The Great Judith Migration

We call it the "Great Judith Migration". Judith is having a great time walking everywhere these days, and taking everything she can with her! She has found that walking is a great way to move items about the house. So for example, as I went into the master bathroom a few days ago, I tripped on something and then stepped on something hard, before turning on the light. When I looked down, I had tripped on a Tupperware and then stepped on a wooden spoon. These are not items Robert and I keep on the floor of our bathroom! So unless we have a ghost, it must be due to the Great Judith Migration.

Similarly, in this picture, Judith has taken a drawer from my work file cart (a drawer that started off full, mind you), emptied it, and then taken off with it. I saw her as she was heading down the hallway toward the kitchen with her prize. That drawer belongs on the cart in the den. Oh well...

It is great fun to see her walking everywhere. It is now a rare occurrence that she chooses to crawl - mostly when she is extremely anxious to get there quickly, because she can still crawl faster than she can walk. But that difference is shrinking daily, and I expect that the walking will be the faster mode of transportation in just a matter of days. Besides, walking is fun because you can carry all sorts of items all over the place!

Walking is also a precursor to climbing. Judith is going to be a great climber! She loves to climb on top of everything. Here's a picture of her climbing up on her train. The train was something she loved to walk around behind for about three or four days. Then she decided it was more fun to climb on it! Of course this makes us very nervous. But we can't keep her from climbing on everything. She's climbing on the ottoman, and on anything she can get a foot hold on.

She's also opening drawers and cabinets all over the place. She loves to take all the plastic bags out of the kitchen and spread them around the house. And getting into cabinets is of course great fun. That's how the Tupperware migrates everywhere! Of course, it is important to have a cabinet she can get into and feel like she's having a lot of fun with! This is especially important when Mommy can't play with her at that particular moment because of food preparation. But overall Judith is getting more patient with waiting for Mommy and Daddy, at times.

Then there are the times she can't wait - such as when Daddy gets home from work. The door opens, I tell her Daddy's home, and she has a great big intake of breath, smiles big, pushes herself up, and walks as quickly as possible to the door. It is absolutely adorable!

As summer has gone on, we've also enjoyed lots of time outside. This is an extremely mild summer for us - much, much, much cooler than last year. The last few weeks we've been between the high 80s and 90s each day. We even had one day where there was a bit of drizzle. It's the first time there's been any precipitation here between May and September in more than 10 years! But it's been extremely comfortable. We haven't had to run the AC much, which is nice. And our garden is doing great!

Judith especially loves the garden. She enjoys playing with the hose and trying to get the water to come out. She loves playing in pooled water on the patio after we water the container plants. She enjoys digging up the basil on a regular basis (nothing else - just the basil - we don't know why). Of course dirt is a great deal of fun and has even found its way to her mouth multiple times lately. And the new delight is the cherry tomato plant. That plant is a monster - taller than Robert! We've been getting a nice crop of cherry tomatoes each day from it. And Judith loves helping to pick the ripe tomatoes. She takes the red ones off, puts them in her mouth, spits them out, picks them up, carries them around the patio, puts them in her mouth, spits them out, picks them up, and then eats them. And sometimes she just enjoys smashing the little tomatoes into the patio and spreading their red seeds everywhere. It's great fun!

Also from the garden, Robert is working hard to assist the bees in pollinating the squash each morning. We have had a very good crop of zucchini so far, which has led to the baking of multiple loaves of zucchini bread for friends and the freezer. We've only had one yellow squash so far, which is disappointing (but that one was VERY good!). And we seem to have two pumpkins growing. Our regular tomato plant is also growing well. We've already had one crop of very nice tomatoes from it, which were great sliced, and also made for some nice salsa & bruschetta. We have another 15 good looking green tomatoes right now that we are waiting to have ripen. And when they do, we'll have a lot more good tomatoes all at once! We are also going to have a whole lot of green beans soon. They are growing like crazy, and we have more than 30 green bean plants, so it should be a great crop over a few weeks time.

Our pepper plants are pretty, but for the seven of them we only have two peppers. The other plant we have in the garden is a watermelon plant. It seems to be trying to take over everything in its path! It has a lot of vines and is about eight feet wide at this point. We're hopeful that we'll get lots and lots of nice watermelon off it by the end of August, beginning of September. Perhaps we'll even have some home grown watermelon when our guests arrive in October!

In other news, many of you know that our landlords told us on July 5 that they were going to sell this house. Thankfully, they changed their minds and decided to sell another property, and we are extending our lease another 18 months, which we are very excited about. They have also told us we can paint anything whatever we'd like. If it's bad, they'll want us to make it white before we leave, but they have no concerns about us painting. We are excited about that, and will begin painting after we return from Chicago. After two years, we are truly sick of white walls. We are especially excited to be able to decorate Judith's room a bit.

Other than that, we are relaxing with a few weeks with no news. We did have a 10 day stretch of bad news where we were very sad to lose several people we loved. Winnie who read and commented on this blog and loved us and Judith so much, died suddenly a month ago. Sr. Emilie from work died suddenly later in that same week. She loved to hold and rock Judith and just smile at her all day. And then our friend Beth from Sheil was killed in a biking accident the next day. She was so energetic and a terrific person. We were in the same sorority (though many years apart), and it was another shocking loss. And then my grandfather, Judith's great-grandfather, passed away on the Fourth of July. He was ill briefly and his loss is hard on the family.

All of this has reminded Robert and me that we truly do want to move back to the Midwest sooner rather than later. As previously mentioned, we are renewing our lease, but we are hoping to not have to do so again. We love our garden, and this is a nice house for us to live in. We have met some very nice people, and belong to a nice parish with a fabulous pastor out here. And I have about as perfect a job as I could ever hope to have as a working mom. I set my own hours, work from home most of the time, and can take my daughter to work when I need to or want to. I also have the best boss I have ever had (who unfortunately, also announced in that week of bad news that he has cancer - he had successful surgery last week and is now recovering at home).

But we are a long way from our family. It was not possible to get to Granddad's funeral in time because of the distance and the holiday week - the airlines were booked and getting out east and back home wasn't feasible. We want Judith to grow up close to her family. We want to be able to get to family events when needed. We simply want to be a lot closer to family. Hopefully, we will be able to make that happen in the next 12 to 18 months. At least if we made it back to the Midwest area we'd be able to drive to visit family on a more regular basis. From here that is simply not feasible.

But so far God has been very good to us and we are trusting that we will lead us to where we need to be, when we need to be there.

We hope that you all are having some summer fun and relaxation. For those in Chicago, we are excited about our trip out in a week and a half and are hoping to see everyone. Other than that, we'll hopefully have some other cute pictures up for you all soon! Have a great week!