. I pick Burt's Bees sunscreen- it's mostly natural, it's easy to find, and, for our budget (keeping in mind our budget goes to very few things these days), fairly affordable. So it is disappointing to see it fall in the "caution" category of their list, right next to Banana Boat. I've used both, of course, my point is its disappointing to spend more money and time on a particular brand only to discover, eh, its about the same as several others (though, conversely, if you've been a Banana Boat buyer, might as well pump your fist over the couple of bucks you've saved each time you've picked that particular brand.) So I read this and I want to shake my fist and demand of the sky, "what else can we do?!"

Except I know the answer, for me at least. Read! Do your homework. I seem to have been born with a gene that says, if you've thought it, someone else has written about it. Extensively. So I read. A lot.

I'm always so glad to come across information like this, put together succinctly and with sources. I've gone to the EPA site, made notes of their recommendations and now I'll know how to shop differently in the next few weeks. I'm glad to see natural instincts, like "The best sunscreen is a hat and a shirt" at the top of the EPA's advice- at least something is simple!

My active imagination determines I could easily scare myself silly if I read too much. So I stop once I have an idea of the material and think, now on to that new Elizabeth Peters mystery I scored at the library! Or those toe-up socks I've frogged and am ready to cast-on again. Still, a little research goes a looong way. I'm still amazed at how picking up the Sears' The Baby Book completely altered our journey to parenting.

I'm going to stop now, because Dory burst into the room, saying "Peek a boo!"and then our conversation went a little something like this.
Me: Hey little sweetie!
(pause)
Me: What's that on your mouth?
Dory: Its choc'ate chips!
Me: Are you and daddy making cookies?
Dory: No! We just eatin' choc'ate chips!
(pause)
Dory: We need YOU to make cookies! We just eatin' choc'ate chips and watchin' Toy Story! C'mon, mommy!

Who here thinks if Daddy was our stay-at-home parent life would pretty much be a carnival all the time?

Seed Fever

This morning, Dory, her arms wrapped around my neck, whispered in my ear, "Let's go see my seeds growing."



One of Matthew's dear, thoughtful co-workers picked up a set of these herb plants for her son and a set for Dory too. This is one of the sweetest gifts I think Dory's ever received. She even labeled each little plant and the garden itself.



Dory and Matthew planted them last night. We checked their progress this morning and, well, not much yet. She was not discouraged. And standing in our kitchen, on a rainy Tuesday morning, with her little monkey arms and legs around me, I wasn't either.

After that, we had tea. Dory served.






If a day can start off this well with no visible seed growth, what will a day with a little visible green be like? I cannot wait to find out.

Seed Starting

(Dory on her John Deere)

Is it March that comes in like a lion? February left like one and March still growls a little. Yet new growth, life and adventure is on the horizon. We started seeds two Sundays ago.

Taking what feels like a lifelong collection of cardboard egg cartons, we got out our seed starter dirt and got going on the dining room table. For anyone who doubts these are the actions of novices, we laid down no towels or newspapers and Dory's first action was to take out a scoopful of dirt, with her little Garfield spade, and pour it all over herself. She announced, this was her shower. I wanted to lecture, on 'where dirt belongs,' I wanted to start sweeping and cleaning up around her. I would have done, too, had not some little instinct, some little voice, called out to me, reminded me of something I already almost forgot- this is supposed to be fun! Dirt is not meant to be tidy, clean, and I expect keeping it to 'where it belongs' is almost impossible. Shower on, little one, shower on.






This was a two step process, playing with dirt with Dory and then actually starting the seeds on the floor of our living room, on a picnic blanket, long after she had fallen asleep, while (talk about getting back to the land!) the Oscars played in the background. We are your modern, homesteading family. In progress.

For the first days my confidence was high, but lately its flagged a little as we see no evidence of growth. Surely its coming. They're in the windows, they're working, surely its coming.

Do we need one of those heat lamps, people? This is my concern.

Off the Grid-iness

What's going on around here? Something is different..

