Dear Summer: Welcome!

Dear Summer,

    You were born two days ago, on August 2nd, 2011.  The time was 6:22pm and we had just gotten to the hospital about 20 minutes before that.  One push and you were out!

    Since it's still fresh in my mind, I might as well go over how the day went.  12 hours before you were born I was still asleep in bed.  Around 8am I told Daddy that maybe he should stay home from work, to be on the safe side (since he didn't want to go in anyway, as we thought you would have been born already).  Late in the morning the whole family went and did errands.  We went to the grocery store, Sabine got her hair cut, etc.  Daddy thought I was crazy to be out and about, but it wasn't even that bad until about noon.  I wasn't even sure it was going to be the day until a couple hours after that when we'd gotten Sabine down for a nap.  I cooked an early dinner, vacuumed the house, and Daddy was getting so mad at me because even though I was having contractions, I couldn't just sit still.  Sometime after 5pm I called MamMa to tell her maybe she should come by to take your brother and sister.  Then I went in the backyard to tell Daddy I'd called you and I started weeding the garden.  That's what I was doing an hour before you were born!

    I think I was just afraid to sit still because I was so scared of what was coming.  When MamMa and Papa got here I didn't want to leave your brother and sister.  I kept giving them hugs and telling them I loved them.  And Daddy was getting more mad because he wanted me to get in the car.  And then when we were partway to the hospital is when I realized you were going to be born very soon.  Just like when your big sister was born, I had to have Daddy drop me off at the door, but this time I made it inside and could still talk.  I couldn't sign to admit papers though, I was shaking too hard!  Inside the delivery room the nurses were being very vague, so in retrospect, I think they realized you were ready to be born, but they were trying to wait for the midwife to get there, and not make me too scared about her not being there.  The same midwife that delivered Sabine walked in and one push later, literally 10 seconds, it was all over.  I can honestly say it was easier than and not as painful as my last birth.  I feel like I won the gold medal in the Childbirth Olympics.

    You are so tiny, Summer!  You were 5lb 7oz, 19 in. when you were born.  And I was a week late with you - I don't know how you go to be so tiny.  Jacob was 7lb. 7oz, so you are a whole two pounds lighter than he was at birth.  Sabine was 7lb 5oz, which is the exact reverse of you, a fact that will make it easier to remember these new statistics.  All of us girls in this family have S names, not something that was particularly planned.  We girls also have only 2s in the day of our birthdays; Sabine is June 22nd and I am October 2nd. Oh yeah, same month as Daddy's birthday, same day of the month as your mother. Anyway, numbers are important to me, so I've been doing a lot of playing around with them in my head the past couple days.

    You're coming home to a full and loving household, little baby.  We have four rabbits, two dogs, and now three kids!  You have one big brother and one big sister, just like I do.  You and I are both the baby girls of the family; it's going to be nice growing up, you'll have lots of people to do stuff for you.  It probably won't be very quiet, but I promise it will be very fun!  You will learn to love being outside in nature, eat lots of healthy foods (you'll probably also develop an amazing appetite for ice cream), read tons of books, and chances are, you'll be one active kid, just like your siblings. You'll grow up with a deep respect for our planet. You'll be introduced to the Tickle Spider and The Bull.  You'll run circles inside our house and always have someone to try to catch.  You'll quickly discover the joys of snuggling in bed with a warm body next to you, and I promise we'll find a place to fit you when there's already a full bed.  You'll get lots of shoulder rides from Daddy.  Jacob will dote on you he'll share his construction vehicles and tools.  Sabine will teach you lots of songs and encourage you to dance.

    I'll keep you ever so close to me and will probably be over-protective; and even though I can't imagine it yet, I know I'll let you go out in to the world when it's your time because you'll teach me things too.  You'll teach me about parts of my heart I didn't know could exist, and I'll learn (perhaps painfully) that I'm capable of things that I thought were impossible (like letting go).  I can't fathom these things yet, but I know they'll happen because I love you with an indescribable fierceness that, surely, can overcome any obstacle.

