The Urban Farm

When I was growing up, summer meant gardens. I have lots of memories of playing in gardens, and of picking beans, canning beans, picking corn, putting up corn, picking tomatoes, canning tomatoes, etc. I liked most of the vegetables my parents and grandparents grew--beans, tomatoes, corn, cucumbers, okra, squash--but by the end of the summer, everyone would be sick of vegetables. You couldn't visit anyone without having them press a bag of produce into your hands as you said good-bye, and you didn't let anyone who came to your house leave without a bag from your own garden. 

I have lots of memories of driving down from the mountain from my grandparents house with my mom saying, "What are we going to do with all this corn!" (Or all these tomatoes, or all this okra..)

Now, in the city and many miles away, we are in the same situation here in Denver.

 

This is a very small portion of the produce we are dealing with around here these days. Mainly, we have too many tomatoes. We planted 19 plants, which you see in baby form at the bottom of this post. 

Here they are in early August. I was trying to take a picture of the sunflower; the tomatoes are the large mass of bushes in the center of the picture. They are as messy and matted as they look. 

This is from a little earlier in the summer, when you could still walk between the plants. Now, trying to pick tomatoes is like trekking into the jungle. We currently have 4 large bowl of tomatoes on our counter, and I use tomatoes as part of every single meal. I am also a tomato hawker. I have stopped short of asking strangers who pass our house if they want to pick some tomatoes, but I have seriously considered putting up a sign that says "Free tomatoes--pick your own."

They are delicious. We planted several kinds: some larger orange and red plums that are good for fresh tomato sauce, and lots of cherries, red, orange, and two types of what Amelia calls "little yellow tomatoes." Last summer she ate them by the pound. She likes them this year too.

 

Speaking of the sunflower, here is is. The baby sunflower is also in the linked post above.

 It's very tall now.

And below are some shots of the garden, produce, and Amelia from July.

Discussing the crops.

We tried potatoes for the first time this year, in the bowl at the back of the line of veggies. We got enough for 4 or 5 batches of hash browns.

Large zucchini

 

I don't know what you see here, but Dean and I snickered when he brought this in. Amelia, whose mind is more innocent, pointed out that this is two squash growing together.

The garden has been a lot of work. We are busy all evening on the urban homestead--I forgot to even mention the community garden, half a block down the street, where we have corn and squash growing, and where we grew basil (already harvested and made into pesto) and edemame (a kind of soybean you can boil and eat from the shell, which is fun for Amelia). And the backyard, where we had early radishes, sugar snap peas,  and arugula, and where we've planted another round of peas, radishes, and spinach for the fall. Whew. But it's really cool what we've (mostly Dean) managed to do with a small amount of space. And most of all, I am glad to have the summer garden part of my childhood back in my life.

What We've Been Up To

So I can't post every day. It was a fun experiment, but I really don't have something interesting to say every single day. I have enjoyed posting more often, though, and I will try to keep it up.

In the meantime, Amelia and I have been having a lot of summer fun.



We have a membership at the Denver Botanic Gardens and go there at least once a week. They have a wonderful children's garden with paths to follow, plants at kid-level, and garden-related toys to play with.



They also have a stream for kids to play in. So much fun! The gardens are only about 10 minutes from our house so this is a fun place to cool off on hot afternoons.



Here's Amelia at home later with her two Popsicles.

We've also been going to Book Babies downtown at Denver's Central Library. This is a different library than we went to for Book Babies last summer.



The library is at the edge of downtown, within walking distance, or we can take a bus (or drive, but it can be hard to park). We've been going early to hang out outside at the Denver Art Museum, which is across the street from the library.
A couple of weeks ago Amelia discovered this piece of art.



After a closer look she kept saying something, which I finally discerned to be "blocks in it!"



Dice. Part of the art, I figured (very thought-provoking).



Amelia added to the piece by dropping this strawberry into the water. She was pretty upset about it till I fished it out and we threw it away.

Last Friday, we went back and the dice were gone! But Amelia found a flower



which she gave to the man.



And today at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, she met a pirate.



As you can see, we've been pretty busy, but having lots of fun.

