First day of school laughs

 First day of school, 2009

First day of school, 2010

First day of school, 2011

On Sage's first day of school she was insistent about wearing the exact same shirt she wore to the first day of school last year and the year before.  Same size even.  Either Sage is not growing, or the shirt is growing, or I'm the biggest tightwad ever.  I know I'm a tightwad (but not that tight).  And shirts don't usually grow (or maybe that's just my third trimester perspective).  As to Sage growing, I know there's no way she'd let me put darling little pigtails in like I did two years ago.  (She plans to wear the same shirt to the first day of school next year, but with braids in her hair this time.)  I just have to be glad she isn't wearing a back to school outfit like mine from the blessed year 1989 (think matching brown shorts and vest and big brown bangs over big glasses).

As for Eliza, she is thrilled to be in kindergarten.

 

And if you didn't know better, you might think she landed herself a spot in Miss Spider's kindergarten class.

And so Lily won't feel left out, I've enrolled her in a little alternative to preschool that I like to call Grocery Shopping 101, where she and I get to do all the grocery shopping (and other errands) together after we drop off the school girls, and we will NEVER take her older sisters with us again until next summer.

Happy Back to School 2011.

The vomit scale

How is it that when your own kid pukes 10 times in one night (the number of dirty bowls in my sink let me know it truly was 10), it's like a 8 out of 10 on the lameness scale....

But when a neighbor kid barfs once in your car, it's 12 out of 10 on the same scale?

That is one of the 600 reasons why I will never run a day care out of my home.

To My Garden

Dearest Garden,
It is really nice of you to carry on, growing tasty things deep down there amongst all those 6 million weeds that I'm supposed to be attending to.

The yellow Siamese twin squash you gave us was unlike any I've ever seen before.  I'm a little scared to eat it, actually.

The peas were a huge hit with Lily.  One day when I hauled her out of the garden into the bathtub, unbeknownst to me, she brought the peas with her and decorated the tub.  She's sad that pea season is over. 

I think the tomato jungle is doing well, even in the absence of cages until last week (that was not good planning, by the way).  We have quite a hoard of green tomatoes, even though Lily picks them whenever she thinks I'm not looking.  I'm counting on some amazing homegrown ones to teach Lily this year that tomatoes are not the worst food on the planet.  (So far she thinks they're just green apples.)

When I brought in another huge load of summer squash today, Sage accused me of falsely informing her that gardens are harvested in the fall.  Let's just let her think that is true, and I'll keep eating the handful of raspberries that ripen each day that never make it inside. 

I think heaven will have lots of sun-warmed raspberries.  Just maybe with less bees hovering.  And maybe heaven will have zucchini plants that only produce the exact number of zucchinis you need.  I'm not complaining, but my compost pit is getting pretty full of zucchinis, which causes me a tiny bit of guilt.  As does the number of zucchini muffins I personally consumed today.