Dear Jacob, Dear Sabine

Dear Jacob,

It seems like lately every night when the day is coming to an end or you've just fallen asleep, I start to think about the day and feel bad for being too hard on you. I feel like that most days, and I'm so sad for it. We're constantly butting heads, and I'm always walking on eggshells around you. We have really awesome times in between all that, but the rough patches somehow always creep back in.

There are multiple theories from multiple people, but I guess sometimes it just comes down to a normal part of growing up. After a certain fight has passed and I've had time to reflect I usually come up with something that feels a little like a revelation and gives me hope. In the past, I've decided we had too much time together and we needed a break, or we didn't have enough alone time with each other. I've come to the conclusion that you're bored, or we've been home too much, not home enough, etc.

This time I've realized that you and Sabine hardly ever get away from each other. Even when you're away from me, you're usually together. And even though you get along really, really well, I think it's starting to become too much, because, yes, Sabine has become an extremely (at times) annoying two year old. So I realized the other day when she took a really long nap, and you played for two hours straight with your little animals and did voices for them, had them set up all around the house, that you don't get to play like that anymore - completely uninterrupted and in your own world because Sabine is always butting in. This realization didn't come too late, but I wish it had come a little sooner in the summer.

I've learned so much from being your mom, I'm sorry sometimes it takes me a while to catch on. When you were Sabine's age I discovered the way to get you to do things was to pretend that we were animals, you the baby and me the mommy, and we would pretend our way through what we needed to do. When you got a little older, I figured out I just had to use a funny voice or accent and you'd do what I wanted. These are techniques I'll surely use on Sabine, thanks for helping me learn them!

You're starting first grade in a couple weeks and I am incredibly sad to see you go. You're so excited about school. I think the time away from me and Sabine will do you good, but sometimes I wish it could be just you and me again.


Dear Sabine,

I started a post for you way back before you turned two in June. I was including things like how many words you used and different milestones. I never finished it and now none of it really matters because you are a completely different person. There is so much about you, I never know where to start. These days you can get pretty annoying. You talk a lot when we're at home, but hardly ever around other people. Even though you're talking more now, I still think of you as a kid who doesn't talk yet. Maybe it's because so much of your communication is through gestures and signs, and more of your personality comes out in that way.

You're definitely a caretaker, always worrying about what the animals and if they've been fed, or where they are in the house. You really look out for Jacob, sometimes acting like a little shepherdess, herding him to me when I'm trying to get his attention. You are a little boss. You like to point things out to us and you like everyone in the room to see what it is and comment on it.

You're also really cute and cuddly, maybe just slightly less snuggly than Jacob, but that's only because he is the king snuggling. You really like to read books with us now. I love this, the three of us sitting there reading books, it's just started to become a thing. You are really going to miss Jacob when he's in school. I'm looking forward to seeing how we traverse through our days with him gone.

Anyway, the two of you are right here next to me now, and in this moment it's mostly Jacob who won't be quiet. He's talking about something random - wanting a box of poison. He's trying to get a reaction from me - and he just won't stop. So I have to end this before it goes sour.

I don't think I'm going to try to do anymore of these posts (even though it's been several months anyway) because it's too stressful to capture all the dimensions of you guys in writing. Maybe I'll come back to it someday.

I do, however, want to post these pictures I just took of the two of you. I had this #2 that a lot of the kids in our club have had in their possession for their second birthday, and I couldn't pass it along yet because I hadn't taken your picture next to it with your birthday dress on. I'd been meaning to all summer, and decided that today was perfect because you're two years, two months and two days old today. So before I put you in your jammies, I put you in that dress that will still probably be your birthday dress next year, and we took pictures. You got really into it, as did Jacob. The pictures are so cute, I'm going to post as many as I can so that I can remember how cute and loving you guys can be!

Love,

Mommy

Day 47: My Little Barbie Centaur

You like? It's a new toy I'm going to be pitching to Mattel. I think they're going to sell like hotcakes!

Not really. Last weekend after Marisa's birthday party my sister and I sat down to go through her (Marisa's) closet to make room for new stuff. First off, simply opening the closet is risky enough; it's waist-high piles of clothes and toys. But we made it through, with minimal refereeing from my mother. See, my sister has a paycheck with which she buys things. I do not. I make things.

