My cousin Cara has started blogging her crafty projects at Pink Tea.
She's good. Really good.
Right now, in her own words, she is "obsessed" with felt foods, and they are beautiful! Check out her felt tea sets for inspiration when you get your next children's birthday party invitation.
Next on the agenda, she says, will be freezer paper stenciling on onesies and t-shirts.
Cara and I have had lots of fun over the years, from practicing and performing grand dancing productions in our grandparents' living room for our family audience, to staging art shows in the same space, with little price tags on our "art" for our adoring family fans, to sharing the same month of June in the same year for our respective weddings, one in Kentucky and one in Virginia. My only regret is that we don't live closer, so we could make barrettes and stenciled shirts over our kitchen tables as we shared tea and our children shared play.
I've never met an artist quite as good as she who refuses to admit to her talent. But you be the judge.
Monday, March 1, 2010
maple sugarin'
5 weeks since my last post?! I'm so sorry. Believe me when I say it hasn't been from lack of desire, but from the lack of time and purposeful prioritizing that happens when you have needy wee ones in the house. One day it will not be so, and I'll long for their little days back, I'm sure.
So many posts have rolled around in my head these past 5 weeks, it's been hard to narrow down which one should come first. Until we did our maple sugaring. Correction: if you're going to tap your maples for syrup, you gotta say "maple sugarin'." Just how it is.
It's been so exciting to plan the sugarin', learn about it (we attended a free park program for Backyard Maple Sugaring that was invaluable), prep the supplies, then follow through to receive...syrup! Real, 100%, all organic, maple syrup from our own maples on our own land. Ahhh....
The pictures in this case truly are worth 1000 words, so I'll let them (mostly) speak for themselves.
For weeks, I've been working on crafting some spiles from our elderberry limbs. You can purchase commercial spiles to use for tapping, but I wanted our first sugarin' attempt to give us free food, not stress us with a big upfront cost that we didn't know if we'd get back. As it turned out, crafting the spiles from elderberry was very fulfilling for me. Our friend Lauren came over one day and we sat at the kitchen table with Sydney (yep, Sydney! Sassy as she may be), all three of us carving out the soft pith from inside the elderberry limbs. It was such a nice handiwork activity to have while we talked about babies and homebirth and summer gardens.
I tied the leftover elderberry limbs that were too small to use as spiles into a bunch and stuck them in a large jar of water. I was so pleased when their little buds began to sprout! We will plant them in our orchard area this Spring.
Jeff took care of tapping all the trees. First, he drilled a hole at a slightly upward angle, about 2 1/2 inches in.
Then it was time to tap in the spile. He covered the hammer with a heavy cloth so it wouldn't split the elderberry.
Some of our trees began dripping sap right away!
It was Jeff's idea to use the little clamps on each spile to hold the catchment containers. We used empty water gallon jugs since they were inexpensive and easy to obtain.
Jeff then tied each jug to the tree as an added precaution.
Our first day was a sunny one with perfect sugarin' temperatures, so we got a full half-gallon of sap, which we then strained before boiling.
We boiled it down to the "maple tea" stage, which is about halfway to the syrup stage. Then, we could no longer resist the urge to taste it.
Yes, we are camera dorks, as if you did not already know!
It finally seems that Spring is around the corner here in our little part of the world. There hasn't yet been a day quite nice enough to leave us with the fresh, renewed vigor of being Alive Again. But there's been enough promise to make me break out The Beatles' Here Comes The Sun, one of my traditional Winter-to-Spring rites of passage. Premature? Probably. But little darlin, it has truly been a long cold lonely winter at times, more so than I can ever remember.
Sydney and I started our first round of seedlings over the weekend. We started all the frost-tolerant plants in our seed cabinet.
Next week, I plan another round of frost-tolerant plants, and then we'll move on to the frost-intolerant plants by the end of March.
And for tonight, that is all. I've just popped a big bowl of local popcorn to which I added chopped honey glazed walnuts I made last night. I'm off to watch one of my guilty pleasures on Hulu while the children are finally sleeping.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
a cool gardening tip
Our organic farming, permaculture expert friend Ande recently gave us this gardening tip that was such an easy and wonderful idea, I had to share.
If you've planted any trees before, then you know what a large hole must be dug for all its roots to be gently placed and spread apart inside. The general rule, I believe, is to dig twice as wide as you dig deep. My rule is to dig twice as wide or a foot larger diameter than the existing roots when spread out gently - whichever is larger.
When you're finished, you have a nice big dirt spot that is quite easy to distinguish from the surrounding grassy area. But within no time at all, it becomes a weed patch.