2011 Garden

"Garden" is one of the words in the description of this blog, but I have posted almost nothing about our garden this year. It's not for lack of garden work being done, although most of the work has not been done by me. Dean started plotting and planning the garden back in the fall. Since then, he has dug up a yard full of grass and stones, designed and laid a stone pathway, built brick and wooden beds for plants, built trellises for peas and beans, started seeds of all kinds, ordered and planted flowers, given tender loving care to seedlings, arranged approximately 500 soaker hoses and made approximately 10,000 trips to Lowes and Ace Hardware.

This weekend, he planted the last of the seeds of the season, corn, beans and squash: "the garden is officially planted."

Our little Denver yards have been turned into an impressive city garden, if I do say so myself. In the backyard, we have peas, radishes, beets, strawberries, blueberries, asparagus, and lots of flowers. In the front, we have broccoli, corn, tomatoes, peppers, squash and corn, plus some flowers and cactuses (cacti?) on the porch.

Here is a little walking tour of our garden, with "before" pictures from April and "after" pictures from today.



Here are the baby peas in April:



and here is a picture of the newly-planted flowers and peas from today. It's safe to say that the peas have grown.



On the other side of the path from the flowers are the strawberries. Here they are in April (they have grown and overcome a strange outbreak of brown spots but still look pretty much the same):



Against the fence and beside the strawberries are blueberries and asparagus. No pictures of those today, as both still are very small.

Moving to the front yard, here are the baby broccolis, right after they were moved to pots:



and here are the front beds in April, just after they were built:



Now here is the front yard today:



You can see how much the broccolis have grown. In the front beds are peppers, tomatoes, tomatillos, and corn.

Here is a view of the other side of the yard from the sidewalk. As Dean said, our yard looks weird. The teepees are for beans to grow up, and the metal trellis is for cucumbers. Behind the beans and cucumbers will be squash.



Finally, here is something very cool:



my hanging cactus flowered!

Now, fingers crossed against wilts, droughts, bugs, and mysterious plant diseases of all kinds.

Blue

In a perfect world, everyone I love would live in the same neighborhood. Amelia's grandparents would live across the street. The rest of our family would live close by. My friends would all live on the same block. Everyone would share child care and dinners and milestones and holidays.

In the real world, we live at least several hundred, if not a couple of thousand, miles from the people we love. My mom just left after a short visit, and I am blue.

Believe it or not, it's not about the baby care. Although I had a great time going to yoga and the mall and getting groceries all by myself while my mom was here, for the most part I really enjoy day to day life hanging out with Amelia. It's much easier, in my opinion, to take care of a toddler than a baby. Maybe it's just because it's more varied--it's certainly not because it's problem-free--but anyway, I am not sad because I miss having time to myself. I am sad because it's so clear how much Amelia loves my mom, and my mom loves Amelia, and they miss each other. The same is true for Dean's mom, and our dads, and our siblings, and our grandparents and aunts and cousins.

When Dean and I were deciding to leave DC not for NC but for Colorado, I made a list titled "Why I'm Moving to Denver." I kept it in my jewelry box and came across it, oddly, just this morning. Everything on the list holds true. Once upon a time, two people decided to have a baby without planning--at all--how they were actually going to live life with a baby, and Denver and the great job it offered to Dean has allowed us, overall, to have excellent lives. We like the city, its vibrancy and lack of crippling traffic, its laid-back, friendly citizens and all the fun it offers. We love our house. I love all of the friends I have made here. I love the fact that I can stay home and raise my daughter without worrying too much about money. But I still sometimes wish that Denver--and the Rocky Mountains, so Dean wouldn't be too sad--could magically be transported about 1,500 miles east. Or that our families would move west. Hint, hint.

On the bright side, we have two visits to NC planned soon. And more family visits to Denver are in the works. The good thing about living so far away is that family visits are special and tend to be very happy. Amelia learns so much every time she spends time with my parents and Dean's; it's like she blossoms. And today, as I was talking to a Denver friend whose parents live a 4-hour drive away, I realized that Amelia had seen both sets of her grandparents more times throughout the last year than my friend's son had seen his. So while it's not my perfect world, we make it work.

