Introducing

Introducing.....my son. Choo Choo Charlie. My family is complete.

Gardening

Even though summer has waned I'm still busy trying to squeeze in a few more things....winter onions, more peas and spinach and lettuce.

I'm obsessively seed saving too. I bought some beautiful striped eggplant from the farmers market last week just for the seeds. Fall is always what gets me in trouble.

The planning of next years garden is always so exciting. I'll be cursing myself next year when spring opens up and I have way too many projects planned.

Gardening 2008

Gardening is something that gives me a great amount of peace and sense of accomplishment. This time last year we were wallowing in a bumper crop of peppers, tomatoes, squash and zucchini.

Not so this year. After our 3 week vacation I came back to a pretty stressed out garden. Most was turning brown and dying even though I had paid a neighborhood handyman to water everything for me.

I've picked one tomato, one pepper and handful of peas, lettuce & berries. I'm gearing up again though and planting more lettuce, peas & carrots, some spinach & bunching onions. I placed a small order from Seeds of Change, my first. I've read about them over the past year as I follow the trials and tribulations in Big Mama's gardening adventures. Before I plant my new seeds I'm going to move the containers back to last year's spot to see if I do any better. I keep dreaming of the day when I have a large enough space to plant a garden like my Aunt Pauline's. As a kid I was in awe of how many vegetables she grew right outside her back door.

I've been reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle this past week and I'm in love. As an avid user of the local library it's rare that I find a book that I like enough to actually want to own. This is an exception. It's already lead me to place a request for Home Cheesemaking from the library. AVM has so many good tidbits I'm hoping to read it one more time before it's due next week.

I love learning new things, especially things I can make with my hands. I'm utterly buzzing with excitement about the prospect of making homemade mozzarella cheese.

More Cohousing Research

We're still very interested in cohousing....even more so when you really wish you knew your neighbors well enough that you could leave your 4 yr olds with them while you take your baby to the emergency room.

We visited the local cohousing group that is still in the process of retrofitting buildings. We really liked their eco focus but I don't think it will have enough green space to make me happy. I'm getting tired of living in a sea of concrete.

This weekend we'll be taking a trip to Lawrence KS to visit the cohousing community there.

My Leap Year Baby

Yesterday was Lili's 1st birthday! She's a leap year baby and she turned 4 yesterday. We had a great party at one of those bouncy inflatables places. Fun, fun, fun! I think we are more wore out than the kids. Jumping around like that is such good exercise. If gyms were more like that I think I would make more time to workout. We had just as much fun as the kids I think.

We Lili a Diego cake as she's been so into him and baby Jaguar. Rrrarrrr! Since most of the party was taken care of by the staff (they even cut and served the cake and made a list of gifts and givers for thank you cards) we were able to spend a little more time throughout the week working on the cake. Making the little cookie animals was my favorite part and I might make them again for a special occasion.

This was our first time using fondant, not too bad. It's Marshmallow Fondant which is basically just melted marshmallows and sugar. Really easy to do. The idea of the cake was from Nick Jr's website. If you have a preschooler that likes Nick Jr. characters they have tons of great birthday party ideas.

One Year

This morning while cooking a Saturday breakfast of blueberry pancakes and bacon(Lili's favorite food in the entire world) a flower delivery man rang the doorbell.

My DP, who is always great at celebrating little things, sent us a blue and white floral arrangement to celebrate One Year Ago when CJ arrived. This has been the fastest year ever. I remember vividly the first few months of Jo's life, documenting every little milestone. Fast forward to number 3 (actually #5) and poor CJ hasn't even had his one year pictures done. Ah to be so blissfully busy right?

I am really in awe at how much this big boy brings to my life. He is such a mama's boy and I love every minute of it. He's getting such a personality and is picking up sign language sooo fast. He learns at the speed of light and is doing something new every day. He's not even looking like a baby anymore, so quickly he's become a full fledged toddler. He deserves a new name here because he really thinks it's his name in real life. Choo-Choo.

His first birthday party was a few weeks ago and we made a train cake for our little Choo Choo. It turned out so cute. Grandma and Grandpa will bring down his new Train toddler bed that we bought off of Chicago Craigslist next week. He has almost completely destroyed the crib that has made it through 5 others before him. Boys. They're so different.

One year ago I was basking in baby love, now I'm running after a giggly toddler. Wow.

So happy one year Choo-Choo. Mama loves you so very much!

