Memorial Day Weekend is here and it is finally time to welcome summer.  Sunday’s forecast promised extreme heat upwards of 90 degrees, so we spent our Saturday doing all of the yard projects that we wanted to complete for the weekend.

The garden is now planted.

We doubled the size of the garden this year, but it still feels small.  We planted lettuce, spinach, chard, several varieties of tomatoes and peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, squash, carrots and beans.  Now we just have the tough task of keeping the squirrels from eating everything.

Thanks to our rainbarrel made from a reclaimed industrial food product container and pallets, we have all the water we’ll need to water the garden this year.

And finally, we got the chicken coop raccoon-proofed so that the little ladies can stay in the coop all the time, assuming we continue having these lovely warm nights.

We ultimately moved the coop to this area better protected by our fence.  Last I checked, our little chicken ladies were sleeping soundly – not a care in the world.

In all, it was a really productive day on our little homestead.  Which means that we can spend the hot, hot Sunday hibernating in our air conditioning, watching movies and generally not accomplishing anything useful.  We’re looking forward to it!

This weekend Jack and I enjoyed our very first race together – The Color Run in Racine, Wisconsin.

The premise of The Color Run is hard to explain in words, but easy to explain in pictures.  Basically, the runners begin at the start line wearing clean, white clothes.

And by the end of this 5k run/walk, they are covered in colors.

It was a really fun experience for both of us.  Jack slept in the car all the way to the event, and he even stayed asleep in his stroller through the long walk to packet pickup, through the very noisy start line party, and even the first part of the race.

And then, color zone one happened.  At the end of each kilometer, runners reach a color zone where volunteers pelt the runners with the color for that zone (the coloring is a food-based powder).  Color zone one was yellow:

After the yellow zone, Jack woke up.  He looked a little bewildered – can you imagine?  What happened?  Why am I here?  Why is everyone yellow?  But he took it all in stride, quietly observing the next few kilometers.

I was a little concerned about how he would react to being pelted with the color.  I had planned to move him off the course during the color zones if it was too much, but there was no need.  The Color Run volunteers are to be commended for that – whenever we came through the color zones they’d yell “baby coming through – look out for little man!” and make sure that they didn’t toss any color directly at him or the stroller.  Of course he got covered with some of the ambient color in the air, but no direct hits.

Color zone pink was my personal favorite.  Also?  Look at this view.  I’ve been to Racine plenty of times before but I’ve never seen the beautiful lakefront.

I had the flu for a good part of the week, so for us, The Color Run was more like a color walk with occasional jog, but that was just fine.  This wasn’t a timed race, and there were plenty of walkers.  In fact, I’d recommend this as a great race for the non-runner – it is a fun way to experience the excitement of a race without the pressure of having to actually be able to run for any distance.  I’d also recommend it for families – we saw plenty of families doing this event together.

So how did we fare by the end?  This photo is the first time Jack got a good look at me after the race – remember, he rides in a jogging stroller so he doesn’t have much of a view of mama until we stop.  Note his expression of great concern.

And a protip:  do not laugh in the color zones.  Yes, there is purple on my teeth.  It did not taste good.

In all, my little color runner did a great job, and we had fun.  As we were cleaning up to get into the car, he asked “Mommy?  You ran race?”  Yes, peanut, WE ran a race!  The following morning he was still talking about our race.  We’ll do this again.

The Color Run is a national event, with plenty more Color Runs coming up in the coming months.  Visit The Color Run website to see if there’s one in a city near you.

Our six little Buff Orpingtons are growing up so fast!  Not long ago, we had lots of this:

And now, we have this:

We’re getting ready to put the girls outside in their coop full time now that the weather is warming up.  While this isn’t my first time around the block with chickens, it has been a long, long time since I’ve had these experiences, and I’m really learning a lot.  My thoughts on these first five weeks follow.

