Quinn requested her first drastic hair cut last week. She woke up Tuesday morning and said, "Mama, I want a cute little bob." After verifying fifty times throughout the day, I cut her hair that night and she's loving it! It totally suits her chatterbox, peppy personality. It makes her look a little older than Jonathan and I were ready for though, (sniffle). Here's the before and after:
Quinn just had her final dance class for the quarter last night. She loved it! She definitely wants to take more ballet soon. She requested many ballet books from the library leading up to the class and practiced all her poses. Each class she would get excited about choosing a different leotard and tutu combination and ask me to take photos of her different poses. During class she was totally in her element and very focused. Watching a bunch of goofy tiny dancers each week was heart-melting.
Last weekend, Jonathan and I went on a date to a concert at church that was very uplifting. We went on a family hike with another family from church and had the Johnsons over for dessert and board games. Jonathan was in Wisconsin this week for work which always makes for an adventure around the house. Luckily, my mom and Jonathan's mom came to give me a hand.
Quinn and I got our first round of seeds into the garden today. Our current crops include five blueberry bushes, one golden raspberry bush, ten strawberry plants, a cherry tree, a rhubarb plant, a Jonathan apple tree we just bought as Archer's birthday gift, and hopefully some carrots, spinach, and kale. Archer tries to help in the garden too, but he mostly likes eating dirt and army crawling all over the grass.
We are in a nice flow here at the Gowins Cottage. Both kids are in bed by 8:15 each night so we are restarting our monthly date night swap with some friends (fist pump). We went in on a grill for Father's Day/anniversary/my birthday with my parents (thanks, Mom and Dad!) and have been using it for dinners at least five nights a week and sometimes lunch on weekends too. The library has some great grilling cookbooks so we can keep the ideas fresh and our house is staying considerably cooler without me using the kitchen appliances every night. Our current favorites are pizza, quesadillas, and veggies on the grill.
Despite my lazy gardening habits this year, our garden is producing big time. I just made my fifth giant batch of kale chips and I'm going to need to pick more again tomorrow. I went to pick green beans for dinner and should have brought a bowl because I had to stuff both my pockets and carry some in my hands just to bring them in. Quinn only likes green beans and spinach fresh while standing next to the garden. We had a good cherry crop this year, our zucchini, spaghetti squash, and pumpkins are looking promising, and blueberries are steady.
I think I might possibly be a runner now. I'm not sure what the criteria is exactly. I signed up for one of those mud runs with some friends while I was still pregnant thinking it would be a good fitness goal. I've tried running many times over the years and would find it so boring, but it has always appealed to my practical side with its frugality and flexibility. I started running when I got cleared for exercise at Archer's six week appointment. It has now been ten weeks straight of running on Wednesdays and usually a weekend day and I'm loving it! My first one was in the rain and I've since run at 5pm on hot days a few times and I still love it. I used to feel like I needed to listen to music or run with someone so I wouldn't get as bored. I now run in total silence and it's amazing. I've even started a run with the intention of thinking of something specific and I just can't. My brain empties and won't let anything in and it's such a relaxing break. Jonathan is still running and biking to work occasionally, and doing arm workouts. Such a strong, healthy man-of-the-house. I'm still working my way up to his level distance-wise, but it will be so fun to run together!
Archer is trying to roll from his back to his belly. He's not getting far, but it's quite cute. He had his first swim on Saturday when we all went to the pool. He seemed to love it and was kicking his feet like crazy.
Last week Jonathan's parents came for a visit, my mom, sister, and nephew came for some berry picking, and some dear friends who currently live in Texas visited as well. We even had a surprise dinner with Jonathan's sister and her husband and daughter last night.
We are just constantly in awe of God heaping mercies on us during this blessed season. All the glory to Him!
