12/52: Grocery Stores, Potatoes, and Our Sunday Best

The kids got it into their heads the other day that they needed to play "Grocery store" so they made an elaborate setup of ALL the play kitchen things, spread liberally on the floor and the ottoman, and made little "packages" to sell to each other. My favorite was the vegetable soup kit, which included ALL the vegetables needed in a pot, utensils included! Somehow I doubt that would be such a hot seller at a regular grocery store (because who needs a new pot every time they make soup?), but it definitely has a place in the very trendy farm to table scene, I think. It made a very sweet scene that obviously I needed to take pictures of!

Theoretically we aren't supposed to plant potatoes until after St. Patrick's Day, so last weekend we passed that point and I got down the seed potatoes that I had thrown in a basket back in October, hoping that they wouldn't rot and would maybe start sprouting in time for planting... They were perfect! Not a rotten one in the bunch! We bought several pounds of assorted organic seed potatoes from Seed Savers last spring, and they grew so well that we had plenty for our consumption, all our CSA families, and enough to save for planting this spring. So Andrew planted a few rows on Saturday, along with sugar snap peas and onions. Soon we'll get kale & other brassica seedlings in the ground, and sow some lettuce as well. Tomatoes are started in our upstairs bathroom "greenhouse" and I'm really desperate to start more tomatoes, peppers, and herbs but still waiting on someone to find the extra seed trays in the shed... Ah well, if we don't find them, it won't kill us to buy seedlings.

Doing another CSA this year was contingent on us having an easy baby and Lucy has shown herself to be quite the clingy little thing, so we'll just be growing for ourselves and maybe selling whatever extra we have a la carte. We'll see how many takers we get, or maybe I'll just be doing a lot of freezing and canning!

The kids have been begging me to dress Lucy in "real" clothes, but I think the more kids we have, the more inclined I am to leave the baby in pajamas 24/7. Or at least until she soils her outfit enough that it really must be changed. But she got her pajamas dirty with just the right timing that I figured I might as well dress her in one of the cute little baby jumpers we have for Sunday Mass, and the kids were absolutely enchanted! She lasted until the afternoon before she peed on herself and went right back into another pair of pajamas.

Meanwhile John Paul, whom I reprimanded slightly last week for wearing white gym socks with his navy pants and brown shoes, was very careful with his outfit this Sunday and was so pleased with himself that he asked me to take a picture. He's been wearing Andrew's bow ties (with the neck adjusted) on the days he remembers to have someone tie one for him, and is absolutely tickled by how "old" he looks. He insisted that I needed to share this picture on the blog, so here it is! Now he just needs to grow so that those pants will fit properly... Every time my mom hems a pair of pants for him, he shoots up a couple inches and they're too short! So we're just going to leave these until he grows, which of course means he'll stay the same height for months.

I spent a long time in front of the closet trying to figure out what to wear, settled on the dress in the picture, and realized afterwards that I still have rather too many post partum rolls to wear it... Ah well, humility! Andrew laughed at me, asking if I thought I didn't have enough clothes! And he's sort of right, the closet does look rather full, but it's full of either maternity things that I need to put away because they aren't nursing-friendly, or things that are slightly too small, or things that aren't dressy enough for Mass. It's a tough stage to be in, this fourth trimester phase! But during all the hours I spend nursing, I'm honestly thankful for the extra "cushion" that I have all over, because it makes the constant sitting a little more comfortable.