Saturday, November 21, 2009

some recent pictures

First, Halloween. Our 23 month old was terrified of our 11yr old's mask. It was both sad & hilarious. This ended up being my favorite Halloween photo. Our 23 mo old (y'know, I did create alias names for everybody, they're listed in my blog's side bar, I just need to get in the habit of using them!) is leaning desperately into his dad's legs here, trying to get as far away from his brother's scary mask as possible. His brother is in the process of removing his scary zombie mask. I just couldn't get a picture of the 3 of them in their costumes, our little dalmation was terrified no matter what! :p Our oldest boy was a zombie, & our 3 yr old was a chicken. I mean, Ocean was a zombie, Sky was a chicken, and Canyon was a dalmation. There, I used their aliases! :p


Even when Eagle kept his mask off, Canyon would run towards his dad instead of standing for a picture.

Finally- no mask in sight & being held by dad. THEN he was happy. Eagle ended up having to trick or treat on the opposite side of the street because Canyon was so afraid of him! haha.

Even though I'm not pregnant anymore, I still look lumpy most of the time. :p Here's our new Seedling in his Moby Wrap. I love my Moby but it's not very easy to readjust once I've breastfed in it. I find the Maya ring sling much faster to readjust. Baby's 3 weeks old here.

And 4 weeks old here. A super talented friend knitted these matching pants & hat. How totally cute they are, I love them!! Thanks, Danielle! :)

A favorite napping spot- on his big brother.

Potatoes! Harvested just the other day from our garden.

Yesterday morning my nearly-4 yr old asked me how to spell bread, milk & juice. As I told him, he wrote them down on his paper. I was shocked to see it! He'd never written a full word before, & he did such a great job! And so here you have it, his very first written words:

Our goofy chickens love eating maple tree leaves. And the kids love feeding them to them:

Two days ago we went out for a walk while there was a break in the rainy weather. I sure do feel like a "mom of many" when I'm out pushing my double stroller while wearing my newborn in the sling! :p We brought bags to collect bits of nature in for some fall time nature crafts.

There wasn't much interest in "collecting bits of nature" once this big fallen tree limb was discovered in the woods nearby though! The kids played on this thing for the longest time, pretending it was a space ship & they were flying all over the universe fighting bad alien guys. Just as little boys should do! So I collected the nature bits. ;)

This is the face I got when I asked my grumpy 3 yr old to smile. haha.

Cute, cute!
Mr. Cute saying hello to a worm.Stay tuned for pictures of the pretty things we made with our bits of nature. :)

Dinner the other night included ginger (creamy carrot-ginger soup). My 11 yr old noticed that it looked like a farm animal & proceeded to draw eyes on it & take pictures. Haha, pretty funny!

Speaking of his taking pictures, I've been discovering more & more pictures in my camera that I did not take. Ha! Here's another one. Apparently my 11 yr old was so impressed by his tower of farm animals that he had to photograph it. I wonder what the farmer down there on the left thinks of all this.

New Seedling, last night (as I was at my older kids' dad's house baking my turkey in his working oven!). Five weeks. Check out those jowls!

ANNNND, the entire reason that I began this blog post in the 1st place! A couple hours ago I got it! The very first smile picture! :) I wanted to come post it immediately so my mama could see it. :) Smiley baby, 5 weeks old:

a great blog & hilarious picture

So, I discovered this very cool blog & have been reading it like a book from beginning to the present whenever I get a chance. You have to look at this particular post though, scroll down to the 3rd picture. Hee hee hee. I love it! Makes me laugh out loud to look at it.
http://farmama.typepad.com/farmama/2009/07/carrot-characters-a-green-sweater-update.html

That picture belongs on like, a sexy garden calendar. Does such a calendar even exist?? hahaha.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

chicken pox, turkey butchering, baby face, plus regular ol' update

Here's what's happened around here the past month:

1. We had a new baby (love!)
2. My husband got laid off (ack!)
3. My husband came down with shingles (so painful!)
4. I came down with a bad case of mastitis (so painful!)
5. Our kids came down with chicken pox (so itchy!)
6. I had yet another root canal (so painful!)
7. Our oven stopped working, along with 2 stove top burners (ack!)

It's been exciting, chaotic, sucky, & fun all rolled into one month. Wheeeeeee! Love that roller coaster!

