The White House

I apologize for the radio silence and no posts lately. I\’ll see if I can make it up to you over the next couple of days. We\’ll start off with this little video of Quinn on the \”monkey\” swing. In the last month he\’s become more interested in the swing. Then Sullivan was here visiting and she LOVES the swing which renewed Quinn\’s interest. Quinn shed many tears that week when he had to take turns with Sullivan on the swing.

If you listen closely, you can hear Quinn saying \”To infinity and beyond\” when you give him the blast-off push. Buzz Lightyear says that in the movie \”Toy Story\” which happens to be one of his new favorites. Enough jibber jabber — here\’s the video…

This is Quinn just as he is waking up. Maybe not so happy. You may remember back in November when I made this post about the Terrific Two\’s. At the time I thought Quinn was entering that two year old stage but what I didn\’t realize was that it was just the tip of the iceburg. I am back to reading parenting books to give me ways to cope in the moment and also look at the bigger picture.

I never realized what strong emotions a little 2 3/4 year old boy could pull out of me. I was telling Don the other night \”It was the best of times, it was the worst of times\”. Funny — I just looked up the full quote and it seems quite appropriate…

\”It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it ws the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way.\”

I watch amazed as he learns new sayings and builds sentences, operates the microwave, puts on his own shoes, cuddles with me every morning and everything else that makes my heart smile. (As I type this he just asked me to get a ladder so he can get a clock off the top shelf of the bookcase.) I also stand amazed as he breaks down crying and immobile when I get his shoes out of the closet instead of letting him do it, when he refuses to get dressed because I pulled off his pj bottoms instead of letting him do it, when I try to get a bathing suit on him, and the list goes on.

We have learned to give Quinn lots of options so that he has a sense of control and independence. Sometimes it\’s as simple as \”juice or milk?\”. Other times it\’s \”Do you want to walk up the stairs or should I carry you?\”. He hasn\’t quite realized that he another choice of doing nothing at all, but it works to get him upstairs.

We add tools to our parenting toolbox but every time we get one thing figured out, it changes again. I remember when I knew *everything* about parenthood — my name was Aunt Amy.

One goal for Don and I is to find new ways to live \’greener\’. We purchased a compost bin at the beginning of the summer and enjoy seeing the compost grow and then shrink. We had been putting in our oodles of pizza boxes but they weren\’t breaking down quickly enough so off to the landfill for pizza boxes.

So we were pleased when a new friend offered to share her Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share with us. If you\’re not familiar with CSA\’s then check out this. We pick up our bounty at a local church and she and I will switch off every other week. I\’m really excited about participating and supporting a local, organic farmer.

In this week\’s share, we got one bunch of boston lettuce, 3 sweet onions, one bunch of basil, 2 cucumbers, 3 summer squash, one bunch of broccoli, three beets, three kohlrabi, one bunch of swiss chard, and one pound of sugar snap peas.

Don and I participated in a CSA in Seattle and I found it easiest to break everything down the day you get it, if possible. So all the greens got washed, chopped and bagged. Tops were cut off, veggies were washed and broccoli was cut in to florets. I also shelled and cooked the peas, which we munched on during dinner, and made pesto out of the basil. See….

From what I understand, the share grows as the summer goes on. We\’ve also signed up for an additional fruit share where we get an additional share of fresh summer fruit. Can\’t wait!