phfr – Page 3 – little thoughts

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – enjoying the end of summer

Posted on 2015-09-242016-03-17 by kristinabean

The garden is starting to take off! I think this is one of my favorite times of year, when I get to watch the new life springing up out of the ground. We’ll see if they make it to an actual harvest though 🙂 I don’t have the greenest thumb in the world!

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And of course it is still warm enough here to play at the splash pad in the afternoons (and probably in the mornings too, to be honest – our highs are just beginning to flirt with the 90’s when storm fronts come through, and then they jump back up to triple digits). Rather than mourn the lack of any significant autumnal season, we’re choosing to enjoy the summer fun as long as we can. Honestly, too, those late summer storms make this one of my favorite times of year: the nights are sometimes cool enough to leave the windows open, the mornings are fresh and clean-feeling, the days are softly warm and perfect for water play, and in the evenings the great dark clouds roll in with thunder and pouring rain.

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Rondel’s developing his own will, figuring out how social dynamics work, and beginning to test some boundaries (not much, though – he’s a pretty compliant child). I’m actually really enjoying seeing his own preferences and opinions grow, and watching him learn how to express them in appropriate ways! A funny side effect of it is this little fake pouty face that he makes when he wants someone to do something in a very specific way, and he knows that it’s a kind of ridiculous want, so he tries to pout when he doesn’t get it but can’t quite keep a straight face.

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When do babies normally start holding their own bottles? Limerick can’t seem to coordinate his. Sometimes he’ll try to pick it up by the nipple and then stuff the nipple in his mouth (sort of in the same way that he’d pick up a bit of food and stuff it in his mouth), and a couple times he’s managed to get his hands around the bottle part and lift it up, but then he doesn’t seem quite sure how to get the right part into his mouth. So in the meantime we hold it for him when he gets thirsty.

(That’s my hand holding the bottle… his are passively at his side. Sigh.)

I hope all of you in other parts of the country are enjoying your beautiful fall weather! Join me at the LMLD link up today!

family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – a busy week

Posted on 2015-09-17 by kristinabean

I really do have some great pictures this week from our visit to the splashpad on Tuesday (I’m trying to go as much as possible while the weather is still warm, because it’s a great way to get the kids out of the house), but I haven’t gotten them uploaded from my camera.

There should be some pictures of our little garden on there too. We’ve planted beets, corn, basil, sage, mint, and oregano so far and they’re doing ok, except for a row of the corn that looks pretty burnt. Now that it’s starting to get cooler, though (highs in the 90s!) I’d like to plant my leafy greens for the fall growing season, too – it’s just about the right time to plant cilantro, arugula, kale, and spinach – all of which seem to be hard to eat when purchased from a store but which are tossed easily into just about every meal when available in the backyard garden. Do you find that to be true in your house as well? The store-bought produce will often go bad before I use it all up (especially greens), but anything that we grow ourselves is devoured immediately!

Sometimes it seems like life is a juggling act and I’m a very clumsy juggler – at least one ball always seems to be getting dropped. On a positive note, we got a lot of laundry and house-cleaning done this weekend, thanks to my very helpful husband, so I don’t feel overwhelmed in every area of life right now, just the normal two to three areas. The kids had peed on all the beds so the laundry was fairly important… and spilled a bowl of cereal (dry) under the couch, so vacuuming was rather needed as well… so it goes with toddlers, I suppose.

I do have a {real} picture for the first time, though, from one of the more hectic nights this week!

What do you do with a baby who wants to see what you’re doing and be in the kitchen but won’t consent to being held still in a wrap and is too unsteady and short to stand on a chair? I don’t know what your solution is, but apparently mine is to let him play sans diaper in the kitchen sink… The toddler heard me putting said baby in the sink and requested to play as well, and surprisingly they played together in peace for the 10-15 minutes I needed to finish getting dinner made.

You can see all the groceries still sitting out on the counter too… they didn’t get put away until after bedtime. But at least it was all clean and straightened up before I went to bed, so I wouldn’t have to wake up to the mess! It’s the little things 🙂

Don’t forget to head over to the link-up and visit other blogs! It’s encouraging to see the crazy and the happy in everyone else’s life, at least for me – it gives me the reassurance that we’re all in this together and no one is doing it perfectly, but that we can all choose to see beauty and find contentment right where we are.

family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – labor day

Posted on 2015-09-102015-09-12 by kristinabean

For Labor Day my mom and I were both free (we work at academic institutions that frown upon working on Labor Day!) and I took the babies down to her house for the whole day. We spent the morning getting her garden ready for the fall planting season (all our seasons are different down here in the low desert) and swimming in her pool, then swam again in the afternoon after my husband and dad were finished working and could come down, and had a delicious gumbo for dinner courtesy of my mom and brother. I’ve never actually had a gumbo that I liked before… I think this one is going to have to enter my recipe files!

