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Livvy. Sweet, smiley, content. Threw me out to sea for awhile. Funny, I was afraid for Jeff to leave me alone with all three of them at once. "Are you crazy?!" I would wonder. "Only a crazy person would leave me alone with all three of these children when I obviously have no idea how to care for them all at the same time."

Then I slowly, s-l-o-w-l-y, got my land legs back. And here I am. Blogging again.

So. I don't talk a whole lot about religion on here. Faith, self-denial, principles - all of those topics I bring up frequently. But religion - or maybe "sectarianism" might be a better term, made-up or not - I try to let be.

I was raised Protestant. I left the church when I was 18 for various reasons and stayed out for about 15 years. During that time, I made lots of friends outside the church. Agnostic, atheist, pagan, Buddhist, Catholic, Christian, and everything in between. When I started to attend again (after my first baby, of course) I was still in my old hometown. I found myself growing and learning at a huge Protestant mega-church with an extremely engaging, intelligent and brutally frank head minister. His messages made me want to attend each Sunday. Well, the free trade organic coffee served in the atrium helped too.

The biggest problem was its size. I joined small groups and all that jazz that you're supposed to do in a mega-church to find your "church family," but really, none of that was ever family-like. In the end, we were thrown together for a short duration and glad to be free for our real friends and family when it was all done. I do still listen to the streaming messages from that minister every now and then, and certainly credit him, that particular church, and its alluring coffee for my ultimate return to Sunday mornings in a pew.

When we moved to the country, I started to attend a Catholic Church and was surprised at how at home I felt there. Not just in the building itself, and not just with the community of many other homeschooling parishioners there, but also with the faith and its practices. When I began to get comfortable at Mass - maybe 3 months in or so? - I finally felt a sigh inside. I finally felt that I had a church home.

But there are some differences and I'm certainly on a learning curve. It's odd I guess to other people that I don't see huge differences between Catholics and Protestants. I mean, there are certainly cultural differences. But ultimately, it's the same God, same Jesus, same Bible (basically). I've always thought that the division between the two sides was way overblown.

Maybe it's an older generation thing. My grandparents have advised (begged? demanded?) me to quit going to "that Catholic Church." I find that very strange. Here I was not even going to church on a regular basis for nearly 2 decades, and certainly having no church home. So when I find one, instead of feasting for the prodigal daughter that I had to them become, I'm somehow even more prodigal. Really?

I think the things Protestants don't understand about the Catholic faith are partly cultural and partly dogmatic. The cultural differences were exactly the things that drew me to the church in the first place.

First off, you can have as many children as you wish and nobody gives you the hairy eyeball. Nobody expects you to put your baby in a nursery while you go to service, and nobody expects you to "train" your babies to be without you.

Women are given recognition for choosing to stay home if it works for their family. The family unit is nurtured, supported & valued. Divorces aren't easy.

Homeschoolers are fairly common and frugality is appreciated, especially in churches with many large families.

But while it might have started out as a draw to a culture, there were parts of the faith that drew me as well. And then there were parts that seemed odd, but in a whatever kind of way.

I like the scripted prayers. Scripted prayers (Hail Mary, The Lord's Prayer, etc.) fill the void when I want to pray but can't find my own words. They also can become meditative when repeated over and over. I like this in a prayer. It's a way to get to God that works for me.

I like that sometimes, you have to get down on your knees. There's something about the stance of being down on your knees that evokes an immediate feeling of supplication. This is another route to God that wasn't available in the Protestant church, except at home or in extreme circumstances.

I like the Church, with a capital C. I know that's one of those Protestant/Catholic sticking points. You know, who is the Pope anyway and why do those Catholics allow him so many unilateral decisions? And of course, that's not to mention the corruption & the politics within the Church! Like there's not equal corruption and politics on many Protestant church boards. And on school boards and fundraising committees and non-profit foundations. I think that's more human than anything.

And for me, I like having a Church with a Pope. It means that there's strong leadership, and I like that in an organization. I've been involved in enough groups to know that the long-term health and longevity of any group often depends on someone, hopefully the best qualified, but someone to make firm, unapologetic decisions and for the other members of the group to recognize those decisions as final. This is how I see the Pope.

