When adults fall down

Coming from the family of origin that I do, controversy and conflict don't scare me much. My worst fear regarding my interactions with my friends is that I will defend myself too well or too early against slights imaginary or intended, and as a consequence that I will hurt their feelings. I can see almost every side to any conflict, and I assume the best intent in my friend. While I may heartedly disagree with their perspective, I still see it and allow that perception to sway me away from confrontation even when I should probably call them out on something inappropriate.

I know I can protect myself, I just don't want to hurt anyone else in the process.

Ironically, as a result I tend to let things go too long or too far. I take too much. When I finally decide I have had enough, I just let it fade ... and the person is left behind. No muss, no fuss, just a gentle grief.

I hate that.

I don't want to experience that with my friends. The whole concept of "outgrowing friends" disgusts me, even while I see how it can be true in some situations.

I have two women right now with whom I am facing that dilemma. One loves me far less than I love her, and the other wants more of me than I can share. One relationship transitioned badly from online friend to real time friend, while the other is in a weird sort of stall while my friend transitions wildly from one station in her life to the next. In the first circumstance, my friend could not give me any latitude for processing the enormous changes on my own life. She wanted what she wanted and didn't care to hear from me what I needed, or the pain in my body that would keep me from the experiences I would love to have shared with her. In the second, I find myself on the other side of the fence. I want to be sensitive to this person, but I find myself being the impatient one.

I miss the little losses of shared time, humor, experiences. I still look at both of them and see the shining examples of goodness and intelligence and humor within the flawed human beings that we all are. I mourn the absence of the sense of intimacy that lets you speak your mind or share a difficult truth without fear of over-reaction or petty reprisals. And if I can't have that now, well yes it is indeed "my loss," but I suppose I am not alone in that arena, because I have a lot to offer too.

I feel frustrated: aren't adults supposed to be beyond this?????? I have incredible friends in my life who have been steadfast for years. It doesn't have to be this way.

The Rocket's Glare

The air was thick with smoke as we climbed the hill. The trees crowding around us could shield us from some of the light but none of the noise of the explosions all around us. Aside from the spattering of light coming from the trees, the path and it's precipitous drop off were completely shrouded in inky darkness.

"I need my head light!" came a small voice, accompanied by a scratchy little series of clicks. A stream of incandescent blue light shot ahead of us, lighting the gravel incline. N had turned on his flashlight headgear, followed shortly by his mom and dad's. G, taking point, lit her yellow flashlight. Always first, always yellow. We climbed up from the beach and then loaded G&N in the red wagon and D in the stroller and made our way back home.

We'd been part of our community, truly our local community. Down at the beach, many people from our neighborhood shot off huge amounts of beautiful fireworks, lit bonfires, sat around drinking coffee (that cracked me up on the 4th of July!) or wine and enjoyed the show. We sat our blanket next to our next door neighbors and the moms bantered about who was going swimming while the girls, long hair flowing, danced around with sparklers. The little boys stayed close to blanket while the Dads [erg grunt me-man] built our bonfire and shot off enormous, brilliant fireworks. This tableau was repeated beach after beach all around the Bay. From Purdy to Kopachuk to Home to Anderson and Fox Islands, we could see the sparkle of fireworks. At 9.30 someone on the GH side put on a BIG show, one apparently this family does every year. Over the ridge you could see Tacoma's big guns in the background. It was very exciting, and definitely very convenient. We've hiked longer every 4th of July at Folly Beach just to get to our car, then faced the 35 minute drive home in traffic all the way.

Earlier that morning, I made an oatmeal-pancake breakfast with Bacon. G was stunned to see cream whipped into "homemade whipped cream!!!!!!!!!!!!" which we served with raspberries. We used the cobalt glass dishes, so it was a nice festive 4th breakfast.

We went out to the farm to pick up our share, then picked up some sparklers of our own on the way home. At the farm, the kids planted a couple of rows of corn in the children's garden and picked three pints of strawberries. They ate their strawberries while we sat out near (not next to, by any means) the beehives, watching them zoom to and fro. It was nice to have P-daddy with us, seeing the what exactly "picking up our share" entails. Farmer T really opens it all up.

