Seven things I've been doing instead of blogging

I

Sewing

Current project: making napkins for my mom out of that hydrangea print!

II

Schooling

After we finish the day's book work, Little Bear more often than not asks me to print off a tracing page "just for fun." I'm looking forward to checking out new curricula to see if anything catches my eye for the coming year! Or for the summer... so far, I'm not having much luck convincing Little Bear that we should take a summer break. We'll see.

III

Planting

Strawberries! It's still getting too chilly at night to risk leaving most plants out, but as long as we're not expecting a frost, these strawberries are fine to stay out. I can't believe they already have blossoms!

In this next week or two, I need to figure out what plants we're putting where; I know that we want to plant herbs, spinach, tomatoes, and hopefully some flowers, but I need to get it mapped out so I know how many plants we can handle.

IV

Playing

Kit is 10.5 months old now, and she and Little Bear love playing together. She's walking now too, holding onto our fingers, and I spend a lot of time walking in circles with her.

V

Canning

Strawberries went on sale a week or so ago, and somehow over the course of the week something like 20 lbs of them followed me home. Two batches of muffins and a couple quarts of sliced berries went in the freezer, and I put up 6 pints of strawberry syrup and 7 pints of strawberry-rhubarb jam. We'll be able to taste springtime for the rest of the year!

VI

Reading

I finally finished Theresa Tomeo's Extreme Makeover, which was good. I really wasn't her target audience, though, so my experience of it was more "I wish more women heard these things!" than "how have I never heard this before?!?"

The other night I blew through On the Way Home, Laura Ingalls Wilder's journal of their trip from De Smet to Missouri. It was interesting to hear her as an adult and mother, and I enjoyed the "setting" given by her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, at the beginning and end. I have a slightly different mental picture of Laura now, I think, than I did from my much younger reading of her other books. The depiction of the drought and crop failures was sobering, and certainly made me stop and think about what effect such a drought would have on us today.

The Lost Arts of Modern Civilization by Mitchell Kalpakgian is my current read, but it requires more concentration than I can muster when I finally have time to read in the evenings, so it's going slowly! I'll withhold judgement until I've finished it.

VII

Outsiding

I know, it's not a word, but I needed one more participle... We've had beautiful weather lately, and the kids and I have enjoyed getting out for daily walks and playing at parks around town. Little Bear has had fun introducing his sister to swings, and was very excited to bring out the always-know-where-you-are tricycle (badly in need of WD40) to ride back and forth on the deck!

Going to bed before the sun

It's not quite summer yet, but we can tell that we're getting close: leaves are out, 52 degrees F actually felt chilly today (after ridiculously early high 60s last week), and the sun's insomnia is growing nightly. The sun rose at 5:11 this morning, and it won't set until nearly 10:30 tonight... and it'll be up again even earlier tomorrow.

When Little Bear was a baby, our apartment had blackout curtains, and we made good use of them! Our current apartment doesn't, though; it doesn't actually have any curtains, or the wherewithal to hang curtains—there are heavy insulating shades which block a fair amount of light, but plenty seeps in around the edges. I suppose that maybe we could ask for permission to put holes in the fancy pine-looking window-frames to mount curtain rods, but... that's a lot of work, and more money than we want to spend on a place that we're just renting. Little Bear didn't have much trouble with the light last summer, and Kit was small enough that she slept anywhere and everywhere, so we haven't bothered to do anything about it.

Well, I had a very insistent alarm clock at 6 o'clock this morning. Kit babbled cheerfully as she vigorously patted my face, "ah done, mama, mama, ah done!" All done sleeping, indeed.

Lately I've been putting her down for naps and bedtime with the window shade open to help her grow accustomed to sleeping with all of that sunshine pouring in, and she's done well staying asleep for most of the night... I'll keep working on it, and hope that we don't keep waking up so early! She's good and tired tonight, so we'll see if that helps.