Garden glory

Summer is when Hadley gets all her vitamins. D and E from the sun, C and B from all the fruit and vegetables.

She has always been more interested in fresh harvest than store-bought or straight-from-the-fridge produce. In this I think she is exhibiting her instinctual gatherer self, who picks what she needs and lets the rest grow. Sadly we need to pick it all or it will freeze in a couple of months.

The last two nights Hadley ate almost her entire dinner while prancing through the back garden:

purple runner beans
snap peas
blackberries
strawberries
kale
carrots
parsnip
nasturtium

This is why our garden is so haphazard and jam-packed. It's hard to specialise when there's so much variety to munch on!

Jump in the Water

I'm trying to turn Hadley into a water baby. I grew up with a fear of water, swimming, pools, and I have never really lost that. I avoid beaches whenever I can. It comes, ironically, from forced swimming lessons. So I am acutely aware that if I push it on her, Hadley could react the same way.

But so far she loves it. I mean, to a point. She's not going off diving boards or anything. But nor would i want her to right now. She just loves to splash and run and get her feet wet. Really, it's almost her favourite thing to do in the world. We're lucky to live in an oceanside town, where she can just tear up and down the beach in her birthday suit and scream at the top of her lungs.

I'm even beginning to loosen up a bit, too. This fall I plan on re-taking swimming lessons while Alicia and Hadley wade in the kids area. Maybe one day I'll actually be able to teach my daughter how to do the front crawl.