Pumpkins! Dresses! Dancing!

We’ve been busy lately. Two weeks ago we visited the Laity Pumpkin Patch in Maple Ridge. It was a massive hit – Hannah asks to go to ‘the farm’ nearly every day now. It was completely crazy, but it was also a great time, and we found our Halloween pumpkins. I’m glad we went when we did, apparently it’s been an awful year for pumpkins, and the pickings were already slim well in advance of the big day.

Then, a week ago James and Sara brought out some flower girl dresses for Hannah to try on. She will be doing the honours at their wedding in March. Hannah had a great time trying the dresses on, and she was very sad and confused when they took them away again. It’s for the best, though – there’s no way I would trust a toddler with a white dress and expect it to look good in 5 months’ time.

Finally, we attended the wedding of Jon’s co-worker last Saturday. Hannah had an absolute blast running around with the other kids and dancing. She was especially tickled with the cookies that the bride baked. You can see photos from all of our adventures here.

So, what’s next on our whirlwind schedule? Why, Halloween of course. I’ve started sewing Hannah’s costume. Wish me luck on getting it finished and fitting properly in advance of the deadline!

Graduated

I’m sorry that I have been missing in action. The truth is that I have a bunch of photos to upload, and haven’t found the time, and so I have been hiding in shame. I will do my best to get my act together this weekend so that you can all enjoy our trip to the pumpkin patch vicariously.

In other news, I have graduated! Not from any sort of school or training program, but from a diaper bag to a Mom Purse. For those of you who are inexperienced in the world of handbags, the Mom Purse is a monster carry-all that contains snacks, lipstick, kleenexes, and an entire toy store. It is roughly the size of a diaper bag, but it does not have pockets for baby supplies, and it does not contain a change pad, wipes, or especially diapers.

My new bag is black pleather, cheap, and overflowing. And as much as it’s nothing special to look at, I feel footloose and fancy-free when I carry it. It represents a sort of freedom. I don’t have to carry kid stuff in the Mom Purse. I do carry kid stuff, but that’s not what it’s for. If I want to turn it upside down and pour out the Cheerios, spare clothes (which I will carry ‘just in case’ until Hannah is 16), and sippy cups and go out all by myself I can. Because the Mom Purse is mine, it is not a piece of baby equipment. It can exist in a world where I do not have a kid on my hip, and sticky snack food stored inside it. See? The Mom Purse is 55 pounds of liberation in a pleather package, and I am free at last!

Merrily I Knit Along

It has been 2 months since I finished a knitting project. Taking the summer off? No, not quite. Instead, I tackled my very first sweater. It took me forever and a day, but I’m happy with the finished result, which is really all that matters in knitting. It turns out that I’m just not all that fast yet.

I celebrated the sweater by knitting Hannah a truly ridiculous scarf. That took me all of 4 days, so maybe there’s hope for me yet. This will be the last of the knitting you’ll see before Christmas, I’d wager, since I’ll mostly be working on gifts from here on out. You too may be the proud owner of a pair of socks. Or maybe not, we’ll see how fast I go. In any case, you can see me latest projects here.

I could probably knit more quickly, but you have to understand that I spend a lot of time chasing a toddler all over creation. You can see a couple of recent snapshots of Mama’s little distraction here.

The Potty

I have been hesitant to write a post about this, because I am sure that it will be bad mojo and lead to a major regression. I am willing to take the risk now, which tells you something in and of itself. I have enough confidence to share the joy with the world, as it were.

I first bought Hannah a potty over a year ago, when she was around 17 months. I started sitting her on it at key times – right after she woke up, after meals, that sort of thing. Things appeared to be going well. Within a few months she would go and sit on the potty by herself, particularly when she was allowed to run around naked. I bought underwear, we informed the daycare, it was all very optimistic.

And then – well, a whole lot of not much. Hannah was afraid of the daycare potty. Every day for months and months they would offer, and every day for months and months she would refuse. I continued on with the potty at home, but it was hit and miss at best. Around the time that she turned 2 she finally relented to sitting on the potty at daycare, but not with any consistency. There were still many accidents, many wet diapers, and so on.