Here are the 2 miserable little pox victims. Our 22 mo old has had the worst case, he has pox absolutely everywhere. In his ears, nose, butt, fingers, & just covering his poor little crotch. It's been extra rough for me the days that I'm home alone with the kids, I only have so many arms & am often up most of the night with the sickies. My 11 yr old also got a mild case which I'm so glad of! I naively had him vaccinated against chicken pox as a baby which can lead to more severe outbreaks as an adult. But he's now built up antibodies against the pox like any other kid. Our newborn breastfeeder hasn't shown any signs of pox. My magical breastmilk is full of antibodies that are keeping him protected. :)

Mr. Miserable soaking in an oatmeal bath:

And Mr. Not Quite as Miserable but with plenty o' pox in his butt crack to drive him crazy all day!


And here's the cute new wee Seedling, 4 weeks old:






Annnnd, here's the turkey I butchered today! A lovely Bourbon Red, a heritage breed.


You may now exit the blog if you are offended by meat eating.


A generous friend offered to show me how to butcher my own Thanksgiving turkey. It was great! I'm always grateful to have the chance to do such things as I do hope to raise & butcher our own livestock one day in the future. None of that funky store bought, factory raised meat for me, thanks.

This was our set up. On the lower left you see a tidbit of our little bonfire (awesome on a chilly day like today!), then in the crate is my turkey awaiting her fate. Then- friends, the table we did the work on, a bucket of water for handwashing, the propane tank keeping the water boiling, & the ice chest. Once the turkeys had bled out, we dunked the carcass in the boiling water to open the pores & make the feather plucking do-able.

My turkey before:


After the neck slicing, bleeding out, beheading & dunking in the boiling water, I feather plucked:

Then I plunged my hands in to retrieve the guts:

And here was the awesome view from where we stood:

I'm proud to have butchered my own natural, pasture raised turkey for our Thanksgiving (click HERE to read about conventional turkey raising, and HERE to read about heritage breeds, and HERE to search for humanely raised turkey near you), BUT, I have no working oven to bake it in!! Haha. And on top of that, I just don't really have the freezer space to store it long term. AND. It looks like we'll be celebrating Thanks Day with my older kids' dad & his functioning oven. He's vegetarian & I don't want to bother him with the scent of turkey roasting in his house all day, soooooo, I'm not going to eat my Thanksgivng turkey on Thanksgiving after all. :p But that's really ok, I went through with the butchering more for the learning experience of it all than for Thanksgiving anyway. And for the gorgeous Pacific Northwest countryside view. :)

Thursday, November 12, 2009

something I wrote when I was 17

I went through a deep cleaning & organizing of my hoards of keepsakes a few months back. It was a pregnancy induced nesting thing I suppose. We're talking bins & bags & boxes of notes, pictures, gifts, & THINGIES from the last 3 or so decades. I'm ever so proud of myself for letting go of much of it! Now I'm just down to about 3 big ol' bins of keepsakes. ;)

Anyway. When I was 16 I enrolled in a high school for teen parents as I was pregnant with my daughter. They had us fill out this cheese ball, corny workbook during one of my years there. The workbook's called "Choices: A Teen Woman's Journal for Self-Awareness and Personal Planning". Ooo la la. So I kept it all these years. It's so fun to read now.

Here's an excerpt, I wrote this when I was 17. The book asks "What do I want out life for myself?" and here was my answer, word for word: "I want to be a hippy. I want a loving hubby, many kids, lots of animals & a wonderful home in the country."

Haha! My goals haven't changed much since then have they!

Another favorite of mine is this goofy page where the book asks you to circle all the adjectives that describe what you want in your future husband. At the bottom is a line marked "other" where you can add an adjective yourself. So I circled stuff like good looks, intelligent, similar goals, & a good provider (all of which my husband has/is), & under "other" I wrote "long hair". Haha! My husband has hair to his butt. Gorgeous hair.

I just love it when my dreams come true!
:)

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

The (late) end of summer update, & canned foods total

We had an awesome canning year! I canned, with some help from my fabulous husband during those times I felt too fantastically pregnant to stand for one more second in that darned kitchen........

