bits

Esme has a bit of a cough, so we're watching it. Sometimes she gets one only when she is crying and filling her sinuses up, poor kid has my nose. If it gets worse when she isn't crying - we'll have to take her in. She has really started acting more grown up more often than she is acting babyish... except for the frustration at times and being a terribly bossy cow when she has her mind set on something. I think those will be lifelong! The garden is producing a lot more - beans, squash, peppers, basil and cucumbers daily. The tomatoes and corn are just starting to become ripe. Mark thinks he'll pick some of the corn tomorrow. I feel I've lost a little of weight eating by smell - cooking pots of garden food and adding anything that smells good to it and not eating anything that doesn't smell 'delicious.' I'm probably quite lucky in that simmering vegetables and things like soup that includes black eyed peas, green beans, zucchini, carrots, yellow squash, onion, herbs and other bits of leftovers smell VERY delicious to me lately. I'm getting a lot of use out of the idea of 'eat half of this tonight, bring half for lunch tomorrow', as well.

I walked around the outside of the garden watering the new squash and beans. They are starting to leaf out.

Before I went to work this morning Esme had to check to see if Mom had everything - shirt, pants, belt, shoes... I found that funny. Tonight I notice she is answering questions, even some slightly abstract ones, much better than ever before. She can answer what color one of our dogs is now without telling me to say it. I tested her a little further and she could tell me what color her bed is (yellow), what color Curious George's "daddy" is (man in yellow hat) and was stumbling on what color George is.. she can't decide between orange or brown for him. I was impressed by that, and her use of more feeling words lately 'I rub mine eyes, it wet.' // 'Daddy go on the moon, it me too hard.' (game thing on Daddy's computer) // 'I no scream, no cry, feel all better!' (about me cutting an onion yesterday I asked her if it made her eyes cry) // 'no be all done Mom, no leave me here, we two sits' (she didn't want me to go upstairs)

She told me in the bathtub that a bubble was all dead, really dead, just sit there...really dead bubble. *ha* // She just told Daddy that something on his computer was REALLY beautiful, and she is giving him lots of directions, 'no no no.. yea, that a GREEN moon, gonna fall down, hold on tight!' etc.

PT update

Proud of Esme - she can sit on the big potty all by herself now without any help... she proved it to Daddy today and also to me several times after I came home. She has always cried out for me to hold her up there and she isn't quite tall enough to reach... but she found a way to do it by herself. Good girl!

To boot, she got into the freezer by herself (using a chair) and got herself her own lollipop as a treat earlier when I was at work. She told Daddy all about what she had done all on her own and what else she needed help with.

garden update (no pics)

It is starting to storm again, we've had good enough rain the past few days to bring up seeds I thought were lost... and others that were just planted recently as well.

bit of a boring update here - no pictures but I've been meaning to put this on the blog for reference. But I keep losing the computer to little fingers... so it is hard to keep up.

Three green peppers, lots of cucumbers, zucchini and some tiny yellow squash yesterday in the garden, added to the normal handful of pinto beans, green beans and a carrot. I put some of those in with a handful of lentils to simmer for a few hours and came out with a delicious garden soup that made me intensely hungry with the very first bite. I am enjoying getting some 'simple food' in and I think it is something I've needed for a while, minerals or alkaline... or just the placebo effect from knowing it is good food made myself from the garden we planted :)

The purple hulled peas are nearly all up, some more of the wax beans came up and the others are looking happier. A few other beans I had been sure had no chance came up behind the corn and others there are starting to twine up cornstalks and get ready to flower. The mexican sunflowers were looking very poorly yesterday, and are better today. Pinto beans along the fence behind those sunflowers are looking better and coming up in the bare spots. The 'advanced' pumpkin is huge now, about junior basketball size, and there is a new one coming on the OTHER side of the garden... and for the record, all of the pumpkin vines are rooted in the same place... but they have wandered all over the other squash and went where they pleased. The red sorghum is up and looks like tiny blades of grass, spaced far apart. The radishes are starting to come up in their new home. The dill is coming up, as are the Mayflower beans and extra Provider green bush beans. Esme's dahlias are coming up as well. The extra pumpkins and squash are up in the valley, but I haven't checked on the extra pole beans scattered there. I planted the whipporwhill cowpeas this morning as well as the white sorghum. Now with this rain it should be all set to come up!

