Growth spurt

Any time Jane's behaviour alters or her routine changes or she seems fussier or hungrier or sleepier or less hungry than usual, we explain it away by remarking, 'Oh, she must be going through another growth spurt.' This time it is unmistakable. For about the past two weeks, she has been uncharacteristically ravenous, and solid foods have moved up from being experimental occasional snacks to becoming an essential source of nutrition and sustenance. She can down half a baked potato or a small bowl of oatmeal in one sitting, and has become hooked on homemade yogurt.

The other night, when we went out to dinner, she was so well behaved: I kept giving her cucumbers from the salad to chew on, which kept her entertained for long stretches. I didn't think she actually ate much of it, merely gnawed on it, until later, when she made a very unladylike digestive sound while I was in the vicinity of her mouth and I distinctly smelled cucumbers.

Meanwhile, the garden does well. The tomatoes I started have all officially died, so I ran out yesterday and bought two flats of seedlings from Walmart. It was so pleasant to plant them with my new gardening gloves (and just last week I read that a lady does not get dirt under her fingernails by way of wearing gloves!) and kneeling pad. The two hills of squash are sprouting and flourishing, and there are volunteer vines all over our backyard. For the past couple of years, it has irked me so much that we don't have a compost that, if at all possible, I have taken pains to throw organic waste out in the back instead of dumping it in the trash. I know there have been various pumpkin and zucchini scrapings over the past year, so I'm assuming we are seeing their descendents, hardy and vigourous, making their way in the world. It's too bad squash isn't nearly as nice as tomatoes, but at least it's nutritious, versatile, and prolific.

Freedom!

Growing older has its advantages, after all.

Both Cold Stone Creamery and Baskin-Robbins offer a free ice cream cone on your birthday. Hollywood Video offers a free movie rental. And various restaurants offer various incentives, ranging from a song to a free dinner and dessert. I spent a little time looking online, and have determined where we shall go for dinner tonight.

It all seems too good to be true. But it's not. Jane and I spent a happy hour this morning earning Starbucks points for walking around a mall (I'm sure it's a merchant-driven incentive to motivate people to window-shop) and eating a free ice cream cone. And you can even sign up your kids in the birthday club at the aforementioned establishments! Next week, Jane and I are going to 'share' a cone for her birthday.

This and that

I planted our garden (consisting of tomato and pepper seedlings, and two hills of squash) last week, and the little plants are coming along nicely. Crops of weeds have sprouted up like anything, though, and astounded me with their rapid progress; hence the phrase, 'Growing like a weed.' Why aren't my little tomato starts flourishing this profusely?

I also planted three blueberry bushes last week. I've been wanting blueberries for years now, and though it was an unpropitious time (none were available in January, the proper time to plant, and I waited too long on a promised plant sale that never materialised), I felt I must do it now, or risk losing the inertia forever. You are supposed to pinch off the buds the first year, but I can't bear to kill off all those baby blueberries, so we're going to harvest all two cups of the blueberry crop this summer or die in the attempt (they will - not us).

I received a yogurt-maker as an early birthday present, and after considering not opening it until my actual birthday, opened it anyway. I've made four batches of yogurt in the last week and am thrilled with the notion of turning cheap, marked-down, about-to-expire milk into fresh, nutritious, bursting-with-the-right-kind-of-bacteria yogurt. It's a little tart, not being doped up with fruits and preservatives and sugar like the store-bought kind, but I am determined to get used to it and cultivate a taste for the tangy stuff. Also I am determined to teach my children to appreciate it, just as I am going to cook and bake for my children without sugar (Ha!) so they will grow up healthy and never know what they are missing. It's too late for me, of course.

Overheard last evening

Me: Well, that was a nice day of rest.
Michael: Yes, and we didn't fight even once.
Me: But we never fight!
Michael: Oh, come on. We argue all the time.
Me: No, we don't!
Michael: As I was saying...

Gag law

Last night my car was in need of gas. Now the price has been rising something awful here, and I've been checking this very handy website that lists the best prices in the area. The problem is that the website is not always current. According to the site, the best price was at a gas station about five miles away, but since my experience has led me to believe that our neighborhood Kroger gas station is usually cheaper than that one, I wondered if the site was simply inaccurate. Rather than drive five miles out of my way to check, I decided to call and find out so I could comparison-shop. And what did the station manager tell me? That it was against the law for him to give me the price of gasoline over the phone!!!

I am aghast and shocked beyond measure at this appalling state of things. I am assuming that it is a state law, since I haven't heard anything about this on a federal level (but if it is a national law, and everyone else already knows all about it, please do clue me in), and I already have a call in to my GA state legislator to find out the details on what this law is, when it passed, who sponsored it, and who's behind it. Clearly it's an unfair attempt to smother competition and healthy shopping, perhaps lobbied for by the oil industry, perhaps by the gas station owners. As a consumer, I most definitely have a right to know what the price of any item is without driving out there to inspect the shelf myself.

I feel like the avalanche of ents after entmoot. I will take this law down.

Overheard last night

[Note: the bathroom scale has been reading 5 lbs. lighter for several weeks now.]

Me: Did you adjust the scale recently?
Michael: Yes, I fixed it today.
Me: Oh. But it's been off for several weeks now. Did you adjust it awhile ago?
Michael: No, I'm sure you knew that the earth's gravitational field was deteriorating, so that's probably it.
Me: Oh, and you just need to adjust for it, like Leap Year?
Michael: Something like that.

He is risen indeed!

Last year we spent Easter Sunday in Holland. We inquired at the little hamlet where we were staying and ascertained that Easter services were held in the little country church down the road at 10:00. Accordingly we went there the next morning at 10:00, only to discover that Daylight Savings Time (or whatever they call it over there) comes a week early in Europe, and we had missed church. That is probably the only time in my life I can recall missing church on Easter Sunday.

This year we have a baby on our hands, and we made it to church (Michael even sang both services). Also we are having friends over for a proper Easter dinner of ham and green beans (or, to be Seussian, green beans and ham) this evening. I love Easter!

Spring is here in shoes of green

I love this time of year. The trees are in full bloom, the grass is green again, and flowers are everywhere. The only drawback to an early spring is that the height of the blooming misses my birthday.

When I was growing up in Oregon, the cherry trees were always in full bloom right around my birthday, and it was a tradition to take a birthday picture of me among the blossoms. When we moved to Virginia, the spring came a bit sooner, and the cherry blossoms were long gone by late April. So my birthday pictures were taken in front of the dogwood.

Now that I live in Georgia, spring comes sooner still, and hardly any blossoms will be left at the end of the month. Our dogwoods have been blooming for two weeks now, and are already mostly leaves. Last year we were lucky to find a flowery bush to pose in front of. We'll probably have to resort to the same sort of thing this time around.

Death and taxes

Last week we finally got around to doing our taxes. And can I just say, Hurrah for the child tax credit! If you had a great insurance plan (to cover the cost of delivery) and lots of generous friends (as we did) you could actually make money off of having children, despite all those pretentious studies in magazines that prove the average cost to raise a child is $164,000 or some such nonsense.

And as for the other sure thing...most of the tomato and pepper sprouts I started from seeds have withered and died. Bother. It all comes of too much forgetting to water.

Eleven months old today

Recently we took Jane to an Underwater Sea Odessy at our church. Watch those toes!