Then there's confession. I am excited about confession. I often wonder what turns so many people off about confession. To me, it seems like one of the best ways to alleviate your guilt about something you wish you hadn't done. It seems like it would naturally provide accountability. I wonder if I am still naive in my ignorance of the process of confession. I wonder if a year from now I'll look back on these words with the same bemused shake of the head that I do when I read anything I wrote about parenting before I had children.

So I have these cultural similarities with the Catholic Church, and have had them ever since I became a parent, perhaps before that. My parents and grandparents were extremely family-oriented. Grace and forgiveness were the status quo, not drama and fighting.

And I also see parts of the Catholic faith that align very well with my own spiritual truths. In other words, the way I have interpreted the Bible is quite similar to the way the Church has interpreted the Bible. I like the focus on charity, giving up our materialistic tendencies (or greed), loving one another, peace, and grace. And there are several traditions that help facilitate a closer relationship to our Creator and that help strengthen my principles.

But what about the practices & beliefs that I don't understand? What about the ones that seem, well...weird?

Why can't priests marry? Many saints had families. Why can't priests have a family?

Why are babies baptized at birth instead of later, past the age of reason, by choice? Should people not decide to follow Jesus (as the song goes)?

And then there's the Eucharist. In the Protestant Church, you take an unleavened cracker and a little tiny cup of grape juice as instructed at the last supper to remember the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross.

"This do in remembrance of me."

At my childhood church, this was written in fancy gold lettering across the podium where our preacher gave his sermons. It was very clear that this was a representation only - it was in memory. of the last supper. Our deacons passed trays of communion from the ends of each row. You took a little cracker out of the bowl then passed it on. Next came the juice. You took your tiny little cup of grape juice from the inside of the tray, where it sat with the other little cups in individual cup holders. You drank it in one quick gulp, then put the empty cup in a tiny cup holder on the outside ring of the tray. You were supposed to be thinking about the last supper or the death of Christ on the cross or the rising on Easter morning during communion. You were supposed to be reverent.

To tell the truth, I was never quite sure what I was supposed to be thinking about during communion. I knew I was supposed to feel closer to Jesus or God during that time but I never did. I knew I was supposed to be more quiet, and I was, but people still talked during communion. People talked a lot during the service at my childhood church. They would whisper, but in the same way that people whisper over the loud thumping speakers in a movie theater.

I was never quite sure why I had to be more reverent, but I knew everyone else acted that way so I did too. In reality, I mostly liked communion because the crackers and grape juice tasted good. I was usually fairly hungry by this point in the service, and communion was a nice little treat that broke up the service. I liked the trays that were passed, especially the juice one. I thought the little tiny cups were cool.

I guess we were all sort of supposed to imagine communion as if we too were at the last supper, and then we were to feel sadness for what was coming next. Why not joy though? Why solemn reverence instead of shining joy? I don't know.

This morning at Mass I came to see the Eucharist (the Catholic communion counterpart) as a whole 'nother thing altogether.

So in the Catholic church, the Eucharist is not simply a remembrance of Christ, but it is Christ. I learned early on that apparently, this distinction held a great deal of significance. I didn't understand why. Actually, I inwardly rolled my eyes every time it came up and thought, "Whatever. Sure, yeah, ok. I'll keep my real thoughts to myself but....whatever."

But this morning, I came to see that the difference is truly that significant. And it's not as silly (crazy?) as it first sounds.

Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that the crackers and wine, the Eucharist, really does become the body and blood of Christ. This means that when the priest blesses the crackers and wine, they now become Christ. I know, I know. Let's just say.

Well then, let's put them up in front of the church and offer them to each person who comes to receive them.

In other words, Jesus Christ himself has now entered the building.

You are allowed to get up off your seat and stand in line with everybody else to get the opportunity to commune (in communion, see?) with him. When you approach him, you kneel. You kneel because you are in supplication to him.

This becomes an enormous privilege. Rather than simply passing a tray, passively, trying to commune spiritually in your heart, you have a tangible object at the front of the church. You don't have to try so hard. He's right there!

You don't have to think (as surely I'm not the only one who thinks such things.), "I wish I could be closer to God but I can't find the words to pray. Is he even listening anyway? Is he even there? Where is this airy, ethereal, wispy God hanging out anyhow?"

Well he's right there, at the table at the front of the church. Better yet, you get to go up there. You get to kneel down there, without looking silly. Without feeling weird, wondering why you're kneeling when God might not even be paying attention. He's right there! Of course he's paying attention.

