insert cuteness here

It's so hard to record baby talk. Especially when the five year old is talking at the same time. I have a word count my brain can handle each day, and it's usually filled up by about 9:30 am.

However, Julia is talking. A lot. We had lots of words for a while. Now we have sentences.

A few samples:

Julia, why don't you do your puzzle?
"Oooohhh. yeeeah!"

"Angry. Monster. Mama?" (Meaning, Mama, pretend to be an angry monster.)

"Hi Pad? Yes? Sissy, Hi Phone?" (Meaning, Lucy has the iPhone. So can I have the iPad?"

"Mama bye? No. No Mama bye."

"Missing you, Mama."

The last one, obviously, kills me.

another birth book

I read another birth book, "Deliver This", and wanted to put it out there. I have a feeling other home birth vets might not love it--since it presents all the birth options out there (from homebirth to elective (by the woman) caesarian) with equal weight. What I liked was this:

1. Very few books by people not already convinced of the need to overhaul the current birth system will write so respectfully of home birth or birth centers. I felt like Marisa Cohen tried hard to abandon her misconceptions about natural birth and take it seriously. For that reason, I could give this to someone preparing for birth and felt like I was showing them options, without hitting them over the head with natural birth info that they might see as propaganda. Resources in the back would point them to great books, like Gaskin or Goer who could further guide them.
   
2. No one is served by women duking it out over birth choices. Less eye-rolling and more real discussion would do everyone good.
3. If all women would see the options, perhaps more would do the research on their own, and make actual choices. What breaks my heart in birth stories is not women who make choices different then mine--it's women that wanted one thing, but felt like they got another, without their consent. More empowerment, more responsibility for women preparing for birth has to be a good thing.

So there. Everyone should go check it out. Especially if you know someone who is not sure what kind of birth experience would suit them.

half full. I think.

With the cold and flu season upon us, I am not surprised to find myself fighting something. I've had a cough for the last week, and it does not seem to be going away any time soon. Last year, it seemed like I'd no sooner recover from a cold then I got another one.
Anyway, I say a cough, and that's what I have. No sniffles, no sore throat, none of that awful taste in my mouth or the crushing headache or--you know.
In fact, I feel pretty good about the fact that the last three times I've been sick it's been like this. One or two annoying symptoms, a lot of tiredness, but not the full-blown cold. Maybe my immune system is really pumped! I'm so healthy! This year is going to be different!
Of course, I've been sick-ish a lot over the last month. In fact, it seems (perhaps I'm whining) I'm mostly sick most of the time. It's an improvement over last year, but--not exactly a victory. (Cough. Cough.)
Hmmm. And there I'm stuck. Because I can't decide whether to (sort of) celebrate the cough, or feel like my immune system is going to hell in a handbasket.

math, homeschool style

Lucy has been spending 99% of her free time doing artwork. Lots of artwork. Watercolor, masks, cards, oil pastels, beading, coloring. You name it.
She has not been interested much in say, more traditional school subjects.
So today, I snuck it in at dinner time. We all had cut up veggies with our dinner. As she ate them, she said, "I have six left!"
"But how many sets do you have?" I asked.
She looked, and said, "Three?" We all went around and counted our sets.

Yes, I marked that down as our math lesson on our daily log. Set theory, check.

the beauty of leftovers

Lately, Dyami and I have been working a lot. A LOT. So dinner has been a challenge. I realized that some nights, I don't have time to cook, but I do it anyway, because I love cooking. It relaxes me, and having yummy food to eat relaxes me even more.
Plus, then my husband cleans up. (Thank you, Dyami)

However, some nights, I don't have much in the way of new food to prepare, and I don't have time to prepare the non-existant food, and we have leftovers from five different meals in the fridge, and I realize that I can do leftovers.

I never loved leftovers as a kid (unless we were talking pizza or fried chicken). But man, as an adult, I dig it.

treasure box

Yesterday, I was folding laundry in the living room, when I heard a crash. I went into the garage, and saw nothing out of the ordinary except for a lone bottle of water toppled onto the floor.
I went back inside. Three minutes later: CRASH! BAM! POW!

I ran into the garage this time, and definitely saw the source of the noise: three storage boxes on their sides, contents partially spilled.

What had tipped them over?

We'd balanced some other bottles of water on the boxes, and one of them had gotten punctured somehow. Half of its contents had leaked out....soaking the top of a cardboard box that's filled with Dyami's and my old papers (school essays we liked, precious letters from friends, diaries). This you probably Would Not Want to Get Wet.

I decided cleaning up the spill took precedence over the laundry.

What might have been a horrible tale of ruined treasures, however, is actually a tale of rediscovered treasures. Only a few things were water-logged beyond repair. I'm lucky I heard everything falling over. The stuff that was most precious to me (namely, a bunch of my letters from college, notebooks I filled while I was studying abroad, etc), were fine.

And so I looked through a bunch of old memories for part of an hour, and marvelled. Because back in the day, I kept me some diaries. Some of them (when I lived in Argentina), I kept in blank-sheeted drawing notebooks, which makes them all the more compelling: space for calligraphy, and drawings, and just jam-packed text. The text isn't super-exciting (though I did find diaries from when Dyami and I started dating, and my entry for September 11th), but the sheer amount of WORDs is quite astonishing.

I left thinking that maybe I needed to start a diary again. Something that feels artistic in my hand, and that I make into more of an art work, a daily practice of working with my hands.

It might mean that I post less here, because the sheer physicality of the memories really charmed me.

I'll keep you posted.

activity

They pruned trees in front of our house today--big old trees, all in a row along the avenue. It required several hours and very large equipment.
I was watching a friend's toddler, and after a few minutes of everyone being frightened by the noise, I explained that the trees were getting a haircut. And that they were chopping up the bits of leftover tree and putting them in the truck.
And then I sat and read while two mesmerized two-year-olds watched the workers. Who knew yard maintenance could be so darn useful?

home

I had a moment of panic when plans got cancelled. I had childcare arranged, and it fell through, and I have a lot (lot) of work that needs doing. Work with deadlines and such.

And then I remembered that I've been feeling overscheduled lately, what with having something scheduled every single day. For three days, all day is pretty much scheduled. Which is two days too much.

So we have a free day tomorrow. And suddenly, I'm craving it.

Hidden blessings, in the form of open space.