the squibix family blog

Harvey's favorite part was the water and the statues.

I wanted to go to see what Katia and the remains of Lee did to the Concord River, and I was not disappointed: it looked about like spring flood levels. Not quite as cold, though!

On the way home we stopped at a special close-down-Main-Street farmers market in Concord center and picked out corn from three different farms (plus an apple for Harvey). All delightful, fun, and relaxing. I only wish I had remembered my camera and didn't have to resort to phone pictures.

Well, the fact is that I didn't steward my tomato crop—any of my crops—as well as I should have. The Martinos Roma tomatoes, especially, never really got staked properly, nor pruned. As a result they weren't as big as they should have been and a whole lot of them rotted on the vine where they were in contact with the vine. And don't even get me started on the ones that rotted inside the house when I couldn't do anything with them in time.

Talking about the garden with Leah this evening she and I agreed that we've been well-supplied with produce, but I know that I could have done very much better. And I will, next year! Maybe I'll start by getting some garlic in the ground this fall.

Anyways, the farmers market tomatoes were to make a marinara sauce for dinner tomorrow. I count it as practice: one reason I didn't treat my tomatoes as well as I should have was that I've never canned tomatoes in any form, so I didn't even know where I should be starting. Now I know. And I was able to use my own basil and oregano in the sauce (along with onion from the farmers market), so that should count for something, right?

Happily, he decided to share them with us, if for no other reason that we have all the canning equipment. Over the course of about six hours we processed almost all the good grapes—neither green nor rotten—into almost two gallons of grape jelly and a similar amount of what we're calling grape juice concentrate. Leah finished up the juicing work on Monday. It was a whole lot of work, but also pretty awesome to bust through that much fruit at once. We're going to take some of the jellies, but Jake gets the majority as befits his status as picker and vineyard owner. I think he's now in pretty good shape for holiday gifts for this winter.

We served up some of the juice to our Bible study peeps this evening, and I'm not sure if it was a complete success. There's a limit to how much particulate matter you expect in your grape juice, and a different limit for a substance to be qualified as a liquid at all, and this juice might have exceeded both limits by a considerable distance. Call it country-style. Our friends are polite and they drank it; they may even visit us again one day. All I can say is that much concentrated grapey goodness must be good for you!

Our counters are stained purple, perhaps forever, and our compost is as well-enriched with grape skins as our minds our with delightful memories of grape canning. There were also a very many seeds down the disposal in the sink, most of which I had to pull out by hand since there were showing no signs of being disposed of by the machinery. I call the move my grape seed extract.

Not that we wouldn't, in some way, be glad to be done eating tomatoes. We've certainly had our fair share over the past month or two—the sores in my mouth testify to the effects of our current high-acid diet. But not really. Besides how delicious and nutritious our tomatoes and other veggies are, there's something wonderful about all the free food available right outside our kitchen door. I'm not ready for that to end!

Of course, even after the tomatoes are reduced to mush by freezing temperatures the carrots and collards will still be going strong. Hmm, I should have planted more cold-weather crops.

I also took a moment to photograph all the apples on the ground, an impressive quantity from which we took all of what went into our half-peck bag. Not so much apple picking, then, as apple picking-up.

Harvey also enjoyed the hayride. Zion might have; it's not entirely clear.

Harvey was also a big fan of the hay maze, just like last year. Double fun playing on it with Ollie!

No applesauce produced yet due to catastrophic illness around here, but we did enjoy one very tasty apple pie.

Naturally, he did totally fine. Which is kind of amazing because not only was it his first time in any sort of formal child-care/education setting, it was his first time spending more than two minutes apart from his family at all. Yes, he's spent plenty of time with his grandparents, but apart from a few panicked minutes at Will's house (all the way across the street) before Will's mom brought him back home, he's never allowed us to entrust him to the care of strangers.