Things did slowly, but steadily, improve. At around 2 1/2 Hannah began to become much more reliable at home. We gave up on pull-ups on non-daycare days, even occasionally venturing out of the house without plastic. There were accidents, even spectacular ones, but for the most part I was willing to accept that. My theory is that I’m cleaning it up whether the kid’s wearing a diaper or not. And, I’ve found that when Hannah’s wearing a diaper she will go ahead and use it. So, I persisted, because being out of diapers was important to me, even if my kid didn’t really care.

Finally, I’d had enough of the pull-ups. About a month ago I had the big talk with the daycare, and we agreed to give underwear a try. Since then Hannah’s has about one day each week where things fall off the rails. However, the last accident was over a week ago now. Lately, the kiddo’s been very reliable about asking to go to the potty, even with extended family members, and even in strange bathrooms. If I offer to take her to the bathroom and she has to go she will say yes. I don’t get the ‘no’ that really means ‘I’d rather not’ so much. I am holding my breath, but I am quietly elated with the direction things are headed.

So, there you have it. We are well on the way to life without diapers. I am totally psyched.

Now What?

The other night, as I looked on, Hannah opened her bedroom door by herself. Up until now she couldn’t reach, and had never successfully made it through a closed door in our house. She’s petite, my kid.

There’s no fencing this kid in anymore. This is almost more scary than having a new walker. We’d better get vigilant with the door locks, is all I can say.

Cooked the Bird

Today was a milestone in my life. I hosted my first Thanksgiving dinner, and cooked my first turkey. It went pretty well, I think, and it wasn’t nearly as hard as I thought it would be. Partly because other people were kind enough to bring the stuffing and the potatoes.

I oversweetened the dessert, overcooked the cheesecake, and under-cooked the blackberry sauce. Still, I managed vegetables, pumpkin pie and whipped cream, the turkey, and cranberry sauce. And I got to use my gravy boat, and china, and set up a kids table. It was fun, even. And I can learn from my mistakes, and do better next time.

In my family, we are all about the holiday cooking. Holidays are the time to pull out all the stops, put in the effort, rise early and stay up late and produce food in quantity. It’s a relief to know that I can hold my own in this department, and that it’s not as terrifying as I feared. And I have the leftovers to prove it (we do love quantity).

Hazards of Organic Food

A few weeks ago I bought some organic salad greens at the farmer’s market. They were quite good, I enjoyed them. At least I did until I got towards the bottom of the bag and found a very small slug on one of the leaves.

I jumped, I shrieked, I panicked. Jon laughed at me. Still, there’s a difference between supporting sustainable farming practices and local agriculture, in theory, and finding a creepy-crawly in your food. Sure, I don’t want farmers to use toxic chemicals to kill these little creatures, but in return the little creatures should have the decency to stay. out. of. my. salad.

Canning, Take One

This past Sunday my friend and I canned tomatoes. This was our first attempt at anything of this kind, spurred on by a desire to eat local and reduce food costs.

On Thursday, 20 pounds of tomatoes showed up on my doorstep.

They were absolutely gorgeous.

Betty, Jon’s grandmother, was kind enough to donate her jars to the cause. I washed them all to prepare.

We blanched, skinned, and cut up the tomatoes.

We added lemon juice to acidify the jars.

My friend’s daughter supervised.

We cooked the tomatoes and filled the jars – we got 16 1/2 pints in total.

We put on the lids and rings, and processed the jars. Then we put them in the garage to cool.

In the end, the seals failed on 2 of the jars. I think I know what the problem was, so we can avoid it next time. By the way, next time will be pretty soon – we plan on canning pears on Thanksgiving Monday, less than a week from now.

Tonight I made pasta sauce with one of the failed jars – they might not be preserved, but I reasoned that they would be fine in my fridge for a few days at least. Hannah enjoyed the the finished result. That’s good, because we have 7 more pints to get through this winter.