The time has arrived!

We have our first tomato! The winner is Oregon cherry tomato. As soon as I picked it, Lily promptly snatched it out of the basket and took a bite out of it! Apparently, she was just as excited as I was!

Although harvests are slim...I am finally starting to get a little bitty bit every day.

A few green beans.
A strawberry or two.
Raspberries that I pop into my mouth so quickly I loose track of how many I ate.
Daily handfuls of crunchy snap peas.
25 heads of garlic.
Not quite enough lettuce.

There are already quite a few blushing tomatoes almost ready to be picked. In fact, I have a stupice that needs to picked...like right now.

It's fun. I love my garden.

I do have lots of empty space in my beds though....must have been too busy this early spring to get everything planted out as I should have. :)

I'm trying to make up for it with some late additions of carrots, beets, onions, salad greens and beans. I'm hoping my late summer/fall garden will be much more successful this year (especially because I won't have morning sickness -yahoo!).

Cheers to all the zucchini that's headed my way!

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Why sleep when you can smile all night long?

It was a difficult week. Probably the hardest I've had so far. I think Amelia went through a mini growth spurt at the end of the week. Wednesday I might have gotten 4 hrs of INTERRUPTED sleep and Thursday night I probably got less than 3 hrs of INTERRUPTED sleep...at most. She must have heard me talk about missing her while she sleeps, because come Wednesday she had no interest in sleep. She is always a happy baby, but this week she just wanted to be held and cuddled every second of the day. And sleep was not a priority. Instead she bobbled her head all around, thrashing it onto my chest, practiced her smiles and squirmed and ferociously kicked her little feet. I mean why sleep when you can just wiggle about and smile all day and night?!

While this is all lovely and fine when you're the baby...as the mom - I was a complete mess by Friday. Thank goodness Dan is amazingly patient and helped me through all the errands I struggled to get done last minute Friday. He let me nap until 1pm! It also didn't help that I talked to the rudest person Ive ever spoken to on the phone as I tried to make hotel reservations. She was mean...and I told her so. Anyways, I was a disaster.

Thankfully Chey came to visit and I relaxed a bit and Amelia enjoyed the company of her auntie.

For now, I think we are back on a normal sleeping schedule - phew!!

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Sleepy head

(Photo: Mei Ratz)

It's crazy how much I miss my little one when she sleeps all day long.

I DO enjoy time with just Dan+Me.

I get to run.

I get to sew.

I get to shower! And EAT!

And stare at my garden.

But still...

I'd rather hang out with my little bobble head.

Vaccinations were yesterday.

I went into it positive, expecting THE scream.

She did well!

It wasn't until later in the day when the sleepy head woke up and screamed her head off with a look of such torturous pain, that 

my 

heart

nearly 

broke 

in half. 

Ugh.

For being such a quiet little one, she definitely has a good set of lungs on her.

I had to leave her today. 

One of just a few times.for just a few hours.

This time for work. It felt nice to talk school and science.

But I came home and just missed the heck out of her little face.

Now she's sleeping again.

And I miss her. Again.

But I do get to enjoy watching the Bachelorette. :)

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July 6th 2012: Garden Update

(note: reader beware...i fully intended to just post pictures and somehow its morphed into a giant novel about vegetables. I sincerely apologize in advance.)

I've been a little slack on my garden updates. Must be because I have something else to grow and take care of :) And she is much cuter!

I mostly want to post details and pictures for my own record keeping, so ignore the excessive descriptions of vegetables and the photo bomb if you'd like.

Up until recently the weather has been really crappy. Barely into the 60s-70s and rainy! Now that July has hit we are almost into the 80s and it's forecasted to get into the 90s within the next week or two. Yippee!!

The garden definitely needs some heat.

I don't have harvest pictures, but at this point I've been eating mostly A TON of snap peas. So glad that I planted nearly 7 ft of them (thanks to my sister who helped me while I was pregnant!)

I've also been nibbling on a few raspberries and strawberries, neither of which have made it into the house or to Dan (sorry!).

The kale as you can see below is doing amazing. If only I knew a way to keep up with eating it. It has been frequenting our smoothies regularly though. I think I'm going to harvest a bunch soon and blanch and freeze it for the winter and soup season.

