Potty 101

And thus begins toilet training.

(Feel free to skip this post if you don't enjoy bathroom topics.)

I've either been waiting for the potty training "readiness signs*" to show themselves, or frankly, picking other battles, but the time has come to give this a concerted effort. Ruby talks enough, walks enough, takes off her clothes enough, knows her own urges enough, and has even begun not to say "NO" to anything-I-suggest-enough, so we gave this a nice, good, first try a few days ago. (Oh sure, we've had the potty seats and panties bought and strewn around the house for about 8 months now, but they've sort of blended into everything else by this point.)

She sure can hold her stuff. 5 plus hours and still no production. I had to hide the diapers and tell her they were all gone. "Washing machine?" she asked (referring to her cloth diapers which we haven't used in a few months.) "Nope, all gone," I repeated.

I've offered marshmallows, new toothbrushes, stickers and even pee-pee parties (complete with the promise of pee-pee hats, pee-pee songs, pee-pee snacks [I know, gross] and pee-pee songs, along with calls to friends and grandparents). None of this proffered bounty could urge her to part with any of her, well, pee-pee.

Usually it all ends in a "I gotta GO" tantrum and I offer her a really old-school (think burpcloth) diaper to pee in and she does and is SO HAPPY afterward that I feel really awful that I put her through so much misery.

Let her just have an accident and she'll learn? you say. Easier said than done. By the time she's on hour 5, she's sweating, clinging to my leg and generally falling apart, but still, no production. If it were as easy as "oh let's just go play with some crayons and if you pee on yourself, well, you'll learn your lesson" I'da done that months ago. The day ends with both of us in tears and I'm getting tired of it!

People, how do you get your little ones to part with their, well, pee-pee?


*email me if you really must know

In the Garden, again!

I keep going into that garden!

Hopefully I won't post an entry every time I eat a cherry tomato. Mostly, I plan to keep track of some "firsts" year by year so I can prove global warming before too long.

Now eating zukes regularly. I've gotten about 2 nice sized zukes every other day or so for the last week, which keeps us in zukes just about the right amount. A lot of my zuke seedlings got nibbled by something right after they popped out their seed leaves, so we're only eating from one hill right now. Within a few weeks, I'm guessing, the seedlings that I was finally able to protect from the nibbling critters will start producing and we'll be overwhelmed with zukes, which is when I start getting really happy. I shredded and froze a bunch last summer and surprisingly, it was the first frozen garden veggie we ran out of.

Now, beans! I'll cook our first batch of *just* beans tonight (haven't had enough at one time yet to make them on their own.) Not much more to say about beans.

Okra. I don't really like okra, but I've planted it the last few years anyway. Because I don't like it, I don't take much care in planting it, but it always does well. I just poke some seeds (10 cents a pack from the dollar store) into the ground and don't bother watering. They always come up and by August, are one of the few crops my garden is still vigorously producing in that intense heat. Best chopped, frozen and put in moderate amounts in soup during the winter. Tried pickling it; pickling water got all slimy and they got tossed. Okra seedlings are currently about 6 inches tall.

In the Garden

1. Ate first 2 Sungold cherry tomatoes yesterday.

2. Still eating lots of New Kuroda carrots. (Ruby likes to go over and pick them herself, then wash them off in the kiddie pool.)


3. A few zukes have finally matured! (Earlier ones rotted after only growing a bit - I'm guessing their flowers didn't get pollinated). Will pick later today.

4. Beets! Have eaten beets and their greens a couple times. The beets themselves haven't been too big, and the ones that are left are quite small, but a fun thing to grow nonetheless.

5. Flowers: Some of the flowers I raised from Botanical Garden seed last spring are blooming now - Purple Coneflower and Joe Pye Weed. Also, some of the self-seeding annuals have started to bloom - zinnias and cleome.

6. Leeks: Vegetable or flower? I don't really understand the onion family. Maybe someone can enlighten me. Sister Cate says she has a self-propagating leek patch in her garden in Texas, so that's what I'm trying to do here. I planted about 10 leeks last spring and haven't picked one yet. Now they're all flowering. What will happen next?

Happy Father's Day!

