E-yi-ya

 Remember this guy...?

Two weeks old

June 2013

Curly-headed Eliah Len 

18 months old

December 2014

 Painting like one of the brudders --

He absolutely insisted on it.

Funny how life changes: I never even considered him,

whereas I'm sure I had Truen painting long before this.

He's still such a baby to me.

Running up our driveway last weekend --

This year it has been "November in December"

and "December in November" in terms of snow and temps.

The Semi-annual Pumpkin Picture

 

My two favorite shots - #18 and #31.  Blaine went bananas behind me to keep their attention while I snapped away (thank goodness it wasn't another 2012).  Often the very first picture is the very best, but not this year.

We didn't carve pumpkins last year.  I can't remember exactly why, though I think it may have been the combo of new baby and no pumpkins from our garden.  Or maybe it was too cold?  Or could it have been that we were too upset about my BIL's cancer?  I honestly have no memory.  I don't even remember being sad about it.

This year Diego and Truen carved their own pumpkins.  In typical fashion, Diego imploded and stomped off all upset in angst and sheer disappointment, as carving was harder-than-it-looked and things-weren't-perfect, while Truen patiently worked toward the end goal without a hitch.  Jamie wanted a "mad-looking" pumpkin and Eliah was just happy to mingle.  The feathers strewn around are the remnants of butchering from the previous weekend.

Years' past for all our viewing pleasure:  

2012

2011

2009

2008

Our very own winter games

Last winter was the season of "Musical Footstools".  I had the three brudders run around three footstools at break-neck speed, then sit as fast as they could when the music stopped.  Whoever sat first would win.  Anyone who passed another would be out a turn (to protect the two year old in the mix).

I was pregnant and sat at the computer to turn the volume up or down, playing music from the special Musical Footstools playlist.  It was a great way to burn off winter energy. This year we haven't played it at all, which surprises me.  The few times I've suggested it have left me high and dry.

This winter has been the winter of Hide and Seek.  We played it quite a bit earlier in the season, usually on teams.  Jamie, the baby and I would hide while Diego and Truen sought.  To prevent peaking and allow for last-minute scrambles, we would alternate hiding upstairs and down, with the seekers always counting downstairs if we were upstairs and vice versa.

Jamie could hardly stand hiding longer than a few seconds and would start squeaking and saying "hoo-hoo!" the second they came looking for us, so I tried to help him find his spot first so he couldn't rat me out immediately.  Diego and Truen always found him right off the bat, then Jamie would join the seekers.

I also hide the baby in clever spots, which all the brudders loved.  I would lay Eliah down in odd spots or tucked away in corners; he would lay there kicking and looking around while his brudders came looking.

I thought about all that this afternoon, when Diego asked if we could play Hide and Seek.  I realized . . . holy smokes . . . we wouldn't even be able to play it like that anymore.  Baby Eliah would just crawl off and endanger himself the second I sat him down.  Things change so fast this baby year.

They loved finding him in his "hiding spot" and would lavish all kinds of baby talk on him and laugh about how cute he was, then Diego would pick him and up come looking for me.  I have such fond memories of it all.

More recently the game is usually "kitty".  Today Jamie was "Extra Extra Ice Cat" and hissed at anyone who talked to him.  Truen was "Snuggly" and pawed at my hair playfully.  Diego played himself as a dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks cat named  "Hungry" who tried to eat my hair like it was grass.  Eliah was my baby kitty.

The boys have also been spending 1-2 afternoons each week outside playing with our neighbor boys.  The wind has blown amazing drifts in the native grass that we planted to the south of our driveway and they've been having so much fun running and rolling up and down them.  A nice break for mama too.

Ruthless

I was always the kind of girl that saved everything.

Pretty much anything was fair game in the realm of keepsakes and nostalgia: rocks, pressed leaves, notes, necklaces, socks, holey underwear, pots, plants, dried oranges, pressed orange peels, hats, hair ribbons, clips, drinking cups, markers, magazines, beauty products, shoes.  Heck, you name it.  I've probably saved it.

