Since the last time...

I've been unsure about how and when I would follow up on the last blog post.  A number of things have happened since that time that have some bearing on both my ability to keep up with the blog and my feelings about how to frame the last number of weeks:

• I had my first full blown anxiety and/or panic attack (something I would be very thrilled never to experience again) the night after I wrote the last very positive blog post, which by the way was all a very true description of how I was feeling that day. For a number of weeks, I had been experiencing some physical symptoms that had me feeling more uptight that usual including tightness in my chest, some shortness of breath, tingling in my arms, etc...  But after consulting both with medical people in the family (thank you Mom B and Dad M) and with my family doctor, it appears that I'm about as healthy as they come physically, and my body is responding to some of life's stressors in not such pleasant ways.  More on what I'm doing about that below...
• We've traveled to and from West Virginia, enjoying a luxurious four days without my computer (that was step #1 in addressing the stress!), enjoying helping prepare for and then joining in the celebration of my cousin's wedding. We celebrated Fausnaught Day and are well into Lent, where we have successfully thus far given up all grocery shopping and have been found to forget numerous times to not eat anything with cheese in it (the other thing we were attempting to go without and which Kali keeps reminding us of - she chose not to join us in giving up cheese, and Alida also has not). 
• Alida has become completely obsessed with computer keys.  She does not want to hear me talk about which keys she can/cannot press and wants full reign of the computer whenever I'm attempting to do anything on it.   So you might be wondering how I am getting away with this blogpost when she is not asleep and I'm home alone with her.  Well, she is chattering away beside me pressing buttons to her heart's content on our old dinosaur computer. It may never be the same once she is done, but she is content.
• E & J closed on their home in Keezletown!  They are officially neighbors and we couldn't be more thrilled!  And being the natural connectors that they are, they are already getting to know their neighbors.  It just so happens that the family right across the street has three children, one of whom is a 9 year old girl.  Kali is over there now meeting her for the first time and using a metal detector to try to find treasure in E & J's yard!

So I've been trying to figure out what to write about my emotional state and how much to just focus on the day to day activities of our homestead, which have been in large part very pleasant.  Somehow it doesn't feel fair to anyone that happens to land upon our blog, or read it regularly, to paint an inaccurate picture of home life.  But I'm not planning to make this public form of scrapbooking the way I process the things most precious and most difficult in my life!

Some of the take-aways for me from the recent health scare and pretty clear symptoms of too much stress and anxiety include, but are not limited, to the following: 

• Limiting the amount of time I spend on email on my days/evenings off work.
• More family walks/hikes or other forms of low key family times.
• Being a little more free to spend money on some things that we might be able to figure out how to do ourselves but which we really don't have time to add to the project list for this spring.
• Tied to that, I'm going to relieve myself of the stress of diving into honeybees this spring. Instead we are going to get mason bees!  They seem super cool and I'm super excited and we hope to order them tonight!

There are other things Jason and I have been talking about but that is enough for now and my time with Alida content appears to be VERY limited. She just reached over and put my computer into stand by...

Here are some pictures from things we have recently been enjoying: cute girls and watching seeds grow. We are also eagerly anticipating ducklings hatching but another picture of eggs is in the incubator would not be very exciting - of interest, however is that after the first candling we removed 8 eggs that had not started developing and none after the second candling. So we are at 30 eggs with one and a half weeks to go!

 

Kali has gotten interested in doing more cooking.  We made crepes together for brunch this morning so here is some photo documentation of our brunch, enjoyed before a family lake to the hike.  You will see the final result of Alida's enjoyment of her chocolate crepe.  If you pick up on her chatter what she is saying is "not this one, not this one...this one."  It's a game we play with her fork when she is needing some additional motivation to consume more than one bite of dinner!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Time to sign off and get the final touches on dinner as we are hosting supper club this evening so will get to enjoy having our table full of friends this evening!

Staycation!

 So it wasn't until about 3 p.m. yesterday that it started sinking in (and I officially decided) that I was indeed taking the next week off work.  There really doesn't seem to be a "good" time of year for me to be out of the office for a full week, and it is a little hard to stick to one's vacation plans when you are spending the majority of the time at home.  But thanks to the encouragement of coworkers and the strong tug towards home, I'm officially on vacation until Monday, February 18th.  I was rather giddy on the way home last night and kicked off the vacation with not one but two episodes of Downton Abbey with members of our household here and then followed that by staying in bed until almost 8:30 a.m. this morning with Alida.  Luxurious!

