Almost Not a Baby Anymore

This little cutie-pie is turning one this week.  One!

My Mom was reminding me how a year ago we were sure this baby would never --never!-- come out and join us.

And here he is.

Walking.  Playing with his brothers.  Crying at my legs to be picked up.  All the time.

I'm still not sure just what we'll do for his birthday.  I'd like to invite some friends and have cake and a little party.  I know he couldn't care less, but I think first birthdays are so fun, and important for the mama.  So I wanna have a party.

But Nathan and Jonah are spending this week in Minnesota, visiting Nathan's parents without us, and we're not sure what day they're coming back.   We figured that Evan and Andrew wouldn't be much help up there, and nor would I with the awful back ache I've had lately.  As it turned out, I spent the first day Nathan was gone on the couch sick all day.

I was a little worried about how I would manage the kids, animals, woodstove, and other chores by myself with these afflictions (and so was Nathan-- he almost didn't go, but he really had to and I twisted his arm), but so far it's been fine.  My house is deteriorating with me in survival mode, but that's nothing new.  I think the little guys actually do better with me laying around on the couch.  Maybe I should do it more often.  That way I'm always available for them to slam their heads into my belly and whine for a few minutes whenever they want to.

Don't you think life would be better if you could just lean on someone soft and whine when life isn't going your way (approximately every 2-10 minutes)?

So, instead of working on all the tasks piling up on me (blah, blah, blah, you've heard it all from me before), I sat on the porch for a while yesterday and watched my babies play.

Andrew started walking much earlier than the other boys did.  He's quite a pro now, and not even a year old yet.

I find it so entertaining to watch such a tiny person walking around.  He's a baby!  He looks like a baby, but there he is, tottering around like a funny little man.

A funny, little, almost-one-year-old man with his fly open.

And brown eyes!  How on earth did that happen...?  They're still a little flecked with green, so they're probably hazel and not truely brown, but they are actually turning more brown all the time.  It's amazing and strange and adorable.

So my little brownish-eyed boy will turn one this week, with or without a party, with or without his Daddy present.  He won't even know a thing about it, but his mama will.  Maybe we'll have a party on Sunday instead.

I'm not the sort of mama to shed tears about "my baby growing up" (at least not now).  Rather, my heart bursts with joy at watching it.

Beginning of the End

The early morning of the first frost is always so breathtaking.

The entire garden --world, it seems-- completely still.  Frozen, as it were, in time.  Everything is held just as it was before the sun set.  Still.  Preserved.  Mummified.  Like maybe my garden could just remain in a fixed peacefulness all winter, unmoving in static lifelessness.

But that beautiful, crystalline tranquility is only temporary and hides lurking violence.

As the sun's rays stretch over the horizon and reach out, sweeping over the last remnants of summer, tender herb must bend it's knee and crumble into limp, brown desolation.  Only decay can follow and the impermanence of earthly life is keenly felt.

But what a delight to breath that cold frost just before the sun is bright, gaze on frosty splendor, stuff chilled hands in pockets...

...and bid summer goodbye.

Rantings of a Feral Insomniac

It's Saturday.

Most Saturdays make me long to engage in some not-so-gentle removal of my eyeballs with a blunt instrument.

Saturdays are Sermon Days.  Nathan is home, but he's trying to study in the office.  He studies off and on throughout the week, but Saturday is the big study-day.

He desperately needs a soundproof room.  Or, as he half-jokes, a bomb-proof cabin out on the edge of the property, as far as possible from the house.  I really do feel for him.  I know how hard it is to concentrate around here.

There has been a lot of screaming and fighting a bickering this morning.  This may or may not have been only the kids.  In any event, it's been loud.

He usually locks the office door, puts on his el cheapo earbuds, and tops that with his chainsaw hearing protection.  But today, it seems that the hearing protection was left out in the rain, ostensibly by some child who shall remain nameless, but whose first initial is, without a doubt, E.  ("So what?" I said.  "They'll warm up as you wear them.  The water might give an extra layer of sound barrier...")

Nathan is very sweet and patient about it all today, really.  I'm impressed. He knows that I haven't had a lick of sleep last night or in the last ten thousand nights, approximately.  Insomnia is a bi.......ig fat meanie.  So he goes off to work, but ends up popping back out of the office every few minutes when someone screams, or is crying inconsolably, or yells, or otherwise engages in the usual unruly racket. He tries to get the kids involved in something (raking leaves outside-- 5 minutes.  Building blocks-- 5 seconds, or however long it takes to knock down what he built for them to play with) so he can sneak off and work while they play and I continue slog around through mud and pretend I'm doing something productive.

I'm... ex...haus...ted.

Zzzzzzzzzzz...