I've been thrust into many situations with my sister this summer and I'm trying to understand how we ever came from the same family, let alone the same planet. I don't think I will ever have an answer to that, but I have come to a very basic definition of how we differ:

Nicole: works all day = paycheck = money = buys things
Stacey: work all day making things = no paycheck

I've simply cut out the middle man, that doesn't mean that I'm above having money. I would love to have money, but right now my main commodity is my time. For instance, we brought in a nice harvest from the backyard today so we don't have to go to the store and buy that food. That's because I'm home during the day to maintain the garden. My sister has to spend money to buy those things.

It's a simple equation, but neither of us understands the others' lifestyle. At all. And that's where things fall apart.

Anyway, the whole point to this crazy looking animal is that when we were going through Marisa's closet my sister pulled out things and announced they were for the garbage pile, and I either screamed, "Nooo, RECYCLING!" or "Noooo, I can make something out of that!" or "Nooo, I can FIX that!" Seriously, she wanted to throw out everything, including perfectly useful stuff and I was freaking out because I don't understand why it's so difficult to recycle something instead of dump it. She'd rather have been done with the whole project because she had to go to work in the morning.

So to be funny I took this Barbie head (actually from a Bratz doll) and the body of a My Little Pony out of her garbage pile and said I could make something with them. Then it came to me that they would go perfectly well together. I got out the hot glue gun and viola. And now that I've written about my sister and me and our differences, I see this hybrid doll as a metaphor for our relationship. We are two completely different people, and when we are together we make about as much sense as this freaky doll.

And now that I have gone and assigned the centaur a metaphorical meaning I must call it art and keep it forever. Great.

Day 28: Summer Lovin'

This is Melissa, Stella's granddaughter. They were visiting for a week and it was like having a neighbor-playmate for a week. It was awesome. Everyday Jacob and Melissa played with each other. Sometimes Jacob went over to Stella's, but for the most part we had Melissa over here, and I loved having her. She's such a sweet girl, and a good influence of Jacob to boot! When they played in the house, it was so calm and quiet, relatively speaking. I'm told Melissa just loves Jacob and wants to play with him all the time - you know, that she's *sweet* on him. I think the feeling was mutual because he was a totally different kid around her - not like a little punk and whatnot. I can't really describe it; he has other little girl friends that he plays with but this was different.

They've gone home now, 1,500 miles away and I don't know that we'll be seeing them again. Melissa was really sad about leaving and not seeing Jacob anymore. At least for now they can be pen pals...

Day 3: Lens or Pupil

I took this photo the same time I was taking the photos of the freaky spider in the back yard. Sabine was at my mom's, so Jacob and I were having an alone day. I'm already starting to miss him because he's going to school in the fall. I'm not happy about that. I tell myself if I can just get one more year of homeschooling out of him after 1st grade, then I will settle for that. Maybe he won't even like school...

I love this photo because you can't tell where the reflection of the lens ends and the pupil takes over. Also, Jacob's iris appears to be blue, green and brown all at once. What you're seeing is the baby pool, grass and tree line reflected. And there I am reflected in his eye too. Oh the possibilities for metaphors in this picture!!

For G'Ma Chris

Zach spent the weekend at his dad and Chris's house re-doing their barn roof. As he was wrapping things up late Sunday afternoon, I brought the kids down for a visit. Sabine was still in her party skirt from that morning when we attended a baby shower. Chris just went nuts over the skirt and couldn't get over how cute Sabine was in it. She said, "I can't wait to show all my friends a picture of my hippie chick grand-daughter in that skirt!" Or something to that effect, but the point is that she said Grand Daughter. That's a big step for someone who doesn't have any of her own children and swore she'd never be referred to as a grandmother.

Jacob must have sensed a shift because the next day when we were back down there picking up Zach's truck, Jacob walked over to Chris to ask her to open the horse stall. He started, "Grandma Chris, can you..." and she didn't even flinch. Zach and I looked at each other and raised our eyebrows as if to say, did you just hear what I heard?

