My bubbles, oh let them stay bubbles.

Our taxes on our house. Ugh.

The assessment for the value of our home, on which the taxes are figured, rose by
Ninety Thousand Dollars.

Reminders to self (to stem off hysteria):

• Beans and rice taste good. You like them.
• WA state has no income tax. This is where it all comes from.
• Beans and rice taste GOOD.
• Renting's not that bad.

Poop and a 4 yr old

This should raise the eyebrows of the weirdos who have surfed into my log after google searches for "caught poop" and "poop on foot." Sicko fetishists.

Right now. As we speak. My son is in the garden lean-to pooping behind the lawnmower. It's his "fake bathroom" he says.

This. Is. Gross.

He uses the gargantuan maple leaves we have to clean himself....my little naturalist. I don't know whether to be horrified or think he's clever.

Wispy hair

My baybay has wispies. He's never had so much as an ear trim.

Now he has car seat head, where he has that tangled bit in the back of his head? It's pretty bad on a routine basis, so I mentioned this morning that I would have to be trimming it.

G went on rant. No one was trimming her baby's hair. That's not alright with her. He's cute enough. He doesn't need to look like every other baby in the world. She went and got her detangler and brushed his hair out by herself.

"NOW we just need tomake sure we brush his hair every day (ok, G cause I don't, right?) and he can keep his cute hair."

Friend Chowdah

This weekend was long and boisterous. It was a hobbit party. It truly was. We had party guests from 1 PM Saturday until 10.30 PM that night. Our houseguests stayed over until the following afternoon, when we all went clamming and had some more people come back for that.

G did indeed hijack the initial festivities and the big girls had a dance party in her newly minted room while the youngers tore up Nick's room and bounced around outside. Then they alllllllllll joined up outside for the daddy-led yard games while the amused parents wandered around yapping. It was a little grey for G's wet slide party, so we didn't bust out the sprinkler.

Schnaygirl counted heads, and until she did that at 10 PM I had no idea we'd had 13 adults and 15 children.

Holy

shit.

Aside from the requisite pretzels and corn chips and stuff, we used an entire 1/4 sheet cake and a Dutch oven full of Grandaddy's rice pilaf. We had nuggets and fries for the kids and they ate all those as well. I never run out of party food, and we did that day. Even so, Schnayboy screwed up the courage to have Dave's insanity sauce on his pilaf again. Life was good.

G opened her gifts and it was really sweet. There wasn't one random present in the bunch. G is old enough that she is known to people now, and she got some really creative, thoughtful gifts. It made her happy and I was pretty touched.

Guests began to leave so P-Daddy fired up the bonfire. That's an invitation to stay, which some of our friends took. Indiegirl even left, tucked her kids in for the night and came back, and most of us sat around the fire sipping hooch while the kids sat with the rest of us inside watching Nanny McPhee. My kids were the first to crash, so I got to go to sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep around 11.45.

The next day Schnayboy came over earlier than planned because we'd scored a bunk bed on freecycle. P-daddy and Schnayboy lit out of here for FAR EAST TACOMA (BLECH) to meet these people at 10 AM. I watched Schnaybaby (a tow-headed 2 yo boy who chirps) and that kind of relegated us to cereal for breakfast because I didn't want to do my big giant breakfast thing without P-daddy watching our kids and with an extra baby, fuhgeddaboudit.

Well? Freecycle assholes didn't even show up. Wasted our time, wasted my guests' time and just generally pooped on the idea of freecycle altogether. This rarely happens to me, and when it does, I take it with a grain of salt. This time though, it dragged several of our friends into it and that pissed me off.

I was further enraged that in my feeble sleep-deprived attempt to make early espresso, I neglected to put water in my stovestop espresso machine and I melted the handle and the o-rings together. What an idiot. NO latte, and now, no latte maker! UGH UGH UGH.

I did get the green goo finished, which was a good thing since the Mommies who lovingly slathered the children in nuclear-holocaust SPF sunscreen forgot to put it on themselves. Sunburns = owie.

So, the men came back and we trooped down to the beach. P-daddy got some clams for his chowder (which he made Monday night) and we generally all collapsed in a heap in the sunshine-filled back yard. That's right, sunshine. Hence no chowder.

After hiking the beach slope, we came home and the kids had their sprinkler party with G after all. That's a beautiful sight and sound there, my friends. A nice end to a good weekend.

Save the net people

Corporate America is out to ruin our damn lives, I swear it.

One room down, gazillion to go

G's room is installed. OMG. I didn't get to paint it, but she's finally got everything hung and put away where it needs to be. I'd like more art in there for her, and non-cream colored walls, but this is a good feeling.

It's a lot more involved than it sounds, involving construction and repairs and welding. (Yes, welding.) but hey! It's done!

Gone with the guilt!

Now G wants to change her birthday party into a dance party in her room. Ahem. Sound familiar?

---

Watched the first four episodes of LOST season one last night. How much do I love netflix???? The show was good enough that the commercials would have slayed me.

Miss Myra's Gun

I have been poking around the blogger universe lately and finding all sorts of random things. This one touched a nerve for me. Guns certainly meant something different to us then. Frankly, I am still somewhat nervous that we don't have one.

More to the point, I hope that when it comes, I will recognize as well as so many of these elders do that it is my time to go.

---

On another random blog, I found this: Oprah for President!

The text for the cafepress shop reads

With all the talk of Hillary Clinton possibly becoming the first woman president in 2008, we need to take action! Yes one woman can change the world, but let's not let it be Hillary... It should be Oprah! If Oprah ran the country like she runs her buisness, we'd be set for world peace!
Vote O in '08 and elect Oprah Winfrey for the first woman to run America! Spread the word, tell your friends, and write to Oprah and tell her she's the best woman for the job!
Here you will find t-shirts, stickers, buttons, and more to help promote campaign '08 and elect Oprah, because a vote for O is a vote for women everywhere.

It's so very tongue in cheek, but oh how I agree with it anyway!

Eagles and Farmers and Deer, oh my

See this bird? It was in my backyard this morning. Chatting with ~A~, I got up to get some coffee. From my vantage point in the kitchen, I could see the entire breadth of the property and this guy flew in LOW....he flew beneath the level of the swingset bar and shot across the yard. I couldn't believe it. Seriously... bears and eagles and deer, oh my. ~A~ is currently chuckling at me because I am so enthralled. I have always lived in suburbia; camped in the wilderness of the Appalachians sure, but never LIVED somewhere where we had cool wildlife in the backyard. Rattlers, copperheads, mosquitoes and marsh rabbits don't count.

Happy Hunting, Mr. Eagle. Get yourself some chipmunk before they eat ALL my garden greens.

Speaking of greens, we went to the CSA farm yesterday so that G could visit her duck friends on her birthday. She enjoyed feeding the ducks their grass, blade by blade. She had one little duck friend in particular who was enjoying this lovefest. G communed with the duck while Nick ran around feeding the chickens stale bread from the farm store. P-Daddy wandered around between the kids, alternating hanging with the poultry and napping in the van with D. We got our farm honey fix and life was good.

I tracked down Farmer T and tried to set a month to redeem my GC to her farm share. Months before, I had a share but I had to let it go because I wanted to invest that money into the garden here. Well the garden is slow and I am having to buy produce I don't like. Even still, I didn't have the 500 up front to finance this, especially since the due date for the money was in May(FPS). She scoffed at that and said I had to spend the money for food anyway, and I said "well yeah, but not all at once." She made a face and said I could pay as I go, a suggestion on which I pounced like a farmcat on a baby chicken.

Seriously, even paying full price, the farm share is significantly less than 30.00 a week for organic produce. A LOT of organic produce. You can't match that in the stores, and frankly you'd have a hard time replacing the bounty we get even in conventional produce dollars. So right now I am loving some Farmer T.

