The Late Winter Crawl

The baby has learnt to crawl. Suddenly I am aware again of every open doorway, our looming stairs, and the cords in every room that he so dearly loves to chew on. We are also in the midst of the human-carpet-sweeper stage, every little crumb and scrap of paper and stray bit of styrafoam is edible if it comes anywhere near his now-perfect pincer reach. Life is about to get really, really energetic. Its a season of movement and experimentation. Go!

I have my annual case of spring fever. I can feel it bubbling up inside of me and sometimes foaming out my ears without warning. I am positively magnetically drawn to the bundles of cut daffodils in the grocery store. I cannot escape the place without a cluster or two in my paw. I have started seeds for the veggie garden and have packets full of warmer weather seeds sitting by for wistful fondling. Time to grow some sprouts for sandwiches to fend off the blues.  Right?

The weather has been sunny and the morning sunrise occasionally breathtaking and I can palpably feel the days lengthening. I am praying morning prayer as a Lenten resolution using a Divine Office app on my phone in the middle of the morning which feels like the right thing to do after having seen a stunning sunrise. I have candles to light in my Mama Space in the sunroom and a little tabletop fountain to tinkle wetly in the background too, a beautiful prayer space. If I pray upstairs, where I write, outside my writing window I can see sapsicles hanging from the broken branches of the big sugar maple if the day is cold and chill sometimes a squirrel nibbling the sweet ice and bounding away to check out the tasty goodies on our compost pile.

This week A is taking a breather week before beginning his new job (that exciting, new life phase that will require thrift!) so we are doing lots of sitting around together and watching intriguing TED Talks at night and having slow mornings. There are just a few days left and then he will be off to train for two weeks in California leaving me and The Little Fellas for a fourteen day solo run. I am packing all of us in the car and taking off for Michigan to do some maple sugaring and maybe a little ice fishing with my parents in the north woods to keep us peppy and occupied. Good times ahead and lots of great blogging of the adventures along the way!

Yoga Pants Night

Long day today. Long nights the last few days. We've had colds, nightmares, teething, asthma and reactions to medication. Wild times, which call for early evenings and long, slow afternoons in my most comfortable yoga pants. A brought me a mug of coffee, bedside with extra cream, just the way I like it to get me going this morning and we're ending the day with some more in the chef memoir (Yes, Chef by Samuelsson) that we're reading together.

It's almost The Maple Sugar Moon, time for warm days and cold nights, piercing sunshine and stiff winds in the very high March sky. I am thinking of Michigan and hot dogs toasted over the coals beside the sap pan.

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Ski Madness!

We are off to the slopes today! Skiis and poles and gloves and scarves flying every which way. Packing is insanity. Packing for a family of six plus winter gear is ridiculous. Time to laugh really hard, drink lots of amazing coffee and throw all ideas of calm exits and quiet gleaming countertops behind you. This is real life baby, we get down and dirty!

St Valentine's Fire

Kids are kind of random. Somehow the boys got the idea that they really wanted to have a bonfire in our yard today. So, I'm game...I'm not sure I'm a law-abiding citizen of the city but I'm game. And this is how we found ourselves having a little, post-valentine-making, paper scrap started fire in our yard at 11:00 in the morning on a Thursday. Yay impulsivity! Maybe this is a new tradition?


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Sunrise Shells

We had a little winter beach forage today. I picked up bedraggled wads of seaweed for our compost pile (vital minerals!) and the boys climbed sand hills and jumped off and then we beachcombed our little hearts out. These shells are my favorites besides the channel whelks or the very rare sea stars. They are pretty common on our beaches and I find them in all shades of peach, orange and golden yellow. In my mind I call them "sunrise shells" but I sure wonder what they really are. Any marine biology geniuses lurking???


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Reading Stack

Cold weather always means an uptick in my reading. Lately I can't get enough. I am greedy at the library, pushing open the door on my way to the car with a teetering stack wedged under my chin. Its a lot harder suddenly, with intensive homeschooling and four wild hooligans to manage to read anything steadily. I am determined though. I finked out on reading towards the end of last year and managed to read pretty much nothing from the end of the summer until Christmas. One of New Year's resolutions was to record the things I'm reading on GoodReads again...in order to do that, one must read. Off I went to the stacks!

I have a couple of new tricks in my arsenal for keeping on. I read a book at a time in audio form using my iPhone and ear buds when I'm washing dishes or driving down the road with all the kids asleep) and sometimes even tuck into a Kindle book on my phone (not my favorite) if I forget to bring a book along and find myself stuck at the doctor's office or the mechanic. I also keep a book or two tucked in the door of the car, sometimes one in the diaper bag and books all over the house for wherever I happen to be having a nursing break. Pull out all the stops is basically the message. Read whenever, however...just have serious tenacity. Bear in mind that in addition to the things I am happily clipping through I am also still hacking away at a book I borrowed from a friend about a year ago. *wince* I am not an emblem of reading perfection. I am only one crazed mommy, doing the best I can, and still in love with the printed page.

Press on.

Slow Days

Sometimes I just need a break. Last week was one of those times. I would have warned you all that I was going to take a hiatus if I had known I was about to need one. Life is occasionally quite impromptu and you know, as in life, so in blogging.

The weekend was exciting. Crazy, gorgeous dump of snow, cancelled birthday parties and then a frantic/worried/bizarre day which we spent huddled over our sweet late-guinea pig Jenny. I never could have imagined that it would be possible to be obsessing worriedly for an entire day over the aliveness or deadness of an animal but that's what happened. They are so very small and she was clearly very sick or else dead....we were rather avidly hopeful. Alas, by this morning I could firmly say she was gone and we said our goodbyes including a custom dirge, Nib wrote and sang "Jenny, come back your friend, you are gone away Jenny, poor, poor Jenny, she did die." and a little postmortem portrait tribute from Dee complete with little stick figure legs poking out of her tiny crayoned body.

This morning after we dropped A off at work the boys and I marched bravely to the pet store after praying for a new friend for our remaining, lonely Sarsparilla. It broke my heart this morning to be greeted by silence instead of the usual friend whistles and tweets and find Sarsparilla moping in her little wooden shelter at one end of the cage. We are the proud new owners of a fluffy black and white piggy and I am pleased to tell you that Sarsparilla appears to have taken her in and is already back to making some of her usual noises. We've named the new little fluff ball Chamomile.

Pom has finally pushed through his two, giant from teeth and is the proud owner of opposing ivories. I heard him gritting them together in that horrible, scraping way all babies experiment with just this morning. Heh. I hope his sleep and irritability improve a bit now that he has put the big chompers behind him for a while. Maybe his body will give him a rest for having started a bit early.

Its slow times at our house. Planning the mythical vegetable garden, roasting beef slow and slower in the oven, drinking vats of milky tea, snuggling the baby and forcing the trimmings from the fruit trees in the yard as I slowly hack away at pruning.