Today's High Is Brought to You By the Number 5

and the low was something like -17. After spending two days totally housebound with a sick toddler in sub-zero temperatures, I feel as though I might have lost my mind. Not in a mad or frustrated way--it actually hasn't been that bad, frustration-wise, because I knew the cold was coming and I was prepared. Amelia has spent a lot of time nursing and we have played a lot of games and gotten out every toy in the house and read all the books and done all the chores and sang songs and danced and practiced toddler yoga and looked at letters on starfall and I discovered a little thing on Netflix called The Secret Life of the American Teenager. But I feel like I've been on some strange spiritual journey. Taken a vow of silence, of sorts. I realize I live the kind of life in which it is not only possible but in fact preferable to not leave the house, at all, for two days. There's nowhere to be, no one to call in to. It's like the rest of the world doesn't exist.

That said, tomorrow it is supposed to be 39 degrees. I hope we can venture out.

13 on 31

I never seem to find the time to write the developed posts I compose in my head at 4am, so here are 13 things about life, lately:

1. Amelia is sick. Poor baby. She and I both had colds for the past two weeks or so, but when mine went away, hers seem to get worse, and a fever appeared. A trip to the doctor showed no ear infection, and when I called again today, the nurse said a virus that sounds like what Amelia has is going around. So I am giving her ibuprofen, and she is drinking a lot of juice.

2. She says, "Juice!" Also fish, mask (because of an African mask Jes got us that hangs on the wall above our reading/nursing chair) and, just this weekend, Daddy! ("Da!")

3. Naps have been challenging, lasting 45 minutes, tops, for most of last week. Maybe because she has been sick? With 10-15 minutes of crying when I put her down. But today, for the first time since I cut her off from nursing to sleep: no pre-nap crying! She just talked to herself for a few minutes, then all was quiet on the napptime front.

4. Night sleep has remained mostly great, even through the sickness. A couple of early morning wakings. I have nursed her at night twice. My hope is that this is fine, as long as it doesn't turn back into a habit. It seems okay so far. There is a middle way!

5. List of lunchtime food items on the table and floor right now: wheat bread. Strawberry jello. Cheerios. Milk. A french fry. A slice of turkey ("gobble gobble gobble"). Vanilla ice cream. Something gooey I can't name--oh, mayonaise.

6. Number of the above items Amelia actually ate for lunch: 0.

7. What has Amelia eaten today? About 1/3 of a bag of rainbow goldfish crackers. (Don't worry, they are colored using natural ingredients, like beets.)

8. What have I been doing during these 45 minute naps last week? Writing! Somehow when I know there is only going to be 45 minutes, I can make myself get more work done than if I think there might be 2 hours. I have been working on my manuscript and work for the class I am taking. My class met again last week (it meets about every 3rd Monday). We discussed my manuscript and one other (6 students, 2 manuscripts per session, for two rounds). I got lots of positive feedback and several helpful suggestions. And a few crazy suggestions, but that is par for the workshop course.

10. And, I just got an email from the instructor asking me if I want to be in a reading soon! A nice boost for my confidence. Especailly considering that

11. I spent some time this weekend looking into jobs for the fall, mostly getting very discouraged. I read too many faculty bios of people who had PhDs and lots of publications. Whatever, guys. I can recite both Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? and Dr. Suess's ABCs.

12. I am looking forward to spring. Although we had some days in the high 50s and low 60s last night, tomorrow's high is supposed to be -3. Can people even exist in that kind of weather? How did the pioneers survive out here? I am making it my personal business not to leave the house tomorrow.

13. After 16 months, I am beginning to feel like my old self again, whoever that is. I think sleeping through the night helps. So does getting to leave the house at night and not being the only person in the universe who can get Amelia to go to sleep. Plus having a toddler is really a lot of fun! Hard sometimes, what with the tantrums and the poor communication skills, but fun. I like playing with Play Dough and stickers and puzzles. And Amelia is only just beginning to be able to do those things, so more fun is in store. I've also been doing more stuff I want to do, generally. I made a sort of New Year's resolution to try to integrate more reading and writing and yoga into my daily life, even if I don't have large swaths of free time. I came up with a concept of "5 and 20." Basically, I try to take a span of 5 minutes to do something I want to do sometime during the day, and then another span of 20 minutes to do something else I want to do. So I might read the news for 5 minutes in the morning, or read a poem for 5 minutes while Amelia plays on her own. Or I might try to do 20 minutes of yoga while Amelia plays around me. Or write for 20 minutes during Amelia's bath and bedtime. After roughly 31 days, I feel happier and more... well-rounded is the best word I can think of. Reading more of the news, for example, has allowed me to actually think of something besides Amelia and exhaustion to talk about to my mom friends (not the conversation often turns from babies and/or sleep, but just in case!), and to Dean and my other friends as well. And doing a little bit of yoga each day makes me feel better physically, and I think helps during the yoga classes I go to too. It turns out that there is more to life than motherhood, and I have been finding ways to access that life. And that is a good thing.

