september mama

it's been a long time since posting! i'm always, always busy at work... but i like it here, so it's ok. i'm stealing time right now...

the kids are ridiculously grown-up. liam walks/runs/climbs everything, and he loves to dance. and play dress up. anything he can wear around his neck, his arm, or his head makes him literally prance around (it's so cute). i caught him a few weeks ago standing in front of their play kitchen with a shiny pink necklace on, holding a baby against his ear, stirring a pot on the "stove." he's going to make some woman verrrry happy one day, lol.

he's still not talking very well, but he is trying. he manages a few words clearly, but the rest is either garbled nonsense or "eh, EH." oh, and i gave him his first haircut last week... i've been torn because his pretty little curls were very girly, and i felt like he is too boyish for that. so i cut it into a sort of longish mo/faux-hawk with a tail at the end, because i just couldn't bear to cut off ALL the curls. so he looks a little bit like a redneck boy from the mid-eighties :). infant innocence has fully given way to mischievous BOY. alas, all with a few snips... i almost cried the whole next day over it.

rowan is little-miss-not-a-little-girl. i swear that kid is a grown up in a munchkin body 90% of the time. she's just so smart, and so with it, and she comes up with the craziest things. her imagination is a little bit out of control, in fact, but she got that honestly. she's counting objects these days, which is neat, and she can sound out many letters and recognize a couple of words. we went to her first movie a few weeks ago (beauty and the beast 3D), which was exciting for her. she didn't wear the glasses for most of it, but she stuck through the entire showing.

i have been making very good progress on my attempts at reducing the size of my ass (and thighs, and waist, and arms...). right around jan 1--by coincidence ONLY--i reformed my eating habits basically back to eating raw, without being too strict about that aspect of it. i'm counting calories extremely closely, however, and just this last week have started doing some silly online workout videos a few nights a week. sunday, i ran 2 miles. it feels great, and today i am ecstatic to say that i am comfortably wearing pants that were too tight 3 weeks ago. *happy sigh* i've lost several inches, overall, from various parts of my body. now i just need to work on toning and upping the metabolism. desk jobs are hard :P.

i managed to write a paper on the topic of unassisted birth for a forestry class i am taking... i thought that was a pretty big achievement, haha. something about behavior changes adopted in the past 5 years. it fit, so i used it.

i have to do work now, but i need to post some pics of the kids, especially liam's new haircut.

there are something like 15 birthdays in my close friend/family circle during september. it's nuts.

...and tomorrow liam will be a year old! friday, i will be 30. t h i r t y . whew.

but back to liam. it's been a while since i updated on his shenanigans:
- he has 9 or 10 teeth
- he tries to repeat just about everything he hears an adult say, but he's slow with actual words; he can say "cat," "dog" (more on that later), "mama," "dad," "nap," "nightnight," and he kinda says "brush" and "flower"
- he has mastered balancing on his own feet, as long as he has help getting there. he pulls up, then lets go of his support and gets really proud of himself before he plops onto his bum. it's cute.
- he's learning to eat with a fork all by himself and is really great with a regular cup (though i don't let him have one because he WILL throw it after 2 minutes)
- he tries to feed rowan's baby dolls with toy bottles/spoons and loves to give them hugs and say 'ahhhh'
- he lets me brush his teeth without any argument
- he still goes to bed like an angel without any fuss, and if he does have trouble falling asleep, i hold him for 3 minutes, he puts his head on my shoulder to cuddle, and then squirms to get back in bed. he's so awesome.
- he's very coordinated and manually dexterous, he can work fussy toys and do small stacking tasks and things like that. he's also capable of climbing/hoisting himself up on things that i would not expect him to tackle, which is slightly alarming.
- he's starting to get really into books and will yell for me to read and point to the pictures
- he loves wearing hats/crowns and putting them on and off other people's heads.

so that's liam most of the time. rowan is the size of a 3-4 year old and she's not quite 2.5 - no one believes her age. her speech is better than most 3 year olds i have encountered, too, which is interesting. they're both doing great with the new nanny though for various reasons i will not get into, she may not end up staying with us.

we are planning a very small, no big deal party for liam this weekend. i knitted him a totally awesome monster (will post pics after i sew his arms and legs on). i am hoping that in the bustle my own birthday will not be completely overlooked...

i'm actually pretty depressed about it. matt has to work, his mom will be in town (therefore no crazy late-night marital fun when he gets off work), and even if i manage to round up a few friends to go dancing with, it would be disappointing for matt not to be there to have fun with me. call me crazy for wanting him to be a part of my officially-a-grownup-birthday-milestone.

what's worse, i have been really explicit about wanting to make a big deal of it, but somehow i don't think my point was got. i fully expect to have the most unacknowledged, crappy, non-event birthday of this decade. i'm not excited. in fact, i'm feeling really lame and miserable about it in anticipation of the huge let down that i know it will be. :(

i'm already bitter. if matt doesn't at least make me feel really loved/special/yay, even if we don't do anything fun, he's going to be on my shit list for the foreseeable future. i really don't want that.

in other news, we got a puppy. a cute, sweet, super young little stray who ended up in my parents' driveway one morning last week. she's some kind of cur/boxer/shepherd mutt and we named her juno. pics soon. she's going to be a big dog, i think. the problem right now is that she really, really likes to be in the house but i refuse to have an indoor dog... thankfully she's young and impressionable. but matt may turn out to be an obstacle in training her to live outside.

ducklings should be hatching under their mamas any day now, and my 26ish little chickies are growing up. they are officially allowed out of their enclosure and a couple of them were literally trying to eat my ankles last night - never been so painfully pecked before! little crapheads. they like me, which is why they were bold enough to get so close, but for some reason the veins on the top of my feet must have looked really tasty because on of the hens pinched me hard (more than once). anyway, they're cute. my little ameraucaunas are adorable with their fluffy cheeks... i love them.

blah. i just keep thinking about how much my birthday is going to suck. i guess i will get back to work.

"i don't wanna eat grabiolies!"


