Black and blue blueberries

So you've probably gathered that I'm a big fan of berries of all kinds, especially ones that I can pick myself. And now that Hayden's old enough to walk around and such, I'm training her to be a berry fiend. She passed her tests admirably with strawberry picking. Now that it's later on in the summer, we've moved on to blueberries and blackberries.

When my mom visited over Hayden's birthday, we went up to pick blueberries at this farm about 20 minutes from us that we have visited in previous summers. They have the BEST berries, huge and delicious. We have to pick in the evening so we hurried out there as soon as we were allowed. Hayden did a great job. I showed her which ones to pick - blue, not green, berries. And we brought her own bucket for carrying them.


She started out strong, picking them and putting them in her bucket. But once she got about 20-30 berries, she lost interest. She proceeded to eat all the berries out of her bucket and then started eating them straight from the bush. Then she wandered around the bushes asking to be picked up; even at 7 months pregnant, I still managed to have her on my back for a little while so she could get some mommy time. She also played in the dirt, played with a cat that wandered through, and played peekaboo through the bushes.

All in all, she managed to occupy herself pretty well so that we got a pretty good haul but I can't say that she contributed much to our blueberry picking. But I think she had a good time and she REALLY liked eating all the blueberries!

Yesterday, I decided it was late enough in the summer to go on a wild blackberry hunt. There's a spot in our neighborhood that has a lot of bushes so I thought we'd go check it out. Turns out blackberry picking isn't really all that toddler-friendly. The path under power lines was overgrown, buggy and blackberry bushes are prickly! But Hayden did a great job of just watching while I hunted down some berries for her. As long as I gave her a berry to eat every once in a while, she was really very patient. Towards the end, as she saw my little tupperware filling up, she got more adament about asking for more "black blueberries" to the point that she just kind of grunted at me and resorted to vigorously signing "more." After about 10 minutes, we had about a cup or two of berries, so we headed back to the stroller and proceeded on our walk around the block. Hayden really enjoyed the berries she got to snack on - you can see her berry mouth!