Sibling interactions

I have three books on the go at this moment. I can go for months without anything on my night table for reading, and then all of a sudden I have three at once. 

One of them is a cookbook- Dinner: A Love Story by Jenny Rosenstrach, which is just a nice read with recipes made for our family..or so it seems. I don't know if this has ever happened to you, but I feel like I use similar ingredients, have a similar cooking style and overall philosophy about dinner as Jenny. Like if I wrote a cookbook about our family dinners, it would probably look like hers. You find a lot of good recipes when they all look like something you can and want to cook.

Anyway, pick up a copy from the library and if you love it too, buy one. It's pretty great.

The reason I told you that is because I'm too busy to write because I'm so busy reading.

I'm getting to this point with blogging where I don't have a lot to say because you really need to be a fly on the wall in our house to really get what goes on between these two stinkers. 

Their interactions are so hilarious, irritating and sweet and it's hard to convey across the screen. 

First interaction below...it seems "loving" on Wren's part, but she's actually purposely being a pain in the butt by squeezing Ellie's head off. 

Ellie will always loudly protest such actions taken against her. Or produce a hilarious face. Either/or.

Second interaction seems like a "sweet" gesture of love from Ellie to Wren. Wren is actually ready to hiss in Ellie's face for attempting to remove her kitty cat ears from her head. Taking off Wren's headband (of any kind) before she has given the okay (such as bath time when her hair needs washing), is like cutting off her arm or some other awful equivalent. The headband is a part of her. You can't eject your ipod from the computer prematurely, the computer has to give you the "ok". Likewise with Wren's headband. Do not remove prematurely.

The "I give up trying to play with Wren" face. 

These photos are now taken on a totally different day. 

What baby doesn't like to be naked? Ellie would like to know.

Have I mentioned before that Ellie will just throw herself backwards onto a seemingly soft surface at any given moment? 

Case and point below. Luckily it was a soft landing this time.

We have deduced that Ellie has two sets of butt cheeks. 

Please note exhibit A:

Lastly, Wren's cute eyes. They have nothing to do with anything in this post. 

She said to me "Mummy, you have brown eyebrows, but I don't." 

I said "You have blonde eyebrows, they are very light. Usually people with red hair like you have really light eyebrows." This launched a discussion about what colour everyones eyebrows are that she knows. Most conversations with a three year old usually go that way. 

The Garden

We planted our garden fairly late. Our veggies are taking their sweet time to grow, but with the sun and less rain, it's happening. 

I let the garden turn into a weed haven with all the rain (because who can weed in the rain..?) and had a massive job of cleaning it all up. 

I had never weeded like that in my life. I actually don't think I ever weeded anything much before. A total shock to all, I know. My first round of weeding looked like me hacking through a forest, chucking massive weeds left, right and center and then going through again for the finer work. My thighs burned.

But look...Spinach!

And carrots! Teeny tiny little greens. I almost weeded them by accident. 

My favourite- beets! C'mon guys, grow!

It's hard to weed and such with the girls outside with me, well, mostly Ellie. Sometimes a bottle and cracker in her playpen with a few toys keeps her happy for a while. But then she wants out and crawls around. She crawls around the garage where I can't see her and find the dirt clumps left from my shoes...I pick her up only to see a smile of dirt in her mouth! 

Wren mostly jumps from stone to stone around me and sings little songs and plays games in her head. 

Nana gave us peas to sprout (we did that ahead of time in a dish) and then planted them out here with chicken wire for them to cling to. They make me feel like I'm really doing something right.

The dirt is basically clay-like and atrocious. Kenton and I literally knew nothing about planting a garden. We (okay mostly me because I have been the only one tending it, haha), have learned a lot so far. And it's only July. Every time we see something that needs improvement, we smile and shrug and say, "Oh well, first year garden. Next summer we'll be smarter". 

We are also encouraged that if these poor vegetables can push through this nasty old dirt and grow, then we didn't do so bad after all for our first time around.

Hey! Tomatoes!

My parents planted the tomatoes, and we slapped in the rest. 

It's hard to tell from the photo, but the garden sits at about 24 feet by 16 feet. It's a decent size for us first-timers!

And raised garden beds? They're definitely high on the priority list for next year, holy crap. No question about it.

This is Wren's little bean sprout she started from preschool. I thought it had died and forgot about it and one day we gasped in amazement, it lived! Her first plant. So cute.

I'm happy to say that I enjoy gardening and trying to find my "green thumb" within. Although if my sister saw how I transferred plants into pots and in the garden she'd probably be mortified. But hey, I'm coming along! (And thank goodness I have a million family members to go to with questions.)

As the plants started to come up, I felt the excitement probably every gardener does when the garden is budding with life. I can only compare it to something like working on a knitting or sewing project. At first it doesn't look like much, and then as time goes on the project starts to unfold and take shape. I feel that same excitement as if I'm making a baby quilt or knitting a toque and it finally starts to actually look like a quilt or a toque instead of just fabric and yarn.

 It's starting to look like a real garden out there! 

Ellie in the grass

My neighbour has a nice camera and likes to dabble in photoshop. She was in the backyard one day and the grass was crazy long so we plunked Ellie in it for a few pictures.

My neighbour isn't a professional, but and I find the photos are usually heavily edited, but that's okay. 

Here she is...

Baby bubbles

Hope you're having a fun weekend. I stayed out way to late with good friends last night already. But we hit up the downtown market, Wren went to the neighbour girl's birthday party, and tomorrow we have a picnic to go to! 

Hope you have a good one, here's a hilarious picture of Ellie in the tub...

A pattern is forming

What a day. Boring as heck.

The girls were up at 5:40am. 

I popped them in the stroller after Ellie's very short morning nap and we went for a run.

Then to the playground.

It started to sprinkle rain while she played with a neighbourhood friend. Then it poured.

I ran pushing them all the way home. 

Ellie had a second very short nap. 

Now we're doing nothing but bumming around.

I just can't be bothered to do anything at all but let them play while I blog. 

I took pictures of them playing. 

 Ellie was sad about something, and when she's sad, she folds in half and puts her head down and cries.

Wren took this picture of her after much begging...

As I write this post, I can hear Wren in the bathroom calling to me to wipe her butt but I'm just ignoring her for a minute because I know she won't get up until I come. She'll just.keep.calling.

Ellie is walking across the living room towards me. She's getting really good at it.

The theme or pattern of the week is Ellie climbing on everything. Here is a perfect series of pictures showing how she gets onto the coffee table...

"Oh hey Mom, just walking across the table, see?"

"Oh hey Mom, just sitting on my dragon and probably going to stand up soon, see?"

Ellie's actual words- "Bucka bucka buckem! Mamamama..Bababa...Ga ga gack gack".

Honestly, kid.