"Clean" is on my to do list for today but thus far I've had way too much fun puttering around the house and just enjoying being home - I've got an organizing bug for one (which my family may tire of quickly).  I enjoyed a jog and a long walk with Alida, ending at the kale patch and came home with two big shopping bags full.  Yes, it is February and we are still savoring large amounts of fresh kale. 

I keep reminding myself that I don't have to do everything I want to do all in one day.  And I want to soak up time with Kali and Alida.  Alida is cracking us up these days with her insistence on dressing herself.  At this point it looks like she may not take after me in my distaste for tight skirts.  The silly gal likes to put both legs in the same hole of pants, the other pant leg serving as a tail.  It makes putting her in her high chair for meals rather challenging. Here you can see it for yourself:



Spring is approaching and with it the anticipation of a new growing season, flowers blooming and ducklings and chicks hatching.  Here's some of the sights around our place these days!

Thankfully we aren't in full swing yet with gardening and food processing and are enjoying fitting in some family hikes here and there.  The lake on our recent hike was beautiful with half it frozen, which was very enticing for Kali and her friend. I was thankful that we still had dry shoes on the way home!

Well, my time is up.  The girls just downed a box of macaroni and cheese and a can of green beans in the short time I was typing this so they are ready to move on to other things.  Kali is about to embark on making another potholder and Alida is "helping." 

Alida

This little gal is not slowing up!  Even if she still likes to pretend she is our "tiny little baby," there is nothing very tiny or little about her, nor does she seem very baby-like.

It seems that all three of us bigger people in this house are quite smitten with her, and enjoy watching her, listening to her, talking about her, and in this instance writing about her when she is asleep (rather than scurrying around to make use of time while she is not underfoot or wanting to "help").  We need to get a book started to jot down all the cute stories because there are many and I seem to forget them as soon as they happen because the next cute thing is right around the corner.  But here are a few that Kali, Jason and I came up with last night.

She loves the Nursery rhymes.  Why?  So many of them are so horrible.  Well, we have been happy to note that she has memorized our modified version of Rock-A-Bye baby (which we think is particularly horrible to sing to your child while they are falling off to sleep...)



If you didn't catch it all, the last line, rather than singing, "and down will go cradle baby and all," you sing, "it's a good thing this trees only six inches tall." 

She is singing a lot - maybe thanks to Kali's music lessons?  But often she combines several songs. Last evening when we up visiting with our other household members she piped up, "Old MacDonald had a farm...and Bingo was his name oh."

She loves books and has many of them memorized.  And most times she wants to hold them herself while you read and knows them well enough to know if she skipped over a page.  She'll stop and say "missed a page" and go back to separate the pages carefully.  She'll often identify a book she wants to read by some line in the book.  When it is a book that only Jason has read to her, it takes awhile for me to catch on.  Yesterday she was saying to Kali, "all about me."  This sounded very cute but we weren't sure what she was talking about until she brought to me her "First Words" book and sure enough the page with body parts had the heading "All About Me."

When she isn't sitting reading books or putting puzzles together or sleeping, she is on the go!  She still drops down on her hands and knees occasionally and will say something like "crawl little bit" as if to just want to be assured that she hasn't lost that skill. But more often than not she uses her two feet - she'll stand at one end of the front room and say "ready, set, go" and take off for the other side of the room.

Some of the very cutest things she says right now:

"I want you Mommy" - When she wants to be with one of us she'll look at us from the counter or her high chair or from wherever she is and say it.  We about melt every time.  So sweet and nice to feel chosen in those moments to be the thing/person she most wants!

"Mommy play me" - normally this comes when I'm attempting to accomplish something around the house.  She'll be sitting with her spell-a-puzzle or some other toy/game.  How can one resist? 

"Whacha doin Mommy?" - This one cracks us up.  She sometimes just asks it out of curiosity when she can't see what we are doing.  But more often than not it is when she is a bit baffled by what we are doing.  So answering the question doesn't quite cut it.  So you'll answer and then she'll say "whacha doin Mommy" again and so on and so on.

She very much enjoys getting in on anything we are doing.  One of those things is the nighty routine, with her favorite part being tooth brushing and washing hands.  We are lucky if that doesn't require a shirt change following due to soggy sleeves.  Jason feels sure she would be happy to get all of her needed water for the day from sucking the water off her toothbrush or soaking it in through her skin through washing hands.

A month gone by!

I just read the last post, written now over a month ago and what really does feel like it was last year!  Students have been coming in to my office for the first time in the new term and asking me "how was your holiday?"  I often have to think for a few moments what they might be referring to because the luxurious holiday break feels like a distant memory! 