Esme is begging piteously for the computer. Now that she can operate several programs (learning SO quickly, was building 'Lego' on Daddy's Minecraft game last night and switching colors and destroying things after building them within a few minutes of him showing her the keys) she wants to do it all herself and stay on for hours! Like parents like child...

it's the little things...

Like being able to put on your pants and using a mouse on the computer, pouring a cup of milk and washing your own hands and face etc... Esme is starting to get those lately and it really has added a whole new level to her independence. She is open more often to learning and trying hard at new things, and applying her range of knowledge. She can play the matching game on Starfall and also 'browse' clip art and Ebay listings by mousing to pictures she is interested in and clicking on them. We're working on the milk thing, she can get it out of the fridge, take the top off, and start to pour it.. but she needs someone holding the cup still because of the angle on the milk carton... poor girl. But, practice will make it right. And I'm still proud of her even though this morning she had both feet in one leg of her pants.. the point was that she went after the idea without crying and screaming for help until it really became a problem she couldn't fix.

When she stops and says 'I picking.... I thinking about colors. I ... I KNOW, 'something she wants', it cracks me up ;) She will pace with both hands behind her back and head down while she is 'thinking' and then decide with a light-bulb expression on her face. When she dives into my fabric box and balances on her belly over the edge, face-down in the tub and saying 'I looking.. I finding. I looking at alls.' also funny.

Blue dot dress

Awesome pictures taken by Mark :)
Fabric by Nauvoo Quilt Company, one of the pieces I bought as part of my Mother's Day present ;) And this is why it was for Mother's Day, so I can have a dress to put on her and see again and again :)

New blue dot dress made this morning before we went to town. The collar on this one is tight, almost 'perfect'... so it probably will not fit for as long as the 'too big' one. I'll need to make at least one more before I cut into the Hong Kong fabric. Hopefully I can find a happy medium.

NOTES:
Would you believe it was this old favorite again... without the back darts and the skirt was measured out to be exactly 9 inches long and 'whatever was left' wide out of exactly one half yard. There was about a 4 inch square left and that was it.


Simplicity 8714, copyright 1970

The finished product really does look like the girl in the bottom right hand corner.

OTHER: Esme is really showing how grown up she is lately. She can open the fridge and get something AND close it and come back to us. She can do the matching game and the puzzle games on Starfall but still gets a little stuck on the Alphabet Maze (letter K) once in a while... but she is starting to understand the arrow keys on that one, too. She is so stubborn - she keeps trying the same one over and over because she REALLY wants to get it right. She also just understands more than she did before, thinks things through better and her imagination games are getting even MORE complex and interesting.

bits of a Pre-Saturday

'pre' because I'm sure there is much more to come today, after it all dries out and the sun comes out. If it does! I'm glad Esme and I put a few seeds in the ground after I got home from work last night, mayflower beans and radishes. Woke up to such a rainy morning, no sun, and a little face telling me at 8 am that she needed cereal and could not live another moment without it. Then she rolled on me, and brought me a 'lunchbox' full of blocks and a teaset and pretended we were having breakfast in bed. So I got up. She got her cereal and is now eating an orange.

Last night I broke out a present we bought her a while back... a tiny projector that shows the moon and planets and is a nightlight. She loved it. We put it in a little hallway downstairs and she brought her playmobil people and a box full of wooden blocks and built houses and had them need to be saved from the moon and sun 'it dangerous.' Going upstairs and telling me to 'wait a minute I be right back' and coming back with a box full of wooden blocks was surprising. She asked where the moon went this morning, and I said we would play with it again when it was dark outside. She accepted that.

