Life becomes slower. Things fall asleep, dreaming under a blanket of white about the coming rebirth of springtime.

We cozy up in warm socks with cups of tea and books in hand (ok, parents of little ones actually DON’T do this but one can dream, can one not?), or sketching next year’s plots, perusing seed catalogs, adding up totals, reluctantly scratching off the  Black Pearl Ornamental pepper, one packet for $4.95, and put in instead the prairie grass ($2.75) for the wild corner, and weigh and consider and in our heads the profusion of flowers and vegetables that will adorn our gardens next year (except NOT, because it NEVER turns out as good in reality as it was in your head. chalk one more thing up to experience. try again NEXT year. AGAIN.) unfold and flourish.

First frost.

End and beginning.

WHEN does it get better?

I don’t see it getting better.

One

Plus One

Equals Two

Miles is having some minor health issues and I thought I’d hop onto my local Weston A. Price Foundation listserve to find out what their thoughts were on traditional, nourishing foods to address the problems and help heal him.  After all, I’m  big believer in food being our medicine.

So, silly me, once I explained the current situation, I checked back eagerly throughout the day to see what people might have to say.  And lo and behold what they had to say was this:

I am “allowing” my child to only eat certain foods.

My child is a picky eater.

I need to “nip” his “picky eating habits” in the bud or I’ll “regret it” later.

Definitely don’t allow him to snack during the day, 3 squares and that’s it

and, my personal favorite so far

I should just serve him his dinner and if he doesn’t like it he can eat again at breakfast.  (oh, yes? really?  feel free to come to my house at 1:37 a.m. when he wakes up crying from an empty belly and YOU be the one to get up with him, feed him and then get him back to sleep. or not. because maybe he won’t be ABLE to get back to sleep for another 3 hours. feel free to just come and do that. that’s fine.)

First of all, all I asked for was some dietary advice.  I thought this was the Weston A Price group, NOT the James Dobson group.

Secondly, you have no idea about me as a parent but even more specifically about my son and the type of child he is.

I pick my battles with my son.  They are many. He is persistent. I pick the ones that I have the most chance of winning.  The rest is a non-issue.

My son doesn’t like green beans?  What do I care?  He eats curry!

It’s not that he’s picky, he just could care less about food.  He’d much rather play hungry than sit and eat and not play.   And that’s what he does. Unless I remind him to eat…and remind him..and remind him…and cajole…and sit there…and finally put the food into his mouth….and 45 minutes later he’s eaten a 1/4 cup of oatmeal.

Who has time for that?

I make sure that the things he likes best are of the best quality I can afford and if he won’t eat onions, well, I for one am not going to get my knickers in a twist.

This child is more persistent than 3 kids put together.  Someday I’m sure that will be a good thing.  Right now, as his mother, it seriously drives me to the brink sometimes.  Look, YOU KNOW how he is if you’ve read this blog from a few years back…go refresh your memory if you need to, I’ll wait.

So he has a limited menu of likes?  He can freaking READ and WRITE.  So stuff it, ladies.  Don’t judge me, don’t judge my son. If you don’t have anything actually useful to say, don’t waste my time with your preachy drivel. Go away and ferment something but leave me alone.

•  The museum tries to fill a role as a public-oriented museum through the Culture School Program where people can join a nude croquis class, pottery class, history of Chinese picture class and art theory class.

• This step coats the fried dough with grain syrup. After coating with syrup, coat with pooped rice evenly.

• Subtitle:BreathingSuncheonBayEmbraces theWorldGarden.

• ④ Namwon Chunhyang Festival, the only love festival filled with scent of love
• Happy My Bathroom – More refreshing with Smartlet, the all-in-one bidet!

• the excretion of desire and scars of greed

The baby-changing ritual is one that T usually does to give him some time with baby since Baby goes to bed so early.  Usually I’m doing something else but after reading a photography book last week that talked about recording the little routines and rituals of life, I decided one night to just go in with my camera and settle in and be a part, outside of the hectic and the clutter and the trying-to-feed-Miles-ness of it all.

….Firstborn children….tend to be capable, strong-willed, effective. They tend to have a high sense of responsibility and a high need for achievement. They like to do things “right”. They like to be leaders. Firstborn boys often are especially hard to raise. They like to have friends whom they can dominate.

First of all, accept the fact that at this age the child’s big emotionaly struggle is with his mother. She is the one who matters supremely to him. She is the one he needs to conquer.  Almost any young child is at his best but also at his worst with his own mother. Never more so than now [three and a half].

Ya think?

I’m melting over here.

Moving to Portland tomorrow.

Other news:

Had a baby.  At home.

You can just feel the empowerment, can’t you?  Gonna write more about that as soon as I get a moment in between:

child-minding

gardening

cooking (ok, not really. too hot. must just eat ice cream instead. also, bacon.)

gardening

obsessing about the garden

getting behind on the huge stack of books I ambitiously checked out from the library because I can’t seem to control my book-portions despite have about 2.4 nanoseconds per day to read.

Also, did I mention the garden.  We are on Round Two Final Chance Or You Are Becoming Grass-seeded Open Turf Again on the main flower bed for this year.

Ok, apparently I’m going to tell you all about this so:

It’s either been hot as blazes thereby shrivelling all my seedlings into crisp little nothings or

it’s been raining maelstroms and pounding both seeds and seedlings into the earth.

So last week I dug out all the weeds which flourishethed like the green bay tree, raked it all out and scattered the appropriate fast-growing annual seeds throughout. Hopefully they will bloom some color before it frosts, which with my luck will be on September 2 before it gets Blazing Hot again until November 22.

Hope to take pix soon because the veggies are doing pretty well including the volunteer pumpkin plant that seeded itself right up against the side of the fence around the deck and is now doing its best to take over the entire deck area. It is awesome.  Altho a little disturbing.

Now, it is stinking 83 degrees in the house despite have the thermostat set at 76 so I am going to go sweat some more, shower, sweat and try to read more.

Right now? I”m reading Love Wins by Rob Bell and I’m also going to talk about that, I guess, for a minute since we are doing stream-of-consciousness blogging right now:

This book is awesome and if you haven’t read it, you should.

Oh, that’s all, I guess.

I’ve also been reading Erik Larson and he also writes really good reads.

Now I’m going to either

a) stop and go shower

or

b) stop this post and write another one about how awesome my newest addition is