Relaxing Places, a Baby with a Squash, and a Walk on the Farm

I really do believe that you can tell a lot from one, badly balanced, poorly shot photo. This is my screened-in porch, and one of my all time favorite places. It is one of Molly's favorite places, too. She loves the view of the bird feeders, which I finally refilled. It's free kitty TV for her to sit out there and watch the feeders, which are now covered with finches and all manner of little birdies. Unfortunately, as soon as I try to photograph them, they fly away.

I just bought myself the cup you see on the table. It was half off at Starbucks on the clearance rack. I've wanted that cup for months now, but refused to pay the exhorbitant regular price. Now it sits happily on my patio table, filled with cafe con leche, with 4 splendas, whipped cream and sprinkles on top. (Hey, a gal's gotta enjoy life.) This is one of my favorite spaces, because I can enjoy the view of the pond and the birds and listen to the sound of the outdoors. I'm pretty decent at making myself relax, and this is my favorite place to do it; I put my feet up, sip my coffee, and just breathe.

The book is Steven Pinker's "The Stuff of Thought," which is a complicated but fascinating treastise on linguistics and the evolution of language. So far I'm loving it, but I'm reading it in small parts, perhaps a chapter a day or so. Now that I'm back to work, my reading has slowed a bit.

Entertaining Nick has become an interesting challenge lately. He quickly becomes bored in the baby cage, so I've been trying to find new things that he can play with. Today it was a pot, a spoon, and a yellow squash from my garden. Not sure why he liked the squash so much, but hey, whatever works.

His latest trick has been to squirt his bottle all over the place. Today he squished it all over the rug and the comforter I have under the baby cage. Then he soaked his onesie. Thus the reason he is nearly naked.

This last place is a very peaceful, quiet wooded setting. It was taken on Saturday, up by Greg's Grandma's farm in Gleason, Wisconsin. The ruins in the back are of the Estonian Church, and Greg told me he thought it was haunted when he was a child. It sure looks spooky.

The property in Gleason is beautiful, and the weather was just lovely. Usually it's pretty cold when we go in September. I wish we would have had more time to enjoy it; we arrived after 2:30 on Saturday and had to leave around 10 a.m. Sunday.

You can see the farmhouse behind the trees. It is small and very quaint, especially compared to the property, which is expansive and wooded. The air smells fresh and clean, and it really is lovely, except for the mosquitoes. They are why we ended up only having a short walk. After one trip up the driveway and back, a few of them started swarming Greg. One was flying around Nick, so he rushed the stroller back towards the house and safety. (Greg is afraid of West Nile Virus. Not that I like mosquitoes much myself.)

Laughing Over Spilled Milk

Nick is becoming a very high maintenance baby. All this week, I came home to work to find that he would not stay in the baby cage without screaming and dissolving in pitiful tears. He seems fine in there when Greg is getting ready in the morning; I'm not sure what the aversion is for him.

It seems like Nicholas just wants to explore. So I've been rather creative. Today I had to plant a raspberry bush that my mom gave me. It took me a few minutes to figure out a strategy for getting this done while still supervising Nick, especially since he refuses to play in the baby cage. I brought a blanket, a toy, and an old magazine (for him to rip up and destroy) outside and placed it near where I needed to work.

The only issue is that Nick now crawls. He did not stay on the blanket for long, and he kept coming over to the area with dirt, sod clumps, garden implements, and plants with pokey things on them. Do you have any idea how hard it is to dig a 16" hole through sod while keeping track of how much grass a baby is ingesting? I now know. Nick ripped some leaves off of one of my zucchini plants, and was pinched a bit by the stem. Then he tried to eat a Japanese beetle. I didn't feel bad for the beetle, but I wasn't sure that it would be a healthy dinner choice for Nick, so I grabbed it and smooshed it instead.

He did love being outside, though, and the grass was an interesting feature for him. He isn't used to crawling on it yet. Nick kept touching it and pulling on it and trying to eat it. He almost looked confused. As I filled the bird feeders, Nicholas used one of my bird feeder poles to try to stand up. One good thing about grass is that it is soft when you land on your bottom.

I will finish with a video of Nick drinking his formula out of a cup with no lid. Yes, we were crazy.



Nick loves to drink out of cups, but he doesn't like the sippy part. He'd rather drink out of a regular cup. He can do it, too, to some extent. Until he can't. That's when the mess starts.