In retrospect, as fatigued as we were, it was a glorious, idyllic summer's day.

Happy Cake

Happiness is a husband who wants to spend his day off hanging with the fam... and who bakes the kiddies a cake for the holiday after they've gone to bed.

He be sweet.

Weekend Mode

Yesterday I donned the chef uniform again for the first time in nearly two years, and went back to work. 7 hours and some owchie feet later, I came home to my family. Everyone was in the back yard, so I unloaded while I listened to the kids play and P-Daddy talk his manly gruntspeak with his friend Schnayboy while they grilled BBQ ribs. How summer-Saturday is that? Schnaygirl came over to join her honey and their Schnaybaby and brought her boss potato salad. One of the best parts? I did nothing. The men planned it themselves. MAJOR progress, there, chicas-who-read-this.

Today I was uncharacteristically not-game-for-anything. Nothing. It's 2.41 and I am in public-appropriate PJs, but PJs nonetheless. I just wanted to hang around with the family. No plans, no schedule, no planned activities, nuffin.

N got a hairtrim this morning and is now next door playing with their boy. Their girl is over here, coloring with G. The girls and I have already spent some time together playing alphabet bingo and CHESS! Neighborgirl, at age 7 plays a proud game of chess. Talkabout nerdy Lory happiness. My girl? Playing chess with her friend? On purpose? Liking it?! AHHHHHHHH.

Loving it!

Ken Schram? On my blog?

Ken Schram has never been a favorite of mine due to his outspoken, obnoxious and incorrect remarks about nursing in public. But this week instead of ranting about the Victoria's Secret Nurse in, he chose to speak about the Carlsen-Rogers case.


This is my response to him:

Thank you very much for writing about Tina Carlsen and Riley Rogers. Regardless of what led Carlsen to disagree with the physicians treating her son and whatever other treatments she had in mind, the fact that they lied to DSHS, law enforcement agencies and the media makes this a scary story. When a medical body pledged to "first, do no harm" promotes false information to use other public service agencies to bludgeon a family into compliance, that medical body needs to be held to close scrutiny.

Many families in this region are waiting with bated breath to see what comes to light in this case. Are they capable of stealing our children, too? I appreciate you bringing this into a wider public forum, as these questions must be addressed.

No Amber Alert issued when you've an MD

Many of you chose to birth at home with a midwife because you wanted to make your own decisions regarding your child's healthcare. Many of you went on to make decisions regarding immunizations and other health issues outside of what the culture of medicine would want for your child.
Riley's mother is trying to do the same thing you were doing. She has done good research to make an informed choice. She has tried to communicate and cooperate with the physicians who have been caring for Riley. In a last resort desperate action she chose to take Riley from the custody of the hospital to protect him from the surgery that she could not agree with.
A group of women have come together to provide Riley's mother, Tina with the support she needs to continue to exert her rights as a parent, to make the decisions she feel is best for her baby.

Tina Carlsen, Riley Roger's mother, was on the Dave Ross show this morning on Kiro 710, while her baby was being cut open at Seattle Children's. She describes being apprehended in Yelm.... "Get down or I will f*(ing blow a hole in your head." is what the police shouted at her four times. I was a caller on the show, and I heard her voice through my phone. I don't think this is something I am ever going to forget.

After his birth, Carlsen was given three weeks to enjoy her newborn before he surely would die. Instead, she has worked tirelessly to make sure her son would live, and now he is thriving in spite of his kidneys. She has investigated treatments, standards of care and has worked with her son's drs to determine the best course of action for her son. They disagreed about the necessity of surgery that would allow them to quickly do dialysis on the baby should it come to that. When Carlsen chose not to have the surgery performed on her son, they called CPS on her and said she was endangering his life.

Now this baby is under the knife for a surgery his parents don't want for him. A surgery after which he will get to be with his mother only TWO HOURS, and that after a Tacoma judge interceded and ordered it. How can these assholes justify that? This is a baby who nurses... he's only 9 months old!

It is now all coming out in the wash... the Amber Alert was wrong.
If you follow the links in progression, it shows more and more over time how they all over-reacted, and are starting to say so. The surgery is not to save his life, but to implement a "standard of care," a nice way of saying plug-and-play medicine. If this is your illness, then you get x, y and z done to you regardless of whether it's evidence-based or exactly appropriate to your situation.