So yesterday's G's birthday antics, directedby Miss G, went as follows:

pancake breakfast
gift from Mommy and Daddy
beach combing
into Tacoma for lunch at Subway
dessert at a safe ice cream shop in Ruston (found by Indiegirl)
farm time
toy store
home for opening Aunt Barbara gift
chocolate oatmeal for supper

Yowza. No wonder they slept in this morning



(Why does D prefer dog food to cereal? Tell me this?)

P-Daddy and the airplane

P-Daddy will be out of town for the next three days. BLEGH BLEGH BLEGH! I hate the new job v. family time. It's running him into the ground, and I know it. If it were me, I'd like to think two nights in a Sheraton hotel room would feel like heaven, (clean, hot bath ALONE? cable TV without regard for ratings? chance to read a novel cover to cover??? oh goodness!), yet he swears he sleeps worse away from home. The way he crashes and sleeps in when he does return from a trip kind of proves it true.

I'll be missing mother's night out tomorrow, which sucks a$$. We finally got the yarn garden to let us have our yarn arts circle THERE, and this is the first time. Also, I am busting it out on T's (not ~T~) baby blanket. She just had her beautiful girl so I switched to crochet because I can move fast on that. I have to admit though, if I can devote myself to wearing the kids out tomorrow, then I can hang in my big giant bed tomorrow, watching movies and knitting a baby blanket. Maybe that won't be so bad.

D has been sleeping through the night for about a month now. Between that and the concerta, it's been nice feeling like me, and getting things done. (with the exception of the financial perfect storm, that is!) We're finally just now getting G's room installed. We hung the curtains and some of her decorations, took the louvre doors off her closet and moved it into an even better floor plan. She has such a tiny space, we really needed to maximize it.

N is in serious need of Mommy time. I am wondering if this is a middle child thing? Poor guy gets the short end of the stick almost constantly. He enjoyed his birthday week, but now he's back to NOT being the baby-who-needs and NOT being the gung-ho always-doing-some-new-thing oldest. I have to be smart enough to nurture what he needs. I still feel stupid about raising boys and now I have two of them.

Is this placenta guilt? He's so precious, and so open to learning and affection. I need to feel as connected to him as I do to the others.

The kids themselves are really close, though. I love watching the sibling love. I can see that in some adults I know, and I hope my kids grow up to enjoy each other and love each other that much.

Happy Birthday To YOU!

Today is G's sixth birthday. Six years old!

In a perfect event for a 6 year old's life, one of her top teeth fell out last night so overnight the tooth fairy came and left her some money under her pillow. Instead of the two quarters, she got a dollar because, you know, it's her birthday.

Her celebration will be on Saturday, so today is family time. P-daddy is staying home and we plan to beach it, and maybe go out to the farm to buy some honey. We gave her a necklace pendant like the one I always wear. They come from the sunken galleon Atocha. I just LOVE mine and I wear it almost every day. G loves the romantic story of how the coins came to be, and has for about a year fantasized about having one of her own.

Lest you think we're all bling and rollin' in the dough, the Atocha was a true motherlode find, which held many beautiful coins, jewels, artifacts and many more bars of purest silver. The silver bars, nice and sparkly, still don't sell all that well. The Mel Fisher company pressed the silver into replica coins and made skazillions of pieces of jewelry out of them. Those replica pieces are what G and I wear.

I'd like to get the little earrings! That would be cool.

Star Trek Child

My daughter tends to dress in ... unusual ways. Sometimes she is UBER HIP, right on the cutting edge of fashion now. Sometimes she looks like a European immigrant coming off the boat at Ellis Island. But most of the time she reminds me of every colonist ever depicted on Star Trek TNG.

Exhibit one:

Feeling better

Yesterday was day two in a huge assault on the financial beastie. I feel better. At least, I don't have the constriction in my blood vessels I was having when I thought about dealing with it. For better or worse, the checks are written and the stuff that has to wait, will have to wait.


This weekend is the maritime Gig Festival, and I am excited about it. We totally missed it last year and I was bummed. I really like Gig Harbor and this is the "yay I live in Gig Harbor!" festival.

The thin line

Nikirj lives in a tiny house. There is one wall between the living and the sleeping areas, dividing the rooms. She describes it as the "thin veil of sanity." I feel like I have one of those walls between me and everyone else right now.

I grew up poor. It makes me nuts when people say they are "poor" and get all keep-up-with-the Joneses about financial shit when they have large TVs, DVD players, stereos, x-boxes, multiple cars, multiple cell phones, high speed internet, kids in extra curricular activities.... come ON! That's NOT poverty. I am talking POOR. Not dirt floor poor, but holes in the windows, ceilings and doors poor. No a/c in the South poor. Intimate friends with 10 year old hand me down clothes poor. No food in the house poor. Break-an-arm-no-electricity-next-month-staying-with-Grandma poor.

It stands to reason then, that one of the Big Two triggers for me backflipping into anxiety land is financial stress. Want to watch me trip? Wait for when I screw up financially.

This month has been rough for me because *I* made an error on our bank account. A big one. A purty one. A REAL BIG FAT ONE. Combined with my insurance company acting up (idiots!) and th eperson who sold us this house not paying her taxes last year (grrr), the month ofMay was a Perfect Storm of financial duress. I am wigging my behind out.

Will we get it done? Yes. Will it effect the rest of our lives? Probably not. But it could effect the next four or five, and that is what I have to be smart enough to avoid. Nothing can prevent us from refinancing this house, nothing, or we will be in big doodoo when the AROM loan comes up for adjustment. FUH LOGGING myself is exactly what I am doing righ about now.

So anyway, my thin veil of sanity is fluttering in the wind. I am trying not to snap at my kids, I am avoiding my friends as much as possible and certainly not driving too many places when gas is at 3.25 / gallon. It's driving me a little bit nuts that I am flashing back to my childhood when I am no where near any danger of that ( I think!), but that's the nasty little nature of PTSD.

Again! Yay for happy pills!

Nine hours of sleep-- can you picture it?

Supposedly we should be getting nine hours of sleep as an adult. I wonder how I would feel if I got nine hours of sleep, every night, for a week. Truly, I can't even fathom it. Do you remember that soft, drowsy feeling you had when you got your full complement? The cat stretch in the bed, the slightly confused sensation as you decided whether you should go to the bathroom right now, or maybe {GASP} roll over?



We have some beach shots from after Nick's birthday. I feel like I am "back in business." Being without a functional camera since before Christmas has really left me low. Now that I think about it, I wonder if that had a lot to do with my depression. I couldn't instantly "create," and that is so important to me. There's something about catching that moment, that glint of color, that certain mood. Several of my good friends (online or not!) are all gifted photographers. We are all competent in photography, but we have our specialties that mark our work. I love the cheeks and the eyes; watching the children morph in front of me while I document this version of theirselves forever.

Another friend of mine likes portraiture, but her gift is still life. She captures the mood of an empty room, the personality of an object. You can smell the paint, feel the warmth of the sun in places she has shot just by looking at her pics. Another woman, whose first love is clearly Mt. Rainier, takes mountain pictures that are neither boring nor expected. She uses her photographs to place you there, and she does it well. Yet she took birth pictures for me that outstrip any professional shots I have seen online.

It's all about what you see. I am so grateful to Niki and Fran for loaning me a camera.

Livejournal didn't do it for me

Or anyone else for that matter.

I transferred everything over here, and I hope that this will give me the incentive to actually post in the blog.

Yeah, the blog. Supposedly the way I can keep in touch with my family and friends abroad. Keep track of the garden, the homeschool, life in general.