This morning, one of our first to-do's was to take our homemade chicken stock, simmering through the night, off the stove and drain it. We left a a stewing hen's carcass, carrots, onions, celery and a bunch of parsley behind as we poured out a silky, golden stock, smelling, though I say it myself, heavenly. Bone broth, as I learned from Nourishing Traditions, a cookbook I find myself pouring over the way spiritual scholars seek out the great religious texts of the world, is "extremely nutritious, containing the minerals of bone, cartilage, marrow and vegetables as electrolytes, a form that is easy to assimilate." Mary Fallon, co-author of NT, attributes "the decline in the use of meat, chicken, and fish stocks" as a "lamentable outcome of our hurry-up, throwaway lifestyle." Few of us buy meat still in tact, "on the bone" as Fallon calls it, unlike our "thrifty ancestors [who] made use of every part of the animal." Homemade chicken stock...

At the library yesterday, after making a large selection from the children's side, we stopped off in the gardening section, only to meander a few rows over, past animal care (where Dory selected a book on hamsters), before cookbooks, there! that book! Made from Scratch: The pleasures of discovering a homemade life. An unexpected find that went straight into the bag, with great delight.

A slew of books, actually, littered around the house (Handmade Home and Coop); on hold at the library (Radical Homemakers); online magazines checked on a daily basis (Mother Earth News and Mary Jane's Farm)...

Yesterday morning, awake before the rest of the family, I sat in our living room, pouring through our seed catalogue, checking and double-checking that we had all we wanted and no more. We picked Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds for delving into the world of growing our own food. Our virtual shopping cart is now full to the point of tipping over and yet I thought, I bet this is a drop in the bucket to real homesteaders...

Homesteading? Is that what we're moving towards?

Surely not. Off to a farm forty miles from anything? Hmm... I love where we live, to me centrally located to what's most important (parents within a fifteen minutes drive, our local park and library a quarter mile walk, many friends anywhere from three to fifteen minutes away, a farmer's market a three mile drive on three different days, Matthew's work and mine easily accessible). Creating our own energy... Matthew's first question: is wind-powered satellite-television possible?

Yet books about keeping a family cow and how to raise your own chickens appeal to me.

Maybe this isn't a surprise. Moving out of the mainstream appeals to me lately, not different for different's sake, but a genuine questioning of what I value and what I hope to model to our next generation. We're already parenting in mostly unheard of way (still trying to follow Dory's lead, in co-sleeping, breastfeeding, cloth diapering until potty trained, the list goes on), so its not surprising these other worlds would start to pull me in.

I would have thought this a tiny community, difficult to find and impossible to incorporate into an everyday lifestyle, available mostly through beautiful blogs and websites. Not so. In fact if I start to look around, I can see where it's been happening around me this entire time. Mental flashbacks to my parent's garden when I was three and four and my dad's stories about me picking tiny green tomatoes far too soon. Some of our first friends when we moved home, who live on a tiny farm, with goats and sheep, she spinning her own wool, both of them commuting half an hour into work everyday. Another friend who makes her own yogurt, juice, broth, dried fruit, the list goes one, while, during winter, a supermarket and interstate sit in view behind the woods and creek at the back of her house. A neighbor one street away who used to keep chickens...

I'm curious how many of us have these longings as of late? Perhaps disillusionment with work, the government, the media, stemming from a realization the promise given won't be fulfilled by that particular establishment, that their brand of happiness just doesn't do for me. Maybe a sudden longing, as generations before us pass on, a call from the past, tugging at the fingers and heart to find the same dirt that slipped through our great-grandparents hands. Or a modern concern, an understanding we don't want to be labeled the "throwaway" society, this isn't the legacy we want to leave behind...

Check "all of the above" for me.

So something is afoot, something definitely moves through the house. I have no idea what I'm doing and, because I came of age during the dot.com boom, I mostly look to books and websites for understanding. Another something on the list, sandwiched between "find raw milk source" and "learn to sew"- talk to people. Find people! Other living, breathing humans, preferably in the same room people from who to learn.

And if any of this sounds like I am disparaging technology or haranguing how life has fallen apart since the development of the internet, let me relate this snippet from moments ago. Dory, at two and a half, just plopped up on my lap to nurse, and with the laptop open in front of her announced: "Mommy, yook! I'm having bobos and pushing buttons on da internet!"

Sing! Sing a Song!