Ande says that he plants shade-tolerant perennial herb seeds around the base of new trees when he puts the tree in. Then, he surrounds them with some sort of fencing to protect the tree (and the herbs, by proxy) while it's little. This means that as the tree matures, so does the herb garden. In the end, there is no weeding to be done around the tree and you have useful plants under there to boot.
We are planting many, many trees this year. Some have been given to us, some we will order to add to our budding orchard, and some we will transplant from the woods. I'll also be ordering many, many perennial seeds and flowers of different varieties to plant around each tree.
back to basics
Although the January cold, wet, unrelenting grey is driving me more mad on many levels this year, there is also a certain rhythm to our days developing here which is a welcome respite from the constant chaotic and unpredictable running we did in the city.
Jeff and I looked over our (lack of) finances yesterday and realized we needed to make some lifestyle changes again. It's so easy to justify buying things at Christmas time - even on a credit card, which is usually a no-no in our home - that I usually end up running up a credit bill that is twice as much as I spent on gifts. When I'm in Target, for example, buying something I "have to get" for so and so, and pulling out the credit card to do so, I'll just go ahead and throw on the snacks we chose for ourselves, the snow boots for Sassy, and the high chair we need for Magpie.
Then January comes and I shake my head again. Why did I do that? Why did I let that happen?
So now the credit cards are coming back out of the wallet where they'd made their home during December, and I'm on a spending diet again. Part of this means staying home more and using less gas. One trip to a major hub here requires about a third a tank of gas - going into the city requires over half a tank. These kind of expenses add up quickly, especially since Jeff and I use our errand-running time to also have quiet time alone. This means we don't usually go out as a family, all of us noisily throwing around ideas in our very small car, each one trying to be heard over the other. Jeff and I both being the introverts we are, we'd much rather go alone, listen to music, and regroup by the time we get back home so we can walk back in the house with a smile instead of a headache.
Since I can't go out and spend money on various classes and supplemental activities for Sassy, I joined the time4learning program instead. It's a terribly goofy name for a quality web-based homeschooling curriculum where children learn different skills through hundreds of online interactive lessons and activities. (I don't get any money for talking about this by the way. I like for my blog opinion to have credence, not dollars!) I have to say, based on our first week, that it's the answer we've been looking for. She does between two and four activities a day, and they each take about 15-20 minutes. They are laid out on the site in order of which skill set should come next according to her current age, grade level, and existing skills.
She loves doing these kind of online activities, and with one baby in the house and another looming, I can overcome my Luddite tendencies as a teacher to recognize the value of outsourcing part of her learning to the computer right now.
In particular, her interest in reading is improving. Although I've always been an avid reader, I wasn't enjoying teaching reading to Sassy. Math is more her thing, and reading came as more of a challenge to her. I just wasn't enjoying teaching something that she didn't seem to be "getting" when it came so naturally to me. I even considered hiring a tutor to teach her how to read. (Pathetic. She's in first grade.)
I knew that part of the problem was probably that neither I nor her dad were being impartial enough while teaching her, because we were frustrated that she wasn't getting it more quickly. Enter computer program - nothing if not impartial. Since we've only used it for a week, I can't gauge her level of improvement yet, but she's doing the activities without complaining and that's a great sign.
We pay $20/month for the service and it keeps records of her completed activities for me. I'm finally confident that I'm not going to forget to introduce her to something essential, just because it wasn't on my radar, like say....metric measurement, or calendar skills, or how to tell a mammal from a reptile, or any number of things that I take for granted because I just know them.
Having this "school" to complete each morning has given our days the structure and rhythm they've been missing. She has different limitations on weekdays versus weekends. She's not allowed to watch television programs on weekdays until 4:00, for example. She has to complete certain core lessons that I put on the refrigerator and we check off until she's finished. After that, she has choices of what sorts of things she wants to do. The choices include just about everything except watch television until 4:00, but she likes to hear choices. So I tell her she can listen to a book on CD, play a game at pbskids, help me with whatever I'm doing, or play with her toys - inside or outside.
I love this structure. Not too much. Not too little.
She also has two predictable chores that are hers. The first is to put the laundry from the washer into the dryer and the other is to empty the dishwasher onto the table and stack the dishes into similar piles.
Not too much. Not too little.
Really, the post-Christmas financial concerns have made us step up some of our self-sufficiency plans. Jeff has started building us a shelter for a dairy goat and a sheep. Eliminating a monthly milk bill and a weekly trip to get said milk 60 miles away would be a welcome change.