Survivor/Biggest Loser Renovation

Let me preface this by saying I really did enjoy renovating the house. Most of the time though I compared it to either Survivor or The Biggest Loser. The amount of physical labor involved was enough to make me lose about 7 pounds in the three weeks we were gone. We even went to the gym this weekend to try to carry on with this jumpstart to the new year. We worked from morning until the wee hours of the night every day renovating. I hadn't seen the news or talked to friends in ages.

The girls watched WAYYYY too much TV to keep them corralled in one area while we worked on the rest. So if I had any advice....it's not to do this with little one's underfoot. Poor CJ thinks his new name is NO. Lili got really sick while we were there and we found out that her insurance doesn't cover her past her home state or a direct bordering state. That's kinda crappy isn't it?

I'm so glad to be back to the pace of regular life. I'm enjoying slowing down and spending some time with the kids. Now if CJ's SW would just call us back about when she scheduled the new Family Support Team meeting for.

Before and After

Three weeks of physical labor including painting, scraping, plumbing, flooring, electrical and everything else you can think of. I actually had a blast, frustrating as it was when the sink kept leaking....it was hard and so much fun.

I'll post more pics and such later. 7 hours in the car and I can't wait to sleep in my own bed.

The Best Part of Christmas

This year was the first year that the girls really understood holidays. During Hanukkah Josie was very excited to be able to light the Menorah herself. This Christmas Lili wasn't even afraid to sit on Santa's lap and they were both soooo excited Xmas Eve.

The best part of Christmas was making that dream come alive for them. While Mommy was upstairs reading Twas the Night Before Christmas. I went outside under their windows and shook jingle bells. They couldn't wait to go to sleep because they didn't want to miss Santa. I even put reindeer "hoofprints" on the front porch and took bites out of the carrot they left for Rudolph. LOL I loved it! They ran downstairs Xmas morning and before the presents they wanted to check and see if Santa ate his cookies and if Rudolph ate his carrot.

CJ had a great first Xmas and loved opening presents. He went from toy to toy and checked everything out.

Bad Blogger

I've been a bad blogger lately. I know. Life has been swirling and swishing all around me lately and it's wonderful. As a SAHM my life is often mundane and routine so sometimes it's nice to be caught up in a whirlwind. Even if it is quite hectic....and a little stressful.

So back to our Lakehouse dream. We've been looking at different investment options for a while. My wife and I are a great team and often revisit and revise goals as they come within reach. We've been able to pull ourselves out of debt, create a family and carve out a wonderful home for ourselves by goal setting and planning. We would be great business partners if I could ever decide on just one thing to do with my life.

We've been researching real estate investments and came across Christine Hrib Karpinski's book Profit from Your Vacation Home Dream: The Complete Guide to a Savvy Financial and Emotional Investment in a magazine article. It fit exactly with what we were trying to do. We were trying to make a financial decision yet fulfill an emotional dream. So we jumped and purchased a place that just yesterday showed up on the top 25 places to raise kids. How cool is that?

Circle of Life

So this past summer we visited a little town in Michigan on the lake. We loved it. We've been thinking about buying an investment property that might serve as my retirement account (since as a non working partner of a same sex couple I cannot have an IRA or 401K) and possibly second income. We took the leap this week and bought a place near Lake Michigan. Eeeekkk!

I'm busy as *&*)#$ dealing with inspectors, appraisers, real estate agents and mortgage companies.

I promise I'll be back soon and give y'all more details.

Felt Sushi

We had sushi for lunch today in honor of the felt sushi I made last night after the kiddos went to sleep. I'm having a blast with this.

Felt Food

My newest little obsession. I stumbled across this blog a few days ago and have fallen in love. Our goal for this holiday is to make most of our gifts or give "experience" gifts (theater tickets, museum memberships) for friends and family.

I love this little fake food. Mine is made out of inexpensive crappy felt squares you can find anywhere. The kids love it. I love it. It's so completely blissful to me to do the same monotonous motion of hand sewing. I get lost in the tiny stitches and the spacing between them. I love that in 10-15 minutes and can dream up, start and finish an entire little project. I ordered a craft book on ebay with lots more ideas. If you know me IRL don't be surprised if your kids end up with a big grocery sack of felt food from me. Who knew a unedible sugar cookie could be so satisfying?