Ok.

I can.

New Easter Tradition

We're in a different zone now so planting coincides nicely with the Easter week. Today the Easter bunny brought the children each a set of gardening gloves and a seed set. We have planted the sunflower house and now we're onto the butterfly garden! WOOT WOOT!

For you guys who haven't had the pleasure yet of experiencing a sunflower house, here is the book that initially set us off a few years ago:

Bunting 's Sunflower House

Here's my children and a couple of cute guests in a young one we were growing a few years ago, and one of the girlie as well.

And here's some forum discussing it:

Garden Web

It's basically a plot of sunflowers, set in a square or a circle. When it grows, it becomes a playhouse. Similar to a bean teepee (which we do as well), you just grow something they can play with and eat

From a homeschool board

They had a getting to know you day, and this was that post.


ETA my old homeschool page. Haven't really updated with the newer homeschool pix. These are all from our life in Charleston! http://www.wolfmeisters.com/homeschool.html


What are your kids’ ages and pseudonyms?

G – 5.5 ; N – 3.5; D - 15 mos

How long have you been home schooling? Is there a story behind it?

We have been homeschooling for about 2.5 years. When we lived in Charleston there was a public Montessori school for which G was wait-listed. Determined that she would not be out of her element when she started, I researched Montessori and started homeschooling her. When N came of age, (the first sensitive period in Montessori is 3-6 yrs) I pulled him in as well. D has his own little sensory shelf in the schoolroom now as well.

When I started to see G respond to the work, and blossom into this amazing little learning machine with little encouragement or effort on my part, two things happened. I began to BELIEVE in the truth of the prepared environment and the children’s house, and I realized I no more wanted to share watching her learn these things than I did her first steps.

I honestly feel that there are school and environments that could provide G with an excellent education of which I would approve; however, to private school my children would require 1500.00 a month. That’s crazy talk.


Does your home school have a name or a mission statement?

No, but I do fancy the phrase “Free Range Childhood”

What is your general home schooling philosophy?

The child wants to learn, and it is my job to encourage them and assist them wherever their fancy takes them. I want to teach them the facts and the nuts and bolts early so that they have a platform later for philosophy and discovery.

Children are far smarter and more capable than society in general gives them credit for.


Do you use a curriculum?
No. We do, however, pattern much after Montessori. We incorporate Waldorf-influenced art and puppetry, and classical reading. We use Music Together curriculum when we need a structure fix.

Do you or your children have any special interests or hobbies that influence your home schooling?
Music is a huge focus in our house. The children are learning instruments and constantly enjoying music. We are currently discussing with them what outside classes they want to take, such as when G took ballet for a year. We are looking into a homeschool scouting group that is forming here.

What is your typical daily routine? weekly routine?
We act like unschoolers. I am dismayed that their best work cycle appears to be in the early evening, when I am most tired!

On Mondays, it’s totally a no-structure day. They get carte blanche TV time and whatever they want goes.

Tuesdays is farm and friends day and we usually go out for lunch.

Fridays are usually play dates of some form or another.



Do you have any special methods/tips for planning? household organization? storage? record keeping?

We do not keep records, other than the whole brag book kind of thing. G was never registered for schools so we are completely under the radar until she is 8.

I do keep manuals here for how to introduce the Montessori materials, and we try to plan ahead to participate in community festivals and holidays as much as possible. We maintain memberships to the children’s museum and the science center.

We have a room that is solely for the school materials and my desk. It’s way cool and we decorate the walls with the alphabet and with their art.

Tell us what you did today!

Today they all have colds so it’s a down day. They made paper crafts just after breakfast, we made crayons with the crayon maker. Later they will finish painting some wood crafts we bought, that they have already primed.
Yesterday G counted to one thousand for the first time.

Me? It’s laundry running day!

Thank you!

---

I belong to Montessori makers ( a yahoo group) and yes Michael Olaf is a hero. I purchased the insets, the sandpaper letters and some golden bead material, but everything else is either made or tweaked to the purpose. I use Le-Chin's Montessori notebook and Montessori's Handbook.

I think the pure education aspects of Montessori work in our home--the analytical thought, the child-led curiousity, the older child-younger child modelling, etc-- but the reason I say we are Montessori based is because I cannot sustain the peaceful environment we're supposed to have. My house is not always chaos, but it's definitely not neat and clean on an hourly basis. It's not quiet, and it's not usually beautiful.

You have really given me some placenta guilt for not showing what they're doing lately. I need to get a new page up!

But I don't want to move to Massachusetts

I seriously doubt it would happen, but a job dh wants opened up. It's open NOW and we didn't think it would be open for another 5-10 years. It's located at his company's HQ in Marlboro, MA.

So I am stuck between dh's dream and what is best for the family as a whole. I honestly feel like I have had enough personal sacrifice this decade.

He's like "I wouldn't get it. I am not qualified." but he said that about this job, and he was their way favorite candidate.

I have a friend coming in from NY

We've never met but we've been friends for years and years. She has two boys the same ages as my big two, and she is due with baby three.

I've been trying to keep up with motivated moms, but we moved in to this house last fall and I am still not unpacked. Today was not a good day. I did laundry all afternoon and would so be done but I had extra to manage (see the poop story).

This evening though, my daughter reframed everything. EVERYTHING. I told her that it was past her bedtime and she needed to go to bed. She asked why I wouldn't go to bed with her, and I gestured at laundry piles and said "Honey I have got to get this done. I do not want to be embarassed tomorrow!"

She replied, very matter of factly, "Aw Mom, your friend knows how messy a house gets with with kids. She know it's embarassing to have kids."

First, I was awed by her trying to comfort me, and that for the first part she was right. My friend DOES know how it is. Then I felt pretty deep shame for her thinking for even a second that she embarasses me. I held her and let her know how grateful I was for her trying to help me out, but that I was in no way embarassed by my children.

Man. Talk about a REFRAME moment.

I caught poop

In my hand.

Fresh from D's air-drying undiapered butt, I caught poop.

Then, while I tried disposing of the poop, the toilet into which I deposited the poop I caught in my hand...overflowed.

I am not making this up.

Poop. Water. Everywhere.

I had barefeet. I had poop in my hand. I had an overflowing toilet.

--------------------------------------------------

Fast forward to the cleaned, scoured and now dry bathroom. To the tired Mom, listening to the whir of the washer and dryer with all the loads of poopy bathroom towels and robes. Listen to the three year old voice pipe,

"Mommy I pooped my pants."

I have spring fever so bad

SO BAD SO SO SO SO BAD

I have put in two bare root roses, and a transplant from a friend.

I took the over-wintered herbs out of their box (they thanked me profusely) and have them in their own spots in a nice area.

We bought this house in August, and the front yard was professionally landscaped with attractive native plants. All the weed guard vinyl is down, all the mulch is down. I am in heaven. HEAVEN.

WOOT. I think I am going to start seeds this weekend. YAY.

Chicken Skin

I remember being a child with crystal clarity. There are gaps of blank time, but on the whole I remember it well. These flashes of memory come and assault me when I least expect them; tonight's came while I was preparing my shopping list.

My-mother-in-the-kitchen is a whole category of memories, most of them good. I learned to sing in the kitchen. My mother would sing while she cooked, or washed dishes, or baked. We were poor and in the South, so there were no convenience foods. There was no air conditioning. For many years, it would be my mother, the heat and me. The back door was off the kitchen and the screen would keep out the mosquitoes but let the breeze in.

