In My Pretty Garden

When I was a child, and even into high school, I would see my mother reading a gardening magazine or book quite often. She knows the names of so many flowers, and I remember quite a few times when she would tell me the name of some wildflower we'd pass on the side of the road. I always wondered how she could possibly be so interested in flowers that she could spend so much of her time learning about them. But because it seemed to make her so happy, I passed it off as some sort of specialized hobby and accepted it for what it was.

Now I know. I know that planting a flower makes you feel like you're doing something to make your home more beautiful, and a happier place. And that somewhere deep inside you feel that if planting a flower makes your family happy, then doing it makes you happy, too.


And so I garden. Not like my mother does, but I do my little bit that is enough to make me feel content that I've done something good as I walk through our yard.I do not yet have a daughter of my own, but I have a son who loves to sit by me and play while I work...because of course he would never pass up an opportunity to dig in the dirt. We got him his own kid garden tools and "boy" garden gloves (they are blue with worms on them), and he has been asking every day if it is a "warmer" day so we can garden. And though I know he would just as soon rip a flower to pieces as plant it, I am very grateful for this season where he and I can share something that makes us both smile.

Tricycle Triumph - A Very Good Day

Tuesday, I was trying to clean up my house a bit, when I got a call from our real estate agent. I said, "Hello?" and she said, "Is there someone outside your house?" At first I was a little creeped out like it was a random warning about some weird guy hanging out in my front yard, but I quickly realized who it was and (with a big sigh) that I was probably going to have to hurry up and finish cleaning everything because someone wanted to see the house right away. I was right. We made an appointment for them to come back in an hour, and I flew threw the house trying to finish all the cleaning I could while encouraging Connor to scarf down his remaining chicken nuggets and applesauce.

After some last-minute frantic vacuuming, we bounded down the front steps and I told C we were going for a ride on his tricycle. He LOVES his trike. If you look back in the blog to last summer somewhere, I think there's a picture. We got it at Sam's Club, and it is a Lightning McQueen trike, which means a lot more to him this year now that he's so into the movie. It has one of those "parent push" handles in the back, and you can either engage or disengage the his front pedals.

So all last year, I left the pedals disengaged and let him just put his feet on the seperate footrest bar. But he's a little big to reach that properly now, so I just strapped his flip flops under the reals pedals to keep his feet on. Then, just on a whim, I engaged the front pedal figuring whatever push he might give every once in awhile would be good exercise.

I sat him on the trike on back of the driveway, and bent down to pick up my purse, and when I turned around HE WAS PEDALING!! I couldn't believe it!! I started searching the ground to see if there was some mysterious hill in our driveway I never noticed before, and though it does barely angle down toward the street, C was really keeping it going all on his own!!

So we went to for big long walk up and down our street. The street goes uphill a bit, and he needed some pushing going up...and actually I think just about any kid his age would. But on the downhill, he kept it going by himself for the most part, and kept turning around to check on me, saying "Mommy let go!" He was so excited to be independent. But probably not half as excited as I was. And, as I'm sure all our neighbors already think I'm crazy since the fire truck "incident", I really didn't mind walking up and down the road with a few tears on my face.

Everybody Has/Needs a Cell Phone

A few days ago, my mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and our new little niece stopped by to visit. Connor has quickly caught on to the fact that most everyone has a cell phone these days. So his Aunt Jess wasn't there very long before he was asking to see her cell phone. He remember from the last time he saw her that there was a picture of her dog on the phone, and he was dying to see it. Then he said he needed to call somebody, so Jess dialed her husband's number and Connor took it from there.

He cracked us up. I was very impressed with how important he seemed to think it was to share the phone with the baby. Lucky for her, she slept through the whole thing. The frog was a toy he found in his toy closet (with some guidance) because he insisted she needed one. I'm so excited to see him as a big brother.