All the other end of January, beginning of February things!

And then there is everything else that has transpired before/following our descent into our first stomach bug since before COVID...

Kali rejoined our family on Friday, January 27 after soaking in an additional few weeks with Christie and Mark. I was more or less unmixed about my delight in seeing her. She, understandably, had more mixed feelings about coming home - which, to be clear, is not a critique of home but a compliment to her aunt and uncle! She had chosen to come home that Friday since we were eagerly anticipating a weekend retreat in our home with Jonathan, Christen and Luca. Oh, that dratted stomach bug! It ended up being a different kind of weekend - surprising us with some time to catch up on some odds and ends around home, even if that was not how we had wanted to be spending those days!

It's been feeling like we are bouncing between seasons around here. My mom's snow decorations are not netting any large amounts of snow that stick around but it's been enough for the girls to scrape together for a few baby snow people. And recently we had a dusting that gave a covering on the picnic table deep enough for them to scoop off the top for maple syrup snow cones. I have no idea how many snow cones they ate but on that particular day they were outside for 6-8 hours and never came in for lunch. They were living on snow and maple syrup because they returned maple syrup bottle almost empty! They crashed as soon as they came in and were soon gobbling up eggs that I fried up as quickly as possible! It's amazing how kids can be SO content doing whatever they are doing and then one thing can shift (coming in from the cold) and all of a sudden it's like a tidal wave of needs catches up to them!  

SIDE BAR CHALLENGE: I was listening to a We Can Do Hard Things podcast recently where people were calling in with ideas/actions/dreams they are wanting to think about living into in 2023. This is the main one I can remember: A woman called in saying she was going to stop turning statements into questions/requests/her responsibility to fix. What a novel concept! I told my family about it and I am currently only in the building awareness phase of this! I caught myself bringing Terah milk when she said, "I need more milk." So that time the awareness came after the action. This evening, Alida made an urgent statement and I started walking towards her and then said, "Wait, that's a statement!" She turned it into a question for me and then I responded. I think it will be a good exercise for all of us! 

We can't really blame the weather for the slow progress on the bike shed walls. Jason will be back on it tomorrow but he can currently only eke out about a day a week at most with work away from home and other responsibilities. It does have to be above freezing at night, but that's not the primary limiting factor at this point.  

There are signs of spring coming around. They instill both excitement and anxiety in me, as we still have a lot of big unanswered questions around our capacity and life direction... That said, here's what I'll share for the scrapbook!

Onions are started. Will they do any better this year? We are buying onions for the first time that I can remember in years... We used up our small harvest awhile back. Garlic is not holding up in storage this year due to an itty bitty bug so that is also nearly gone. May the alliums do better this year!

The chickens sure think it is spring! And we are getting a beautiful array of colorful eggs again this year. We have crested 50 in a day now a time or two. And there are still new ones starting in. A few of our most faithful customers are no longer in the area and I'm no longer going to CJP regularly, so I'm exploring some new ways to get them to people who will enjoy them. 

I like seeing the remainder of the autumn joy in Nora's garden and then up hill from that the new spring crocuses blooming. They sure add a splash of color to their surroundings!

I've been able to enjoy several beautiful hikes to Hensley's pond in recent weeks with others (a dear friend and now doula client, a former doula client and now friend, a fellow doula and now friend, and a former colleague and still dear friend!). The latter was a particularly special walk as Alena and I gathered to reflect on the one year anniversary since I left CJP and she became the Academic Program Coordinator. We lingered at the pond drinking coffee and eating some baked goods I made while sharing with each other. We both made it a full year in our new roles and that is saying something! It was really meaningful to talk with the one person in the world that understands the job that I left and why it took me so so long to leave. And we both feel deeply grateful that our training months gave us a unique chance to work closely together and solidify our budding friendship. I'm glad that during the past year it only grew. One of the many lasting gifts from my time at CJP!!

Sometimes there is snow and cold, sometimes there is sun and warmth!

