The Garden
This spring we had to have our playscape taken out because the wood it was made from had begun to rot. This freed up space in our backyard, and as I was looking at this newly acquired space this April vacation I was struck by inspiration. I was going to plant a vegetable garden.
I had no clue as to how to plant a garden when I was struck with this thought. So, after several conversations with gardening pros and several books later, I have carrots, squash, tomato and rosemarry plants growing in a nice neat 10 by 10 square in my backyard. I can already see what I want to do differently next year, but the whole experience has been very positive so far. Eli does not seem to notice much of what I am doing in the garden, but Ari is definitely interested in helping to water the plants and he often comments that mommy’s “garben is booful”. I have a vision of Ari helping to harvest the vegetables when the time comes, but he may not be quite ready to understand the concept. We’ll see. In the meantime I am quite fond of working in the garden under the hot sun while Ari and Eli play in the backyard. How do we possibly survive the winters?
In other news, Eli has become very mobile and is constantly pursuing his interest in understanding how the world works. Just when Ari lost interest in emptying the contents of the cabinets, Eli has discovered the joy of taking things out and throwing them on the floor. Eli has also started to say some words with regularity including, baba (for bottle) dog, dada, ball, all done and no….but still no mama though! Oh well.
Ari has also become very fond of singing and pretty much sings to himself all the time. He also has become fond of telling jokes. These are 2 year old jokes, like when he randomly is walking around his room and he looks up and says, “Cookie fell in the toilet!” in reference to the part of the book “Cookie’s Week” when Cookie, the cat falls into the toilet. Or “Baby Bop ate lemons!” in reference to the part of a Barney movie when Baby Bop accidently eats lemons and has a very strong reaction to them. Oh, to be two and be so easily amused with life.
There are only ten more school days and then the heaven of summer vacation begins.
