Fall Colors

There's nothing better than the colors of fall. They are so warm and inviting. I am thankful to have gotten one good shot of my boys in our front yard.

They wanted to grind moose, play in the sandbox, and play pirates.

We went on a walk together while big brother was in preschool. He stomped, roared, and stuffed leaves into the mouth of his brother's favorite toy the entire time we walked.

Almost 20 months old. Watching the leaves fall from the trees.

After this he hopped into my seat and said "I drive," his first 2-word sentence.

Third Time is a Charm: Short Book List

I feel like if I had a 3rd kid, I would get everything as right as possible from the start. It wasn't until our first baby was born that I became versed in contaminants and how to keep levels low in the household. My Master's Degree in Environmental Science coupled with a book called Slow Death by Rubber Duck and hundreds of hours reading journal articles fueled this knowledge. It wasn't until our second was in utero that we started cracking down on contaminants in our diets, which needs no explanation in this age of the industrialized food dilemma. And if I were to have a third, I would crack down on reducing our exposure to additives in vaccines and minimizing reactions (which are actually quite common) from the day of their birth. I don't like to be a part of the US of A's wonderful thoughtless experiments or support big companies, and I don't like to be kept in the dark. I like real evidence. I recently read 4 books that are on 4 completely different topics and have 4 different audiences, but that have A LOT in common.

The Gerson Therapy: The Nutritional Program for Cancer and Other Illnesses (by Charlotte Gerson), a book on consuming phytochemicals in fruits and veggies combined with coffee enemas to relieve pain and liver load to actually cure ailments or at least prolong life

Eat to Live (by Joel Therman), a book on losing weight and dieting in a way that does not harm the body

Super Baby Food (by Ruth Yaron), a book on healthy family eating including how to properly prepare, cook, store, and preserve food to maximize vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients including phytochemicals

The Vaccine Book (by Robert Sear's), a look at the major problems with our health care system in terms of vaccines and how to receive all or most of the vaccines while reducing the risk of high chemical exposure or severe reaction afterward. If you haven't figured it out already, diet plays a role here also.

Chapter 2. 1st Day of Preschool

If Chapter 1 is birth through toddlerhood, Chapter 2 is the preschool years. Before Chapter 2, kids show an interest in doing things with new mentors and friends. I think they show this interest around 18 months or the time they figure out how to open the door of the house to the outside world. In the last two years, we've taken our first son to swimming lessons four times, daycare playtime once every week or two, playdates with the same group of friends, and library story time. He has also become comfortable around his grandparents and while traveling.

I signed him up for Young Learner's Preschool when he was 1 after hearing about it from a friend. It is to my knowledge one of the best preschools in town. The director is supposedly supportive of shy students, energetic, creates structure, and communicates very well with parents.

During the car ride to preschool, he probably asked me twenty times if I or at least his little brother would stay with him like we had two days ago for Orientation. He also told me I couldn't take a photo of him. I assured him we would get ice cream afterward if he was a good boy and didn't cry or whine. When we arrived, he was excited to carry his bag inside by himself and he said it was okay for me to take a photo. He had a dollar coin in his pocket for good luck and in his bag a t-rex for show-and-tell, markers, crayons, glue, and his down vest for playing at the playground at the last part of class. As soon as we walked into the door, the activity had him. He and all of the other kids who arrived at the same time put their bags on their hooks and went right to the tables to do a project. Here he is with Mrs. Tina and Mrs. Michelle. I believe there are 11 students in his class and that number may go up to 14. Half of them are 3 and half of them are 4.

When I came to pick him up two and a half hours later, he ran to me with a hug. He said, "I did a very good job." His teacher said, "He did great!" He even described his dinosaur to everyone at show-and-tell. Before we left he yelled "Bye. Bye. Bye." and then ran up to "Miss Shell" as he calls her and gave her a giant hug. In the car, he told me that Huey, the boy shown below at the other table who was in swimming lessons at the Alaska Club with our son brought a monster truck for show-and-tell. He said Mrs. Michelle was "very, very nice" to him. According to him, she helped him make a volcano with green play doh, played music like "The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round," and taught him how to pretend he's popcorn by doing "small pops, medium pops, and giant pops." We practiced this at home later. It's so fun that he can share with me the things that he learned. And I feel like I did a great job preparing him for this day.