My mother would skin chicken she'd bought from Winn Dixie. It was nasty work, but she didn't seem to mind. I am sure my constant chatter was annoying, and to pass the time she'd say "open your hand." I would, every time, full well knowing what was about to happen. I would open my hand, knowing but simultaneously hoping that maybe THIS time it would be different, and it would be a candy or a ....something. Into my hand she would drop raw, tepid chicken skin. I would shriek and it would fly up, up into the ceiling as I threw it away in disgust. She would grin or shout at me for dirtying the ceiling, alternating her reactions depending on her mood. This was our dance, and it passed for intimacy between us. And it got me out of the kitchen, out of her hair.

I remember loving her in a huge pulse, even and especially then, because it WAS the routine. It was a sure thing. I remember the high-pitched creaking of the screen door as it would open and out I would fly, leaving the hot kitchen and the dead chicken behind.

I guess in one way this memory is a gift; I can turn it around and believe that surely G loves me this passionately, and her love is a something to be protected and appreciated. In another, I never skin chicken.

The newer van.....

The one we bought to avoid the problems like this....

That one....

Won't start.

Sigh.


One day sooner than later, we will kill all our consumer debt and be able to afford new vehicles. Or at least easy-to-maintain vehicles. I was really committed to driving one vehicle for a long, long, long time but the Windstar just costed itself out.

We have a friend coming over tonight to look at it, verify whether it is the alternator. If it IS then we are lucky and got off easy. If it isn't then we will have to look into busting out the powertrain warranty and hoping it is covered.

I have always wanted a T&C and I really like this van, but it is still an older model (97) with the little issues that go along with it. At least it's cute. No one would confuse my teal green Windstar with cute.

Birds and Elk and Husbands Oh my!

The bird feeder is an amazing success. The kids are LOVING it, the birds are loving it and the husband is engaged. We printed out the pdf book from Seattle Audobon and the children are using the field guide to (correctly) identify what they're seeing. Black capped chicadee, Steller's Jay, Spotted Towhee and Song sparrow are the most frequent visitors. They've gone through 2 pounds of sunflower seed in 24 hours.

G has been inspired to pull out the zoobooks library and has now found the ornithology magazine and is absorbing that. In the meantime, P and N were looking through the rest of them. P brought me a picture and said, "are these the deer you saw on nikirj's street?" and indeed they were...I'd seen a herd of ELK.

I am so not in SC anymore!

Yesterday I installed some natural light bulbs. It helped with my mood a bit, but the glaring sunshine today has gone a LONG way towards lifting me up.

Yesterday while we were at Home Depot buying the bulbs, we spied some birdfeeders. They were very inexpensive so we snagged two and Voila! instant homeschool project for today.

We got a feed sock like this one http://www.bestnest.com/bestnest/img_p/WLA-S-10015-APP2_200x400.jpg and a tube feeder. We're going to discuss which bird feed we bought (thistle, sunflower seeds) attract which kinds of birds, placement of the feeders, and the anatomy of a bird. I am using zoobooks as source material and coloring pages from enchanted learning as action materials.

Homeschool budgeting just doesn't get any finer than that. For less than ten dollars, we have lessons for the day and enrichment for home and education for the rest of the YEAR.

Looks like this may be the week we get it allll unpacked. We have both been focused on purging the useless, cumbersome and out dated. I have joined an online challenge to rid the home of 500 items in January (post taking down Christmas decorations) and we've been slogging it out. I think husband gets frustrated seeing the garage but if we got the stuff out that's scheduled to get OUT, then he would be a m a z e d.

Overall, we had a sunny day yesterday after 26 days of straight all day rain. I felt like I was in the movie Groundhog day. From dawn to dusk, it remained the same 46-degree, blue-gray cloudy light, raining day. The only difference came at dark when it was the same 46-degree, DARK raining night. So yesterday we spent a great amount of time OUTSIDE.

We also found a church we may enjoy. Choir rehearsal is tonight, so I will see how that goes.

I didn't do it to YOU!

"Nicholas...do NOT pull the baby's hair!!!!" said I.

---

"I didn't do it to YOU!" he replied, surprised.

Dirty Boy

ok so tonight, N passed out at his usual bedtime. ~G~, who had gotten weirded out by Harry Potter, lay down with D-babyin our bed, who has a hard time falling asleep without P-Daddy (who is out of town).

I go in there after a while to check on them. Since ~G~ has magic D-baby powers, I assume I will see sleeping angels. She is under the covers, fast asleep while D-baby is nodding off, standing up at the side of the bed..... covered in dirt he'd been eating from my potted plant.

He outlasted her.

Le sigh.

My boxes

WOOOOOOOOOT

For years, it was just get it labelled. I was satisfied because I had a ginormous garage. But now it's consolidate. woot woot. Keep it neat, keep it clean, minimize.

We bought two large sterilite tubs from Target on their day-after Christmas sale, and from Michael's we purchase a gift-wrap holder and an ornament holder.

Because of these purchases, we got rid of NINE smaller cardboard boxes and a LOT of ornament-holding boxes.

It fee;s good to get rid of that stuff and have only four, contained holiday boxes. It's all green and red so we know without even thinking where it is. I am so happy.

HAAAAAPPPYYYY



BUH BYE BOXES.

N's Johnny Song

N's Johnny Song

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N has a Johnny song some of you may have heard:

(he wrote it himself)

Johnny went in the woods
Johnny went in the woods

Johnny saw a dragon
Johnny saw a dragon

Yay Johnny

(second verse)

Johnny went in the woods
Johnny went in the woods

Johnny took out the dragon
Johnny took out the dragon

Yay Johnny


well this morning he invented a new verse
which is between the other verses

Johnny went in the woods
Johnny went in the woods

and the Dragon said

'Oh shit!"

The Rainbow cometh!

When Paul and I decided we would be moving to Washington, we sat Graham down and asked her what she thought. She didn't think much of having "some volcano spitting rocks at me!" so we told her that if we moved, we would buy the kids a Rainbow. Finally, we've been able to do just that.

They knew we bought it, but thought that the unit would be delivered the day after we knew it would be. I really would rather not have spent the day saying "no it's not here yet."

Click the link for pictures.

When Your Baby was Born....

What was the first thing you noticed?

For me,

~G~: her ass. I had a hospital / epidural birth and didn't feel her come out. I saw her floating in the air in front of me as they pulled her out. I say floating because all I saw was HER; her impossibly red, impossibly tiny little butt.

~N~: How fat he was. He had enough chub coming out that he looked like DD at one month old. He was also a precipitous labor so he had horrible skid marks on his face.

~D~: HWB. First thing I noticed was his hair. We were underwater, I felt the ring of fire, and I reached.... to this day it is like a [pleasant] scar-memory. I can recollect at will the exact feel of his head crowning; how soft his hair was, how warm his head. Just that little piece of baby in my hand.

Confetti Farts

So this morning, ~G~ was changing a diaper...and she says to me:

"Mommy he made a little fart! And paper came out!!! And a piece of my shoelace!"



At least now she will UNDERSTAND why we beg her to pick her stuff up off the floor!

The lawn sprinklers came on and doused my Dog while he was in turn, sprinkling the lawn. That just made me laff. Henh Henh.

Again, with the beauty of this place. I am so happy here. Our property is only a little over an acre, but the way it has been developed leaves at least half of it as forest. It's amazing to look into the trees and know that it is ours. It's safe from development, safe for the critters, and safe for us as a buffer.

On our way down to the neighborhood beach we are treated to a lovely view of Mt Rainier. It's 150 miles away from us here and across the Sound now. It looms large though, and is another feature that just chases away any visual doldrums.

If we can get unpacked relatively quickly I will be a happy camper. It's nice to feel somewhat healthy again. I have the emotional energy to set up house but physically, our family has just been really incapable. Getting better! All around!