Do you see how that works? Do you see how taking an intangible somewhere-out-there albeit loving being and bringing them to a tangible right-in-front-of-you object has enormous power to connect and bring communion?

Now add to that the fact that you can actually consume this tangible object. Well, now you get to leave with Christ inside you. Inside! You get to take him with you.

I feel silly to admit this, out loud, in a published sorta way, but when I got this concept this morning, finally, when it clicked, I was speechless. I felt shaky. I got up, of course, and went to the front of the church. I'm not baptized Catholic so I'm not allowed to take communion there. But I'm allowed to go up and receive a blessing from the Priest. I usually don't go up at all, but how could I not go up today, after realizing that I had an opportunity to be so near to Jesus himself?

So I went. I stood in line. I was actually excited. I did not feel crazy. I was still speechless. I stood right next to the Eucharist, next to Jesus. I liked being near. I went back and sat down in my seat. I was reverent. And it wasn't on purpose.

what to grow

"How are things?"

"Good! We're good, tired but good."

"And how's Mazzy doing with a new baby in the house?"

"Oh, fine. She's taken to Jeff now and she's very good with the baby. Very gentle."

"But how are you holding up?"

"Oh, good. Tired, but good."

These are the questions I get from nearly everyone these days. And those are my standard responses.

Why does everyone ask almost the same questions? Because everyone with any kind of child care experience at all knows that caring for such a young toddler and a newborn together is hard. Really hard. And those with just a little more experience can intuit a lot. They know that Mazzy doesn't understand why a new baby suddenly has to come first every time. They know that poor Sydney is usually getting her needs met last. They know that I feel guilt when I have to choose one's needs over the other, and they know that there are many moments when all of them have needs, demands, desires and they're all breaking down at the same time, and the cacophony of children's cries and whines makes me want to lock myself in the bathroom. They know that sometimes I do.

Why do I give the same standard responses? Because I'm far from the first mom to have closely spaced children, and because there are ups and downs to every day, and because we muddle through, one day at a time, just like everyone else, and because it's all temporary. Quite temporary.

Its temporary nature is in fact what's weighing most on me lately.

This time, I was lucky to have an easy birth that allowed me to bounce back quickly. As is my nature, I could hardly wait to do all the things I couldn't do when pregnant. I had significant back pain in my third trimester this pregnancy, impairing my physical capabilities since around March of this year. So much of the garden work I'd been planning to do had to be crossed off my list. When Livvy was born easily and my recovery happened quickly, I jumped headlong into the garden work.

I got quite a bit accomplished. Here's a picture of the back garden (my pet project). Take a good look because it's not going to look any better than this from here on out this season.

I miss my Mazzy. I remember missing Sydney like this when Mazzy was born. Now that Livvy is here, I miss Mazzy. I think it must be my natural reaction to losing the next "baby" up. But sadly, I actually miss Livvy this time too. She's here all the time, as are Mazzy & Sydney, but I find myself trying to put her down or hand her off or push her to be okay by herself more than I ever did the other two.

And when I do get her off me long enough to accomplish something, what am I doing? Reading to Sydney? Playing with Mazzy? Crafting with Sydney or dancing with Mazzy? Taking videos of the fun things the kids are doing that they won't be doing next week and will thus be lost from our memories? Nope, nope, nope & nope. I'm tending the garden. Weeding, mulching, row covers, mixing up an organic fertilizer.

When I'm nursing this lovely, cuddly little newborn, am I soaking it in, knowing we would like this to be our last baby? Nope again. I'm at the keyboard one-handed, Googling potash and grasshoppers and black plastic.

I'm tired of being frustrated and torn. I feel like I've been frustrated and torn all Spring and Summer this year, and I want to scream at myself: "Enough!"

There's really nothing to be frustrated and torn about. The lay of the land is pretty darn clear here if you take the bird's eye look for a minute.

The garden will come back next year. The garden and I will start anew and its only recollection of this year will be that the soil improvements we did have made it stronger, healthier, & more productive.

The children will grow a full year between now and then, and we'll never get that time back. Sydney is forming memories that will last a lifetime now. Mazzy and Livvy are having their personalities formed and their security in this world shaped at an unbelievable rate. We won't start anew next year. We'll start smack dab in the middle of our developing relationships.