This is one of my fine qualities (ahem) that drives my tidy husband insane.  And I'm sure it drove my mom insane before him.  I was like a giant, heavy nostalgia magnet unable to let anything go.

But no more.  As I get older, I am slowly making my move to the other side.

I am starting to get ruthless.

Clutter irritates me.  Useless junk piled up in storage spaces drives me batty.  Broken toys feel my wrath.  I am more than ready to chuck whatever unfortunate excess that comes across my path.  I can't take it anymore.  Even items I once clung to with tender remembrances aren't very safe anymore.  I just don't have the capacity of time or energy to preserve it.  Or perhaps it just isn't as important to me anymore.

I announced this to Blaine the other night and got an effective huzzah! amen! it's about time! in response.  I'm finally catching up with him in this dept.  It used to be a fight, but now I'm joining his team.

We have several avenues to remove built-up junk at our house.

• Semi-valuable, useful, and rare items are sold on eBay or consigned
• Ordinary but useful items are given to thrift stores; ditto on excess toys 
• Excess paper products, recycled; likewise on all the other recyclables
• Trash = garbage

Consigning has actually been very useful.  You pay a fee to the consignor to sell the item, but there is absolutely no work involved and that makes it sooooo worth it.  You can also sell larger items or stuff of regional interest that wouldn't necessarily sell (or sell for much) on eBay.  We've succeeded in ridding ourselves from horded household items, dumpster-diving quests, and portions of the lifetime accumulations we've gotten from several sets of older folks moving to a smaller space.

Just this weekend, after organizing a work space to attack my gargantuan mending pile (which was eventually halted by a sewing machine malfunction), I was grim in my resolve to rid ourselves of some of my last holdings.  That $1,000 wool rug that we bought before having children?  The one we've never used because our cat Lester peed on it the first time we ever unrolled it?

Yeah.  That one.  That baby is getting the boot.  I am done.

Third tooth

 The result of a game of "pillow monster" the day before yesterday --

Truen accidentally bashed into Diego's mouth

right as he was pretending to bite him.

He pushed and twiddled it with his tongue all yesterday morning

(like you see in the above photo) until it just plopped out.

I wasn't as sad this time 'round, 

though it does change the look of his face.

Strangely enough --

Just this week I looked at his face with nostalgia,

thinking how different he'd look with his baby teeth gone.

Singing by the fire

In December 2005 my brother made up a song inspired the bumbling Master of Disguise, Chief Inspector Clouseau.  He was home on Christmas break with his guitar and I was home visiting with Baby Diego.  My sister was still in high school and on winter break.  We had nothing pressing to do, nothing at all. 

We sat around a lot in those days and this visit was no exception.  We lounged in the living room in front of the fire and sang the song together, very sweetly.  Over and over and over again.  It is soft and folky, nothing like you would imagine the sound of a fake peg-legged pirate with an inflatable parrot on his shoulder and a rubber nose singing right before he fell off a foggy pier into the murky waters below.

We bumped into the video I took of it the other night and it triggered much nostalgia.  I wish I could post it, but it resides on a mini-DVD vs. our hard-drive.  It is sweet, oh so sweet.  Sing it mournfully in your head as your read it.

Does it have a title, Erik?

Sixteen chests on a dead man's rum,
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of the kip-per,
Drink to the devil and ohhhh-ohhhh-ohhhhh
ohhhhhh-ohhhhhh-ohhhhhh
Sploosh.

Inspired by this scene in Revenge of the Pink Panther, starting at 2:22 --

The Annual Pumpkin Picture

If this series isn't positive proof that we need Squeeze HERE while taking pictures, I don't know what is.  I couldn't get them to hold still or look at me at the same time.  Sheeeeeeeeesh.  We ran out of time on the weekend we carved them and it is too dark to take pictures by the time he gets home from work.  I wanted pictures before the pumpkins started to mold and rot, thus the solo attempt.