Here's a few tidbits on what is happening on the home front these days. Still seldom a dull moment:

Alida is benefiting from all kinds of lessons from Kali.  She has now learned, according to Kali, the words "A" and "I."  Here she is having a music lesson:



I've endured a few really challenging weeks at work, including putting in more hours/days than normal, which means less hours/days at home!  One of the side effects of this was that Alida got even more attached to her daddy.  It is hard to even mention that one evening for a moment she was crying in my arms for Jason.  I'm sure glad it was only once and that the pace of things is slowing somewhat and she seems quite thrilled to be with either one of us!  And I do still have the "mommy milk" draw, at least for awhile yet.  She loves being our little helper or, when possible, doing things herself.  She recently dropped her wooden airplane (started by Jason in his 8th grade shop class and finished for Alida for Christmas) and it broke.  Here they are fixing it together (and as I'm typing this, they just finished gluing it again after it's fall today):



In other news:

Kali's ducks are in their new home and still keeping their incredible record of one egg/day since they started laying mid-October.  We've started collecting them for hatching baby ducklings in early March!

We've enjoyed several hikes to the lake as a family.

We are still loving those curls!  She now gives us a verbal running commentary on her life and the laughter increases with her expanding vocabulary.  My favorite phone calls during my work days are the "Alida stories" Jason calls with occasionally.

Kali named herself the "leaf queen."  Our neighbors wanted to be rid of their leaves and we needed more for our garden - love those win-win scenarios! 

Tonight, January 25, we ate fresh roasted broccoli.  Due to the recent cold snap that is likely to be the last picking from the patch, but you will hear no complaining from us.  And there is still a big bag of fresh kale in the fridge to enjoy.

Christmas Eve

It's Christmas Eve and a batch of green rolls is fresh out of the oven.  Before too long we'll sit down to roasted sweet, white and the last of our purple potatoes and venison burgers.  It's not exactly oyster stew, which I mostly liked for the crackers, but it's what we mutually agreed upon for our Christmas Eve dinner.  The pancake and smoothie brunch has been long enough ago that my belly is starting to feel eager to deposit some goodies into it.  One of our holiday goals has been to get hungry between meals! 

As the holiday greetings come in by snail mail and email, I'm realizing it is about time to craft our own letter that sums up the year that is coming to an end.  That's always more daunting than a blog post, hastily crafted with multiple interruptions throughout.  So here I am with a hodgepodge of news that I didn't want to lose sight of. 

First of all, when I downloaded our pictures just now, I found that our camera had been set to video function when we asked my dad to snap a family photo before heading off to church yesterday. It was our first foray to church in several months and due to that, and that we don't get out all that often as a family, it seemed a prime opportunity to get a photo.  We have a few photos, but family photos don't seem all that exciting - most people occasionally take a family photo, right?  But how many have a video of taking a family photo without knowing you are taking a video.  Don't worry, it gets turned the right direction at the end. :)



Today has been a really fun day at home with the girls.  Occasionally Alida's notes "Mommy's home" and I love to tell her that I'll be home today, tomorrow, the next day, the next day and the next day.  We are all still coughing and blowing our noses occasionally but spirits are rising and we see the end of this particularly germ invasion.  I slept the full night in my bed last night for the first time in weeks, only up a few times to take my coughing fit to another room so Alida would not be disturbed.  So we are on the upswing.

It didn't hurt anything for it to be snowing when Kali awoke this morning.  Not long after brunch we headed out for a little adventure, which included a jaunt down to the kale and broccoli patch (a neighbor's market patch long abandoned but still producing and available for our picking).  And, yes, I did brush snow off of kale and broccoli, coming home with two bags full!  Here are the girls enjoying the snow. It was cute to see Alida trying to throw the snow, somewhat unsuccessfully:

The last tidbit was Jason's and my astonishment again at our littlest gal.  It has been so very fun to experience her explosion of language and comprehension.  She is putting things together left and right and letting us in on her inner workings.  She seems to remember things and also attach emotions to happenings (like the bird that got hit flying into our door or the cat that showed up at our door one evening - she still talks about both happenings with some measure of sadness at their plight).  Anyway, her recent obsession has been with Spell-a-Puzzle (a game that Kali received from her Aunt K years ago).  By the day she gets better and better at it.  The puzzle is made up of pieces that each have a letter of a word on it and a part of the picture. Then on the back are little pictures of the word that is to be spelled.  The game says not for children under 3 and for children ages 4-7.  Historically we have done the bulk of the work for her but in recent days she has started putting all the pieces together herself as we hand them to her (we don't dare try to do it for her as there are unpleasant repercussions to such actions).  Well, today I was busy doing something else and she was out there working on it by herself. When I came out, I was more than a little surprised to find her putting together a word that she had searched out the pieces for by herself and put together.  She did it several times.  The manufacturers still consider the game to be a choking hazard!