I want that to be a good place. I want those memories. I want pictures and videos and crafts and bonding and lots of nursing, rocking, soothing baby love. Like I said, we'd really like Livvy to be our last baby. I want to bask in her newborn days.

Our friends at WindDance are easily carrying the CSA, just as we intended for this year. Our animals are largely self sufficient right now. And our local farmer's market has lots of wonderful vendors who sell any kind of veggies we might be looking for and whose families I'd be proud to support.

So enjoy the garden pictures here before the weeds and insects take hold, because I'm unashamedly pushing the garden work to the back burner for the rest of the summer to enjoy my three little girls.

Unidentified Random Squash

The Buckwheat Field (this winter's chicken & guinea feed)

The Sunflower Row

Front Garden Tomatoes

my quick apologies to those of my readers who get my blog notifications through RSS feed or email. i hated to flood your readers with four testing posts. if there's a way to test your blog live without triggering your notifications, i'd love to hear it!

and one more makes...

Two dogs, five chickens, one goat, one fish, one part-time cat, two parents, two children, and one newborn.

She's here! She's here, she's gorgeous, she's just like the other two (wear me nurse me sleep by me and we're all good), nothing like the other two (our combined genes can look like this too?!), and exactly like herself. Leggy like a little frog, dark blue eyes that capture you and don't let go, a furrowed brow, grasping fists that cling to your shirt already, long lean arms that make a wide circle when she startles.

Little Livvy's here and she's beautiful and she's so little. And so is Mazzy. And so is Sydney, although it's easy to forget it. Three little ones with three sets of needs now, often competing to be heard first, loudest. There's Jeff and myself in the middle, and there's lots of exhausting days full of hairy moments that we tag team all the way up until bedtime when we're too tired to even vegetate in front of a tv show.

That's okay. We've been down this road twice before. The road might be a little more rough, but it's familiar. We know how to navigate it, and we know the crazy intensity of newborn days lasts a short time in the grand scheme of things. And besides, we know that babies don't always come easily, on your timetable. Riding under all the stress and noise and exhaustion is an overwhelming knowledge that we are blessed to have these three children. These exact, unique three children.

As usual, I'm having a hard time slowing down to enjoy the exact, unique gifts Life has given me. On our current horizon, we have:

The New House
They are starting our basement Monday. Yes, this Monday! We've been waiting for this for so long, it's hard to believe the time is finally here. I'm so looking forward to experiencing the homebuilding from start to finish, and knowing our future home inside and out.

The Gardens
Man, am I ever kicking myself for not doing more on these before the baby came. Jeff has been great in reminding me that I had awful back pain for nearly the whole third trimester, so I shouldn't feel too guilty for not having more forethought. He has also been great at helping with the more undesirable and monotonous tasks (read: weeding and mulching).

I finally gave in to black plastic mulch for week control. Although I'm not a fan of plastic at all, anywhere, let alone around our food, after much deliberation I decided it would be better to have vegetables than to let them die from weeds gone wild. Realistically, I have a newborn and a toddler in the house and realistically, neither my husband nor my seven year old wakes up on any given day thinking, "I can't wait to get out to the garden and fight some more weeds!" (Strangely, I do often think those exact thoughts these days, but I digress.) So, realistically, it would be me fighting those weeds, all by myself. And it would be me fighting the plague of grasshoppers colonizing themselves in those weeds. And it would be me doing all of this with a baby slung on the front, while I try to cover her tender newborn skin from the glaring, unrelenting sun.

Yeah. So I chose to bend my own rules so I could do one weeding and mulching job, albeit a much bigger one, and then forget it the rest of the summer and enjoy the limited time I had out there.

The Current House
The kids and I recently had the chance to get away for a couple days to my dear friend Kate's house. It was the perfect opportunity to assess some of the issues in my current house (and household). We spent late night hours talking about how to solve some organization dilemmas, how to motivate Sydney to do some regular chores within her ability level, and some nitty-gritty details on how to keep the house in guest-clean condition at all times. These things are not my forte - I needed a friend to help me brainstorm.

When we got home, I had renewed energy to put into getting our current house into better shape and a plan for keeping it that way.

