I don't have any one grand thing to report as I sit down to write this afternoon, but feel like I'm bursting with all sorts of little things about which I've found myself thinking, "I should document this on the blog." So here I am, while Alida wraps up an afternoon nap and Kali is folding the three loads of laundry that the girls and I brought in earlier. Alida continues to assert that she is not fond of naps, but continues to prove to all of us by about 1 or so p.m. on most days how very much she still benefits from them. And we've worked out a pretty sweet "deal" in that if I only walk to the end of the road and back, she will try to fall asleep when we get to the end of the road. She's some kid - some days she'll be jabbering, sitting up, and looking out (doing everything but trying to fall asleep). When we hit the corner she'll lay back, put her head to the side and it's the last thing I'll hear from here. Kali is some kid too! Often she'll read Alida some stories while I quickly clean up from lunch in order to get out on a walk with Alida before she completely unravels. Then, as I'm heading out for my walk, she'll let me know that I can leave a list of things for her to do while I'm gone or while I'm napping if that would be helpful. I'm honestly overwhelmed most days by her helpfulness - I would be getting far fewer "pick me up" naps without her help, that's for sure. I feel so grateful not only for her help but for the fact that right now she is humming as she works. She genuinely seems to take pleasure in being part of the daily happenings of our life here. She'll be clear when she wants a break to do a little reading or needs to weed her own garden, but multiple times a day I'm asked if there is anything she can do to help.
Alida also expresses interest in helping, but so far her interest doesn't often match her ability to actually be of great assistance. She often proclaims what a help she is and will ask me time and again if I'm able to do a certain job faster with her. Well, there is one job she will now actually be able to help with and make a dent in my load. She has expressed a lot of enthusiasm for laundry - she doesn't like when she misses being my "clothespin girl." A long time ago putting up a kids' laundry line was on our project list and then the inspiration for it waned and we took it off. It got re-added this past week and taken off again, but this time because the project got done. We surprised Alida with it and were pleased with her response. She will now have yet another way to contribute to Spark's care - hanging diapers!
We keep making strides at getting things ready for our newest little gal's arrival. It may seem premature to some but yesterday marked 27 weeks and we are now less than 3 months away from her due date. On the work front, I've been setting up times to meet with various persons who will be taking pieces of my job this fall in my absence. I also received permission to do some "test days" of working from home and did that for the first time this week. I have to say that I could get used to that! Kali and Jason put in a full day on the duck coop project and Alida put in a full day being my side kick. There were lots of little shards of papers and pieces of string around from her "artwork" by the end of the day, but she did super. Everyone did, and I honestly felt more productive than I ever feel at the office. I already know that I like hanging out in pajama-like clothing for as much of the day as possible and that I have a strong preference for my home environment and being around the girls and Jason. I was just surprised how easy it was to get into a groove and stay focused on some long term projects that I've had a hard time gearing up for in the office. So I'll be doing that a few more times over the next few weeks until the craziness of August and final preparations for new student orientation hit. My work craziness will coincide with tomatoes and green beans and cucumbers and corn and... So it seems like now is a great time to sort baby things (as this is as much of a lull as we are going to come by before October!). Alida can't stop talking about how cute Spark will be in her first Halloween costume - yes, we did in fact find among the passed along items a very sweet little jack-o-lantern sleeper. It does make us all very eager to have her in our arms - and my goodness what a lot of arms are eager to hold her. We got our last glimpse of her on Friday when we complied with the request that we come for a follow up so they could "finish" up the first ultrasound. She hadn't been 100% cooperative in them being able to check everything off their list due to her position. Since they promised not to charge us for the follow up we decided to go ahead, since we had to head that direction to pick up our new mattress anyway. I will admit that I was also interested in them taking just one more look to make sure we didn't have a little guy on the way since I had been so sure. Well I was so very surely wrong and we are most definitely welcoming another daughter!
