… who has her first loose tooth??!!
I know I lost my first tooth in kindergarten, but I’m not ready for Kaia to lose hers already!
last night I knitted her “Heart Man” (that’s what she calls him) to put her tooth in when it falls out. He’s holding a pocket for her tooth. Isn’t he cute?!
… and still chugging along 🙂
Actually, I’m feeling pretty good…. I just get tired out easily.
I don’t know if you could really call it nesting, ’cause my house is in shambles and I’m not really ‘creating a nest’ for the baby, but all I want to do is sit on my butt and make things. Really, it’s been going on since last Fall. So, I think this baby has some serious crafty genes that are coming out through me!
So, inspired by a little felted gnome that I got from Kristine
I decided to make a leaf blanket for the baby. I got some green fleece (on sale! Yahoo!) and made a pattern on large construction paper. Then, using some of Kaia’s washable markers, traced the pattern on the fleece and cut it out. I also cut out a triangle to go at the top of the leaf for a little hood. Then I marked a vein pattern on the leaf and sewed thread on top of that. Came out cute, eh? From tip to bottom, the leaf is a little over 3 feet, so it should fit for a while. I have a magnetic snap that I might put on after the baby comes and I see where it will fit best… or I may use something that is more adjustable for the baby to grow with.
Of course, now Kaia wants one, but I’m tired of the needle work, so, maybe I can just make her a hooded cape like thinging without a leaf pattern….
And once you open up the leaf blanket to reveal the baby, you might see these:
I knitted up some baby leg warmers for the little one…. They turned out really cute, but much too big for a newborn (maybe 6 months to a year). So, I plan to knit a much smaller pair once I find the right yarn (man I love yarn 🙂
Kaia took the leg warmer and put it over her hands and said “Look mom! It’s a perfect hand warmer!” So, since I can’t stop, I knitted her a muff out of some fuzzy yarn from my stash. It turned out really cute, but man was that fuzzy stuff hard to knit with!
All else is cruising along here at the homestead. The chickens are all laying again (except the younger ones), the guest house is livable though not complete (needs finish work and for the water to be run), and my belly is getting ever larger! Anytime in the next month we will finally get to meet this little one!
We’ve had the most amazing 48 hours! Thursday night, our friend Julie came over to paint henna on my belly. She was hired as a birth gift from another friend. Julie is an amazing henna artist and actually did henna on our hands before Toby and I got married. So it was very fitting that she do our birth henna.
Here’s my view from above 🙂
And the finished product (with the lemon/sugar mix on it)
Kaia chose a peacock design for her right hand.
Isn’t it beautiful? She also had part of my belly design done on her left hand.
Toby got a part of my design on his left hand too
Then, last night we were given a beautiful Blessingway to welcome the baby into the world. It was absolutely wonderful! We had an amazing group of friends come out… they brought food, set up a lovely birth alter with candles and art work, photographs, herbs, and more and gave us blessings. Then after eating I was given a salt foot rub and herb foot bath while we all watched a belly dancer honor us with a dance of birth and family. It was all so amazing!!
Do I look relaxed??? 🙂
The beginning of her dance was done with a basket balanced on her head… she also used scarves and candles. the pictures were taken with a flash, so it looks bright in there, but the lights were actually off, so she danced by candle light. (Kaia was enthralled!)
Then, today in the mail, I got a wonderful gift box from Kristine that had some wonderful treats along with a beautiful birth goddess statue and a hand crafted tin filled with birth art and positive affirmations! Thank you so much Kristine! These have a special place on the birth alter!
I’ve been feeling really crafty lately! It all started this past Wed. when Kaia and I went to a kids knitting circle. She’s been wanting to learn how to knit, but isn’t really ready to use knitting needles, so we went to the circle to see if we could get some tips for her. She ended up learning how to finger knit and loves it! She started at the circle and knit the whole way home, through the evening and until bed. Then she woke up and knit some more… and then all the way to school, and all the way home. And it stayed like this until she had over 30 feet of finger knitted yarn. She finally finished it up so she could wrap it around our solstice/christmas/yule/festive evergreen tree. Right now she’s only knitting on one finger but this shows the basic idea.