It was a good week. Lots of trips to the park, my mom visited, Jonathan's sister had her sweet baby girl, and we planted the rest of our vegetables. I'm glad I kept a garden journal last year with dates and details because I just did the exact same thing this year. My brain isn't exactly in garden planning mode these days. Quinn helped me plant green beans, zucchini, spaghetti squash, pumpkins, and sunflowers. I think all that remains is tomato and strawberry plants to purchase.
This guy is loving holding his head up!
He reached 9 lbs, 6 oz at my midwife check up this week. And he smiled a handful of times today! That is, aside from milk drunk smiles like this.
Happy Easter!
Sometimes one's husband is so good at completing to-do lists that a preggo gal is left with nothing to do during naps while waiting for labor to start. All the bookkeeping is caught up. The freezer is packed full. The house is pretty clean.
So, I decided to sew a dress. This was my first one (aside from attaching a skirt to the bottom of an old tshirt) and it was such a fun project! I actually purchased the fabric for a blanket for baby brother. I've adored it for quite a while. But when it arrived the orange was way too peachy-pink for a little boy so I decided it would have to be a sundress. I followed this simple tutorial and I love the result. It took about 2 hours over the course of a couple days. It was designed for a size 2T, and Quinn is getting closer to a 3T so I just added a half inch to the arm holes and body. I'm not sure if that's the proper strategy, but it seemed to work fine. I think it will still fit as a little tunic top as she grows taller. It passed the twirl test with such flying colors that I couldn't get a non-blurry photo.
Otherwise, we are just trying to make each day special as we await our new little fella. Oh, and we have some tiny sprouts of spinach and kale already! Oh, glorious spring.
It's starting to feel like spring around here. We planted our spinach and kale seeds last week and added three more blueberry bushes and a raspberry bush to our yard. My feeling is, if I'm going to pull weeds and do yard work, I better get to eat something afterward. The daffodils are starting to pop up too which makes me feel so cheery. We've had some lunches at our picnic table and made more trips to the park. And then the rain has encouraged some tea and cuddling up to read.
Our buddies the Thielmans came up for a visit last weekend. Their little gal is almost one and Quinn loved bringing her toys and trying to hold her hand as she practiced her walking. My dear friend Mary visited yesterday for a nice ladies lunch out and it was so good to catch up with her. We had Matt and Holly over this weekend too. They are sweet to Quinn and humor her every request. I hope Quinn will always remember her quartet bedtime serenade of "Deep in the Hundred Acre Wood". And we've just enjoyed some good fellowship with our home group and at church lately.
My mom came up for a visit on Friday which is always a treat. She took Shinobi with her when she left so we don't have to worry about him when labor starts. And so I can actually get the house clean. At dinner, Quinn said, "Nana, I don't want you to take my doggie." and we reviewed that he was just going to have a sleepover party with Nana and Boppa until baby brother was born. Then, when he got in the car and my mom started driving away, Quinn burst into tears and started wailing, "I miss my doggie!" I totally started crying too, it was so sweet. It took a while to calm her down and until mid-morning Saturday she kept saying, "I miss Shobi". I'm glad to know she loves him so much.
The home visit went well and we were able to go to the Children's Museum for a birth center potluck. The midwives are totally celebrities to Quinn. She loved having them at our house and seeing them out in public.
This is possibly the last photo of us as a family of four. Crazy!
Ah, wedding weekends. Our friends Matt and Holly (who Quinn talks about constantly) got married on Sunday. Jonathan was a groomsman, so Friday night he went the bachelor party in Portland. Another groomsman stayed at our house that night and then all the Portlanders carpooled to Corvallis Saturday. The rehearsal was at the best man's house. They have a beautiful backyard and garden. We all went to dinner and then Quinn and I stayed at my college friend Sara's new house. Quinn thought Sara's kids were pretty cool. We met with my dear friend Mary and her son for breakfast Sunday morning, had tea at my friend Kendra's house (while Quinn had a quick nap) and then zipped over to the wedding.
It was a very sweet wedding. We're so happy for Matt and Holly!
