Growing Up So Fast!

Judith is quickly approaching her first birthday, and we are just watching her grow up a little bit more each day. (Just a warning - you're back to the regular writer of the blog, so this is not nearly as well crafted as the entries from Aunt Karen and Uncle John, or from Robert! Sorry!)

With the fabulous weather (always sunny, rarely a cloud in the sky and not yet 100 degrees each day) we are trying to spend lots of good time outside. Robert and I have been working a lot on the garden, and Judith is enjoying helping us. She now has her own little watering can, rake, shovel, bucket and sieve. The watering can and bucket are her favorites. With them she can dump both dirt and water on Mommy while Mommy is trying to plant flowers and re-pot house plants. This is great fun for Judith. She loves splashing in the little water puddles created by watering the newly filled planter boxes as well. And then she enjoys crawling around in the dirt. That explains why her clothes are just so gosh darn messy.

The weekly farmer’s market is also in full swing. We drive to the one in the next town over each Saturday morning, and then do our grocery shopping. However, this coming Saturday they are starting (for the first time ever) a farmer’s market in the town we live in – which is VERY exciting! We’re looking forward to seeing how it compares. At the farmer’s market we have been going to all the food we get is pesticide free, which we appreciate. They also have several stands from farms that are certified organic. The one in our town will not have organic farmers. We’ll have to see if any of them are pesticide free however.

And to go along with all the fresh food we’re buying, Judith has been trying new tastes lately. Her latest loves are spaghetti, mustard, and roasted red pepper spread. The spaghetti is a homemade sauce with a red pepper, a green pepper, an onion, mushrooms, garlic and herbs all sautéed together and then combined with the actual spaghetti noodles. Then the immersion blender on a low setting makes it a manageable, chunky food for her. She just gobbles it down. The mustard is from our favorite local winery. They sell several mustards, but the one we really like is the Sweet and Hot Stone Ground Mustard. I was snacking on it the other day with pretzel sticks, and Judith was begging for a little taste. I felt very guilty giving her a taste, thinking she was going to hate it. Wrong. She loved it and wanted more and more. It made her very happy! When she had her fill, she chewed on the pretzel for a few minutes before deciding it wasn’t really her thing.

And the roasted red pepper spread was served at this very nice Italian place where we went for lunch last Sunday afternoon. We decided that in honor of the long holiday weekend, we would go out and about. So we did some shopping, ate lunch at a really good restaurant (Robert and I each even had a glass of wine – we felt like such grownups!), and then we went to the park. It was great, great fun! The park was different from what we have around us. All the playground equipment was over giant sand boxes. So Judith played with sand for the first time. She was concerned about this new substance at first, and then decided that it was quite enjoyable. She liked picking it up in her hands and letting it flow through her fingers. The park also had fabulous rose bushes and a great gazebo, which made excellent backdrops to lots of pictures. We really had a great time.

For that trip we had the stroller with us because we were going from store to store. But over the past few weeks, Judith has become enamored of this idea of riding in shopping carts. We are now actually using the shopping cart cover Aunt Karen and Uncle John gave her for Christmas. And she’s having a good time being able to see more of what is happening around her.

She’s not walking yet, but she has started making her first sign language sign. She’s very good now at the sign for “more.” She uses it when I tell her that we’re done with a meal because we’ve eaten all the food. She lets me know when I need to get her more. And when I do, she smiles and claps. But she also uses the sign to indicate that it’s time for her to eat and she’s hungry. She sometimes uses the same sign to indicate that she wants us to do something different. Robert thinks that it sometimes simply means, “I want a banana.” Anyway, this whole concept of “more” seems to have become quite broad. It’s the only sign she can make right now, so she uses it for everything. It’s quite adorable! We figure that over the coming months she will get better at using other signs and will be able to better differentiate what she’s actually asking for.

And of course, her language skills should also begin to improve slowly. Right now she’s fairly good at “mama” and “dada”. She makes lots of other sounds, but none of them that seem to mean words or objects, so far as we can tell at this point. There are times she goes on just a streak of babbling though, and again, it’s adorable! In general, we find our child QUITE adorable!

Judith is getting better at being with other people as well, which is good, because we’ve had occasion lately to use a local day care center. So far she’s been there one time, but she’ll be there tomorrow again, and probably once during each of the next two weeks as well. The woman who runs the center has degrees in early childhood education. Her husband is a pastor and they have three small children of their own. She operates this center out of her home. It’s only a few blocks from our house, which is very convenient. And she’ll take Judith on a drop in basis on the odd days when I need to go into the office and can’t take her with me, and our next door neighbor can’t watch her either. It makes us feel good that there is a nice, qualified, licensed person who is available as a back up. I do try to take Judith with me to work as much as possible, but there are times (like tomorrow – an all day staff retreat day) when it’s just not appropriate. Fortunately though, by the middle of June I will actually have my own office at work, with all my files. I will be able to bring her in and get her set-up and let her play around a decent sized space while I work. And I can nurse her with the door closed and not have to worry about trying to find a place to do that. It’s very exciting.

And now, if you’re still reading, you’re probably bored with our mundane life, but we love it and we are grateful to have the loving friends and relatives who care about us enough to check in on us every once in a while. Have a great week! And Happy Summer!