The most surprising things about raising chicks:

• Like kids, they grow up really, really fast.  The difference between the first photo and the second photo is only about four and a half weeks.  They transform from these little puffballs to chickens right before your eyes.
• They are eating machines.  I cannot believe how much they eat.
• They are hilarious.  One of them loves to jump straight up in the air.  I don’t know if something is startling her or if she’s just bouncy, but every once in a while she just goes STRAIGHT UP for no apparent reason.
• They enjoy our company.  Jack loves to tell them about his trains, and they seem to listen.  They like being talked to and petted.  They are so sweet and so social.

The most annoying thing about raising chicks:

• They just can’t seem to keep their water clean.  Within moments of giving them fresh water, they kick shavings into it.  I think they are testing me.

The strangest thing about raising chicks:

• When they are indoors, we keep them in the same room as our parrot, Wyatt.  I swear the chicks and Wyatt make very similar chirps, and I don’t think I’ve experienced that with chicks before.  Are they learning parrot noises from Wyatt?  How strange would that be!

Kids are truly humbling.  Their honesty and their innocent approach to life can really take you down a few notches.

This morning, for example, I woke up around 5a.m. and my little shadow woke up a few minutes later.  After some hugs and a little discussion about Thomas the Train (what else?) I started to get him dressed for the day.  He suddenly looked up at me with great concern.

“No, mommy.  No.”

He began petting my hair vigorously, trying to smooth it down.  I admit, I had just woken up so my hair was unbrushed.

“No, mommy.  Bird is not a hat.”

And, just in case I didn’t hear it.

“Bird is not a hat.  No bird on head, no.”

Apparently, my hair looked like a bird.  Or a bird’s nest.  Or something.  Sigh.

Hey, kid.  Let me remind you:  your hair hasn’t always been perfect either, and I have photographic evidence of it:

So, yeah.  Take that.  Bird head, indeed.

*digs family out from under a pile of Kleenex*

Well, hello there!  What day is it?  Wow.  The Monkey Butt household has been so sick.  Again.  Flu, sinus issues, general misery.  It hit us all pretty hard, and we’re really all still in the midst of it.

Not fun.  I’m hoping we’re seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but sadly I know there are more tunnels ahead.

And so we come to the daycare dilemma.  Jack is in daycare one morning a week.  Mr. Monkeybutt is a stay at home dad, so daycare isn’t a necessity so much as it is a nice way for Jack to get out and play with other kids, and it gives my husband one morning where he can run errands without the toddler, or work on some projects, or just sleep in.  The problem is, of course, that a daycare full of little ones is like a festering house of plague, and our little pestilence-bringer carts home every germ he comes in contact with.  While Jack rolls with it pretty well, my husband gets chronic sinus infections that require antibiotics to treat and which really take him out for a full week at a time.  And sometimes – more recently than ever before – these sickies take me down with them, which means I miss work.

And so, our dilemma: is daycare more trouble than it is worth?

Daycare has its pros:  Jack loves going there.  He socializes so well with the other children.  He learns so much there.  He genuinely looks forward to “school.”  I know all this sickness now is helping build his immune system.  And I know that taking him out of daycare doesn’t mean he’ll never get sick.

Daycare also has its cons:  Aside from this whole constant illness thing, it isn’t cheap:  we pay $64 for each morning that he’s there, plus the random fees and charges that they assess at the full rate even though he’s only there one morning a week (example: $30 summer activity fee.  The only summer activity that is going on during one of his mornings is “water sprinkler day.”  Hmm…).

We’re considering not renewing daycare for next session.

Jack will still have plenty of playtime with other kids – we are very active members of the YMCA, and he absolutely loves their nursery and kids’ gym.  We go there at least once a week (you know, when we aren’t dying of some plague).  I’m sure he’ll still get sick from his contact with the other little germy fellas at the Y daycare too.

Although, I’ll miss stuff like this from the daycare:

So, we’re pretty torn on this.  Any thoughts?

Mother’s Day is approaching once again, and I want to take this opportunity to ask for something from you.  I don’t want flowers.  I don’t need a card.  A day at the spa, a pedicure, breakfast in bed – those aren’t me.  Even at just two years old, I think you are wise enough to know that those things just aren’t your mommy.