I will see if she will allow me to put on a movie and sew something or if there are other big plans she has for the day. She has gotten into the habit of arranging plans again... dollhouse and blocks and 'roll ball' and other games she insists upon. Sometimes I can put her on Starfall.com for a while on my computer - and lose my computer for hours. She has finally learned to use the tiny button mouse on my laptop and the separate click key that is further down on the pad. She can now do the games by herself, even the one where there are letter 'puzzle' pieces up on the top of the screen and slots on the bottom of the screen to put them in. Those allow the user to mouse to them and then click to 'pick up' - and not have to hold down the button while dragging. She has finally gotten that one and Mom used to have to always be the helper on that one.

LATER: I am very glad I planted the pinto beans. They are so interesting, and producing a few mature pods every day. They turn white with purple specks when cooked..again, very interesting. I made the second sleeveless shirt of what I am sure will be several more. It is not too wide, but the neck is not something that will grow with her, either. I want a happy medium. I used the navy blue with dots that was one of my Mother's Day fabrics.

Green with Spots

can see the neck is just a tiny bit wide

Made this last night, using a size 4 vintage dress pattern as the base for the bodice. I used almost every last bit of the green fabric that these bird pants had come out of previously. It is just a tad big on her for width... can alter that the next time through. Big is always better than too small, as long as it is proportional.

She told my mom on the phone 'Mama make mine own dress, green with SPOTS.'

She came out to the garden and helped me plant the last of our green bush beans and also pick a few beans and zucchini. She wanted me to put the pinto beans that were harvested right back into the ground - they were seeds. Ha.

Cowpeas

Varieties of cowpeas
some are used 'fresh' and some are eaten dry

From left to right: black eyed peas, Mississippi silver brown crowder, pink eye purple hulled peas, mayflower beans

I have been doing some detailed research into different kinds of 'southern peas', also known as field peas or iron peas or clay peas. These are varieties of peas that are used primarily to make dry goods, although some of them can be eaten fresh like the common green peas or sugar snap types. They tend to be less sugary and more 'meaty' or like dry beans in flavor. It is one of those kinds of foods that are good to know how to grow, keep and propagate for the future. It is interesting to me because there are so many kinds of cowpeas, from different times in our history, and all of them have very interesting stories.



Esme said she had to help mama sort seeds


She actually mixed them up more and dropped a lot
on the floor.. but it is the thought that counts!


Cow pea 'bandit'
I asked her to hold the bags up, and she did this.

This last picture really shows how much she has been growing!

The same shirt when I made it last September


Equinox post Animal top shirt
It was much more roomy on her back then!

It is time to make another round! I got a half yard of something in the mail the other day, all the way from Hong Kong. Daddy and Grandpa were wondering why Mama would order something from that far away for something this small.... well... I explained it to Daddy like his description that he could buy all the canned apples from the store they had, and none of them would be as good as a batch he made himself. Further than that, if the produce was from their own garden and nobody else had anything like it at all... it would be even more of an experience eating whatever was made from it. The fabric from this shirt pictured was also from Japan... and I fretted over how to use it well - and I do believe this shirt was the best choice for it. When I use something that special it both spurs me to MAKE the item, and further to continue to use that item over and over with a 'history' of how it got to be what it is. In a way, my interest in heirloom beans and peas also works into that keyhole in my mind - it connects us to something else, is useful and continues to create memories into the future as well.

LATER: Esme has been so cranky the past day or so, off and on - and she is asking for and drinking more milk again, and then crashing for an uncustomary nap. So, my deduction is a growth spurt. I'm working on her 'civility' as she is resorting to 'gimme this' and 'go away', screeching and pushing and shoving with her crankiness... not the way to act. I threatened to remove her from Grandma's house for one of her spats... and she did get better after that talking to. Now that she is napping, I went to check on the garden. There were three small pattypan squashes today that had turned bright white (time to pick), a handful of green beans and a few cucumbers. There were several zucchini, but only picked two as the others may get a little larger. I planted the pink eye purple hulled peas in a little square in the back of the garden. If they turn out to need some support fencing I can add a small stretch later. The beans under the big pole fence are starting to poke their heads up, but not the peas yet or the wax beans.

