Mmmmm....

Look what they served in the dining halls today:
Caprese salad (tomatoes, basil, and fresh mozzarella) with a parmesan wafer. Mmmmm delicious!

How not to spend a 3 day weekend:

Watching the sunrise after pulling an all nighter to work on a paper that a professor wants by 9am on Monday morning...which is a federal holiday, so there's no class. It's nearly 6am and I'm still not finished with it yet, though I'm surprisingly coherent.

The funny thing is, I think my professor would totally understand if I emailed her and explained what was going on, but I'm such a perfectionist that I need to finish it in order to feel like this all-nighter was worth it.

Exciting plant growing venture

I love gardening, especially vegetable gardening. There's something so rewarding about putting food on the table that I not only made, but also managed to grow in my garden as well. I spent 5 months in high school working on an organic farm (if anyone has high-school age kids who are interested in the outdoors, farming, sugaring, and animal husbandry and are academically talented, email me and I'll tell you all about it. I went to it and it was AMAZING, but that's a whole other post there). Being a city girl, and now a person who lives in a dorm, I've never had a garden of my own, which is why I got super excited when I heard about this.

Basically, it's a hydroponic planter where you can grow your own herbs, fruits, and vegetables right in your kitchen/dorm room/whatever. I'd considered the Aerogarden before, which is similar, but it was crazy expensive. The Prepara Power Plant Mini is only about a bajillion times cheaper. You can buy it here for the full retail price, but I urge you to look around if you want it because I found mine for half that price from an independent Amazon seller. I just started it today, so it'll be a few days before any seedlings appear.

I decided to grow tomatoes, basil, parsley, and sweet peas, hoping that maybe they'd come to fruition together so that I could make a meal, maybe caprese salad with homemade pasta topped with sweet pea and parsley pesto. This is going to be awesome, and I'll definitely post pictures of the seedlings when they come up!

Darn.

Remember how excited I was about this trip? Unfortunately, the trip to Georgia isn't going to happen....I could either pay for the airfare or pay for the program but not, as it turns out, for both. It's really disappointing, since I've had a trip to the Republic of Georgia be canceled before. My latest plan is to spend a few weeks next summer working on an organic farm making cheese in Georgia which would be free (except for the airfare, but it would be from England which is closer).

How do you parent someone else's kid (especially when you're not a parent yourself)?

I babysit a 9-month-old 15-20 hours a week, and have done so for the past few months. I'd heard stories about playground monsters from other parents - you know, the inevitable kid who shows up at a playground/skating rink/restaurant/park/other public space where kids hang out and proceeds to bully or otherwise harass your own children while the bully's parents look on and refuse to intervene. That, or the parents are in La-La Land and don't even notice what their kid is doing.

I'd never seen that kind of situation play out until now, probably because this is the first time I took a really young child to the playground since I was a kid myself. (Ok, that's a lie, I used to babysit a kid aged 7 who I took to the playground all the time, but she was adopted from a Chinese orphanage fairly late in her childhood and was more than capable of dealing with rough and rowdy kids. Bullies never bothered her more than once). Anyways, this was the first time I had to intervene - a 9-month-old can't deal with bullies unless said bully is also 9 months old.

As soon as we got to the park, I plopped the baby down on the ground and he started playing happily with his toys. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a 3 year old boy approaching. Right away, I could tell he was going to be trouble. Something about his body language was really off and he was behaving strangely. I think maybe he thought that the park was his and that anyone else hanging out there was infringing on his territory? He started circling us like a shark circles it's prey, and with each circle he'd come a little closer. He then started hiding behind park benches and swings, glowering at us. Ummm okay....a little weird, but maybe he's pretending he's a spy? I thought to myself.

When we moved to the swings, he got really aggressive. He started to throw his basketball at us, pretending that he was aiming for something else, but he was going for the baby's head. Ummmm hello? You don't throw basketballs - or anything else for that matter - at a baby, and especially not at their head. He knew what he was doing was wrong, because he kept trying to hide it, and that's a lot worse than a three year old just tantruming and lashing out in anger. The fact that he was trying to hid his behavior showed that it was premeditated. Then he rushed at the baby with a stick and tried to hit him with it as he ran past. Another "mistake" I'm sure.

Meanwhile, this kid's parents are looking on and seeing everything, but don't seem the least bit bothered that their son is attacking a BABY. I've heard horror stories of parents trying to reprimand other people's children on the playground only to find that the previously lax parents are suddenly oh-so-concerned about their precious little monster being held responsible for their actions. I didn't want to suddenly find myself in a confrontation with this kid's parents, but I wasn't going to let his behavior pass by unremarked. I picked up the baby, walked over to the kid, and told him in a firm but calm voice that it was unnacceptable to throw things at or hit anyone else, whether they were big or small. I don't think he listened, but it certainly caught the attention of his parents who fortunately were on my side and put the kid in time out.

All things considered, it went ok, but I'd sure appreciate some advice here. I'm not a parent myself so I can hardly claim to have the perfect parental discipline style. It also feels weird to tell another kid what to do when I don't have a kid myself. If you have kids, how have you handled this type of situation? Do you treat the offending kid as you would your own child, or are you stricter or looser with them? Do you try and get the parents involved instead by calmly explaining the situation to them? Any advice would be greatly appreciated, since the weather will only get nicer from here on out and I'm sure that we'll spend plenty of time in this park. It's inevitable that sometime soon I'll have to deal with a problem child with even more problematic parents.