D I

Rachael was in heaven during our trip to DI. The kids clothes are right next to the shoes.

More harvest pics

Here are just a few more pictures from our garden. Our bell pepper plants did almost as well as our insane squash. Rachael likes helping, although I have to be very specific about exactly what to pick or we end up with a lot of green tomatoes in the bag.

Anna Pacified

Anna loves her mouth. She sticks everything in it. Much more than Rachael ever did. Lately she has been shoving things very far back in her mouth (see Patrick's post below). She really likes her pacifier and if she's not sleepy, this is the way she hangs on to it.

Sign of things to come?

Anna was sitting in the bouncy seat tonight and when I looked up this is what I found. Is this a sign of things to come?

Bounty

It's officially harvest time here. We've been picking loads of squash this past month, but tonight takes the cake. Would you look at those roma's? Gorgeous. All this was picked just tonight.

First Day of... School?

I've been so conflicted about this decision. I recently received some health information that necessitates me changing a few things including increasing my gym attendance. Our current arrangement allows me to go twice a week while Patrick watches the girls on his lunch break. I didn't think it would be fair to make him do that 5 times/wk. Rachael also only gets to play with kids her own age once a week in the nursery at church.Lately she has been coming home and informing me, "I hit my friends" or "I take toys from my friends." She is so smart and a lot of the time I don't feel like I'm giving her enough enriching activities at home. Most of the time I struggle just trying to clean house, entertain and feed both her and Anna, and not fall into a pity party personally.
Our solution is preschool 3 half-days a week. She gets more interaction, age-appropriate activities, and her teacher will help with toilet training. So why is this a struggle? Because I feel like I should be able to do all that for her myself. I am her mother. Putting her in preschool makes me feel like a failure. It's not as if I had a whole ton of kids. I just have 2. Besides that, it was my job to design fun, learning activities for children that were age-appropriate as well as to help them work on negative behaviors and build positive ones.
I guess the bottom line is, preschool isn't about Rachael, it's about me.And that's not right. I'll be praying for some perspective and maybe a little peace. Sorry this turned into kind of a downer. Guess I needed to let it out.

Montana

We went to Georgetown Lake last week for a family camping/reunion extravaganza. Patrick took most of the pictures so there's not a lot to this post. Some random flower/weeds and Rachael swinging. W had fun. Glad to be home.

Summer veggies

So I am proud of my healthy dinner tonight. Besides what you can easily tell, there is eggplant and kohlrabi in it. The latter and the squash came from our garden. Those are turkey meatballs and homemade baked tortilla chips too. Woot.