Sadly, we are forced to sell our older van we wanted for vacations, and sadly, I'm forced to cart two (three in June?) children in a Kia Spectra sedan, but while the vans look lovely and roomy, it's more helpful for me to consider my basic needs for a vehicle. They are: it gets reliably from Point A to Point B and doesn't cost me much money to maintain. The Kia fits those basic needs for now. Sometimes I look at it on a continuum: a nice, posh, brand-new Honda Odyssey would be my first choice in our "ride." A horse and carriage would be first-choice in how much I want to pay for transportation. The Kia is somewhere in the middle.
We're planning to do some maple sugaring this year. We have so many maples on our property. If we wanted to tap them all, I'd have to spend over $50 in commercial maple spouts. I'd rather spend that $50 (if I spend it at all) on a huge outdoor boiling pot, so I'm looking at some handmade options made from elderberry limbs. Since I hate just sitting watching television programs and doing nothing productive while I'm sitting there, I thought perhaps the elderberry spouts might be a good idle time activity.
We're trying to keep our food bill as low as possible, so I'm sort of falling back to Nourishing Traditions habits, trying to get the most nutrition out of simple staples.
All in all, we're trucking along, tying to keep from getting too blue in all the grey.
Here are some recent pictures, but I have many new pics that will have to come later. At Maggie's first birthday party, we accidentally left our DSLR at Nana's house. AGHH!!! So, I can't post any pictures of her first birthday or any pictures taken in the past two weeks really. AGH!
Maggie is one!
Modern Grandpa
Our dogs' toy
We joke about the number of once-living things our dogs scavenge from the woods and the neighboring fields that end up scattered across our lawn. And we joke about our mindset with them - how much it's changed since we were in the suburbs. Case in point: here is the third deerskin they've drug up from who-knows-where to toss around and take turns chewing on. Had we looked out our back door of our little suburban home to find a deer skin in our backyard, let me tell you I would have freaked out, convinced that teenage kids around me were dabbling in something terrible and evil and were surely out to get our family. (Yes, you may laugh.)
Here, I drive home & get out of the car to find my dog gnawing on a random deer leg with fur and hoof still attached, and I shake my head and laugh while I pat her head.
Things change.
Jeff and I looked over our (lack of) finances yesterday and realized we needed to make some lifestyle changes again. It's so easy to justify buying things at Christmas time - even on a credit card, which is usually a no-no in our home - that I usually end up running up a credit bill that is twice as much as I spent on gifts. When I'm in Target, for example, buying something I "have to get" for so and so, and pulling out the credit card to do so, I'll just go ahead and throw on the snacks we chose for ourselves, the snow boots for Sassy, and the high chair we need for Magpie.
Then January comes and I shake my head again. Why did I do that? Why did I let that happen?
So now the credit cards are coming back out of the wallet where they'd made their home during December, and I'm on a spending diet again. Part of this means staying home more and using less gas. One trip to a major hub here requires about a third a tank of gas - going into the city requires over half a tank. These kind of expenses add up quickly, especially since Jeff and I use our errand-running time to also have quiet time alone. This means we don't usually go out as a family, all of us noisily throwing around ideas in our very small car, each one trying to be heard over the other. Jeff and I both being the introverts we are, we'd much rather go alone, listen to music, and regroup by the time we get back home so we can walk back in the house with a smile instead of a headache.
Since I can't go out and spend money on various classes and supplemental activities for Sassy, I joined the time4learning program instead. It's a terribly goofy name for a quality web-based homeschooling curriculum where children learn different skills through hundreds of online interactive lessons and activities. (I don't get any money for talking about this by the way. I like for my blog opinion to have credence, not dollars!) I have to say, based on our first week, that it's the answer we've been looking for. She does between two and four activities a day, and they each take about 15-20 minutes. They are laid out on the site in order of which skill set should come next according to her current age, grade level, and existing skills.
She loves doing these kind of online activities, and with one baby in the house and another looming, I can overcome my Luddite tendencies as a teacher to recognize the value of outsourcing part of her learning to the computer right now.
In particular, her interest in reading is improving. Although I've always been an avid reader, I wasn't enjoying teaching reading to Sassy. Math is more her thing, and reading came as more of a challenge to her. I just wasn't enjoying teaching something that she didn't seem to be "getting" when it came so naturally to me. I even considered hiring a tutor to teach her how to read. (Pathetic. She's in first grade.)
I knew that part of the problem was probably that neither I nor her dad were being impartial enough while teaching her, because we were frustrated that she wasn't getting it more quickly. Enter computer program - nothing if not impartial. Since we've only used it for a week, I can't gauge her level of improvement yet, but she's doing the activities without complaining and that's a great sign.
We pay $20/month for the service and it keeps records of her completed activities for me. I'm finally confident that I'm not going to forget to introduce her to something essential, just because it wasn't on my radar, like say....metric measurement, or calendar skills, or how to tell a mammal from a reptile, or any number of things that I take for granted because I just know them.