Its Saturday morning, Matthew and Dory are playing in the living room and I am tucked up in bed, with this laptop, a stack of books, a candle burning and I can see about two inches of Knoxville snow* out of my window, an occasional flurry sweeping in another handful of snowflakes. And for some reason, I have the song from Sesame Street ("sessy street" as Dory calls it) in my head. This version particularly. We are thoughtful and limiting on what Dory watches, but Sesame Street is still a classic to me. Especially scenes like this one.

I have no special blog to write today, except for working to build a habit. So I'll mention the books by my bed right now.

Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy by Sarah Ban Breathnach
Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting by Michael Perry
All New Square Foot Gardening by Mel Batholomew
You Are Your Child's First Teacher by Rahima Baldwin Dancy

I also have the Winter 2010 of Interweave Knits

Also
Angelina on Stage and
Llama, Llama Red Pajama

And I've just been invaded- time to read those last two books! Will write more about my reads later. Definitely a theme developing though... What books are you starting this new year?

And I'll mention, just now Dory thrust a crayon and piece of paper at me to make our grocery list. She said we need; Bread, Eggs, Cheese, Blankets, Sofa, Pillows, and Curtains. Sounds like an ideal list for a wintry Saturday to me.

Happy snowy Saturday to you!

*Knoxville snow: an inch to three, melts fast, rarely stops up traffic or sticks on roads, but sends our whole town (myself included) into a frenzy for bread and milk. Everyone goes to get bread and milk. Gluten-free, dairy-intolerant people race to the supermarkets for bread and milk. Causes me to wonder, is this some strange plot by our local grocery stores to sell more bread and milk in these crazy diet days? Just a thought...

This Post Brought to You by the Letter 'P'

Dory's vocabulary grows in the most interesting ways. I expected it to run along the lines: daddy, mommy (OK, maybe I hoped it would by mommy, daddy, but either way...), doggie, bath, I want to go to the park, I'm going to a movie with my friends where are the car keys...

Turns out, learning how to speak a first language is a bit slower, more erratic, and far more entertaining than I imagined. I've seen friends with their children, translating, with a parent's expert ear, conversation that is totally alien to me. Dory has been no different. What I consider perfectly formed words might still be incomprehensible to your man on the street. To my mind, she has a list of words that she's more than mastered now. Some are traditional: daddy, dat (that), doggie, bat (bath), ucks (yucky) and, most recently, mommy. Some I did not expect that she just loves to say are: duck and sock. All day long, socks come off and on from the joy of announcing "shhhock" as she tugs them off her plump little feet. And she absolutely thrills anytime she can point out a "duc-K, duc-K, duc-K." She knows a few of her friends' names: Ike (Isaac), Emme (Ember), and Lana (Alana, and, technically, the name of her friend's mother, but still). Favorite problem word? Uh-oh.

By far, though, what sends her quick, bright mind into frenzied delight: the letter 'P.' Anything with the letter 'P.' Appa (apple). Hipa (hippo). Pwoops (oops). Pot (Spot, based on her favorite literary character). Pata (pasta). Pei-pei (pee-pee). Po-hee (potty). Pway (play). She's even tried piwhoa (pillow).

I did not foersee how important language would be right about now. She's almost eighteen months and Matthew and I are realizing, she understands a lot. I mean, A LOT. We-have-stop-saying-that-word a lot. We started to notice it around fourteen months. She seemed to understand us beautifully. Her brilliant parents? Not so much. This was the trouble. We couldn't understand her and this was incredibly frustrating for all parties, as she would speak traditional toddler "eh-eh-eh" (sometimes accompanied by pointing) and Matt and I took turns trying to figure it out holding out random items and saying "this? you want this?" I noticed, we were treating her the way a lot of Americans in foreign countries behave: speaking LOUDLY and slooooowly. It wasn't pretty and not, probably, our best moments as parents, though we were trying.

Then- dum-dum-dum-DUM!- inspiration struck. Sign language! Our friend, the aforementioned Alana, started teaching her daughter sign language when she was about four months old. By one year, her child could sign almost one hundred different signs and understood almost twice as many. Yep. World domination is next on her baby's list. I marveled at watching her sign different animals, wanting to go up or down, play on the swings or the slide eat crackers or cheese. It was amazing.