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climbing on the oregano in the raised bed garden!

(By the way, I’m so thankful that we live near my parents! The boys and their grandparents have a really special relationship, and it always makes me happy to see all those people, whom I love so much, loving each other and enjoying time spent with each other.)

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Some advantages of helping my mom with her garden: transplants of oregano and mint to take home to my garden, along with some basil and sage from the nursery (we all went with her since she wanted some new pepper plants), and a bag full of processed oregano from the massive overgrown oregano bush! She and my brother have been processing the leaves with a bit of olive oil in the food processor and freezing it in ice cube trays (my idea – and I harvested the oregano – but they did the more tedious work of stripping the leaves). It really is a handy way to store excess fresh herbs, and then a cube can be pulled out to use as a sauté base for vegetables, or part of a light sauce for pasta, or even as an herby sauce for a white pizza.

(I thawed one last night and used it as the beginnings of a pasta salad dressing, with a touch more oil and a bit of red wine vinegar to brighten it up, in lieu of lemon juice)

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I love the look on this kid’s face! And he loves jumping into the pool (actually, he likes to hold your hands and kind of step in off the side into the water… he did jump all by himself with both feet a few times though!) – and swimming in the pool, and knocking Daddy down in the pool, and pretty much everything to do with the pool.

What’s my {real} for this week? Just that all good things come to an end, I guess 🙂 I’m not very good at getting pictures of the {real} in life, now that I think of it – maybe I’ll show you guys the state of my kitchen floor one week…

I hope you all had a great holiday weekend too! Check out the rest of the link-up here 🙂

family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – birthday fun!

Posted on 2015-09-032015-09-14 by kristinabean

Still playing catch up on the pictures here… I have pictures from this week but they’re still on the camera and I’ve got all of August’s pictures to process first! Hopefully I’ll be up-to-date for next week 🙂

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For Rondel’s second birthday back in July we visited the zoo! And our zoo, being in a hot desert environment, obligingly has a spashpad where the kids can cool down. Limerick was a huge fan.

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This baby is seriously in love with water play – here he’s enjoying one of the Rondel’s birthday presents.

And here’s Rondel himself enjoying the water! He’s a bit more cautious than his brother but once he gets past his initial reluctance he has a lot of fun.

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I don’t actually have any pictures of him looking happy while opening presents, even the Hotwheels Mustangs from Grandpa – he was just so utterly serious about the whole process! It’s really neat how important every little thing is to toddlers, and how all the experiences we are so familiar with are brand new and somewhat exciting, challenging, and frightening all at once to them, because of course they haven’t lived through it all before.

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My sister got Rondel these peas and we made the mistake of letting him open the afore-mentioned Mustangs first… he had eyes for no other gifts once he saw those cars! Limerick, however, decided that the peas could be for him instead, if no one else wanted them, and immediately attacked them with great delight.

It’s very nice, you know, how little kids don’t hold you to some standard of perfection as their parent – they just ask for your love and attention. They don’t really care about the presents, or about how beautiful the cake was (creatively imagined but only somewhat successfully executed, if you want to know), or about how many people are there celebrating them. I’m sure their desires and expectations will grow with them, but so will my understanding of them and my relationship with them, and it is this knowledge that we’ll be growing together that keeps me from feeling overwhelmed about all the parenting milestones ahead of me.

So happy 2nd birthday Rondel! Here’s to many more years of love and laughter together.

(Go check out the other {p,h,f,r} posts through the link-up at Like Mother, Like Daughter!)

family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – sister time!

Posted on 2015-08-272015-09-12 by kristinabean

For the link-up at LMLD this week I have the pictures from my sister’s visit from Seattle! It was so nice to have the whole family together for a few days, enjoying each other’s company.

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Just look at those beautiful fat baby cheeks! Limerick may be short but he isn’t lacking when it comes to rolls of plumpness.

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My sweet little sister playing with Rondel – he took to her right away despite his typical reservations around new people – maybe he remembered her from his infancy, or picked up on the love and family vibe going around. Either way it made me so happy to see them together, two of the people I love most in the whole world.

And another happy! My sister’s husband acting silly for the benefit of the baby 🙂 Funny how babies always seem to bring out the ridiculous and disarmingly un-self-conscious side in people.

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And when it comes to funny things babies do? Apparently Limerick decided that beer would be a tasty and appropriate substitute for his normal milk and water! Watch out dear Auntie!

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For the real I don’t actually have a picture, just a confession – these pictures are from way back in June! I just finally uploaded them onto my computer this week. But the joy of spending so much time together was too good to pass up on posting, despite the delay.