Having this "school" to complete each morning has given our days the structure and rhythm they've been missing. She has different limitations on weekdays versus weekends. She's not allowed to watch television programs on weekdays until 4:00, for example. She has to complete certain core lessons that I put on the refrigerator and we check off until she's finished. After that, she has choices of what sorts of things she wants to do. The choices include just about everything except watch television until 4:00, but she likes to hear choices. So I tell her she can listen to a book on CD, play a game at pbskids, help me with whatever I'm doing, or play with her toys - inside or outside.
I love this structure. Not too much. Not too little.
She also has two predictable chores that are hers. The first is to put the laundry from the washer into the dryer and the other is to empty the dishwasher onto the table and stack the dishes into similar piles.
Not too much. Not too little.
Really, the post-Christmas financial concerns have made us step up some of our self-sufficiency plans. Jeff has started building us a shelter for a dairy goat and a sheep. Eliminating a monthly milk bill and a weekly trip to get said milk 60 miles away would be a welcome change.
Sadly, we are forced to sell our older van we wanted for vacations, and sadly, I'm forced to cart two (three in June?) children in a Kia Spectra sedan, but while the vans look lovely and roomy, it's more helpful for me to consider my basic needs for a vehicle. They are: it gets reliably from Point A to Point B and doesn't cost me much money to maintain. The Kia fits those basic needs for now. Sometimes I look at it on a continuum: a nice, posh, brand-new Honda Odyssey would be my first choice in our "ride." A horse and carriage would be first-choice in how much I want to pay for transportation. The Kia is somewhere in the middle.
We're planning to do some maple sugaring this year. We have so many maples on our property. If we wanted to tap them all, I'd have to spend over $50 in commercial maple spouts. I'd rather spend that $50 (if I spend it at all) on a huge outdoor boiling pot, so I'm looking at some handmade options made from elderberry limbs. Since I hate just sitting watching television programs and doing nothing productive while I'm sitting there, I thought perhaps the elderberry spouts might be a good idle time activity.
We're trying to keep our food bill as low as possible, so I'm sort of falling back to Nourishing Traditions habits, trying to get the most nutrition out of simple staples.
All in all, we're trucking along, tying to keep from getting too blue in all the grey.
Here are some recent pictures, but I have many new pics that will have to come later. At Maggie's first birthday party, we accidentally left our DSLR at Nana's house. AGHH!!! So, I can't post any pictures of her first birthday or any pictures taken in the past two weeks really. AGH!
Maggie is one!
Modern Grandpa
Our dogs' toy
We joke about the number of once-living things our dogs scavenge from the woods and the neighboring fields that end up scattered across our lawn. And we joke about our mindset with them - how much it's changed since we were in the suburbs. Case in point: here is the third deerskin they've drug up from who-knows-where to toss around and take turns chewing on. Had we looked out our back door of our little suburban home to find a deer skin in our backyard, let me tell you I would have freaked out, convinced that teenage kids around me were dabbling in something terrible and evil and were surely out to get our family. (Yes, you may laugh.)
Here, I drive home & get out of the car to find my dog gnawing on a random deer leg with fur and hoof still attached, and I shake my head and laugh while I pat her head.
Things change.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
library day
We had our first Mommy-Sassy day today since our Magpie was born. We headed to town to visit the library, the chocolate shop, the nature shop & the coffee shop. Before we left, I thought it would be fun to pull up an activity we could do at the library together. I was looking for something that helped teach specific library skills, remembering those field trip days we would take in grade school, visiting the library, learning about the Dewey Decimal system, browsing through card catalogs. Although the process has changed since information was stored digitally, the same filing system still exists and deserves some explanation.
How pleased I was to discover a 9-lesson curriculum just for K-2 children, focused on the same library skills I wanted to share with her. An elementary school in Stanton, KY publishes this library skills curriculum online.
We decided to start with the lesson on learning how books are filed alphabetically by the author's last name, using the Easy Books in the children's department as an example.
The published lesson plan had us start by reading the book Chrysanthemum
by Kevin Henkes - one of our favorites - but they were all checked out.So we read two other Henkes books and two books of Sassy's choice. Then we sat at one of the little tables where they already had coloring sheets and crayons set up. I told her she could either color one of the pre-printed sheets or just use the back of the page to draw whatever she wanted.
She did both.
We folded the sheet in half and she wrote her first and last name near the "spine." Since the books on our library shelf were labeled with the first two letters of the author's last name, we wrote the first two letters of Sassy's last name at the bottom of her book to remind her what to look for. Then, we filed her "book" on the shelf where it would go alphabetically.
