apparently, i'm a gardener

well, pioneer katie has made a rare spring-time appearance.  usually, she emerges only during wood-burning season, but it looks like her existence is going to be year-round.  

chuck and i decided that this would be the summer for a vegetable garden.  good idea, right?  finally, our kids are all old enough that i can work in the yard without having to watch them every moment.  we've been in our house for four years now... so the essential "work" is done, and we're moving on to the "fun" stuff.  

no, i'm not naive.  i know a garden is work.  but, for someone who is finally enjoying being outside rather than dreading it, the thought of cultivating and maintaining a garden sounded appealing.  about a month ago, chuck and i talked about how much we wanted to take on and he decided that 50 sq. ft. would be adequate.  i thought that seemed kind of small...at the time.  shortly after that, he cleared the plot of grass and covered it with a tarp until i was ready to plant.  although it is a bit too early to plant, i figured i'd better get the ground ready, so i trekked out to lowes and picked up a 40 lb bag of pulverized lime (don't ask) and fertilizer.  

my plan was to break up the ground, spread the lime and fertilizer, and then add some topsoil - all in anticipation of the vegetable plants i'd be adding in a few weeks.  i figured that would take a half hour or so...

lucy took pictures while i worked.  i hit a bit of a snag, though, when my garden tool kept getting caught on roots.   

turns out, my very hard-working and rarely short-cut-taking husband (and i'm not being sarcastic) decided to prepare the garden by flipping over shovel-fuls of grass.  so, what looked like a plot of dirt, was really just an upside down lawn.  i dropped my garden rake, and - down on my hands and knees - proceeded to remove each sod clod... one by one.  that small 50 sq. ft. garden never seemed so big.  and as i dug with my hands, trying to rip out the sod, i couldn't help but think that chuck must have had a really good reason for doing it this way.  for the life of me, i still can't figure that out.

an hour and a half later, i was done - and covered in almost as much dirt as my garden.  my back and arms were sore.  my ankle was throbbing.  my knees were raw.  and i was a bit crispy (did i mention i decided to do this during the hottest part of the day?).  and, yet, i felt incredibly accomplished.  

you can see how much sod is there on the tarp.  i wasn't really sure what to do with it.  but, that's ok - i'm not planning on doing a thing with it.  any guesses whose job that will be?  haha...

imagine the possibilities...

my amazingly thoughtful husband is taking lucy and tucker to school on friday for Take-Your-Child-to-Work Day.  technically, it's today, but tomorrow fit his school schedule (and my mom schedule) a little better.  

that means,...this time tomorrow,...i will be getting 2 kids ready and off to school.

and then...

after that...

i'm alone.

for a whole day.

i've been contemplating my options.  how do i want to spend this luxurious friday of solitude?

honestly, i'm just looking forward to going grocery shopping alone.

going to the bank alone (without asking for lollipops)

running countless errands alone.

hmm....what else could i do?

any suggestions?

oh, to be in that head of his...

i do have other children.  really.  

for some reason, though, tucker seems to be at the forefront of my mind these days.  

tonight, he's sitting at the dinner table.

dinner has been cleaned up for over a half hour.  

everyone else has long since moved on.  

he's still fighting with pasta and broccoli.

from the lonely table, he just announced, 

"when i eat gross things, it makes my head shake.  like there's maracas in there..."

a few random faces from that crazy little head

signs of spring

after a cold, rainy week, we were all excited to get outside for a beautiful, sunny day yesterday.  it was hard to deny spring's arrival... especially with all these sights just waiting to greet us.

the japanese maple,... working hard

i'm always amazed by how quickly the hostas shoot through the ground.

these may be considered weeds... but they're just so darn cute

nothing says "sunshine" like a forsythia

i planted these primroses last year and watched them suffer and toil to no avail.  

what a shock to see them be the first thing to bloom this year!

and, my favorite, the pansy.  

incidentally, this particular pansy sat out in a planter all winter long.

all the other pansies were taken to the basement to "rest."  they died.

post-trampoline interview

the many adventures of tucker...

i'm really hoping that these stories do not become a regular occurrence.  i'm not so sure, though.  at 3 yrs old, tucker has aged me more than my older three children combined ever could.  not sure what it is about that boy...but none of my other kids have made me consider medication...for myself.  this weekend, tucker made his second emergency visit in the last month.  and my nerves are shot.  

yesterday evening, tucker and his 2 sisters were on a trampoline at grandma's house when he fell off.  we're still not sure how it happened - fell, rolled, something.  either way, chloe came running in the house to tell me that he had fallen on the concrete and hit his head.  i ran outside to find him screaming (they had him laying on the trampoline at this point).  after seeing that he was moving, i picked him up and tried to get him to talk to me.  he wouldn't.  he was too busy screaming.  i lay him on a bed with an ice pack and tried to calm him down to no avail.  

at the point when he started to fall asleep in between screams, i knew he needed to be seen by someone.  so, we quickly got him to the closest ER - and, thankfully, were seen immediately.  the dr and nurses had no better luck getting him to calm down.  he was not cooperative in the least... he refused to answer questions.  he was angry and volatile, and every time the dr touched his neck or head, he got angrier and screamed louder.  the dr tried to do a neurological work-up, but was limited by tucker's irritation.  he did tell us that tucker's resistance and fight was a good sign - he definitely didn't show any signs of spinal injury the way he was whipping his head around trying to get away from the dr's hands.  

my biggest concern was the fact that he wouldn't respond to our questions or requests...and that when he did finally start to calm down, he would fall asleep.  they decided to do a cat scan, as that was the only thing that would determine if there had been any internal injury, bleeding, or swelling.  we weren't sure if he'd lay still enough for the scan, but within 30 seconds of laying down on the table, he fell asleep.  

it only took minutes for the dr to return to our room and tell us that the scan was completely clean - everything looked normal and healthy.  he agreed that tucker was suffering from a concussion - however mild - but was fine.  he advised us to keep an eye out for anything abnormal.  so, we took him back to chuck's parents house.  as soon as we got him in the car, he started talking and answering all our questions.  of course.  it was almost as if he was a different child.  that night he slept well (although i did not...) and woke up fine the next morning.  a few hours later, we left for our 4 hr drive home, but about 45 minutes into that drive, tucker began crying in the car...and then proceeded to throw up.  as chuck and i stopped and scrambled to clean up the mess, we were both wondering what exactly was going on.  was this one of those things we should be "watching for" or was this the logical product of windy and hilly mountain roads?  the next 3 hrs were long and painful as we watched for any more signs that he wasn't "right."  thankfully, i think we're able to chalk that incident up to good old fashioned car sickness.  

even now, 24 hrs later, my nerves are a bit frazzled.  and, oddly (or not), he doesn't seem to remember much of it; i wonder now if he was really "with it" the entire time.  he's only 3.  how much more of this can i take?  the dr got a kick out of tucker's shirt, aptly labeled, "I do all my own stunts."  haha...yeah, right.  we commented that he was wearing the same shirt the night he went to the ER with a lego in his nose.  maybe it's time to retire that shirt...