At this time Carlsen has been released, and now they are deciding whether to drop the kidnapping charges. Who lied? Who said that the surgery was life saving? Who told CPS, the Press, the highway patrol, that the child would die because his mother "kidnapped" him. She is 34. I am 35. They stole her child. They can steal mine.

This is one ring into which I am definitely tossing my hat. You can't be a mother for long and not know people who have children with serious issues. Cancer, mental challenges, failure to thrive, anything. What happens when you disagree with your provider and that provider is one of the physicians who thinks Father Knows Best? What happens when you finally decide "that's enough chemo, enough feeding tubes, enough torture."

Most parents love their children to desperation. Most people who decide "thanks, but no thanks" to the places like children's hospital are doing so because they can provide better care for their children. This institution ran a smear campaign against this woman and literally took her nursling from her at gunpoint. They then kept him secreted away from not only Mom, but Dad, grandparents, everyone he knew and loved, playing the media and the law enforcement agencies as patsies along the way.

I thought in Washington, we'd be safe from shit like this.

I called into the radio show and I have written the Governor's office. I will be writing the newspapers and contacting Cantwell, as well.

oh yeah baby

Wow. Wow. Wow.

Some things need no further comment from me.

Farmin

So the kids and I didn't seem to want to leave our house today, because it was just not hot as hell inside. I even tried to get out of going to the farm, but when I called him P-Daddy was still in Seattle and didn't think he could make pickup on time.

I will type that again... sigh... P-Daddy was in Seattle. We (well 4/5 of us) love Seattle. It was either that or Northwest Glory Harbor for our domicile, and since the wage-earning 1/5 of us despises urban living, here we are! That, and the nasty ass commute. I totally support living where we do but alas I love Seattle. But I digress.

So the farm; well it was still hot as hell OUTSIDE so the farm was toasty when we got there at 3.30. I piled the share into the laundry hamper and the kids scampered about like the little rabbits they are. Farmer T is really into kids so it is nice, to be able to go to a place where the kids are welcomed and encouraged to explore. While I helped install paths in the children's garden, G made potato prints and communed with the adolescent chickens and D went belly-swimming in the freshly turned field. The soil there is like baby powder. I don't know why I think I can ever just go there and come home, much less clean.

As I was thinking we were making our break for it, G asked Farmer T if she could "go pick a strawberry to eat." Farmer T responded by handing her a pint box and telling her to have fun. When N, coming back from his potato stamping, saw G's box then he wanted to go pick. So we spent another 30 minutes in the fields (and yes it was hot as hell.)

Still, that's really cool. This CSA is valuable to us on so many different levels, and the educational benefits for the kids are just huge. They're going to a farm and getting the experiential learning, but they have the added benefit of doing this over time. They've seen the chickens sitting on their eggs, and they've fed them and watched them grow from the moment they hatched. They watch the bees soar to the berries and back to the hive again, and they sweeten their tea and oats with that honey. They've seen the hoophouses nurture seedlings and haybale mazes, and they've seen those same hoophouses topple in a winter storm. They've seen the fields flood, but they've seen how the farm rebounds from disasters such as those. They're watching their mother and her adult friends volunteer. They're learning life cycles, which is what one would expect, but they're also being versed in community and resiliency.

In unrelated news, I washed one of the school mats with a load of children's clothes. The mat was a red woven fabric... with a very strong dye. For the first time in my life I dyed an entire load of clothes hot pink. Sigh. I washed them again, I soaked them in oxiclean. This is very effective dye. Nicholas is going to have pink underwear for a while, until I get some blue dye to make them all purple.

The hot as hell day

We started it at the beach, since hey that's what you do on glorious days. It was a -2.8 low tide at noon, which yields a lot of tidal pools. This one trip will generate a webpage of its own, but I had to post some pics here.