She asked if we could just leave it there. "Sure!" I said. Then we laughed conspiratorially, like we were doing something so subversive.
She played computer games for another half hour or so, while I talked to the children's librarian who, I found out, was part of the LLL group nearest me. As we left, I asked Sassy to let me take a picture with her by her newly filed library "book." She was so afraid that the librarian would realize we were breaking the rules - since we had filed it there - that she had to sneak it out with her. I was amused, so I played along like I had no idea she was taking it with her. When we got out the door, we laughed like sneaky cohorts again.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
A Christmas Surrender
My time is in short supply lately. We had three weeks of straight sickness that we're finally on the other side of (I hope!). My Magpie wanted All Mama, All the Time and Sassy was eager to grab any of the leftovers. Sleep has finally returned to most of our nights, and nothing could have made me happier.
It's been a little frustrating. I've been itching to write about so many things lately, but carving time out seems to be getting increasingly difficult. Jeff is home every day now, since his layoff in November. He is a homebody by nature, so he rarely goes out unless it's for a quick errand. It's even harder to grab writing time when he's home, for some reason. Perhaps I feel it's not as practical as other activities I could be doing (cleaning, laundry, diapers, cooking)? Perhaps I feel rude shutting the door to my computer space, leaving him with both kids? Perhaps I know my proclivity to irritation when interrupted and I don't want to start our days off poorly? I don't know. It seems to be an adjustment process, both of us here all day, every day, and fortunately, I think we're on the tail-end of that too. There's small stuff to tweak and that's about it. Overall, the change has been very positive.
Maggie turns ONE! in less than a month. It was around this time that I had planned to secure a part-time freelance writing job at The Madison Roundabout, a monthly publication focused on entertainment and editorials. They've been advertising for a freelance writer & photographer with a few in-house hours to help with layout, probably right before print each month. I first saw the ad back in early summer, and I keep seeing it in the paper each time I pick it up. I wanted Maggie to be about a year old and a little less addicted to Mama and the nursies. I wanted her firmly established on solids and sippies and able to stay with Daddy for a few hours at a time. She's getting close.
But then in September, I got this instead.
Um, that wasn't in the plan.
On November 30th, our last day of insurance from Jeff's job, I had a quick ultrasound that showed a flippy floppy baby and a quick little heartbeat.
Looks like the Roundabout is out for awhile. Looks like life is going to get a lot harder, time is going to get a lot shorter, and sleep is going to run away with the spoon.
For those of you who might not know, successful conception and pregnancies have always been rather difficult around here. It took a long time to conceive at all, then I started losing babies after Sassy. First there was a 12-week missed miscarriage, then lots of positive pregnancy tests that ended a few days later, months and months of those. Then there was an infertility specialist and Clomid and twins that only held out a week. There was me not into the whole infertility routine - I said I wasn't hardcore enough for that - and then there was a brilliant nutritionist to whom I'm infinitely thankful. There were lots of supplements and diet changes and then there was the conception of my Magpie. There was worry, lots of worry, then there was a placental hemorrhage at 12 weeks and the ER and lots of unwanted interventions and the news I was miscarrying.
But I wasn't.
There was me on bedrest for four weeks, finally awakening to the intuitive connection I had with my baby inside. There was me learning to trust that, to consult that, and to communicate with a baby that was part of me and not at the same time.
There was a planned homebirth, finally decided at 32 weeks, for a baby with a beautiful and established head-down presentation. Then she flipped, 3 weeks before I was due. There was a decision to be made, and the intuition I'd learned to trust before...the communication patterns we built during the Big Scare at 12 weeks, made the decision for me. I would trust the baby and her decision to flip, and I would trust my body to have her.
And then she was born, she was here, and it was beautiful! She was a gorgeous little baby and I was so happy to have had her at home, to have had her without a c-section, but most importantly, to have had her at all.
And I decided I didn't care if I had any more. I could be done and be fine. This was a first!
Imagine my surprise when after all that trying, all those losses, all that heartache and mindtrip (infertility is the ultimate in mindtrips, what with all the "positive thinking will get you where you need to be," but I'll choose not to digress this time), here we were with an unplanned pregnancy.
To boot, we had just moved and I had so many plans for improving and working our little homestead next year. I soothed myself all summer last year by telling myself I could be super productive this year, when Maggie started toddling. Just one year, I told myself. No big deal.
When I couldn't write as much as I wanted, I told myself: one year will make a big difference. When I ended up stuck in the chair nursing again I told myself: next year things will be different. Another sleepless night with a baby using me as a human pacifier all night? It's just a year, sleep is always hard for a year.