We here at 740 thought it was Father's Day all day long. Daran got pancakes for breakfast and a card and even took Ruby to the park in celebration of his fatherhood. Turns out, it's next week. But here, enjoy this really great picture anyway:


(Remember, you can click the photo to see it big!)

Goodbye car, Hello lasagna

I didn't think I'd post an entry about selling the old Civic and getting a new car (a Honda Fit) but here I am anyway. Bye bye 17 year old Civic. We sold 'ya today!


Careful readers may have noticed that I'm all into lasagna gardening. It's really just a way of killing weeds and creating new garden beds without having to till. Here's one of my more colorful projects at the end of the driveway, where I envision something nifty growing one day. I laid down unfolded cardboard boxes and double layers of bulletin board paper (hoarded from my classroom 3 years ago and kept in the basement to keep cricket droppings off my valuables) onto the area to be gardened. Covered with woodchips and left to rot. This particular gardening spot has no pressing timeline - just keeping the weeds down and adding decomposibles is really the only goal at this point.

Photo catch-up

Hey ya'll! It's been a while since we posted any photos. It's always one thing or another. Anyway, here goes (remember, clicking photo makes them large):

This is the photo I promised way back when. Notice the 4 competing patterns: hat, shirt, pants and socks. Also notice the mischievous expression on her face, and the tender way she is holding her baby doll.




Here we have Ruby all gussied up with hair clips, thanks to Daddy. I couldn't resist posting all of these as a series.

In the Garden

Two exciting harvests to report:

1. I ate my first New Kuroda carrot yesterday. It was a little small, maybe 4 inches long and a centimeter wide at its widest. This was fun for me for a couple reasons, however. I've never grown carrots before, ever, and lacked confidence (poor me). Schwester Cate told me about this variety of carrot that grows well in Austin - heat tolerant and sweet and juicy. I had my doubts, not being a cool weather crop kind of gardener, but I tried them and they're doing well! Thanks Cate!

2. Golden raspberry! Yes, that's right! I'm equally unsure of myself when it comes to any kind of fruit growing (despite the fact that I have bought 4 fruit trees this year - 2 Asian pears, a peach and a cherry) so when I stuck these raspberries in the ground last fall I didn't have high hopes. Actually (Paul, please correct me if I get any of this wrong here) these raspberries come from my Grandma Ulanch, who had a prolific patch of them in her garden in Grand Rapids, Michigan. They ended up in my garden via my cousin Paul who successfully grew them at his home in Pittsburgh, PA. When he and his family moved to Cary, NC last summer, he gave/lent me a few raspberries and black raspberries to care for while his family was renting. Again, I don't think of this fruit as doing well in our southern climes but apparently I was wrong! It was delicious. And I like having a piece of my extended family's garden in my garden. Now Paul and Julia just have to get their new garden on Medfield ready, and maybe I'll give them some of these bushes back. :)

Subscribe to Our Blog!

I have made a pretty significant life-changing "discovery" this week. It is the concept of the RSS feed (now featured on the upper left of this blog, where it says "Subscribe in a reader" - next to an orange box/button). For those who don't know, an RSS feed can alert you when a particular website has added new content. You read these updates in an RSS reader - I use Google Reader, which gives a good explanation of RSS. This is an extremely helpful tool for me because I like to keep up with tons of web sites associated with my various interests (sports, politics, music, news, blogs, macrame). So instead of blindly clicking through a million bookmarks, I can go to one place a see what's new on my favorite sites. In Google Reader, I choose to view the feeds as a "list" and it looks just like my Gmail inbox. I see the title of the story, then I can click on it to get a little blurb, and if I want to read the whole thing I click again and up pops the actual site (in a new tab if you use Firefox). It's especially useful for sites that update on an irregular basis (like this one!). Instead of clicking every few days and being disappointed to see the same old post, you can wait until a new one appears in your RSS reader so you don't waste your time (you can see the old posts in your reader, too).

I pretty much only go to my Google Reader to surf the web now. I have the feeds organized into various folders. With RSS I'm able to keep up with things that I'm often interested in but would sometimes slip past my memory, like NY Times Magazine (newspapers have RSS feeds for any and every section in their publications, so I can keep up with the sections I want without wading through their sites to get them).

