amending the holiday letter

Yesterday, Milo had his first oatmeal cereal! He was so funny, pulling everything into his mouth with such urgency! We also got a new car seat for Rowan so that Milo could have his old one, and Rowan was so excited about it, he completely dressed himself trying to get us to go somewhere in his new carseat (which was still in the living room.)

I went to bed thinking about the holiday letter, especially after finishing This Organic Life (Thank you so much Rach and Frankie) and realized that although I have made a great effort to eat more locally, we didn't do as great of a job in the first half of the year. I don't want to over-represent what we've done.

Last year, I tried Door-to Door Organics, being pregnant and frustrated with the availability of food at the local grocery store, but that didn't really make me feel too much better because here was this food being shipped from all over the world and then delivered to my door. Then i read BK's Animal Vegetable Miracle and had many epiphanies about how I look at food and what I consider when i buy food or choose recipes. We already belonged to a CSA, (Monroe Farms) but didn't do the winter share b/c I thought it was basically just potatoes.(it's not! we did it this year)
Anyway, what I should have said is that the first time I walked into Safeway (i think it was June) and asked what was grown in colorado, and they said... the green onions. i just walked around in a sort of wonder. All this food brought here in great quantity regardless of what is actually able to grow where we live. I get the clear impression, like Gussow (TOL) that most people don't care about how or where their food is grown, and maybe you don't either. But I didn't want to make it sound like here we were eating all from our backyard and whatnot, because we aren't. (yet!)

Maybe in a handful of years I'll have more things worked out for eating more locally (especially from Feb to May), but my biggest two goals for the garden this year are to get a functioning compost and plant some raspberry bushes. My next book I'm going to read is another by Pollan, Second Nature .

As you have already figured, both boys are napping at the same time! Milo is getting more regular in the pm, which gives me hope. Hope that Rowan doesn't give up his nap!!! That way I may actually have a few minutes to study (or write here!) during the day. School starts again next week, wish us luck and sleep!

New Years is upon us, and my list of resolutions calls for more canning, more raspberry picking and more strawberring picking.

Inner Christmas

i found this in Ode Magazine: Merry Inner Christmas

(both of them are napping together!!! yippeeeee!)

capturing it in photos

Now that we can't set them down in a place and have them stay there, it's a whole new level of planning for a group picture. Here are two pictures of us attempting to get our kids to do what we want them to. Me, trying to get Rowan in the vicinity of the Big Guyat Rowan's preschool and below, Andy (Annabeths dad) attempting to gather attention and keep our play group altogether using some fancy guitar work and fun christmas songs. It was great music, but I can't say it really worked to get the kids rapt with attention and focused on being a group that we could take a picture of!!! If I can figure out the youtube video thing, I'll put a little video clip I took which is great.

When they were about 6-9 months old we did the first group shot, all the babies in diapers. They may not have been happy, but they stayed in one place! This time, not so much. The photographer had her work cut out for her, and I think she did an awesome job. We'll be able to see the prints soon.
Yesterday I got the best treat, a tea time at the Dushanbe Tea House in Boulder and got to spend time with my book club ladies. Since I've been more than my normal crazy self lately, it was a very good break. We talked the entire drive up there, the whole tea time and the whole snowy 2 hour ride home! That's 7 hours of talking!!!! Not every minute of it was about our children. Just most of the minutes. :) It was fancy and our waiter most attentive. By the time I got home, I was actually calm and peaceful. I also really needed to pump.

We are going to have a get together on New Years Eve day. We did it last year, sort of open house style. I think I'll put a little more thought into how it all goes together this year. Or maybe I won't. I'm trying to do as many things as I can before school starts up again, and specifically getting pictures of Milo together. He entered the world and was recorded digitally. We didn't get the camera until Rowan was 10 months old, and since then I've tried my best to print some. But these last 5 months have been quite a blur.

It's about time for me to do our Holiday/Solstice letter and I'm going to do it here. I wanted to get pictures out to everyone, but that isn't looking like it's going to happen. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow.

breast milk, soil

First off, I had a magnificent day after a much more restful night after I did the last post. I even threw both the boys in the glorious stroller and tromped around the lake, less than halfway around the wind died down and it was a good place to be.

Secondly, a tip for all of you out there who may someday find yourself pumping breastmilk. each part of your pump is something equivalent to gold jewelry but not found in all stores. In fact, you may find yourself on a QUEST for a very tiny but not inconsequential part that you did something boneheaded with like left on the counter and who but god knows where it is now?

Also I learned some very valuable tips about handpumps and pumping in general in my first quarter of school, like...
-toilets aren't that comfortable to eat on and pump.
-hand pumps are nice because when you are sitting on the toilet, there are usually no outlets close by.
-if you bring your pump attached to the bottle, an important part to remember is a TOP to CLOSE the milk in the bottle after you are done pumping.

