Amy?

Did I do this to Tyler?

I sit at the Hospital waiting at the Lab for a blood draw. It's close to 5:00 and decently busy. There might be about 10 other people in the waiting room. I sit for about 15 minutes and the Lab tech comes to the door, and says, "Amy?"

So I stand, and head toward her, I can tell by her face something is wrong. I look behind me and TWO other people are standing also. She looks at the chart, points to a young girl and her Mom and says, "That Amy, you are 14?" The girl nods Yes. Me, and other Amy sit back down.

Later, again. Amy? (Like she didn't get it the first time) and she looks at the chart again, and point to the other lady, who is clearly older than me. Great...not me again.

Finally, Amy? I stand and walk up to her, and she smiles..."The last Amy!" Great, I'm now the last Amy...

Is Tyler as common as Amy? Mike and I have as common of cames as they come. With a VERY common last name to boot (Thanks a lot hubby!)...I guess we'll have to see if there are 10 other Tyler's in his class :)

Runny Noses and Veggies

Ty and I are both sick. I'm not sure if it's the same thing, but I highly suspect he brought me home a gift from the daycare kids. He is happy as a clam, runny nose, coughing and all. Is immune suppressed Mommy, is absolutely miserable. I even slept upstairs last night. Partly so I wouldn't wake the two of them up, and partly cause I knew I needed some sleep. I slept like a rock, but woke up feeling worse than ever. My head may explode and I'm more than half way through a large box of tissues I only opened last night right before bed. Me neck is all swelled up and my throat is really sore, and I took Sudafed, so now I'm tired again.

Ty is napping. When he wakes up I am going to drag myself over to the farm to help with harvesting the winter squash. Mike and Ty are going to pick more green/yellow and Roman beans for freezing. We're also going to stock up on swiss chard, spicy greens, and Mike's getting hot pepper to make a sodium free pepper sauce. I don't know how long I'll hold up...I guess we'll see.

Tonight we need to finish the apples, blanch and freeze the beans, blanch and freeze some corn on the cob (we've only frozen corn cut off the cob so far) and cook up some batches of the card to freeze. I am not sure what to do with spicy greens, but I found a recipe online for a mustard green soup, and it sounds pretty yummy, so we might try making that with the spicy greens, and then freezing it. I'm trying to fill up our freezer because it takes less energy to keep the freezer cold when everything inside it is frozen. Need to put more meat away too though...wish we could afford that 1/2 cow or 1/2 pig now...maybe in the spring...

Thirty-five pounds of Apples, three dogs, and a rainy day

Today was a really busy day. I made a trip up to Biddeford, ME (about an hour away) with Tyler. While I did that Mike went to Home Depot, and bought grout sealer for the laundry room, then to our local orchard and picked up the two bushels of apples we reserved, and came home. He sealed the floor and finished up just about as I got back home. We started working on one bushel of apples. 35+ pounds of apple per bushel. We currently have a turkey fryer sized pot on the stove full of apples cooking down into applesauce. We also have another 35+ pounds worth of apples sitting in our living room and I have no idea what to do next. I'm thinking spiced apple rings, or wedges, or maybe some cranberry apple relish.

Chopping, and coring 35 pounds of apples is not easy, or fast...especially when you are trying to do it while dodging three dogs that have glued themselves to your feet trying to catch every crumb that hits the floor. After almost tripping over them twice, I put a chair, and the trash can, blocking them out of the part of the kitchen I was in. Dewey...the little brat that he is, realized he could fit under the chair. So after he did that a couple times, I blocked off that\ bottom part of the chair with a laundry basket turned on it it's side. Mike and I were able to work in relative peace for about 20 minutes. Then all the sudden there was a huge commotion and the laundry basket was hopping across the kitchen floor with a panicked Dewey trapped under it. Mike and I were laugh so hard, we never even managed to make it over there to help him get out...he just kept jumping trying to run away from the laundry basket and it kept following him of course, but eventually it fell off. So funny. At that point he was so embarrassed that he didn't come back over near us for a while.