We started on a much, much smaller scale with a few signs for Dory, the ones we could remember and that seemed to be important for her to communicate. Eat (as in "do you want some food?"). Milk ("or would you prefer some milk?"). More. Thank you. Oh, and bear (that was all Matthew, big Chicago fan that he is- and let me tell you, Dory cannot see a bear without enthusiastically signing it, probably her favorite sign to date).

Now we're to the point where she shows us when she's hungry, wants to play, wants to sleep, wants Mama (by signing milk), and she's even made up her own sign for color which is to wave her hand through the air like she's writing (right now, Granny Suzanney is murmuring, "Baby Genius, like I told you...")

My thoughts on signing? Absolutely worth it. If there's a Baby Two, we'll start much earlier. What a relief and pleasure to communicate with her without it dissolving into tears (on her part) or behaving like monkeys at the zoo (that would be Matthew and I). We picked up a book from the library on Baby Signs and took off. I've even wondered if the signs have helped with her language because we waste less time trying to figure out what she wants and spend more time talking to her like the interested and brilliant little person she is.

And for any of you wondering, yes, Dory has said her first curse word. The one that rhymes with "sit." And, yes, she has on several occasions pulled it out and said it a few times, just to practice, I guess.

And yes, it was Mommy who slipped and said it. Thank you very much.

Dory and the Bear

(Hey Fans. This post is a little late in coming, sorry 'bout that. Mama's computer was all crazy and I couldn't get on to blog until tonight. SO here's a post I put together almost two weeks ago.- Baby D)


Hi Y'all! Dory here!


Can you guess where I am...?


The mountains!




Our good friend Candy invited us to come stay. Isn't she nice? It made her so happy I said yes!


There's a lake...


And it's very secluded and quiet...


You can't even hear these guys up at the cabin...


Gram came too...


I have to say, I am a fan of nature. All the fresh air...


Playing outside...


Long walks...




I think I could definitely see myself settling down in a place-


Umm... huh- is that- is that a-


A BEAR?


Wait a second...


Nope, my mistake.


It's a stuffed animal. Phew.


I definitely like the mountains. And the lake. And the woods.

But maybe I don't want to live there...

Bon Appétit

Hello again! Dory here!


Just wanted to update the ol' blog on what's happening here in my world. Here I am, up in my big girl high chair. Look, it's a chair and there's a tray with those little orange things on it... This is pretty cool right?


Mama! Hey, how are you? What? What's that?


Sweet potato, huh? Well, OK, if you say so...


This is... this is...


You tricked me!


I'll catch you later, blog-land. No way is she catching me with that one again!

Some Christmas Spirit

Hello Internetland!


It's your favorite baby blogger! And I've got a lot to report.


First- thumbs! They are the best.

Why did no one mention them earlier? There should be a sign right when you come out- "Welcome Baby, check out the the short, stubby finger, you're going to like it." I can't get enough of mine!

What else, what else? Well, I've been doing a little of this...


a little of that...

I'm a baby. It's basically my job.

Hey, I'm pushing up! It's not easy, not my favorite pose, but I make the best of it.


Oh! And feet! I found them. They are fantastic.

You can grab 'em, you can wiggle 'em around over your head. And if you're really lucky, you can pull off a sock and chew on it. But that takes practice. Don't you 3 monthers try this at home, OK? You've got plenty of time. But feet are good. I mean, they're no thumbs, but they're good.

Just to go back to the thumb thing. I'd have a second sign. It would say- Guess what? You've got two of them!


That's about it for now. Just hanging out, doing my groovy baby thing. Oh, and here's a funny shot. I might have overindulged on milk, been a little silly...


Christmas! It's just the best, isn't it?

Where Did I Put It...?

What are all these thingies? Elephant? Monkey? Seriously, who do these Big People think they're kidding?


Oh, well. Time to post! Hmm, where did I put my laptop...


Huh. Where did I put it?


Here? No...


I think the Big Ones have hidden it!


Oh, fine. I'll play with this silly thing.


Huh. This is kind of fun actually.


A little bit later...

Lalala. Gosh, this is one good thumb.


Hey, wait a second! There's my laptop! Hahahaha. Time to blog! Right after I finish this thumb...