A New Man In My Life

For a couple weeks now I've been cheating. His name is Reggie. He is sweet, gorgeous (but that's not why I love him), and I can tell by the way he responds to my petting, that he is needy. When we first saw each other, it was love at first sight. Well, I can't speak for him, I guess, and he's sort of a quiet guy, so there's really no telling what exactly is going on in his mind. I feel very guilty that I'm going behind Zach's back, but I can't stop loving Reggie. Zach has no idea yet, but Reggie is coming to live with us. It's just a question of when and how it's going to go down.

You see, I met Reggie at the pet store when I was in there looking for litter box pellets. I didn't even have in mind that I might meet someone, but all of a sudden there he was across the room. Even though I was a good ten feet away and didn't have my glasses on, I knew it. I approached him with my children in hand, squatted down to his level and looked around to make sure no one else could see us and I cracked open his cage to give some much-needed attention.

You have guessed by now that Reggie is of the non-human variety. He's a rabbit. I have a sweet spot for rabbits - always have. We used to have four, now we're down to three. They are 7, 7 and 6 years old, and they can live to 11 or 12 years. I think Zach is sort of waiting for the rabbit thing to run it's course, but even so, over the years we've seen other rabbits that have caught our attention and we've wanted to give them a home. We've always come to our senses, but this time is different. Of the rabbits who live with us now, none of them were planned. We brought them home one-by-one as we found them in the shelter or living in someone's basement under a milk crate with potato peels for food.

Reggie is at the pet store because his owner, who was an employee at the pet store, passed away. When I was there that first day, a girl who works there saw me so I started asking her questions about Reggie. That's when I learned his name, age (6) and circumstances. When I was checking out at the counter I casually mentioned to the girl checking me out that Reggie was really sweet, and that the first employee had told me he was going to live at the pet store as sort of a 'house bunny', but to please take my name down incase he ever needed a home.

I have rendezvoused with Reggie three times since then, always going back to the pet store with some lame excuse. On the third time I was there, an employee who knows me well (Em) came over while I was visiting with Reggie. She had heard I was in love with him and I explained how I'd sort of given them my name, but that I was in no position to actually take Reggie home, and that Zach would kill me if he knew I was even considering it. But then next time I came back, the Em came over and told me how she was 'working on it' to have the pet store peeps let me take him home. I got all, "No, noooo, I can't do that!" But then felt the call to duty. Em said she could tell Reggie was depressed and that he needed a new home. She didn't agree with the majority, and added that I'm the only person she would consider sending him home with.

So before I knew it, and without me even planning it, I am in the works to become Reggie's new number 1 human. Uh-oh. I don't care. It's fate. How else can you explain the way I was drawn to him from across the room? Or felt his presence in my heart before I even saw him with my eyes? Some people feel this way about having a baby, or meeting their soulmate. Well Reggie is one of my soulmates. I don't believe in one actual soulmate for a person, but rather that there are many soulmates for each of us, human or non-human, who we are destined to meet and have our paths cross for a while.

While Zach still has no idea about any of this, I'm already busy making plans in my head, and preparing the other rabbits for an expanded family. I've been making another attempt to get them all to get along. In our rabbit family it's the first two against the last one, and they tear each other apart if they ever are out of their cages together. But this time I am determined to get them to get along so we can have one big, happy rabbit family.

It's Facebook's Fault

I miss my little blog and I'm constantly telling myself that today will be the day I catch up. There's just so many things I want to post about, I don't know where to start, and it feels hopeless anyway because there's never enough time. I don't entirely know how it happened that I've been so inattentive to blogging, but I do know that Facebook is mostly responsible.

I've been on Facebook for a couple years, with waxing and waning interest, but I guess our relationship (mine and Facebook's) turned serious when Jacob and I started playing Farmville. I thought it would be a cute game for us to play together, because farming is his thing and maybe it would teach him problem solving skills and some other life concepts, numbers and spelling and whatnot, motivate him to learn to read, etc. It did do all that, and it might sound cheesey, but since I was sitting down with him to play and we were talking about it together I think he was learning things. I don't think it's so much what kind of tools you use to teach your kids, as much as it is you sit down with them and spend that time together talking it over.

