In Which You Catch Up

Okay, so I know this post is waaaay overdue. I meant to write this on Monday, but here it is, Thursday, and I'm just finally getting to it. I've been getting myself caught up all week.

So I'll try to hit the highlights here, so you can have an idea of how life has been here at Casa la Funny Farm.

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Nathan's parents came from Minnesota and spent a long weekend with us. They come twice a year --Memorial weekend and Thanksgiving-- and we always look forward to seeing them. It's just so fun to actually visit with family and have them at our house for a good long visit.




Jonah, as you can imagine, just eats up all the attention and love.




He suffered a little let-down on Monday, of course (well, really, we all did...).

Then last night at supper he was heard to ask, "So... When is Thanksgiving?"

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And I would have ordinarily posted this right away, but... well, you know, busy etc.

Anyway, Opal had two kids early Saturday morning!

(Also, my sweet husband who checked on her during the night and found the new kids at 4:00am thought it would be funny to pretend nothing had happened when I got up. He didn't bother to tell me about the babies until I had been up and putzing around for awhile. He has been duly set straight and has seen the error of his ways. The very grave error. Which he will never repeat. Ever.)



Eh-hem. As I was saying. Two kids.

Adorable, beautiful little doe kids. (Also, for the record-- they're extremely well-mannered and calm, in sharp contrast to those buck kids we had earlier in the spring. The difference between boys and girls is sharply apparent even in the animal world!)

Here we have a dark-eyed, angelic little beauty:


Oh be still my heart, she is just too much! Pure milky white with those dark eyes and nose and delicate airplane ears! (Airplane ears is what you get when you cross long droopy ears with erect ears.)

And in contrast to her sister, we have a fun, colorful, little cutie:



Check out her spots and dark feet!



Too cute!

And they haven't once gone through a fence or gotten into trouble and they stay pretty close to mama. Granted, they're not even a week old, so I'm sure they'll come to that, but those buck kids were total mischief makers by two days old.

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On Monday morning I took Jonah to the Memorial Day parade in our small town.



He still loves the fire trucks.

And he still covers his ears.

Is it horrible of me to say that I'm so glad we were rained out and had to leave the parade early? Seriously. I can only take so much of watching every beauty pageant winner and first runner up and second runner up AND third runner up from every podunk town in the county riding on top of fancy cars and doing the beauty-queen wave. Add to that every tractor for miles around and... I'm pretty bored pretty fast.

Also, most of them weren't throwing candy.

And what they did throw was all tootsie rolls.

Nuff said.

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So add all that to a barbecue with a couple of other families on Sunday (which I thankfully did NOT have to have at my house! Whew!) and I've been a little tired this week.

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I've also spent as much time in the garden as humanly (and pregnantly) possible and have gotten a lot done, despite the torrential thunderstorms, ravenous mosquitoes, and blistering sun. Yes, I have a sunburn AND mosquito bites and the combination is less than thrilling. Don't scratch. That's all I can say.

(Just FYI: Homeopathic Calendula gel is the BEST thing ever for sunburn. Better than all the other traditional remedies. It relieves the pain tremendously and shortens the misery. Helps with bites, too. Also, this Plantain salve is fantastic for bug bites. I've been going through a lot of both.)

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Oh, and I'm having a baby in about 6 weeks (give or take a couple). I'm starting to feel sooo ready to be done with this part, but I also have a lot to do before then. A neighbor of mine just had her baby 3 weeks early (healthy 7lbs, though, so hard to say if it was really early) and I felt a little jealous. But then I reminded myself of how much needs to get done before baby-time and... I felt a little better. I'm just ready to have my body back.

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In other news, Nathan talked to a well-guy yesterday and might be able to have our water-pressure problem (as in, we have none, ever, and we never have) fixed. Evidently, the well may be clogged up with gunk and the guy can come and blow highly pressurized air down into it to break up the gunk and improve the flow rate. That would be FABULOUS, especially considering that I'm hoping to use water (tub and/or birth pool) for labor. I've been concerned about how long (read: days, months, years) it could take to draw enough water. Besides, we've lived with this low water pressure for long enough, I tell you.

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My laptop screen has been deteriorating for quite some time and now has developed a problem displaying images. Grr. Photo editing is a little more difficult, but web image/video display is worse. It looks like everything has had the "posterize" action run on it. Sigh. I shouldn't spend so much time on the computer anyway.

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I started reading Charlotte's Web to Jonah and immediately regretted it. I hate that story. It's cute and all that, but it's really kinda twisted. And Jonah falls for the manipulation right away. He knows that we eat animals and why, but he's very upset about the idea that Wilbur could be eaten.

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However, Jonah himself is doing great with his reading! In fact, he brought me a reader and is sitting next to me reading to me, so I'm multitasking just a little.

Which means I really should bring this collection of tid-bits to an end and focus on one thing at a time for a change...