We've also of course been enjoying fresh cilantro (although I like to let it flower because the white buds are so pretty and delicate!) and lots of lettuce. I have a super bad habit of wanting only the freshest of lettuce and not picking it in time before it bolts. Oops! Thus, Dan and I ate a slightly bitter salad for dinner tonight. Oh well!

Also, I never really got a good batch of spinach going this spring, so I'm banking on putting in a nice sized fall crop (I like how I use the word "crop" like I've got acres and acres of land...oh in my sweet sweet dreams!)

Also, this year I've planted cucumbers in mass because I can never seem to get the plants to grow big enough before the bugs get them. So hears to lots of pickles!!

Ummm...the corn is teeny tiny. Not enough sunlight. Pathetic. Also, it went in a bit late after the chinese cabbage - which was a bust, btw. Too many slugs. I hate those things. I wouldn't be sad if I never saw another slug in my life...so sooo slimy. And they eat everything! Anyways, I'll try the cabbage again this fall. Probably need to start it now...hmmmm.

Beets - hahahahahahaha! (that is the beet god laughing at my ridiculous repeated attempts to grow the darn things! I can't for the life of me grow them!)

Potatoes - we planted the organic blue version. Um, not sure how they are doing. They give me anxiety. I felt the same last year and didn't know how exactly to maximize the yield (again, what am I some kind of cash crop farmer?!?!). Hilling them stressed me out. So let's hope they are somehow growing big and beautifully blue. Thankfully, a few french fingerling volunteers from last year sprouted. They were so delicious that I completely forgot to save some to plant this year!

Carrots - I would be exaggerating if I said I had 2 of them growing. What the heck happened this year? I sowed them 3 times and nothing! Grrrr! But I'll stupidly keep trying...

Tomatoes - actually they are just starting to take off. I have faith in trusty territorial seed. Ive got quite a few green fruits growing on 6 different plants. I think this time last year I only had a couple of my very early cherry tomatoes ripe, so we are not too far behind.

And beans! Oh the green (and purple!) beans we will soon have! The first rotation of bush beans are practically ready and I can't wait! I'm also super eager to try the Royal Burgundy beans. They are the purple ones and look fun to eat.

I'm also growing pole beans this year and it's amazing watching them climb the trellis. I'm going to have a ton of runners climbing soon!

Well, I guess I just made up for all my missing garden posts. Haha!

Now wake up and go do something productive with yourself. No more blog hopping!! :)

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Holy...garlic!!

It's garlic harvesting time! I pulled this beauty up the other day and just couldn't wait to cure it to see what it tasted like.

Whoa.Garlic!

Look at how big the cloves are!

Not sure what I did to get such magnificent garlic!?

It might be the easiest thing I've ever grown. In October I put in a bunch of individual siberian garlic cloves (you plant the clove not the whole bulb!) ordered from Territorial Seed and literally did nothing until July.

Tomorrow I will pull up the rest.

Now...what to do with all this garlic?!?

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2 months

Already????

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Eddie

He is pretty cool.

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June's Awkward and Awesome

(Photo: Mei Ratz)

Awkward

• Baby grunts.
• Waking up at 2am to feed baby and literally falling asleep while walking to her crib and face planting right into her as I try and wake-up and gain enough composure to pick her up without dropping her. #dangerous!
• The number of times we've ate Krispy Kreme doughnuts recently. Not to mention the quantity of doughnuts consumed each time...
• The online AutoCAD class I have to take this summer. Homework? Ugh!
• Trying to teach relief society when I got maybe 3 hours of sleep the night before.

Awesome

Jude, my sweet new nephew

• Congratulating Jeff and Hilary on their wedding day and gaining this kiddo as my new nephew! 
• All the baby smiles.

• When people love to hold Little A and make adorable faces at her. Or rock her to sleep :)
• Father's Day + Anniversary 
• Seeing all the cousins cuddled up on the couch together this morning.

• The time I slept 5 consecutive hours + 3 consecutive hours. What beautiful sleep.
• My garden peas.

• This hilarious face

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