Kaia wrapped herself up in her knitting before wrapping the tree:
After Kaia’s knitting class, I just happened to be headed to a ladies night with some friends and learned how to knit hats. All I’ve ever done up until now was simple stitch scarves and blankets, but I love knitting. I stopped doing it when I tried to read patterns and couldn’t figure out what I was doing. I think I’ve got the hang of it now! Now I just need a high paying job to afford all the awesome yarn that I want to get!! Here’s my first attempt. It was supposed to be a newborn hat, but it turned out a bit wide, though not deep enough for Kaia (but she was gracious enough to model it for me).
Well, then I got inspired to make something with all the tangerine peels we have right now (I ordered one of those citrus fruit boxes!) It wasn’t as easy to do this with thin tangerine peels as I imagine it would be with oranges or lemons, but they still turned out cute!
First, lightly score around the skin. I took off the top 1/3 of the tangerine.
Next peel off the top 1/3 (with the tangerines, I really wasn’t able to save this or make a candle top out of it because it was too small).
Then, slide a spoon under the remaining skin and loosen as much of it as you can, working your way around.
Once it is fairly loose, slide the peel back and work your thumb in to peel the remaining skin off of the bottom. This is tricky as it may want to break at the end, so go slowly.
Once I had a bunch of bottom peels ready, I put some candle wax in a double boiler to melt. Then I got the wicks ready. I used some putty and stuck the wick to a metal candle thingy (don’t know what it’s called) to get it to stay in place better.
Then I pressed this into the bottom of the peel.
Then I poured the melted wax into the peel. After it cooled just a touch, I stood the wick up in the center (if it wasn’t already there).
And here they are… wick trimmed and all. We used red, orange, purple, and blue colors in our wax (though it’s hard to tell from the picture)
In preparation for my labor (some time in Feb.), I have an idea. I thought it would be nice to have some visual things to focus on during contractions, so here’s the project… In whatever media you chose (paint, crayon, photo, pencil, etc…) capture any or all of these words through art: “Spiral”, “open”, “release”, “relax” , and also the visual of water rippling out from a center (like when you drop a pebble in water). This can be as small as a 3×5 card or as big as a poster board, or anything in between. Then, when I’m in labor, I can pull out one of these and be reminded to move my hips in spiral, or let myself open up to birth, release, and relax… and feel the love of my friends around me.
If this sounds fun and exciting and you feel inclined to make something, let me know and I’ll send my address along.
Thank you!
Check out what I picked off of the roof yesterday! There are lots of calendula flowering, too… if they don’t freeze tonight, I may harvest them and make a nice oil or something.
And, since I begin my third trimester tomorrow (Oh My God!! Where did time go??!!) I thought I’d post a belly picture. I really feel very large! I’m still not 100% convinced that there aren’t two in there 🙂 And we already know that this child will not sleep all the time like Kaia did, ’cause he never stops moving!
We all had an amazing time at Disney World! (I never thought I’d hear myself say that!) Kaia and I met Toby down in Orlando last Sat. (He was already there finishing up a conference). When we got off the plane we were welcomed by sunny 70 degree weather with a gentle breeze, and it stayed that way the whole time we were there! Absolutely beautiful! My Uncle works at Disney part time, so he got us all the discounts he could (included free tickets to the theme parks!) and booked us into one of the Resorts. We stayed at the Disney Carribean Resort where there was a lake surrounded by tropical plants, and many pools for Kaia to chose from. (I grew up in Miami and didn’t realized how much I missed the tropical plant life. The ferns and palms are so prehistoric looking… ) Everyday the housekeeper made animals out of towels to keep Kaia’s stuffed doggie company while we were at the parks 🙂
On Sunday, we went to the Magic Kindom. We got there before the gates opened so we wouldn’t have to wait in too many ride lines. But, the crowds weren’t bad at all. We had no wait at all for many of the rides… Dumbo, It’s A Small World, Peter Pan’s Flight…. Kaia had her picture taken with Ariel, which she loved! We went back to the hotel for an afternoon break and planned on going out to the fireworks that night, but I was a little dehydrated from all the travel and walking around, so I decided to stay in and put my feet up.
Monday, Toby and Kaia went back to the Magic Kingdom and hit more rides, had pictures taken with Jasmine, did some shopping… I stayed at the resort and relaxed on the ‘beach’.
Tuesday we spent the day at Epcot. There were few people there and we didn’t wait at all in lines.
