Summertime Blue

It's blueberry season here. Although I remember pulling blueberries off of bushes while walking in the woods as a child, I have no memory of deliberately going blueberry picking. In place of that memory, is the book Blueberries for Sal. Perhaps I never needed to go blueberry picking- Sal and Little Bear went for me.

We took the kids blueberry picking a few miles from home. These are not wild blueberries, mind you, but rows of bushes at a local apple orchard, grown under nets to protect them from the birds. You enter through a corner, getting tangled like Peter Rabbit in Mr. MacGregor's garden.

Noodle was thrilled. At first she kept squawking for more, but when she got heavy, we set her down on the ground and the real fun began. She realized that she could get to the berries directly and happily plunged into the picking, popping green and blue berries into her mouth indiscriminately. Mushed from the ground? She doesn't mind. I gave up any notion that I can control her at all.

I asked Q if he remembers Blueberries for Sal. No response. Ah, well.

Unlike Sal, we did not have pails to drop our blueberries in, "Kerplink, Kerplank, Kerplunk." We had a large flat box. It was simplest to leave it in one location and bring a handful at a time. Q took over some of the relay action, a good chore for a child who has trouble differentiating between ripe and unripe until the berry is in his hand. Noodle spotted the motherlode, and dove in. The rest of the the trip was spent juggling the box and Noodle, if one was on the ground, the other one must not be.

The July afternoon sun baked us as we picked. We decided we've had enough after an hour of late afternoon sun. I offered Noodle a final blueberry. She was so tired she can barely open her mouth.

When we arrived home, Q asked in a small voice, as he climbed out of the car, "Mommy? Are we going to can our berries for the winter?"

Moments in July

Noodle has a new word, brought out by Local Grandma. After we sing Happy Birthday, Noodle will follow it with a soft breathy, "Happyhappyhappy."

While I was busy singing to her over dinner last night, Q excused himself to use the potty. Where he fell asleep, head forward to rest on a step stool in front of him. Sadly, I wasn't able to transition him into his bed from there...

And then there were two...

We've had a busy week with a visit from cousin C from FL and his daddy. In the midst of the visit, we decided it was a good idea to finally move Noodle's crib into Q's room. This is having some mixed results. On the down side, we cannot seem to get either kid into bed and asleep without waking the other one. On the up side, Q has been a little shining star of a big brother. He sings and talks to Noodle to calm her down. He may have gotten protective of his toys during the day time, but at night, he's delighted to share his room. As I type this, he's bellowing, "I've been working on the rail road! All the live long day!" To be honest, I'm not sure how either of them ever falls asleep.

Noodle seems thrilled to have company at night, although she flips out if she sees me putting Q to bed. Just now, when Q left to get a drink of water, she got very upset. The night he went potty twice was a little traumatic. And then I must also remember that she's taken to pooping after she's put to bed each night. The transition has bumped bedtime from 6:30 to 7:30, or sometimes 8:30...

There's a lot more walking going on for Noodle and she can now say several more words: house, horse (they sound the same and she might not say them spontaneously, but in context it's very exciting), Mama and a cat's meowing sound that is remarkably similar to Raleigh's meow (our large brown cat) although I would not have recognized it if she hadn't mewed back at him one morning.

She can also climb a step stool, I discovered this afternoon...