Most non-obscure sites now have RSS feeds but they're sometimes hard to locate on the page. You can quickly find them (and anything) by pressing Ctrl F, then type in "RSS" and search. When I click an RSS tab it automatically takes me to a Google page to confirm I want to subscribe to the feed. Now, I use Firefox, which is favored by and very compatible with Google, instead of Explorer, so I don't know the process of setting up the feeder for Explorer (it can't be that hard). But I also recommend downloading Firefox if you haven't already - it's safer re: computer viruses and it's easier and more practical. And another thing! Get a Gmail account already! I've used all the web-based emails (Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail) and Gmail is easily the best. Yahoo is pretty decent but Hotmail is still atrocious and I can't believe anyone still uses it (Cate and Adam!!!). Gmail and all things Google. I'm happy to answer any technical questions (which goes to show how easy this is because I'm not tech savvy).

If you just can't bring yerself to embrace progress, I have also set up an option to subscribe to this blog via email. So whenever there is a new post you'll be notified by email. That link is just below the RSS feed. For those of you using Blogger you can add these features to your blog for free via feedburner.com. Just make sure your blog has been updated with the "layout" option. Okay, Kirsten is now making fun of me for making the driest blog post ever. But just remember, RSS changed my life (as much as the DVR)!

"Oh look! I see a cup down there!"

This was uttered enthusiastically today by Ruby, as she was looking off the edge of the deck at a cup she'd thrown down there weeks before. I blog about it because it's probably the longest grammatically-correct sentence Ruby has exclaimed in her own little life! She even used the first person, a relatively new development. ESL-Mommy is very proud.

Some other frequent utterances:

"Wait a minute!" (Sometimes I wake up before Ruby and go into the kitchen to start getting breakfast ready. I turn on the monitor since it's hard to hear when she wakes up with the radio and coffee going. Occasionally "Wait a minute!" will be her first words upon waking.)

"Sometimes..." (Said out of the blue, pensively, for no apparent reason).

"Delicious" (How she described a taste of jelly Daran gave her. Also "tasty")

"Rubys do it!" (Whenever I am trying, god forbid, to help her do something beyond her abilities. Often paired with "NO Mommy" or the very cute "No mom")

Eating

peas from the garden!

Lettuce from the garden!

Radishes from the garden!



Ah, the joy!

For the Record

I post this not because it will interest anyone that much, but because I want to remember, and this blog seems to be my Ruby Diary. During her most recent illness, Ruby was diagnosed with bronchiolitis (not so much pneumonia - well, one doc at the hospital said maybe kinda sorta pneumonia - how's that for exact science?). B'itis is a condition that is most common in non-breastfed infants of 3-6 months old, according to my research. Ruby doesn't exactly fit that demographic. I also found out that kids who get b'itis are more likely to develop asthma later in life.

Another point in fact: Ruby has good taste in music. Her favorite song for some time has been Old Train by Tony Rice from the album Manzanita, which I originally put in my car because I couldn't get enough of it. Well, I've had enough of Old Train, but if you don't know this album and you like bluegrass, check it out.

In the Garden, In the Wild, Volume 2

In the interest of keeping up with myself, a thread which I started on GardenWeb last spring was recently revived and I noticed that as of April 22, 2006 I had zucchini seedlings coming up FROM SEED in the garden. What the ....? This year it's still in the 40's at night and we had a nasty freeze right before the frost date which killed off our lovely crepe myrtle's new growth as well as some other stuff I don't really keep track of. In other words, it was a lot warmer by this time last year. And I certainly haven't planted zucchini seeds outside yet!!! Where's Al Gore?!?