Winter Hike

We went to Roxborough State Park yesterday for a little winter hike. Amelia had skipped her nap so she was fairly happy to doze in her carrier.

The park features a line of jutting rocks that look windblown. They are all tilted at the same angle. We went on a hike that took up through a few of them, then up above for some great views.



Starting out







The trail was very muddy. We learned what happens when the dry Colorado clay gets soaked with melting snow: it turns into cement.



View of the rocks from the "summit"--I don't think we were very high, but we had a great view.



Denver and the plains. Can you see Denver? Tiny city to the left. Interesting clouds to the right.



Nice afternoon light.

It was a very pleasant hike. Amelia was sleeping for a little over half of it, and Dean and I were silent while she slept. I hd a nice time taking pictures and thinking hiking thoughts. Somehow you think about different things, or think about things differently, when you are just walking. After Amelia woke up, she looked at the scenery and munched on a triscuit for the rest of the hike. So all in all it was a success. A good afternoon.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring...

but last night, Amelia slept from 7 PM-6 AM with nary a peep (and took a two and a half hour nap yesterday afternoon). Dean and I slept well last night too, and Amelia has been a happy baby all morning. Now she and her daddy are out playing in the snow.

I noticed as I logged on to blogger that this is my 300th post. This is a nice event to record for it, at the end of a week of change for the better.

Snow in Denver

Finally!

Untitled

It is winter here. We woke up this morning (at 4:30, but I don't even want to talk about that) to a very lightly snow-coated world. Under the full moon, it was pretty and peaceful and I baked a pumpkin pie, but now the sun is out and it is windy and bright and terrible. Snow sparkle in the wind so you can see where the wind is going. And the wind is swirling.

I dislike winter. I think I have reptilian roots somewhere and part of my soul freezes when it is cold outside. I am vaguely but constantly itchy and grouchy. Baking, putting up Christmas trees, and drinking hot chocolate help, as does yoga and wearing my bathrobe all day long. Or big sweaters. As long as they don't itch.

I have been writing this morning so that explains some of the weirdness of my opening paragraphs. I am writing about dreams and from the voice of Ryan in Teen Mom, so I am bit out of my normal speaking voice.

We got the results about the lead. Turns out there is a little lead in the dust in several places in our house. We had some work done on the porch that exposed some old paint and some unseen chipped paint inside. So now the outside is cleaned and the inside has been touched up and I am doing to try to mop every other day. Hopefully that will solve the problem. Amelia will be retested in two more months.

I feel guilty for buying an old house and for not mopping it enough. You read all these articles and things that encourage moms to let the housework go a little--and then you find out there is lead in the dust on your floor. The irony is I sweep twice or even three times a day some days. But that just sweeps the lead dust around. Horrifying.

Something about winter is making it very clear to me that we have actually MOVED to Colorado and are not just here on an extended visit. I feel a little shocked. It also has to do with our first experience here that made me realize that we are essentially all alone. We had norovirus. (This was not actually diagnosed by a doctor but it was some sort of terrible stomach virus so I am calling it norovirus.) Amelia had mild symptoms last Saturday, the night before we were leaving for Santa Fe for a week (Dean had a conference for work). Saturday night, I also had symptoms, much less mild than Amelia's. All night. It was terrible. So at about 5:30 Sunday morning, I faced a dilemma. Option 1: In the aftermath of a terrible stomach virus, with a baby who also might still have a stomach virus, get on a plane. Option 2: Stay home, alone, with a stomach virus, and take care of a baby who might still have a stomach virus. Alone.

I have some very nice friends here, but they have babies too. And it takes a special friend to come over and take care of your baby and be exposed to your stomach virus so they can take said virus home to their babies. Pretty much the only person you can ask to do that is your mom. And all moms in my life are about 1500 miles away.

So I decided that if I could keep down some crackers and ginger ale, and if Amelia was okay, I would go. I did and she was, so we went.