I want something from you that’s much bigger.  Much greater.  Much more important.

But don’t worry – you’ve got time to work on it.

I want you to promise me that, as you grow up, above all else you are going to do everything you can to just be you.

When you get into middle school and high school, you’re going to have a lot of different people influencing you.  I’m not talking about your peers – I’m actually not so worried about the gangs, the drugs, the bullies.  We’ll work through those together.  You have a great head on your little shoulders.  I’m worried about the far more subtle influences – the ones that seem harmless but that can take you on a long, long journey far from yourself.  People who will tell you what you should do, even when what you should do falls far from who you are.

A lot of people are going to say you should go to college.  You should get a degree in a subject that will ensure a good job.  You should drive a sensible car.  You should look forward to working up the career ladder, to putting in long hours at the office, to earning two weeks of vacation per year, to 9-5 spent in a cubicle with 30 minutes for lunch and a good pension plan.  You should meet a nice girl and settle down.

Those are great plans, if that’s what your heart is telling you to do.  But what if your heart compels you to paint?  To sculpt?  To sing?  Those are far less certain paths than, say, software engineering.  What if you fall in love with farming?  What if you’d rather do hard work with your hands and your back?  What if you want to delay college in order to spend a season through-hiking the Appalachian Trail?  What if your twenty-fifth birthday rolls around and you still don’t have all the answers?

By the time you have to face these questions, you’ll be well on your way to being a good, good man.  You won’t need me to tell you what to do – at some point, that’s no longer included in mommy’s job description.  But I hope, I truly, truly hope, that along the way I’ll have given you the tools to be confident enough to know that, even if the world says you should be doing one thing, that your heart gets a say in the matter, too.  And I’m confident you’ll make the right decision for you.

What I’m saying is that I want you to promise me that you’ll define your own happiness so you can find your own happiness.

I love you so much.

xxooxxoo

Step one:  put the toddler to bed in his room.  Books are read, cheeks are kissed.  Boy is tucked in.  All is well.

Step two:  put on sassy outfit for the husband.  Appreciative comments are exchanged.  Kisses and snuggles are swapped.  All is well.

Step three:  venture upstairs to our room for the night.  Discover a line of trains at the foot of the bed, and a little pair of socked feet sticking out from under our quilt.

**insert sound of record skipping**

Sigh.  This is not where I tucked him in!

Step four:  put away the sassy outfit for another night.  Put on sweats and a t-shirt.  Return downstairs for a night of television and Facebook.

Step five:  have a good laugh.  Not exactly what we had planned for the night, but darn it, that’s cute.

Our pre-garden planning is in full swing at the Monkey Butt household.  Our tomato plants have been growing tall under our grow lights.  The garden beds are being readied and the seeds have been selected.  All we are waiting for is the danger of frost to pass us by (a May freeze here in Wisconsin surely wouldn’t be surprising).  Additionally, one of my favorite days of the year is coming up on Saturday:  the opening of our local farmer’s market.

With the enlarged garden this year and our renewed dedication to self-reliance and local eating, we’ve decided to challenge ourselves this summer to avoid the grocery store as much as possible.  With careful tending and a certain degree of luck, our

The chicks are growing up!

garden will take care of a lot of our needs.  While my family is far from vegetarian, I have plenty of vegetarian recipes that we all love.  The farmer’s market will provide us with meat (and eggs until the chickens are big enough to lay).  Additionally, now that Jack is a little older, I hope that we can incorporate some fishing trips into our weekends, and this is a family that loves fish.  Plus, we’ve been building up a decent store of dry goods in our home too, so we have some good staples to keep us going.

All that said, we can’t totally forego the grocery.  We do not drink cow’s milk, so alternatives like coconut milk and almond milk are necessary and can only be found at the grocery.  Certain fruits just aren’t feasible here (oranges, for example) so we’ll have to rely on the grocery store for those.  But I think we can make a big, big dent in our grocery bill and our grocery reliance by focusing on eating very locally.