Timer's ringing, kids are getting hungry (which means crabby for one), the fire needs tending, etc...

Germs & Farmers Cheese

I know, the two things in the title hardly seem to go together, but they did in my day today.  It seems it is the time of year once again where we are battling germs almost nonstop.  I've been thankful that all of our bugs to date have been relatively minor.  Alida, however, wilted during the night last night.  I felt her feverish body and wondered what the day would bring.  It brought a pretty sad and tired gal with a bark-like cough that caused her to crumple into tears and to tug very strongly at my heart each time.  On the work front tomorrow ends the term so it is one of my busier weeks and I wasn't sure how clearing my schedule was going to go.  But after one attempt at transferring her sleeping from my arms to Jason's, it was clear where I wanted to and would be spending my day - at home!  If she would only know how much more relaxed Jason is around sick kiddos, she may have chosen his tender care, but for today I was the "chosen one" and glad that I was able to be with her.

Unlike the picture here that I just couldn't help but include (could she get any cuter?), Alida was pretty much on my chest either sleeping, cuddling or nursing until about 4:30 p.m. (I'm so very, very glad she still enjoys and can benefit from nursing when she doesn't feel like eating a thing).  She is currently benefiting from a little Ibuprofen and so is up and about toddling around and playing with Kali, still greatly disturbed anytime she needs to cough.  Poor little gal! 

This afternoon I found myself saying what my mom often would say to me to try to help me focus on the positive: "there is no great loss without some small gain."  I missed a number of things today that were unfortunate, but gained a few things too.  I loved all the cuddle time (she seldom is still long enough to cuddle unless she is sleeping0, and it enabled me to finish Barbara Kingsolver's newest novel, Flight Behavior (strongly recommend it!).  I also got to enjoy a walk with R, one of our housemates.  And, with Alida feeling a bit perkier, got to spend just a bit of time experimenting in the kitchen with my new book, Wild Fermentation - that's where the farmers cheese comes in!  Here was dinner:

It was actually slice-able - super easy (add vinegar to boiling whole milk, stir, strain and salt if desired! 

Please note that this is the remains of ONE sweet potato after we all enjoyed generous helpings.

Kali still "doesn't like" kale chips but there is always a very mysterious crunching sound whenever they are served.

Snuggle Love

One of the happiest moments of my life so far (Jason writing) happened this morning.  When I woke up, Alida was still sleeping, but Kali stirred and wondered where I was going (I usually keep her company in her bed).  Janelle had to get ready for work, so Kali and I curled up with Alida in the big bed and drifted off again.

After 45 minutes of intermittent dozing by Kali and I, Alida finally roused, gradually becoming aware of me, and then Kali.  She was happy to see us, and Kali wrapped her arms around Alida, who smiled and reciprocated.  They spent some minutes smiling and cuddling and enjoying the presence of each other, and Alida said, several times, "Suggle Yuv."  This translates as our family word for such times (usually with parents, not the other kid!), "Snuggle Love."

The friendship developing between these girls is so sweet and precious.  Kali genuinely cares for Alida and her needs, and seems to enjoy her involvement in toddler provision and minding the vast majority of the time.  She is really very patient with her, and despite the fact that Alida doesn't always enjoy all of her methods and that they sometimes have conflicts when their needs or desire conflict, Alida seems to admire Kali very much, saying and doing and consuming as much of what Kali does as her age, size, and awareness will allow.  Most of the time they are at ease and happy together, and they are very cute when they play soccer together!

I look forward to more of these moments, and it was especially heartening to see them enjoy waking up side by side, since one of our hopes is that before too much more time goes by (not to rush things) the girls might enjoy sharing at least a bedroom if not even a bed, such that Janelle and I get to occupy the other one TOGETHER again!

Note from Janelle:  Below are just a few of the many pictures taken today while I was at work.  Kali said I probably shouldn't look at them if I already feel like a particular little person is growing up too fast!  Is she really ready for a big kid swing?  And, also, please note that when the "boss" is around the chickens are pecking around the yard like good roosters!