We had a nice time in Santa Fe after about Tuesday. (Dean spent Monday battling the norovirus. To any Federal Public Defenders who find themselves feeling a bit under the weather this week, we offer our deepest apologies.) However, Amelia was oddly whiny for most of the week. I don't know if she missed her crib and her Gee and her high chair and her nightly YoBaby Yogurt Drink or if she was perplexed that we had apparently moved to a hotel room or what. But she was whiny. It got old. Also, she slept great in the hotel till the last night, when she woke up 3 times. And she has been making up 2-3 times a night since we got home Sunday.

We are still nursing. I am perplexed. Sometimes I want to quit and sometimes I don't want it to end. Before we left Amelia had pretty much weaned herself to 3 nursing sessions a day but traveling always makes her revert to the breastfeeding habits of a newborn and now it's like every time she sees me she dives for the boobs.

Who knows. Maybe after Christmas we will go cold turkey. We leave for NC again in about 3 and half weeks and I don't see the point in making any huge changes before then. I think after that we are going to swear off all travel till the spring.

This is not the cheerful Amelia Update I had intended to write. But now Amelia is awake. Until we meet again, my friends, drink a cup of hot chocolate for me.

I Voted

Yes, I voted--and for the people I meant to vote for--but barely.

Let me start with a little story. Once upon a time, when I was a teacher, I had no patience for students who didn't read and follow directions. "Take your time," I would harp. "Read the directions. Read carefully!" If someone asked a question which the directions obviously answered, I scolded them and sent them back to the italicized font at the top of the page.

I myself have always had a very good track record for reading and following directions, going all the way back to the fifth grade, when my class was given a worksheet that instructed us to "Be sure to read ALL the directions first before doing anything else." I read through all the directions: 1. Remember to read all the directions; 2. Draw a circle; 3. Draw a line through the middle of the circle; 4. Walk to the back of the room and sharpen your pencil; 5. etc; 6. etc; 7. etc. As my classmates drew circles and sharpened pencils, I read through all the directions, finally reaching 30: Now that you have read all the directions, don't do anything on this page. Take your blank page to your teacher for a surprise.

I was the first one to the teacher. I got a candy bar.

So today we woke up early to vote before Dean went to work. We strolled Amelia in her pajamas to the polling place. The lines were very short. I got my ballot, and the man who handed it to me told me to draw a line to connect the broken arrows for the candidates of my choice. I took my ballot to my little voting cubby, where I did read one set of directions, which was posted on the cubby wall: Read your ballot and use the provided pen or pencil to vote. If you make a mistake, you can receive up to two replacement ballots.

Huh, I thought to myself, stupid Americans. Who would need two replacement ballots?

And I began to select my choices, carefully filling in the spaces between the arrows. Filling them in completely. With a thick black line.

When I got to the top of the second column, my eyes fell on the directions at the top of the ballot. Fill in the space between the arrows with only one single line. Making extra marks can void your ballot.

As you may or may not know, the race for Senate in Colorado is very tight. I very much do not want one particular candidate to win, because I strongly disagree with that candidate's ideas about abortion. So I did not want my ballot to be void. I thought I better go check if it was going to be.

The poll workers were concerned. Yes, they said, I needed to mark only one single line. After a flurry of flipping through the pages of a polling handbook, my first ballot was marked VOID and I was handed a new ballot.

I was flustered. I was embarrassed. I was in a hurry because there was a lot to vote on. I had only had half a cup of coffee. For whatever reason, I went back to the cubby and carefully drew a straight, single line--in between the arrows for the Senatorial candidate I did not, NOT, NOT mean to vote for.

I stood there for a few minutes, feeling like a complete and total idiot. I couldn't go back and tell the poll workers, who I had left about 5 seconds ago, that I had messed up another ballot, but I couldn't stand there and vote for the wrong person.

I slunk back to the poll workers. They kindly but gravely informed me that they were legally required to state that this was the last ballot I could receive; even if I messed up again, I could not have any more ballots.

"I understand," I replied.

So I went back to the voting area. I went to a different cubby this time. I very, very carefully chose the Senator I wanted, and drew a single, straight line to connect his arrow. I figured no matter what else, I should really try to get the Senator right. But I made it through the whole rest of the ballot, even the proposed Constitutional amendments and Ordinance 300, the question of whether Denver should create an "extraterrestrial affairs commission to help ensure the health, safety, and cultural awareness of Denver residents and visitors in relation to potential encounters or interactions with extraterrestrial intelligent beings or their vehicles." (I voted yes on that last one. Why not?)

