Somehow it is already August and the final stretch of summer, though I guess with the strange school year Covid changes, summer won’t really end as usual? We are headed to Kentucky next week for time with family and this past week we managed to hit one of our favorite summer traditions: blackberry picking! Feel free to stroll down memory lane with berry pics from 2017, 2018, and 2019. We got way fewer pictures this year because, um, there are now like a million kids, but we still came home with lots of berries, in spite of the berry terrorism attempts of one 2 year old sassy girl who intentionally dumped them all out.

Might as well start this random summer catch-all with some berry things. This is the best berry pie there is, and I have made it with fresh and frozen berries of all varieties and it is always perfect.

This blackberry dutch baby was also wonderful, though of course one of my children refused it, as is always the case with any fun breakfast I make. Actually, it’s the case with most breakfasts. SEND HELP. Any great and easy breakfast recommendations for a kid who hates eggs, isn’t interested in any sort of fruit, and only sometimes likes cereal? Breakfast is destroying me lately.

The fruit-hater wouldn’t touch this roasted parmesan broccoli either but the rest of us devoured it.

And in the final piece of food news, I’ve been loving this easy cabbage slaw recipe. My mother-in-law came a few weeks back and stocked our freezer with all sorts of main courses we could pair them with easy sides to stretch out our Meal Train. She left us with tons of tasty BBQ pulled pork and it was perfect with a side of the slaw. (Which of course, the fruit-and-broccoli hater also refused.)

Are you watching Indian Matchmaking? It’s my treat when Madeleine needs to nurse and the other kids are napping. This article was really interesting. Any good shows you all are watching these days?

You will notice that Maddie Lo didn’t make it in any pictures at the beginning of this post, as she is at that dreamboat stage where she will sleep forever in the carseat so she snoozes through most outings, which is better for everyone involved. I’m not sure how I would survive a non-summer baby, as the DC heat ad humidity are some of my best tricks for getting newborns to sleep on the go. As for sleeping at home, she is doing shockingly well for a seven week old, and I credit it to a combo of accidental sleep training since I just can’t always get to to her quickly, and knowing more what I am doing each time around, such as employing this amazing swaddle.

This.UGH. It’s funny because it is all too true and sad all at once. No matter where you fall on the spectrum of opinions about schools opening or not, the one thing we can all agree on is that it is a less-than-ideal mess for everyone involved. Henry’s school co-op decided to just cancel and refund tuition for preschool families because we all just said that we had no interest in zoom preschool. But for families with older kids who need to actually be learning- there is no great solution. One thing that was a good reminder was the words from the Lazy Genius in this podcast about not taking our own adult frustrations about closures out on kids. A good reminder for me as I tend to get frustrated about everything canceled and then act annoyed at my kids, when they have absolutely no agency in this decision.

Happy summer weekend all!