Community
Now that my energy level is back, so is my desire to build a community around us for both myself and the children. I've been trying to attend more playgroups in the attachment parenting group I started here, and I'm also looking forward to being able to join in the special events at our church/homeschool co-op again soon.

As the queen of ridiculous to-do lists and wildly unrealistic expectations of what I can accomplish in a day, it's been hard to decide just what should come first each day. Some tasks have an obvious time frame, others a tight deadline, and others seem never-ending. If you asked me, I'd always say the children are my priority. But my actions often betray my words on this, and I usually go to bed feeling guilty for not spending more focused time with them instead of these other things. I fear that my words say, "I love you and value you," but my daily actions say, "Everything else is more important to me than you are."

My usual routine is to spend the first 20 minutes of my day nursing the baby as I plan what I want to accomplish that day. This bears repeating. I spend 20 minutes planning what I want to accomplish that day. But last night, as I was guiltily recounting the times I pushed the kids off to do something else, the times I greeted them with irritation instead of a smile, and the times I said, "Not now" (because I'm doing something more important right now), I thought about that morning routine.

What if, instead of spending those first 20 minutes asking myself, "What do I want to accomplish today?" I spent those first 20 minutes prayerfully asking, "What am I meant for today?"

This morning I did just that. And funny enough, as usual, I didn't exactly get the answer I wanted. This morning, there was no garden on the list, no computer work, no home organization overhaul. There was:

• prepare and feed the children nutritious foods to help their immune system (Mazzy has been sick)
• do laundry
• do dishes/clean kitchen
• do something special for or with Sydney
• nurse Mazzy as much as possible

In my head, I kept saying, "But the garden, the garden! I've worked so hard & my work will be wasted if I don't eradicate these grasshoppers and their weedy habitat!"

To which the following was added to my list:

• ask yourself what you can do for Jeff today
• ask Jeff to take care of a couple things in the garden you can't get to in time

I always am surprised and amazed at how a true and open heart in prayer can reveal things I'd never have come to on my own. I nixed the garden from my own to-do list today, even though I didn't want to, and guess what? Jeff offered to help finish some of my garden work before he left for his job today, I stuck to my smaller, less exotic list today, and I had quite a bit of patience and joy despite a cranky sick toddler and a naturally needy newborn.

I wonder, what am I meant for tomorrow? And the day after that, and after that? How might my life change if I asked that question each day with a true and open heart?

So many thoughts like this - thoughts that have the potential to bring about real change - have been stewing lately. I got the chance to grab this one and record it. Usually the days are too fast for blogging right now. And that's okay. There are those times in life where the ride is too wild to do much besides hang on for dear life and try like mad to enjoy yourself. Writing might have to take the back seat for a bit, because this is definitely one of those times.

the countdown has begun

We are down to the final weeks - less than a month until my due date now - and I'm beginning to notice the big inward shift that seems to mean birth is impending.

I had three very busy days in a row last week. First, we had guests on Wednesday for the day. It was so much fun to have our sister-family here for the day...you know, that family where you know each other so well that you don't have to pretend to not be grouchy in the 8th month, and their children know you so well, that their feelings are not hurt by said grouchiness. We had six little ones altogether running and playing and swinging and nursing, all under the age of 8. We had a wonderful, energetic, and exhausting day. We all went to bed happy.

Thursday, I went to our local playgroup with the girls. It was fun to hang out and talk with another homebirthing mama when I'm so close to having the experience again. As usual, Sydney ran off and romped and jumped with her son, having a wonderful time. If I could have come home right afterward, it would have been a perfectly lovely day. But instead, there were the errands. "I'll just pick that up while I'm in town," sounds well and good at 11:00 a.m. before I've been out for four hours. At 5:00 in the evening, when the hunger has well set in, and the tiredness is starting, making three more stops with two hungry tired children in tow no longer sounds very viable. Yet, if the errands must be done, and I'm right there to do them, then I must push beyond my comfort level. We came in close to 9:00 that night.

Friday, things really fell apart. I'd scheduled a day into the city that day. I've had my eye on the Cricut Personal Cutting Machine for making t-shirts and other stenciled graphics, and someone had one listed for a good price on craigslist. Conveniently, I passed the screener for a consumer research study that day which made me almost enough money to pay for the machine. (I ended up having to add just a little to the pot. :-)

So the day was set up to drop kids off with my dear friend Amy for babysitting near the research facility, attend the study, spend time with Amy afterwards, meet my dad before the craigslist appointment, withdraw cash for the machine, grab dinner, buy the machine, pick up the milk, make a deposit at the bank, and head home. Again, it all sounds well and good before I've left the house at 11:00 a.m.