-electric pumps are really nice, and you should get one that does both boobies at the same time if you have to leave milk with any kind of regularity.
-electric pumps are not really nice if you lose a tiny little piece of plastic that connects parts to the pump!!!
-most importantly, until the moment you have to bare your chest and extract milk from it for your precious baby, you don't really get what all the fuss is about pumping space. When that moment arrivese,THEN you understand it perfectly and can't really say anything coherent when some person says "why can't you just use the bathroom?"
-best to make sandwiches or something you can eat with your hands if you have to pump and eat on your break, because it takes one hand, and it's hard to both if you need a fork or something.

I think that breast milk is like soil. Why can you put stuff in the ground and watch it grow? it's just brownish black stuff! Why can you put only these little ounces of white stuff into your baby and watch him/her grow? MIRACLES, thats the only thing i can say about it. try and explain it all day long, and I'm telling you what--nothing can do it.

and finally why are naptimes always so short? i pumped two measly ounces and wrote this, and neglected dinner and the pile of dishes in the sink... and it's already over dammit.


ah well. being a domestic godess is one of those understated professions. I read in an old issue of The Sun that gives me great comfort, "Before enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water." i think thats how it goes. Not to suggest that I am at all enlightened, not at all.

love them, hate them

Pacifiers that is. They really help sometimes, but then they become a habit. DR has a habit, and DM doesn't and both are a problem. I wish that when we gave DM his pacifier it would help him go to sleep, especially at 12, 1:30, 3, 4-5, and 7 in the morning... Why is he awake at these hours? this I know is the wrong question and there is no good answer, but I really can't help myself.

There is nothing I resent more than being awakened in the dead of the night. This may make me a bad mother in your eyes, but I can't help it. I bet even if I went to therapy I would still not really like my children when they wake up yelling their heads off at three in the blessed morning. It's a terrible chain reaction too, because I don't like them and G doesn't like me for not liking them. Even in that Once upon a time before I had a life filled with boys who sleep intermittently I resented being awoken, and that was before I was totally wiped from being with them all day long too!

There is nothing to say except that I'm complaining. I know, and I shouldn't. But you did come here of your own free will. I didn't make you come and read my lame-o complaining about the capacity of a two year old to repeat a single phrase more times than you are even capable of counting. "I want my paci" five hundred (or more) times is the other problem with pacifiers. It's all about sleep really, how can we get the most, and for DR that's with a Paci. Too bad he also wants it when he's awake. blech. The Paci Fairy is coming soon, and that will mean less sleep in addition to the minimal amount that we are already barely getting.

Crappy post I know, but I warned you. Maybe I should get outside, oh wait, they both have runny noses and I can't use my fabulous double stroller with the wind whipping around. Must be winter, since I have cabin fever.

Well, at least our furnace isn't under water like B&C in Seattle. I told you I was lame for complaining. Ugh.

On another cheery tangent, we're planning for untimely deaths right now. Hopefully you have already done this. Nothing like estate planning to make you think about the uncertainty of life.
I think that's enough gloom for today, and best if I stop before it gets any darker.

No expansion

After an assessment of our priorities, the second floor comes in as an absolute negative. More debt, more stress, more more. We won't do it, for better or worse. We do have a few other things to concentrate on, so we should be okay on being occupied (!!)

The boys are down at the same time again, thanking the goddess of napping is in order. This morning I read an article in Bicycling (Jan/Feb issue, p. 56) about America's broken traffic laws, and it made me feel desperate about any of us going onto the road to ride. Our friend lost his mother on Friday, and we grieve for him. I don't think I have anything appropriate to say about death. Every time Death strikes, I wish many years had already passed so that the hurt won't be as fresh for the person. Like I said, it's not appropriate to say it. Maybe the only thing to say is factual: that birth and death happen-- sometimes in close proximity. That's certainly not comforting or wise. Just dumb. See? Nothing worthy to say, except we are deeply, deeply sad.

I have heard the news of two new babies in our life, and am waiting to hear of another. Did you see the new slideshow option? I love this thing, it's a neat new feature. Well, they're all new to me, but apparently it's new to the blog too.

So. No second floor. No office/study/guest room for us and no bigger living room. No second bathroom. Oh well. Maybe next, next year. Or maybe not.

day worth recording

Look at my baby! last night he just saaaaat up! all done with that seat, apparently. (4 mos old exactly, and look at him go! (sorry its sideways, i'll get better here.)

We left the house by 9, hopped in the double stroller (see above), and went to play at Claire gardens. This afternoon, both boys napped at the same time for over an hour and I got to work on my final and catch up on school mail. Any one of these things is a miracle, and they all happened in one day!

Nonna & Nonno left yesterday, and so now none of us really know what to do. Who's in charge of feeding us now? Who's keeping track of all this stuff? :)

G and Rowan are going on a plane trip tomorrow, to visit cousin Gino in Seattle, and to see the salmon run in the stream near B & C's house.