399 pints of food this summer.
:)

This includes:
jam (strawberry, blackberry, raspberry, currant, cherry, & blueberry)

pickles (some from nearby farm or our garden, some from father in law's garden)

peach, pear & apple sauce (some we picked from nearby u-picks, some ordered from Azure Standard, some from friends )

carrots ( from FIL's garden)

green beans (from our garden)

chicken (from Kookoolan)

pasta sauce (tomatoes from nearby organic farm <---- this place is great!)

corn, pickled beets, peach & nectarines (all from above linked farm)

fruit cocktail

bacon-bean-veggie soup

Woo Hooo! We shall be eating well this winter. I've already been chowing on the pickled beets. They are sooooo yummy. And I just love my chunky apple-pear sauce. Wow, I love food. :D

Some end of summer pictures:


My daughter turned 18. I put frozen raspberries on her cake. Which then melted & produced a "bloody birthday cake". Haha. Oops.
The ever elegant daughter, as per usual retaining her composure whilst her rambunctious, sweaty little brothers cause mischief all around her.

Daughter, her flowers & her dad.


A few weeks later it was my husband's birthday. He asked for brownies & cheesecake. I think they turned out rather pretty myself. ;)
Too bad I have no picture of the Birthday Husband. I really have a shortage of pictures of that man.



How cute is this? I found this hen with her wing around her little friend & had to run back in for the camera.

Just a few garden goodies:

My new kitchen gadget! I'm so excited to have a pressure canner! Now I can can just about anything.

Like, green beans & carrots!

And chicken! So awesome.

Some mizuna sunning itself:

I ate enough kale this summer to feed 89 donkeys, plus 4 elephants.

Our jerusalem artichokes & garlic. Those scapes were very tasty.

I can't believe how many beans our bean patches produced all summer long!
Haha! This was how I learned that you actually have to *follow the recipe* exactly when making yogurt with my yogurt maker. This is not what yogurt is supposed to look like. ~giggle~


My verry dirty kids, home from another hot, fun afternoon in a u-pick orchard.

They were so dirty that I kept laughing & taking pictures before bringing them in the house to scrape their dirt off. This picture's particularly hilarious to me- it pretty much sums up these guy's personalities. Mr. Grump & Mr. Happy.

And here is Mr. Happy on a different day, napping under a blueberry bush while mom & dad picked around him. ;) I added this one to the side bar of my blog, I love it, so cute!

Our 3 yr old plus cute baby duck at friend's house:


This was just one visit Husband paid to the nearby organic farm I mentioned. Each time he went he brought me home piles of goodies like this (though, the apples were from a friend) . And thanks to Danielle for telling us about the place!

A helper gnome, helping me with the EndleSS Tomato Sauce Canning Extravaganza of 2009. Oy.

Look! A bucket full of pinkish purply stuff!! It's actually our homemade sauerkraut. Do you like how I said "our"? My husband actually did the entire thing. ;) We decided to use both red & green cabbage, so this is what we got. :) It's so, so good. I eat some nearly everyday. It's super stinky though, because, well, it's fermented cabbage. The night that I suddenly found myself in labor, I sent my 11 yr old son downstairs with an urgent message to give my husband while I was laboring in the bath tub: "Open all the windows before the midwives get here!!!!" He had just been working on the kraut in the kitchen before labor started, & the whole house smelled like it. The 1st thing I asked my daughter when she got here was whether she noticed the house reeking when she walked in. I was really fixated on making sure the windows got opened when I was in early labor. I guess I really didn't want to offend our midwives, hahaha!


In early Sept. we went to one of our favorite annual homeschool events, "Not Back to School Day" at a nearby amusement park. Although I have to say, it's not my favorite when I'm 8 mos pregnant & it is 90degrees out. :P The youngers had a great time though you'd never know it from this picture:

Or this one:

The only pictures I got of my 11yr old were like this one. There he is! haha.

Here's a random thing. I had hand washed a bunch of dishes about an hour before. They were cool & nearly dry on the counter. The whole family was in another room watching a movie. Suddenly I heard a weird noise from the kitchen, went to investigate, & found my new 4 cup glass Pyrex measuring cup had spontaneously exploded! It was really bizarre. I hadn't done anything at all that I would imagine could make it burst. It's a scientific mystery.

Lovely blondie in the sun:


Our dehydrator sucks. Instead of drying our cherries, the dehydrator melted. Among plenty of other issues the darn thing has had. But. It's great at drying hops! Our awesome friends gave us a bunch of hops for our home beer brewing. Plus a wee baby hops plant. Next, I'd REALLY like a fancy Excalibur. ;)
Here's my little helper at it again:

And here's Harrold. He's an enormous spider, just under 2 inches, & so FAT. He lived just outside our backdoor the entire summer. The kids got in a habit of wanting to say "goodnight spidey!" to him each night I went out to close the chicken coop. I really loved watching him rebuild his huge web, which he often did nightly. He was super cool. Then about 2 weeks ago I noticed he wasn't rebuilding his web nightly anymore & was lethargic & weird. And 5 days ago he disappeared. I guess he was just a warm weather spider & now that it's chilly, he's done with spider life. Bummer. I'll miss Harrold the gigantic spider. I still look up there every night on my way out to the coop, expecting to see one of the hugest spiders I've ever seen, doing cool stuff, but alas.