I carved Jamie's cute little guy and Squeeze carved the boys' pumpkins based off their specific instructions.  They picked their pumpkins out on our outing to "Pumpkin Fest" (though Truen ended up using the one good one from our own garden vs. the lop-sided mammoth that he had picked out).

Pumpkin Pictures: 2011, 2009, 2008

Seasons in clothing and life

I finally finished re-organizing the boys' winter clothing for storage in our household's biannual seasonal clothing change.  Just yesterday.  It is a task that I both enjoy and dread.

On one hand, I am pleased to remember how blessed we are.  I revel in the base-level practicality of it all, knowing that I don't need to even think about clothes for the next boy.  I like the nostalgia of memories triggered of my boys at certain ages.  I love the frugality.

On the other hand, it is a fairly sizable task to tackle while my three little guys dance around me.  It always seems insurmountable and I usually put it off for weeks and weeks.

But as I folded baby clothes yesterday morning, the ones that Jamie has grown out of, stacked upstairs for later organization, I felt the weight of sadness.  The memories.  Those little, soft baby clothes with the sweet-smelling, fat baby that goes in them.  My tender heart!  Indeed . . . babies are very likely becoming a thing of the past for our little family.  It makes me so sad.  I can't even bring myself to speak of it in certain terms.

No more babies?  Never to birth again??  Never to hold my own newborn close, savoring every little snort and grunt?  Never again?  It hurts, ladies.  It hurts.  And it is probably - I think - pretty much, most likely, the end.  Probably.  I think.

I know we must all go through it to some extent, but it is just. so. sad.

Just like brudder

Just like brudder.  Always.

It is so fun to watch the wheels turning in his little head,

seeing how he works it out to mirror his brudders.

(I remember my sister squatting like this with me when she was a similar age.)

On a sidenote: Truen wore those shoes when he was 2.5 years old.

And they definitely won't fit Jamie next summer.

Currently: Schtinks = 27 lbs :: Truen = 32 lbs

I thought I'd try to get a good shot of the three of them while I was at it.

No luck . . .

Though I do love seeing what each of them are up to.

They are sitting in front of the chicken yard --

currently we have 9 chick(en)s which we will butcher this fall.

(We liquidated our egg-laying stock last fall.)

Same thing.  Just like brudder.

He insisted on having his towel wrapped around him

just exactly like Truen had his towel wrapped.

He has been wanting to "help" in the kitchen too --

In this case, making ice cream.

Yesterday he was "helping" me pound bread crumbs.

On the step-stool, a good 2-3 feet off the ground.  Gah!

I spent most of my time hovering,

worrying about a misstep vs. getting dinner done.

(: But how I love this little brudder. :)

Home again / Home again / Jiggety-jog

Here we are, at home again, again.  And I didn't miss any flights, hallelujah.

I will never forget the spring of 2011 arriving at the gate in Seattle just as the door was closing, pushing a loaded stroller, the baby hanging in the sling in front of me while literally dragging the wailing 3 year old, the 5 year old trotting alongside of us holding on to the stroller.  Why Truen wasn't in the stroller I'll never know (or remember).

Or, same flight, at the layover of my re-directed route to Salt Lake City, feeling like an earthquake survivor, yellow baby poo smeared all over my pants (mid-flight poop blow-out), grappling with the aftershock of missing the last three of our four flights and realizing that something in my plan of attack needed some major adjustment.  Yeah.  It was lovely.

But this time my dad accompanied us to the gate with a pass from "special services".  I was jittery while waiting in line the brief few minutes it took to get to the counter for the pass.  And though we wouldn't have been late to the gate anyway, it definitely allowed for a more leisurely walk and an extended good-bye.  I was so grateful for my dad's presence. (Note to self: do this every time.) 

I even got to go to the bathroom all by myself, a rare-known treat these days, to which my dad so hilariously quipped, "I'm a big girl now!" when I told him how surreal it felt as I washed my hands and walked out of the bathroom door completely unharrassed.  Oh my . . . it makes me chuckle even now.

