Our Wheels

I did my first shopping via Craig's List today. I bought a tag-along bike. For those of you with out children of about age five I will fill you in this...

is a tag-along bike. It is designed to attach to the parent bike and let the child, who is too big for the baby seat and too small to keep up reasonably well biking alone, ride. I would show you a picture of us riding on this bike but I am not that talented, so trust me, Alexa loves it. I looked at them in the bike shop the other day knowing that it was exactly what we needed to get out and about this summer and nearly passed out from sticker shock. The cost upwards of $179. Which for someone such as myself who bikes but not more than a leisurely ride here and there I figured I could have a whole new bike for that much. So I took a look at Craig's List and sure enough found one for sale in Burlington. The picture looked good and the ad said, "excellent condition, rarely used and even more rarely pedaled." I can appreciate parenting humor when I see it and more importantly I can relate. So it all worked out and for a mere fraction of the cost Alexa and I are zooming around. She was a bit nervous at first the first ten feet she spent yelling, "I'm too scared" over and over. Then she was quiet so I asked if she was OK. "It's kinda fun." Twenty more feet, "It's really fun." And there you have it. It does take some getting use to as she is still riding her bike with training wheels. It lurches every now and then and you have to be prepared to counter her moves, although she was getting better as we practiced more. Of course our riding meant Chloe has to dust off her bike and get rinding too.

A task she did quite well last week, but for some reason today claimed she was far too terrified to do. We accomplished it though after about an hour of tears, threats, isolation, and a lot of entertainment for the neighbors, she got on the bike and was riding up and down a (quiet, flat, straight) street near our house. After about an hour of riding (very willingly) she said, "Mommy this is really fun." I tell you people it is exhausting, however lest we loose our momentum we are heading back out tomorrow. Maybe we will even make it to the bike path.

Lexa's Lemonade

When we were in Arizona my sister Andrea taught Alexa how to make fresh squeezed lemonade. Alexa was amazed at how the juicer worked. Shew as even more amazed to know that we own one too. Since summer is now here Alexa is on a lemonade mission. When we were at the grocery store yesterday she wanted to make sure we picked up lemons so she could make lemonade. Here she is juicing away...

adding water,

and adding the sugar.

There you have it Lexa's Lemonade. Available only in my refrigerator.

Tough Day

Cabbie had his surgery to remove the growth on the back of his left leg yesterday. He was a good patient and came home a few hours later. I am sure that he thought the worst was over until today.

See there was the issue of licking, so now he sports the cone. Which in and of itself is bad enough except this...Cabbie loves to eat. He eats his twice a day 1/3 cup of food in about 30 seconds. Well, now... can't eat without someone holding his dish up. He can however drink without help. But struggling with his new head gear he keeps walking into chair legs and can't walk up the stairs without hitting it on each step. Thus requiring a bit of help. Poor guy. It is going to be a long 10 days until those stitches can come out. It is possible this could be more humiliating that Alexa making him play dress up.

Garden War

I enjoy my gardens. I love wandering through the gardening stores and picking out various plants and seeds. I don't often know or pay attention to the names of what plants I pick out I just like the size, color, shape, and pay attention to when they bloom. It is like a game for me to try to have something always in bloom. This year I got a really early start as I put in crocus bulbs last fall, so the first colors were up by April. I know it may seem odd to other people, but it is fun for me and I enjoy it. You can imagine my unhappiness when the cat from across the street started sitting in and eating my flowers. In my wanderings through the gardening section I had come across a perennial with tall spiky purple flowers that blooms all summer long. Perfect. I planted it along with some annuals on the right hand side of my flower garden out front. Without realizing it I had planted Cat's Mint. Which apparently is along the same line as catnip. See where this is going? The rather annoying cat across the street, who might I add replaced the other annoying cat that use to kill bats and birds and leave them in my yard, lays on the plant rolling around and munching everything around him. Take a look.

Notice the left side it very full and colorful while the right is bare and chomped? Yes, I am obsessive compulsive enough that this DRIVES ME CRAZY! He did some damage to the one in the backyard too.

Although you don't notice it as much until you get right up to the garden and you can see where he has sat, rolled, and munched.

In my quest to be rid of the local pest I went to the gardening store today and described my problem. The nice man showed me this. It is nothing toxic as I want to be free of the cat not destroy the dirt. It is made up of white pepper, cinnamon oil, and thyme oil. While I was there I also noticed a buy one get one free sale of their plant of the week- daises. Who can resist daisies? Not I, so I got two. My hope is that it will grow nice and tall and fill in all the stuff the cat has eaten. I also picked up some more zinnia seeds and sprinkled them all over and them topped the whole things off with the repellent. Fingers crossed the little bugger finds somewhere else to feed his addiction.

