Welcome home dinner!

We are home safe and sound from a few days vacationing with my family at Deep Creek Lake in Maryland. And all of us are home - we are happily reunited with Kali!! It was a little ways into our car trip home that Alida caught sight of Kali in the backseat of the car and she just stared at her for quite some time. I think she is very glad to have her big sister back - talking on the phone didn't quite cut it!

When I told Kali over the phone while she was in WV that eggplant had arrived at the farmers' market she quickly informed me that that would make a good welcome home dinner for her. Well, I hadn't been planning on a welcome home dinner, but things evolved from there and I would say that Kali's welcome home dinner this evening was a great success!! It didn't hurt that it included some of Jason's and my favorite foods of this time of year, and we enjoyed some of our garden's firsts. Our dinner was comprised of fresh string beans, the first cucumber dill salad and fried eggplant. The sun gold cherry tomatoes never made it to the dinner table.

For dessert, after Kali and Jason played a little frisbee and I watched Alida put herself to sleep again and while a fresh batch of blackberry jam was boiling away in the canner, we enjoyed organic ice cream cones, organic sprinkles (Kali only) and organic strawberry ice cream (all thanks to the newly opened Friendly City Food Coop http://www.friendlycityfoodcoop.com/ in Harrisonburg).

It's good to be home!!

The upcoming week is a "big one" for our family. Alida has yet to befriend the bottle and, after laying off with trying it consistently for the past week or so, I will head to work twice this week for a few hours each time to give Jason, Kali and Alida some practice with the bottle and without me. I don't think any of us are looking forward to those times right now, but are hoping for the best. The last few months have been such a gift and have held so many treasured times and built many sweet memories. I know there will be a lot more to come, and I am glad Jason will have more time with both girls soon. However, currently my worry and sadness about the upcoming transition definitely overshadows the potential benefits the changes to our household could hold. It will be much easier on all of us if Alida is willing to accept her mommy's milk through a different delivery system, though none of us blame her for wanting it in the way that has worked quite well for her for the past 3 plus months - she's not convinced that this change is necessary, which makes it hard for me to feel good about it.

To end on a more happy note, a Kali story: Kali tends to get fixated on certain things whether it be a food, a certain activity, a game we play together, a book or series of books she is reading, a hairdo or in this case an outfit. She has an outfit which she calls her "running clothes" that she loves. She wears it at almost every possible opportunity (to the point where I'm kind of glad when I can say that it is in the wash). Well, it was freshly washed this evening and so after her bath she of course wanted to wear it. As she was getting dressed, she said, "This is the kind of thing that I don't know how I lived without. If I didn't have these clothes I would have to run around naked at least 2/3 of the time." :)