been a few days!

Let's see, since the last time I updated, we took another cabin vacation, where Kaiden learned how to push himself forward with his feet! 

His cognitive skills with hearing are moving along nicely too.  Kaiden looks at me when I say his name, and responds to a few phrases.  "Give it to Mom", "Let's go eat", "Come to Mom", and of course the words he already recognizes - eat, drink, Lola.  I used to supplement words with signs, and now the signs are just supplements to words.  He will whip his little head around when he hears a noise, looking for the source.  My favorite though, is that when I say "come to Mom" while he's laying on his belly on the floor playing with toys, he will push himself up, and work his way over towards me, staying pushed up, indicating that he understands I want to pick him up.  I've been working with him in that I will not pick him up unless he pushes himself up first - or, if he's laying on his back or in a sitting position, he has to lift his arms up before I will pick him up.  He's got it down now!

Onto the topic of food . . . with Nick's help, we did 95% of the final garden harvest yesterday.  Everything got picked, cleaned, washed, and appropriately stored.  There's still one producing zucchini plant, two producing crookneck squash plants and a few 2nd crop radishes out there but everything else has been cleared and the space tilled for next summer.  The shallots went crazy this year after Nick transplanted them, so I gave away about half of them yesterday and planted some seed heads within the garden.  The shallot patch currently resides next to the garage, and if the seed heads take off in the garden, I'll move the rest of the patch over.  We had a volunteer raspberry bramble and grapevine show up this year and grow well, let's hope they stick around and start producing next year!

I tried a new recipe yesterday for a rutabaga/parsnip/maple syrup dish, modified from one I found on the internet.  Modified of course to remove the nightshade components.  It was very good, but next time I will change it further to suit my tastes with the addition of ingredients as well as slightly changing how it is cooked to get the desired texture.  A very rustic dish that was delicious served with my special turkey, and spiced pears for dessert.  Thanksgiving, anyone??