The Sunday before last I prepared him for the big day by getting him all signed up, introducing him to the space and the people, and staying with him through the morning. He was super nervous at first, but warmed up quickly when he saw all the toys that were available—and the bubbles at the end clinched the deal. It was also very nice that his best friend Ollie was there; and it was his first day too!

There were some anxious moments yesterday as we dropped him off. I had definitely hinted at it in the car, but he hadn't quite grasped the idea that we were going to be leaving him; no more did we quite believe that we'd be able to pull it off. But as Leah hung by the doorway watching him (I had given up and gone to church; we didn't need two anxious hovering parents!) he was doing so well that she slipped off without even saying goodbye. Goodby again, that is.

When I picked him up the staff said he had done great: not upset at all. Apparently he asked once after Mama, but when they told him she had gone to get him a bagel he accepted the answer and went back to playing. We'll take it! I'm looking forward to a few good months of sitting with my wife in church before we need to take turns removing Zion. Although there's always Baby Church...

I guess we called what we were doing with Harvey parenting too; I find there are posts with the tag way back when he was the only little one around here. But that was a lie, because with the first one you don't know what you're doing. I suppose we were able to describe what we were trying (or maybe just enduring) but if we thought there was any method to our madness we can now see that we were wrong.

Not, of course, that we're necessarily doing any better with Zion. But at least we've done these things once and can learn from our experiences. We're doing some things the same—holding him a lot, rocking him to sleep, nursing him exclusively (well, that one's not so much me)—and other things differently—not trying to get him into the crib. Also we let him sleep on his stomach sometimes.

Not unrelated to that last point, we're also continuing to not read parenting books... except when we do. I confess to some bewilderment as to how to go about beginning "potty training" for Harvey, and since Leah feels similarly she got a few books out of the library. One of them turns out to be a general book of tips, and it's completely ridiculous. It seems that other parents worry a great deal about many things, things that it never occurred to us might be problems. Leah worries, sure, but mostly just about keeping them alive (which is by the way a priority I wholly share). Whether they're properly dressed walking around the house? Not so much.

Clearly, we are doing very well as parents. Our older son is able to play independently for the better part of an hour at a time (some days), he is kind and generous to both friends and strangers (after we've convinced him to acknowledge their presence), and he's a devoted lover of literature. Seriously, you should hear him reciting books to himself as he plays with his legos. Our younger son can eat with the best of them, and sucks his thumb like a champ. Maybe we should be writing the books! No, we don't have time for that. I guess we'll stick to blog posts.

And they'll mostly be about both boys at the same time. Sorry, Z.

I have to say I was kind of impressed. It sure is fun to watch his ability to think abstractly—and to express his thinking—grow by leaps and bounds. I don't hang out with a lot of two-year-olds, but I'm going to go out on a limb anyways and say that ours is particularly exceptional.

At this stage my rage is still too inchoate to be neatly expressed in a blog post, but I would like to note a couple things. First, there are folks who say that, while they agree with the protestors that some things might need to change, they need to be presenting specific policy suggestions rather than the variety of aspirational demands currently being proposed. Yeah, because our congressmen would love to do something about the problems facing our country, if only they had an idea that would help! Note: that's not actually true. Also, congressmen historically have a poor record of taking policy suggestions from hippies.

Even worse are people who suggest that, if they really wanted to make a difference, the protestors would try and work through existing political channels. I don't know, volunteer for a campaign or something. They point out that in the United States it's only the government that makes the kind of changes the protestors are looking for. At least since 1775, that is. That completely misses the fact that no changes get made at all unless social pressures force the government's hand. Do you think the New Deal was enacted because politicians' hearts were bleeding for the poor? No, it was because if they didn't do something they would have had a revolution on their hands.

Not that we're ready for revolution yet; too many people are more concerned about what's on tv (or if their neighbors will be allowed to get abortions) than they are about their social and economic well-being. But protests put pressure on the system, they change the terms of the discussion, and they help crystallize a society's generalized grievances. I don't agree with everything the New York protesters are saying (nor do I think they're even speaking with a unified voice themselves) but I love that somebody is out there saying something.