I really can’t remember the last time we truly went on a vacation… I mean, we’ve enjoyed family reunions and trips to the beach, but I don’t think we’ve ever had a vacation like this. All the while, we tried our best to eat well (locally and sustainably) and not contribute to non-sustainable consumerism. I was happy to see that some of the restaurants at Epcot are supported by food grown in their own research nursery (that you can ride through)… they are working on organically and intensively grown crops.
Now, if you ask Kaia what her favorite part of it all was, she won’t say meeting Ariel or Jasmine, she won’t mention the three times she rode the carosel, she’ll forget about all the times she begged to go back to the swimming pool… She’ll say “Shopping!!” Who raised this child??? When did she become a shopper?? But she absolutely loved walking around the shops and looking at all the disney stuff. Ugh!
Here’s all the lard after it was canned. Looks like creamy milk, doesn’t it! I’m really enjoying using it to cook up eggs, veggies, etc…
Kaia and I spent some time making some holiday soaps. This was a batch of Wintergreen/Sweet Orange soap, and she’s mixing in a little cinnamon powder ‘to make swirlies!’, while enjoying a piece of Halloween candy.
The next day, we cut it up into pieces and will let it sit 3 weeks before using it (so it cures and isn’t so caustic). The first batch made 20 pieces of soap (~3 oz each)
The second batch we doubled and ended up with another 44 bars! This one is Clarysage/Ylang Ylang with swirlies of cardamom.
We’ve been getting the garden beds ready. Made 8 raised bed frames with scrap wood. Hopefully that will be enough to get us started this spring. Toby tilled the soil and mixed in lots of leaves and some roof dirt (which will help break up the clay and add some compost). I need to add more compost, manure and soil and will plant some rye for the winter.
We gave Kaia a mini-sling to practice carrying doll babies… But she found a fuzzy, wiggly doll baby she likes better… Snuggle or torture? It depends on who you ask.
She’s also decided she wants to learn how to knit. So she plopped down in the rocker by the fire (an appropriate place for knitting, I think) and pretended for a while. We are going to start a kids knitting group with some other moms when we get back from Disney.
And, what post would be complete without snuggling kitties… Isabella, Daisy, and Chub Chub Max.
From the Royal Mermaid Queen
We headed into West Asheville where there is one street known for it’s trick-or-treating. We’ve never taken Kaia out on Halloween before, ’cause we didn’t want to have to deal with all the candy and scary costumes and stuff. But this year we talked and she decided that she would pick out her 10 favorite pieces of candy and give the rest to the candy fairy in trade for a game or something. We’ll give her some $ for spending at Disney when we go next week. So, anyway, the houses on this street were completely dressed up! And by the end of the street, it was so packed with kids and parents that there had to be many hundreds of kids that came through! She had a blast!
This is one of the dressed up houses:
Here is Kaia’s best friend:
And the Mermaids treasure:
Kaia had a pumpkin carving party tonight with 3 of her girlfriends. It was a lot of fun and a little chaotic 🙂 Once they got all the goop out from inside, they drew all kinds on pictures on the pumpkins. It took a minute to realize that detailed pictures couldn’t be cut out like they wanted. So, Kaia settled on a heart and some random shapes. And she cut everything out herself!
After the party, I cleaned up all the seeds and roasted them. I have always just added a little salt, but this year I decided to get a little decadent. I found a recipe on the web and tweaked it a bit:
Sweet and Salty Pumpkin Seeds:
–2 cups cleaned pumpkin seeds
–2 Tbsp. butter or coconut oil, melted
–2 Tbsp. Soy sauce/tamari
–1 Tbsp. sugar/sweetener
–1/2 tsp. Chinese 5-Spice powder
Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Mix all ingredients in a bowl. Spread the seeds on a cookie sheet. Bake for 45 minutes, stirring every ten minutes. They turn out crispy and very yummy!
Progress on the guest house is slow going because Toby only has a day or two a week to work on it, but it’s looking really cute!
This is the view as you drive up:
This is the side view, where the front door will be:
The other speckeled sussex died this morning. We don’t know what happened to her. She was supposed to be a full sized bird, but didn’t really seem like she was growing normally. Her body stayed fairly small, so I thought maybe she was actually a bantam. But, her head just looked like it never got any bigger. Yesterday she was sluggish and the other chickens started picking on her. They didn’t cause any physical damage that we could see, but as the day wore on, she just sat down and stopped moving. She died over night. Any thoughts?