After the wedding, we grabbed dinner with some friends and then stayed at the Albers' house. Quinn thinks their daughter is the best. First thing in the morning Quinn wanted to go find her to play.
Monday was my birthday so we went out for breakfast and wandered around Corvallis. It was so fun to see old faces and places. I loved getting to catch up with old friends. But I love returning to our house. There were blueberries and veggies waiting for us, and a giant dahlia welcoming us home. We went to our favorite restaurant for dinner and stuffed ourselves and ended the evening at the park, as usual. After late nights and short naps, Quinn was ready to crash, as were we. Lots of living this weekend. A great birthday. I couldn't ask for better. God's been spoiling me for 29 years running.
Lots of garden babies, woo hoo!
Clockwise from top left: bell pepper, spaghetti squash, blueberries, green beans
This pretty girl trying to do pull-ups.
A pool party in our backyard. And Quinn is having her first night without me (yeah, I'm that mom) and playing with Nana and Boppa while Jonathan and I head to the coast for our Anniversary. Oh, summer.
June has been a busy month for us. I've been spending any free moments doing a big bookkeeping project. But aside from that, we've been having a lot of fun.
Jonathan did the Tough Mudder with some friends two weekends ago. It was like recess for him, he had a blast. Eleven miles of running over rough, hilly terrain and a bunch of challenging obstacles. All the training totally paid off and he's already excited to do it again next year. So proud of him!
We went to Black Butte last weekend with Jonathan's side of the family. We had a great time. Quinn loved all the attention and practicing everyone's names. Plus, we went to the pool and playground which are always a hit. She liked sweeping the floor a lot. After Jonathan's dad took a group photo with his camera on the tripod, Quinn started pretending the broom was a tripod leaned against the wall and the dustpan hooked onto the handle was a camera. She'd walk up to the broom, push a small circle on the dustpan, then back up and pose and say, "cheese!"
Quinn's imagination is starting to show a lot. She likes to get out the travel changing pad and change her stuffed animals' diapers. She pretends to be Jonathan getting ready for work with a badge necklace, lunch bag, and phone. She has her stuffed animals do whatever learning or art project I had her do earlier in the day. She pretends a guitar puzzle piece is a guitar. And tons more. She's also making lots of connections with books that we read. When she saw the tuba puzzle piece she remembered the Sergeant Murphy book. When someone sneezes, she references a joke from a Little Critter book. When something was heavy she remembered the duck book. And any time we stop at a red light she mentions Go Dog, Go! And many more examples of this too. It's amazing to see her learning to make sense of her world!
Here are some photos from Black Butte taken by my lovely sister-in-law. And also an update photo of the garden. A couple weeks ago the spinach finished producing so I put in some basil in its place. From left to right we have tomatoes, green beans, basil, kale, zucchini, spaghetti squash, and nasturtium all around.
It was a nice weekend. Saturday we discovered a secret hiking path through our neighborhood to a park we like. It's so nice to be walking distance from so many parks! We also ate at our favorite restaurant.
Sunday was a great sermon at church followed by some parties. We went to a first birthday party for a friend's daughter that ended up being somewhat of a college reunion. It was fun to see so many OSU toddlers and babies zooming around. Sunday night we hosted an ice cream party at our house (I completely copied the idea from this blog) and it was so fun! I tested out a homemade mint chip recipe when Boo and Dennis were here using mint picked fresh from our meadow. It was delicious, so I knew I had to share it at the party too. We had two batches of mint chip, a bunch of store bought vanilla, and guests brought their favorite toppings. The kids all played nicely and the adults were all chatting even though it was a bit of a random assortment of attendees. Quinn enjoyed naming everyone she recognized, playing catch, and drawing with chalk. I think these Sundae Sundays are going to become a tradition.
On a gardening note to myself, I pulled out the spinach because it wasn't producing much anymore and Quinn and I planted pumpkin seeds today. She's really into this gardening book and wanted to plant seeds "like Max".
