How we grow: Summer Goals progress report

My mother-in-law once told me that children always grow like crazy in summer -- that I wouldn't necessarily notice it while it was happening, but fall would come and we'd try on the last spring's jeans only to find that they would be several inches too short. It could be all the fresh air, the fresh fruit, the sunshine, or the mellow vibe -- but she's right. The kids -- and our lives -- are growing fast.

My Doodlebug, once an exclusively-dress-wearing-princess, has discovered the monkey bars and shorts this summer. She wears skirts and dresses less and less often, preferring to have the ease of movement that comes from unencumbered legs. I am relieved about the dresses, which I always found impractical, and very proud about the monkey bars. When she began camp this summer, she could not swing across even one rung of the monkey bars. Now she can make her way across all five of them on the little jungle gym at her camp -- both using her arms in the traditional way, and by hanging upside down with her legs and crawling across like an odd little upside-down-crab. She proudly shows everyone her "monkey bar callouses." She collects bugs with her friends, gets filthy every day, and ALSO comes home to play dress-up. It's a great balance. Despite my sunscreening her every day (ok, ALMOST every day), she is brown as an almond, and every little dirty smudge makes her more beautiful.



Little Shmoo is eating her way through the summer, and I just never get tired of hearing "Mama, can we make dinner?," even if it is ten in the morning. Her appetite is nothing short of miraculous, and it blows my mind to think of the difference between now and just 18 months ago, when we feverishly catalogued every bite of cracker. Every part of her is growing, from her beautiful kissable belly to her increasingly luscious golden-blond hair. There's even enough to make into a ponytail now.


The girls and I got really lucky just before summer began, and ended up with a bike trailer. They ride in back every day on the way to camp, to the beach, to the park, to the library, to do errands, almost everywhere. Days go by where we don't use the car, which is just what I had hoped for us. We can fit the kids, a beach blanket, a towel, water bottles, and two buckets & shovels into that thing, and we can be at the beach in 15 minutes!

The farm boxes that come on Wednesdays have introduced us all to the many things to be done with greens (including pulverizing and freezing them for winter, which is what one must do when one receives this volume of greens!). Last night's dinner was a stir fry of eggplant, zucchini, peppers, summer squash, carrots, cabbage, and onions, all from our farm box, with brown rice, oil, soy sauce, spices and pistachios being the only store bought portions of the meal. We've given away several heads of lettuce, but thrown away very little unused & rotten produce. We're only 6 weeks into our 20 week share, so hopefully we can keep this up.

Finally, tomorrow we are going camping with two other families. There will be eight kids and six adults, with the kids ranging from six years old down to seven months old. The fiddle is coming, hoping to make nice friends with a guitar scheduled to join us. Wish us luck!

It's summer, and we are just where we wanted to be. By fall, I know we'll barely fit into the selves we were last spring.