Kaia and I drove up to Banner Elk for the Woolly Worm Festival this past Sunday. It’s a big fall festival where people bring their woolly worms and race them up a string. The winners of the individual heats race each other until there is one final winner, who gets $1000 and their worms color pattern predicts the upcoming winter weather. They haven’t posted who won this past weekend or what the winter prediction is, but supposedly, over the past 20+ years, the worms have a 85% positive prediction rate :-)!
Kaia and I brought our two worms home and hope to keep them through the winter. In the spring they will turn into Tiger Moths. My worm is the one on top of the paper tube… his name is Arnold. Kaia’s is the one climbing in the tube opening and her name is Sunflower. They were both great racers when they were on our clothes, but once they got on the string they kept turning around and going backwards!
I canned up 10 pints of chili this morning. It was my first attempt at canning up meat, and it turned out really yummy!! Tomorrow I plan to make a very large batch of bone broth to can up. I’ll probably take some of the broth and add some chicken meat and veggies to it to make a chicken soup, and can that up too. It’s funny, I love looking at my filling pantry shelves, but I don’t want to open up any of it! I wonder when I’ll start eating from the supply 🙂
addendum: Here’s the recipe
With the night weather cooling, we’ve noticed a draft coming from under some of the doors. We haven’t done any winter insulating yet, and we need to get on that. But, in the mean time, Kaia and I sewed up some ‘door snakes’. We have a bunch of sand left over from building. So, we stuffed the snakes with sand. They are really heavy… I hope they hold up!!
Kaia woke up early yesterday and couldn’t sleep last night ’cause she was so excited about starting school. She’s been going to a 3 day a week Montessori school, but this is a new school that goes through high school. We’re really excited to see how things go. The school looks fabulous! Kaia will actually be going 3 days a week and home schooling on the other 2 days. That’s one of their ‘school options’ that she can do through the 12th grade if she wants! And check out the curriculum. It makes me want to go back to school 🙂 (oh, and no, she’s not wearing any makeup)
Kaia and I went Blackberry picking yesterday and got gallons of blackberries, and even a few raspberries. The vines were dripping with berries as big and juicy as I’ve ever seen. The raspberries weren’t ready just yet, but the farm owners had picked some of a different variety a few weeks ago and frozen them. So, I got a few gallons of raspberries too. So, we should have lots of yummy jam soon!!
Look at how huge these things are!
We’ve also been canning up some tomatoes. A local organic farm had some problems with their packing boxes and ended up with some bruised tomatoes that their buyers wouldn’t accept. So, they were trying to get rid of them and selling 20# boxes for $12!!! We got two boxes and I can’t find a bruise on them! They are perfect!!
So, tonight we canned some salsa, and on Sunday we are going to can some Pelati and some Roasted Tomato Garlic Soup. MMmmmmm…..
All is well on the baby front. I was showing so early and measuring ahead of dates, that we though we might have twins. So, we decided to go for an ultrasound just to be sure all was ok. Turns out there is one happy baby in there and one freakin huge placenta! From what I understand the main reasons for big placentas are moms with Syphilis (which I don’t have), diabetes (which I don’t have), Rh incompatibility (which we don’t have), and just because. I guess it’s just because. Big placentas often grow big babies… :-O
Isabella and Daisy went in to get spayed last week. Daisy came back her usual self and just bounced all over the place. We tried to keep her calm so that she wouldn’t break her sutures. She did fine, but for some reason Isabella’s wound opened a tiny bit, about the size of a pencil eraser, and she was having some swelling under one of her nipples. So, we took her back in and they put an adhesive on the skin to get the wound to close. But they also had to give her a cone to keep her from licking it.
She was not happy about it, walked around the house backwards, and somehow still got around it to lick the wound. Within a day it was opened up again, so I decided to do it my way. I cleaned the wound and put a sterile dressing with honey on it, then wrapped her belly in an ace bandage. So far so good. She’s able to move around and hasn’t tried to take it off. She’s eating well and I’m giving her some herbs in her food to keep down infection and to decrease the swelling (which is gone now). 
Well, Kaia has had her first big right of passage… Yesterday, we took a family trip to the Mall (which is a rare thing for us) to hit Claire’s boutique! And you know what that means!! Yep, Kaia got her ears pierced!! She’s been asking for a while to do it, and I kept saying ‘talk to your daddy!’. I got my first piercing when I was 3 and never had a problem with my ears and loved having earrings. So, I was fine with it. Toby, on the other hand, was not ready. This is his baby girl getting metal stuck in her ears so that she can look more like Barbie. So, I totally understand. But, yesterday, she talked him into it.