Your Turn

Oh, the poor baby of the family, you are always second, even in the blog. It's a good thing you are a patient fellow. Mr. N, you sure do impress me. By 18 months of age, you can ride a bicycle with handlebars all around the house and do not have any trouble with corners or obstacles. You can blow your nose, well, better than I can. You can climb onto the couch and off. You can assemble a wooden train track by yourself and even a jigsaw puzzle if I show you where the piece is supposed to go. We didn't work at any of this; it was just "there." "It," the knowledge just appeared all of a sudden. It seemed like you moved onto new, more mature, games and mastered them at your first attempt. I change your diaper and you say "butt." Yep, loudly and clearly and perfectly and at a surprise to me. I'm sure you say 50 words already but I stopped writing them around 30. You tell me when you "potty" or sometimes instead quietly run to the baby toilet and sit. You tackle playgrounds and slides without me anywhere near you. You eat anything, including large carrots from my garden and you're just getting your molars.

They say a second kid progresses more quickly because they are trying to be like their older sibling, but I know a large part of this work is genetic. I know for a fact that you have not ever been bitten or had a toy thrown at your head and somehow you figured out this is a good way to get the attention of an older brother who is not being nice to you. Oh, well, you don't know your colors or your shapes and you think a lot of animals say "moo" that do not. Come to think of it, I still give you a bottle of milk, a pacifier, two naps a day, so you're not quite ready for college, but YOU, little buddy, are not going to be second at everything in a year or two. You are just too smart to let someone else take the lead.

Kids Say the Darnedest Things

I love the age of three. I love all of the ages (so far) and I am sure there will be many ages that I will not love as much (teenage years), but our three-year old just has such an exquisite imagination I have to write down some of his blurbs.

The other week our son was pretending that his Diplodocus dinosaur was baby Riley, the girl pictured here playing with our younger son. Whenever he was too busy to properly care for baby Riley, the dinosaur, I was asked to push her/it in the swing and carry her in my front shirt pocket.

Another day, he exclaims, "I see a tiger I better poke it with my rhino horn." He butts his head and falls onto the floor.

While playing Go-Fish he says, "Hey, mom, look at my face." Then he scrunches eyebrows together. "That (points to forehead) is a reason." He nods his head in approval.

He stops for a minute building letters with foam blocks, walks off, cups hands together. "Mom, I'm getting you a secret." He sneaks on toes into other room and gets a toy stethoscope. He returns. "Here is your secret. Now you need to listen to somebody's heart."

He stands in garage and pees on driveway rocks, raises hands and exclaims, "I just made a number nine!"

I think he had a fun time today with the real baby Riley's older sister Morgan. During a hike he was able to take photos with her camera and wear her backpack. Together, they pretended to fix the old tractor pictured for about an hour. See them conversing. He practiced her name about 50 times before he went to sleep. "MorGAN. MOORgan. Morgan. Wheeeere Arrrrre Yooooou?"

After today, Morgan will probably be added to the list of friends that he always requests: Cedar, William & Julia, and Arthur. He starts preschool next week and he will meet 10 new friends with whom he will learn and play twice a week and who will probably become a part of our lives also. As the years pass, more and more of life's realities will be instilled in him. Whatever happens, I hope at least part of his amazing imagination sticks with him for life.

Chena River Trail

Sometimes, after a long hike, you just have to sit and watch the leaves fall off of the trees,

look at each other,

smile,

ask for a snack,

share,

and laugh.

Groceries

When I grocery shop, I do not look at the price unless it is excessive. I instead try to decipher through labeling (yes, click on this link and you might learn something new about how they try to trick us) what I should buy for my family to eat. My husband was the leader in our movement toward organic a couple of years ago. Now I too look for USDA Certified Organic, which is the best we can do next to going to a farmer's market, growing our own, or hunting and gathering. I also look to see from where the product was shipped. I'm interested in the food that has the most nutrients, fewest contaminants, and was grown closest to home.

It is not stressful to shop this way, but it is expensive. However, I do think it is less expensive than buying packaged and processed food, because that you tend to eat more of because of the low fiber and nutrients and also waste because it doesn't taste that great. We usually spend over $200 every week or two. This week we already had a lot of vegetables, some fruit, cheese and free-range chicken eggs on hand, so the bill was only $100. Not much packaging to recycle. Mostly fruits and veggies. And a pack of markers, for our son's preschool class. It would be a bit more if I had to buy soap or toilet paper, but our diaper bill is really nothing, just the cost of electricity for the washer, maybe $5/month. There ya go, boys, compare that to what you eat and spend on your families 30 years from now.

The Sunny Side of a Rainy Day

I feel like the stars have been aligning lately. Nothing big, just small. Here is just a snippet of them.

