Look At Me, I'm Blogging!
I'm doing two builds at once right now and can't get any debugging done, so I'm using the time to update my sorely-neglected blog. Depending on how long the builds take, there MAY BE MORE, so stay tuned! Some highlights from the last sparsely-blogged month or so:
I got Mother's Day flowers from Hannah. (Don't they look great in the vase Al's friend Fred designed?) Hannah helped Austen make a card, too—my first hand-drawn Mother's Day card ever. Do I have a great nanny or what? Al made reservations for brunch at the Sofitel, and as usual, they didn't confirm. (In our experience, you have to try a couple times to get the Sofitel staff's attention, but once you have it, the service is excellent.) The food, however, also as usual, was excellent. I can still taste the amazing pan-seared sea scallops in my mind (I ate four, in addition to many other lovely items). The continually-replenished fruit trays were Austen's idea of Heaven, and he practically slid out of his high chair with a moan of ecstasy when he realized there was an unlimited supply of whipped cream. (Hey, it was a special occasion.)
We've been doing a lot of gardening around here, and it's turning out to be one of Austen's favorite activities. I love finding new things we can do as a family because it means less stress on all of us—no tug of war over who's watching Austen, less yelling, "no, don't touch that!"—not to mention more fun for all of us. I discovered on Mother's Day that my smallest T-shirt, a GoGirl design that my neice gave me a couple years ago, worked well as a smock for Austen, who was already wearing his brunch clothes when Al decided to plant some basil and arugula.
In addition to basil, arugula, and flowers, I planted two kinds of tomatoes, yellow squash, zucchini, and yellow peppers a few weeks ago, and they're growing like mad. Two small yellow squashes and one small zucchini are already visible, and the tomatoes are flowering. I'm telling you, composting works! Oh, and speaking of compost, there's also a plant growing out of one of our compost pots. It seemed determined, healthy, and not-at-all-weedlike, so I let it go. We've been dying to see what it is, and until Sunday, we were guessing it was some kind of melon or squash based on the shape of the leaves. On Sunday we met my aunt Jancy at the Custard Corral, however, and she suggested that it might be potatoes, "because that's what always grows in my compost pile." Somehow, I've gotten the idea that she's right (even though she hasn't seen our leaves), and last night I dreamed that I pulled up the plant to see what was under there, and sure enough there were MUTANT POTATOES.
With all the planting we've been doing, the umbrella we found for a decent price at Costco, the cute little table and chairs we bought in Princeton last year, and the successful bee eradication, our deck is becoming a *really* pleasant place to hang out, especially for breakfast. I sure do miss our friends in California, but the weather's been very San Francisco-like here this spring (60s-70s and dry with a brisk breeze), and my god but the living is easy in Philadelphia.
Austen and I went to watch Hannah play the first of what turned out to be three soccer games on Saturday (sadly, her team lost the third, championship game in the second round of shootouts), and afterwards Hannah let Austen kick the ball around. It turns out that the kid actually has some moves! He must've gotten them from Al (or, more likely, Hannah), because he certainly didn't get them from me. I still don't know how to play soccer, despite being on a team once when I was 10 (it was a fall league in Massachusetts, and I ended up missing half the season with pneumonia). The 7v7 version Hannah was playing looked like fun, though I think I still prefer skating to running.
And finally, every parent has a picture of her kid with the kid's hair spiked with shampoo; this is mine.