This morning, in the hallway, Joel bursts into tears after accidentally biting his finger (being two is rough in terms of unintentional self injury). Phoebe, laying on the carpeted floor is startled by the sudden loud noise of his crying and begins to slowly push her bottom lip into a pout - it's so sad to watch but it's also one of those cute baby things that makes you smile. Joel, being comforted by Mark notices that Phoebe is beginning to cry and mumbles some muffled words through his own tears, and runs to the living room. He grabs Phoebe's little cat doll (he always seems to keep track of exactly where it is), and as he runs back I finally understand what he was saying - "Phoebe's doll! Phoebe's doll!" he shouts repeatedly until he lays it down next to her and then collapses again into Mark to continue his cry. Mark and I "awwwwww!" to each other and cheer him on for his empathy. The cherry on top to this moment was Zoë, who heard the commotion and also came running with a small stuffed McDonald's happy meal toy that Joel has recently grown attached to in order to help comfort him.

5 Things I Hope My Children Learn From Growing A Vegetable Garden

This post was originally published by Parent.co. You can find the entire version here.

Growing up in Michigan, my mom had a vegetable garden that she grew just adjacent to our back porch. I remember her excitement at bringing in lettuce leaves, making rhubarb bread, and trying to recover from spying the occasional slithering garden snake.

I don’t remember getting involved in the gardening process much, other than eating (and probably complaining about eating) the vegetables and fruits that were grown there, but now – deep into parenthood myself – I appreciate much more the effort involved in raising young children and trying to keep plants alive and growing, too.

I started a garden in our California backyard when my first child was nearly one year old with the simple intention of trying to save a little money by growing some of our own food. As we added another child to our family, my commitment to gardening waned because, well, children. But we are finally coming to the surface for air again this growing season with a 3-and-a-half-year-old and a one-and-a-half-year-old, and I’m trying to approach it with new intentions as I get my children involved.

Here’s what I hope to show them without directly telling them:

1 | Good things take time.

It’s been roughly 80 days since our first tomato plants were planted earlier this spring. We have harvested four tomatoes so far, each on separate days, two of which were bite-­size cherry tomatoes. The anticipation of a ripened tomato has been hard for my daughter when I tell her they aren’t quite ready yet, especially when I’ve enticed her outside with, “Let’s check and see if the tomatoes are ready!”

However, the few times we have taken a ripe one off the vine, sliced it, sprinkled it with a little salt, and bitten into it have been moments worth the wait. We’ve even convinced her to categorize tomatoes as a “dessert” item. (Relax… she’s known about chocolate for years.)...

Head over to Parent.co to read the rest of this post. Thanks!

world peace

We spent a couple days with Mark's family in Hocking Hills, exploring lots of beautiful rock formations and overhangs, most involving crossing paths with other families of explorers. Zoe has started to point out whenever she sees a "beebee" (baby), and applies the term liberally from newborns to third graders. In order to not incite the wrath of the younger elementary set who I imagine would prefer *not* to be referred to as "beebees", I started to encourage her to refer to kids we see as "friends". On one such hike, she started waving and saying bye bye to just about anyone and everything we crossed paths with on our way back (people, ferns, millipedes), giving a special "bye-bye, fren" to the people we saw. Today, we stopped by a playground where a whole slew of kids on a field trip were enjoying a lunch break recess. We left after only a few minutes on the swing, and on our way back to the car she would turn around about every five steps, wave, and say "bye bye, fren" to the new friends we were leaving behind. Which, you know, means it takes forever to get to the car, but also gives you a little picture of maybe something related to world peace.