Sunday Drive

Some people take Sunday drives. We take Sunday crop-scouting/equipment moving trips. Yesterday we took an especially long drive down to see our crops on the Ohio River, with a very out of the way detour at one of our farms in the hopes that Kelly's missing wallet was in the tractor he'd been driving all day Friday. Thankfully, it was there! Also thankfully, Riley was totally up for a long drive and even took a 1 1/2 hr nap during it. Yay!

First stop...the tractor...to retrieve the missing wallet.

This tractor was the first tractor Kelly ever bought, so it sort of holds a special place in our hearts. And for that reason we are both oddly sentimental about it and we will probably own this tractor forever. :) Its a Ford TW-20. And before you get all impressed with my equipment knowledge...let me continue. The thing on the back is a chisel plow. I'm pretty sure. But I could be wrong. The piece of equipment next to it is um, some sort of tillage tool. Lets call it red tillage tool. I was going to take a picture of the field that had been plowed but I was afraid the little man in the truck would wake up if we were stopped too long :)

Next stop...fields on the Ohio River. Sorry, no river photos...they're close but not THAT close to the river. I should have taken a pic while we were driving along it...its quite impressive. At least to this northern Ohio native it is!

And here we are at our soybean field. Isn't it pretty?! And big?! Maybe not for some areas of the country...but for southern Ohio, this is a nice sized field.

Kelly and Henry scouting the beans. By the way, these are double crop beans. Hence the fact that they're still green this time of year! Most soybeans are dropping their leaves and drying out at this time of year so that they can be harvested soon. But these beans were planted in oh, say July or so. This field was home to a crop of sweet corn for the first part of the growing season. Yum!! Not our sweet corn though. A friend of ours from college is a vegetable farmer (talk about a stressful occupation!) and we sublease his fields from him after he harvests the sweet corn. And bonus, we get all the sweet corn we can pick for free before we till it up! Yes, our freezer is full of frozen sweet corn :)



Henry loves to run through fields. This is the picture of a happy dog. Also, a fast-moving dog...get out of his way!


This was somebody's barn once. Who knows whose it was...who knows what it was used for. We had our..um..whatever piece of equipment we came to get (yes, I forgot already-there is a reason I'm not the actual farmer in this operation...come to think of it, maybe THAT was the chisel plow and the thing in the first picture was something else. Hey, just because you have a degree in agriculture doesn't mean you have to know anything about equipment)...anyway...we had our "implement" parked next to this barn. If I was brave (or stupid maybe?) and if I didn't have a baby with me...I would have wandered around a bit more and explored. Am I the only one fascinated by old abandoned barns and houses? I wish I could go back in time sometimes and see who used it, who lived there...what it was like in its prime. This was probably a huge barn at the time it was used. Did they milk cows here? Probably..it seems most old barns were dairies at one time. Did kids run in and out of that doorway there? What kind of family owned it? Where was the house that went with this barn? What happened that made them just abandon it? That barn was probably somebody's pride and joy at one time...how would they feel about its overgrown and ignored state now? Seems sad to me. Sort of fit with the overcast rainy day.

Then my camera battery started to die and the "implement" was hooked up to the truck and it was time to head home. We made it home with minimal complaints from the little man in the backseat and had a nice relaxing family Sunday. Oh....with successful eating of both cereal and bananas (by the baby. Me, I'm not so into rice cereal and pureed bananas, believe it or not.) :)

Cereal Success!!!!

So maybe all I needed to do was decide I wasn't going to stress about it. Because we took a couple days off from the cereal attempts...and when we tried again last night? Success! As in, he ate the entire bowl of it with minimal gagging! Ok, so I have no idea how much was in the bowl...a tablespoon? Two? Who knows...I just randomly threw some in and didn't pay that much attention b/c I figured he wouldn't eat it anyway. Little did I know. We tried bananas too (I made a little bowl of them thinking if he didn't eat the cereal, we'd try something with more taste)...and while he didn't gag on them too badly (they were a little thicker than the rice cereal but still super thin for bananas) he was not a big fan of the taste. I have a bunch of very ripe bananas so we'll keep trying for a couple of days and see if the taste grows on him. Hopefully we have a successful rice cereal experience again tonight!! Fingers crossed!