But by 5:00 that evening, I was having a very hard time with things. I tried to send an email to my craigslist appointment to give her my cell number, and I couldn't remember it. Not only that, I couldn't draw it up after 10 minutes of searching my brain. This is extremely unusual for me. I had to ask Amy to tell me my own number!

My anxiety (and likely, my blood pressure), continued to increase throughout the evening. By the time I was on my way home, I was in tears, and I felt like I was crawling out of my own skin. I couldn't get comfortable in any position, although nothing hurt. Later, I recognized that it was anxiety. I don't usually have anxious episodes like that, so it took me awhile to see it for what it was. I had only one agenda: get back home. Now. I finally achieved that at 11:00 p.m., and went straight to bed. Over the next day, I gradually felt better, and realized what was going on.

It's pretty simple, I think. The body is an amazing thing, and its way of forcing you to prepare for a new baby is intricate and heavily emotional. When I consider our creation, these ways in which we are much more like animals, rather than the ways in which we let our intelligence muck things up, are what fascinate me most.

If I'm merely going to pay lip service to staying at home more, cleaning and nesting, carefully watching my stress level and blood pressure, well then, my body will just give me anxiety episodes to force the issue.

I haven't gone out further than 10 minutes from home since Friday. Yesterday, I bought 14 quarts of strawberries and spent the day making jam. Today, I spent the day cleaning untouched corners before the baby comes, including the birthing room.

And so the countdown has begun. I want the house clean - always. I want the mice that have been trying to stay in Hotel Heirloom gone - altogether. I want the bathrooms bleached and the freezers full; the birth supplies ready and the pool set up. I want the gardens mulched and the weeds pulled and the berries and peas harvested so I can sit back with a new baby very soon and babymoon away, without worry.

I do not want to leave my house.

Thinking about taking a trip to the grocery right now makes my hands sweat. Thinking about taking a trip to town, or worse - to the city - nearly makes me hyperventilate. And being in crowds? I don't think so. I'm not upset by it. I think I probably should have listened awhile ago, before Ms. Anxiety had to take the wheel.

So perhaps I'll have more time to blog in this small window of time between commitments and obligations and traveling and, well, life.

I wanted to post some pictures from Easter this year - Alive Again Day, 2010. The long winter (around February in this picture) can be so hard out here, when you're face to face with the incessant snow and grey day after day, that Alive Again Day marks a significant turning point in the seasons.



We continued last year's traditions of Alive Again Day, and it was very meaningful. I baked a gluten-free brownie cake for us, and then we took a hike to look for what was alive again after our long winter and to collect new spring flowers.

We placed one flower on top of the cake for each person we love who has left this world to be alive again in Heaven.



Sydney said a prayer for each person.



Mazzy enjoyed the festivities very much, thanks to the gluten-free cake.




Before we got our clothes all mucky from hiking, we went to church at St. John's, where they played the Easter hymn that takes me right back to being a little 7-year-old girl, watching my Mom practice with the choir for Easter Sunday. We honored her during our Alive Again celebration, but it still doesn't take away from the fact she's not on the pew next to us - or spending time with the girls, or helping me prep for the baby, or countless other things that get to me more when I'm pregnant. That Easter song always makes me cry.

We then came home and immediately took Easter pictures before anyone could get dirty. I love taking family pictures annually at Easter and Thanksgiving. It's so cool to look back on them later and see how we've all grown each year. Jeff had to play photographer for this photo shoot, so he wasn't in the shots.











As I clean and bake and prep and focus, I can almost see next year's pictures, with three little girls and one not-so-big mama.

mommies

While Mazzy provides comic relief to our house each day, Sydney is growing into an articulate, considerate, thoughtful little family member. In short, she's growing up!

We have so many interesting conversations lately, I wish I remembered to write them all down. Alas, they slip my mind while I'm sleeping (or not sleeping, more accurately), and I only can hold onto a few. Like the one we had tonight:

Me: Sydney, you have my Mommy's hands.

Sydney: I do?