Notes: boiled cucumber tastes like asparagus to me. the notes I was seeing said that plain solid brown whipporwhill cowpeas were very hard to come by for this year 2011... some crop failures. They are one of the old varieties that might be what Grandma remembers from her childhood. The brown speckled whipporwhills are coming in the mail soon I hope. They are a variant that supposedly tastes very similar and were a family tradition in Tennessee. Now I should kick myself to go sew a shirt for Esme!


saw this dress pattern
and would like to make it for Esme

I made her a green and polka-dotted sleeveless shirt one size bigger than the other one. It is the same fabric in her bird pants. It is a little wide in the neck... but it does fit and doesn't slip around too much. Loose is better than tight in hot weather and bigger is always something to grow in while too small is never good! So, it is a win. I might tighten the front just a tiny bit when I use the Hong Kong fabric for the next one.

Corn devestation and other garden pictures

The storm the other night took out two rows of our corn. I went out there in the mud this morning and cleared out the stalks. We are going to plant pole beans in the place on a fence.


There was corn in all of these rows... and now there isn't :(


pulling the stalks out to mulch in another part of the garden


The older corn did not fall down
and has tassels and silked ears


The Shackamaxon beans were not an entire loss, these ones survived and there is still half the package in the freezer.


pinto beans out climbing their fence!

I was happily surprised to see a hummingbird drinking from the pinto bean flowers while I was out working in the garden. I did not know they liked them.


One of the first pinto beans maturing

I opened about ten pods to try to see what the differences were. Some of the pods were yellow, but were not spotted inside. This one was spotted inside, but green on the outside. The difference on this one was that when I began to squeeze the pod the beans moved around inside easily - they were no longer firmly attached to the skin inside.


This is Pollywog
she is Pogo's new mouser in training.


She enjoys hanging out in the garden with me and chasing frogs.


crookneck squash


peppers


tomatoes, all still green

We have strung the new fence for the pole beans and were letting the dirt dry out a little in the sunshine. It's time to go see what we can do with it. Esme is having terrible cabin fever but is afraid to go get dirty in the mud because she knows that means Mom will wash her hair. It feels odd to have her tell me 'no play outside, there is mud, I'll get dirty.' so matter-of-factly. I feel like I've been given a changeling!

LATER : It really does feel like we've gone over another horizon with Esme this week.... It seems like she has finally connected thought process on a whole range of things. I was given a 'like a Cinderelly bath' with a loofah full of water over my head today. She is saying 'follow me' and 'carry me' even though those words are VERY hard to understand (follow sounds like 'throw me' and 'carry' sounds like 'call' or 'kill'.. very hard to get unless you also pay attention to her hand sign and try to correct the word). She is also trying so hard to do everything 'help mom' and to copy us. After we went to town today she took some plastic keys out to the truck saying 'I go back to work' today and then came back in a few minutes later, stole Daddy's keys off of his desk saying she needed the 'right key.' She was in the driver's seat of the truck trying out keys to the ignition before he realized she had actually taken them outside.

We were both outside in skirts walking to the mailbox the other day and she said we were 'two girls mom, we got skirts'. When there was no mail we were 'sad' it was empty and going home. Today going to the mailbox she was rattling off about how we would be sad again so we shouldn't go we should send Daddy on the motorcycle to see if it was empty so we didn't cry. It was just a light-year ahead of even last week, even though there were a few little 'gaps' I could put two and two together to know she meant an idea bigger than she has expressed before.

I was being asked to play 'mama and baby' with my bare foot and her toes just a little while ago.. she was trying to feed them both invisible tea and plastic food on a table. It feels very odd to have your foot invited to sit at it's own place setting at a table!

Mostly what I am seeing is a better ability to say what she is thinking or describe what she has just seen/did has truly improved. She no longer has as much of the frustration or ambiguity of meaning that she used to have (I want a purple etc...). There are still a few times she uses a color or a simple word instead of the real word like 'oh the poor pink yellow it fall' instead of saying 'kite'.. but she had said 'kite' earlier, so it is just a matter of habit...