The rain this week has been a blessing. I feel like a master gardener even though I haven't done anything.
We are still eating lots of spinach and this week have been able to start harvesting kale. My second row of green beans has sprouted and the tomato plant has two flowers. I have five dahlias emerging from the ground now and a bunch of other doubtful plants are starting to look more promising. Even the meadow has a ton of sprouts, some of which may be weeds, but I'm really excited to see how it grows. The peonies are exploding so I have a continuous fluffy bouquet in the house to remind me of my wedding day. I'm also excited about the addition of some hostas. I had hosta leaves in my wedding bouquet. My great grandmother grew hostas in her yard and gave cuttings from them to many of her sixteen children for their yards. My dad was visiting my grandparents in Canada last week and brought me home some hosta cuttings from my grandma's plant. I hope I can keep them healthy!
It was also nice to have some quality indoor time with Quinn. It's easy to spend tons of time at the park running around with the nice weather. She's starting to like to do art projects, play dress up, and use her imagination. It was really fun to just play with her instead of cramming our days full of outings. We had so many comical little conversations this week.
This week marked the end of moms group at church and home group until Fall. That went fast. We have cake club tomorrow and I get to have a moms day out on Sunday with the neighbor ladies. Woohoo! And as a random close to this post, here's a really challenging article.
A pretty good week I'd say. I'm still kind of in shock at all the sun we've had. It's boggling my mind that our rain barrel is running low from having to water plants already. I've managed to keep everything alive still though, which I'm shocked about as well. The newest growth is one dahlia sprout emerging from the soil and a lot of tiny sprouts in our future meadow. They could be weed sprouts I suppose, but I'm hoping they are flowers.
Quinn sported some OSU gear this week.
She was mowing the lawn "like daddy". I want to go on the record as saying that though Quinn has more opportunities for attending Duck events and receives more Duck paraphernalia as gifts, we will let her make up her own mind about her college preferences :). We both truly support both schools. This OSU cheer dress was a gift and is getting some wear now that it fits. And she currently enjoys watching a "ball show" played by a wide variety of teams. Though, she already points out the "O" when she sees it.
I celebrated my 22nd "born again" birthday on Wednesday. What a mercy to have been held in the Lord's grip this long!
Today we went to the pool. I couldn't get a photo because Quinn was too excited to start swimming. Our neighbors went down the giant slide and I thought Quinn wouldn't want to. She went down it last Summer during swim lessons and was silent, didn't laugh or cry. But she wanted to try it today. As soon as we got to the bottom she started saying, "more more!" And she wants to sit on the bench at the table now to eat instead of her high chair. So grown up!
We have the Canada ski trip film festival at our house this weekend. And lots of yard work as well. Enjoy the sun everyone!
I never anticipated gardening would be so exhilarating. I was beginning to lose hope in all the seeds I planted recently. Then, all of a sudden, pop! I have tons of sprouts that just pushed their little heads through the soil. As of this morning, I now have 12 sunflowers, 9 green beans, 7 nasturtiums, 2 zucchini, and 2 spaghetti squash sprouts. I just keep peeking at them and smiling. My new favorite word of Quinn's if flower, pronounced "flowf". She likes to walk around with empty seed packets and her watering can.
My sister came up for a visit this weekend. It was so good to be with her and watch her play with Quinn.
Also this weekend we got a free rustic old handmade wooden table and benches off of Craigslist. Once we get it tidied up, I'm anticipating a lot of dining al fresco in the months ahead.
Well, since my last post we've had some playdates, some visitors, moms group, more spinach salads, and lots of time outdoors in our yard and at parks.