I happened to have a lidocaine cream, so I put some on her ears before we left for the mall. She was so stoic! She said it stung a little, but barely flinched and then wanted to look at more earrings. She chose her birthstone to pierce with.
Now that Kaia is 5, we’ve decided to start giving her an allowance to teach her about money. We tossed around lots of ideas of how it would work, but then we ran across this article. So, Kaia now has 4 jars and each week gets $2 to put into each jar. “Spending” is for immediate satisfaction… to spend on what she wants. “Savings” is when she wants to save up for big purchases (she can take her ‘spending’ money and put into her ‘savings’ jar if she doesn’t want to spend it that week. “Donation” is for giving to her favorite causes… maybe 2-4 times a year we will empty this jar out and give the money to whatever cause she wants. “Investment” is a more long term thing so she can learn about putting money away for the future when she gets older.
She already had a piggy bank where she would put money that she got for gifts and stuff. So she decided to break the piggy bank and buy a doll with that money. The rest of the money will be split between the jars.
Here is her new doll (it’s a porcelain doll she got for $10 from our local fabric store!) and her money jars.
Ok, so I’m writing something that I can’t tell you too much about, just yet 🙂 But I need some help from you! I’m looking for honest stories from the mouths of older siblings about what it was like when their little brother or sister was born. I’d love to hear their impression of the new baby. Any stories would be great! Things like: How did you prepare for the new baby? How did you feel when the baby was born? Did the baby make a lot of noise? Did you like to play with the new baby? Was the baby funny looking at first? Did the baby take over mommy’s lap? What funny things did the new baby do? etc… Any stories are fantastic!
These stories may be published, and of course, I will get your permission first.
I can’t give you too many more details right now, except that I’m writing something very special! 🙂
Please email them to maria at dirtundermynails dot com
Thanks so much! Oh, and pass this on to any friends with kids who may want to share their stories.
I’ve been feeling like making things lately. Kaia’s birthday is coming up and I have been wanting to make her a ‘princess canopy’ for her bed for years. So, I finally got around to it. It came out pretty well, but I have to secure the hoop on the inside better so that it hangs level:
I also promised her that I would make her a ‘hoop skirt’ for her birthday. We’d seen this design at a festival and she loved it, but they were $40. So, I decided to try my hand at it. The first one I made came out badly, so I planned harder for the second one…
First I cut out three panels of fabric all the same size (9″ on top, 24″ sides, and 21″ on bottom). Then I hemmed the sides of each piece and sewed them together (leaving a strip ~2″ in between two of the strips that was not sewn together. I hemmed the top, leaving a small gap and enough space to thread an elastic in. I threaded 19.5″ of elastic (since Kaia’s waist is 20″) and sewed closed the little hole that I put the elastic in through. I then hemmed the bottom so that there was a 1/2″ gap to thread in 1/4″ flexible tubing (I used some plumbing tubing). Along the hem, I used some lace for decoration, and to conceal the hoop. (Remember that 2″ strip on the bottom where the sides weren’t sewn together? Once you hem it, it leaves a gap where you can thread in the tubing, and take it back out if you don’t want to use the hoop.) Thread the tubing in (~5 feet of tubing) and use another piece of tubing that has an inner diameter the same as the outer diameter of the hoop tubing to hold the hoop together.
OK, so if I haven’t totally confused you, here’s how it turned out:
When she walks the hoop holds the dress out away from her… and it has ‘great spin’, which is very important to an almost 5 year old! And the whole thing cost me ~$10.
I also found a skirt in a magazine that I really loved, but it was way out of my price range. So, I tried my hand at making that too. First I needed 20 ‘strips’ of fabric. I used 4 strips each of 5 different fabrics. I cut out a piece of paper to trace my strips from.
Here you see the paper and the pieces traced, before I cut them up.
Once I cut all the fabric, Kaia helped me put it into a design. This is what one of the four panels will look like
Then I sewed all the edges together, sewed an elastic the size of my waist into the top, and hemmed the bottom…
I like it, but it’s not as ‘flowy’ as I had hoped it would be… then I realized that the skirt in the magazine is made of silk, and I used mostly cotton.
I’ve also been gathering some herbs on the land for medicine.