There will be plenty of room in our bed for her, as long as we can muster the motivation and energy to fully transition Alida to her bedroom with Kali before October. It's the first time we've owned a queen mattress in our life and it feels rather luxurious. When we were setting it up, I was feeling doubtful about whose mattress this was going to end up being as two other little people seemed to be staking claims on it right away! They do get some credit for helping with its transport - as we were all rather squished on the way home with mattresses in the trunk and pillows and covers in the front. And I had supper stuff loaded all around me to dish out food to everyone on our way back over the mountain so we could stop off for a round of mini-golf before heading home. It was the second "free Friday" activity the girls had really wanted to do as part of the summer reading program with the local library. It was fun, and good it wasn't much more than 18 holes or Alida would likely have started to get even more creative with her hitting techniques. She did get a hole in one without any assistance, which I think surprised her about as much as the rest of us.
But most of our time is not being spent hauling mattresses from Charlottesville, sitting in a waiting room for over an hour for an ultrasound or mini-golfing. What we are doing a lot more of is taking part in the crazy abundance of summertime at Tangly Woods. On our way down the driveway to head out on a nappy walk, I shovel wineberries into Alida's mouth. And with her slumbering and me trying to muster the energy to get her back up the driveway at the end, I pick a berry here and there for a little boost. What variety I get to enjoy; sampling black raspberries, mulberries, wineberries, blackberries and red raspberries all on one little jaunt up the driveway.
Our cucumbers are in! So far they haven't lasted more than a few hours as we are enjoying crunching them down raw and we've made our first cucumber dill salad of the year. That is nothing new, but one of the ingredients was the results of my newest experiment. I made my first batch of homemade mayonnaise and am hooked. Could it be any simpler? I used a wide mouth quart jar and put in eggs, oil, salt and lime juice, stuck my immersion blender down in and in less than a minute it was creamy and a light yellow color. I followed a recipe perfectly for the first round and now will start playing around with it to tweak it to our tastes. One more thing off the list of things we sometimes buy from the store!
Beets continue to be a big theme around here. Today I peeled, grated and got 10 lbs of beets fermenting since we consumed the last of the first batch a few days back. It's sitting next to the gallon of sauerkraut in the pantry that we just tasted and approved today and several jars of dill heads in vinegar waiting to be used! Next on deck for lacto-fermenting around here will be pickles and hopefully soon after that green beans. We aren't intending to go cold turkey and stop all canning, but I do hope to diversify our preservation methods and begin experimenting more with methods that increase rather than decrease the nutrition of the food. We have made one decision and that is that we hope to not can any green beans this year (pressure-canning that is - we won't go without canned dilly beans just yet!). I did do one round of canned beets in the pressure canner and one round of pickled beets which I water bathed. 
Today at lunch we ate the very last of the beet greens for the year (other than the few that will come yet from Kali's garden) and also the very last winter squash! I soaked lentils, amaranth and rice and made a stew with lots of fresh things from outside and a good number of canned goods. In the end we had a steaming pot of deliciousness: meat broth, venison, tomatoes, salsa, oregano, basil, rosemary, purple onions, and garlic added to the previously mentioned items. And it's a particularly nice dish in that all of us like it! Though, at lunch today, it was hard for Alida to focus on her bowl of soup when at the other end of the table maple pudding with blueberries, raspberries, wineberries, and gooseberries awaited us!
It seems we hardly have the chance to get impatient with our plants or mourn the end of a particular food for the year. One season comes to an end just as another starts in. It's hard to be too upset by the end of black raspberries when wineberries come in on their heels. I never seem to get enough peas, but fresh cucumbers are right up there and are doing just fine filling the void. There is, however, one person that is feeling just a tad eager for some final ripening. It seems that Alida (who loves to win, as any who know her will attest to) is going to have the very first ripe tomato. She's been eyeing one of her yellow stupice for several days now and it is getting more yellow by the day. I could listen to her say "yellow stupice" all day long, partly because it is cute and partly because I love how familiar our 4-year old is with various types of plants. My guess is she'll be sinking her teeth into that particular specimen shortly.
As often happens, Alida is now up from her nap and my concentration is divided. The girls are putting laundry away and Jason has finished up mowing and is working on processing the garlic. The next thing on the agenda is to pull all our purple onions together. Fun! So I better get moving. I'll end with one of the last pictures I took today. I was trying to get a picture of the hummingbird moth (we think that is what it is though it could also be a hummingbird hawk moth) that was enjoying flowers along the front walk. I only got two pictures before my camera battery died and I thought I had missed it on both. I was pleased to see it in flight on one of the two!
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