I also used Farmville as a bribe to get Jacob to get dressed in the morning, get ready for bed, help me with certain tasks, but then he just memorized how to log on himself and started playing without me at times. He'd always get caught and warned not to do that again, etc, etc, but he'd always do it again. The weeks went by and it became an obsession. So I've phased out our crops and weaned us off this week. We're going to be taking a break from it for a while. It's feels liberating. I'm going to have to start hiding the computer from him though.

Anyway, being on Farmville meant I was logged onto Facebook at least a couple times a day, and so naturally I started posting more and more on facebook. It's like an abbreviated form of blog posts and is an outlet for me when time is sparse and I don't have time to blog. A lot of the things I would have ended up blogging just ended up as a status post on Facebook, and helped alleviate whatever stress was building up from not being able to get my thoughts out - but not all of it. And there's far more people I'm in contact with on Facebook than will ever read my blog. It's just a better way to keep up.

In no particular order, here is some stuff that happened over the last couple months in status posts copied from Facebook:

is teaching Jacob how to play Uno. Oh my God for the 80th time, no, you can't put a that RED 5 on that BLUE 8. I seriously underestimated the difficulty a five year would have with this concept!!! Holy crap, nooooo that Draw 2 can't go on that GREEN 6!!!!!!!

Ran the half marathon this morning. 1:56:30's. I'm happy with that and I don't think I ever want to do it again....

Just got home from the movies...Saw The Time Traveler's Wife. You definitely have to have read the book to follow the movie.

BIG DAY today. Zach met the president, shook his hand, told him his name and got his picture taken with him! AND I was on national television breastfeeding!

To mark the official start of homeschooling, Jacob and I just made frosting (science and math), but with nothing to eat it on, we're just having it spread on bread!

Sabine took two 10 minute naps today. That's it.

I am celebrating the last birthday of my 20's in my home, alone, cleaning like a madwoman. Believe it or not, this is an often sought-after fantasy of mine!

is trying to get Zach to sit still and look at people of walmart. I can't get enough of this!!!

ran the 5k today and Jacob ran his first kids' run. He also won the Wii they had up for raffle! It seems luck follows wherever he goes.

This one is a post from Zach: Happy 5th Anniversary...We are still alive...and so are the kids! Looking forward to today and the weekend...

Just finished reading Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell. Very interesting book.

Jacob and I couldn't stop watching the puke scene today from The Office wedding episode....hilarious!

Well there you have it, Facebook. Now that our relationship is out in the open, I have to break it off. Well, not completely, but I think we need to see other people and I need to visit other internet playgrounds for a while. Get some perspective. Some 'me' time. Don't worry, I'll still be visiting. Just a lot less. Well, at least a little less. I still care about you, but it's just that my blog is more of a long-term relationship, and we're a little more serious than you and I can ever be.

New Stella

It seems every other year Stella is in favor of our family. The other years she's into one or another of our neighbors. She'll leave for Florida one autumn in one frame of mind only to come back here the next spring with a completely different agenda. This year when she came back north I was very indifferent to her, stayed away as much as I could because last year was the year she anonymously called the cops on us because of the smoke from a backyard fire. We traveled a lot in the first half of the summer anyway, so we just didn't see that much of Stella.

And then one day we were taking a walk, as usual, when Dorothy came hobbling out of her house to say hi. She loved visiting with us and told us so. She showed her pleasure with life and the people who are good to her. She told Jacob he's a good boy and told me what a lovely person I am, and wondered how I got to be such a nice person. Dorothy is the complete opposite of Stella. She asked that we come back often and to always knock on her door when we're going by.

Jacob was completely taken with Dorothy from the beginning and I think a lot of it probably has to do with the fact that his great-grandmother passed away just a few weeks before we met Dorothy. Meeting her probably filled a void in Jacob.

Over the next few weeks we learned a lot about Dorothy, but she learned very little about us because she'd need to ask the same questions each time we knocked on her door. For good reason though, because together we figured out her age - she couldn't remember how old she was, but told me the year she was born and I told her that will make her 94 this fall.