I'll admit my reaction wasn't ideal when I first took that test. For a few months, though I didn't speak my feelings much out loud (an old infertility mindtrip of JINX prevented that), on my good days I was ....indifferent....about adding another baby to our family so soon. On my bad days, I was scared, annoyed, even a little angry. The one that was missing was joy.
Next year was supposed to be my time. Finally. I was supposed to be able to work the land like I wanted to, and get that little part-time writing job outside the house. It was supposed to get easier, not harder!
But there are some things in life that you just have to accept. First of all, there's no way out of it. More importantly in this case, this little surprise of ours, way off the time plan we'd established, has the potential to bring so much joy - a lifetime of it. I know that I now can't imagine my life without Maggie. What parent can? And it's not just any baby, it's her.
I can't imagine my life without her shy little way of burying her head in my shoulder when people talk to her, while she still looks at them with a crooked smile. I can't imagine my life without her love of being hugged tightly and rocked back and forth, the way she just smiles and loves back. I can't imagine my life without her slobbery little open mouth on my cheek when I ask for kisses. Her particular nose and her particular hairline and her particular fingers and rolls and the little birthmark under her left thumb and the little knot on her right ear.
And I know we'll feel the same about the next baby.
I'm writing this today in lieu of so many other subjects I could have - and wanted to - write about, because today is about Christmas. Why?
Let me share another little secret of mine. Although I was raised in a Christian church, I never really felt the big significance around Christmas. Yes, it's the day Jesus was born, which is the best of all Bible stories for children. A little baby in a manger born in a barn with farm animals around? For a child, how does it get better than that?
But as I matured, I lost the magic around Christmas and I didn't get any real insight or significance from the actual birth of Christ. I mean, he was born, but he didn't accomplish much that day except journeying through the birth canal. I always saw the significance behind Good Friday and Easter. But Christmas was about family gatherings and pagaents (would I get to be Mary this year?) and remembering my parts for the bell choir and candlelight service and of course, presents.
And then a few years ago, I watched two movies about the nativity story that brought the events to life for me. Each year since, as the parent of young children, I've begun to relate more to Mary and Joseph as the focus of the lessons I learn at Christmas. And this year, I'm finding my own spiritual lesson of Christmas to be that of surrender. Jesus was quite the ill-timed baby, yet Mary embraced him. Joseph could have walked away, but he didn't. Here came a little baby that was about to make their lives in that culture very, very hard, and still he was embraced. Their timetable was surrendered.
I often think about that late third-trimester journey to Bethlehem when I'm tempted to bemoan my own pregnancy woes and discomforts. Surrender. Perspective and surrender.
It's so tempting for me - in all areas of my life - to think, as soon as xyz happens, then I can be happy. It's much harder for me to embrace the present for the joys it can hold.
When I think about surrendering my own timetable this Christmas - my own plans, my own body, my own bed and my right to a full night's sleep - I want to remember that every journey has its own purpose. I can stay in the journey and enjoy it for the unique joys that it brings, or I can keep waiting for the end of the road. How sad to miss everything along the way.
It's been a little frustrating. I've been itching to write about so many things lately, but carving time out seems to be getting increasingly difficult. Jeff is home every day now, since his layoff in November. He is a homebody by nature, so he rarely goes out unless it's for a quick errand. It's even harder to grab writing time when he's home, for some reason. Perhaps I feel it's not as practical as other activities I could be doing (cleaning, laundry, diapers, cooking)? Perhaps I feel rude shutting the door to my computer space, leaving him with both kids? Perhaps I know my proclivity to irritation when interrupted and I don't want to start our days off poorly? I don't know. It seems to be an adjustment process, both of us here all day, every day, and fortunately, I think we're on the tail-end of that too. There's small stuff to tweak and that's about it. Overall, the change has been very positive.
Maggie turns ONE! in less than a month. It was around this time that I had planned to secure a part-time freelance writing job at The Madison Roundabout, a monthly publication focused on entertainment and editorials. They've been advertising for a freelance writer & photographer with a few in-house hours to help with layout, probably right before print each month. I first saw the ad back in early summer, and I keep seeing it in the paper each time I pick it up. I wanted Maggie to be about a year old and a little less addicted to Mama and the nursies. I wanted her firmly established on solids and sippies and able to stay with Daddy for a few hours at a time. She's getting close.
But then in September, I got this instead.
Um, that wasn't in the plan.
On November 30th, our last day of insurance from Jeff's job, I had a quick ultrasound that showed a flippy floppy baby and a quick little heartbeat.
Looks like the Roundabout is out for awhile. Looks like life is going to get a lot harder, time is going to get a lot shorter, and sleep is going to run away with the spoon.