(translation: "mom, that ravioli clearly contains meat and you are NOT tricking me into eating anything slathered with tomato sauce. nice try.")

so i haven't even started my new job yet, and i'm already privy to some mini-dramas/conflict. and i thought i was escaping all that... ! really though, it just boils down to one very cranky woman in a position of not-that-much relevance to anyone else. so it shouldn't affect me often.

related to this, i HEART our amazing IT woman. yes, our IT guy is a woman. woot! she's sharp, witty, personable, and totally adept at her job. we are already friends :).

i haven't posted about animals lately because i haven't had much to say, but we've had some things going on that are worth mentioning. first, my mail-order chickies are growing fast! they're so cute and bouncy, and will shortly be outgrowing the cage i have them in. my three incubated hatchlings are slightly older and are also doing well. james brought me a rooster and hen yesterday who are about full-grown, and i have the two adolescent survivors out of the batch of sick chicks i bought back in march(?). i also have an incubator full of viable pre-chicks! i candled a few of them the other day and i saw kicking fetuses in every one i randomly picked up. so in a few days i will have some brand new hatchlings, totaling my chicken count to something like 40. holy crap.

the problem right now--since we caught the raccoon, fucker--is our ducks. they are BIG, and very, um, reproductively aggressive, which is going to be a serious problem. they attacked our new rooster yesterday, confused as to his sex, and i had to literally grab the ducks and throw them out of the coop to keep them from hurting him. and he was full-grown, much unlike the rest of my flock! i don't really know what to do about this except find a way to confine the ducks and/or get rid of them. i'm not really a fan anyway, but they are matt's project so i will leave it to him to deal with their shenanigans. all i know is if they hurt/maim/kill my chickens they are going in the oven. stat. at least one of the duck hens finally laid an egg the other day (which was promptly eaten by, i presume, crows).

matt is working with a tattoo artist to design a full sleeve for himself, which both makes me happy for him and slightly (so slightly) jealous. i've been toying with the idea of extending my own half-sleeve since i got it, and i know just how i would do it, but i am hesitating due to career issues. more than likely it would never be an issue, but then again, you never know... and i do NOT want to have to wear long-sleeves every day in florida heat. so we'll see. i need to find something spectacular to do for my bigthreeoh birthday, though, and that technically qualifies. :)

the munchkins are lovely, as always, and totally embracing their new caregiver and her kids. i come home and they are happy, rested, fed, and usually playing very intently. it's great. then i get to spend bath time with them and hang out for a little bit before they go to bed at their new, later, bedtime (about 630, lol). rowan has learned how to operate door knobs and greeted me at my bedside the other morning, declaring "i'm awake!" uggggh. so it's time to get those little childproof door knob cover things. i can't have her running around the house while we sleep, or worse, deciding to go outside on her own. liam has mastered the walker and is so funny as he runs through the house with his arms held out, propelled in a nearly-uncontrolled fashion by legs that are just starting to cooperate. he's going to be walking really soon.

oh, totally random product review: tom's of maine unscented deodorant (aluminum free) is awesome!! i usually use the lavender stuff that i bought a few years ago, but it doesn't really work over more than a few hours, but this stuff ROCKS. it says "24 hour" and it is. i don't have much of an issue with stink, thankfully, but what little there is has been quashed by this stuff. love.

i need to buy a bunch of cardigans and some prints for my office, but i have to wait for the monies :(.

some good(?) things have come out of this new-job-preparation state i find myself in. i almost feel a sort of mild nesting impulse, if you can imagine that.

the first thing: terrariums. (yes, that is grammatically correct.) oh. my. word. they are addictive! i realized that because my office has no windows, and less because i work in forestry, i definitely need some plants in my space. but the no-windows thing sort of poses a problem, no? enter MOSS. velvety, otherworldly green, beautiful, beautiful moss. it happens to love shade. so i found a nice little DIY kit on etsy and ordered it for myself. i have a slight obsession with containers--boxes, jars, bottles, etc--so i happened to have a stash of suitable terrarium enclosures on hand... then i went outside into the woods and gathered up rocks, lichen/mushroom-covered branches, and forest trinkets, and last night i assembled it all together into the most amazing, wonderful, dreamy little ecosystems i have ever seen. i am in love. i just want to stare at the moss and shrink myself so i can live inside the jars and roll around on it. (incidentally, i am positive i was a dryad in a previous lifetime...) here's a few pics, but trust me when i tell you they do NOT do justice to these magnificent specimens.

rowan has been doing really well with the potty, until two days ago. she decided to pee on the floor twice in a row, and then again the next day. ?! no idea.

but she watched the french babies dvd a few more times and she was counting in french all by herself, and she came up to me, pointed to the apples, and said "I need a pomme!" :D. she even tried to sing 'mary had a little lamb' in french (marie avait petit mouton, petit mouton, petit mouton) which was totally awesome. so i think we're making progress, and i barely have to do anything... i'm a little worried that the nanny won't be able or interested in keeping up (or maybe she has an atrocious accent), but i guess that comes with the territory.

i'm supposed to bring home dinner and i have no idea what to get. ugh.

well... i wasn't planning on doing this until the kids were a bit older, but an opportunity arose that i just couldn't let pass, and now i find myself preparing to start a full-time job.

fuck.

i mean, it's a really amazing situation--better than i would have dared hope for--so i really have nothing to complain about. except the kids. i am so, so, so dreading leaving them for multiple full-days each week. to the point that i almost called the whole thing off; great salary, flexible hours, cake job, and all.

they are going to let me work 4 days @ 10hrs each so that i can be home 3 days/week(!!!), after an intial let's-get-going 8 to 5 run. because matt is also a state employee, our health insurance is going to be $15 a month instead of over $200. i'll get ample vacation leave. i'll be on salary (i.e., no time clock). i'll have a closed-door office that i can decorate as i please. and yes, i will have some mental and social stimulation while doing something i am really good at and people openly appreciate me for.

but (oh the huge BUT)... this is a major sacrifice and it is scaring the hell out of me. i just tentatively hired a stranger with two kids of her own to come to my house and care for the loves of my life. without me. ((they need me! don't they?)) i know millions of mothers struggle with this every single day, and my plight is not unique, but bollocks this hurts. how does a mother leave her newborn when maternity leave ends? i cannot imagine.