She was bitten by a horsefly outside today and was able to tell me exactly what happened, show me the bite and say it was a bug that was flying. 'Something bit me right here arm a bug.' I watched it for a while but her arm swelled a little and it was gone by bathtime. There was a while back when she would have answered 'yes' to any question - but when I asked her if it was a snake that bit her (hadn't seen it yet) she said 'no, a bug. a bug bite and go fly.' Also all afternoon we have been having tea parties with 'bugs bunny baby rabbit' toy and a dragon and she was pouring 'apple juice' out of teacups and baby bottles and telling everyone to drink their own cup and not drink out of other cups...

43 month language spurt

I keep posting these, because I want to see where the 'aha' moments were... we've been having another round of them. I know it is in direct relation to how much time Esme spent with me during the vacation last week.... she absorbed so much and is now sorting it out into her regular speech. Mark and I keep turning to look at each other with that familiar : 'was that our child that just said that?' look. It is nice. She is getting so much more across to us as complete thoughts.

Last night we 'baked a cake' impromptu for a coworker of mine. It is her birthday today, and I was going to bring her some cupcakes and dishcloths for a last-minute present. Esme got to help me and she was so happy we were going to make a birthday cake ;) She ran upstairs and told Daddy something.. didn't catch the words, but he got the idea what I was doing even though he hadn't seen it -- so she really is explaining things much better. She got to lick the spoon, and wanted to offer him some birthday cake on a spoon, too ;)

I've posted elsewhere today that I am certain that Esme is a 'different' type of thinker. She absorbs raw information and then it brews for a little while... and then she sorts it out and tries to use it, sometimes when we have no idea because it has taken so long to brew etc.. She has shown this for a very long time - like never saying 'Mama' for so long even though she knew the word... sometimes it is 'there' but she doesn't put into action until she is certain about it. And other things... she just blows us away with a really good understanding of something before we knew she was working on it!

ie: the other day she started handing me pins when she saw me start to bend under a hem on a pair of pants.. she just walked over to the pincushion, picked it up - and before I could say 'no ow' she had handed me a pin and told me to put it in the cloth 'go on, right there mama... go on do it.' I was like: 'oh, uh.. thanks' and then she waited for me to put it in the cloth and handed me another... when I said I had enough pins she wanted me to start sewing it so she could put them back in the pincushion as I pulled them out.

To her, these are Mama's toys, and she is helping Mama play with her toys ;)

She was proud of helping Mama break eggs and stir them last night making the cake, too. I let her put all the cupcake papers into the pan and she thought she was a VERY big girl, but also understood when I told her the mixer was something Mama had to do right now, and that filling the cupcakes with gloppy cake batter was also something 'messy, Mama has a hard time doing this right, but I am going to try hard.' Esme: 'ok Mama, try hard, you do. I sit.' And she watched me do a couple, decided it WAS hard, and drank her milk and played with her toy at the table.

Diddle diddle dumpling

Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John,

went to sleep with his stockings on,

one shoe off and one shoe on,

Diddle diddle dumpling, my son John



Esme fell asleep in her chair while watching her little projector toy (which a friend at my work gave her a few months ago). She had been outside in the yard playing for about four or five hours straight with just juice and had not wanted to come in for lunch. She finally came in and was watching the 'Finding Nemo' tape on this projector (she calls it the fish and/or doggie machine, as there is a 101 Dalmations tape, too.) and then it ended and she was very very quiet... fast asleep, still muddy from the yard and did not even wake up until I had her on her changing table putting clean clothes on her. That sort of aborted the nap idea... Then I put her to bed with the real 'Nemo' DVD on and gave her chicken and orange juice. She ate that, and laid quiet for a long time watching.... then she got up and ran around downstairs with us as the storm began to roll in. She is standing behind Daddy's chair and rocking him while singing the lullaby song from her dollhouse. She might go to sleep sometime between now (9 pm) and 11 pm... I'm kind of glad when she doesn't take a nap in the middle of the day, because then she doesn't go to sleep until midnight or afterwards!