Me: Yes. My Mommy's and my Aunt Joanna's. They always had the same hands. I've thought from the day you were born you were going to have those hands and you do. I'm glad. I always thought my Mommy's hands were prettier than my hands.

Sydney: Well of course you did!

Me: Why do you say that?

Sydney: Because everybody loves everything about their mommies! They love every part of their mommies the best!

I laugh, and smile, & think, "What a complement. That's about the sweetest thing I've ever heard." Then she continues...

Sydney: Well, except their voice maybe. And their face. When they're mad. Nobody likes that.

Indeed. Nobody likes that.

I think she's been missing our time lately. The Sydney - Mommy time that we had for over five years is in short supply, and about to get even shorter.

The other morning, I slept in later than anyone else in the house. Jeff had Mazzy already down for her morning nap when I awoke, and he opened the bedroom door while I gained my energy to hoist myself out of the awkward bed situation I'm having now that I'm getting so big. I spied Sydney down the hall looking at me, but she didn't come in. She's been reprimanded for waking me up too soon, or being all over me before I can get the first cup of coffee in.

"Sydney!" I quietly called to her. "Do you want to come lay with me for a bit?"

She turned her head quickly toward me, smiled a big toothy smile, and literally ran down the hall. Then she snuggled up against me and said, "Now we can really snuggle because Mazzy's asleep and no one is in between us."

She rammed her knee a little too hard into my belly and I said, "Ow! Be careful!"

"Well, except for that baby I guess," she added, smiling.

I really think we are blessed that she is such a loving and maternal big sister. Apparently, she does have feelings of being left out more, wanting more attention, and feeling like she lost a little too much of her Mommy. But if you saw her with her sister, you'd never guess it. She is infinitely patient and protective, and she is giving Mazzy the same qualities. I see it whenever someone is upset. Mazzy tries to comfort them in just the same way Sydney tries to comfort her.

We are very lucky parents indeed to have such sweet little girls.

how we love Spring

Just a few pictures this time. We are super busy around here, what with the sun shining every day. Really! Every day! It's the best Spring tonic ever, but it doesn't have any interest in sharing me with the computer.

So I thought I'd update with a few pictures of all the outside stuff we've been doing that has kept me away.

Jeff built me a small greenhouse out of old windows. Yay! My new seedlings hit the greenhouse after just a few days under the green lights, and they appear very happy. The greenhouse faces due south, so you never know...we might just have winter-long veggies this year. Next to the greenhouse, you'll see our cedar cuttings set up for staking our peas. And on the side, you'll see the two half barrels of roots - one all orange carrots, the other half purple carrots, half beets.



Here is a view of our strawberry patch in the foreground (where we planted 70 strawberry plants this year) with our cut garden space in the back. All that cut space will become planted gardens for our CSA work with Allways Farm Collective within the next couple weeks. There's about twice as much more on the side of the house. It's so amazing to see it cut, since it's finally starting to take on its future form. We can totally imagine it all planted with vegetables and melons now.



Here is a close-up of the empty side of the strawberry patch, where I took advantage of the soil improvements we made to plant a small hill of potatoes.



This is what makes all the work out here worth it....growing organic children with organic food! Sydney and Mazzy are such good friends already, which is amazing with their age difference. Syd has wanted a little sister so badly, for so long! Here, she tries to teach Mazzy ballet.



The two of them played "ballet teacher" for a good 15 minutes while I admired yet again, more sky.



And this is how we roll these days when Mama gets to do work. I drive the John Deere while the girls ride along behind me. I just can't physically do what I could do 3 months ago. But the countdown is nearing. I have about 9 weeks left now until we should be welcoming our third little bitty into our life.

vow of poverty

Here's some heady stuff I've been gnawing on lately. The more I sit with it, the more comfortable it feels, and the more exacting my thoughts have become. After writing this over a month ago, I'm finally ready to share it.

The conclusion to this post occurred to me this morning: the only way to become free and spiritually whole in our consumer-driven society would be to take a vow of poverty. Preferably, as a family, or at least as the heads of the family.

Now, like those movies that show you the last scene before getting into the juicy parts, I'll backtrack. First off, why poverty? And second, why an actual vow?

