How does your Garden Grow?

Our garden is officially a jungle. I feel like I need a machete to walk through the tomatoes and squash and grapes which have all intertwined themselves together into a delicious mess. We have so many tomatoes that I have borrowed a steam canner. Yes, I need to get my canning done.

When we go to the garden Piper loves to pick things, she is pretty good about picking whatever is red, I think she ate every strawberry we grew back in June/July. She was just faster than us! Now she picks tomatoes and eats them like apples, favoring the early boy over the roma.

Finally...

...a wrap hammock for Piper. Jesse told me I must not try to put my nearly six foot self into this hammock, but, oh dear, is it tempting. I have wanted to put one of these up forever but I just barely convinced Jesse that it would be easy and safe. The hardware was purchased from Lowes, it cost a whopping $0.98 a piece. We used heavy duty eye bolts with soldered closed rings attached to them. We put them into our archway which should be an easy fix once we move out, just a little spackle, sanding and painting. Piper loved it, she did a giggle that sounded like a chipmunk chattering and started saying "hamma." For those of you not familiar with my love of wraps, the hammock is a long piece of woven fabric that makes a great baby carrier. These things have a multitude of uses even past the carrying stage!

Before and After

Before:
After:

Who doesn't love a good before and after photo shoot, especially where the change is so awesome? I used my birthday money this year to buy some much needed furniture both for our bedroom and for our "kid corner." This will hopefully eliminate the piles of clothes/toys in areas of the house and maybe create a more restful/organized environment! I was able to do all of this during Piper's nap, and I'm very pleased with the result.

A Moment in Time

To capture a moment without a picture I think it's prudent to make a list of all the words that Piper can say to this date:

• cupcake


• good morning/ good night


• salt


• pens


• horse


• dog


• mama/dada


• gramma/papa


• NO!


• mine


• more


• bye bye/ good bye


• oh dear


• uh oh


• ball


• swim


• shoe shoe


• baby


• moooooooo


• away


• gum


• juice


• choo choo


• car cart
• hot/ cold
• sorry
• phone
• camera

White Coats and Hippocratic Oaths

Today was Jesse's long awaited "White Coat Ceremony" where all of the medical students recieve their first white coats, this year the students were also gifted a really nice stethoscope. (We learned that there is a whole set of jokes in physician humor pertaining to how to distinguish different specialties purely based on how they use a stethoscope, still a little too inside for us) The students also take the Hippocratic Oath for the first time. My favorite part, aside from seeing my man cloaked in the coat of a doctor, was the keynote speaker. Dr. Richard J Sperry spoke about how far medicine has come and how much it has lost. He begged the students to keep their humanity, to listen to and look patients in the eye, to be compassionate and in doing so to "buck the system." Well said, Dr. Sperry.

A day in the life

A new camera today calls for a new blog! Here are some pictures of Piper as a 1 year 8 month 3 week and 1 day year old. I was over at my friend Olya's house basking in her raw food diet glow and recieving a little camera tutorial (custom white balance anyone?)

In the bottom picture Piper and Maya (4) are showing off their matching head wraps.