So we started our homeschool year up again at summer's end. This is my son on his 1st day of 6th grade. I asked him to "tell me how he feels about school starting up again" & this is what I got. haha. He's growling about it being evil or something.


And, my new preschooler on his 1st day as well. :)


And there's my end of summer update. A recent update would include things like gushing about how cute our new baby is, posting pictures of the kids in their Halloween costumes, and moaning about my being the Queen of terrible Mastitis & toothaches. :( But all those things can wait as I have a shower to take, babies to breastfeed, bedtime stories to read, & if I'm *really* lucky, I'll get to have a sleepy conversation with my husband.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Guess who joined us on October 12th??

A gorgeous, perfect.........................





BOY!!


Yep, it turns out that the wiggly little being in my belly these past months was another boy. My fourth boy in a row. haha!

My husband & I have shared a few laughs over this. I think we both figured that, odds are, this one would be a girl. But no. :)

My oldest, my only girl, is 18 & has moved out of the house. It's just me & this herd of boys around here now.

We don't post our kids names online anymore which is a bummer, I wish I could share! But instead, I'll share the details of how he came to be here cozied up on my lap and not cozied up on my bladder anymore.


The short version:

Perfect baby boy.

Born at 2:05am, Monday October 12th after a 5 hour labor that began with no warning!

He was 8lbs, 13oz, 21 inches long - exactly the same as 2 of his older brothers! What are the chances?! Of my 4 boys, 3 of them have been born exactly the same size, and the 4th was a behemoth at 10lbs, 6oz.

We are both healthy & fine. We had a fantastic homebirth, I wouldn't change a thing. His dad caught him. His older siblings were all there, though one was asleep. ;)

I am euphoric!

(Me & my 3 youngest, about 2 hours after birth)


And, my long, juicy, detailed birth story. Full of love, blood & mucous. Y'know, the stuff that births are made of.

I have to add a word of caution here. This story ended up very, very long. But I wanted to get all the details out on paper before I forget them. And I'm writing this out more for me than anyone else. I will print this very blog entry out to put in my baby journal. So, I apologize if you were hoping for something more succint & to the point.


Our new boy took up life in my belly back in January & my due date was October 18th. My pregnancy was pretty fantastic. I suffered the usual symptoms- overwhelming fatigue in the 1st trimester, pelvic aches & pains in the last. But I sure loved feeling that wee person wiggling & waggling around in there. I always savor my pregnancies, & spend plenty of time writing in my pregnancy journal. I treasure those journals!

I couldn't wait to meet him or her, and to learn whether it was a him or her! I was getting impatient and excited in the last weeks before my due date, to get this show on the road. But I wasn't having many signs that labor was approaching anytime soon. I had several obvious signs in the days & hours leading up to every one of my other kid's births. I'd been obsessively watching for my usual signs of impending labor this time, knowing that I'd be seeing some any day now.... But instead, this is how my labor began:

I was watching a Netflix movie online. I had zero expectations that I'd find myself in labor that night. It was 9pm on Sunday, Oct. 11th, 7 days before my due date. I took a quick phone call from my ex-husband. During our chat, I had one strong contraction. I sat back down to watch my movie. Three minutes later, I had another very strong contraction.... and another one 3 minutes after that. I pause the movie & tell my husband that I'm going to jump in the shower. That will always slow or stop my contractions if they're not the real thing.

So, I'm in the shower. Every 3 minutes I have a very strong & painful contraction. And it hits me! "OMG, I think I'm in labor!"

And after all those weeks of feeling anxious & excited & impatient for labor to begin, do I jump for joy? No, I start crying & shaking with fear & nervousness because, OMG, I'm in labor! haha.

I spent about 15 mins. feeling terrified, realizing how much pain I was soon going to be in & how hard I was going to be working in the coming hours. Then I looked down at my belly & felt the the baby's knobby heels poking out at me. I switched my thoughts to him/her. I was going to meet my baby! At last! And I said out loud, "Okay baby... here we go." And I took a deep breath & stopped crying.