Sparkling Pee Fountains

The pee pee fountain

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Filed under category of ~L~hasn't had a boy before:

New yard! New Deck! New imagination! All require copious amounts of ~N~ pee!

Bad guy like Green Goblin? We "pee and poop on dat bad guy!"

Have to pee? Run past both bathrooms and to the outside deck where one can watch urine sparkle in the sunlight!

The Littlest Lactivist

N, D and I were playing on the bed this morning when D became fussy. I was on my back, giving him airplane rides, and N wanted me to put his brother down to sit beside him. I still had D in the air above me as I said "No, honey, he just wants to nurse."

N jumped over to me, yanked open my nightgown and pulled out my breast to hand to D. "Here's your nursey, baby!"

Complete Drama

COMPLETE

TOTAL

MELTDOWN

over this:


G was (very very past tense) helping N make his bed when she decided that she should have "the prettiest one" pillowcase. They got into a tug of war fight over it at the top of the stairs. No hitting, thankfully, but much screeching.

This was already on N's bed and she removed it from his pillow and was making out the door with it. He stopped her, because he too, dearly LOVES this pillowcase.

Seriously. She screamed in her room for an hour, until she was wracked with coughing, because she had to "have the prettiest one" and "Mommy hurt [her] feelings"

My Goodness. I guess it COULD pass for Monet-ish, but LORD that's an ugly pillowcase!

Op Ed in Tacoma News Tribune

They published my letter to the editor!


"Hospital’s policy makes natural event more dire

Federal Way
I commend The News Tribune for Alex Otto’s July July 24 article regarding the VBAC (vaginal birth after caesarian) policy at St. Joseph Medical Center.

To a mother of three, it is disheartening, to say the least, that a house of healing would want to turn a natural event into a far more dire surgical event.

I am completely taken aback – in a positive way – at how you have chosen to present this story to the community. This is just the kind of socially responsible, encouraging journalism that we need."

Amazing Persimmons!

“Happy 4^th of July!!!!!!” is G's battle cry today. Whenever there is a holiday, she is the beacon of holiday cheer. Today we had a very laid back, but very satisfying Independence Day. And it was an independence day!

P stayed home and we just pretty much hung out as a family. We'd planned to go out of town but crankyvan is being resistant to the idea. My friend ~A~ , razor sharp as always said "We do have a tow truck company, you know!" She is one funny lady.

nikirj and her brood came over for a few hours since her husband went to watch War of the Worlds in the theater. The kids splashed around in the inflatable pool and had a sandwich lunch while nikirj and I looked over house plans. The grownups had gyros, grilled hot dogs and grilled chicken. D ate his first meat today, grilled chicken. The little piggy had about ½ ounce of it before I cut him off. Animal protein at 6 months can’t be easy to digest. But he thoroughly enjoyed it, smiling broadly as he closed in to eat. Little baby. Just wants to be a big kid NOW!

After nikirj left, and despite the fact that G and N utterly blew off their naps, we took them to see the Federal Way fireworks at Celebration Park. It was the closest the children had ever been to a show and the biggest I’d seen. At times, despite us being outside the park by a block, we felt the fireworks were going to drift into the car. N, bearing his Buzz Lightyear doll as a shield, alternated being thrilled and terrified while G shouted “Amazing! PERSIMMONS!!!!!!!!!!” I don’t know where she got that but it was ADORABLE.

This neighborhood (Twin Lakes in Federal Way) is just covered with tiny baby dragonflies. Has been for two weeks now. It amazes me that there are so many… and you can watch the birds just dive in and pluck them from the sky. It’s gotten me wondering about the biomass signature here… what did it look like when we didn’t displace their habitat? I know there are places on the mountain still where the pre-industrial, natural world is just going to town. I can’t wait to get a glimpse of that!

Graham had her portraits done this morning for her recital. The recital is “Lands of the Sun” and Graham’s class is doing “Cuban Pete.” They’re quite adorable, even though the hot pink, sequined costumes are heinous! LOL

Weeds can be pretty. They really can. We've got some weird little butter-yellow cup shaped flowers in the back yard and they're simply lovely. As usual, staring out my windows in the evening makes me feel content and safe. I love the play of the light in the sky; the huge, tall trees everywhere; the feeling of being nestled in. It's a nice place to live.

Yesterday we went to the pediatrician for D and G. We left N with ~A~ to play with three out of her four littles (who are we kidding? he loves ~A~ ) and headed to the dr. Now, Perfect has four bandaids on his legs. After five months I finally allowed them to start his immunizations. He was such a big boy until shot #4. Then he cried, very angry. But we gave him a tookie (his first tookie!) back at ~A~s house. Perfect is 18 pounds 13 ounces. 5 months. Eater! All better.

Cept for my ranting:

Abusers!!! I hate seeing him with bandaids. Baby #3 and I still wanna cry!

G is 41 pounds and 75% in the height percentiles. She's my tall willow. She was a show OFF on her vision and hearing tests and was very not amused during her blood draw. I don't know what she thought I meant when I said "blood draw" and "they're going to take blood out of your arm" but she was adamant with me after the fact that her idea did not include the "shot" she received.

The draw is for her food allergy RAST. I am hoping and praying to God that her peanut allergy has gone. If you pray for anything, please pray for my grace so that I can handle whatever the news is appropriately.

At A's house we gave Perfect his first teething cookie. Like every other food item to which he has been exposed, he adapted immediately and well. He ended up with two arrowroot cookies, which to experienced Mommies means, he ingested about half of one. The kids love it out there and I definitely enjoy being in a yard again. This little spit of grass we have fenced in back here does NOT make the cut.


Rant ON:

I got my damn period yesterday!!!!!! Woke up to use the bathroom that morning and oh how surprised was I????????????

HOW? HOW?? He still nurses ALL THE TIME. The little pig is almost 19 lbs by now and there is just no reason for this....... HOW HOW HOW????????

I would say, hey look how fertile I am wooohoo a baby making machine BUT Kimbolina DOESN'T GET HERS FOR A YEAR OR SO AND SHE'S THE BABYMAKER!!!!!!!

At least I know why I was so damned cranky this week.

There is a place in Auburn where you can see the sky, wide open until Mt. Rainier. When you come out of Peasley Canyon and onto 15th Ave Rainier is at 2 o clock and the whole sky swirls above you. This is the intersection of highways 162, 167, and 18 and you can see for miles and miles. It’s great, because when you’re coming up from Puyallup on 167 you can look around and accurately determine what the weather is like in cities as far away as 30 miles. The weather here is sooooo dynamic and this view of Mt. Rainier to the east lets you watch the phenomenon that allows the temperature here to be so mild. You can watch the oceanic clouds pouring in from the West, hitting the Cascades and swirling back, keeping the moisture here. It’s beautiful. Amazing.

Leave it to Pugetopolis to have even an interstate snarl provide an ooh-aah moment.

Laundry. My God, the laundry. At least right now it is laundry hill instead of Laundry Mountain. In all honesty however, that’s only because the kids have been pulling their clean clothes out of the folded-laundry baskets. Poor fings. I need to put it away!!!!!!!

Parks make you tired

Nothing like taking the kids to the park motivates me to do laundry. Or scrub the shower. It looks so relaxing; all those Moms lazing about in the sun, watching their beloveds running and playing with others' beloveds. But ya know-- it's not all that relaxing. You have to stay awake. You have to be alert. And if you forgot the water bottles or the sunscreen, somebody's toast.