i have sought counseling from the only other working mom i know, and she assures me that the time i am with them will be all the more special once i start working, because there won't be all the time that i now spend trying to do chores around them, or whatever. and that is a good point. i spend a lot of our daily time doing maintenance work for them, managing liam's mischief, making food, and trying to clean/work/whatever around them. we don't have a whole lot of really 'quality' time, other than in brief moments here and there. so i can see what she means... but still. is it better to be there more but slightly distracted or less and fully attentive? i am going to miss them so fucking much.

it will be very good for rowan to (finally!) get to play with a little girl, and she got along marvelously with both kids and immediately took to their mother, which i take as a great sign. (we interviewed one other mom+kids and rowan was NOT into them. it was obvious.) liam too, of course--he was all smiles and her kids played with him as much as with rowan. so yes, it will be good for them, and at least they will get to be comfortable and secure in their own home... but rowan is going through a mommy-withdrawal stage where she clings to me on my return and then worries--i can see it in her face--about when i will leave again. i am afraid this might subtly scar her emotionally. really.

another but: this basically means that breastfeeding will not be increasing after all. there is no way i can get my supply up working 5 days/week. i'm not even going to try. we will continue to nurse in the morning (if he's awake) and evening as long as he wants to, but i don't expect to actually provide much in the way of nutrition... though at least i can provide comfort. i will be doubly sad when that relationship ends, because now i feel like it is mostly my fault... and i'm sorry to say i expect the end is just around the corner.

i am excited about the job, i am... i'm just in a terribly depressed funk that i pray to the gods passes quickly. i'd like to say it's just hormones but the fact is this is a totally justified emotion and i am not exaggerating. women are taught to force away their maternal feelings in favor of what society expects of them, no matter how unnatural... i'm not going to do that. it's a fucked up and horrible thing to have to leave (/abandon) your children and i plan to feel it until i don't anymore.

*sob*

edited to add:
in addition to all my stress/worry/sadness over the kids, i forgot to mention that i am feeling like a total asshole with regards to my boss, who just a few weeks ago asked me pleadingly whether i was planning to stick around for a while, because "we can't do this without you." so. guilt? yes. more guilt? oh yes.

i gave my notice today (via email, while the poor guy is traveling!) and i just feel ill over it. i know they will be ok but i hatehatehate causing a ruckus and making other peoples' lives more difficult. sigh.

*whistles* this one is a doozy.

many of my friends, most of whom are serious intellectuals (like, have PhDs or will soon), are child-free and intend to remain that way. i used to consider that kind of life myself, before i got pregnant. i get it.

i even agree that for people who just don't like children, knowing there are a few places in your town (or on vacation) you can go to enjoy your time sans-kids is a great thing. trust me when i say that as a parent, i KNOW how valuable some peace and quiet can be (not that i remember what that's like anymore...).

the issue is that underneath all this catering-to-the-child-free is a very nasty, ugly sentiment that says "children are not worthy." that frightens me on a level i can't really put into words. something along the lines of the motivations of pedophile priests and child abusers... the basic belief people like that MUST carry is that children are a lesser entity. i am not comfortable with that belief going mainstream. kids aren't pets and they certainly aren't second-hand smoke, so don't class them as if they are. like it or not, children are valuable, beautiful human beings and they have rights and thoughts and feelings just like you and they do, in fact, have a place in society.

as for the argument that "more and more people are choosing to remain child-free" and thus the market for anti-child policy is growing, let me suggest that what that really says is: if there are less of them than there are of us, we get the upper hand. it's ok to discriminate against minorities because they are minorities and we don't like them. wtf?! hello progress--not.

whatever you think about having kids or not, the problem is clearly not the children; it's bad parenting. (i blame bad parenting for soooo many things. it is a horrifyingly rampant problem in american society.) so rather than punish the children by exclusion, when in all likelihood they are simply emulating what they see from their parents and/or acting in whatever way is tolerated at home, how about we find constructive ways to improve the average joe's parenting abilities? or build in an embarrassment factor in places such that if your kid is a monster, you are openly asked to leave? if bad parents and their kids aren't even allowed to enter places or be around peers who would otherwise reprimand them for their (in)actions, how are they ever going to learn publicly appropriate behavior?

but i guess the intent is really just to make the breeders and their crotch-fruit stay at home and out of the sight of the first-class citizens as they go about their merry way.

the no-kids-allowed movement is spreading

IUDs are always scary (at least, the non-hormonal copper kind like i have) because you're told that cramping and bleeding tend to increase, on top of other potential complications with regards to insertion. when you are like me, and have lived long years with excruciating menstrual cramps for 12-24 hours every month, "increased cramping" is not really an option. but i went for it anyway, because short of matt going under the knife, it's the only kind of birth control that was ever going to work for us. i never had much issue with heavy or long-lasting bleeding, so that didn't concern me.

6+ months and three periods later, i can say WOW! the menstrual cramping thus far has been laughable considering what i used to endure (it's likely that pregnancy alleviated it for me). sure, there's a little lower backache and some minimal cramp-like feelings, but i could endure without medication. and i'm finding my usual 4-5 day periods are now more like 6, but even that is nothing. the really interesting thing, for me, is that i have developed very distinct ovulation pains for about 3 days each month. i'm keeping detailed calendar records so that i can pinpoint my ovulation day and get better at predicting the arrival of my period. women are "supposed" to have 14-day luteal phases, but it looks like mine is more like 9-10 days (that is, 9-10 days after i feel the 'ovulation pain' i should expect my period). we'll see if it gets more exact as time goes on.

also IUD-related, still no problems with it, ah, interfering in the act. which is always nice.

in other news, rowan is using the potty (as least for pee)! she was 5/5 yesterday with NO accidents. the day before, too. she has been off-and-on for months, as i have mentioned before, but this time it was 2 days of 'i need to use the potty' right after peeing in her diaper, so we did it, and the next day she caught it before she went, and asked for her "pantypants," and we've been off diapers during the day ever since. she said "NO DIAPERS!" yesterday, and it was great.

as for liam, i have a strong feeling that Luvs are giving him a rash. he's never worn anything but the all-natural diaper types until now, and suddenly he has a horrendous rash on his butt. he's in pain, too. we're going to do some trial and error to figure it out, but in the meantime he hates diaper changes. also he is cutting the next set of FOUR teeth all at once, so it might be the yucky poo irritating him :(.

