kim through
   the looking glass

Yep, you read that right!

As a community, we decided a while ago to purchase a hive so that we can begin to harvest our own honey. I’ve been busy reading bee books and looking up bee keepers’ associations and generally learning about bees.

Yesterday, we got news that the bees would be here Wednesday or Thursday. Today, we hurried along and set up the hive, doing some last-minute research.

And then we got a call that the bees were here and they suggested picking them up tonight.

So Crystle and I took off to Better Bee Supplies in Cambridge to pick up some supplies and our “nuc” - beekeeping language for a nucleus of bees, which contains 3 lbs of bees (around 10 000 bees).

We drove them home (in the trunk - Gil was in the back!) and once here decided to hive them right away instead of waiting until morning. Graham and I suited up an armed with our hive tool and a spray bottle of sugar-water headed to the hive with a cardboard box full of 10 000 bees.

It was more than a little nerve-wracking!

Graham was great - he placed the full frames into the hive like a pro - he used to have bees as a kid - with only work gloves. He was stung only once - the sugar-water was very effective at calming the bees!

So - success! Our colony can now grow and begin to produce honey! I’ll check on the hive in a week (hopefully with a bee-keeping friend!) and make sure the queen is laying eggs and that the foragers are bringing in honey.

Exciting! And a little bit terrifying!

I was lucky enough to piggy-back on an order that Brad put in for some programming books a few weeks ago. He ordered me The Birth of Hathor (which took me completely by surprise!), Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves, Pagan Christianity, and Reimagining Church. I quickly dug into Pagan Christianity and would like to offer a short review here. Read the rest of this entry »

My friend Tammy is hosting a Mom 2 Mom Carnival on encouraging our kids’ relationship with Jesus.

If I’m going to be brutally honest, I’m not entirely sure how we’re going to go about helping our kids build a relationship with God!

One thing we currently do is pray before dinner each night. We try to pray for specific things and for specific people instead of saying a generic prayer. One thing I remember about growing up is that we generally only saud prayers by rote (ie. “Now I lay me down to sleep …”) so I was very uncomfortable actually praying out loud around other people since I’d had so little practice. I want to give Gwen the opportunity to pray out loud her own prayers in our home so that she becomes used to using her own words to express herself to God.

Another thing we hope to do is family Bible reading. I don’t yet know how best to do this and not make it a chore and boring, though, as that was most of Brad’s experience regarding family devotions as a kid!

I hope, also, to expose our kids to other Christian adults. Living in an intentional community in which we have deep relationships and intentional get-togethers (ie. weekly potlucks and weekly morning prayer) is a wonderful way to show our children the love of God through others. I think having positive adult role models who talk about their faith, their relationship with God and their walk with God is an awesome thing for kids to have!

All in all, I think the number one thing to do to encourage kids to have a relationship with God is walk with God yourself. Kids learn the most from what they see, and if all they ever see is a ‘Sunday Christian’, how can we ever expect them to move beyond that? That means that both Brad and I have a lot of work to do in how we live our lives and ‘walk the walk’. I hope, and pray, that we can rise to the occasion.

This summer, we’ve done a lot of planning for ways to grow our own fruits and veggies and taken many steps toward becoming much more self-sustaining. Our housemates have a large vegetable garden in the back and although they have offered for us to partake of the veggies/fruits grown therein, I didn’t feel up to doing that much gardening just yet … I don’t really know much about it and when the planning was happening, I didn’t feel up to helping even with that, since it was at a rough Gwen-time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Brandy asked what toy Gwen was playing with in the video, so I thought I’d do a post on Gwen’s favourite things!

The toy in the video is a Kushies Peeko. Of all her toys, this is the one that keeps Gwen’s attention for the longest! It’s a ‘multi-sensory box’ (contrast coloured sides, each of which velcros shut like a book with things inside, ie. a mirror, a crinkly thing, ribbons, etc.) and inside the box is the Ozlo toy, which is a contrasty, multi-coloured “dog”.

I’ve posted about this one before, but the Schaff coloringo is an amazing rattle and teether! It’s not too loud (perfect for mom and dad!) and a great size for her little fist. The colours keep her attention, as do the different shapes for mouth exploration!

Gwen enoys grabbing and shaking her Manhattan Toy Winkel. It’s got a nice gentle rattle sound and is easy to hold and comfy on her sore gums!

I was hoping Gwen would enjoy her Ringley teething toy as much as the coloringo, but it doesn’t get much play time, sadly.

The Beginning Bites by Sassy are a favourite of Gwen’s, and they were great fun to watch her learn how to hold! She squeals when she sees the blue one. We borrowed these from my sister We also borrowed an earlier version of Sassy’s Wooden Trio. The textures and shapes are great fun for Gwen to explore.

One of Gwen favourite thngs to play with on the change table (I reserve it for there!) is Manhattan Toy’s Snuggle Pods Peanut. It’s soft and squishy and she always grins whenever she sees it and grabs it from me!

The toy we have for fun in the bathroom (keeps her busy while we shower!) is Ikea’s Leka playbook. It’s got tonnes of fun textures, a mirror, toys that pop out, and squeaky stuff. Does it get any better than that? We also have an Ikea Barnslig - a soft elephant with teething ears.

Those are the toys Gwen plays with the most for the time being. And most of them are 6 months and up, so she’ll continue to explore them at a different level as she gets a bit older! We have a serious lack of cloth and board books, though!! It’s getting hard to read her regular books as she’s grabbing the pages and wanting to eat them …

We’re trying to be intentional about buying cloth and wooden toys. Crystle and Dave (community members) brought Gwen a cloth animal playset (complete with watering hole and tree!) back from their trip to Africa. I can’t wait for Gwen to play with it and get some pictures!