I have a pair of drawstring pants cut out for me and need to take a few minutes to sew them up. I've finished one blue dishcloth and working on a second. It still has been a very laid-back sort of day, I didn't put any new seeds in the garden but I did weed a bit in the corn and harvest some basil for drying.

Last night's recipe:
one medium zucchini sliced up in a pie pan with olive oil, vinegar and a little water to cover the slices. One large clove of garlic sliced up, handful of black olives sliced up, half a small can of tomato sauce, dried basil. All of that cooked at 400 degrees during the same time a pizza for Mark and Esme was in the oven - then turned down to 200 degrees. Drained the water out and chopped a small amount of mozzarella and cheddar cheese - put it on the top of the mixture and broiled it until the cheese melted - put it in aluminum foil and ate it cold today for lunch. Very worthwhile, even moreso cold because the zucchini 'squeaked' when warm.

smatterings

I did miss a few things in our garden - peppermint and dill. Along with basil those are pretty essential. There are mints in our woods running wild...but I don't feel enough confidence to go looking for them when I want some.

Esme asked for fish sticks this morning and is now reading a book in her bed. She was incredibly sweet yesterday all day long, and it may continue today but it may not. I'm not setting my sights yet! At one point yesterday she asked me to paint her fingernails - which I only do if she is really good. So, I did. And halfway through she says 'I'm a lady' and holds up the hand that was done. 'Lady fingers, all purples.' It is her favorite shade of heliotrope purple. She went on to say that Mama was a lady, and she was a little lady, now we were two ladies.. and that it was all the beautifuls (Esmespeak). She was very proud of her fingers and still is today. That was sappy sweet. She was playing with her little dollhouse and her Duplo figures and was making them dance together to the music and then was trying to order the 'little buddy' around the house (go do dishes, watch tv, talk on the telephone) while the girl figure danced. *I thought I was getting a tomboy!* Well, she was hopping around filthy with mud in a mudpuddle yesterday, saying 'ribbit ribbit ribbit oh a radishes!' and pulling up weeds by hand. 'Not a radish. ribbit ribbit ribbit.' I didn't know frogs could garden quite that way ;)

Mark said yesterday about Esme's word combination examples: 'She didn't get language, it got her.' And they're still battling it out. She said that one cat drinking was 'onebody drink cat', and two cats drinking is 'twobody drinks cat' and more than that is 'everybody drinks'. I also had to explain to her it was possible to 'eat all' of just her toast, when she was insisting to me that 'eat all' meant her cereal AND her toast.. which she didn't want to do. Then eat all the toast. NO EAT ALL. "one toastbread all gone, eat all toastbread, make all gone" was what finally got it across. Even I'm speaking 'Esmespeak' now... but she slowly filling in the spaces.

play outside

Esme playing outside in the sand. It is almost cool enough out of the shade to work in the garden... but not quite. I made this pair of pants today with some bird fabric from The Quilting Bee in Camden, TN. The rest is fabric Esme had picked out for pants last week.. they went together well.


'Short Tail' kitten.. being carried off by Esme


making a sand pile or 'mountain' acc. to Esme


This is for Grandma!


pink cheeks


a new trick of hers, picking up and carrying around the bowling balls in the yard instead of just pushing them around

note: the black eyed peas have one sprouted! The Shackamaxon beans were planted today. Eleven by the corn near the carrots and a few more to fill in where the lima beans had not taken and there was a space. Esme's experiment beans from the 'Bean sorter' post day are starting to come up, as well.