I was cleaning the house and my baby handed me my address book, which had been lost, and whose contents was the completion to a letter I wrote to my dying uncle several weeks ago.

I forgot to tell a hike leader I wasn't coming along until the day of the hike and when I went to my email to find the leader's phone number I read they had just canceled the hike due to heavy rain.

I found the cord to transfer photos from my camera to the computer, which had also been lost, for a long time just in time to work on some photo projects.

It rained, but I completed several projects including a photo book for a friend, some prints for my mom, as well as uploading photos to print for our own books. My house is clean. The laundry is put away.

My baby cried all week because of a fever and new teeth, but because of his reduced energy he discovered the greatness of both books and television.

I was dreading driving to the far side town twice a day two times a day to attend both my son's preschool classes and my photography classes, but the preschool teacher told me there is another class we can enter that has fewer students, older students, is held later in the day when the sun will be out in winter, and is on other days of the week. Also, I know through play dates and swim lessons a few of the families in this other class and they are mature and kind company.

And, look, the sun has come out for a bit.

Our Berries

I'm going berry crazy and I'm taking the kids along with me.

You can take the girl out of the berry patch, but you can't take the berry picker out of the girl, my friend told me the other day. I probably would not be so obsessed with berries had I not grown up picking tame organic blueberries in Minnesota for my modest college fund. I find myself now on maybe an acre of wild berries in Alaska, and I'm picking every chance I get. This is year three. Year one, the first year after the dead White Spruces were removed and the area was introduced to sunlight and the raspberries appeared, was not nearly as plentiful. However, I had a one-year old then and I have a one-year-old now and I do love that age. They will sit happily and feed themselves berries for quite a long time. Raspberries are our best crop and the only thing we've harvested (on our own land) until this year. I have so many I have friends come to pick.

This year, I have already frozen hoards of blueberries and raspberries and plan to preserve some high bush cranberries and rose hips as well. The raspberries and blueberries will be reserved for hot cereal topping and wine, and the roses and cranberries will make great jellies, syrups, and catsups. The University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension publishes a book showcasing many recipes for every common berry in Alaska. And there are many.

Highbush Cranberries. Notice the maple-leave shape of all leaves but the top ones. They will turn more cherry-colored and more translucent throughout August and sweeten for best picking after the first frost. They grow on our land about the same height as raspberries and roses, from 1-4 feet. I will not confuse this with the poisonous baneberry (which I have yet to find on our land). The Baneberry is one of the few truly deadly plants in Alaska and has a similar-looking cluster of berries that are however opaque, without a pit, taste awful, and have a much different leaf.

Wild Roses. The hips (left, pink) in August or the pink flower pedals in June can be used in recipes. The hips are loaded with Vitamin C and are best picked when soft.

Bunch Berries. Some call these Dogwood. They are edible, but in the presence of other berries they aren't worth preserving not because of size or number but because they lack flavor. They are however a desirable ground-cover. They have a pretty white flower in early summer, a symmetric arrangement of six leaves, and a lovely clump of orange-red opaque berries in late summer.

Northern Commandra Timberberry. Even though we have plenty of these also, I had trouble finding these in my wild food books and on the internet so had to wander over to the neighbor who lived in the bush to get the name. It is edible also, but again does not have a great taste. It is about the same color as the bunch berry, but the berry is much larger, the leaves much smaller, and the plant has a more verticle look than the bunch berry, reaching up maybe a foot at most.

For now, we will have to wander off of our land to find other desirable wild Alaskan berries, like Blueberries, Crowberries, or Lowbush Cranberries (Lingonberries), Strawberries, and many others. And for now, there is more raspberry picking to be done so I better end this post.

Mother's Day

I know Mother's Day was more than a couple of months ago, but I am sorting through digital photos for hard copy order and ran across these three. They make me smile. It was toward the end of my last semester of school, and I was pretty tired of deadlines and bored with life. Inside the packaging from my four boys was an immersion blender. I like practical gifts. Thinking back ... my husband worked on Mother's Day, so I brought the boys out to eat lunch at our favorite kid-friendly restaurant, Taco King, and the guys there brought this flower to our table.

It's the small surprises that really makes the days wonderful, isn't it? Like walking out into the forest to pick blueberries with your children and finding two of your favorite mom friends and their children had the same idea, two days in a row? Or that day you just dread stopping at the grocery store for milk but run into an old friend and have a great time catching up in the check-out line? I just love it when without a plan you venture out on your own and surprise everything falls into place.