i caught a raccoon last night in the trap--probably the one that killed all our chickens--so i am hoping that problem is over. at least until next spring. i have 22 chicks coming in the mail this week!

i'm going to make a conscious effort to write regularly now. for my own sake, so that when i want to look back i actually have something to look at.

liam is fully mobile lately, and stands up every chance he gets. a few days ago i caught him as he pulled himself to stand next to rowan's bed, then grabbed a toy and did it with no hands! i'm thinking he will be walking before his birthday... i've been experimenting with letting him swim underwater, since he seems to have no fear of the water and can hold his breath when dunked.

rowan is still anti-potty for the most part, but she is getting enough cognitive ability that i think i'm going to start pushing her a little bit more. as for swimming, a few weeks ago she fell off the top step in my parents' pool, and came up without choking (meaning she had held her breath)... she cried for a few seconds but i made a huge fuss about what a big girl she was for swimming all by herself, and the tears turned into pride pretty quickly. but she still doesn't want to leave the steps. she is going to be a lot more work in terms of encouraging her to take risks. liam will be the total opposite, ha.

matt received a shift change as of tomorrow; he'll be working 4pm-12am with tues/wed off. that is going to be... interesting. on the days i'm home, he will be trying to sleep in until 10am or so with the kids running around (after waking up at 630am). on days i work, i won't really see him at all. i have to say i am rather looking forward to some 'alone time' in the evenings, in which to knit, or work on computer stuff, or just not cook dinner... but it will be weird to go to sleep without him almost every night. weird and unpleasant. i hope it works well for him in terms of getting things done at home, though. he used to be a total night owl, so maybe this will be comfortable for him after the initial adjustment period. we should theoretically save a bunch of money on movie rentals, too, since we will only have two nights per week in which to watch something uninterrupted. we'll see. soon enough it will change again and he'll be on 12-hour shifts... then i will really never see him. sigh.

some milk production drama happened but i don't feel like explaining it; butters is doing well and we are getting a gallon a day. our chicken situation, however, fucking sucks. all our adults were killed (but the ducks remain unharmed). the babies that i mentioned in the last post died--9 of 12 of them--of a sickness which is apparently highly contagious and re-infectable. so i can't keep the 3 who survived, because they will pass it on to any new birds we get. wtf. so right now i technically have no chickens, and it sucks. (as soon as i get rid of these 3 i will be ordering some new chicks.) i do have a batch of 9 eggs incubating, and if i can believe what i see while candling, they are all developing nicely. i'm excited about that because those were the last few eggs from our now-deceased chickens, so i'm glad to potentially have some progeny of the good birds. i'll be ordering chicks to arrive about the time the eggs are due to hatch (july 19).

speaking of milk production, work has ruined mine. i was doing great, pumping 6-8oz at work and nursing plenty... and then suddenly shit went to hell. i'm not really sure how/why. but i know that liam gets bored nursing (let-down too slow lately) and wants an instant-gratification bottle and i am failing miserably at pumping ever, let alone regularly. i started taking fenugreek but so far all it has done is make me smell like syrup. not necessarily in a good way. i was reading up on relactation, though, and it sounds like if i just stick with a 2-hour nurse or pump schedule for a week or so i should be fine to reestablish supply. i wouldn't even care about weaning except that liam is clearly not ready to stop sucking milk out of things, so i would prefer that it be me if that is the case. granted, i am giving him homegrown raw milk in those bottles, and he eats food abundantly, but since he wants to nurse i need to be able to provide the milk. trouble is, bottles are so EASY; plop him in bed, hand him a bottle, and done. none of this 'baby is sleeping in my arms gotta slide him gently into bed without waking him" frustration. laziness prevails despite the best intentions, sometimes.

what else? my new niece, aria, is adorable and growing very fast. kai has been given the 'a-ok' by several doctors, including his ophthalmologist, which was a surprise. he is normal on all the scales, and will grow out of whatever slight delays may be holding him back. it's shocking, frankly. i realize there may be emotional/behavioral differences that surface as time goes on, but apparently hope is strong. if i had to compare him to rowan (speechwise), i would say he is where she was at about 13-14 months (he is technically 19.5 months now), just starting to use understandable words. he's a sweet little kid and has so far been very good with his baby sister.

the grapes are starting to ripen on the vines in the yard...

well. i just went through to find a post about rowan when she was 8 months--as that is how old liam now is, if you can believe it!!--and i found one small paragraph. damn not updating the blog enough.

"rowan is 8 months! she eats like a champ, is still nursing full-time, sleeps through the night, has 2 full teeth and 2 half teeth (all bottoms, lol), she's babbling up a storm and trying really hard to hoist herself up on things. she loves books, playing in the grass (or dirt), and other babies."

so... liam eats like a CHAMP, i mean he eats everything and is already refusing baby food in favor of anything he can chew. he nurses full-time, which for him means about 4 times a day or so. he sleeps from about 530pm-630am. he has four teeth all the way (2 top, 2 bottom). he babbles all the time. he's about 1/2 step away from crawling successfully, which rowan never even tried to do. he is getting around using the army crawl for now, but the knees keep coming up, and he definitely likes to pull himself up when he manages to get a hold of a sturdy-enough object. i don't read him books, which is awful and i am really working to change; i just never have the chance, between rowan's demands and the housework i have to fuss with. but we do need to institute storytime AT LEAST 30 min a day. he doesn't really play in the dirt so much, because unlike rowan he puts EVERYTHING in his mouth, but he loves the pool. also unlike rowan, he's not interested in the tv; she was obsessed with elmo at his age. he barely glances up when rowan is watching something. and i am grateful for that.

he is very different than rowan in a lot of ways... he grabs at everything, and will roll/drag himself across a room if he sees something he wants. he can drink from a straw, and if i have something edible, he wants it. now. he is very silly and i call him 'trouble' all the time because he's so into everything. he loooves the cat, but unfortunately he's not very nice with his grabbing and pinching, so i have to keep an eye on that. he's a really, really, really happy little guy with a sweet personality... very affectionate. but he's also a monster because he is a little bit reckless. still very sensitive (like rowan) but not nearly as cautious. i'm told he's just "a boy" but that seems oversimplified to me.