We haven't hiked to the pond as a family for awhile but the girls and I hiked up to the top of the hill behind our home recently and did some "trail grooming!" Jason and I had been talking about wanting to start doing that short hike sometimes in the morning together to get our hearts pumping and legs moving before getting into the rest of our day. The trail is now ready...and we haven't done it once yet. Maybe tomorrow?!

Two very quick animal updates. We said goodbye to Mocha and Butterscotch. They are not dead, but we gave them to someone who was interested in them AND has a stream. It seems that recently they had decided that they were ducks after all and didn't like living in the compost coop with the chickens anymore - that made herding them home at night sometimes a chore that was apt to make me want to eat them! And since we are just about to make chores A LOT more complicated already with breeding, hatching, etc..., we didn't need a lone pair of ducks to add to the housing and chore complications. So they have a new home and we hope they are happy there! And Snuffles (the piglet) has recovered and is gonna stay at his place of birth. He has won the heart of the person we got him from for not holding anything against him after all he went through. He has now been affectionately named, Mr. Snuffles.

And now a few human updates! While we have had to alter the way in which we get together, the girls still normally get to see Ivy several times a week. Yesterday all the girls joined me for our Adopt-a-Highway pick up. We might soon work ourselves out of a job as we are finding less and less each time. Yay!

We saved Kali's gingerbread house until she got home. It was still delicious. We had fun thinking how terrifying it would be if there really was a snow person that large in proportion to our real house!

Kali brought home the 1,100 dominos that Mark and Christie had purchased while the girls were there. They thought our home would get more use out of them. I suspect they are right! The other day, Kali did a train that used every single one!

Alida, Terah and I recently read Helen Keller together. Alida got a bee in her bonnet and in less than 48 hours she learned the braille alphabet. She was having a lot of fun writing messages in braille and trying to get any family member that would to learn it so they could converse with her. She has since learned that there is A LOT more to it than just the alphabet. She got Anne of Green Gables out of the library in braille!

Alida's imagination had her seeing a cardinal in a milk spill on our table the other day so she added a little dab of peanut butter to give it feet. :)  

I forgot to mention in our last post that once our appetites started returning, we did have our delayed girls' pizza night.

Don't worry, I'm not forgetting! LUCA!! He's growing and changing so much and so fast. He is ALMOST walking. He has the cutest wave and normally waves for a bit after someone leaves - he did it a LONG time the other day when his daddy stopped by and then left. He stood at the door happy, just waving and waving...

A favorite game of ours together is for him to put his head down and we say "nighty night" and then he pops his head up and we say "good morning!"

Today the game of peek-a-boo with all three was a hit!

He still likes to hold our fingers (or a finger) for extra support walking around but he sure seems steady enough on his feet that it won't be long before he's toddling after us.

He sure brightens up and complexifies our Thursdays! As all little people are apt to do... I normally try very hard to not have much that I have to get done or only short things I can do in bits and pieces in the time it takes for him to come find me from the living room to the kitchen. He did help me make spinach salad dressing today and seemed to feel very accomplished working the Ninja. He was also very eager to help me stir the milk for yogurt. I am a bit rusty in my skills of doing things with one hand or somehow magically no hands. It does take me back to a life phase that feels kinda far from our household now. Each phase is precious and challenging in its own way. I'm just glad we are at a point in our own family's life that we get to be a special part of Luca's life. He seems to be glad about that too!

Coming out of the fog...

It was towards the end of last week that I was thinking, "it's about time to update the blog." And then this happened:

Last Friday, Jason left in the afternoon for PA while I was doing town errands. He was going up for a visit/work weekend, to contribute to some projects at his parents' place. While we'd miss him, we also had some fun things planned for our girls' weekend (pizza party, a day with Luca, etc...). Those things did not happen!

