The Pilgrims Came and other Thanksgiving Notables

At Playschool last week we had our Thanksgiving Feast. A couple of the local pilgrims heard about it and stopped by to see how it compared to theirs. Here they are in action - making applesauce, butter and potatoes with the kids, reading to them and feasting.

Better known to some of you as
Jacob's grandparents.

We also had friends over to make these cute turkey cookies.

Gobble, gobble!

Then there was the real baking. I made a pecan pie for Thursday, and Jacob helped me to make more applesauce and butter. I had no idea how easy it is to make butter. I think we might do this all the time now.

We went to Zach's dad's for Thanksgiving dinner. Chris does a fantastic job with the dinner! We actually got there on time this year, and before most other people so I wanted to take some pictures since we all looked clean and you know, it was the first special occasion where I wore normal clothes, rather than maternity clothes. Zach was more interested in the game on TV and Jacob decided to act like a lunatic, so this is all I got.

Here he is about the run in front of the camera - on purpose.

And here's the best I could do to crop his head out
after he tried to run in front of the camera - again.

There's also a series of photos where I tried to get myself, Jacob and Sabine in a picture together. This was actually before the pictures of just me and Beanie. There's Jacob making a face, Jacob with his mouth open revealing the bite he was chewing, Jacob making another face, Jacob sticking his hands in our faces, then the last one he actually looks normal in but I'm looking to the side mid-yell telling him to stop. I look pretty awful in all of them so they're not getting posted. I gave up on Jacob being in them and then we went for the picture with just the girls but of course Lunatic kept bouncing around the room and getting in the way.

Then the rest of the family showed up. For a long time Jacob was the only kid on this side of the family. Then last year there was another baby, who's now a toddler, and this year two more babies, born four days apart.

Then there was the annual 4-generation photo. This is the sixth year we've taken this photo. I think it's pretty cool to have them documented like that. I'm not sure what Zach is doing holding Jacob like that. He's probably giving him a major wedgie, and Jacob looks totally goofy just dangling there. I kept telling Zach to put him down and let him stand like a normal person. He wasn't listening though. Maybe I can try to crop it so just their heads are in it.

I think I've decided Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday...

It's 8am and I'm on my third change of clothes.

Every once in a while the exhaustion catches up to me and I have a night where I just completely crash. That was last night. Around 9 I started to loose all ability to function in an upright position. I crashed on the couch and that's where me and Beans (yes Mother, Beans and I) spent the whole night. So much for sleep hygiene.

We woke up a few times through the night but each time I was still too tired to get up and get us to an actual bed. So at just past 7am I woke for good and found a huge, round wet spot on my left quad. Luckily for the couch, all of her pee was on my leg. She must have had her little toosh hoisted up on me through the night. So I took her diaper off, tossed it and it landed by the basement door with a big thud. I briefly tried to get her too pee over the toilet (yes, I'm still trying the diaper-free approach - with little luck) then grabbed a diaper to head upstairs.

Just before we got to the staircase, Beans let loose with the poop. She got my pants, shirt, foot and the floor. "Zach! I need your help!" I yelled as I waddled up the stairs. He met me at the top, took her under the arms and I wiped her toosh. Then I headed to the bathroom to figure out how to get out of the poopy clothes without smearing it all over my face. While I was doing that, I head Zach yell. She'd peed on the bed (which, by the way, we just changed yesterday. "I don't care, leave it." I instructed when I came back into the room. At this point Zach was in his second shirt because she'd spit up all over him while I was changing.

We both headed to the bathroom where I prepared the bath for Sabine, and Zach sat down to remove her cruddy clothes. Then she peed on his lap and all over the clean bathmat. Next was into the bath where she made a whole lot of "bubbles" under the water and we both thought wouldn't that just top the cake if she had a blowout in the bathtub! It was just air though.

I should have known the 'air' usually leads to something else because as I was sitting on the floor toweling her off, she had another blowout. This time she got the clean towel, my second set of clothes and the bathmat (which I'd been considering to just let the pee dry and leave it as is).

So if you'll excuse me now I must attend to the growing mound of poop-covered laundry that has accumulated in the basement...

1+1=4

Dear Jacob and Sabine,

Today one of you turns five months old, the other is five years old, and it has been exactly nineteen years since my father died. I've lived over two thirds of my life without him. Something I think about is the fact that I only have a handful of good, solid memories of my dad, but I can hardly remember a time when I wasn't your mother. I'm terrified something will happen to me; that even though I've poured my heart into loving the both of you, and your world spins under the umbrella of my existence in the here and now, one day I could become a fraction of memory to you. These precious days, months and years could fade into a fleeting wisp of your past.

For now our lives are full of each other, full of more happiness and love than I've ever had before or can expect to have again. So full, in fact, that I haven't had time to record our days with the urgency I'd like to. Oh I started posts for each of you, and the time to finish them came and went. And then some more time went by. And as I started to think about picking back up where I left off, I was so sad for the details that'd gone by unwritten about. It sort of reminds me of that poem, Footprints in the Sand...the man is walking on the beach and at his most troubled times it appears God is not with him, etc, you know the story. On paper it might appear that our lives were empty during these recent weeks, but the truth is that life was so full, no time was left for putting it into words.

Then I have the problem of which details to put into which child's blog. Your little lives, Jacob and Sabine, have become so intertwined that it's impossible to say who gets to claim ownership over which memories. It's like the way I try to take a photograph of just one of you, but the other of you somehow always creeps into the photo. Each of you alone no longer makes sense. You are two halves of my heart. Yes, that's what it's like to be your mother. You're each like a chunk of my heart, and you're walking around outside my body and it is scary. I am constantly feeling the pull of my heart in two different directions. I don't expect that will ever change. The mothers who've experienced this phenomenom will tell you so. They also tell you that having a second child doesn't double your work, it quadruples it. And I am finding this to be true, that 1+1=4.

What's inevitable is that someday your world will outgrow my world. No matter how hard I say my silent wish, "Stay small, stay small, stay small." But for now, you are my babies, and the best I can hope for is that you will always know in your hearts where you came from.

What's to come

The other day I was in the kitchen and Jacob was hanging out with Sabine on the couch. He was keeping an eye on her for a minute and he didn't think was listening. But from around the corner I hear his little voice sweetly say, "Sabine, wanna pick my nose?" I could just picture him leaning down with his face close to wherever her hand was, trying to get her to 'accidentally' stick her finger up his nose. Yeah, he's going to be that kind of big brother. The ones who are always sitting on your face and farting or talking you into sneaky things then blaming it on you.

Voting Day

The Farmer, His Cow and a Pea Pod