Catch Up (not ketchup) Post

Haven’t posted much lately.  Been busy with Mommy and Homeschool stuff.  So I previously posted about growing tomaters this sumer.  I tried “early girl” and “cherry falls” tomatoes.  The early girls grow to be about the size of Roma’s you can find at the grocery store.  They are really tasty, grow abundantly, and I didn’t have any pest problems with them.  The only issue I really had with them was that they have a thicker skin that what I’m used to.  It totally doesn’t affect the flavor though, so I think I’ll try them again next year.  The “Cherry Falls” tomatoes are a small trailing cherry tomato plant.  I grew it in a container.  The cherries are soooo delicious and sweet!  I’ll definitely try to grow more cherry tomatoes next year. We recently went to Carlsbad caverns with my brother’s family.  I finally got to meet my sweet little niece, Emmalyn.  She’s an adorable little doll baby!  They also finally got to meet Kai.  The two of them are about 2 months apart in age.  Carlsbad caverns was spectacular as expected.  Some day, I’d love to go on some of the guided tours, but it’s just too hard to do right now with the kiddos, since you have to be a certain age.  Hotels in Carlsbad are really pricey.  I think next time, we’d like to try camping there.  We stayed late to watch the bat flight in the evening.  That was sort of unspectacular.  There were no large masses of bats that flew out all at once, but it was still neat to see some bats.  When I was in high school, I worked as a research assistant one summer at UNM.  Our research project was all about bats.  High school was a long time ago, but I still think bats are pretty cool, and this was the first time I’d gotten the chance to see a bat flight. In other news, We’ve started 3rd grade for Sean and some preschool for Mia.  It is so hard for me to actually keep to a schedule for schooling both kids right now with all the chasing around I do with Kai.  So Mia really gets schooled about twice a week when Sean is in his PE and Arts & Crafts classes at the Community Center.  I’m glad that once Mia is really needing deeper instruction Sean will be even more independent than he is now… At least that’s what I keep telling myself. Kai recently turned a year old.  We were in Kansas because my sweet Grandma Peny passed away.  (I’ll save that story for another post).  Anyways, Kai is 1, and he has learned to screech really well.  He definitely lets you know when he doesn’t like what you are doing.  He also nods yes and no pretty well, and most of the time he actually makes sense when he’s answering you.  He’s really good at throwing things on the floor and then saying “Uh-Oh”.  He still has some trouble sleeping.  I’ve decided to turn off the baby monitor at night so that I don’t hear his every sound.  I think he’s just loud whenever he’s in between sleep cycles.  I think that I had been responding to him and nursing him unnecessarily just because I heard him moaning.  Now that there is no monitor, I only hear him when he’s really crying.  Since I started this, I’ve had a few night where he sleeps all the way through to morning, then starts crying around 730 am.  I must say… I missed getting some sleep!!!!  I hope this keeps up.  He’s also been getting much better at settling himself to sleep on his own.  Right now, I still need to be in his room while he settles down for sleep, but I don’t need to be holding him or rocking him or nursing him.  Yay!