How Will Our Garden Grow?

We planted a garden this past weekend. Very exciting for us, as we've wanted to do this for a long while but have never gotten around to it. Phil dug out a portion of our side yard that gets full sun for most of the day (with help from Hank, who had already dug some of it up) and I planted the vegetable starts that we bought. We're trying to grow 2 kinds of tomatoes, 3 kinds of peppers, sugar snap peas, lettuce, spinach, strawberries, raspberries, rhubarb (we actually planted this last year, Heidi ate it down to the roots, and it has come back with a vengeance), two types of onions, and a whole bunch of herbs. We'll see how it turns out.

Emmett has become quite the fan of the pacifier. It really helps keep him calm and happy and he seems to like it better every week. I was hesitant to use it at first because I didn't want a toddler with a paci addiction, but I've since decided that I'm willing to deal with that later in order to have a content baby right now. :) I'm getting really good at this "pick-up/put-down-the-baby-with-both-hands-while-keeping-one-thumb-on-the-pacifier-so-it-doesn't-fall-out" move that I've started using. Thankfully, the past two days he's been better about being put down in the bouncy seat without fussing. I've actually been able to fix a quick dinner and do a quick clean-up without having him scream at me. And today he tolerated a 45-minute walk in the car seat without getting upset at all! I'm very proud of him when he's kind and helpful to me like this.

In other news from my not-so-exciting life, after years of Phil asking me to do this (I don't know why I haven't until now), I finally started making sweet iced tea. I make it with Splenda so it's not so bad for us and it is super yummy. My first batch was too weak and not sweet enough, but the second one was much better. The only bad thing is that I didn't realize just how much caffeine you ingest from several tall glasses of tea and I had a bad case of the jitters after sampling my first batch. I guess being off of caffeine for 9 months makes a person extra-sensitive to it later. I have since made a separate decaf batch for myself.