Berry season

The key to enjoying a maternity leave, in my opinion, is - aside from producing the cutest kids known to humankind :) - to do all the fun things that you can't do when you are stuck behind a desk at work. Liam is old enough now that I can do things with him that I enjoyed doing as a kid. One of those things, which we got a chance to do yesterday, is pick strawberries. We always went to a local pick-your-own farm when I was little, and I loved it. Loved it. I honestly don't know what the attraction was, but I thought that when I was old enough, I would get a summer job picking strawberries. Instead, my first summer job was selling vacuum cleaners - really! - so perhaps I am perpetually trying to make up for that disappointment.

Regardless, we live in a small town surrounded by farmland, and there are berry picking farms all around. On Tuesday night I asked Liam if he'd like to go pick strawberries and the answer was a resounding yes. So as soon as we were all up and fed and showered, off we went. The point of the trip from the outset was not so much to bring home a lot of fruit as it was to have some fun. And it's a good thing my expectations were low.

Mallory was supposed to sleep in her carseat, but she didn't. And she didn't enjoy being cooped up in it, either. I didn't want to pick her up because we were out in the full sun, and even with her hat on, her arms and legs would be exposed. That didn't matter too much though, because Liam just ate everything in sight and as soon as his belly could fit no more, he decided it was time to go home. He did put a couple of berries in his basket early on, but he ate those too and when we left his basket did not have a single berry in it. I rushed to finish filling the last basket that I had started, and we went to pay - it was $3.75 for enough berries to cost us $9 at the grocery store. I had no idea that so much of the cost of strawberries is in the labour.

So our trip was brief, but it got us out of the house for the morning, and that's enough to make me happy. We have enough berries to maybe make some shortcake with, which makes me even happier. The drive out was nice - the farm is on the river, and Liam enjoyed looking at the water and all the expensive real estate. I suppose Mallory is the one who got screwed on this outing; stuck with us out in the hot sun in her car seat, and we wouldn't even let her have a taste.