Babywearing

I've been trying to write a post (and email back a fellow foster parent....I'm still with ya Beth) and none of my words are coming out right. I swear the older I get less and less stays in my head. I'll be going towards something look to the side at the cat and forget what I was walking towards. Information falls out randomly. But anyway.

I've been babywearing since Jo was born. I found information about Kangaroo care when looking for help for preemies. That lead to babywearing. I started out making my own ring slings then Mei Tais. I later starting purchasing carriers at www.thebabywearer.com after I became too busy with babies to sit down and sew. I have a ring sling, a wrap, a few mei tais, a podeagi and now two soft structured carriers. CJ has been my biggest baby yet and I recently starting looking for a heavy duty carrier to keep up with his weight gain. Yesterday my new carrier came in. I'm still fiddling with it and getting used to a high tech carrier but take a look at my Beco Baby Carrier.

It came at just the right time. We've all ended up with vicious colds. CJ has started wanting nothing but mama. He fell asleep in the Beco yesterday when I was just trying it on. He is clinging to me most of the day even though he's crawling like a champ and already pulling up to stand.

Photo Post

Ah....feels like fall

Sometimes I think that as a stay at home mom I'm isolated, sometimes I think I'm so overwhelmed with people needing me that I'll never be alone.

This pic is from my "Mom's Day Off" that I had about two weeks ago. DP took a day off to stay home with the kids and I got up and left the house at about 8:30 and didn't return until suppertime. It's been three years since I've had a day off just for me (my last pap smear I had my feet in the stirrups and a cranky baby in my arms).My day was more than wonderful. It was bliss/happy/calm/energizing good. I took my camera and had a photography morning at a local sculpture park, did some shopping (alone!) and went fishing with my mom. I really miss nature. I really do. Having non-walkers really limits where you can go. I wonder if my kids think nature is the stuff that surrounds the playground in the park. It was so peaceful to be surrounded by green and even dip my toes into a creek. It has me thinking that we need a little lake house somewhere.

Bumper Crop

I'm lovin the garden right now. I wish I could grow lawn in little pots. This year's garden helps me plan next years garden and what I need to do differently. First I need to plant ONE tomato plant. Lili and I are the only ones who will eat them. I need to plant half the amount of bell peppers - they have done sooo well and everyone likes them....but we're soooo sick of bell peppers and the plants are still growing strong.

I've started gathering seeds from flowers that I see going to seed (daylilies in parking lots, hibiscus at the zoo) and I'm going to clear out one planter just for flower starts.

I'm going to get my mom and MIL these planters for next year and build some stands for them. My mom even printed out the above picture and showed all her neighbors what her citified daughter is growing. I love it.

Jo's Birthday Party

This past weekend was Josie's 3rd birthday party. She's been so excited and continually asks "Is today my birthday?" We'll be at GrammaGramma Grampa's on her actual birthday July 6th and she is going to be spoiled rotten. I can't believe my teeny tiny baby is this sassy, sweet diva.

We've tried to convince her that "the people" don't let three year olds wear diapers. She has to wear underwear after she turns three. (My pretty pretty princess picked out little boys race car underwear). I don't know if it will work but I'm willing to try anything, including lying and scare tactics. Aren't I just horrible? Toddlerhood is wearing me down. They are stubborn, energetic little creatures. Who decided that this stage should be right after the sleep deprivation of infanthood? There's a design flaw there (yes I'm speaking to you god/buddha, higher power).

Photo Post

Today I wanted to put up some pics I've been meaning to share but haven't taken the time to write about.

1. A pic of Jo and her first BFF. Our newly adopted cat Maestro.

2. A picture I took of my newest great-niece, Lana Arlene, with her mom and brother.

Fresh peas

I am thoroughly enjoying myself as a gardener this season! I love my Garden Patch boxes because it makes it so easy to see success. I started out just growing on the balcony of our loft and I've expanded my garden to the back yard. I keep dreaming of next years garden and how much bigger it's going to be. We're already enjoying the sweetest sugar snap peas and my lettuce should be salad size soon.

I checked out a couple of books from the library this week on sustainable farming and mindful eating. I'm especially liking Harvest for Hope by Jane Goodall (the chimpanzee lady). As our garden keeps growing I'm becoming more excited about preparing meals. I often struggle with food in general but I'm feeling less stress about it right now as I see it go from seed to plate. I've been reading Sarah's blog and I'm going to use her Kale recipe on some swiss chard I bought at the farmers market this past weekend.

Now if only those tomatoes would hurry up!