Saturday, March 23, 2013

Spring has officially arrived

...even if there is another snow storm in the forecast.  It feels springlike today anyway!  I'm inside while Alida finishes up her nap and then hope to join Jason and Kali outside for some more gardening - time to get the onions in the ground!

In the meantime, this "virtual scrapbook" needs some serious updating!  Here goes (though I should note that I'm going to dwell more heavily on the last week - which has been most enjoyable - and not the week previous to that - which was not - in which Jason and I were walking zombies with very unpleasant colds that caused us to miss a very much anticipated date night):

One of the biggest highlights since the last posting was having my mom around for a week, while Dad was off birding in Texas.  It's amazing how wonderful it is to have another set of hands around, particularly when they are a grandma's hands (complete with a desire to soak up our girls' sweetness!).  The week just felt a lot "roomier" than most.  It was fabulous to cross off one of those long term projects that never had risen to the top of the list.  While I was at work and Mom hung out with Kali and Alida, Jason was able to finish up shelving/cabinets in the laundry room, as well as make a bench for Mom to sit on while weaving (she was weaving the air with much excitement when he brought it in for her to try out!).

All around it's been a very upbeat week in the Myers-Benner household and there has been plenty of excitement to go around.  The most recent news is that Kali is officially a soccer player.  After the first round of practices were cancelled due to snow and bad field conditions, Kali got to meet her team this morning for a first practice and a short scrimmage.  While she was with her team, Alida and I played soccer on the sidelines.  It's a beautiful day out and it was so fun to watch Kali out there running around (and kicking the ball sometimes) and to watch Alida kicking the ball along the sidelines while saying "dribble, dribble, dribble." The gal can in fact dribble a soccer ball quite well!  Kali talked nonstop all the way home about it, including the things she noted that she will need to work on (she noticed that she needs to do more running at home because sometimes the ball would be kicked and other girls would get to it before she could).  She was clearly taking it all in.

Now she is outside enjoying the sunshine and playtime with Buttercup, her pet chicken. And what a pet it has become.  Yesterday Kali was taking worms to her while we were prepping the soil for planting potatoes. Kali was skipping around happily commenting how Buttercup sure likes gardening days (as do we). Not long after that we noted that Buttercup was "free ranging herself" having snuck out from under her pen.  Well that gave Kali an idea.  She hung out in the garden picking her up and putting her in the leaves to scratch around. Then she wanted to see if she could fly.  Well initially she would put her up on the trellis and watch her flap down. Then it seemed to her to make more sense to just fling her in the air.  I don't know all that many chickens but she sure seems to be about one of the most patient and tolerant chickens that I can imagine. Kali flings her up in the air with all her might and Buttercup flaps down, lands on the ground and immediately starts scratching around to see what treat she might find at her newest landing spot.  And then the routine is repeated. 

The other excitement is watching her ducklings grow and grow and grow. We can hardly keep up with their food and water consumption. They are now enjoying fresh grass in their outdoor pen.  Their sounds are changing and it is hard to believe that they had all just wrapped up hatching 2 weeks ago.  We still have all 17 but Kali and Jason have crafted an advertisement that we plan to circulate to see if there are others who would enjoy having ducks!  We strongly recommend them!!  My favorite thing is to come to their pen and talk to them and see their little heads tilt to the side to look up at us.  I also think that as their sounds get louder, it seems that sometimes the adult ducks (their parents) can hear them from their pen down the hill. Kali took a duckling over to them once to introduce them - it was hard to tell what they thought of the encounter.

In gardening news, we have lots of things growing indoors - sweet potatoes, cilantro, lettuce, kale, parsley, onions and a few little apple trees.  Yesterday we planted four long rows of potatoes from ones we had saved form last year - white, red, purple and fingerlings.  It was in a new area below the garden that J and Jason have worked hard to clear this spring and then the chickens have run over some of it to give us a head start on working the ground.  But there was still plenty of work to give all of us a good upper body work out yesterday afternoon.  Another gift of Mom's presence here was that I enjoyed several hours of working alongside Jason, J and R.  It's a rare thing for Jason and I to get to work together on the same thing at the same time and I enjoyed it thoroughly.  Not only that but there is nothing quite like entering what is normally Jason's "domain" on the home front to give me a huge dose of appreciation and admiration for what an incredibly hard worker he is.  Let's just say that I'm aware of some muscles today that don't get a lot of attention on a daily basis.