I added the other daisy in front of the other Cats' Mint in the back. Sprinkling more repellent there. The cat hasn't gotten to that one as badly but I didn't want to cut him off from one only to have him find the other. I also sprinkled some around the vegetables in hopes that it will keep other wee beasts out of there. Because look-

that is a sort of red strawberry under all my squirrel proof wiring.

Fourth of July... well OK it was the Third

Burlington celebrates their Fourth of July on the third. No one really seems to know the official reason for this. We all just figure it must be so that the smaller towns can have their fireworks on the fourth and not be dwarfed by Burlington's. It seems to make sense, and we all just go along with that. This was the first year in a wile that the girls and I have been in town for the celebration. We have been in Maine the last few years. Chloe tried to decorate herself for the occasion, but soon realized that look was more trouble than it was worth.We headed down to Battery Park first to take advantage of the free pony rides.
The we went down to Waterfront Park where they had lots of inflatable bouncy things for kids to play on. The lines were huge for some things, but the kids did a nice job of waiting and really the lines moved along pretty smoothly.

This is the only picture I have of Chloe on the obstacle course. She flew over things faster than I could get pictures.

If you look closely at the legs in the bouncy house you will see a purple dress with pink seahorses and a blue and white dress.

I didn't bother to take pictures of the fireworks. I have never figured out why people do that. They kind of loose the cool effect by not being directly under them. We had a good time, and minus a panic melt down by Chloe over having to use the port-a-potty (which resulted in yelling by me) all went well. After the grand finale of fireworks there were about three small ones that went off and Alexa said, "They must have found some crumbs." She is so cute.

Tooth Fairy

Alexa lost her first tooth today. It has been a little bit loose for a while but none of us expected it to come out so suddenly. In fact it came out so suddenly that Alexa swallowed it with her lunch. She was, to say the least, devastated. She could not stop crying. Alexa has been watching her sister lose teeth and get money from the Tooth Fairy for years with envy. She was so excited when she visited the dentist four months ago and he mentioned that he thought her bottom tooth was a little loose and would come out soon. She has been so patient in waiting for it. She was inconsolable. Chloe tried to write a letter for her to the tooth fairy explaining the situation.

Alexa then began to fret about the tooth inside her. I finally decided that a certain amount of deception was needed to help the situation. You see I had kept the first tooth that Chloe ever lost. I don't know why, but it just seemed like the kind of thing you are suppose to place in an envelope and tuck away, so that is what I did. So today I went upstairs and got that tooth out. I discretely tucked it into Alexa's napkin and we were able to "find" her tooth as we cleaned up for lunch.

You can probably see from the pictures that she had just been crying. She is so relieved to have something for the Tooth Fairy to come find tonight.

A Run

As the girls have gotten older it has become harder for me to get out and run. When they were really little I used the jogger. That worked pretty well for a couple of years even though I used it long after Chloe was really too big for it. The summer I started this blog (2009) I ran with both of them in it. The jogger plus both kids and assorted snacks meant I was pushing around 70 pounds of weight. It was a lot and about 4-5 miles was the limit for them and me when using it. Last summer I tried to get the kids to bike with me a few times while I ran, but neither of them (especially Alexa) was able to bike all that far and the pace was not very consistent to say the least. I also tried to have a sitter come a few mornings a week so I could get out to run, but that wasn't great either. It is hard to find someone and when you do it is about ten dollars and hour. Which gets rather steep if you want to go more than a few times a week. This year I am trying out a new idea. I am using the high school track to run on. It is really tedious for me. I can't think of much worse, save maybe running on a treadmill, than running around the track. It really don't have much choice though. If I want to get a run in and I assure you I am much more pleasant to be around if I have had my run. So for the past two days the girls and I have packed up some activities for them and headed over to the track. Today Alexa was used the long jump pit as a sand box. It worked rather well. She also brought as kick ball and kicked it around the field and into the various soccer and lacrosse nets that were set up.

Chloe settled herself in for a good read.
The high jump mat made a rather comfy place to settle in with a good book.

So far it seems to be working OK. I might even start to throw a few speed work outs in. Goodness knows I could use improve my times and it is an amazing track to run on.