I love taking my kids to the park. Really I do. And it's good for everybody. But I do appreciate the fact that they will leave when it's time to go! :)

Life as we know it

As we move closer to actually possibly moving into this house, I am finding myself dreaming of it constantly. The dreams run the gamut from pleasant, homey, sunshine streaming, dinner steaming dreams to the seller getting another higher offer on the house at the eleventh hour. I do believe we’re doing what we have to do but the notion to me of spending 1800.00 a month on HOUSING makes me want to violently toss my cookies. I can really think of other uses for that money. We need to be financially disciplined—MYSELF primarily—to make this work. I hope to God we can pull this off and refi very quickly.

D fell off the bed yesterday for the first time. I was not amused, but neither was he. I hate that horrible pain scream they make, and the crying without sound. He was so shocked. We both got over it.

Yesterday afternoon took the kids to Wright Park in Tacoma. It was a ridiculously glorious day—perfect June day—despite being chilly, which I am certainly unaccustomed to at this point in the year. The skies were blue and dotted with fluffy white clouds, and the wind played music with the leaves of the trees through the park.

Squirrels here are very odd. They are much tamer than in SC, and will be right on the playground where the kids are raising hell. Yesterday evening, one was in our back yard SUNNING ITSELF on the privacy fence. They’ve got more personality here, that’s for sure.

Going on day ten without a van. It’s in the shop for transmission work. AGAIN. I am tired of missing chiro appts. Had to reschedule G’s well child visit and D still hasn’t had immunizations. Used P’s car to go to park yesterday but by the time I got it from him there were no more available times with the Pediatrician.

First Time Mama

Sap Alert-- Perfect Douginess Update

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This morning he woke, next to me in bed of course, and smiled at me.
He smiled, then said "Muh Muh!"

FLUTTER FLUTTER FLUTTER FLUTTER

Happy Birthday big girl!

G’s birthday was a cute little success. She’s so adorable. Five years old. I can hardly believe that. But she’s always amazing me so I don’t’ know why that should even phase me at this point. She wanted a “dance party” and asked for ABBA for her soundtrack. We got her Thomas decorations and a Thomas cake and moved all the furniture in the living room back against the walls. We covered the floor with balloons and set up the surround sound… and when the guests arrived she took them to her room. LOL

She hijacked her own party! BIG GIRL!

I find myself daydreaming almost constantly about the house we’re trying to finance. It’s really small (1600 sq feet) but in a perfect location. I have to back myself off from my tangent of “succeed at all costs.” I am dedicated to helping us attain our life goals and being house poor is not one of them. Still, I really want to own our home. Especially here, it is a completely solid investment.

The boys are sleeping in our bed right now. It’s 8 am and all the children are still asleep. P is in Spokane on a business trip and things just go on a different rhythm when he is out of town. I miss him when he’s gone, but not when it concerns bedtime and the children. They abuse him mightily and we all pay for it!

It's a wonderful life, folks!

What a wonderful life. I am afraid to admit that this move has turned our life in the right direction. Life is nearly idyllic here. We have fresh air, green trees and mountain views. We have a wonderful little family with good kids and good friends, albeit some who live thousands of miles away.

We are starting to make new friends here, too. NC is a woman who has a 5 yo daughter, a 3 yo son and a baby a week older than D. She and I shared a midwife and we both had home births for the most recent babies. All the kids get along GREAT.

N potty-trained (thank you GOD!!!!!!!) just shy of his third birthday, and was amply rewarded. Danelle and Charles came to visit that week and so they were her for N’s birthday party and to see him go play in the IKEA ball pit for the first time. That was his big giant reward. He was truly beyond excitement. It's a great ball pit.

D is still perfect, but oh I wish he would go back to sleeping through the night. He did for a little while but then got sick and now won’t do it anymore. I am considering putting him out of the bedroom to see if he just wants his space, like N-baby did.

G and I are sick today. I think I have a sinus infection and she’s not too far behind that. Yuck.

I have been seeing a chiropractor and the difference in daily life is frankly amazing. I am grateful for the surcease from pain. I hope whatever we are doing there will help me in the long run, not just while we see this guy. It had gotten to the point where I couldn’t walk without pain.

Balance Coming

I feel like a big moron but I still ache when I look at pictures of our Charleston house. The closing went through at the end of January, and everything went fine. We didn’t even have to make repairs, really. But the fact that someone else is living in the first house we ever bought as a couple makes me sad. I am homesick to a certain point too, which doesn’t help. The picture that set me off this time was a picture of my 22 weeks pregnant belly taken in the kitchen. It’s low lit, and it just feels so homey. This rental doesn’t do it for me, despite how into routine we have gotten. It even gets messy here now!

D is still perfect. He finally outgrew his layette this week so I have clothes of his to pack away. That’s truly amazing to me. Today is Monday and he will be two months old on Friday.

G has been struggling a little bit with how little time I have to give her. She’s been definitely bratty a lot more lately but she’s trying really hard to keep her chin up. Feisty is an understatement when it comes to my girl, and I know it. But I still wish I could give her what she wants along with what she needs.

N is close to potty training. At this point I think it has to do with his own laziness. Everything is in place; he just has to decide that he wants to just be done with it. Personally, I wouldn’t want to walk around with crap in MY pants. He’ll get to that place soon I am sure.

P spent the entire day putting together a tiny little swing set for the kids. I am so grateful they have something to swing on. It’s weird to look at that tiny thing compared to what we used to have but at least it’s something! And it’s THERE! It fits well into this tiny little back yard. We have got to get some land. I am not well prepared for how close people live together out here. Drives me batty.

I am bitching which is actually a good sign I think. I am no longer so desperately homesick that I cry a lot, and that routine I was talking about has helped me out. I have gotten more involved with the Montessori materials again and that’s a GREAT thing.

G is a Mommy now

She has really embraced her baby dolls now, one in particular which she has imaginatively ( hah ) named Newborn.

She'll stroll the baby into the room and introduce herself, and ask me my name. Then she'll introduce Newborn.

Wolfmeister(AKA Mrs Feduppica): What a lovely baby. Where did you have her?

G: Oh, at home.

W: Did you have a midwife?

G: No, no. I did it myself. I was just walking through my bedroom when she fell out of my pee pee place. I had to just pick her up and love her!

Color me Tired

Color me tired. D has hit his two week growth spurt and is nursing almost constantly, day and night. I am not getting engorged, and the little tyke has turned into a laundry-generating piss pot. He's eating a LOT. This boy is trying to keep up with his linebacker older brother.

Did I mention he is perfect? When sleeping, D is indistiguishable from newborn G. When he's awake he just looks like himself. That's so fascinating to me.

G is (almost) perfect and N is (almost) perfect. G is very in love with her dollbaby, Newborn, and is a very good mommy to her.

N has finally started loving Mommy again, largely because I can play with him once more. Pain-free is good!

P is happier now that baby is here and he can really dig into new job. It means some nights away, but I can handle that I guess.

Perfect Smiles

D has been smiley since he came out, but I don’t think anyone could argue now that his smiles aren’t social. Yesterday he was in quiet-alert state, holding eye contact with me, when he curled into a big open-mouthed smile. Then he came back to staring at my eyes. That was a SMILE for me. THRILLED me.

D’s birth has been very healing for me. I am just in love with all my children.

I have three children!

Perfect

Yesterday D’s cord stump fell off. Today he got his first bath. He’s developing the chubby cheeks and he’s unfolding his little legs. It’s such a miracle. Our last baby.

Heavens Awake

Some days just change your whole reality.

DGF was born at 10.55 PM on New Year’s Eve. We should have had faith that as one of our children, D would choose to emerge on a holiday. This is, after all, P’s son! Free parties every birthday for the rest of his life!

Contractions started at 2.15 in the Super Mall of the Northwest. The running story is that the fact that this mall is in fact an outlet mall, sent me over the edge and into labor. The prices were very good! After long (for me) and difficult (posterior cervix that just wouldn’t move forward) labor, D emerged into his parents’ hands in a water birth, at home, nine hours later. G was able to cut the cord (with Daddy’s help) and hold him within seconds of his birth. He weighed 7 pounds 8 ounces and was 21 inches long. He’s perfect.