As I took bucketfuls of rocks to the rock pile in the woods I thought about the family work project we did the year after Nora died.  We hauled trailer load full after trailer load full of rocks from that pile to create our parking space.  I still can remember how good it felt to do that project together - talking some, silent often, engaging together in hard manual labor that was predictable and productive.  It was healing work - a good "working the grief out" project.  I wasn't thinking all that deeply yesterday as we worked out there together in the sunshine, but I could feel my spirit being soothed and strengthened.  This week marked the 7 year anniversary of the fire next door. I felt closer to the memories this year, as Alida is the age Kali was when it happened.  We also gathered on our Tangly Woods night this week to plant a white currant bush in P's memory.  And Nora's garden is coming to life again with the first bright yellow daffodils.

There have been a number of special gatherings this week - some that I knew about and some that came as a major surprise! Last Sunday we celebrated St. Patrick's Day with neighbors, S & M.  The evening, of course, included a green meal (which was much easier to plan now that I make bread and pasta regularly with pureed greens).  We also enjoyed some after dinner music - listening to S play dulcimer is another of those soul soothing and strengthening things in my life.  Sometimes when I close my eyes I travel back in time to the night they made the trip over to UVA with a home cooked meal to eat with us as we stayed by Nora's side.  That evening ended with Nora, along with the rest of us, being calmed by dulcimer music. 



The event of the week that I had not anticipated was a surprise half birthday party, planned by none other than my sweet husband!  I not only had no clue anything was in the works, but it took me almost 10 minutes to get out of my state of complete confusion to a point of clarity about what in the world was going on as close friends trickled in our door.  Jason supposedly has had this up his sleeve for a few years now, but has been solidifying the plan in his mind since sometime last fall.  He figured, which is probably true, that the only way to surprise me was to do something like this at a very unexpected time.  It worked!  And it worked even better in that he planned it on a night that I had also planned something (our Tangly Woods community meal and the tree planting).  I went from feeling confused to feeling overwhelmed by the love and care of those gathered around me as I read the various halves of birthday cards given to me.  The evening ended with a few lively games of ping pong - I haven't beaten Jason in a game yet but I can be credited with helping him perfect some of his spins and I did hold the lead 2x in one of our games.  He knows better than to "let me win" even at my own half birthday party.  A very fun and special evening and we don't have a single picture to show for it!

By far the most precious thing about life right now is watching Alida and Kali enjoy one another - and there is a lot of that to savor.  They both are growing up on what seems to be an hourly basis.  It looks different with both of them, but it is equally amazing to observe.  This past week I brought my breast pump home from work and Alida drank her last bottle of "mama milk."  I'm so glad she still enjoys nursing.  But even that doesn't have the "put her to sleep" magic anymore.  So as we find ourselves trying to be flexible with each new stage of the journey of parenting, Jason and I find ourselves in a new rhythym that has been wonderful.  Night walks are the new "magic" for Alida sacking out within minutes (if not seconds).  As soon as I wrap a blanket around her in the Ergo, she puts her little head on my back and is easily lulled to sleep by our footsteps and our voices debriefing from the day as we walk.  While I wouldn't mind those night walks happening in the 9-10 p.m. range rather than the 10:30-11:30 p.m. range, I am very grateful for the time of connecting about our day that Jason and I have been enjoying.

This will soon be too long to hold anyone's attention, so I think I'll go join Jason and see if we can't get some onions in the ground before the next snow storms hits.  By the time I write again, our baby will be 2!  It should be a fun week with a number of low key mini-celebrations to be enjoyed.  She's already enjoyed opening a few presents and as I type is sitting on the counter chattering while Grandma ices a doll cake for her (we'll see if she can bear to wait 24 hours to lick the icing off the doll). I'm especially glad that unlike her first birthday, this one lands on a Tuesday so I'll get to enjoy it with her in person.  And while much has changed in the last year, some things haven't.  Green pasta will once again be on the menu for the birthday meal!  It's nice that some things stay constant for more than a week or two!

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