43 months

43 months

She never meets a stranger, is always 'on' and full of energy. Sometimes that can be trying on mama, (or anybody around) especially when we are NOT full of energy (like my chest cold). She knows what she wants and will repeat it over and over and over and over to try to get it. But, she isn't listening as well as she used to when the answer is no, or the task required first is something she does not want to do. She has learned how to throw her weight around and is testing how much we will take (action or inaction) before we will get firm with her. I feel I yelled at her a lot yesterday, both at the library (for crawling on other children and trying to butt in when they were using computer and not talking to her) and after a bath when I was starting to feel poorly again and just wanted to go to bed. But.. c'est la vie. We have another week or so of my vacation. There will be another library visit, and mama will try to not be so paranoid about her being overly friendly with other children who seem to have learned 'stranger danger' even when it compares to other three year olds and either go running to their mom at the first confrontation or steadily ignore anyone they don't know. Esme is like an irrepressible kitten against being ignored -- it is sadly hilarious to watch her trying to get their attention, bringing them blocks, puzzles, trying to comment on their computer screen and telling them they did a good job - all while they pretend she isn't there. Very sad, but she does not give up. I often wish there was a more open place for kids to play around here, one that wasn't a 'daycare' and was out of the heat but nice to interact with others in. She needs to be four for the preschool here.

Esme is talking a lot more and picking up terms of her own again that don't make much sense unless you know Esmespeak. 'all the way down', 'turn purple', 'come in' and a few others are entirely different in her world. She ran up to me at Grandma's yesterday and said 'they kill him in the tongue!' I think she meant somebody's tongue (a frog probably) got tied up around himself and he said it hurt. She tells us we 'make grow' in the garden, and 'make radishes' and yesterday after I made her get in the car from the library she told me she was 'mad at the mama'. Daddy asked her why and she said 'there, there the mama mad of the Esme.' If I ask her why she is crying she tells me 'here, I cry in the mouth right here', and points to her mouth. *roll eyes* She gets why mixed up with 'where'... and she actually rarely asks 'why' - she wants to find out but she doesn't use the word. She is more hands-on though, she will FIND OUT why, she doesn't really want to be told, she wants to be shown.

She is still stronger than anybody gives her credit for. A few weeks ago another mom said I should stop her trying to pull a child her size in a wagon because 'that's over 25 lbs!'... I rolled my eyes. She can do that. She did. I said we had stopped being as impressed at her strength a while back, until moments like that came up I didn't even think it was impressive.... but apparently it still is. She still seems taller than other children her age - nobody believes she isn't four yet. She is taller than both the five year old boys she has encountered lately. And yet she seems as graceful as a hippopotamus in a leotard at times... falling off chairs, falling on her face on an unobstructed floor... she can go for whole hours sometimes without finding something to bump herself on, and then she just unleashes it on us. The odd thing is that she gets BACK up there and sometimes gets hurt a second time because she is trying to figure out what she did the first time! These are what we call the 'science' moments. She has to try everything out and find out what it does, why, and if it will do it again a little differently. And her mud experiments are complicated. There is a pink plastic lego flower out in the yard right now buried in mud around a rubber duck. I'm sure there are more rock stonehenges out there, as well.

Other things: She has put on her car seat straps for a while now, we buckle them, and she can unbuckle them. She sits in the back seat with an old newspaper and claims she is 'busy - reading' on trips to town. She can turn on our water hydrant to fill the dog dish and turn it back off. She can get our upstairs porch door open if she tries really hard (which she does not always) and has no trouble at all getting into the garage and outside through that door. She can almost open the downstairs patio door to feed the dogs down there - but she gets confused by the lock AND handle - and focuses on the lock only. She can turn on Grandpa's robot and turns him off immediately if he growls and scares her.

Her 'process' behavior is still high - have to do this thing before that thing and sometimes she gets 'stuck' and can't get to the next thing before something is completed. It is especially bad when the thing we need to do next is not part of her usual routine - like putting something away before she puts on her shoes to leave, or changing to a different shirt because she has stained the one she is wearing and she is already focused on putting her straps on in the truck outside.... I have to try HARD to get her to slow down, rewind, and come do this first. These are the things she gets really mad at mama about - mama has these 'expectations' that aren't in order according to Esmeworld... and mama insists about them! *sigh* I try to get her around those, but there are often tears as she proclaims 'I CAN'T - need (other thing)' and I try to get her to calm down and realize not everything in the world has to be in HER exact order all of the time, and to see why I am asking etc etc.... It is working slowly. When she does get her mind set on something, though - she has all the elements of it worked out and has the array of items needed for it ready... she is a deep thinker and her thoughts seem to have the force of a freight train!

