With everything happening in our lives right now, our backyard farming plans have gotten off to a slow start. We had originally planned to have at least weeded the backyard and prepped a couple of patches of dirt to be built up into planters by now, but so far all we’ve done is buy the bricks to build the planters. I should point out, however, that getting a hundred 60-pound bricks home from the store is no small feat.

In the meantime, I’ve been letting the kids play a game called Farmville using my Facebook account. It lets you plant and harvest vegetables, flowers, and trees from the comfort of your computer screen. It also lets you decorate your farm with fun themed items. Right now I have a small cemetery on the corner of my farm, in celebration of Halloween.

Halloween cemetery in Farmville

In addition to my holiday-themed items, I’ve also got a little pond. Eventually I hope to add some buildings.

duck pond in Farmville

But mostly I just enjoy watching the plants grow. I especially like my cherry trees. They provide some nice pink contrast to all the green foliage.

cherry trees and rice paddies in Farmville

I time plantings so that the kids can do the clicking for me. During the week this means choosing plants that will mature right around dinner time. During the weekends I’ve got more flexibility. As far as educational value, both the kids and I are enchanted by the depictions of little bell peppers, egg plants, and wheat stalks. But mostly I’m just glad it’s keeping them excited about the prospect of working in their own garden.

Categories: Facebook, gardening, kids and parenting
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Yesterday I worked from 9am to 6pm, came home, had a quick dinner, then worked from 7pm until midnight. Yes, I’m tired. No, I still don’t have this work-life balance thing figured out.

These bell peppers are the sole survivors of our gardening experiment this summer. They tasted good enough that we might try again next year.

The kitchen remodel is going well. All that’s left are 5 more cabinets, the vent hood, and the drawer and door knobs. Installing the vanity panels and the flooring and buying accessories for the cabinets will be icing.

This was Angie’s Halloween costume. I think she looks great in orange.

Here’s Angie with her friend Payge who is 4 and a half months older. Payge is small for her age and Angie is big for her age, so they end up looking the same size.

In other news, there’s something screwy with our internet service. Our access has been spotty on a minute by minute basis, and we haven’t been able to get it resolved because every time Kevin calls customer service he gets cut off about 20 minutes into the conversation.

The strangest part is that for about 3 days Google kept redirecting us to their United Kingdom page. Tonight it redirected us to their German page.

Anyway, that’s why I didn’t post a Nablopomo entry yesterday. Apparently I was in Germany.

Categories: angie, gardening, home improvement, memes, work-life balance
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Monday was a very special day. My sister gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, Bethany Noelle! Mother and daughter are doing well.

It’s been a veritable baby boom in our circle. Not only do I have a new niece, but in the last few months FIVE of my cousins have also had babies. Among our friends there are two new babies plus two more on the way. Wowie!

In other news, we finally hired a gardener. Not finally as in we finally gave into peer pressure but finally as in we finally found one willing to take our business. After a year of dead end inquiries and referrals, I finally found someone by calling a number in a mailer. During their first visit we watched surreptitiously through the window as they surveyed our front yard and laughed at its awful state, but after two visits the yard already looks worlds better. Hooray!

For the back yard we’ve got different plans. I’ve successfully sprouted seeds for a bunch of fruits and vegetables, the majority of which have already been moved into pots, but eventually they’ll all need to be planted in the ground somewhere back there. I also gave up on the old batch of sunflower seeds that refused to grow and sprouted a new batch that’s doing very well, but instead of planting them in the back I think I will eventually plant them in the front, but maybe wait until they look a little less weed-like to avoid confusing the gardeners.

Kevin convinced me to sign up for Netflix so that I don’t end up working all through my leave. Here’s the first batch of movies I watched:

By the way, did you know yogurt containers are not recyclable? I looked it up a while back and was shocked to learn type 5 plastics are not easily recyclable. This means you can’t just dump it in your curbside bin. This recent Slate article explains it pretty well. Update: It turns out our trash disposal company will take all type 1 through 5 plastics in curbside recycling! Yay! Check with your local trash disposal service and maybe you’ll get some good news too!

Categories: environment, gardening, kids and parenting, movies
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I can’t sneeze. The baby won’t let me. I can do the AH-, but instead of finishing with -CHOO, I just wince painfully. Even blowing my nose is difficult because of the abdominal muscles required. I’ve never experienced this before because both Alex and Ana were born in winter. Something to keep in mind for all of you future moms who suffer from spring-summer-fall allergies like I do.

Yesterday while teaching the kids how to baby proof the living room for their soon-to-be-born baby sister, I told Alex how he used to play with the TV set. He couldn’t stop laughing through the whole story.

Back when Alex was a baby, we watched two shows a week religiously: Charmed and Gilmore Girls. Eventually we had to stop watching Charmed once Alex got old enough to be scared of the monsters, but at first all he noticed was the bright light coming out of the box… and the row of buttons immediately underneath.

Alex learned quickly that pressing the On/Off button got Mommy and Daddy’s attention right away. When he graduated on to the channel buttons, we bought a plastic shield made for babyproofing the TV. It didn’t last a week. Alex figured out how to pull it away from the TV and reach behind it with his nimble little fingers. We ended up have to duct-tape over the buttons and use the remote control exclusively.

I have many other Alex babyproofing stories, but I can’t recall any for Ana. Aside from perching precariously on the arm of the sofa I don’t remember her doing anything else particularly dangerous or naughty. I wonder if it’s because she had an older sibling to occupy her attention. Or maybe they just have different personalities.

Daisy’s preoccupation with eating plants is bordering on the pathological. Kevin found several gigantic lumps of regurgitated grass in the backyard. But I think I’ve found a way to keep my plants out of her reach: container gardening. I’ve transplanted all the small plants into long, rectangular containers and set them on the patio tables and the corn into large pots set on top of the patio chairs. Thank goodness Daisy has short legs.

Categories: allergies, gardening, kids and parenting, pets, pregnancy
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