For those of you who might not know, successful conception and pregnancies have always been rather difficult around here. It took a long time to conceive at all, then I started losing babies after Sassy. First there was a 12-week missed miscarriage, then lots of positive pregnancy tests that ended a few days later, months and months of those. Then there was an infertility specialist and Clomid and twins that only held out a week. There was me not into the whole infertility routine - I said I wasn't hardcore enough for that - and then there was a brilliant nutritionist to whom I'm infinitely thankful. There were lots of supplements and diet changes and then there was the conception of my Magpie. There was worry, lots of worry, then there was a placental hemorrhage at 12 weeks and the ER and lots of unwanted interventions and the news I was miscarrying.
But I wasn't.
There was me on bedrest for four weeks, finally awakening to the intuitive connection I had with my baby inside. There was me learning to trust that, to consult that, and to communicate with a baby that was part of me and not at the same time.
There was a planned homebirth, finally decided at 32 weeks, for a baby with a beautiful and established head-down presentation. Then she flipped, 3 weeks before I was due. There was a decision to be made, and the intuition I'd learned to trust before...the communication patterns we built during the Big Scare at 12 weeks, made the decision for me. I would trust the baby and her decision to flip, and I would trust my body to have her.
And then she was born, she was here, and it was beautiful! She was a gorgeous little baby and I was so happy to have had her at home, to have had her without a c-section, but most importantly, to have had her at all.
And I decided I didn't care if I had any more. I could be done and be fine. This was a first!
Imagine my surprise when after all that trying, all those losses, all that heartache and mindtrip (infertility is the ultimate in mindtrips, what with all the "positive thinking will get you where you need to be," but I'll choose not to digress this time), here we were with an unplanned pregnancy.
To boot, we had just moved and I had so many plans for improving and working our little homestead next year. I soothed myself all summer last year by telling myself I could be super productive this year, when Maggie started toddling. Just one year, I told myself. No big deal.
When I couldn't write as much as I wanted, I told myself: one year will make a big difference. When I ended up stuck in the chair nursing again I told myself: next year things will be different. Another sleepless night with a baby using me as a human pacifier all night? It's just a year, sleep is always hard for a year.
I'll admit my reaction wasn't ideal when I first took that test. For a few months, though I didn't speak my feelings much out loud (an old infertility mindtrip of JINX prevented that), on my good days I was ....indifferent....about adding another baby to our family so soon. On my bad days, I was scared, annoyed, even a little angry. The one that was missing was joy.
Next year was supposed to be my time. Finally. I was supposed to be able to work the land like I wanted to, and get that little part-time writing job outside the house. It was supposed to get easier, not harder!
But there are some things in life that you just have to accept. First of all, there's no way out of it. More importantly in this case, this little surprise of ours, way off the time plan we'd established, has the potential to bring so much joy - a lifetime of it. I know that I now can't imagine my life without Maggie. What parent can? And it's not just any baby, it's her.
I can't imagine my life without her shy little way of burying her head in my shoulder when people talk to her, while she still looks at them with a crooked smile. I can't imagine my life without her love of being hugged tightly and rocked back and forth, the way she just smiles and loves back. I can't imagine my life without her slobbery little open mouth on my cheek when I ask for kisses. Her particular nose and her particular hairline and her particular fingers and rolls and the little birthmark under her left thumb and the little knot on her right ear.
And I know we'll feel the same about the next baby.
I'm writing this today in lieu of so many other subjects I could have - and wanted to - write about, because today is about Christmas. Why?
Let me share another little secret of mine. Although I was raised in a Christian church, I never really felt the big significance around Christmas. Yes, it's the day Jesus was born, which is the best of all Bible stories for children. A little baby in a manger born in a barn with farm animals around? For a child, how does it get better than that?
But as I matured, I lost the magic around Christmas and I didn't get any real insight or significance from the actual birth of Christ. I mean, he was born, but he didn't accomplish much that day except journeying through the birth canal. I always saw the significance behind Good Friday and Easter. But Christmas was about family gatherings and pagaents (would I get to be Mary this year?) and remembering my parts for the bell choir and candlelight service and of course, presents.
And then a few years ago, I watched two movies about the nativity story that brought the events to life for me. Each year since, as the parent of young children, I've begun to relate more to Mary and Joseph as the focus of the lessons I learn at Christmas. And this year, I'm finding my own spiritual lesson of Christmas to be that of surrender. Jesus was quite the ill-timed baby, yet Mary embraced him. Joseph could have walked away, but he didn't. Here came a little baby that was about to make their lives in that culture very, very hard, and still he was embraced. Their timetable was surrendered.
I often think about that late third-trimester journey to Bethlehem when I'm tempted to bemoan my own pregnancy woes and discomforts. Surrender. Perspective and surrender.