Squeeze met us with lots of hugs and happiness at the airport for our 10:50 PM arrival.  We got home somewhere between midnight and 1:00 AM and finally simmered down enough for bed-time around 1:45 AM (though that would have been 11:45 PM to our bodies, which had adjusted to Pacific time).  The boys ran around, reacquainting themselves with the house and exclaiming how different it looked and how good it felt to be home.

And, LOL, the next day Diego even protested the need for a nap, saying, "but there are so many adventures to have at home now that we are back at our house!"  But let the record state: he was sawing logs within minutes of laying down.  We were zonked.

It feels good to be home (MN).  Being home (WA) was such a good break in the action for me.  Re-connecting with roots.  Soaking up the green.  Leisurely visiting with family.  The pleasure of seeing my boys know and love their grandparents and aunts and uncles.  Experiencing respite from the "usual grind" and the ensuing feeling of a refreshed perspective on life . . .  yes . . . it has been good.

Much love to all.

<< Memory Transport >>

We're still at my parents' house, savoring every moment . . .

At home I usually use either Dr. Bronner's Sal Suds or OxyClean to remove stains from clothing.  Sal Suds is particularly effective on grease stains and will remove the problem even after going through the dryer, while OxyClean removes almost any grime with a long, hot soak.  I'm sure you all have hammered out your own methods.

So the other day when I needed to attack some greasy-grimy clothing, I pulled out my mom's weapon of choice: Spray n' Wash, and was instantly transported to the free-wheelin' feelin' of the exhilaration and excitement of being home for Christmas break during college. 

I thought about it more and realized that my parents still had a houseful of kids at that time and two grimy teenage boys who were full-bore in their glory years of wrestling and puberty.  The washer/dryer set-up at my parents' house back then was in the back entry, entirely open to the rest of the floor and the downstairs had a permeating scent of Spray n' Wash.  And no wonder.

Amazing how a scent can conjure such memory and emotion. Freedom. Enthusiasm. Discovery. Missing my main squeeze, but enjoying the drama of it all. Spending time with immediate and extended family. Seeing old friends. Thoughtful daybook entries. Watching my sibs play Legend of Zelda on the Nintendo64. Slow days. Inspiration. Cloudy skies. Endless free-time. Showering whenever I wanted to. Sleeping in. Freedom.

Ahhhhhh, it was grand.

Home again / Home again / Jiggety-jig

We are back at my parents' house in Western WA and I didn't even miss my flight to get here.  We flew out of Sioux Falls, where we walked outside and climbed a rolling stairway to get onto the plane.

So far we've stayed home a lot, and have seen a couple of aunts and a grandma, a brother, a sister, and a SIL.  The boy-ohs amassed a large collection of pet bugs stored in plastic containers within the first couple of days.  They have spent a good chunk of time in the misty, moisty mornings, when cloudy was the weather, outside.  Truen has his very own spotted pet slug and Diego has the tiniest little brown salamander that he found in the crook of a rotting log, about the half the size of my pinky finger. 

The grass is green, the trees are budding, crocus and daffodils are up, and the birds are twittering.  Spring . . . the most beautiful of seasons here in the Pacific Northwest.  Ahhhhhh . . . I am soaking it in.  Though Squeeze did report that it was in the mid-60s F at home yesterday.  Yow!  Talk about unseasonably warm.

My parents heat with wood, so the house is toasty warm and the boys are running around in their undies for most of the day.  They do that at home too, but here they have a valid excuse.  It is haaaaaaht.  I'm in a t-shirt and little pants vs. the woolens I usually cavort around in at home in the winter.

I am enjoying the relative leisure of being here, my main job being to keep these wild things tame.  I'm cooking and cleaning as well, but it has a different, less suffocating feel to it.  And there is so much less of a toy mess to wrangle.  A nice reprieve.  And.  And!  I should say.  I'm trying to relax and enjoy my boy-ohs.  Play.  Read.  Snuggle.  I do all these at home too, but I feel less pressured to finish and start on some other task here.  It feels good.