I hope his tiny body can contain all the love we’re throwing at him—all of us, including N—adore him, and this week has really blessed us with love and togetherness.

D-meister Greenleaf; 37 weeks Home Waterbirth w/ Siblings

It took me a year to write this birth story. It was almost as important to my life and worldview as ~G~'s, when I was born into motherhood. D-meister's birth was home-based, filled with family and friends. His momentous arrival was simultaneously mundane, and part of the ritual of waking and sleeping. I loved this entrance.

2.15 PM Contractions began at Super Mall of the Northwest, in Auburn. This became the source of much humor, because being new to the area, we had not been there before. When I saw that there was a Carters Outlet, I got too excited and went right into labor. Thankfully, that morning P-daddy had taken the kids to the park; I had showered and even blew dry my hair. Woowoo.

We all piled in the car to race home, but being new to the area and excited, we went the wrong way on the wrong freeway. We should have gone West on 18, but we ended up going North on 167 towards Seattle. We turned around in Kent, with my contractions still strong and regular. We called midwife around 3.00 pm, as we expected another precipitous labor with this guy. She’d had a birth the night before and had not yet been to sleep. Yikes. This made me feel guilty that I had gone into labor, and a little concerned about whether she would be ok to come. That seems silly to me now, but at that moment it was a concern for me, like she would tell me “No, you have to have your baby later.”

We made it home and dh started filling the birthing tub AKA fishy pool. Before he even pulled it out, G immediately raced upstairs and got dressed in her bathing suit. She had months ago seen a birth story (at Puget Sound Birth Center in Seattle) where the big sister delivered the baby in his waterbirth. She was adorably determined to be an active participant in welcoming her brother. My contractions began to fade in the hubbub of preparation and as I began to stress out because I’d not cleaned the house that morning. I was, however, very tired of being pregnant, and tired of false labor so I decided to walk them back in force.

This worked, but I didn’t tell dh where I was, and he was annoyed that I disappeared. He peeked out the front door and saw me chatting with a neighbor. I didn’t really want to be talking to the man, as I was in active labor; but I likewise didn’t want to appear rude to our new neighbor of three weeks. I didn’t want to tell him that I was in labor, either, so I settled for sideways pelvic rocking, shifting from foot to foot while I had the biggest grin on my face. He may have found me to be a cheery pregnant woman, but I was just delighting in the fantasy of how he would react if he knew I was going to have a baby RIGHT NOW. Would he run around? Would he be stunned that we weren’t leaving for the hospital? I finally got away from him, and headed up the opposite direction on the street. I had a labor mood swing and didn’t want ANY PEOPLE near me. I began to resent having to be outside in the cold to accomplish this, but I was mindful that I adored my family and didn’t want to hurt their feelings. A neighbor’s white van slowed next to me and I looked up with a scowl. Ah! It was the midwife! She and her daughter (her 13 yo girl Alyssa, here to help occupy the kids) laughed at me because I was glowering so hard. My mood swung back to “JOY, JOY THE BABY’S COMING!” and we all went in for me to be lightly fussed at by my husband for my leaving.

Ann got to business and checked me. I had been closed completely the day or so before, but I was now 4-5 cm, so yay! This was the official confirmation for me that this was it. I called ~A~ and webcammed with *T*. I said “*T*, say hi to Ann the midwife,” as *T* could see the midwife behind me in the room. Then, moments later, *T* wrote “Wait……..why is the MIDWIFE There?” *T* called Danny, so she came online too. They got to see me all giddy. ~A~ called Letijandra. MidwifeAnn called her midwife colleague and we settled in to the boring parts. dh and I watched MidwifeAnn unpack, we met the new midwife person and ~A~ arrived.

Eventually the hard labor began! ~A~ hijacked the camera from dh and got the best pictures we have of any of our births. This freed up dh to be with me completely and created a wonderful record. She was constantly making bawdy jokes and kept me laughing until I was complete, when allllll laughter stopped from me. She provided SERIOUS doula support; It was awesome for me, and for dh. Some favors are unforgettable, and she will always be in our hearts for that night.

I waited to get in tub until 7 cm. I used the birth ball, the birthing chair (from cousin Dennie) and the stairs until that point. The kids were ecstatic then. G was constantly supportive and inexhaustibly exuberant. She proved way beyond 4 yrs of age that night, and this homebirth meant so much to me for her sake. She’s old enough to remember it, and she learned so much. My daughter learned birth firsthand, and learned to be not afraid. She saw her brother from the moment he entered this world, and was involved in the family circle in a conscious way. I was not expecting at ALL to be as comforted by her presence as I was. Another joy there, another birth in my relationship with my daughter.

There was a problem with labor that prevented the precipitous labor we were all expecting: while baby was in proper birth position, my cervix wouldn’t come forward to drop baby into birth canal. My dilation was being hindered because my cervix was pointing toward my back instead of into my vagina. The midwife had to manually pull it forward. After several times of doing this and having the cervix revert to the posterior position, she held it while I pushed (not complete) to force it to be “stuck” in proper position with the baby’s head. This HURTS LIKE HELL. I was tiring now, and she went to break water at 8 cm, but was already breaking. Yay.

I experienced a crisis of confidence when I was finally complete. As with the other two, I couldn’t think to move past the pain. I abruptly left the birth tub and took dh with me to the bathroom. I was very sick of the heat and sweating. Even though I was home, I had many eyes on me and I felt like a fish in a bowl. It wasn’t terrible, but enough to make me want “my honey” alone. In the bathroom, I had pushy contractions and was able to void on the toilet, which greatly relieved me in several ways. I did not want to dirty the birth waters. Emptying out my front and back eased the constant pressure-pain; being with P-daddy alone allowed me to release the baby to come out.

The warm pool is truly the “aquadural” of birth story legend. My experiences of labor pain within and without had a noticeable difference. I went back to pool and eased baby out three contractions later.

During my crisis of confidence, I kept repeating two mantras, which strike me as quite bizarre in my opinion: “In pain she shall bring forth children (from Genesis)” and “I am utterly alone.” I felt this huge sense of being completely helpless.

The constant pain had terrified me. I’d never felt alone like I did this time and I don’t know why this birth made a difference. I remember wanting my Honey behind me in the pool, but then thinking I’d still be alone. This delivery was all up to me and I knew it. Maybe that’s it; typing this I am realizing that my solitude was feeling like there was no back up. That’s not the case, but outside the hospital setting it felt like it.

The relief I felt when I finally felt the ring of fire completely outweighed the simultaneous terror I had of ripping. I was flooded with JOY and VICTORY and RELIEF. I was literally praying, Thanking God it was over it was over it was over. I reached down, recognizing the signal, and felt his soft tuft of hair. It is the first time I had that. It was a miracle to me, and the being-alone sensation was something I relished then. The change was—only I knew he had arrived. It was a moment, just a moment, of being alone with this infant as he came into the world. I still feel his head in the palm of my hand. I hope I will always retain that sense of touch.

As he crowned and I began to push out his head, I realized I would need help with his shoulders to prevent tearing, and said that much out loud at least. My attendants swear they heard practically nothing I felt that I was ranting and shouting. I said, “I need help with the shoulders,” and MidfwifeAnn leapt up and came over to the pool. ~A~ and dh swear I said only “shoulders.” MidwifeAnn held my perineum for his shoulders to pass, and pushed him forward for me and dh.























D Greenleaf was born into Mom’s hands, brought out of the water into his parents’ waiting arms.