It's so tempting for me - in all areas of my life - to think, as soon as xyz happens, then I can be happy. It's much harder for me to embrace the present for the joys it can hold.
When I think about surrendering my own timetable this Christmas - my own plans, my own body, my own bed and my right to a full night's sleep - I want to remember that every journey has its own purpose. I can stay in the journey and enjoy it for the unique joys that it brings, or I can keep waiting for the end of the road. How sad to miss everything along the way.
Monday, December 21, 2009
the log home
When we moved out here, we intended to build right away. We wanted a log home; well, technically we wanted a log-sided home. Is it the most "green" of all our options? No. But it was part of the package for us. We wanted the acreage and the log home on it. We love log homes - they bring many happy memories with them for both of us. We do a heck of a lot of other stuff to reduce our impact on the planet, and we wanted to give ourselves this one luxury.
But as these things go, giving ourselves a luxury every now and then doesn't mean we give in to our whims completely. We've been actively researching how to make our future log home as low-impact (and least costly) as possible.
So we decided on a few things. First, we're going to make it a stick-built home with log siding. We have newer-growth edge woods (7.5 acres of them) that have been untended for a very long time. Jeff is currently cutting down our red cedars - actually in the juniper family - to use as our siding. Red cedars are what they call "pioneer" trees, meaning they are one of the first to establish themselves on a field that is left untended. They're very prominent in new-growth woods like ours. As the hardwood trees start to grow up around them, they eventually shade out and kill off these juniper pioneers.
Our woods could use some culling, for certain, and the red cedars are a great option since they will eventually die out anyway (in fact most are already dead except their very tops, 20 feet up), and since they regrow so quickly. As luck would have it, they are also one of the best trees to use for a log home since they are so bug resistant.
We are also building a two-story home with a small (less than 1200 square foot) footprint. The bottom story, which will house our bedrooms, will be underground with a walkout into our woods. We're having a standard concrete basement poured, then we'll finish it with three bedrooms and a small living area with a woodstove that looks out into our woods.
It can get very hot in our area during the summer, and we usually end up running the air conditioner for at least two months each year, for both temperature and air quality. Having our sleeping areas underground should eliminate the need to run our air conditioner, except maybe a week or two in mid-August when the tomatoes are ready to can. The prospect of canning in 95 degree heat with 70% humidity makes canning not happen.
We're using as many free and recycled items as possible to finish the interior of the house. And we're situating the house to take advantage of the solar gain in the winter.
We're very excited about our plans, and the fact that we will one day be living in our log home on our land, just like we intended from the beginning. We think we have it figured out financially so that we won't have to borrow any money to complete the house.
And the best part?
We're starting on the basement next month! By the end of winter, we should have the entire basement poured and weatherproofed. We might choose to finish it and live in it before the rest of the home goes up. We could then sell our mobile and have that cash to use for the framing and/or the roof.
This is a huge step for us, and it definitely keeps me going on these endless cold, cloudy days. :-)
And now, a quick plug for my other blog, Supper In Seconds. If you've never been there, it's a recipe blog I started a couple years ago dedicated to scratch cooking that takes 15 minutes or less hands-on time.
We eat little to no processed food here. I am extremely sensitive to chemicals (another bonus on using our own logs for our own home), to the point where I was on medication for nearly 15 years to deal with my chemical sensitivities. I stopped taking medication 5 years ago, and have learned a lot about keeping myself and my family fed without convenience foods.
I started documenting my favorite quick recipes, because if you don't have the sensitivities I do, and you can eat convenience foods, I suspect most of you probably eat more of them than you want to simply because they are quick to prepare.
Supper In Seconds was intended to offer some alternatives.
I've had some camera issues for several months, so the blog is very deficient in pictures for a food blog! However, my dear husband just fixed those camera issues for me as my Christmas gift, so I can now start including pics of the finished recipes too.
In the future, you can access it on the right sidebar of this blog. I hope you enjoy it too!
And finally, on to some recent photos:
We lost our Christmas stockings in the move somehow, so I sewed some more & Sassy and I decorated them tonight. She decorated the one with the Christmas tree.
With Jeff home full-time now, finding a quiet space to do some schoolwork in our very small house - or any non-distracted work - is very hard for Sassy. I carved her out a little spot today.
She, in turn, immediately set to work choosing a tablecloth for the table an setting up her desk.
And lastly, yes it's true we have no TV input. That's right. No cable. No satellite. No network news. However, aside from Hulu, entertainment still abounds, no worries. For example, just last week I spent 30 minutes watching and documenting...
The Death of The Fly, starring The Tiny Spider One-Fourth Its Size
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