All of which is really a lengthy intro to my update of my garden and wild spaces---

In the Garden:

- peas growing, flowering and a few rows in desperate need of staking (well, technically, I just need to hang the string between the stakes. Not a nasty job or anything but boring enough that I keep putting it off)
- started from seed and growing, about 4 inches tall: lettuce, beets, carrots, radishes. Carrots seem to be growing awfully slowly. Schwester? Are these Texas carrots wanting more warmth?
- lots of seedlings in 4- and 6-packs waiting for transplant: sweet Romanian peppers, basil, dill, snapdragons, asters, and other forgotten plant matter
- a huge trailer load of mulch (thank you John and Jen) has allowed me to create a huge new lasagna bed (future: blueberries?) and expand other garden areas
- then after the windstorm that knocked our power out for two days (due to falling trees) we got a boatload of unexpected woodchips delivered on top of the mulch (thank you Chapel Hill, especially for the call saying you were coming!) so now I have nice garden paths and more fodder for lasagna beds!!!!!
- other Asian pear arrived from internet, bare root and sad looking but already perking up once planted into the soil
- canna lillies and gladiolas (both red) planted and eagerly anticipated (canna lillies from Dollar General, for what it's worth)
- lots of empty garden space waiting to be planted pending a warm break in the weather and a free Saturday morning when I can get my goods from the Farmer's Market (NEXT WEEK!!! REALLY!!!)

In the Wild:

- Daran and Scott spent Good Friday with a chain saw dealing with the fallen tree in the back yard. Plans to create a nifty switchback trail through the wild are in the works. Eradication of poison ivy a necessary evil=Roundup.
- Pine and oak pollen all done
- Some azaleas blooming; others all brown due to frostbite
- the huge Rose of Sharon I moved last year looks dead. I thought as much at the time (was planted under the roof more or less where it got no rain) but hoped for the best. That was going be a nice deciduous addition to in front of our bedroom window (you know, shade in the summer, sun in the winter?) but I think I'll give it another week or 2 to see green and then it's BYE BYE
- tiny lilacs from Daran's mom are blooming! I need to figure out how to get them bigger. They are so cute and sweet but only about 8 inches tall.

That's all folks.

Somebody Call the Bambalance!

Ruby had to be rushed to the hospital Thursday morning...according to her pediatrician, who was following "protocol", which is Latin for "please don't sue us, dear sir!"

Over the Easter weekend Ruby started coughing but showed no other signs of illness and was her usual spry self. By Monday evening her cough was unstoppable. We contacted her pediatrician who invited us over to her house for a look-see (yes she is awesome). She prescribed Albuterol and some other medication to help Ruby breath better. Her cough got much better but her overall condition worsened as the week progressed. Ruby has been sick several times this winter and this one, aside from the Monday night coughing fit, didn't seem terribly different than the other ones (not nearly as bad as the New Years week projectile vomiting). But eventually her energy was completely zapped and she turned extremely lethargic. Wednesday Kirsten took Ruby into the Peds office and was told to keep monitoring and let them know if things worsen. By Thursday morning her cheeks turned red and she seemed to have gotten a little worse. Kirsten called for an appointment and they said 3:30pm. After 30 minutes Kirsten decided not to wait another five hours and took her in.

At the doctor's office they examined Ruby and decided she might have pneumonia and should go to the hospital for a chest x-ray. They also informed Kirsten that Ruby has to go in an ambulance. I was not there to say, "But the hospital is like two miles away and we could get there before an ambulance even gets here." When the doctor says your child has to go to the hospital in an ambulance who's gonna question it? Kirsten called me and gave me the news. I asked why the ambulance (it's not like she was in acute distress when they left the house) and Kirsten was later told it's "protocol."

Soon an ambulance arrived (no sirens) with an SUV full of paramedics in tow, plus an extra MD. They wheeled a full-size stretcher into the office, through the waiting room, down the hall and into her room. They strapped her down and wheeled her out. Approximately seven people were earning their paychecks around 31 lbs of warm toddler. On to the hospital went Ruby and her mommy. Kirsten says Ruby was enjoying the whole production.

I had to be in court on a case that had been continued several times over 5 months (and I knew Ruby wasn't in serious condition, just really sick). Kirsten called and said they were in the hospital watching videos. They had given Ruby some oxygen and stuff and decided they wanted to keep her overnight. Well jeez, she must really be in terrible shape! Just as bad, Kirsten hadn't had a thing to eat since breakfast and it was getting on towards late afternoon - her blood sugar is volatile. I wrapped up in court, picked up an enormous sandwich at Sutton's Pharmacy and headed for the ER.