Anyway, so after I got done baking the bread and putting milk through the cream separator, alternating with feeding, comforting, changing diapers, wiping up spills, and generally spinning my wheels, Nathan's had it with trying to work through the noise. He let Evan sit in his lap and listen to music with him while he worked, but that didn't last long, and Andrew wanted to be involved, too, and that just doesn't hold up.  His patience is wearing thin.  Very thin.

So I start some dishes.  And I... invite... Evan to help.  (Ah, where are those blunt instruments?)  And then Andrew is screeeeeeeeaming at my feet, prompting Nathan to come out again, but by then I already have Andrew in the ErgoBaby on my back, even though my back is like death-warmed-over these days.

We're happily (depending on who you ask) doing dishes together.  But I hear playing coming from the living room.... Playing...  And there's Nathan, setting up blocks for the little guys.

The little guys.  Are with me.

"I HAVE TWO CHILDREN DOING DISHES WITH ME."

"But I..."

He loves me.  I know it.  He's helping me, not himself.  He knows my patience is non-existent.

But I... I have no mercy.

"DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW NOT-FUN THAT IS?"

"I just thought I... really quick..."

"GET IN THE OFFICE AND DO SOME WORK WHILE YOU HAVE THE CHANCE!  GO! GIT!  GOOOOOO!"

He blinks.  We smile at each other.

"You're hard to deal with sometimes, you know that?" he says as he closes himself, once again, in the office.

Yes.  Yes, I am.

Oh, I do love that man.

Difference Between Work and Play

Harvesting sweet potatoes involves trucks and tractors.

What else would you do with all that dirt?

And you can't wash dishes...

...without bubble beards.

The lines between "work" and "play"...

...are very often blurred.

Homeboy

Maff-U-Thee

We were doing math, you see. And Evan was "doing" math, too.  And hamming it up.

He put a pile of ten blocks in the box, put the sheet of plexi over it and, peering through, he said, "Mom!  Mom!  I-I-I..."  (in that cute little fakey-stutter that he does lately as he's learning to speak sentences) "I-I-I thhheeee...  BOKTH!"

"You see BLOCKS?  Wow!  Do you see math?"

"Maff!  Thhhee maff!"

"You see math!  Math-U-See!"

(What you don't see, is that dump of a kitchen.  Right?  Riiiiight?  Maff is more fun than kitchen-cleaning.)

If you're not having fun with math...

...you're doin' it wrong.

Not Fall Yet

Some people call this fall, I call it "late summer". Late summer has a flavor all it's own and while it's obvious that fall is nearly here, this is just a last bit of summer.  Everything in it's own time, and I dislike getting ahead of where we really are.




I just love the light and air on days like these.  The sun is extra golden, nights and mornings are crisp, and the days warm so pleasantly.

These days, Andrew lives on my back in the Ergobaby carrier.  He seems to only want to be in constant contact with me, and the only way for me to accomplish anything at all is to strap him on.  This is a new thing for me, actually.  I usually wear the babies when they're tiny, but when they get big enough to protest, I don't put up with it.  They just always seem to want to be in my arms (not strapped in hands-free) or on the floor, so that's what I work with.  Andrew has been so clingy these days, though.  But he doesn't seem to mind the carrier, and will even happily co-operate while I get him in the carrier on my back by myself.  He just clings there and waits while I buckle and snap.






We're spending time outside in this perfect weather while we can.

There is certainly lots to do!

We picked all the storage onions yesterday and laid them on bread-racks to cure on the front porch.

I have to remind myself to slow down and go at the kids' pace.  Evan doesn't just put the onions in-- he puts them in and takes them out and moves them around and throws them in the yard and puts them in shovel to scoop into the racks.  It's just more fun that way, see.

And Jonah takes sooooo long to get the trays from the barn because he puts his feet in them and monster-walks all the way to the front yard.

I'm too quickly inclined to snap at them to stop playing and go faster, comeoneletsgetthisdonealready!  But what's the point, really?  I tend to miss the forest for the trees.  "Have some fun." I remind myself.  If the kids are happily working steadily, then the battle's already won!

This morning when we started school, Jonah asked for a break from regular school.  This is very unusual for him, Most Regimented Second-grader Ever.

Instead, he wanted to do this "science" experiment in which you measure a gummy bear and put it in a cup of water and then measure it again the next day.  "Hm." I said.  "I don't have any gummy bears."

So we made some sour gummies, which I had seen a recipe for only a few days before.

And we had some good math lessons along with it.

Then we cut them out (I don't have fancy silicone candy molds, but I do have tiny cookie cutters, though cutting this stuff is not easy, I should point out.)...

...ate all the scraps...

...and admired our work.  (And shared them with Daddy.)

THEN and only then, did we finally get to that science experiment and there is now a homemade sour gummy soaking in water on top of the fridge... and a whole jar-full for eating.

Great things happen when I have fun with them.  It's just hard for me to slow down, sometimes...