rowan is now 2 years old... and jeebus, what a big girl she is. fully verbal, with sentences and pronouns and verbs and adjectives used correctly, many of her sentences even include the entire subject/object/verb of correct english :). she expresses her opinions very well (and they are many). she loves movies, and right now it's all about tinkerbell, peter pan, the little mermaid, ponyo, and princess mononoke.* she also really likes yo gabba gabba and sesame street. potty training is sort of on hold while she decides whether or not she wants to do it: she's really into the "pantypants" but doesn't want to go on the toilet. so we waver. but she's not the kind of kid i can trick or force into things, so we'll leave it to her pace. today she is actually going to "school" with her playmate--our nanny's 3yo son--for the first time... sigh. that thing they say about time and flying? it's true.

i am back to work at a new job 2.5 days a week, which is working out really well for everyone involved (i think). i get out of the house and a paycheck, the kids get away from me and someone their age to play with, the nanny gets a playmate for her son and some farm goods, and matt--who watches them on tuesdays--gets some alone time with the kids, who are really starting to connect with him more. it's good.

we are back to milking butters every morning (at 5am!!! aggh!) and besides some issues with the calf sneaking his nose through the fence to steal milk at night, it's going great. she is such a good cow; i never realized before. maybe being pregnant as she was made her cranky or something. we are planning to inseminate her soon with sexed-semen for a guaranteed female, so that when her time is up we have a substitute milk cow. hopefully that won't be for a while, but who knows how long she will live? she wasn't always a family farm cow... and lifespans vary by treatment. also she only has the three working udders, so her supply is never what it could be if all four worked. when does go, i will be glad to know that at least we've got her daughter :).

last weekend i convinced matt to take me over to a bird farm to pick up some chicks, since we have lost so many of our hens lately... we had a raccoon coming every night until we caught him, and after that there was a fox. we're down to 5 hens and the good old king red rooster. but now i have 12 babies in a safe cage who i hope will grow quickly. i got 6 ameraucanas, 1 wyandotte, 1 cochin, 2 plymouths, and 2 barred rocks. of course, we don't know how many will be hens, but betting 50/50 still gives us a nice-sized flock. i just hope the cochin is a hen! they are cute. and ameraucanas have fluffy cheeks :) :) :). matt picked up another duck hen; they should start laying any time now, if they haven't already (every few days we get a mysteriously large and strange-looking egg, and once or twice there has been evidence of a broken 6th egg--but we only have 5 hens). i also got my mom a pair of black bantam "frizzles" as a thank you for all the favors she does us--her flock is all bantam because big chickens scare her, lol. anyway.

things are going very well. matt is working on the fence for pasture #2 and hooking up the electric system in his workshop (finally), our garden is lush and productive, we've made a little money selling some of our goods, we *should* actually be able to save a tiny bit of money for the first time in years, and everyone is happy.

:)


*um, yeah, i know that's totally not a kids' movie... we have a bit of anime at the house and NO kid movies (other than nightmare before xmas), so she found it one day and demanded i put it on, and she loved it. why? i don't know. but she does, scary beast-gods, blood, guns, and all. so whatever. i need to get my real kid movies back from a friend (the dark crystal and spirited away).

rowan continued to be sick last week, though i have decided now that she was teething too. the combination of symptoms (night waking, gross diapers, snot, crankiness) is obvious in hindsight... but let me tell you about thursday.

rowan woke up way too early and i was changing her in the dark because i was still half-asleep, when she started saying "poopie hands" repeatedly. oh god. yep. so i turned on the light and it wasn't just her hands, which had somehow found their way into her diaper, it was also her sheets, the padded bumper around her headboard, and her blankets. yay for diarrhea! into the wash it all went. the morning was fine after that, and when i put her down for her nap in just a diaper and a shirt, i remember saying to myself "she needs pants, this is a bad idea" but i guess laziness took over and i ignored it. 30 minutes later she is wailing and kicking the wall for my attention, so i went to get her and it was a horrible and yet hilarious scene: rowan lying on her side as if paralyzed with her diaper undone and hanging off her body, with gross runny poo coming down off her, through the side of the diaper, and straight onto the bed. she was whining and upset and wouldn't move because she didn't want it all over her (i shouldn't laugh but it really was funny). it was, again, all over the CLEAN sheets, and now also on her favorite little 'pillow pet' --thanks grandma--ms. ladybug. she had been shat upon!

i washed a second set of sheets while rowan played in my bathtub (with the drain unplugged, of course).

then, because mommy is really stupid, we decided to give the 'big girl panties' a go that afternoon. i knew her tummy had to be empty and i figured she would not want to pee in the underwear, so we talked over and over about how she would tell me when she needed the potty and so on... all afternoon i asked her every 5 minutes if she needed the potty, and it was always "noooo," so i left her alone. i must have ignored her for about 10 minutes at one point, though, because suddenly her panties were wet and i didn't know when or where it had happened. sigh. eventually i found a puddle on my bathroom floor. i'm sure the reason she didn't bother to tell me was because she knew she isn't allowed in there and didn't want to get caught.

as for blackmail, it's a bit of an exaggeration: i'm refusing to eat any meat until matt quits smoking. you'd think that would have no effect on him, but he gets annoyed if i even suggest i might be vegetarian again, so i'm hoping it will give him some small incentive to stop spending money and being stinky over something as stupid as cigarettes. he likes cooking excessively large slabs of animal parts for us, and he'll miss it if i don't partake... besides, at the very least i should theoretically be able to lose some weight just by cutting out the meat and replacing it with veggies. we'll see.

we had a litter of bunnies a few days ago and another is on the way today or tomorrow, and matt bought us a few rhode island pullets the other day, too. they are living in a fish tank on our dining room table at the moment. karen has successfully hatched four chicks from our eggs this week, too, which is really exciting. i hate that we will have to segregate them and deal with the whole pecking-order deal for a while when they are big enough, but it beats not having any chicks. i'm going to try another round of natural hatching later this week, i think. our hens want about 18 eggs under them to sit, so 2-3 days of no collection should do it for a full nest. i hope matt didn't piss them off too much the last time.