As the evening wore along, Alida noted that her stomach felt off. She didn't finish her ice cream...red flag! Terah and Alida joined me in our bed for the night and thankfully Alida took one of the edges. At 11 p.m. she threw up for the first time - amazingly NOT in the bed, but also not in any receptacle. I carried Terah sleeping to her bed because I didn't know what tending Alida was going to need the rest of the night and figured 3 in the bed might make that harder. Got all cleaned up and settled and maybe caught a cat nap before the next wave struck her. Then around 1 a.m. I heard Terah throw up - also mostly off the edge her bed. So another clean up job and I made a makeshift bed on the floor of our room so I could have both kids and their barf tubs close by. They both were pretty clockwork retching on the hour. Around 5 something in the morning I heard Kali stirring. Uh oh! Her bed hangs from the ceiling so I didn't feel eager to clean her bed/bedding OR to have her lean out over the edge. I woke her enough to give her a container and it was a good choice. Things got rolling around 6 a.m. for her. 

Not a restful night! But in the morning, I realized I better use any burst of energy I had to do some things before I fell ill. I got our woodboxes loaded up and made a chicken soup. I was already feeling kinda crummy so sorting chicken feet and necks was NOT an enjoyable job, but we were VERY grateful in the subsequent days for that pot of soup chicken corn potato soup! 

Thankfully the vomiting phase subsided pretty quickly and I never got that phase. I jumped directly to the achy, miserable and completely out of it phase. So our girls' weekend was mostly spent on the futon, bed or sleeping bags on the floor. We watched or slept through a few documentaries, watched a few movies and I read and read Anne's House of Dreams out loud (which we finished). Everything on the calendar got cancelled, and we did the bare minimum - which did include me and Kali having to do the Saturday milk pick up at our neighbor's farm (first time for either of us without Jason). Of course it happened to dovetail with there being more milk than there has been in weeks, but we got the tank emptied and ourselves and the milk home all in one piece! My parents were complete rockstars - Mom helping with laundry, Dad helping with chores and them furnishing us with saltines and gingerale. It really would have been so much harder without them!

So far my parents are still healthy (we've been mostly staying completely apart or popping masks on) and Jason hasn't gotten it yet - he extended his time in PA by a day to give it more time to clear the air. By Tuesday, the stomach stuff was mostly all gone other than maybe still lowered appetites. We cleaned and cleaned and cleaned - four loads of laundry and about a gallon of white vinegar to try to reduce whatever exposure Jason would have rejoining us. This has been such a weird bug if we do even understand where we got it and the length of incubation and time for transmission. Sigh! 

I was hoping it would be 24 hours and out, but it seems that either we had a co-infection of a minor cold too or somehow some congestion, tickly throats and slightly runny noses was all part of the same package. We are doing our best to avoid getting anyone else sick, but have no idea when we aren't contagious anymore - there's a very special someone upstairs who has a birthday on Saturday and we would really like to celebrate with her!!!!

So here we are... The first night I had some odd ability to see the humor in my role. It felt almost comical as I rotated from one barf basin to the next. I realized it was the first time in all my years of parenting that all of our kids were sick at the exact same time with the exact same thing. In some ways I'm glad it didn't hit one of us and then wait days and then the next and so on. We just all went down together. The humor didn't stay with me too well into the daylight hours and I'm not enjoying this lingering phase where we can't say boldly that we are symptom free but also aren't actively sick anymore, and making decisions that come with that ambiguous status. But there were some wonderful moments - when Alida felt good enough to make pancakes, when the dominos came out and kids were playing upright, when Kali got the twinkle back in her eye, when we could enjoy our "pizza party" and had enough brain power to play Rook again, etc... 

While his spouse and daughters were lounging around in a state of malaise, Jason was enjoying some wonderful connection time with his family and also replacing windows and framing a new bathroom and things like that in PA. He got out of here at a good time!! I think he's happy to be back but he dove right back into his current construction project here and we really haven't had time to do much by way of catching up. It continues to be a very full season of life for him. And his construction skills are so very much appreciated by many who benefit from them (our household included), even as he continues to yearn to be doing what really makes his heart sing and what feels like a much deeper calling for him in a full-time kinda way! So far, anyway, it seems so very much easier to find people willing to pay a skilled carpenter than a plant or animal breeder... I keep hoping that we'll find the right connections sooner rather than later!

So that's that. I'll include all the other updates in a separate post... It's amazing how quickly the world gets reduced to what's happening within the walls of your home, or maybe within a single room. We are slowly venturing back out in mind, body and spirit!