My dad is reading Prince Caspian aloud to us, which brings a menagerie of memories and atmosphere back for me.  Diego is transfixed, Truen listens while he plays, and I try to keep the baby under wraps while sitting and listening, which involves a lot of belly-bouncing and lazy nursing.

So here we are.  Home.  It feels so good to be a daughter again, re-connecting with my roots.

Love to all.

The Pumpkin Picture

Laughing at their daddy

I'm lovin' the pumpkin pictures!  I want to make this an annual tradition.  We did it in in 2008 and again in 2009, but when I combed the memory banks this weekend, I realized that we didn't do it last year.  Why not??

And then I remembered.

Blaine carved pumpkins out of the sheer force of will (for the boys' happiness) after a day of butchering 24 chickens.  The day before Halloween.  The next day, as he was laying prostrate on the couch not wanting to move, I gathered my meager reserves and took the boys to their grandparents' house for some trick-or-treating.  Out of sheer force of will.  Hobbling the entire time on my poor pregnant legs.  Then I myself spent the next couple of weeks laying on the couch, practically bedridden.

Things are much better this year.

Blaine did all the carving, following each boy's special request for the shape of the eyes, nose and mouth.  Except Schtinky, who pooped out and had to nap halfway through, and got the cutest little one-toothed baby pumpkin ever.

I didn't carve because I was cutting up apples for sauce while keeping the baby as happy as I could in the backpack until he could take it no longer.  (Sidenote: I canned another 8 quarts of applesauce last night and 9 pints of cantaloupe pickles.)

What I love most about this picture of the boys - aside from the yearly tradition it has become, how much the boys are growing, the fact that Truen and Jamie are of similar size, all their adorable little faces, the autumn-ish feel to it, and my fondness for the pumpkins - are Schtinky's tan lines in the fat rolls on the ankle of his right foot.

See 'em?  Precious.

11 years

 1999

Lexington Apartments (Blaine's place)

I've always loved this picture --

and I still have that shirt.

 2004

Gooseberry Falls, Two Harbors, MN

Photo taken by LSJF

(Lyndi)

 2009

Snowed in and LOVING it --

It ended up being the Four Days of Christmas.

Lovely, just lovely.

2011

Diego's 6th birthday

No longer just the Two of Us . . . 

Now we are the Five of Us

It is nice to be married in 2000, because I never have to do the math.  It is 11 years today (+ 4 = 15 years total, yowza).  I feel happy, settled, understood. 

Our relationship feels like a comfortable and colorful pair of woolen socks on a chill night under the stars.  Immature fights are a thing of the past, his smile and scent is home, and we are just as intrigued by each other and the things around us as ever. 

Only now it includes three bright and bellowing boys bouncing all over us.

A menagerie

I'm going to start Jamie's birth story this afternoon.  I wonder how many days it will take me?

In other news:

• One of the side benefits of bathing every few days is that it makes a hot shower feel like an absolute luxury.  I can hardly believe how amazingly wonderful it feels.  It makes it almost worth it.  My preference is to shower every other day.
• I have fancy long nails for the third time in my life.  With every pregnancy, my nails become a lot stronger and I grow them out as an experiment.  This time instead of cutting them all back as soon as one breaks, I've been filing them.  That's what it's called, right -- a nail file?  It sounds wrong.  Anyway, I like them, but it is kind of annoying too.  I can feel them as a type.  And I've found that I have to handle things differently because they get in the way.  Definitely not working hands.
• I had my last postpartum appointment with my midwife yesterday.  I felt very sad that I wouldn't be seeing her again very soon, if at all.  Another chapter closes.  There was another 3.5 week old baby there and I couldn't believe how small she was.  The hostess of whose home we were using referred to Jamie as a "bruiser" in comparison to her petite frame.  He seemed to be stronger too, with better control over his head and arms.  Interesting.
• Jamie is definitely more like Diego when he was a baby.  Diego was the one that all the great-grandmas referred to as "husky".  (Oh, how I loved that!)  Truen was always (and is) very small, at the bottom of the charts, the baby that made the nurses wonder if he was "eating enough" or growing well enough.  He's just small -- there's nothing wrong with that.  In fact, as a three year old, he's wearing clothes that Diego wore at two.  Size: 2T.  And we still have to roll the pants.
•  Squeeze broke down his 72 gallon bow-front aquarium this weekend.  The remnants of the fish have been moved to a 10 gallon tank (which shows how many we actually had left) and drained all the water out the window.  There just isn't time for such a massive hobby in his life right now.  And it isn't even massive, really.  Just a few hours a month, but even that was too much.  He's had it up since 2001.  It used to be at the end of our bed in our duplex on Humboldt in Minneapolis and we watched it every night, mesmerized.  It is truly the end of an era, though neither of us are sad about it.

