Lately, I’ve been discovering what amazing things can be accomplished when I have two hands free and several hours at home.
Rosie’s “transition”:/news/2008/rosies-big-transition/ to crib-napping has been going quite well — so well, in fact, that Lucy and I find ourselves stuck at home a lot more than in the past, waiting for Rosie to wake up. But with a little forethought and planning, we’ve been enjoying some Mama-and-Lucy activities that we’ve never delved into before — like gardening!
Each year I aim to plant an assortment of annuals to brighten up our yards and supplement our diets, but this year I had pretty much given up on the idea. When could I possibly get the opportunity to garden when I was having trouble finding time just to fold the laundry? I was glad for the “perennials”:/news/2008/youre-our-little-flower/ that had already sprung up but held little hope for much else.
Rosie, however, has opened up new opportunities for us, by providing us with some excellent chunks of time for new planting adventures. Her trend of taking a 2-3 hour nap almost every day is a transition not just for her, but for Lucy and me, too. (We keep saying it: this is the proverbial “easy baby” we’ve always heard of but never really believed existed.)
Early in the week, the girls and I seized one of our short windows of “everybody’s awake!” time and headed out to our local “Home Depot”:http://homedepot.com/, where we bought a conservative number of impatiens, ageratum, and petunias. Later that day, Lucy and I had our chance to clean up some weeds and plant these beauties in our garden. Lucy had fun being an active participant in the project (see video, below), and Mama had fun training her gardening apprentice. We finished our planting project that day, and even went to Home Depot for a second round later in the week, when we planted geraniums, marigolds, basil, and a cucumber plant (with some extra help on those from Grammie & Grandpa Boyd).
One treasured moment from that first day of gardening: Lucy, standing next to me while I knelt and dug in the dirt, patted me gently on the back and said, “What a sweet Mama!” I’m willing to do lots of gardening with that kind of affirmation!
She’s so adorable! Hopefully the fact that she helped plant will keep her from later ripping them up. My kids seem to enjoy “helping” by picking green tomatoes, and pulling lilies out of the ground. I love that she mentioned her hands being messy!
You are a sweet mama.