i'm about 1/3 of the way through knitting rowan's birthday dress (i started early to ensure it would finished on time, but now i think she will wear it for easter too). it's a really pretty little thing evocative of a flower, with the petals as skirt and the...inner part thingie...as the bodice. i'll post pics when it's done.

liam is blabbering away all the time, lots of new sounds and accompanying facial expressions. i love that kid.

i've made a resolution for perhaps the first time in history. i have an obscene (and surprisingly high-quality, considering my budget) stash of yarn, 95% of which was bought just because i liked it in the moment. now it is taking up space and doing nothing to curb my desire for more yarn... so i must be rid of it! and since i have been SPINNING--yes! it's amazing! addictive!--i have to find some excuse to do it more... "i am out of yarn" sounds like a good one to me. :) :) :)

so. the plan is to knit right on through my stash, give away the random leftovers, and spin my own when i need yarn for projects. from here on i will spin and dye yarns specifically for a given project, with as few exceptions as possible. as fiber is cheaper than yarn, i feel justified. plus i get to be twice as productive by doing it all myself. *rawr*

i'm quite proud of my planning skills at this point too, since i have managed to choose a project ahead of time for almost all my stashed yarn. i wonder if they are happier knowing their destinies are predetermined...

in other news, liam is big enough to sit in the bouncer! his feet touch the ground and he loves banging on the toys. it's really cute. he has been doing this little baby jig where he pounds his arms down and stomps one foot really enthusiastically; it's hilarious. he's also definitely teething because his fists are always in his mouth and he shouts about it most of the time. not crying, just a general ahhHHHHhhh while chewing. hehe.

rowan is advancing verbally at a breakneck speed. she's picking up so many words every day and stringing them together totally appropriately such that i am surprised by her no less than 3x a day. really need to watch my language to avoid embarrassing myself in public down the line. she's still a little cranky but now i'm starting to think it's because she has been sick... today she seemed better than she has been and she was a lot less troublesome as well. so who knows. terrible twos or just feeling bad? *shrug* i'm sure i'll be baffled by something else in another week or so.

no chicks this time around, the hens abandoned the nest (motherf*cking matt!). but we are getting 10 eggs daily now and i'm sort of swimming in them. i posted a barter ad on craigslist hoping someone wants to trade or buy some. we'll see.

gotta go clean up and make dinner now though.

i have acquired another totally practical-yet-impractical skill which i am reveling in... spinning! as in, yarn. my vote for "next animal to join the farm" is obviously sheep, now. :D

it sort of happened by accident, despite me wanting to learn for a while (but never caring enough to invest the time or money)... i found a friend on ravelry who incidentally runs a yarn/fiber shop on etsy, she wanted makeup and i wanted yarn, so we traded. in the process, i ended up with a few drop spindles and some wool as part of the deal, and she showed me how to use them. BAM!

that day, we went to visit a nearby alpaca farm, the owners of which i have connections with, and not only did they hook her up with a crazy deal on raw fiber, they explicitly told me i can come get some for free anytime. *drool* alpaca feels like clouds. so i've got about 5oz of fluffy, jet-black heaven in a bag, which i am not going to touch until i know what i am doing with that spindle! i'll practice with plain old wool until i have a more consistent product, then on to the fancy stuff ;). i've actually been considering brushing the rabbits when they start their spring shed to blend in some non-angora-but-still-soft-rabbit with my wool or alpaca. this is really dangerous, because my knitting projects have slowed down dramatically... i want to spin all the time. i know it's a phase and it will pass, but still. i've been trying to rationalize a la telling myself i need to use up my stash of yarn and then i will have an excuse to spin :)

ah. i just love making things, and similar to the process of taking milk from the cow and turning it into something...more complicated...knitting from spinning from wool from the animal is just so satisfying. i dub it "slow crafts" off the top of my head. did i make that up??

speaking of rabbits, the distressed doe is still hanging in there. i don't know how, but she's alive, and it's hard to say whether she is still in labor. her breathing is weird and that lump (aka fetus) is still in there, but she seems ok. the sitting hen was disturbed for a day by matt stealing too many of her clutch, but she is back to sitting... though i don't know if the eggs will end up being viable or not, now. i told him in no uncertain terms to leave her the hell alone, so hopefully she recovered her broodiness quickly enough and will manage to hatch at least a few. we'll see.

we had a mystery crop of something from the garden last week--after much debate and research, it turned out to be daikon. (yes, matt failed to keep a record of what he planted.) it was then a mystery to both of us WHY he planted a massive amount of daikon... ? not the most useful vegetable, and he couldn't recall buying the sees, but we did some new things with it and it was tasty. stir-fried greens, and a potato-parsnip-daikon soup. he pickled some in the traditional way, as well, but i haven't tried them yet. the rest is basically rabbit and cow feed at this point, because it wilted really fast and we just didn't want to eat that many radishes. lol.

liam, rowan, and matt all have colds and i have a scratch in my throat that i deny is the onset of my very own sniffles. i got about 2 hours of sleep last night (thanks, liam...and matt...) and spent the morning in a nursery full of wild little boys followed by a funeral lunch... weird stuff. all i have to say is thank the stars for crock pot dinners because i have no desire to cook at all. i should be sleeping now, as a matter of fact, but i couldn't resist using naptime for knitting and spinning instead. oh well. coffee's brewing.

rowan has been difficult lately. she does things she knows will get her into trouble (albeit very little trouble) and has been pinching herself and me, just to be mean. never liam, thankfully. matt thinks she's bored, and i think he's right. so i've got to find some friends for her or something more interesting to do than sit here with me and/or invade grammy and grampy's home every day. would be easier if matt didn't take my car every day. i'm going to go hunting online for toddler activities...

i know i mentioned the rabbit tragedy already, but it got worse. the next day there was another non-living baby in the cage. it looked like its legs were hemorrhaged so i'm thinking mama smushed him or he was stuck in the birth canal for too long... sigh. then it got worse again. mama bunny ("fatty") was gasping for breath and not moving around at all, with her eyes mostly closed. there were strage pinkish drops of blood(?) around her whiskers.