Over and out.

Nothing better

Honestly, is there anything tastier than a green bean just picked from the garden? Eating one always reminds me of my grandpa and his garden from my girlhood. Delish.

And it's hard to hold a candle / In the cold November rain . . .

November Rain came on iTunes this evening . . . and honestly . . . I felt like I was 15 years old again. Isn't it amazing how a song (or any sound, really, or a scent or conversation) can transport you back in time?

My first-and-only "slow-dance" of my teenage years was to November Rain at the Homecoming dance my freshmen year of highschool. All nine miserable minutes and twelve exrutiating seconds of it. That was the same Homecoming where I hid in a side-room to avoid being tailed by another boy who I knew was going to ask me to slow-dance. (I was so scared . . . I just couldn't handle things like that at that point in my life.)

And I didn't return to another school dance until the middle of my junior year when I couldn't resist the fun anymore. I dealt with the slow-dancing dilemma by running around and pinching butts or snapping bras during the slow songs. I'm sure people looooooved me.

Another big song at that point in my life was Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen. And you know it was all the grandeuer and drama that pulled me in . . .

A Wooded Room

We found a very special place this past week: the inner sanctuary of an old barn at some friends' place. They are an older couple, and had partially torn the roof off of it years ago in hopes of dismantling the poor thing for scrap lumber, but didn't get very far. Meanwhile, Mother Nature and all the little wood-fairies have been hard at work reclaiming it for themselves. I felt completely transported to another realm in this room; my eyes must have been shining the entire time.

I have always been attracted to the inner sanctum - alternate realities - hidden realms - secret places. Some of my favorite books, or parts of books, from childhood involved hidden spaces: Hester Gray's garden in Anne of Avonlea, The Secret Garden, Sarah Crewe's attic room at the girls' boarding school, or the Alden children's home in the boxcar with their pineneedle beds.

Being in this room, with its enormously high vaulted ceiling, the sun streaming in, trees growing up from the dirt floor, the sunlight dappled with green leaves - oh my, it transported me. I want to go back. I want to live there. I want my children to feel the tug of intrigue and have their senses filled with the ethereal atmosphere.

And yet...I also felt mournful there. I imagined its history: all the people and cows and hay who have been inside that place. How the farmer who built it would slap his forehead in disbelief if he could see it now. How the children who played on the thick rope swing in the haymow would feel teary to see their magical playland a mere shadow of its former self. And how even the trees from which the lumber was milled would see themselves, astonished: still strong, but leaning, leaning, and slowly on their way back to mildewy dust.

This place . . . affected me.

Bear with me a moment, please

There is something about chilled air - drizzly rain - the smell and feel of sticky sap from fir or spruce - and the sight of split level entry houses circa 1981 that remind me of my youth and fill me with nostalgia.

I have stumbled upon all these things within the last couple of days and it makes me feel like I'm 11 again. I guess I miss...the suburbs of Western WA...?

No...but memories flutter in my mind and fill me with, as my husband has described so well, "sweet melancholy".

7 years