As I took my ballot to the collection box, the woman handing out the "I Voted" stickers congratulated me. "Good job," she said. "It is difficult to follow all those directions."

I smiled weakly, said thank you, and left as quickly as I could.

In conclusion, this is what people mean by Mommy Brain. For me it's a combination of chronic exhaustion and the feeling that I am always in a hurry. I guess before I was a mom I had lots and lots of time to follow my thoughts to wherever they went. Now, not so much. And, pre-Amelia, it was much easier to finish a task. Now unloading the dishwasher can take all day. So I think I try to do everything as quickly as possible. Including, it seems, voting.

House Tour: the Long-Awaited Conclusion

This is my and Dean's bedroom:




It's hard to take a picture of the bedroom that's not all bed but the room has lots of slanted walls like Amelia's room.

Here is a shot of the stairway:



Not pictured are the two bathrooms. They look funny in the pictures. But they are nice bathrooms. We like them.

Finally, here is a more recent picture of the stone pathway Dean built this weekend!



It is the first step in the reconstruction of the backyard (thanks to Jim for pulling up the stones and tilling all the grass!). We are planning another backyard garden, featuring an asparagus bed and a sandbox for Amelia. So far we are enjoying the lovely pathway.

The Housewife

Lest you were been misled by an earlier post in which I was somewhat cheery about housework, let me state for the record that I am neither emotionally nor intellectually fulfilled by the life of the housewife. Yet lately I have found myself loading the dishwasher, unloading the dishwasher, folding clothes, and sweeping up a curious mixture of shredded wheat shards, crushed Cheerios and cat hair all day long. Chores and the state of the house have been driving me crazy. It seems like no matter how much (laundry, sweeping, straightening up, etc) I do there is still more (laundry, sweeping, straightening up, etc) to be done. And it has started to eat away at time I would like to spend doing other things, when I am not playing with and caring for Amelia of course, such as writing, reading, posting here, and, perhaps most importantly, watching Teen Mom.

At the same time I really do like staying on top of what needs to be done around the house. Dean is more than willing to do his share and more but he already comes home to The Amelia Channel (all Amelia, all the time!) and it is more fun to hang out and relax during the evenings and on weekends than to catch up on weekly chores. Since I am home all the time anyway it seems like there has to be some way to find a balance between completing the tasks that need to be done and spending some of Amelia's nap time doing what I like, want and need to do to feel like my life is more than breastfeeding, housework, and singing "The Wheels on the Bus."

So, the other morning I began to imagine what the job of "housewife" and "stay at home mom" would look like if I had to go into an office to do it. I figure there would be more structure. Tasks organized into a sort of daily and weekly routine rather than a nebulous and perpetual blob.

So I made a list of everything I do: all the chores, errands, outings and fun things I usually do in an average week. Then I divided them up by how often they need to be done. There are daily chores like sweeping. There are every other day chores like doing a load of laundry or diapers. There are things that really only need to be done once a week, like going through all the mail and paying bills, and irritating administrative things like making appointments or trying to consolidate your various retirement accounts, a result of changing states and jobs several times, into a single IRA.

Next I drew up a little schedule:



I am hoping a loose structure is going to help me better use my time. As you can see my and Amelia's workday day is divided into 5 main segments: morning playtime, morning nap, midday playtime, afternoon nap, and post-nap. We go to the park in the mornings but I am happiest when the kitchen is clean, the beds are made, and I have showered before we go. Otherwise that stuff eats into A's morning nap, which as you can see I most like to use to write. Midday playtime is the best time to leave the house for errands like grocery shopping or for fun things like Book Babies or lunch with Dean, which we have decided to do once a week. (Sometimes I will join Amelia and Dean for lunch and sometimes I will leave them to their own devices for an hour while I go to the library, something I am very excited about.) We really spend most of Amelia's waking time playing or reading or the like but I am usually able to get a few things done while she pulls pots and pans out the of cabinets or turns the pages of board books on her own.

And, as a bonus, now readers of this blog can easily look up what I am doing at any given moment. Note that we are on Mountain Standard Time. :) As you can see, I am right on track: it is Thursday afternoon and I am writing on the blog. However, I am noticing that I forgot to add Teen Mom to my schedule. Pencil that in for right now.