I arrived to find Kirsten and Ruby sitting in a room watching a baby animals video. Ruby looked better than she had all week. She was peppy, happy, curious and playful. Over the course of the next hour she was climbing the medical equipment and running up and down the hallway squealing with delight. I felt a little bad she was running around, getting in everybody's way but this child was showing the sick how to heal thyself! And no she was not drugged up. She'd had a little oxygen, some graham crackers and several bites of a Sutton's sandwich (and an existential sense of how much of a drag it would be for her parents to stay in the hospital overnight).

We decided we would not keep her in the hospital overnight. Our front porch was no more than three miles from that very room and we could not see a reason to keep her holed up in a building that is filled with disease. Plus Ruby had pulled her finger oxygen hookup off and wouldn't put it back on and nobody seemed to notice or care. .

We broached our plan to some doctor/guard on duty and he told us to wait for her doctor. In the meantime a student/MD talked to us about why they would want to keep her. She said Ruby's oxygen saturation level dipped below 90% while she was sleeping and this is cause for precaution. What is the consequence/risk when this happens, I asked. She replied it could cause brain damage. Um, I'm just a stupid social worker but that doesn't sound realistic er something. Kids pulled from under frozen lakes and revived might suffer brain damage due to lack of oxygen. Kids with 'maybe pneumonia' who are 'dipping below' the good point, not so much, I thought. I didn't guffaw or anything but I did disclose my interest in the medical literature and how it relates to Ruby's situation. I never heard anything more about brain damage after that (my mother informs me I was hospitalized more than once for pneumonia so you be da gudge). The real doctor caught wind of our plan and contacted Ruby's ped, Dr. Lawrence. Dr. Lawrence gave Kirsten the okay and the main doctor concurred but still wanted us to sign an "against medical advice" waiver. We left the hospital at 6:30pm.

Ruby is getting better. She is still sick but her energy is back - hopefully she will be healthy by the start of the week. We have pretty mainstream beliefs regarding medical care but, man, the process seemed filled with overkill. I don't disagree with her need to go to the hospital, but in an ambulance? With an additional SUV and a bunch of extraneous people in tow? Then she needs to stay overnight in a hospital to be monitored? Eventually we called bullshit. I have a hard time not thinking the overkill is related more to the legal/business needs and less to the medical necessity. Though you could find many-a-administrator who'd be able to deftly explain how all the steps were clearly "in the best interest of the child's well being", and make you feel like a fool for thinking otherwise. I see that a lot in child protective services. Plus she's got good insurance.

Late winter into spring

(Please pardon this post as I figure out how to align the pictures with the comments. It may take couple days, and I also can't figure out how to unpost this while I figure this out).
Reflection in Grandma Judy's door.









Washing hands (another current obsession).

The Clothing Truce

Had I known this time would come, I would have bought all solid tops and patterned bottoms (or vice versa) for Ruby, in complimentary colors for a seamless toddler style. However, I didn't know this time would come, and I can't resist the multicolored good deals at the thrift shop, which means that Ruby has a bounty of patterned clothing, tops and bottoms, which she likes to pair quite heinously. As soon as I recharge the batteries in the camera, I'll upload a picture of one of her latest outfits.

Besides wanting to pick out her own clothing, she will accept nothing new. I don't know how this bodes for summer. Turtlenecks (her favorite clothing item) will not be a good choice for July. (Especially the black one, faded to a nasty brown and stretched out to hang baggily on her frame; this particular turtleneck is her favorite of course). Many of her stretchy pants are getting short enough to be worn as capris, so that's one thing I know she'll wear and be suitable for summer. But the cute 4-5 pairs of shorts I've found recently that will fit her perfectly this summer? No can do. Expecially if I suggest them. My newest idea is to leave any new clothes I want her to wear strewn around her room, but to totally ignore them in the hopes she'll discover them herself and want to wear them. The other idea is to tell her that Dr. Lawrence (her pediatrician) says she has to wear them. This actually worked when she didn't want her car seat straps tightened.

If none of this works, you'll see a lot of naked Ruby this summer. At least it'll be time for potty training.