I’ll post some updates on this challenge as the summer progresses, along with reports on how the garden is doing and what we’ve learned from our mistakes this year (mistakes are always the best teachers, aren’t they?).

So…any advice?  Thoughts?  Words of wisdom or encouragement?

Jack has a little public service announcement for all of his fellow babies and toddlers:

Did you know that a diaper

can also be used

to store toys?

Give it a try!  Your mom will be so impressed when she finds Thomas the Train during your next diaper change!

It is that time of year again – even the best kept lawns are sporting hundreds of sunny little spots, much to the great annoyance of the Type-A lawn perfectionists.  Fortunately, I’m not one of them:  I love dandelions.  Well, maybe “love” is a bit of a strong word.  More accurately, I’ve realized that I will never win the dandelion war in our lawn, so instead I’ve decided to enjoy them.

Ten Reasons to Love Dandelions

1.  Dandelions greens are great additions to a salad.  Pick dandelion greens when they are small and tender and add a few to your salad. Their slightly bitter taste adds a lot of depth to a standard iceberg lettuce salad, and the benefits of dandelion greens are hard to overstate: rich in vitamins, plus they are a natural diuretic.  Just be careful where you decide to harvest:  you don’t want to pick your dandelions anywhere that pesticides may have been applied.  If you don’t use any chemicals on your lawn, that’s your best bet.

2.  They will keep a toddler busy for a long, long time.  Hand him a bowl and tell him to pick dandelions.  It doesn’t get old – they love the sunny little yellow puffs, they enjoy pulling and tearing the greens, and they adore anything that involves putting stuff into containers.

3.  Dandelion honey is a nice, summery way to sweeten iced tea.  Pick a nice big bunch of dandelion flowers (12 cups is a good number) and boil for about an hour in six cups of water.  Add a whole, chopped lemon for extra flavor.  Let the mixture sit overnight, and then strain out the dandelion and lemon using cheesecloth.  Simmer the remaining liquid with enough sugar to make a simple syrup.  Allow it to bubble nicely, but take care not to burn it as it will carmelize easily.  When cooled, it takes on a honeylike consistency.  Eat some on toast, use it to sweeten some sun tea, or add it to granola for a tasty treat.

4.  Dandelion necklaces.  Another fun kid-craft:  remove the flower from a dandelion stem and you’ll notice that the stem is a hollow tube with one end narrower than the other.  Insert the narrow end into the larger end to form a link.

5.  Dandelion wine.  I’ll let you Google your own recipes for this, but it is a wine easily made in small batches without any of the usual winemaking equipment (I made mine in mason jars).  Sweet and smooth, it is one of my favorite wines.

6.  Fried dandelion greens.  I’ll admit, I haven’t tried this yet but I think it would work.  One of my family’s favorite side dishes is fried spinach, but I think dandelion greens would be a fine substitute:  cut up and fry up two or three pieces of turkey bacon.  Add a generous handful of greens and fry until tender.  Add a tiny sprinkling of sea salt and some coarse ground pepper to season.

7.  The butter test.  ”Do you like butter?”  Tell your little one that if they like butter, their chin will turn yellow if you rub a dandelion on it.  My chin always turned yellow, so I must love butter.  Silly, but sweet.

8.  Dandelion coffee/dandelion tea.  This is another one on my to-do list.  Dry, chop and then roast dandelion roots.  Grind them, and they are said to be nearly identical in appearance to coffee.  Here are some instructions that I plan on following when I try making dandelion coffee.

9.  Wish making, of course.  When the dandelion heads turn white, make a wish and try to blow all of the seeds from the dandelion.  If you blow all of them off, your wish will come true.

10.  They are nature’s way of telling you when to mow your lawn.  When your lawn has more dandelions than the house on either side of you, it is time to mow.  At least, that’s how it works in our house.

Dandelions – love them, or hate them?  Do you have any useful or fun ideas for dandelions?