It's really amazing to see Ryle and Gray interact. Ryle does love his little brother and Gray's eyes light up when he sees Ryle. He will follow him with his eyes and is very interested in what he is up to. The new big thing for Ryle is to help bathe Gray. He assists in diaper removal, disposal, belly rubbing and rinsing. He also loves to try to "carry" Gray.
Gray sits up mostly on his own, he still pitches over occasionally, but more often than not he stays upright. He never lets me eat a hot meal and does not appear to like anything green (the exact opposite of his brother now.). Gray loves breakfast of single grain oatmeal cereal and fruit. Lunch is single grain rice cereal and an orange vegetable (carrots, sweet potatoes, squash -- not as much as carrots, but he will eat them). Dinner is usually an experiment of other foods to see what he will and will not eat. When he sees us sitting down to eat he will start his protest until he gets his food. He's trying so hard to be just like his big brother!
He is now fully suffering from separation anxiety. If I leave the room (or just his eyesight) he will protest. And I swear he says "momma". I'm breaking the food rules a bit with him though. Some nights he will demand to try what we are eating. He really likes mini bits of beef and chicken and loves licking nectarines.
Hmmm.... what can we say about Ryle. He comes up with the best sayings! Today he asked me across the table "so, are you coming or what?" I couldn't figure out where we might be going, but it was funny none the less.
Why walk when you can run? Apparently Ryle has taken this to heart. His favorite thing is to race either me or Daddy. Today he held on to my sweater and said he was my caboose, then grabbed Daddy's hand and called him his freight car. He definitely loves his trains!
He likes to try to match things, and if you aren't paying attention to him, he will try to fool you...
I love that Ryle loves the garden. Today he was excited to eat bok choy straight from the garden, no rinsing or cooking required. Good thing they were higher leaves and we are growing organic! I can't keep up with Ryle and his newly acquired radish habit. He loves going out and finding out which radish he can pull and eating them as soon as they get a rinse. Every container available has some radishes tucked around the main plant just waiting to be ready for Ryle to eat.
We haven't harvested swiss chard in a while, so when we finally get around to it, it should be quite a haul. It's hard to find things that will survive the heat. It hasn't even gotten truly hot here yet and most things are already bolting. Spinach, bok choy, some asian greens, and the arugula will have to wait until fall to get replanted. The tomato plants are loaded, the Fairy Tale eggplant has 3 medium sized eggplants and lots of babies, our cucumbers are getting bigger, the zucchini and round squash are producing, our Scarlet Runner beans are hopefully going to start climbing up the trellis soon, the Trionfo Violetto have just broken ground (let's see if the darn birds leave them alone!), and Royal Burgundy bush beans are sprouting in a container. Now let's see if we can actually grow any Edamame! We have two seedlings from the first batch we planted, yes, 2 germinated out of about 20.... and the second batch were eaten by birds... if we manage to grown any, they better be worth the heart ache.
Our biggest haul so far was a whopping 2 pounds 9 oz of bok choy! We've had lots of mini harvest of bok choy, swiss chard, salad greens, peas, tomatoes, etc but nothing like this bok choy harvest. Ryle's favorite harvest was the cauliflower. While it was fun to grow and looked pretty, I do not think this will be in the garden again for a while. At least until I get a better understanding of what I am doing out there! We had lots of cabbage worms who loved to eat the leaves (and wig me out) and some smaller bug that made the cauliflower head it's home. I definitely do not like the buggy/wormy part of gardening! Cabbage worms are gross, cutworms are gross and even though worms are so good for the soil, I am usually startled when I find them as I am amending the soil.