Blog Meets Blog

As you will recall, we kicked off our month of summer fun with a visit from my friend Liz and her son Oliver. Liz wrote about the visit much more promptly than I did (am doing), but rest assured it was a great week.

Last weekend I had some rare free time in our cabin in Estes Park (more on that soon), and I spent some of it catching up on my reading my blog list. I was really touched to read the nice things Liz had to say about her visit here and about our friendship.

I have probably written about this before but Liz and I met at Governor's School East in 1996. We spent 6 weeks becoming lifetime friends. I LOVED everything about GSE, especially getting to know Liz, and when it came time to go home that summer, I was heartbroken--except I wasn't that sad to leave Liz. I knew--I just knew--that we would always be friends.

As things worked out, we were--but also sort of weren't. We thought we might be college roommates, but then went to different universities. After college, we went our separate ways and only rarely wrote each other very short emails. But when somehow--I don't quite remember how--I started reading Liz's blog. Then I started my own blog. Then Liz and I shared some pieces of writing through email, and then she had a baby. Then I had a baby--and we were in touch constantly.

I wouldn't call Liz one of my "mommy friends"-- those are the friends you have just because you are a mom, people you wouldn't really have much to say to if you weren't both sitting on blankets in the park, trying to prevent your babies from eating too much grass. Liz is my friend because she is kind, funny, and super smart, because she is just one of those people, rare in my life at least, that I liked immediately and liked more the more I got to know her. But she has been one of my most important friends who is also a mom. Oliver was born a year and a month before Amelia, and not only has Liz patiently dispensed advice regarding breast pumps, diapers, baby monitors, and God knows what else, watching the adventures of Liz and little G has also, more importantly, given me a model of what life as a mother can look like. Liz is a mom but also a teacher and a writer , a wife, a sister and a daughter, a blogger and a friend to others and someone who takes time for herself--not to mention a pregnant person. And now she is also a PhD student. She wrote that she is nervous about this new venture, understandably so, but if anyone can do it, it's you, Liz! I have no doubts. You will make a truly outstanding professor of education.

Anyway, so Liz and Oliver came to visit! We had a great time, especially considering that due to A and G's different ages and nap schedules, one of them was sleeping for a great part of each day. We managed trips to both the zoo and to Book Babies, and had daily picnics in the park. Liz was very patient with some of Amelia's more difficult nap episodes and my fear of driving on Denver's Interstate 25, which made our travels from and to the airport take longer than they really should have. (I have since conquered that fear--yea me! I am a grownup who can drive on the busiest stretch of interstate in Colorado!--but at the time I insisted on taking the long way.) It was a real treat to have so much time to catch up with Liz and to really meet Oliver, who I have read about extensively but spent little actual time with. He is a fabulous kid. He is calm, happy, loving--and he can put away an impressive number of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches!



Speaking of the airport, I cried when we dropped them off. Thanks for visiting, Liz. I wish you lived next door, but I know we will be friends wherever we are.

P.S.! The fish oil smell is all gone. :)

House Tour: Dining Room

The living room opens into the dining room, which doubles as my writing studio. This giant table is an excellent place to spread out, say, 48 pages of poetry and try to put it in some sort of order. And to write.





Behind the table is the desk. Note the pale green wall my dad repainted (the previous owners took their shelves and left the wall with the old paint torn off where the shelves had been). It is the only green wall in the house. It is my favorite wall.



This is Amelia's elephant, who currently lives in the corner of the dining room. I got the elephant at Goodwill (which is 2 blocks from our house) for her to practice standing on. We are used to it now but when I first got it, it kept scaring me and Dean. It sort of lurks, looking like a large, unfamiliar dog.

House Tour: Living Room

We love the living room. It is the prettiest room in the house, with shiny wood floors and this gorgeous built-in bookshelf (original to the house, which was built in 1895). We no longer have a TV in our house due to the living room's beauty. A TV just did not fit in, so ours in sitting in the garage. We've canceled our cable. (Instead we have been watching reruns of Arrested Development on hulu.)





The rocking chair was Dean's great-grandmother's. We just bought the coffee table from an antique furniture store in our neighborhood. And the couch is from Ikea.