Life is Good!

I love being a mother to a boy.



He is so different from me.



And yet we are so much alike. :)



His goofiness? That's all me. Yep. Me. Thank you very much. His politeness too? Um, I'd like to take credit for that as well, if you don't mind. I mean, Matt's a great dad - and - all, but I'm the keeper of good manners. Huh? Ah that's, Pardon me, what did you say? Burps. Ski-use me. Passing gas? We say, “Who tooted?” and then sing a little Beatles, “Toot toot and toot toot ya!” Why not? You're only young once, and lets have a little fun along the way, right?

So this past weekend we had a ton of fun playing in the yard, running thru sprinklers, riding bikes and harvesting vegetables from our garden.



The tomatoes are incredible this year. Naturally perfect. These are organic Black Cherry tomatoes, pretty hard to find usually. This is the first year I grew them.





They produce a beautiful lacework of pericarp and placenta; a design perfected by nature. It inspires me to eat them daily after admiring botany's handiwork.

I eat this salad almost daily. The basil and tomatoes are from my garden. I slice a little blue cheese and drizzle a good, well-aged, balsamic vinegar on everything. I found that if I use a good vinegar, the kind with a lot of flavor and pours slowly, I wont need any oil at all! None! What a healthy salad! (The one pictured below was made for a friend. She opted for lemon olive oil, so I drizzled that on for her as well.) Here's the result:



This salad below has crumbled blue cheese. Sorry, the lighting is not that great.




And these organic cherry toms are like eating candy. No kidding.



They grew to perfection this year. Not a single tomato cracked. Not a single one without flavor, beauty and nutrition. All pesticide- and fertilizer-free. If I get the chance, I'll try growing a couple more of these next year.

Of course, hats off to my peppers too. We have dark purple and bright red, so attractive and sweet that Oliver will just pluck them off the plant and take a bit in between dips in the sprinkler.

Next year I'll plant a whole section of pepper plants. This year we had three and that yielded about 9 peppers. WE NEED MORE! :)



Seeing Oliver eat a fresh red pepper? It makes a mother proud, for sure.

But back to the boy stuff. Did I ever tell you that I mentor a young gal... I've known her since she was 8 or 9... she confides in me, she looks up to me; I haven't embarrassed her yet I guess! I love her. Her name is Kaz, and here she is:





(I think I need a more recent photo of her. She's 14 in these pix and today she's taller than me and driving!)

Here is a more recent photo of her!



When I got pregnant, she was genuinely excited for me. We chatted weekly about the baby and together we watched my belly grow. I think she was about 12 or 13 at the time, about 6-8 inches shorter than me. She thought it was so cool that I had a spotlight on my shoe collection, as if they were little sculptures, little creations. (It's true, I did love my shoes that much at one time. Then I had kids... er, a kid I mean.) We were both girly-girls, shopping together in downtown Chicago, stopping for coffee at Starbucks, discussing the latest happenings on Project Runway... you get the picture. So when I found out Oliver was in fact a boy, I was so bummed. I admit it. When I told Kaz I was going to have a boy, she was distraught. How on earth could someone like me have a boy? No way! No. (pause) Way. (pause) After a moment of silence, Kaz placed her arm around me, took a deep breath and said, "It's OK Andrea. We'll get thru this together." I about died.

Now we both love Oliver so much and we are both so happy I had a boy! :) 

Lest we forget what boys like:



I'm sure there's a magnetic pull on his boy parts to all-things-fast, all-things-dirt, all-things-wet, because getting dirty and wet and jumping in puddles is all that he is.







And I love it.