The Start of Harvest

I was looking up an old post on my recipe for Thai Chicken and Coconut Soup and realized how long it has been since I put fingers to keyboard on this blog.

After we came back from Hong Kong, things just got lost.  I attempted working from home with the baby, which was unsuccessful to say the least.  CJ was just beginning to scamper around pretty quickly on his hands and knees, and he needed too much attention.  Inevitably, the phone would ring while I was trying to feed him, or he was crying, or we were cleaning a poopy diaper.  I took him to the office with me at least 3 times a week, when I would go in to pick up and drop off paperwork, and my co-workers would get less work done as we played pass-the-baby, and runs to the office always had to be scheduled around his nap times.  Two weeks after I started to "work from home" I hired a babysitter/part-time nanny.

Who turned out to be fabulous (no you cannot have her name until CJ goes into daycare full time).  But my little house is so small, we couldn't all be here together.  It was too distracting for CJ to see me around the house, but out of reach.  It was too distracting for me to try to get work done while CJ was nearby.  It was making it too difficult for the nanny to deal with CJ while I was around.  Two days after I hired the part-time nanny, I started to pack my work files, binders and laptop and head to Borders Books while she was here.  I had to work somewhere, and I needed a wi-fi connection!

In any case, since I last wrote, we've had a few milestones:

I discovered CJ likes popsicles. 

He crawled into and fell out of his toy box.  A few times. 

He learned to wave....

And then to stand...

Today, my husband plucked these gorgeous berries from plants I put in the ground last spring, before the CJ was even born, and they were just as sweet as they look!  

Two weeks ago, we pulled our first batch of homegrown garlic from the ground, and tonight, my son took two solid steps by himself before falling on his knees and crawling away.  In eleven days he will turn one whole year old, and after 6 years in this house, my old tangerine tree is dripping with fruit that is finally sweet and tart, just like life itself. 

I'm harvesting an abundance of blessings.