I realized this was going to be one of the last times I was going to look down & see my enormous pregnant belly full of this baby, and watch his knobby body parts push my skin out in lumps & bumps. I took a mental picture right then that I don't think I'll ever forget.

I filled the tub, sat down & contracted every 3 minutes. My husband & my 11 yr old son came into check on me & ask what they should do, who they should call. Finally, I told them to call everybody. Husband called the midwives, my 11yo had the fun job of calling my mom & his 18 yo sister. That was pretty exciting for him, and me. :) It was all really happening!

Very soon my contractions were 2 minutes apart. And that's where they stayed for hours.

That same day I'd happened to have read a birth story in which the mother said that during her labor she had loud & vibrant images & sounds from a computer game she'd played dancing through her mind. She asked why she should rely on drugs during birth to escape the pain when our brain is so capable of creating its own "drugs".

I thought of that story after I found my own mind doing something similar, making me feel druggy. During a contraction I'd lean my right ear into my outstretched right arm. And I'd tap the tips of my fingers into the side of the sink. This produced a nice solid "thud, thud, thud" heard in my ear. The thuds got harder over the hours as my pain intensified. My tapping increased to hitting & eventually punching the sides of the sink. All the while, my left ear took in the sound of the whirring bathroom ceiling fan. And my eyes were fixated on an image of a leaf printed on the green shower curtain on which I sat. This all produced a rather nice, repetitive, fuzzy, wavy noise inside my head. Those of you that have done nitrous or sat in the dentist chair on laughing gas know what whooshing, repetitive, wavy sound I mean. I felt pretty stony. And that green leaf will be burned into my mind for life. Hahaha!

(My 18yo daughter was our fabulous photographer again. Here she told me to look up immediately after a contraction. That is why I'm so happy. lol This is where I spent my 5 labor hours, the bathroom floor just off my bedroom. The lights were dim, candles were lit. It was a cozy cave to birth in.)


Finally, after 4 hours & 45 minutes of contraction after contraction & mentally begging my water to break so I could get a move on & end this labor, it finally broke. That was followed by a few blissful minutes of no pain, no pressure, nothing. I wanted to walk over to my bed & just go to sleep for the night. "This is the calm before the storm" I thought to myself.

And then the storm came. The urge to push overtook my being. Some women claim to enjoy the pushing stage. I am not one of them. I find that stage of childbirth to be the most torturous moments of my life. Unbearable! I feel like my skin, pelvis, vagina & my butt are being ripped in half. I repeated over & over to myself "the only way out is through.... the only way out is through...just push...just push...just push...the only way out is through.." and I pushed through the torture to escape. I was very loud, roaring & chanting things like "go out out out out".

And you know what's funny? All this whining & complaining about "torture" & "waa waa me" ? I only had to push for 13 minutes before he was born! Haha, yep, 13 minutes. I know, poor me.

I was in a kneel, my husband caught our baby from behind me. I looked over my shoulder & my eyes went straight to his crotch (the baby's not my husband's). I needed to know who'd been in there all this time, a girl or a boy??

"It's a boy! Another boy!" I said with a laugh.

A perfect, perfect boy.

I was instantly mesmerized by his face. Everything & everyone else disappeared. The only thing that existed in the universe was his perfect face.

(Minutes old. I'd agreed to having a hep-lock in my forearm just in case I had a severe hemorrhage afterwards that required IV fluids, etc)


(Perfect little newborn face)



I was temporarily brought out of my trance when one of my midwives handed me one of my herbal tinctures to help prevent a hemorrhage. I had armed myself with herbs, vitamins, supplements, knowledge & lists of my plans on how to deal with my expected post partum hemorrhage. I had even armed myself with midwives this time, specifically because of my worries over dealing with a hemorrhage on our own as we did with our last baby, an unassisted homebirth. The birth before that one, a midwife attended hospital birth, was also followed by a hemorrhage.

And then guess what? I didn't hemorrhage after this birth at all. But it's so weird, because I would have thought I was, had my midwives not been there reassuring me that I wasn't. The blood was dripping & pooling, I was light headed, my ears were "ringy". These were all things I'd experienced during our last birth that I attributed to a hemorrhage. But my midwives (whom I trust) told me that this was not a hemorrhage at all & saw no reason to treat it as such. So they didn't (besides that 1st dose of blue cohosh I took before the placenta came, as was my plan). My bleeding lessened quickly, my light headedness was gone once I rested, and all was fine.