In the garden, In the wild

My first installment of an ongoing diary of plant life and its springing into life in these parts:

Garden:
- peas planted and coming up
- Asian pear tree planted and budding (another on its way from the internet, needed for pollination)
- seeds sown: carrots, radishes, lettuce, beets
- indoor seedling starts: sweet peppers, basil, dill, tritoma (flower)
- last year's parsely looking nice


Wild:
- redbuds JUST starting to bud
- daffodils at peak but have been out for months (nutty December!)
- jasmine flowering
- columbine sending up flowering stalks
- grape hyacinth in full flower
- dogwoods also just starting to green up
- forsythia in full bloom
- a few azalea blossoms can also be seen!

My Most Excellent Links

I wish I could figure out how to put a permanent set of links off to the side of our blog posts. If there are any Blogger experts out there who can help, let me know. Til then, this post will have to suffice for those of you who are dying to know what I like to click on when I surf.

Gardening websites:
There are a ton of great ones. Here are a few:

1. Garden Web Forums. These are awesome. You meet a lot of cranky people within, but take 'em with a grain of salt. Last summer, I posted an innocent question about tomatoes and got harshed upon because I was growing mostly Early Girls. That's the kind of treatment you're likely to get there, but it's fun nonetheless. I like these forums a lot: Compost, Design, Winter Sowing (not that I've actually done that yet), Lawns.

2. Renegade Gardener. I think this started out as a website for northern clime gardening but Don's advice straddles many USDA zones and his post on tree rings was hilarious and influential.


Funny Mother websites:
3. Dooce. I actually went back to the very beginning of her Monthly Archives and read them all. Now I'm hooked.


Other interesting sites:
4. Ask Metafilter. Maybe I'm new to the whole Q&A website thing, but I like to check into this one from time to time. I haven't ponied up the $5 to post a Q but I'm hoping maybe someday someone will ask my current burning question. (Today's: can I trim the roots around my maple tree without harming it?)

5. Urban Dictionary. Just discovered this. A while back, a student asked me what "yo mama" means and I had a hard time thinking up a definition. Wish I'd known about this at the time.

6. Steve Pavlina. I'm a bit embarrassed to be linking this one. He is probably a total cornball and possibly dangerous in a cultish sort of way but I think some of his articles are interesting. Not that he needs any more money from anyone clicking on his website.

That's all for now. Feel free to post links to some of your best time-killers in the comments section. Remember you don't have to sign up with blogger, just post anonymously and then sign your name, unless you want to be secretive.

The Many Faces of Ruby

Snow!

It's not much, but it's the best we can do here in NC.

A Million Little Obsessions

I guess James Frey won't mind if I "borrow" my title from him?

Anyway, it seems like Ruby's "A Million Little Obsessions" era may be waning just a bit, thank heavens! For some months now, Ruby has had a number of little things that she must, must do or else the world ends. For instance - washing her hands (in every sink, moments after just having washed her hands); needing to drink water out of "Abby's cup" (cup that cousin Abby once drank out of six months ago); needing to see anything I'm doing on the stove or counter ("see RICE!!! see RICE!!!) (though this one I can kind of understand)(being that I like to cook). At her Grandma Judy's house when she first arrives she must drink apple cider (and she must get the ice cube herself), THEN put pennies in the penny bank, THEN turn on the flashlight, THEN give herself a dollop of hand cream, THEN play with the spices and teas...and so on.

But I said I thought this era might be ending. What actually might be ending instead is her spirited bullheadedness when she doesn't get her way about one of these things. Today, for instance, we visited a friend with a couple toddlers. Ruby wanted to go up the stairs into another part of the house (another obsession: steps). When she gave me the questioning look about going up (and that's a new thing, too - she actually sort of asks permission sometimes!) and I told her we were going to stay downstairs, SHE ACCEPTED MY ANSWER!!! 2 weeks ago, I would have (and did, actually) suffered through a tantrum and had to take her home. This turn of events is so welcome and liberating for me. I know new hurdles are ahead, but to anyone with a strong-headed, bull-headed, spirited, terrible yet tender toddler like Ruby, I say to you, it may just get better!

In keeping with the theme, here is a picture of Ruby swimming in the pool last summer which she is obsessed with looking at these days: