Birthday Sneak Peak

Photos only for now! Just thought I'd share a little peak at our celebration today!

Preparations, etc.

Okay, I guess I can sit down, now.  Write a blog post, etc.

So, um... Hi!

Yes, my boys are in bed, my dishes are mostly washed, goats milked and fed, bathroom clean, various and sundry other chores done or partly so, laundry unfolded but oh, well, AND I baked birthday cake (and 20 cupcakes).  So glad my Mom talked me into baking cake tonight.  I always think that whipping up a little cake batter and baking it is no big deal, but it is. It is!  I would so regret doing that tomorrow and then waiting for it to cool so that I could frost and decorate it and then people arriving and babies crying and stress levels ramping...

We are preparing for a birthday.  How did my first, sweet, little baby get to be six?  I dunno.  It's a mystery to me.

I am also preparing for a hugeamongous number of people to be here.  How did that happen?  I meant for a small, shortish birthday party consisting of cake, presents, playtime, badabing, badaboom, (almost) everyone out in two hours.  But it morphed into 17 (!) children and all their parental people (it's really only three families, but they're big ones) and hot dogs at the firepit, and it looks like it's going to rain.

We're gonna have a blast!

So I baked cake ahead of time. Phwhew.

And most of the time I was baking, cleaning, etc., I had a small bucket of tears following me around.

He doesn't look so teary there, does he?  He's trying to fool you, see.  Actually, he's mostly naked, and that makes him very happy.  Tonight, after a solid hour of crying (following supper, which was preceded by eons of crying), I finally undressed him to get him ready for bed, and then he happily crawled off to play, naked.  Why didn't I take off his clothes long before?  Sometimes it helps just to pull off his socks.  It doesn't matter how cold he gets, he'd rather do without clothes.

My poor little guy is kinda miserable these days.  'Member what I said about him being able to eat without any trouble and my thankfulness for it?  Yeah, about that.  I was fooling myself.  It became harder and harder to ignore, and now the fussing, night waking, bowel troubles, and horrible rash made me face the facts:  this baby needs some digestive assistance, stat.  So we're working with a wonderful naturopath who has a good plan and we're praying hard for some positive results and relief for our poor, rashy, little crabby-pants.

To top it all off, we're ALSO preparing for a road-trip next week for a visit that I'm sure will be fun and wonderful, even if the actual road-trip is not.  I have some anxiety, I will admit.  Okay, a lot of anxiety.  And I don't have very much time to get ready, and I'm not even close, and I'm sleep-deprived, and I have a very crabby baby to deal with... Breath in, breath out.  It'll be okay, right?

 But I'm not going to think about that!  I'm going to think about partying with my delightful six-year-old!  Focus on the fun stuff!  (Birthday pictures to follow soon, I hope!)

Two Birds, One Stone

This was a great math lesson, AND we got a much-needed task done.

We learned about quarts and pints, counting out a dozen, and the addition/multiplication of dozens.

Fun AND productive.  That's my kinda school.

Grandpa!

Grandpa's here!

 The boys are having so much fun!

...with wrestling...

...and tickling...

...books!...

...and bike riding lessons!

We are enjoying a very rare treat of a visit from my Dad.  It's not often we get to have family around here, so we're soaking it up! 

Easter Preparation

Sometimes I think I enjoy the preparation for a holiday almost as much as the holiday itself.  It's fun to get ready for something fun!  And I really enjoy, in the case of a church holiday, thinking of the symbolism and teachings about the day as I get ready.

We have an Easter breakfast at church, and I was asked to bring some sort of sweet bread.  Cinnamon rolls was suggested, and that would be fine, but it just didn't seem special enough.  Mom reminded me of the fancy Easter breads that my Grandma used to make (based on Ukrainian "Paska").   I got really excited to have a fancy and traditional thing to make for the breakfast.

I used my usual sourdough recipe, but I added lots of soft butter, some sugar, and eggs to the dough to make it rich and sweet (for the sweet reward that is ours to claim).  Then I kneaded in some chopped cranberries and walnuts (for Christ's blood and bitter sufferings).  Two of the loaves I braided, and two of them I shaped in round pans and decorated with swirly crosses and flowers (for... obvious symbolism).

I let them rise in the fridge overnight and baked them this morning.

They didn't quite turn out like I had envisioned, but I guess I just need to keep practicing.  It is bread, after all. I learned some things, and I think I know what I need to do differently next time to make the decorations turn out better.

 

The little "flowers" look a little less than flowerlike, but this is dough we're talking about here.  It's limiting.

Nathan was slightly appalled at first that I nestled colored eggs (red eggs to symbolize the new life we have through Christ's blood). in the dough before baking.  ( He was also disappointed about the lack of cinnamon rolls.  Guess I'll have to make him some, soon.) Yeah, maybe people will think it's weird, and I even thought it was weird when my Grandma did it all those years ago (she made hers round like a nest, though, a detail I'd forgotten, which makes a little more sense).  There are quite a few things that I've come to understand and embrace about what Grandma did that I used to think were weird (or gross!).  Someday, I'll be an grandma, too, and by then I"ll make beautiful Paska, and my grandchildren will think I'm a weird old lady who puts whole eggs in bread.

I had never made braided loaves before, and I was a little bummed that they lost the braided shape upon rising and baking.  But, like I said, I learned some things, and I bet it'll look better next time.  I was also disappointed that the color from the eggs bled all over the bread.  I kinda thought that might happen, and waited to put the eggs in until right before baking, figuring it would surely bleed if they sat there all night.  But they did anyway.  Oh well.  Not sure how to prevent that.

Jonah was asking all week, then nonstop all day today, when it would be time to color eggs.

Today!  Sometime, today, I promise!

It's really a fun, low-stress project with him now.  It used to be chaos, but now he's old enough to need very little direction.  We really had fun with it.  Next year, it will be chaos again with Evan helping!  Fun, fun!

For our Easter dinner, I get to make the food, but not clean my house for company!  Yay!  Best of both worlds.  I'm making most of the food (minus the meat, but including herb-roasted potatoes, balsamic-maple marinated broccoli salad, asparagus "tart", and cherry cake topped with almond strusel) and taking it to our friends' house in Indiana.  I'm looking forward to a good visit with dear friends, and a brief break from the "same ol', same ol'."  Holiday visits with them are always lots of fun.

But for now, back to the preparation!



A blessed Resurrection day to all my dear blog readers!

In Which There Is Organizing

I just love having places to put things away!

This house has the strangest assortment of closets (or non-closets, because there about as useful as not having any at all).  There are three, upstairs, and they're all nearly useless.  Oddly shaped, poorly designed, lacking shelves, and downright weird.

I've been really needing a place to put away the totes of kids clothes and baby stuff that I'm storing. They have been stacked in one or both of a couple of bedrooms upstairs, moved back and forth as necessary.  I'm sick of moving them.  I'm also weary of digging through the pile to get to the tote I need, which is always on the bottom, despite my best planning.  And with the sudden explosion of growth in our family, I feel like I'm going to spend a fairly disproportionate amount of time sorting through these totes.  So I pestered and cajoled and finally, my dear husband tired of my whining and built me some shelves in one of the closets (the very weirdest one.)

He copied the ingenious design of an older pastor we used to know, now long since gone to his eternal reward.  These shelves are held in place by the weight of the stuff put on them, and they're amazingly sturdy.  Those things are not going anywhere, no matter how hard they're pulled on.

He used rough 2x4's and junk wood, because I was only interested in speed and utility and not looks, in this case.  We're talking about the farthest corner of the house, here.  I don't care what they look like.  I think they're awesome.

 

Evan helped, too.

No, really, he did.

Anyway, now I can Put Things Away!

I am thrilled!  I love it.  That awkward space is so much more useful now. 

Now to sort through and get rid of extra stuff up there that is not useful...  It feels so good to purge clutter.

More of Evan Eating Food

Evan had his first taste of banana today.  He loved it, of course.  I know all the rules about starting foods and only giving a very small amount the first time, but, um, Evan ate the whole banana.  (Smallish banana, granted, but it was still more than a tablespoon.)

I quickly abandoned the chunk-of-banana-in-the-fist idea, though, due to imminent airway obstruction.

Then there was the frustration (for him, that is... amusement, for me)  of chasing slimy little pieces of banana all over the tray until he finally got hold of one, only to have it slip out just shy of the target area.  He did manage to get the whole thing down, anyway.

As a baby, Jonah would projectile-vomit the entire contents of his stomach only minutes after consuming banana.  Ideal baby-food it was not, for him.  Actually, Jonah pretty much couldn't eat anything at all until he was older than Evan is now.  I'm so grateful that these two are so different.  Evan is pretty much doing fine with food, and I'm very thankful for that.  My milk production is rapidly decreasing (yes, I did just talk about my own milk and the making thereof in public.  Apologies to my brothers.) and I'm very bummed about that, but at least I can give him other things.  I've known people who can nurse a baby right through pregnancy, but I don't seem to be one of those, unfortunately.  I'm also very glad that we have goats and will be able to have plenty of fresh milk for Evan. I haven't yet given him any, though Evan does eat lots of yogurt made with that milk.  I reeeeeally don't want to give him a bottle, but he's not big on cups, so we might have to go there.  We already have a thumb addiction to deal with.  Oh well.  He won't be sucking on those things when he gets married, right?

I'm very paranoid about starting solids with babies.  The experience with Jonah was... harrowing.  I'm happy to report that Jonah seems to be food allergy/intolerance-free now, but starting him out was not easy.  I have a very unconventional (but not unresearched, and quite methodical) method to starting solids.  In my book grains come last.  Evan most likely won't have any grains at all until he turns one.  For now, it's fruits, veggies, yogurt, egg yolks and yes, meat (even liver!).  He seems to be tolerating everything just fine, except that he tends to have red, chapped cheeks.  That could be from some food, but I haven't been able to track it down to anything.  It could also be from teething, which he's deep into, or from having had a cold and rubbing snot all over his face for two and a half weeks.  He also has a little spot on his thumb above where he sucks (right where his hand touches his nose), so for now, I'm going with the snot theory.  See how paranoid I am?  I look for every possible sign if intolerance.

I'm also really lazy about starting foods.  I would actually rather just not do it at all until he's big enough to mostly feed himself and not choke.  It's just such a hassle to make special food and spoon it into his mouth.  I know, lazy.  I honestly cannot imagine feeding solids to a 4, or even 6, month-old.  It's just so much easier to sit down and nurse. 

It looks as though those days are nearly gone with Evan.  I'm hoping and praying that we can continue to nurse once or twice a day, indefinitely, but I guess we'll just have to see.   For now, onward and upward!