Almost every day is Mama's Day in my book.

Grandma Carol's

Boys,

I found myself giggling at you while we were at Grandma Carol's last night. I know what it's like to go to a grandparent's house. I relished the Sunday family visits at Grandma Bernice's after church and the evening stays and Grandma Mabel's when my parents went out for the evening. The attention a kid gets at a grandparent's house is like no other.

Grandma Carol has a fan on a stand. Baby, you are afraid of it, but, my older boy, you think that thing is an airplane with adjustable speeds. You say you are the pilot and driving us all to your grandpa and grandma's house in Minnesota. Last night, you even had Grandma Carol get you a pillow and a blanket so you could go "night night" on the plane just like you do in real life.

Your two other favorite things to do there (besides eat her never-ending supply of chocolate chip cookies) is to pretend that the adding machine is a credit card machine and to sharpen pencils in the automatic pencil sharpener. Baby, who's not a baby so much anymore, at almost 18 months, you like to sit in the chair at the big desk and take that big pile of sharpened pencils and put them one by one through the mesh holes in the back of the chair.

Playing with keys is another favorite at her place.

I forget already what you guys used to like to do over there. Stickers. Daddy and the house. Pretend the cow is a musical instrument. The memories leave so quickly.

Grandma Carol says one of her fondest memories of your Papa Bob is giving him a cup of cold coffee and a hard biscuit and watching him eat them on a hump in the back yard where he grew up in downtown Fairbanks. That is what the gold-miners did and so he was pretending he was one of the guys. She thinks he was about 3, your age, and possibly explains his addiction to coffee now.

Salad Spinning

My garden grew significantly while we were in Minnesota and even since this picture was taken a week ago. Look how dry it was in May when things were just starting to sprout. Between the worms from the vericompost doing their thing, a bit of organic fertilizer, and some moisture my garden was much more productive this year than the last two years. Here it is after being thinned once. I have thinned it probably 5 times. My method of planting close together for weed reduction and water retention has seemed to work well.

I always like to talk about my best purchases, things I have or will use time and time again and save me a lot of trouble . . . like a Sportbrella to cut back on sunblock and UV rays for the beach, a Klean Kanteen insulated mug for my coffee and ice water, Baby Bjorn molded plastic bibs to significantly cut down on toddler meal cleanup, and of course the Deuter Kid Backpack back-saver which I was so lucky to borrow for a bit from a friend. The list of things I have that are really life-changing is not long, but it includes the OXO Salad Spinner. I have used that thing every day and question why I didn't get one years ago. Boy, oh boy, have we been enjoying a lot of green protein and the best part is my boy here loves to do the spinning for me.

Looking for the Light

My first amateur photo session couldn't have turned out more perfectly. I knew Birch Hill would be a great location, but I was stunned when Mount Aurora presented a rainbow the entire hour shot. My beautiful friend, expecting in one week, was a joy to photograph.

This evening, we weren't waiting for the light, but we simply went looking for it and it was exactly where I thought it might be. I chose Mount Aurora not only because you can get above the tree-line without much walking but also because of the slight breeze it receives almost all of the time. If you're not from here, that means there aren't any mosquitoes up there, an important detail. Sometimes, everything works out just wonderfully.

Candid Captures

Back in Minnesota, the guys cut a bunch of wood and then wondered what to do with it all. Not nearly all of the wood, a culmination of many days and many locations, is pictured.

The "big field" which was picked and plowed by my great-grandpa Joseph was reclaimed (by chainsaw from tree invasion near the rock piles that surround it) and fenced for horses. It was a huge job, but haying it each year is a huge job also and this will cut down on that.

Each day, after getting dirty, it was time for a bath and a tick check.

We took some time to rent a pontoon and catch some pan fish.

The cousins chilled at the cabin . . .

and worked hard . . .

moving wood for the bonfire

We spent a hot day at the zoo with friends.

We made music with family.

Everyone enjoyed a train ride and one of us even took a nap.

 

The boys got a little wild playing horse with grandpa.

With grandma things were a little more calm . . .

well . . .

maybe not. I'm not sure what they were imagining this time or what shenanigans those two got into in the basement but I know they had fun.

We ate 3 meals a day most days out on the deck.

Although the boys had a pretty great time (especially playing alone together in their bedroom at nap and night times), they did fight over the rocker.

The last day we all worked together in the blueberries, preparing for their ripening in late July by weeding, pruning, and spreading chips . . . a work-in-progress.

That's the last post on June in Minnesota. What a fantastic time we had!