Corporate (ir)Responsibility

So it was bloody McHappy Day today. Why 'bloody'? Isn't it nice that McDonald's is doing something nice and responsible, contributing to the community, helping sick kids?
This, people, is called 'corporate responsibility', and if you think 'aww, good for them' when you hear about something like that, then it's worked a treat on you.
Woohoo, yay for them, they hoped to raise $2 million for Ronald McDonald House today, by donating $1 from every Big Mac sold. $2 million.

For the entire year, McDonald's said global same-store sales increased 5.7%, while its sales and operating income reached record highs of $21.6 billion and $4.4 billion, respectively.

Compared to that, $2 million is nothing. A smokescreen. If less than a third of the amount of the price of one burger for one day can add up to $2 million, then what would happen if they donated the entire price of that burger from that one day? Or what about more than one day?
But no, $2 million sounds like a lovely big number, and the sheeple are suitably impressed at how kind and generous McDonalds is. How could I be so cynical? They're helping the sick kiddies!!
And, of course, in the meantime, they get on with the business of selling horrible crap to the sheeple, which makes them fat, unhealthy and sick.

And then there's the Mt Franklin breast cancer campaign- breast cancer, of course, being a fashionable 'good cause' these days. Buy Mt Franklin bottled water to help raise awareness of breast cancer! Because more toxic crappy plastic landfill is just what we need to reduce the incidence of cancer!

I could continue, but I have a sick, unhappy baby to take to bed. Here's hoping we both get some sleep.

Baby Potatoes...

Just a quick one, but I had to record our very first potato harvest!
They were planted on August 16th, four little seed potatoes using the garbage bin method. Due to attack by evil 28 spot ladybirds, the first two bins aren't looking too happy anymore- the leaves are all droopy, chomped and some are a bit yellow... anyway, impatient DH decided it was time to empty out the first bin ("it'll be an experiment") to see what progress had been made.
Here are the results...
...about 500g worth of baby sebago potatoes. They were all down the bottom, growing off the original root system- none had grown off the stems which had been covered in the second layer of dirt and mulch.
So at least we know that there are some growing down there! The rest of the bins will be left until the leaves etc completely die off, so hopefully a slightly larger yield from them!

It's Getting Closer...

...to when Malachi will start preschool. We went for the enrolment visit today, filled out paperwork and chatted to the director, Liz, who I really do think does an excellent job. She can be a little scary (intimidating) if you don't know her, but I did some casual work at the preschool while I was pregnant with Malachi, and DH's daughter Elizabeth went there for a little while when she lived with us.
She's very professional- didn't bat an eyelid when I said I was pagan (she invited me to provide the teachers with info about celebrating the seasonal festivals that they could share with the children) or when I said Malachi wasn't vaxxed, and she said that she totally agreed and supported me not wanting Malachi to have any chemical additives or sugary crap (ie when other parents bring in birthday cakes), or when I said I was intending to homeschool.
Malachi's vaxxed til 12 months, and after that I did my research and decided I didn't want him having any more. So really, the only one he's 'missed' is the chicken pox at 18 months. Liz said (as she has to) that if there's an outbreak of anything he's not vaxxed against, he'd be excluded til it was over. And then she said that chicken pox was the most likely one to happen, and that "it'll go through all the immunised children anyway", and thus proved my point that there's NO point in injecting chemicals into our kids, to 'immunise' them against a disease that they're gonna get anyway!
So I'm feeling more confident again about the whole preschool thing. For the rest of the year, we're going to go for a play there once a week, so my beautiful boy can feel confident and safe in the space when it's time for him to be there without me.
And he's very excited about it!

And just for the sake of it, a pic of my future babywearing man:

Save the Strawberries! (And the Carrot Harvest)

I've tried to keep the dog out of the vegie garden, semi-successfully, but the slaters are still attacking the strawberries, so that out of the 50 plants out the back, we've gotten maybe three berries, and from the 10 plants out the front (in pots), we've gotten at least six.
SO! The plan is... dig up and pot all the strawberries out the back. Yes, all 50 of them!
In order to do this, I need all the pots I can get. The parsnip seedlings got planted, which freed up three pots, and three more with Roma tomato seedlings needed to be vacated, so I needed somewhere to plant them out. The solution- harvest all the carrots, and put the tomatoes in the carrot spot.
I originally planted 83 carrot seedlings, and used maybe 20 or so, which left me with 60-65ish carrots to pull up, wash, chop and freeze.
Zara decided to have a decent sleep, and it wasn't too hot outside, so Malachi and I went out the front and started pulling up the carrots. (Well, I pulled up carrots, Malachi rode his bike around and occasionally came over and pulled some leaves off a carrot plant).
Managed to get them all inside and in the sink before Zara woke up.