In other, sad, news....our little black barn kitty was hit on the road sometime last night. I happened to look towards the road this morning as I was coming out the door and saw her in the road :( I'm so sad about this. Sure, she was "just" a barn cat, and we hadn't even had her all that long-only about 3 months, but she was so friendly and sweet. Here's a picture of her from Riley's baptism. She loved to sit in the gutters along the edge of our porch. :) She fit perfectly and she could "hide" from Henry that way. The poor girl had broken her leg a few weeks ago, who knows how-I think she was a bit of a daredevil, I've found her pretty high up in our backyard tree before and she liked to climb the screens on the windows too- but she had recovered quite quickly and just yesterday was running around the backyard and coming out to play with Riley and me. I hope her little grey sister sticks around....I'm afraid she'll be lonely but I hope she'll be okay by herself in the barn. I hate living on a busy state route :( This is why we didn't have barn cats for so long....poor little black kitty (yes, that was her name, I'm not creative). She will be missed.

Adventures in Solids

Solids. Well.....Day 1 of cereal went great!

Getting ready. No, Riley, you need to keep your hands away from your mouth. Ok fine, I'll just hold them. Hey look Daddy's "helping" too...you know...by watching. Yep. Daddies are always good at that kind of helping, aren't they? :) I guess its moral support? Right.




Um, Mom? What is this stuff?



Hey, that was fun!
And that right there was the most successful cereal adventure we've had to date. By the way, that one was 2 weeks ago. And he ate the entire bowl (which granted, was like half a tablespoon or something, but still). Every attempt since then has resulted in gagging and if we're lucky, swallowing a couple spoonfuls. Only after gagging first of course. When I described the issue to the pediatrician at his 6 mo appointment, she said it sounds like he just has a strong gag reflex. No way...you think? :) But she did suggest to get a finger gum brusher thing and brush his gums, particularly in the back, to try to desensitize his gag reflex. So I'm going to try that, but really I'm sort of thinking he's just not ready for solids yet. I think he still has a bit of that tongue thrust reflex going on, where anything that gets in his mouth gets pushed back out. He's growing just fine still, so we're giving the solids a rest for a bit and we'll try again say, every few days or so. In the meantime, I'm doing my best not to listen to all the "well-meaning" people who say "what?! he's not on solids yet?! But he's so small! He needs more food! You have to get that boy to eat solids!!" Whatever. He's growing fine and guess what people...for the amount of solids he'd take in right now, he's going to get a lot more calories and nutrition from nursing than from a couple tablespoons of oatmeal and a fruit puree (ha, like I could get him to eat all that at once! I wish!) anyway so keep your advice to yourself thanks. Unless you actually have useful advice on how to get him to learn to eat...I don't want to hear it. And "put it in his bottle" is not useful. That's not going to achieve anything...he's not going to learn to eat that way.

Stats! 6 month appt was last week. 14 lbs, 7 oz and 25 1/2 inches long! Still my little guy but he's growing!! Still right on track and meeting all his developmental milestones, so YAY! Speaking of....check out my big sitting up guy!

Still needs a boppy or pillows around him to lean on, but he's doing so great! And he LOVES to sit. So much, that he refuses to lay down to be rocked to sleep anymore. Yep, he will only fall asleep sitting up in your lap now. Which is hilarious by the way, because if he doesn't lean his head against you, he starts doing the head-bob thing when he is falling asleep and you have to put his little head against you so he doesn't keep doing it. Poor guy!

Also...welcome fall!! My favorite season is here! Next week is Farm Science Review....basically a huge outdoor farm trade show. Takes an entire day to see it all, but its like a sort of unofficial college reunion, as we always see plenty of people we went to school with and are stopping every 50 yards or so to talk to someone. Hmm...maybe that's why it actually takes so long? Either way, this will be Riley's first FSR. I think he'll love it, as so far he's a big fan of any "busy events"-fairs, weddings, parties, etc. And, we get to have the stroller storage advantage. Am I the only one that is happy to take a stroller to places because it means I have somewhere to stash more stuff? Hmm...might be chilly, better take a jacket but I don't want to carry it-put it in the stroller! I'm thirsty...lets grab a drink...hey, cupholders in the stroller! One of the hidden benefits to being a parent. :)