We've been bringing her baked treats, crafts and a photograph of us with our names on the back so she can remember who we are. In turn, Dorothy has told us a lot of her history and about her two sons - one 'bad', one 'good'. She can't remember her late husband's name but knows he fought in WWII and that he was never the same after that.

She has her favorite neighbors, like the ones who take her to church every week, and her not-so-favorites, like the one who has the crazy wife. Dorothy loves to show off a picture of herself and say how pretty she used to be, you know, back when she had teeth, she jokes. She has a very good sense of humor. Today I said we couldn't come in because I had to go home and make lunch. "You've gotta go get drunk?" she asked. I laughed as I corrected her and she smirked back at me.

It's almost as if Stella has sensed the shifting dynamic in the air because she's been by more often the last couple weeks than most of the summer. More than likely though, it's probably because the back neighbors have pissed her off again. She actually called the cops on them the other day because the daughter's boyfriend kept driving his diesel truck up and down the driveway. So now we're the good guys again. She sits and chats like old times and brings over a plate of whatever she cooked that day. It's nice to have the company, and I'm starting to warm to her again. Sabine points across the yard in recognition now when she sees Stella.

I hope our old lady friends are around when Sabine is a bit older so that she will have nice memories of them like Jacob does. And I hope when I'm that age I have a little family to come visit me.

Yes Day

Ever heard of parents being fed up with always saying no to their kids and in response declaring it a 'Yes Day'? This is where they consciously say yes to everything they would normally say no to. Kinda like Jim Carrey in that movie, Yes Man. Well, it looks like today we are going to have a Yes Day.

Here is the reason: About a month ago Zach found out his step-father had Yankees tickets for a game today. There are four and Zach will be going with his mom, brother and step-father. If you can count you'll realize that that leaves no ticket for Jacob. Well Jacob got to go to Yankee Stadium (the old one) last year and that sort of set a precedent in his mind that Yankee Stadium is a thing to do. So when Zach found out he'd be going, and without his little boy (with whom the Yankees have become the stuff of major father-son bonding), we didn't know what to do.

I told Zach we couldn't tell Jacob, that he'd be crushed. And when Zach mentioned the camera, I thought that there was no way we could get away without telling Jacob because he'd see the pictures. Also though, we've never lied to Jacob. I don't want to start now.

Well today's the day and as Zach said a really long goodbye to Jacob this morning, the guilt was building. I'm good at lying and making the day fun in a pinch, but all I could of was that I didn't want to lie to him. I sort of brought it up in a casual way, as in a hypothetical situation. And Jacob was so good about it. "What? Tell me, Mommy." So I told him.

He tried so hard not to cry, but his face belied him. It slowly contorted, the forehead and bottom lip getting closer to one another. I told him it was ok to be sad and to cry, that we could talk about how he was feeling, and that we'd do plenty of fun things to make up for it. Jacob is taking full advantage of my guilt, and suddenly it's turned into a 'Yes Day'.

On one hand I realize there are many of kids in the world who don't even have the luxury of a roof over their heads, so we may seem spoiled, but I think it's more than that. I think it's about the father-son bonding thing. I think Jacob feels left out that Daddy is going anywhere, period, without him. They have such a strong bond that I'm actually surprised Zach is even going. I would think that he'd be like, "Oh I simply can't go if Jacob can't." I know that is completely naive though, coming from someone who is not a Yankees fan. Jacob had a really awesome first-time MLB experience (fourth row behind the dugout, a player handed him a ball, almost caught a foul) which will be hard to top in his lifetime. I think he is sort of spoiled in that respect. The same way we're runined for road-trips now that we've had the experience of three weeks in a free 31ft. RV (we're very lucky people that we've had some great opportunities land in our lap like that and I am forever thankful).

So for today Jacob has already had hot chocolate for breakfast, we're going to the diner for lunch (where he plans to have chocolate milk and pancakes), we'll have ice cream (probably chocolate), we'll go see Marisa....and who knows what else.

Husbands...

They just don't get it. Beckie left a message on the answering machine, but Zach was the one to get it so he paraphrased in a note to me.


And like the teacher in the Peanuts cartoons, that's exactly what I imagine he hears every time I talk to him.

Fun with our hats

Because sometimes they're just too cute for words