The annual start of the local Farmer’s Market is a source of much anticipation and excitement in our house. By the time late May rolls around it feels like an eternity since I last tasted freshly grown lettuce or experienced the joy of a ripe tomato. While I’m still waiting for the tomatoes, our market has an abundance of cold weather greens and lettuces.

When new leaves appear on Cottonwood trees the underside of each leaf is a bright silvery green. Watching the leaves shake in the wind makes me wish I could capture the color and motion and turn it into a chandelier!

Spring in the Midwest is a fickle beast. At one moment the weather is warm and soft drawing you outside with enthusiasm. Things can even heat up with 90 degree temperatures causing you to unearth your flip flops and clean off the grill. Then the next day Spring will turn a cold shoulder with biting wind and temperatures that come dangerously close to allowing the rain to freeze on your windshield. This yo-yo behavior can make meal planning a real challenge. Soup either sounds like a crazy idea when the air conditioning threatens to kick on or like a brilliant idea when you are reaching for another sweater.

Two weekends ago we set off in search of wild asparagus. It was a sunny Spring morning and we piled into the car with my parents on our first spontaneous adventure since Anna arrived. I had visions of tender young spears poking up through brown field grass and adorable photo ops of a baby and fists full of asparagus. Mr. B recalled seeing a large patch of asparagus on public hunting ground last fall. So with a map in hand we set out to find the asparagus mother-lode.

One Baby: two months, 13.6 lbs and 23 1/2″. A full night’s sleep? Priceless.

We rounded the two month mark this week and are going strong. Anna is growing quickly and amazing me each day with the rapid development babies experience in the first year. She can see color, recognize faces, and best of all has started granting big loose lipped smiles to those who come into her view. Sleep is coming more readily, with wonderfully long 6-8 hour stretches at night. I feel human again.