And then there were four

While it seems like everyone is having a bumper crop this year, our sad little garden is leaving much to be desired. This is our first summer at this house and despite the yard facing south we didn't realize how much shade the trees cast on the property. It turns out that we only get about 4 hours of sunlight a day which means all of our plants are terribly stunted... Our pea plants stand at about 20cm tall (to be generous) and have produced only a hand full of pods with as many as 4 tiny peas inside. Only two of the lettuces plants we planted came up, and then went promptly to seed. Same with the cilantro - a few leaves and then straight to flowering. They must think its fall with the little sunlight they recieve....


We have had a bit more luck with the zucchinis and tomatoes - we have enjoyed two small zucchinis and 2 tiny tomatoes so far this season! Haha.... On the bright side, both have lots of blooms and some small fruits that we are anxiously awaiting to be ready to pick. We have yet to find out how the carrots have done... but if I can take a guess I would say marginally at best.

Despite our inability to grow things here, we have been able to harvest a lot of great food from gardens that are doing much better then ours. Clay's parents had us out their way this past weekend and we came home with a large cooler full of beets, carrots, snap peas and potatoes, two huge buckets of cherries, half an ice cream pail Saskatoon, and two pails of raspberries. Needless to say we have been spending some long hours in the kitchen canning, drying and freezing the bounty. We still have more to process and it looks like we will be heading out to Paul's parents place this weekend and helping out with the garden out there as well!

Canning has been a new experience for both Paul and I... after a bit of a rocky start I am pleased to say that I think we will have some really good food to enjoy this winter. I am particularly excited to try the cherry pie filling and the caraway and peppercorn pickled beats... I hope to get some more fruits from the farmers markets and have those canned as well!

I am sad to announce that we lost another chicken last week. So we are now down to 2 faverolles and 2 silkie chickens, and none of them are feeling compelled to do any laying yet... We think that we may have an issue with worms and that is what is causing our chickens to die, so we are trying some homeopathics on them and hopefully we can keep the rest happy and healthy as we head into the fall. When the first egg does eventually happen, I will be sure to let you all know.

Cameron is now 9 weeks old, weighs 12 and a half pounds and is getting gigglier and wigglier by the day!

Cam is still a pretty easy going guy, but is certainly starting to voice his preferences more these days! He is actually using his voice a lot more in general; he has several coo's that he uses constantly but is now starting to try out some new noises as he becomes more and more talkative.

This summer is in full bloom, the weather is fantastic and Cameron is getting bigger and stronger every day. Good vibes all around - what more could we ask for?

Cameron and Paul

Paul is full swing into the summer programing for the home he is working at; they have been doing canoe trips, hiking, camping and some mountain biking so far. I am going to have to get him to write about those adventure at some point, but from what I gather they are going well (for the most part) and he is having a good time taking the kids out! Since he is doing day trips as well as overnights he is able to bank a lot of hours in just a few days of work meaning that he will typically get 3 days on a week and 4 off - what a perfect summer time schedule!! It certainly is great for us to be able to spend time together and get outdoors.

Camping!

We stayed in town for the long weekend and when everyone was coming back to Calgary, we packed up and went camping! It was nice to get treated to a quite(r) city and have the campsite to ourselves. Evening for just a night, it was great change of scenery getting out of the city for a while.

Diapers roasting by an open fire...

Cameron did amazing with the camping, not that we had any doubts - he is still a easy going baby, but we were not sure how we would fair with diapers and sleeping in a tent. However we had no problems! Cam used a few more diapers then he normal does because he was on a pee strike and we couldn't figure out when he needed to go... (more peeing babies coming up next paragraph), however we were able to wash the ones he did use and dry them by the fire and in the end we didn't end up needing the extras anyways! Sleeping was a bit trickier; we took my 2 person backpacking tent to see how it would go... With Cam being so small still the space wasn't the issue, but feeding and peeing was a bit more awkward then normal. Still, we figured it out fast and now we know that we can pull it off even in a small tent - a big family sized, car camping tent will be a breeze!

Cameron going potty!

We have been practicing Elimination Communication (EC) with Cam since he was about a week old and overall are having a lot of success with it! EC goes on the basis that babies are aware and in control of their elimination needs; when they need to go they signal (could be fussing, squeezing with their knees, making a particular face....) and you are then able to hold them over a "receptacle" (for us an old bowl at night, the toilet or even right out on the front lawn during the day), make a cuing noise and.. ta-da! The baby goes! Sounds crazy? Impossible? Well it isn't! It really does work! Its more of parent training then baby training when it comes down to it, and we are proving to be good learners! Of course we have some bad days, but they are being increasingly outweighed by really successful ones! Cam actually really dislikes being wet now and isn't even fond of wearing diapers anymore. He goes without diapers most of the time during the day but wears them to bed at night, however we have had several night now where he stays dry for the whole night so we are hoping to start keeping him diaper free at night as well sometime soon.
Yes, sometimes when we have a 'miss' we get peed on, but to be able to respond to his needs that much better and avoid the numerous pit falls of diapers (cost, cleaning, rashes...) it is totally worth it! We are able to get by now without any issue with only 10 or so cloth diapers. On good days we have to wash only 2-3 diapers a day (and a few jumpers) and on less successful days this may jump to only 4-5 diapers. And those numbers keep dropping every week - in the past 24 hours we went dry through the whole night and had only had 2 misses all day and one of those was because he was got startled and it made him cry.... not too bad! We haven't had any issue with rashes because he is never sitting in a dirty nappy so we dont even have to use diaper creams or baby wipes. As he goes through different stages (like teething) we expect that he will regress some, but that's how it goes.
Pretty awesome all-in-all