My husband is so nice to me. I seem to get ideas in my head that I just have to do. And Jonathan is so sweet for helping me complete these wild projects. For example, there is a stretch of land, maybe 10' by 50', that is technically not our property, but it affects our yard a lot. It was full of years worth of old giant branches, blackberry bushes, and the most giant dandelions I have ever seen in my entire life. If there was such a thing as a dandelion museum, these would be the main exhibit. We're talking two foot diameter. Well, I got it into my head that if we could clear up the debris and dig up the blackberries, maybe we could use our friend's rototiller to get it into good shape. I was hoping to fill it with native wildflowers that Quinn and her buddies could enjoy in the future. I started gathering the branches bit by bit during naptime. I think Jonathan could see by my dedication that I wasn't going to give up on this dream. This past Saturday, he agreed to do a 15 minute yardwork "sprint" with me to finish clearing the branches. Well, two hours later, we'd cleared over half of the land! We were shocked at how different it looked. We were kicking ourselves for not getting before pictures. And it turns out giant dandelions are a bit easier to pull than normal ones. On Sunday, we finished digging everything out during Quinn's nap again. We filled our bin and two of our neighbors' bins with debris. Then I planted tons of wildflower seeds. I'm hoping they'll start sprouting quickly.
Our first harvest!
And it made quite a tasty salad.
Quinn likes picking all the "grapes" off of the grape hyacinths. And she helped me sow some sunflower seeds.
Some household updates on this Spring Friday afternoon.
Garden: I now have over 60 spinach sprouts and 9 kale sprouts. I'm still kind of in shock. The next task will be to thin the spinach once I can see which sprouts are the best.
Toddler Talk: Quinn has some new words. My favorite one to hear is "salsa", it's heart-melting. She also says suit, skirt, slide, poop, big blue boat (a song), vroom, boy, bus, and Miles (the neighbor boy). And she consistently makes the animal sounds for dog, lion, bird, cow, duck, and horse.
Bacteria: Okay, that probably sounds nasty. But there are updates! I successfully made some yogurt in the crockpot the other day. We go through it so fast around here and it's such a simple way to save some moolah. Also, I've been making water kefir for almost a year now and the grains multiplied enough to share with my mother-in-law and neighbors. It's nice to have such a frugal probiotic around to add to smoothies or just drink plain. Also, now that the weather is warmer, I'm going to get some sourdough going again. My sourdough starter didn't survive the move back in 2011 and I've been missing it ever since.
Happy Weekend!
These two rascals love watching for buses and waiting for daddy.
I have spinach sprouts! This morning when we were playing outside, I spotted four little baby sprouts reaching for the sun. Or else they are four baby weeds in a straight line. Then while Quinn was napping I went outside again and spotted six sprouts! Now if I can just keep them alive...
Update: Four hours later there are now thirteen sprouts! Must have been a good spinach day.
And this little munchkin has begun to play dress up. She frequently gets a running tank top out of my dresser and wears it around like a dress. If I had to guess, I'd thinking she was being a wizard with a rock and a pen wand shouting a spell. But I don't think she knows about wizards, so I really can't be sure.
I have a seventeen-month-old! Quinn wants to be my helper throughout the day. Of all her words, I think her favorite is "Upf!" lately. She wants up on the counter to help make smoothies (including a blender sound impression).
She helps me wipe the table after meals. She loads clean diapers into her wagon and takes them to her room to put away. She oversees garden construction.
And she rocks shoes to sleep. That's a pretty important developmental milestone right? I frequently find her in our closet or by the front door cradling a shoe in her arms, rocking it back forth and saying, "shh, shh." No clue.
We spent last week in Eugene visiting family while Jonathan was gone for work. Quinn was lovingly played with, fed, read to, and doted upon. We love our Eugene trips.
Jonathan built us a raised bed garden on his birthday weekend. (We also went out to pizza with some friends, so it wasn't all hard work.) What an awesome man! The finished product is beautiful. I'm nervous about the whole gardening thing though. I am quite the plant killer. But we had some green thumb friends over for a garden consultation a couple weeks ago so I think I'm ready. Today I put my spinach and kale seeds into the soil. Here we go!