we did some 'research' online and couldn't find anything, though i am versed enough in the hazards of birth to guess that she was either 1) still in labor, 2) hemorrhaging, or 3) suffering from an infection. we could only assume whatever it was must be birth-related..? but of course the vet was going to charge upwards of $200 for a visit and--cold and hard as it is--we just can't pay that for a rabbit we can replace for $15. i didn't want her to die or to suffer, but there's a limit to the extravagance we can bestow upon livestock at this point.

i decided the best chance she had was to get some penicillin from the feed store and give her the proper dose; if she did have an infection it would either cure it or not, but it was either that or nothing. (by the way it's not fun to stick bunnies with needles :(...) the next day she was the same, but we managed to check her out on the underside and there wasn't any unusual blood or other ick, which was a good sign.

today she actually seems slightly better--she is not so droopy and her breathing sounds a tiny bit easier. i'm really hoping the meds help because i hate losing animals! we're keeping a close watch on her. the more i see her the more i think she might actually have a purely coincidental respiratory infection...

in other animal news, i have cracked open five eggs with double-yokes in the last two weeks. five. that's almost a world record! being that the chances are 1 in 1000 for that to happen in the average dozen, i'm thinking one of our chickens is a hereditary double-yoker. it's novel and fun, but unfortunate because that means her chicks won't hatch. oh well.

and finally, mama is tired because babies are NOT SLEEPING AT NIGHT! why?!?!? liam woke up every hour last night. rowan woke twice. repeat for the last several days. these nights make me want to say things like "i hate my life" even though i don't. i'm just exhausted and not getting a break. in liam's case, i fear he is waking because it hurts to pee (more on that later). or he's teething. rowan, i cannot explain. it's so, so frustrating to finally climb back in bed and just drift off only to be startled out of it by wailing children. *cry*

i need a day off.

...since i last posted?! terrible.

liam is 3 months old and very much a big boy lately. physically and in terms of his interactions with other humans. i swear he will be talking by 6 months old... and he's really stable with his torso so i expect he should be sitting around when rowan did (20 weeks), if not earlier. his bedtime routine is like clockwork; we do bath and bed right after rowan goes down, and both kids are out by 630. it's amazing. but he has been waking a lot recently (every 4 hours, down from about 8 hours a few weeks ago) and i'm not sure why, but i'm hoping he settles down soon. he's also drooling a lot and eating his hands so we may have entered teething phase #1... *cringe*


rowan is using multiple-word phrases and pronouncing things very well lately. she is all about coloring, watching movies, and riding her toy unicorn all over the house. her hair is long enough to pigtail and some days she even lets me :). she recently had a few tumbles and scored some serious scrapes on her nose AND a massive ugly bruise on one cheek... it was a rough week.


matt is starting a 4-day, 10-hour shift for the next 3 months which will have him home friday, saturday, and sunday... it's nice, though i worry about how bored i know he will be. matt+boredom=annoying. and of course he never wants to do any of the projects i suggest he fill his time with, so it's kind of hopeless. i just have to resign myself to the fact that he will be monopolizing the computer for at least one full day per week, watching stupid movies on netflix instant play. ugh.

butters still hasn't had her calf, and she's huge. i worry about how much bigger she can get before that belly just plops to the ground. and day by day marge is looking rounder too... we'll see what happens. the downside to having a "farm" was evidenced to me this morning when i went out to feed the chickens: one of the rabbits decided to birth without a proper nest, so i was greeted by two dead baby bunnies in her cage. not a nice way to start the day :(. one looked like he might have come out that way, but the other was still soft and had likely died less than an hour before i went out there. it's really depressing... he was probably just too cold. the odd thing is that she only had two. rabbits like her usually have 8-10 kits per litter... ?? the point is, dead bunnies are really sad and it sucks to have to face harsh realities and deal with them sometimes. sigh.

we are getting 8--yes EIGHT--eggs every day, such that our fridge is overflowing with them. i try to use about 3-4 a day, but we still have surplus. hoping to trade someone for them, but not sure who/what for/how to go about that. i think i might start with craigslist... the garden is full of greens and root veggies because matt plants in the opposite season by accident every year, but they are growing beautifully so i'm not complaining. looking forward to lots of, er, turnips. and beets. and kale. in the spring. lol.

i'll try to post more often. i've been using my free time to knit...

mostly because i'm KNITTING constantly (gotta get the xmas stuff done...). still not a good excuse though. t.w.i.n.k. was in an indie craft fair last weekend that totally rocked--we made money and it was really fun. someone even told me they liked my "style" in my shiny new outfit bought just for the show! never been told that before; it was nice. and between me and karen we traded with other sellers for at least $200 worth of stuff in addition to the money we made! *headbanging*

as for liam, he is seriously huge. not fat, like those chunky huge babies, just hefty and long. at his 8 week checkup he was 12.2lbs! crazy. he is absolutely sweet... he coes and smiles and tries to laugh all the time. incidentally, that stinky watery poo was diarrhea which cleared up after a few days and now seems to have returned. i do have a sort of forceful letdown but as there is never froth in his diaper i don't think there is an imbalance (also because my boobs are so small that's unlikely--he can only get so much out of them per session and he definitely drains them completely). his eye grossness seems to be all better too, in spite of the stupid antibiotic cream that i stopped using after the first week. he is sleeping between 5-7 hours at a time for the first night stretch, and napping for 1-3 hours once or twice a day. he's delightful.

rowan is getting really good at speaking and i have been drilling her on xmas "stuff"--we watch 'rudolph' and 'santa claus is coming to town' constantly and we've been reading the classic books to make sure she associates santa and whatnot with all the fun that is coming. tonight is a parade downtown that we are bringing her to, and we got a tree yesterday which i plan to decorate today (our first ever). very exciting! she woke up and the first thing she did was smell it and say MMMmmmMM, haha. love it!

i got some fancy new yarns thanks to a gift card i had been saving so i am really looking forward to knitting some things for myself after the holidays are over. so far i have completed a bunch of things for rowan, a really cute set of wristlets and cowl for my sister, a fluffy collar for my mom, slippers for matt's dad, slippers for matt's stepmom, a scarflette for matt's mom, a pair of armwarmers for me, and a cowl that doubles as an overskirt for me. i am working on a hat for matt now, and after that it's the fancy yarns and complicated projects. woohoo!

