this (long) weekend

Having been home with Claire for the last 19 months (plus a month before she was born), and being married to someone who works on a rotating shift cycle, it's been a long time since weekends have had any real significance.  But now that I'm back to working part time, I am rediscovering how to treat the days a little differently depending on where they fall during the week.

This weekend started off with this yummy bolognese on Friday night,  made with local ground beef and basil, garlic, and tomatoes right from our garden.  The pasta came from a box (or was it a bag?) but that didn't detract much from the delicious sauce made with a blend of tomatoes, cream, herbs and spices, garlic and red wine.  Mmmmmm mmmmm good.  I ate a lot of it.  A LOT.

On Saturday, Beeba (that's the name Claire has given to my mom, in place of grandma) joined Claire and I at the market and then came back with us for a little sleepover Saturday night.  Mike was at work so it was just us girls.  Thanks to the extra set of hands I was able to turn the last of the apples we'd picked a few weeks ago into a few jars of apple butter.  We napped, ate, sang, read, played, ate, slept..... a most exciting evening.

Mike came home Sunday morning and made coffee and breakfast (whole grain pancakes and bacon) for everyone before my mom had to head home.  Actually, he started the coffee before I even came rolling out of bed.  He's very good at that.  At making breakfast when we have company.  He is also good, of course, at making breakfast just for us, but I think he finds a certain pleasure in cooking for others.  I do love that about him.

Afterwards we took Claire to the fabulous playground up the road in Montreat and there we bumped into our pals Michelle and Keegan.  We tried to wear her out a bit and after we were back home and she was napping soundly, we headed out into the yard to address our garden and start the process of making it into a fall garden.  We pulled old plants and stakes, Mike gave the compost a good turn and put in new supports for fall peas, and then he got a start on planting some of them before the rain started.  I pulled the dried bean pods from the vines and together we plunked the dry seeds for next year's garden into a little bowl as we watched the rain from inside.  Tomatoes and basil were picked for some salsa and pesto making in the near future, and I made a list of things not to grow again next year (celery, cabbage, carrots) and things that I missed growing this year (green zebras, potatoes, onions and to my surprise, summer squash).  Now it isn't that I dislike celery and cabbage and carrots, not at all.  It's that I don't seem very good at growing some of them and others (cabbage) I eat so little of that it doesn't seem worth it.  It was a good year for me in terms of deciding which crops I really want to put my time and energy into and which others I am happy to purchase from others when needed.

Claire woke up in time to help with some of the gardening, to try her rain jacket on for the first time, and to be given the honor of carrying one of our new hen's first eggs (!) from the coop over to mama.

A mama who was waiting eagerly and perhaps just a bit nervously as she watched those 19 month old hands holding and turning that lovely little egg.  Claire delivered it in perfect condition.  The egg was laid by this beauty, a Silver-laced Wyandotte who is as yet unnamed (as far as we know).

She likes to roost in the Rose of Sharon and is the most nervous of our girls and a bit dainty.  Except that is, for when she laid that first egg.  Nothing dainty about that.  She spent a good hour up in the roost (I didn't have the heart to tell her that wasn't where she was supposed to do the deed) and then came running down the ramp squawking and practically screaming about that little egg.  She went on and on, clearly quite proud of her entrance into henhood.

Good job, pretty black and white hen.

Sunday afternoon we rearranged some furniture and moved Claire's mattress into "her" room.  I spent some time in there daydreaming of where I'll put this or that and making a list in my head of things I need (want) to pick up or find for her room.  Some picture frames, a little wooden table and chairs, the perfect shelf to hold her toys and some of her books, mini clothespins for displaying pictures and art, a sweet duvet cover for her bed....... and so it begins.

Of course she didn't sleep in there last night.

She slept in our bed.  Which is where she napped today and where she is sleeping at the moment.

I knew it'd be this way.  After all, part of the rearranging involved moving our bed and putting a bedrail on my side "just in case" she ended up in our bed still.

Just in case.  That's funny.

It isn't that I'm not ready or anything like that.  You are silly if you are even thinking that could possibly be it.

It's just that I'm not ready.

Oh, I'm ready to finally start sleeping a bit more at night again, for sure.... but now that I have an awareness of how fleeting her babyhood is and I finally believe that she will not in fact be nursing forever and waking me up forever, I just don't mind the interrupted sleep as much as I used to.  I won't go so far as to say I enjoy the multiple (yes, still) night time wake ups, but I will say that, on most nights, they don't seem so bad anymore.

On most nights.

Today was a rainy unofficial end of summer and Claire and I spent most of it hanging around inside reading books, eating, watching bread rise, baking bread (it had been way too long since I'd made our bread and the cooler weather gave me just the kick in the pants I'd needed), listening to music and napping.  I joined her for a much needed long nap today.  That's part of my new way of looking at weekend days- take the opportunity and nap with her!

Do you see that little orangey-red leaf right there?  Proof!  Fall is on it's way.  Oh, sweet, sweet, sweet, long awaited lovely season~

Tomorrow, back to our new normal.  Whatever that is.  We're getting there.