Bean sorter

I stayed home from work today in order to get an antibiotic from my doctor. I've been trying to get over this since Monday but early this morning it graced me with 'green chowder' coughed out of my lungs during a eucalyptus bath. So, it was time to get medication. Maybe after a few doses of the medicine I will go back to work tomorrow one more day before my vacation.

Because I'm a geek even when I am sick (especially so, sometimes, if the body is not willing the mind still rambles etc.) the morning was spent perusing bean varieties. I have a strange fondness for the way beans create an entire sprawling, leafing, multiple pod-producing plant that can be used fresh or dried and then cooked or planted again. There are so many varieties, some of which have been passed down within single families or small communities over hundreds of years. One of these varieties, 'blue Shackamaxon pole bean', is coming in the mail in a week or so, and also some French blue lentils. I intend to plant it as a small fall crop, after our corn is down to stalks and at the tail-end of the crop of pintos and limas and green snap beans that are already in the garden. If I had a larger garden and more time I would plant as many varieties of beans as I could, just to look at all the differences. But... step gently... don't want to get into the same mess as my pumpkins are in - growling and ready to wrap vines around the nearest thing possible as they fight for space. *just kidding*

Esme and I also sorted through a package of dry 'soup beans' that had been sitting in my pantry for a long time. Esme loved the idea - she had a wonderful time sorting 'seeds, make grow' into different colors, shapes and textures. She called the few garbanzo beans that were in the group 'white what is this feel'. They are very crinkly and bumpy compared to anything else. She didn't miss one of those in the entire pile... which I found very interesting. She was finding them by feel, and not by sight for the most part. She put them away from the other white beans on a separate plate and also sorted out the 'bigs' as she called the lima beans, from the 'whites, small' of the other two or three types of white bean that were in the group. She sorted out pintos, kidneys and red beans into one other pile (which I further separated) and the black beans into another. I told her to leave the greens and yellows (lentils and peas) and she did easily. It was a wonderful game for her.


The odd ones out

I found the above brown and red beans very distinct from the others in the pile. I think they are actually just variations on pintos and kidneys, but they were interesting enough that I will try to grow them separately later with the Shackamaxon and see if they produce anything.

At the end of the activity Esme was very possessive of the beans she had separated into the cup. She wanted to go make those grow, right now - no questions mama... let's go. We go make grow. She lost some of the interest after we put the first line of them in the ground. I chose a place at the edge of our woods where the loggers had left large areas of dirt. I dug trenches for her with a shovel and let her put them in. Then Daddy allowed her to put a line of them to the right of his flowers (morning glory and cardinal vines) on the fence where some variety had not taken. Esme planted her entire cup and then got very cranky - so I brought her in and convinced her into a bathtub. Now she is drinking juice and watching Bambi quite happily.

I'm feeling half human, but could really use a nap! If Daddy doesn't leave to go to town soon I might try to steal a few minutes of one.

NOTe: When I was out in the garden today Esme asked me if I was 'making grow, you make radishes?' Why yes, yes I do. hehe ;) She was pulling up pigweed in the yard a few minutes ago saying 'no, not a radish', so she has the idea and has been paying lots of attention to what I'm bringing in from the garden. My summer squash IS all starting to produce. The white patty pans have set and are about 2 inches across and growing. The golden crooknecks are less than 2 inches and a lot of them. Some of the zucchini (which I thought hadn't even flowered yet) is producing short little green fruits. I took one of the two inch zucchinis inside to try. The cucumbers are starting to blossom while still looking very very small. I saw some of the pear tomatoes setting small bulbous fruits. I thought my basil seed had been washed away and would never be seen again. However, I found it! It is growing along a wash line at the end of the corn, now marked with red flags. It was only a 25 cent seed packet, but it does make me happy to see it coming up in about ten plants :)