There were some pretty funky looking ones. Had to share this one-

And just to be immature... this one has a penis, tee hee hee...

Spent the rest of the day, whenever Zara let me, washing the carrots ready for chopping.

And by the end of the day, they were all chopped and in the freezer. Yay me.

And so since then I've been trying to rescue a few strawberry plants each afternoon. I've done 17 so far, LOL. 33 to go. Need to find more pots! And I've discovered that I'm mildly allergic to strawberry plants- I've come up with a rash along both arms after each potting expedition, just like a grass rash. Oh well.

Baby-Led Solids = Fine Motor Skills

We're doing baby-led solids with Zara. It's also known as baby led weaning, but to me 'weaning' means the end of breastfeeding, not the start of other foods. Anyway, basically it involves following the baby's lead as to when they're ready to start other foods, letting the baby regulate what and how much they eat, and not feeding them bland pureed mush.
I was planning on using this approach with Zara anyway, and she made the decision to start when she was 5 1/2 months by grabbing a bread roll out of my hand, and shoving it in her mouth.
To start with, the vast majority of the food that went in came straight back out again, somewhat soggy but pretty much intact. Slowly, she's started to swallow more of the food, as evidenced by her changing poos! (Luckily they're still mostly breastmilk poos, just slightly chunky, so they still smell nice!)
Mostly she eats fruit- she's tried pear, apple, banana, watermelon, kiwifruit, rockmelon, strawberries, blueberries, orange, mandarin... and probably more. She's also had bread, pasta, rice, carrot, zucchini, eggplant, mushrooms, tomato, olives, capsicum... etc etc etc.
She still has no teeth but still does pretty well chomping up crunchier things!
Obviously you need to be sensible with what you feed a small baby- no nuts or anything- and make sure they're supervised in case of choking, but evidence suggests that babies are far less likely to choke on food when they are controlling what goes into their mouths than when they're being spoon fed.
Anyway, the original point of this post was- I was watching Zara eating roast potato for dinner, and thinking about how good her fine motor skills are compared to other babies I've looked after of the same age (Malachi, and babies I cared for when I worked in childcare). She can pick up an individual blueberry, or olive slice, and get it into her mouth with pretty good accuracy. I imagine this extra practice and development of her fine motor skills will give her a headstart with drawing, writing and other similar skills compared to babies who are spoon fed... it's amazing how all these skills tie in together, and how much our babies can actually do for themselves if we follow their lead and trust them.

Mission Accomplished!

I've been looking at my parsnip seedlings for the past week or so, and thinking that I really needed to transplant them out of their containers as they were getting too big to be in there... well, I finally got it done today! Zara had a decent sleep and I planted another bin of potatoes, bringing the total to four, and 38 little parsnip seedlings are now (hopefully) happy in their new home in the back vegie garden, next to the red onions.
My next mission is to transplant the self-seeded lettuces in the back garden around to the front with the other lettuces. I was having a look at them while planting the parsnips, and one is a red iceberg! Yay! My favourite kind of lettuce. There's only one in the front garden, and I keep pulling leaves off to eat them, but now that there's another one coming, I've got one to eat, and one to go to seed, to grow more for next time!
Also on the garden to-do list is to earth up the third potato bin, and, as always, weeding weeding weeding...

Turtles and Caterpillars

DH went out to check the vegie garden while I had the kids in the bath this evening and found a turtle in the backyard. I was a bit worried about it at first, as last week a snake came into the yard and the dog killed it (and killed it very thoroughly- it was in three pieces, poor thing) so I thought she might have had a go at the turtle too. It was upside down and hiding in it's shell, but has now been rescued and is in a box behind me, with a towel and some water in a dish.
I can hear him scrabbling around in there, so he seems fine. We'll take him down to the river tomorrow and let him go.
He's a longneck turtle, much like this one-

I was just out checking the front vegies, as I've seen cabbage moths hanging around. They totally destroyed my broccoli last year, and I don't want them hurting my cauliflowers!
Anyway, I found about 20 of the damn caterpillars (and another bloody 28 spot ladybird!) and chucked them all into the box with the turtle. When I checked just before, they'd all disappeared... I hope he's eaten them! Either that or they've just squiggled themselves under the towel.
I guess we'll find out tomorrow when little turtle dude is relocated to his new home.