I woke to Alida wiggling beside me bright-eyed and smiley around 6:40am. She is officially done being swaddled at night and it is cute to see her going from being a tightly wrapped little mummy to a sprawled out big baby laying on our bed. After enjoying some morning smiles and a few of her raspberries blown in my face (a newly acquired skill), she was ready for her first nap of the day and, while Jason did chicken chores and then picked stinging nettles for our breakfast, we went for a nice long walk.
Jason and I enjoyed nettle egg sandwiches, watermelon and applesauce and then started on our day, doing inside tasks and slipping out anytime there was a break from the rain and wind. Jason harvested the following things from the garden: slicer tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, swiss chard and lambs quarter, basil, and watermelon (the cucumbers had been harvested and canned the night before, the beans picked and ends snipped for eating over the next few days, and the sauce tomatoes were also picked last night ready for us to process today).
The rest of the day included Jason and I working side by side making just shy of 40 pints of salsa and while Jason took the lead on much of the tomato chopping, I made several batches of pesto, a huge batch of green rolls, and made up a recipe for a potato crusted fresh tomato pie because I needed to think of a way to utilize the oven heat for more than just the bread I was making. We also made the butter from our milk share, Kali made chocolate peanut butter no bake cookies with a little help and I ended the day getting a large batch of pasta sauce started.
Fitting in all the cracks of the day were many diaper changes (as well as many diaper changes avoided by Alida still going potty much of the time in the sink) and lots of time nursing. And watching Alida could be a full-time activity and great entertainment right now. She is so cute laying on her belly - her favorite thing to do is to lift her legs and arms up so it looks like she is swimming. She thinks it is very funny when we imitate her. She also loves having her belly eaten and she will grab about anything within reach - watermelon is still a much loved snack, so it is a good thing we grew a lot of them!
Alida isn't the only one adding to the fun and laughter in our home. Kali got an idea from a book, "50 Simple Things Kids Can Do To Save The Earth", to write a letter to your senator about protecting the rainforest. And so she did, but she tacked on two additional items. "Ps. Rule about no tailgating...Pss. Help protect monkeys." Off it went and she is eagerly awaiting a response.
She has brought it up a bunch of times since then and is wanting her correspondence with the senator to have the greatest impact possible. Well when she learned about petitions she got to work again. Her petition now has four signatures. Jason and I were both happy to sign the request for our representative to protect both monkeys and the rainforests. But what I loved most of all was Kali signing on Alida's behalf. In case you can't read it, it says, "Alida (Too little now...Probably will care later)." So if you are in the Keezletown area and would like to add your signature to her petition she is ready to collect as many signatures as possibly before sending it off!!
Well, Jason is working on the mountain of dishes from today and I need to attend to the pasta sauce simmering on the stove and the last canner load of salsa. We didn't exactly put our feet up today but we reaffirmed for ourselves that 1. we make a good team and 2. we love food processing the best when we do it together!!
It's a pretty good thing that the rain nixed Jason's many plans for the day!!
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