Sister love, popcorn, and dreaming of red raspberries...

I don't imagine this blog post will get written in one sitting.  Terah is doing her evening nurse-snooze-wake routine and is laying on the boppy staring up at me with sleepy but content (for the moment) eyes.  Jason is sitting next to me at the table shelling red popcorn. I had forgotten how driven my hubby is when there is corn around to shell.  And the daily "popcorn testing" has commenced; Alida's was last evening (superb) and we just downed the first trial run of Kali's (equally superb). I believe we'll do a second round yet tonight to try out the red!  I just beat the older girls in a round of SkipBo and so far Alida is dealing with the loss very well (helps that Kali got last place!).  The rain is pouring down outside and I just "had" to turn the oven on and bake something.  So we whipped up a batch of pecan, chocolate, maple cookies and since I don't like the oven on for just one thing, I have a triple batch of granola going.  I thought we might get the wood stove going this evening but it is feeling comfortable without (maybe it's the little heater on my lap or the oven is adding enough warmth to not need an additional heat source).

I realized that I completely neglected in the last post to share some Halloween photos.  Kali dressed up as Zebeth (the dragon that she and Aunt Emily made up), Alida dressed as an angel (which inspired some interesting conversations about angels) and Terah had no choice but to be a little terah-o-lantern in a hand-me-down outfit we received.  We took the trio down the road for a one stop trick-or-treating outing to Aunt Emily and Uncle Jonas' place.  The two mile car ride was plenty for Terah, though we discovered that the dark car scared her and turning on the interior light made the ride more manageable for her, and therefore us.

The content baby has now had a diaper change and is nursing (this gal is processing a lot of milk!). And speaking of processing food, I realize that our blog is often dominated by food unless there is a baby in the house!  We still talk about food a lot, marveling that we are still enjoying lots of fresh green stuff.  Just this morning I made broccoli, paprika pepper, garlic scape omelets for Jason and I.  At lunch I made a mashed potato and carrot tops bake with fresh chives and dill and also a carrot top loaf (that was a little too much of a good thing - we have eaten so many carrot tops and I was trying to use up the last of them and went a little overboard on the loaf!).  We are enjoying enough fresh spinach to use it for cooking and have made multiple rounds of hot spinach dip (pictured here).  Meals are still an array of colors and textures. I'm enjoying cooking when I get the chance, but we've also been so grateful for the breaks in cooking when folks have come out with meals for us.  I'm enjoying cooking more right now because I'm not having to do it 3x a day...

And you'd think we'd say "enough already" with our freezers and pantry and root cellar full, but Jason's project for this week was finishing up getting red raspberries transplanted to a few new locations.  If the plants do well, which we expect they will, we should have plenty of raspberries for Jason to have his fill of jam!  And, of course, as we expand some of these plantings our hope is that at some point we'll have abundance in a quantity that we could actually market and it provide a portion of our income.  So far one regular customer, bartering and giving away is all we've done with our surplus.

Change seems to be a pretty common theme around here and probably the most remarkable changes for us to absorb right now are in our three girls.  They are each growing and changing so much.  Keeping up with those changes and being attentive to their needs in their unique stages is a beautiful and wonderful challenge!  For Kali one of the biggest challenges is keeping up with her soaring height such that she has clothes that fit her. I told her today I think someone attached a string to the top of her head and stretched her up this year.  For Alida we have to keep up with her need for constant silliness and rambunctious indoor soccer matches!  I'm often nursing Terah in the recliner in the front room with Alida in the backdrop playing an intense soccer game by herself, even arguing with herself about the score. It's rather entertaining!

And then there is the big sisters' love and adoration of their little sister. I love it, except when they fight over her... Here they are:

And big sisters are not the only admirers that Terah has.  She thoroughly enjoyed a little visit with her Aunt Emily the other day!

I am down to one hand, my left, so time to close!  Here's Terah enjoying the ladybug tummytime spinner for the first time. I've been so grateful for a reduction in fussiness such that we have been able to do more than feed and change her.  She's enjoyed a shower with me, tummy time, walks around the house with Kali, being held by both girls while awake and alert, etc... May this general trend towards happy contentedness continue for all our sakes!