we think that marge, cow #2, may also be pregnant now. she was exposed to the bulls for much longer than butters, so her later fertilization makes sense. it's nuts. butters is due any day now and it's been really, really cold so i'm a little worried... probably baselessly. we have something like 14 chickens and are getting 3 eggs a day lately. i'm not sure how well the garden is doing but it's out there with green stuff in it. our well froze a few times during these cold nights but matt has insulated it now and it appears to be effective.

i think that's all i have to update at the moment... i need to post pics of the little ones...

when the shock of liam's perfect birth finally wore off and i could start integrating it into my life experiences, some strange things happened. "birth" stopped being something that i obsess about. i am as interested in keeping it in my life as i was before, but i'm not on a soapbox anymore. i'm not feeling the need to rant and rave and hoist signs about it (though i gladly will should the occasion arise). it would seem that the total non-event normalness of giving birth the way i did has toned the whole subject down several notches, with a big added dose of peacefulness and contentment.

related to this was gaining the understanding that i will never get over rowan's birth. it doesn't hurt anymore (mostly probably because i have "proved" myself to myself; silly but true) but i was wrong to hope that liam's homebirth would somehow heal the trauma rowan and i went through. it didn't, and that's ok. it healed me in a profound metaphysical way, but nothing will ever lead me to "get over" her birth... it was awful and that's just the way it is. i am able to accept it for what it was and see it in a more objective way, but it will always be a scar even though the wound is no longer throbbing.

on a more mundane note, liam has strange diarrhea going on. for the past few days his normally sweet-smelling, sticky yellow curdled breastmilk poo is stinky, greenish, and so watery it soaks right into the diaper. wtf? i need to do some research... he seems fine otherwise and is eating/sleeping normally so i don't know what to think. as of last night we moved him out of our room--he's 6 weeks old--and into the spare bedroom to get ready for the move into rowan's room. i don't want him in there until he is sleeping through the night because i don't want him to wake her all night long. right now he's consistently going 3-hour stretches both for naps and for night sleeping. he's growing really fast so i can i only assume that explains the several night feedings..?

i am doing good with my "diet" which isn't--eating lots of oats, fruit, yogurt, and green juice. cutting out most meat since i don't really want it anymore, and avoiding breads. i should reduce my coffee intake but i just like it so much... and i've been doing that workout every other day too. i'm sure i'll lose just enough weight to gain it all back over thxgiving and xmas.

rowan is working on her 12th tooth and is saying everything i say to her. it's very cute. i'm really looking forward to xmas and seeing her excited over the lights and tree and parades and gifts. it should be so fun!

"uncle james" brought us 4 more hens yesterday as well, so we now have... 12?? chickens running around, but two of those will shortly be executed for the sheer fact that they are upstart roosters. matt is working on the barn but all we have is 4x4s in the ground so far. winter is coming...

both babies are sleeping at the same time for the second day in a row. *bliss* yesterday liam napped from 9am-12pm, too! i even had 5 minutes this morning to slather my head with henna (way overdue) and get some stuff ready for the GLAM which twink and my shirts will both be a part of. as of last night i have whipped myself into shape in terms of making him sleep in his bassinet, and he slept 5 hours and 3 hours (he is officially a stomach-sleeper no matter what i try). it was great to sleep in my bed without a baby i'm afraid to disturb by rolling over! maybe matt will come back to our room now... lol. i also started a pilates regimen that uses baby as the weights, and man that showed me just how out of shape i have become. it was EASY as far as workouts go, and only like 15 minutes, and my arms and legs felt like they were going to give out. i used to be able to do some seriously intense workouts and still be ok. i guess i should look at that past glory as something to work towards again.

i have discovered that i can knit and nurse at the same time, and all i can say about that is HALLELUJAH AMEN woo-freaking-hoo!! i've made some xmas gifts for rowan and i am even halfway done with a pair of super-cute fingerless gloves for me--first thing i've ever knitted for myself. it's glorious to be productive while i'm stuck on the couch otherwise "wasting time" (if you don't consider that i'm imbuing a mini-human with nutritious growth juice).

in the TMI realm--be warned here--matt and i resumed marital relations more than a week ago and everything is a-ok in the nether zone. it's sort of shocking, after my recovery post-rowan. i think i would've been fine with activities down there even at 2 weeks, but i wanted to be sure. it's such a relief.

i'm going for my IUD consultation on thursday which i am very excited about... yay for long-term surefire contraception that doesn't involve surgery! lol.

liam is 6 weeks old. he cooes and looks like he is trying to talk all the time, which is something rowan never did this early. he smiles a lot and is very interested in what is going on around him, and he's much cuter than he was before. i need more photos of him...

patience is a wonderful thing. having "given up" on the big-girl bed, as i did, in the hopes that rowan would sort of grow into it on her own, i am absolutely delighted to say that she has! a few days ago she decided that naps needed to be taken in it, and was consistent with it... so i decided to take advantage of a late-night out (after which she fell dead asleep in her car seat) to sneak her into the big girl bed for the night. it worked. she woke up in the middle of the night, i came in and comforted her, and she was back to sleep until the morning and has expected to sleep there ever since. it's awesome! i am so glad i left it to her to decide when she was ready. now i just need to get liam sleeping longer at night and i can have them both in their room together :) :) :)

liam is growing and has made a leap in awareness over the past few days. he's very into being awake and hanging out more, which is great... we're past the drowsy-all-day-nursing stage, and he's taking more defined naps and setting a bedtime for himself. he's a lovely little baby, and looking more and more like rowan by the day.

rowan has started repeating EVERY word i say to her lately, also, which is new. she tries to say everything, which means my sailor's mouth is rapidly becoming unsustainable. i'll be regretting it very soon if i don't clean up my language!

our farm has grown by another rooster, too. karen brought us a very showy little bantam "duclay" named peter to join our flock. he's tiny but apparently has a big heart. i think he'll be staying with us for a while, at least. butters hasn't birthed yet and my eggs were duds. matt has been planting the winter garden with spinach and lettuce...