There are so many reasons to choose a lifestyle of poverty as opposed to a lifestyle of chasing wealth, it's hard to pinpoint just one. More than anything, focusing on achieving wealth as the measure of our success shifts our focus onto ourselves and our achievements as the center of everything worthwhile. We spend the majority of our time thinking about how to acquire more....more money, more assets, more things.

In the Bible it's written, "It's easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven." I think this is absolutely true. If you think of your soul as something you cultivate throughout your life, like a well-loved garden, it's easy to see how greed and the love of money would make your soul a vast, brown wasteland like the GMO corn fields beside us, needing a constant application of money, achievements, and nifty things like the corn needs its Round-Up.



Greed corrupts firm principles into weak idealism. Greed becomes the definition of success. Greed permits you to do things you know are wrong because "I have to - it's my job" or "I work hard - I deserve it." Greed holds you down to a life you aren't purposefully choosing, in a job where the greedy person above you can make a nice dollar off your time - you know, your time...that finite substance we all have only so much of, but spend the majority of it doing what we "should," what the experts tell us is best.

Experts have great expertise in broadcasting their opinions and convincing others to believe them. Experts self-promote their "expertise." In reality, they have an opinion, just like you, just like me, based on their own particular worldview and their own particular goals and measure of success. By the way, if you're talking about an expert in America, their opinion is always that wealth = success. You may throw out any expert opinion with wild abandon if you don't happen to share the same definition of success. Even the most popular self-help, Zen, figured-it-all-out author on Oprah at any given time is there because she made a bunch of money selling her book. Can you really be all that Zen when you're drowning in royalties?

A life of poverty begets a life of self-discipline. Or is that the other way around? If I were writing my own set of spiritual truths, I would certainly include this one: "It is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for an undisciplined person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

A life of poverty begets a life of self-denial, and although it's extremely counter-cultural in our times, please hear this: self-denial is not a bad thing! Really! Self-denial leads to ingenuity, creativity, new skills and often, a greater sense of meaning and community.

If you were to decide not to buy any more clothes, for example, what would you wear? Perhaps you would learn how to sew. Perhaps you already knew how to sew and you would further your skills by designing your own clothes. Perhaps you would accept outgrown clothes from others, increasing your feeling of friendship and sharing in your community. Or perhaps you would downsize your existing clothes even further and make clothing entirely simplistic for yourself. None of these side effects could have been achieved without first denying yourself the convenience of buying more.

But a vow? Really? Isn't that rather old-fashioned, simplistic, monk-like even? Isn't it our responsibility for our children to provide well for them and leave them a legacy to help them succeed later in life?

I ask, isn't it our responsibility to ensure that our children are creative, disciplined, principled, and generous? Isn't our primary responsibility to raise our children to be spiritually whole? Shouldn't our last priority be to raise little camels and then try to push them through the eye of a needle?

In America, this is the status quo. From all directions, we are told that success is measured by wealth, that monetary success is of utmost importance, and that your financial class is a huge component of your worth as a person.

It's extremely difficult to counter these incoming messages unless you do something drastic. Something like making a purposeful decision, now and forever, that this is not the path you choose. Something like a vow of poverty.

"I vow that my time will be used to serve God, my family, and those in hardship. I vow that my time will not be used to acquire and hoard wealth. I vow that if wealth comes my way, I will use it to serve God, my family, and those in hardship. I vow that I will strive to be satisfied with what has been given to me and not constantly seeking more. I vow that I will vocally and adamantly oppose and bar from my home any cultural practices that promote the acquisition of wealth and consumerism over generosity."

When you choose poverty over wealth, you can free yourself to tune out the messages that surround you. They can buzz around, making themselves heard, like the swarm of flies that they are, but not gaining entry into your foothold. For our family, they can share the same buzzing, swarming space with all the other expert opinions we don't buy into.

Hospitals are the only safe place to have a baby.

Schools are the best place to educate and socialize children.

Food additives are perfectly safe.

Genetically modified plants help feed the hungry in third world countries.

Your investment portfolio is important.

The government is looking out for your safety.

In this country, we seem to have "the gift of too much." This is no gift at all, but a constant burden to bear. For me, overcoming this burden is a constant struggle, but a fight worth fighting. I hope that the "legacy" we leave our children is the message that they are worthy from the inside out, that they are free to spend their finite time on pursuits more meaningful than chasing wealth and comfort, and that building their bank accounts is the easiest way to degrade their souls.