G had fallen asleep during my crisis of confidence. When I said shoulders, SitterAlyssa bodily picked her up and shook her so she would be awake for actual birth. (Another mom-daughter pair in action.) I am eternally grateful for that. N had fallen asleep hours before and he met baby in the morning.

I maintained a COMPLETE internal monologue the entire time and no one could really hear me. When not contracting, I could talk, but otherwise I would just THINK I was saying things. It was really frustrating me, because sometimes I was asking for help-- or thought I was—and not getting it. MidwifeAnn later explained this as quite common, describing the phenomenon as “Moms being in their own place” to do the work. It’s sort of a meditative state and explains why homebirths seem so quiet.

D didn’t nurse right away, but breathed immediately. He seemed to be gaping, which alarmed me but he was just drinking in the air. D didn’t cry until the midwife stimulated his back, and even then stopped quickly. He just lay there against my breast, looking around, taking it all in. We waited for cord to stop pulsing then G cut it—with help from dad. Dad and G held D while Mom delivered placenta. No rips, just some skidding for Mom, and swelling for baby and Mom.

Neighborhood fireworks went on for a while after the midwives left and G had gone to bed. We felt like the world was celebrating with us. Simultaneously, it was just dh and I with our newborn. For the first time I was able to sleep with dh after a birth. For the first time, dh was able to spend the night with his new baby. We felt our family was complete, together, content.

D pooped, peed and nursed the first hours he was out. He slept through the night and I showered the next morning. I was functioning properly in the bathroom within the first 8 hours without pain. That was so shocking to me. SO AWESOME.

He was the perfect baby. Everyone says it was a perfect birth. Reading this, I would agree. But I had to process that; all externals were saying “Yay you!” while I felt my body failed me. I had to reframe my expectations entirely in retrospect; I had expected a painless, precipitous birth as I’d had with N. Now, I feel grateful and “Yay me.” After nine hours of labor, including one hour of pushing, I did not tear and had a water birth in front of crackling fireplace… not a bad birth at all.


D. Greenleaf F.
(AKA Thumper Thomas Apple Lighthouse Mt Rainier the Tax Deduction)
10.55 PM 12/31/04
7 pounds 8 ounces
21.5 inches long
14 inch head



Random funnies:

N got into the birthing tub nude, and Midwife visibly relaxed upon seeing his little intact self. “Oh good! I didn’t want to try to talk you out of circumcising your baby!”

G: “I know you can do it Mommy! I just know you can push the baby out!” alternated with “Are you pushing the baby out yet Mommy?” and “I’m so proud of you, Mommy!” She said this constantly for about three hours, until she fell asleep.

Movers Suck Really Bad

Finally located some of P’s winter clothes today. Movers are colossally stupid, or just generally lazy.

Note to mover: the garage is where the car goes. Games, bed linens, kitchen supplies and leather jackets do not go in the garage. The master bedroom is not where boxes marked “kitchen pans,” “girls room closet,” and “family room stereo” go.

Note to packer: Leather jackets are not tools. Homeschool supplies, when clearly labeled “homeschool,” are not games. Games are not tools. Christmas wrapping paper rolls are not “tall toy items.” Stain stick and Oxiclean are not generic “garage items.”

English is GOOD, particularly when it is your native language. Learn to read it!

Holding Pattern

I remember the discomforts of pregnancy mainly through memory of the words I used to describe it then; not physically. This is a pain in the behind. The visco topper for the mattress has saved me from the balance of the pain I usually experience in my hips and groin, but nothing can protect me from the fatigue. I have this drive to make this house a HOME. I really need it to be, and I have until Christmas Eve which is on Friday, to so it. I want it finished. It’s not hard to do—we planned this move carefully to make it as simple as possible on this end.

But I am
so
tired.

I was in bed for a couple of days with the prodromal labor, which has subsided. I see the midwife tonight (in a couple of hours) and I will see what happens with that. Hopefully the sight of her does not (or do I want it to?) put me into hard labor. I want to meet this little guy. And I want him to let me walk around again!

Crampy and Campy

Also typical of me, my body has decided to out this baby out early. I am 35 weeks 6 days by most counts and the baby wants OUT. The midwife has me on bedrest and I am supposed to drink beer or wine—at least one a day to keep my irritable uterus calmed down. I need to get at least to 36 weeks, preferably 37. Doesn’t feel good and certainly adds to my stress. We still haven’t trimmed the tree. We bought the damn thing—it’s standing in the living room—but it’s just bare. I knew with the move coming when it has that we would sacrifice a lot this year, but my kids WILL have a Christmas.

My online friend *T* stayed on the phone with me for a good two hours while I labored away. Good for me, had to be weird for her! No family here, no friends to come watch the kids. This is such a bizarre place to be socially for us.

Children cuteness: N tells everyone he can about how he has “finawwy seen Mt. Reindeer.” He took a week to get on Pacific Time but he’s there at last. G is having a blast and even she acknowledges that so I am happy with for her part of it. She says Washington is “not scary at all” as she had feared, and that she is enjoying learning all the new things. I have been scouring the children’s periodicals and am overwhelmed with all there is to do here. They definitely won’t want for fun or education!

And the Fast forward......

Typically of me, the pregnancy and the resulting excitement has occupied me sufficiently that I dumped my journal. 2004 has also shown us the worst hurricane season the Southeast has seen in 20 years. Florida was devastated by three consecutive CAT 4 hurricanes, all of which brushed by Charleston on their way out. We were directly hit with an additional Tropical Storm, which of course is nothing, but having to prepare to evacuate six times in a summer was no fun, especially given my pregnancy and P having to prep his residential care facility house instead of ours. I was by myself and I really hated it.

This summer’s garden was a success too. I had more victories than failures, and I learned a lot about gardening and pacing. Next year that yard will be beautiful. We planted a lot of things that will come back in full force. We also had a rat snake try to make it’s way into the house. I have been around snakes all my life but this one was IN our kitchen and we didn’t know it. One of us closed the side door in time to crush its head but we didn’t find it for a few days. Compounded by the fact that as juveniles, rat snakes and Eastern rattlers look identical, I was completely creeped out. Between that and the hurricanes I was ready to leave Charleston behind.

Since I last wrote, I have discovered that this baby—Thumper—is a boy, due January 17, 2005. More than that, we were planning on having an unassisted homebirth. My ideal fantasy was to have the baby in front of our glorious, crackling fireplace in a birthing tub, accompanied by my husband and my daughter. Thanks in part to a homebirth video we all watched, G is insisting that she even be in the tub with me to help the baby come out.

Typically for my pregnancies, life cannot be that simple. At least this change in plans is not devastating, like a hurricane or a gall bladder surgery. Throughout the summer P and I blanketed certain parts of the country with his resumes. After some intense negotiations, P took a job with CV in Tacoma. So now we live in Pugetopolis and P earns about 25K more a year. And I am 35 weeks pregnant. How’s that for drastic. So I am sitting here typing with many boxes to my right, and sleeping children upstairs.

We flew in on December 3rd, and since then, we have seen the Space Needle, the Woodlands Zoo in Seattle, and Mt. Rainier. We have spent time with my online Mommy friend ~A~ and her family. And we have explored, explored, explored. It’s beautiful here—rainy as hell, true—but beautiful. This transition has been extremely difficult but we planned the heck out of it so I think once we sell our house in Charleston (been on market since October) and get through moving and Christmas expenses, we’ll be much better off and able to enjoy the area thoroughly.

It was nice purging most of our material things, useless or unused, but I really want to get our home in order. We’re renting for a year or so first and I definitely don’t want to spend that time amid boxes. I am pushing to be unpacked before Christmas and definitely before baby arrives.