I have to say, I'm pretty impressed with us. We even broke out the juicer and juiced the cores and it was enough apple juice for us each to have a glass (so yummy) and to put some juice in with the apples so they wouldn't burn. then I took all the juice gunk and put that in a pot with some water and I'm cooking it down. I think I'm going to strain it with cheese cloth, and see if I can use one of my pectin packets and add some sugar to make apple jelly out of it. If I can reduce the amount of waste on 35 pounds of apples to the size of grapefruit, I'll be happy :)

I'm going to re-can the peaches from two years ago too. I'm thinking about making a peach chutney with it and canning that. We just haven't eaten up those peach halves like I thought we would. They are still yummy, but I want to put them in something we'll use more.

"Putting up" for Winter

Mike and I have been hard at work most weekends, trying to do at least one day a week picking at "the Farm" and putting up food for winter. We've canned about 12 Quarts of Sauce, and 12 pints of sauce, we've frozen some meat sauce. Today we went to pick about 30 ears of corn (which VERY hard work...not the walk through the corn field everyone pictures!) to add to the 12 ears we got in our farm share yesterday. We'll blanch that, cut if off the cob and freeze it. We also picked yellow beans. I thought about 10 pounds, but Mike says closer to 15 or 20...we're in the process of cutting the ends so they can also be blanched and frozen. The farm was closing but we did a couple trips up and down the tomato rows and managed to grab about 10-15 pounds of tomatoes. I think we'll freeze those...it's just easier :)

This CSA thing has been so awesome...we really have a good stock of food going into winter. If prices go up, even a small amount, it won't effect our budget. Now I just need to find the $ to buy half an cow and half a pig and we'll be good for winter :) That's gonna run us over 2K though, so it might be something we need to save for and do in the Spring.

Adoptive Families BBQ

Today Mike and I went to a BBQ that was all adoptive families. We had the greatest time. There was a circle of families, all with babies about Ty's age...many of them also black, and it was so nice, to sit among other "non matching" families and feel like we were the norm. We accepted when we adopted Ty that we were also accepting the additional attention, but sometimes, it's nice to be the same as everyone else. We met a single Mom there that has a black baby boy that is one month older and 10 pounds heavier than Ty. They are truly on opposite sides of the growth charts :) However if we both stay in Amesbury, they would be in the same class through school. How cool is that! She wants us to get together every other month or so and talk about the things we each do to that help us raise a child successfully in a transracial adoption. I think that would really be a great support for us!

We also met a wonderful little girl, Tess who was adopted from Ethiopia. I am really hoping that in 2010, I'll be making a trip to Ethiopia, but we're going to see where our journey takes us. We know that Ty will have siblings (I'm hoping for many) but it remains to be seen how they will find us. We had faith that the "right" child would find us, and be our first child, so we'll keep the faith that all our children will find us when the time is right...

Seven Months Ago Today

We met Ty for the first time. At this time (10:30 EST) it was 9:30 there and were just wrapping up our time at cradle care, and heading out to find somewhere to sleep that night (our hotel plans got all screwed up)...I had given him a bottle, and we had changed a diaper (maybe two)...we were both in awe, and in love. We had a son...

Sometimes...I ignore my dogs...

Now wait a minute! Before everyone that knows us starts nodding their head knowingly, just wait. I'm sure many think, sure she doesn't care one bit about those poor dogs since she got Ty. We'll that's just NOT the case at all! I do ignore them, but, I HAVE to! Really, I ignore them like 3 two year olds having a full blown tantrum. See when we first get home and let them out of their kennels, they are EXCITED. They want to run and jump and play and bark and growl. I want them to do all that too! OUTSIDE!!!! But they want to do it right next to me, nearly on me and taking me out at the knees. I've trained Dudley (the smartest as far as I'm concerned) that when I say, "Outside!" he best head for the dog door. About 50% of the time, Daisy will follow her...if the little dog will let got of her ears she will anyway. That leaves...You guessed it...D-E-W-E-Y. Crazy insane, little "big" dog. He thinks since the other dogs are outside, *I* must want to play, so he proceeds to run around me in circles barking and barking and barking. I've finally realized in order to get them all outside at once (as to avoid some dogs running out the door while other run in...chaos) I issue the "Outside" command, and them must fold my arms (so they can't lick my fingers) and turn and put myself in the corner. Usually I'm laughing and have to make sure the little dog doesn't see. I put myself in the corner and feel absolutely ridiculous that I treat my dogs like children...even more ridiculous is how much $$ we've paid to "train" these dogs and how we can just never back it up. I'm getting softer by the minute. Today, Ty cried when he was supposed to take a nap, and I GOT HIM OUT OF BED. He smiled. It's all down hill from here...