argue

Jonathan's latest vocabulary word is "argue". As in that is his favorite thing to do. Here are a sampling of this morning's conversations:

J: What am I eating?

Me: You are eating applesauce.

J: No. I am not eating applesauce.

Me: No? What are you eating?

J: applesauce

Me: Which movie do you want to watch?

J: Elmo's ducks

Me (showing him the youtube thumbnail): This one?

J: Yes.

(starting the movie)

J: NO NO NO! No Elmo's ducks!

Me: You don't want to watch Elmo's ducks?

J: No!

Me: (stopping movie). Ok. What do you want to watch?

J: I want Elmo's ducks!!

J: Mommy want to argue?

Me: No, not really.

J: Yes argue.

Me: No.

J: Yes.

Me: AAaargh!!

Pockasils

I have become a fan of making popsicles. Or as they are called around here- pockasils. I picked up some popsicle molds at the grocery store this spring for a dollar each after reading the labels on all of the commercially available fruit-pops. I was determined to find a cheaper, healthier option for us during the hot summer months.

I've made chocolate-banana by pureeing some over-ripe bananas and then adding chocolate milk. Last week I made peach-vanilla pudding pops by mixing pureed peaches and instant vanilla pudding.

My current batch made use of the glut of cantelope that appeared in our fridge this week from our CSA and the leftovers from a fruit tray someone brought to a party.

My basic recipe was to take all of the excess cantaloupe and pop it in the blender. I got about 3 cups of sweet peachy-orange goo. I added 1/2t of vanilla and 1T of honey and poured it into molds. Perfection!

I'm thinking of trying some more gourmet flavors by adding some herbs to the mix. Maybe watermelon-cilantro? Or mint-lime?

buggers

Our car conversation from yesterday:

Jonathan: "What is that on my finger?"

Me: "I can't see it right now. Where did you find it?"

Jonathan: "In my nose"

Me: "Then it is probably a bugger"

Jonathan: "A bugger!! Buggers in my nose"

a few minutes later...

Jonathan: "I have buggers in my nose. We have buggers for dinner sometimes"

Me: "Do you mean hamburgers like we had last night?"

Jonathan: "Yes! I have hamburgers in my nose!"

elbows

Since Jonathan's throwing arm has been improving, we've been working on some common sense rules about what can be thrown indoors and what cannot. The rule is basically that squishy things can be thrown; hard things cannot.

One of the other things, apparently, that has been capturing Jonathan's interest is the idea that we have bones. In our Richard Scary book Lowly worm breaks a bone in his foot (OK, so there are some biological/anatomical problems with that, but whatever). So we've told him that we all have bones inside of us to help us stand up, etc. The bones are underneath the hard parts of us- elbows, knees, legs, etc. And the squishy parts of us- tummies, noses, ears, cheeks- don't have bones right underneath.

So this morning I woke up to the sound of Jonathan chatting to his stuffed animals in the crib. His discussion with bear went something like this "Don't throw your elbow. No. Elbows are not squishy. They might hurt somebody. Elbows have bones. Teeth are bones. Don't throw your teeth".

Hot Summer Days

It has been HOT here for the past few days. The kind of hot and humid that makes me sweat just thinking about opening the door. But with a kiddo who cannot get enough of playing outside- I choose outside over tantrums and never ending whining even on horrid days. So on days when the pool is closed, we bring the water fun to our own backyard!

Onions!!

We got back from vacation last night, and by 10:30 am I am already overwhelmed with produce.

Before we left, our garden was limping along at its typical pace:

beans struggling up a trellis and cucumbers refusing to grow

tomatoes, basil, and okra

onions that for some reason chose to lay down instead of growing upright

Jonathan helped me survey and do some harvesting in our own garden this morning. Before we left, the onions were close to being done, and when we got back all of their little tops had completely fallen over and turned brown. So we dug them up and set them out to cure.

Many of them remained quite small, but we got a few decent sized ones. Enough to justify $3.99 in sets. We also got a few handfuls of Roma tomatoes (these are the ones that made it out of the garden before being eaten). The beans and okra are shaping up to be failures this year, but the cucumber plants have a few baby cukes.

We then picked up our CSA for the week, and HOLY COW!

I had forgotten what summer bounty they sometimes give us! 4 cucumbers, 4 ears of corn, 1 cantelope, 2 patty-pan squash, an eggplant, an onion, 1 green pepper, and 4 huge tomatoes. The watermelon was our own seperate purchase, but Jonathan and I can probably polish most of it off before the weekend is over! Any ideas for what to do with patty-pans?