Gardener Conall

Conall has another garden this year. He got a gift of money from Aunt Jackie and Uncle Bill for Easter. He wanted to use the money to buy plants for this year's garden, and Caitlin decided to do the same with her gift. They bought Roma tomatoes, heirloom tomatoes (Caitlin picked out a "pink" tomato plant), grape tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, a bell pepper plant, a strawberry plant, a watermelon plant, two basil plants, some marigolds and a jalapeno plant (for Po Po and Pop Pop).
We also had some seeds for green beans, cucumbers, and flowers. We had already started the garden off with a rosemary plant. As always with Conall's plants, the plants are flourishing. They are healthy and he has at least 10 green tomatoes, if not more. The kids have already eaten about 6 strawberries and there are more growing. I am interested to see if we actually get a watermelon from our plant!

Conall showing his garden off to the neighbor boy

Squeakers

Conall's newest caterpillar "Squeakers" which is really a tomato hornworm.

Staying Put -- Update on Our Week

We've just been staying put this weekend, trying to get ready for the next week. Caitlin has puked two nights out of the last week, which is a lot, considering she didn't puke at all for about a month and a half. The last two have been pretty bad and now that we know to be looking, she has shown signs that she has a bad headache, too. Hopefully this one will be a short cycle and we can recover quickly from it.

I strained something in my neck or shoulder this last week. I did it doing something the first night Caitlin puked so bad, something I did while cleaning, cleaning her or holding her while she puked. I spent 2-3 nights and days this week trying to get it back to normal. It is better, but threatens to tighten back up on me anytime I feel stressed.

Aunt Amy came over yesterday, and although the weather was nice, we stayed inside and let the kids stamp and color and mommy make a card. Notice I said "a" card -- the kids kept us so busy I only got one made. I have some cute pictures of Caitlin stamping with Aunt Amy that I'll post soon.

Conall also has a new caterpillar -- a tomato horn worm -- that Aunt Amy found devouring her tomato plant. He has named it Squeaker and is feeding it cherry tomatoes.

Conall had a great first week at school. He got a "green card" every day. His teacher uses a system of green, yellow, orange, and red cards for behavior. If he gets 5 green cubes (cards on his chart) in a row, he gets to pick something from the teacher's treasure chest. He can tell you every kid in the class who got something other than green and what each one did to get it! He is quite the little enforcer. We've gotten a lot of laughs out of this.

Hopefully, we can get Caitlin back on track this week and not be so worn out and do more fun things in the coming week.

'Matoes

These are tomatoes (Caitlin calls them 'matoes) from Conall's garden. He is so proud of them!