This makes me scratch my totally befuddled head! All this time I've pegged myself as "a bleeder", feeling fearful about the post partum hemorrhages I'm prone to have. "Once a bleeder always a bleeder" a midwife had told me. And now I question whether I've ever actually had one!

At my 1st supposed hemorrhage at the hospital with baby #3, I told the nurse I felt faint as I was walking to the bathroom (after an intense 90min birth). The midwife immediately turned to the Pitocin & gave me a shot. I've never thought to question until now, "Was I actually hemorrhaging? Or just adjusting after a very precipitous delivery??" Geez, who knows!

But, here's another crazy thing I have to include in my story:
The whole reason I'd decided to have midwives at this birth in the 1st place was due to my concerns over the expected hemorrhage. I didn't have one, but what I had instead was a lot of bleeding during my labor. I've never experienced that during any of my labors before. It seemed like a lot of blood to me, so 4 different times during my labor I asked my midwife to come in & tell me if it was normal or not (otherwise the midwives stayed in another room as I had asked them for a "hands off birth". I really just wanted to spend my laboring time with my husband. They totally respected that. It was awesome). Each time the midwife reassured me my bleeding was within normal limits.

Now, if I hadn't followed my intuition that was telling me to have midwives at this birth, and had been birthing unassisted again, this bleeding would have freaked me out. In a worst case scenario, heavy bleeding during labor could be caused by placental abruption - the placenta coming unattached before the baby is born. Since the placenta supplies all the baby's oxygen, a complete placental abruption would be fatal to the baby.

If we'd been home alone, I'm pretty sure I would have been so scared of a possible abruption that would have called 911 or gone straight to a hospital. Then I would have dealt with who knows what unnecessary interventions, under bright lights with complete strangers! My awesome homebirth would have never happened.

So, I'm grateful that I'd gone with my gut feeling & my midwives were there.

And so, I've finally come to the end of the very long story of my labor & bleeding. :p If anyone actually read this entire novel length thing I'm not sure whether to say thank you or tell you you're goofy for wasting so much time! heehee. But like I said, this detailed story is more for me than anyone.


So, our new son has joined us. So far, at 8 days old, he is the mellowest little guy you ever did see. He puts up with a lot of poking & petting from his older brothers. And slept right through their pushing his bed across the floor tonight. I'm still mesmerized by his face and ridiculously adorable body parts. He has the sweetest bony little chicken legs & the cutest tiny fuzzy butt you've ever seen. There has never been a second when I didn't love him completely, from the moment I looked over my shoulder to see what soul had been sent through my body to join our family here on earth.


(Within an hour of birth I was in my own bed cuddled up with my new baby. Ya gotta love homebirth. ;) This picture is a perfect example of why I adore having lots of pictures of my births - I have no memories of the time I spent here in my bed except for the baby's face. This is a picture of me, mesmerized. I didn't know my daughter was taking pictures of me, I didn't know my toddler was in bed next to me. There are pictures of my husband cuddled up behind me, I don't remember that either. But I remember how my baby's face looked there, cuddled up & breastfeeding.)


(Less than 2 hours old. I braided the umbilical cord tie for him during my pregnancy, my husband tied it on after birth. It just fell off today at 8 days old. I'll save that little tie forever.)


(About 15 hours old, in the lap of his very cute 3 yr old brother)


(And then into the arms of his 21 month old brother, who is also very cute ;) )


(Couple days old, gape mouthed in the arms of his dad)


(And in the arms of grandma, who has been visiting since birth day & has kept us all very well fed! :) )


(Three days old)


(Little inky foot for his baby book. He has a bandaid on his heel from his blood draw for the metabolic test taken earlier that day. The midwife chuckled when she opened the bandaid after taking his blood. It's a Hannah Montana bandaid. haha)

(Very handsome profile)


(Two days old)


(Two days old)


(My pile of boys. This is one of my favorite pictures. The only thing missing here is my daughter! She was behind the camera so much recently, or running out for classes & work... next time she slows down I'll have to snap some photos!)



I'm so incredibly happy that this is my life. Why I have been so blessed I will never comprehend, but I thank my lucky stars everyday! And I'm not just saying that because I'm in that euphoric, post-birth high stage. :)

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

A kid funny

When we picked my husband up from the train after work today, our 3.5 yr old son asked him how his day was.

"It was fine, how was your day?"

Our son says, "It was fine when I telled mama last year that I have to go poop."

Hahaha. I just had to make sure I wrote that down somewhere to remember. Kids are so funny.