We live on geoduck central, and after exploring all the other life we could see (shrimp, three kinds of starfish, fish that hide in holes, mating dungeness crab, flounder, it goes on an on), we played find the geoduck. There are literally hundreds of them down there!

uhhhhhhh

I really don't have much more to add to that at this time. ~A~ is probably damn dying up there, because we are hot as hell. I was enjoying myself earlier in the day-- it was AWESOME. I experienced the first balmy breezes I've felt since moving here, and pretty much lolled in that down on the beach. (great pix from that later when it's not 87 degrees in the house)

Yet the mercury continues to climb, and our peak heat happens at about 5 PM. Remember... people don't have AC here. Not even window units, usually... and our windows won't FIT window units.

I bet the mall is gonna be PACKED later.

Happy Birthday to me

It's that day again. Every year this day just ...ugh. I dont' mind about getting older really. Not in an annual fashion anyway. I just don't like the sag. This sag where I look like me, but droopy. The weight I can lose, so even that doesn't truly bother me. It's my face. I like laugh lines; the skin...heading South....the corner of my eye being imperceptibly lower than it used to be. That bothers me.

I keep waiting for the time in my life when I will finally be thin, finally be straight-teethed, finally be beautiful. Um, whoops. I am thirty five. Better jump on that project, yah?

In related news, today already beats the pants off of the infamous two-people-remembered-my-birthday-but-only-after-3PM year of 2004 (my wonderful Grandmother and my friend Danny--hmmm who does that leave out???) N the blueberry has in fact informed P-daddy that he will be taking care of Momma today. G gave me several pieces of art, including a knotted, beaded necklace which of course, I will sport all day. I am going to give myself a spa morning, where I dye my hair and maybe even shave because God has in fact given me an additional gift as well; it's forecast to be about 77 degrees today, which will seem like heaven to me!


I linked to another blog because it is just that funny. I love her joke here about comments, and sometimes I feel just that way. I get an awful lot of traffic for no one saying anything.

Um. Have you met me?

Freudian Inventory Results

Oral (66%) you appear to be overly passive and dependent, wanting things to be given to you instead of working for them. Anal (40%) you appear to have a good balance of self control and spontaneity, order and chaos, variety and selectivity. Phallic (60%) you appear to have a good balance of sexual awareness and sexual composure. Latency (43%) you appear to have a good balance of abstract knowledge seeking and practicality, dealing with real world responsibilities while still cultivating your abstract and creative faculties and interests. Genital (60%) you appear to be somewhere between a progressive/openminded and regressive/closeminded outlook on life.

Take Free Freudian Inventory Test
personality tests by similarminds.com

I would have to say I agree with the oral fixation, but the whole depending on other people is laughable. It's something I struggle with every day, trying actively to depend on others and "share the load." It seems tidier to just do it all myself.

Meet Elvis

Yes, it keeps on getting better.

Now we have Elvis, the Guinea Pig. No we did not name him that. Yes, we really did get a guinea pig off Freecycle. No I have not lost my mind. Yes, P-Daddy is out of town. No, he doesn't know. Yes, Elvis will live in the schoolroom.

But hey, we get to have children who say I love Elvis and mean it. That should make P-Daddy happy.

Meet Bill

G got a fiddler crab from the beach and named him Crabbo. G loved Crabbo enough that his name made it onto P-Daddy's father's day card. Well, Crabbo didn't so much enjoy being housed with us, so I convinced G to let him free to make his way back down to the beach. G obliged, because she really is an "animal rescuer!" at heart, but that same heart was broken.

Sobbing into the phone with P-Daddy, she asked "Can we get me a hermit crab????? One that can live with us???"

Let's see. Sobbing Baby Girl. On phone with P-Daddy, which means...distance....inability to hug. Instant "yes, of course honey."

So while the little boys and I shopped for new shoes ("these make me run FAST, Mommy!!!!!" and "choooooooooochooooooooooooooo shooooooooooooooes! choooo chooooooo shoooooooes!" ) P-Daddy took the G to the Petco and bought Bill. You can see Bill's home linked above.

G chose the name, and I have no idea where it came from. But Bill seems to like G, so all is well.

Rest in peace, Crabbo!

Twelve Senses, Seven Arts

This ideal really spoke to me. We're so art heavy here, and I am excited to find a way that makes sense to me to punch it through into the other disciplines.

This is really turning into a homeschool blog isn't it? Well, if that is the case then here follows some more homeschool items under consideration.