Here’s a giant mullein that I got some flowers from to make an oil:
I also harvested some oats in milky stage to make tincture out of. The tincture is SOOOO green!
And here, just because it’s so beautiful, is a clary sage flower:
I was happily surprised that our little berry patch is doing well this year. After the chickens scratching all around and kicking up so many roots, I didn’t think it would survive. But last week, I saw some red coming from the weed surrounded strawberries and found ~1 1/2 quarts of ripe, red strawberries! I’ve since picked another quart or so.
I wanted to get lots more strawberries so we could freeze a bunch. So, Kaia and I went out for Flying Cloud Farm for a little berry picking yesterday, and got ~2 gallons! MMMMmmmmm!! Their berry patch is huge! The strawberries plants are all so big and healthy, and everything is organic!! (I need to give my berry patch a little time and attention so I can try to get them to grow as big as the ones at the farm!) the patch is surrounded by flowers that you can pick a bouquet of for just a couple of bucks! So, Kaia and I had a really nice afternoon!
Last night we has a pasta dish with a salad topped with strawberries and a strawberry vinaigrette for dinner, and for dessert – strawberries dipped in home made whipped cream.
How’s this for a yummy treat??
Now that we are living in the house, and the projects have slowed down (a little), I feel like Toby and I are taking on roles parents that we haven’t been able to yet. We are playing family games at night, taking outings without having to hurry back home to get some building time in, we are sitting down to healthy, home made meals. It’s been very, very nice!! Though there is still the stress of completing the home projects and paying off the bills, it has lessened.
Kaia and I spent Mother’s Day at the LEAF festival and had a wonderful time. It was relaxing and energizing at the same time. Kaia had brought $25 from her piggy bank so that she could get some fun stuff. We walked all around the fair and she passed up hand-painted butterfly wings and hoop skirts so that she could get this unicorn pill box hat! She’s worn it around ever since. She even wore it to school yesterday! Isn’t it fantastic!?!
Sorry for the slack in posting. All is well here.. just busy. We are settling into the house and really enjoying the space and amenities! Kaia and I are especially having fun cooking together (something that was really hard to do in the little cabin). We ate so poorly the past two years. I had no desire to cook and PB&J was often a main meal. So now, I’m trying to get back on track with healthy, whole foods and lots of local fresh fruits and veggies. I’ve singed up for a weekly recipe mailer through Cooking Traditional Foods. Every week she sends 6 recipes and a dessert, shopping list for those recipes, and when to prepare stuff in advanced. Her site also has recipe and discussion forums, and the recipes are loosely based on Weston Price’s ideas. It’s been really helpful in getting back on track with cooking. I figure I’ll do this for a while until I get into a good rhythm. My only objection is that 5 of the 6 recipes include meat. That’s a lot of meat for me (and gets expensive), so we may use bean and other substitutes.
The animals are doing pretty well. Ralph has decided she has had enough of being a mom and got off the nest. So, no chicks from those eggs. (We can’t invest in an incubator right now.) The cats are all adjusting really well. They have already started snuggling up together, which is really cute. Suki went to the groomers last week and when I picked her up they said a lot of her hair was falling out and she had redness and bruising on her skin. She looked almost bald in patches. I took her to the vet the next day and the blood work showed that her clotting time was a little slow. They think that she either had a really bad allergic reaction to something or that she may have gotten into some rat poison. So, she is on some Vitamin K to get her to stop bruising and increase her clotting time (this is the antidote for Rat poison, too). Her skin is looking mostly better already.
Business is going well for me. I’ve got as many clients as I can handle right now, which is nice. I’m excited to have my office space set up in the cabin. It will be so nice to be able to hear the frogs and the birds during my consultations and not the 18 wheelers rolling by. I’ve had to cancel a few appointments this past week, cause my forearms and hands are covered in poison ivy. Because of the pattern on my arms, I think I might have gotten it off of Suki. I don’t think I’ve ever had it this bad (I usually only get a blister or two). Both arms look all bumpy and scaly. I’ve been using high dose licorice powder (as a paste on my arms, and as a tea) to decrease the swelling. It works well.
I’m giving an herb walk this weekend at the LEAF festival. I got a free ticket the the festival in exchange for the class. So, Kaia and I are going to spend the weekend playing, dancing, swimming, hooping, and having fun!!!
From a conversation in the car on the way to Kaia’s school:
Me- Papaw is coming up today!