There is a program called WAVA out of the Steilacoom school district which throws a bone at people like me. I don't HATE public school, per se, but I do really believe in my core that it wastes enormous amounts of time and squashes creativity and individual thinking in a morass of invented rules. K12 is a respected homeschooling curriculum available for purchase. Like many other states, WA has now licensed it for use as a virtual curriculum through the school district. The financial deal is that we don't have to pay for anything (k12 is expensive) and the children are enrolled officially in a public school district. They count G on their books, but I do all the teaching and get a curriculum I might like anyway for free.

One of the things that gives me pause is that unlike a traditional k12 curriculum, G would be taking "assessments." She would be in contact with a teacher from the district who will "help us" with our progress. WAVA participants also must participate in the pile of horseshit known as the WASL, and I kind of groove on the idea of having an invisble child or two. G is not known to the state yet, as kids here do not have to report to school until they are 8, and if I enroll her now I will have to file the homeschool letter of intent every year should I choose to not continue with WAVA.

The meeting is on Saturday at a museum in Tacoma. I am very much looking forward to it. (Then after that.........we get to go to a program hosted by Wolf Haven International at our local library. Obviously, I am a big fan of wolves, but G has shown some interest in them as a result of it.)

The other consideration is a GH homeschool organization also administered through the public school district, which allows for a much more liberal relationship between home and brick and mortar school. It seems pretty active and if you look at their yearbook for this year, G's age group has a significant amount of kids for a community this size. This is extremely appealing to me. Local, local, local. There is no secret about my grand affection for Pugetopolis at large, but when it comes to day in and day out, I'd rather engage here at the municipal level rather than go over to Tacoma, for example and participate in their (extremely well-organized and dynamic) homeschool HUB. We mindfully chose to live here, and I'd like to surround ourselves with other people who made the same decisions for themselves and their children.

Having said that, Kitsap county (adjacent to us) also has some really good offerings for the homeschooler, the most attractive to us being in the arena of music. They even have organized choirs for the children.

We also watched the Search for the Atocha, so that G could see where her coin came from. The documentary was a nice launchpad for discussion of hurricanes, shipping traditions, international trade then and now, and what constitutes "treasure." What do people value? We compared the Atocha to the wooden boats the kids had boarded at the maritime gig festival, and we learned that G now wants to have all the treasure off the Atocha. Failing that, she says she will just have to find treasure all her own. She says she has a lot to do when she is a grown up.

Oh cool!

Nut and dairy free blogger. Anyone who links to sunbutter as much as I do is ok in my book!

From ChicknGirl

(leave your name and...)

1. I'll respond with something random about you
2. I'll challenge you to try something
3. I'll pick a colour that I associate with you
4. I'll tell you something I like about you
5. I'll tell you my first/clearest memory of you
6. I'll tell you what animal you remind me of
7. I'll ask you something I've always wanted to ask you
8. if i do this for you you must post it in your journal


So this is for Emily:

1. You're one of the few people who managed to verbally shock me: I don't want to fuck it! I want to knit it!!!
2. I challenge you to find a friend to watch the kidlets while you get to the Stitch N Bitch in GH.
3. Green
4. Your velvety voice and generous laugh
5. Getting out of your car and laugh-shouting at me "Your directions suck!"
6. A Rabbit
7. OMFG WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO MOVE??? YOU HAVE TO TELL ME. YOU MUST. DO IT. I KNOW YOU READ THIS. TELL ME. DO IT. DOOOOOOOOO EEEEEEET.
8. You already did it, so hey! :p


For Tera:

1. Damn woman, how grateful am I that you explained the one broken pinto bean effect.
2. I challenge you to pack one room a day this week down to the kids-are-at-boarding-school level.
3. Terra cotta orange, for so many reasons
4. What's NOT to like. I admire your fearless and compassionate nature.
5. On our May 2002 I-Pillage EC. You are and I were the leading contenders in the actually-LOSING-weight-while-pregnant class.
6. Smokey the Bear
7. Would you really ever consider moving here if thingbop gotta job?
8. Post it in your journal

Programming the Organic Computer

Yesterday we went into Tacoma and had a nice, family, way-unschooling day. It was reminiscent of our "Thursdays" when we first began homeschooling. We began the day with breakfast, the kids played together while I cleaned up around the house, and then I cleaned out the van (which I habitually do on a weekly basis now, yay me!). When I went outside, so did they.