K- Yay!! He’s never come up on a school day before!
M- Yeah he has. Lot’s of times.
K- No he hasn’t mommy. I would remember. My mind is better than yours. Your mind Mommy, well, I don’t want to say it’s rotten, but it’s a little rotten.
M- WHAT??!! My mind is not rotten!
K- Well, my mind is better than yours. You don’t ‘member things like I do.
M- Well you only have 4 years of life to remember! I have 34! I have to be selective about what I remember so it doesn’t crowd my brain!
K – Well, my mind is still better than yours.
(this conversation was followed by Kaia singing a song she had just made up that she said was called “deep memories”. But, it was whispered inaudibly, so I couldn’t understand the words.)
Yep, it’s strong enough!
Well, it looks like we have another family member. I’d like to introduce you to Rosie, our baby mouse. We were getting out some bee stuff from storage and found that all of the bagged up hive bodies had mice in them. In the first bag, three grown mice ran out. In the second bag, a momma mouse and 4 babies were in there! The momma ran into a wood pile, so we put the nest with the babies by the pile and she came to get them. But then we found one near our step, all by itself. It wasn’t making any noise and looked like it had an injured arm. So, we took it inside to warm it up. I gave it some rice milk but didn’t think it would make it through the night. It looks to be 1-2 weeks old. It has fur and it’s ears are detached from it’s body, but it’s eyes are still closed and it is still wobbly when it walks. But, when I woke up this morning, it was raring to go. I soaked some bread in rice milk and it ate a little. Looks like it’s arm is moving better, too. Still, it isn’t eating much. I don’t think it has had anything but mousey milk. Tomorrow we will head to the pet store to get better baby mouse food and a little cage.
How can you not love that face??
And for easter, Kaia and her gradma made an egg tree 🙂
We’ve had a hard week. I began bleeding this past Sat. and had a full miscarriage on Monday. When I passed the amniotic sac I was able to see that there was no baby in there. It looked like the development stopped pretty soon after implantation and it just took my body a few weeks to realize that there was nothing growing. Which is probably why I was having such an easy pregnancy with little symptoms. We are all very sad, but hanging in there. It makes it a little easier to think that the baby’s spirit realized that this might not be a good body for him and decided not to come. It also makes it easier to know that we will meet this little one when the time is right. Kaia has been doing so great. When I told her that the baby decided not to come to meet us right now, I started crying and she went and got me a tissue. She keeps asking me if I’m sad and if there is anything she can do. Her teacher told me yesterday that during ‘circle time’ (when they go around and say what they are thankful for that day) she said she was thankful for her mommy, her daddy, and that even though the baby’s spirit went back to the spirit world, it would be back some time so she could meet him. She’s such an amazing little girl!
This past Sunday was my birthday and it was fantastic!!!
Woke up to breakfast in bed, then laid in bed and relaxed/read until 11am.
Went down stairs and had chocolate peanut butter cup ice cream with cherries on top for lunch.
Went to the Spa and had a hot stone massage and facial.
Went out to dinner at the French Broad Chocolate Lounge (truffles and gourmet brownies)
Followed by Salad for dessert 🙂
Got taken out to Hot Springs for a dip in the mineral springs.
Drove home and slept like a baby!
And guess what Toby got me for my birthday? Continue reading
We are proud to announce the marriage of Kaia and Max! The blushing bride wore a white, sparkley princess gown with pink slippers, and the groom… well the groom was none to happy about his white veil. Seems his bride made a last minute change from his elegant black tux with tails to a shiny polyester veil with cheap elastic.
The Bride kept a smile on through the whole ceremony, but as you can see, the groom is not the happiest about the clothing mishap, though he still looks quite stunning.
After the ceremony, the groom spent the rest of the evening sitting on another woman’s lap, sulking while his bride danced the night away.
How to create laughter in the home after being snowed in for days with a sick child?
Read Strawberry Shortcake books and replace every ‘berry’ word with ‘booty’.
“Once upon a time, Strawbooty Shortcake joined her booty best friends for a picnic. After they had eaten, Strawbooty sighed with happiness, “that was the booty best picnic ever!” she exclaimed. “Oh Strawbooty, our picnic’s not over yet” Rainbow Sherbet said, “Bluebooty’s going to read us a story”. “I brought my favorite book for fairy tales” added Bluebooty Muffin……”