The following vignet is an example of how unschooling works, and why it is so cool. I am not a Radical Unschooler, but I fully understand the concept.

While I was cleaning out the car, N offered to help and pulled out his Gandalf staff from the back of the car. [insert link tomemorial day here] The kids decided that instead of the staff, they'd like to make another bird feeder (this will make our 8th feeder this spring).

I did nothing. I contributed little but encouragement while the two older children found supplies, fended off D, devised a plan and created their little bird stand. They staked their yard art and happily completed a project that required initiative, imagination, engineering and an understanding of animal behaviour. More experienced homechool Moms could probably add in a few more categories there, but I was happy with it. And this was just the 30 minute block of time before we left for our homeschool enrichment day out!

After that, we filled the rest of the feeders and made our way into Tacoma. We had a picnic lunch in the park next to the market, sucking down honey sticks and listening to some way-out-there, new-age harpist named Destyne singing for the entire time about living for today. Every song was about living in the now. She's obviously a big fan of living for today. Cause. She said it a lot. The kids soaked up the atmosphere but barely tolerated a picnic, as they knew we were really there for the free-Thursdays children's museum.

I set the kids loose in there and looked forward to some down time. The Tacoma Children's museum, while competent and visually appeallng, is probably the smallest children's museum I have ever seen. It is in effect one long shoebox with dividers for the discrete areas You can see the length of it and pretty much hear that far too. A few of the exhibits really rock and the kids love it, which is what matters. The part I like about it is that it's in the same building as my dh's job and there is only one way in and out.

Given this setup, I was confident I didn't need to hover to supervise the big kids, and I thought D would wander nicely on his own. Welllllllllllll.... almost. I did end up having to follow him around, and I did enjooy playing with him, but I was disappointed. I had brought skirezort's blanket to work, but I only got maybe 15 stitches in.

Frankly, this is what shames me: I was annoyed that I had to play with my son.

Other mothers were engaging their kids. Once upon a time I would not have even considered trying to shed a 17 month old. I saw the other mothers and they reminded me of well, ME before I had three. D has been a sweet, loving child but comparatively high maintenance when you consider his sleep issues. While he sleeps through the night now, he does it in our bed. At 17 mos, I am still nursing him to start the day at 5.30 am. If I am lucky, he'll go back to sleep, but that's a crap shoot.

It's obviously not D's fault that I am not engaged with my children the way I'd like to be; life is not very understanding of that. Lessons with G, N will be up our behinds. Pick a child, the others will use their sibling rivalry skills to interrupt. We have the garden to tend, the animals to feed, the house to clean and maintain. Life. Oh yes, that spouse thing. When deos one even have time for a conversation, much less intimacy or sex?

I simply don't know where I should get the energy to DO like I think is optimum for my kids. Further, I don't know whether I should do what I think is optimum. Am I over thinking it? Over reaching? I just don't know. Do I feel depression lurking because I am depressed, or simply because I am depleted? It doesn't take much to perk me up, so I don't think it is the big D. Factor in that children act like, well, children and you have some pretty high-energy dynamics going on in our household.

What I have decided to do to address the issue is just re-order our lives. We've been moving toward a more organic flow with thing. I used to have structured weeks, allowing for days to just "be." It's pretty much reversed now, and to some extent that seems to be working. We're not computers. I can't just tweak some html markup and javascript and suddenly transmute our lives in appearance and function. People change slower, over weeks and months. That alone is frustrating. Just altering habits within yourself takes so much time, but to do it for a whole family?

I will not give up on this. Nearly weekly I still marvel at their physical beauty, their athletic prowess, the creases of their smiles, the way their hair glints in the sun. I truly love being a mother. I love our specific little quirky family. I am grateful all the time, in stunned disbelief, that the life which started out as it did should have provided me with this amount of love and beauty. What I want is to have that feeling of wholeness and solidity that I envision when I think about our family. It will get there.

If I clean out the garage. :p

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

---

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.