Checking in

My goodness. It has been a long time since I've posted. I'm alive and well, but too busy to get near a computer. I can imagine it will probably be like this for the next month or so.

I'm actually at my parents' house in Western WA. I've been here for a week now; Starbeans is living it up with Bupa and Gramma, loving all the attention and interaction. They love it too, of course: it makes me happy.

I've been feeling the baby move a lot -- mostly the feeling of light tapping on either side of my belly. My uterus is enlarging rapidly, as I now can feel a big hard lump in my lower belly where I used to have to feel around for it a bit. I really love feeling it move, imagining who it is and what it must look like. Everything is so mysterious at this point.

All my pregnancy books got packed up in January (before we knew we would be pregnant soon), so I'm not as on it with this pregnancy. I'm too lazy to look online (besides, I like books better) and the pregnancy book I did have, I had to return to the library. With my first pregnancy, I could tell you everything that was going on with baby and body week by week, but this pregnancy -- not so much. Not that I have a lot going on or anything, right? Sheesh, man. I'm looking forward to life slowing down a bit. But...does it ever? I have a sneaking suspicion that it doesn't.

Finding "Bee-doles"

Baby Lucy

Starbeans' older cousin, Mari, gave him a realistic baby doll this last weekend, called "Lucy". Her head is hard and floppy and sometimes bashes him in the face, but he loves her anyway. It is so cute!

He has just started getting interested in dolls within the last month or so: starting with my use of the Doll-baby Jealousy Nursing Technique, but it has continued with a genuine interest in playing with them. He carries the dolls around, gives them water from his sippy cup, and points out Lucy's eyes, ears, mouth, and toes; even as I write this, he is giving Baby Lucy a ride in his "Bih-Tuh" [Big Truck].

Fashion [that doesn't make] Sense

I can't wait until the current fashion of HUGE t-shirts and ENORMOUS pants and shorts dissipates. The teenage boys in our area look so silly. They can barely walk, with their pants clinging to their upper thighs -- they waddle like ducks, constantly clutch at their belts, and continuously attempt to keep their pants from plain-old falling to the ground. It is downright absurd. Will they ever look back at themselves, like many have been known to do, and say, "I wore that??"

An interesting side note on that last question: It seems that the people who are the most whooped up about keeping with the fashions are the ones who say it with the most fervor. I wore that?? As you might imagine, I do not fall in that category...I just don't have the energy or interest to participate. Just let me be warm, comfortable, and moderately attractive.

Closing date: scheduled

We signed the purchase agreement on our home last night. Our closing date is scheduled for Friday, June 29th. Wow. This is really going to happen. Next weekend, we are traveling to our New Town and signing the purchase agreement on that place. The 15 acre farmstead. Wow. We're gonna be Rural in less than 2 months --------- Whoa.

Drying diapers

Where diapers hang to dry in the spring, summer, & fall

Where diapers hang to dry in the winter (in the basement)

Today is 16 weeks - I should be feeling the baby start to move soon. I first felt Starbeans move at 17 weeks, which is pretty early for a first pregnancy. None of my friends would believe me, but I knew what I was feeling; and slowly but surely, those fluttering feelings became firmer until they became full-fledge punches and kicks. I can't wait! Then maybe I'll start feeling truly pregnant, instead of just thick in the middle.

Curls

Starbeans' hair is curling up into little ringlets with more moisture in the air, giving me all the more reason to delay the inevitable First Haircut. It is so precious! I'll have to post pictures soon.

An a. borealis stream-of-consciousness list (straight from my brain to yours)

• I don't own a microwave.
• I don't own a dishwasher.
• I do own a television.
• I read a lot more before Starbeans was born.
• I'm getting sick of the pseudo-name, 'Starbeans'. That was a nickname for him for a few weeks when he was 6 months old. I really want to just call him by his real name, which means, supplanter, and is the Spanish version of James, but I don't know if I ever will because it seems like it would be so revealing. I certainly can't change his pseudo-name at this point. That would be too hard.
• I love trees and fungi.
• I have been known to cry over the sheer beauty of violins and cellos playing.
• Once, Squeeze bought a huge set of ear phones to go with his discman. I ripped on him and ripped on him over their size and seeming extravagance until, one night, he had me listen: playing was Sacred Treasures: Choral Masterworks from Russia. It made me cry like a newborn babe.
• I always wanted to live either in the city, or in the country. Never in the suburbs.
• I lived in the suburbs from birth to age 14, then lived in a semi-rural town until I graduated from high school.
• I spent college in the suburbs again.
• I have lived in the city as an adult, thus far.
• The town my family moved to when I was 14 was an old logging-turned-farming community - my mother's family has been there for 4 generations.
• That town is now one huge development.
• It makes me sad, but I know that the wheels of change have been in motion for not just 10, 15, or 20 years, but over 100 years. It struck me when I was in the new grocery store in town last fall: I saw a picture of 3 women, sitting abreast an enormous stump -- there was room for at least two more people on each side of them. The picture was taken in the very district my family lived in for 10 years and not a tree of that size exists, anywhere. They were all decimated. You see? Change began long ago.
• Where I live in Minneapolis was farmland 100 or so years ago.
• No one can stop "progress".
• One of our main requirements for going rural was to move to a community that would NOT become a suburb in a matter of 10-20 years. As a town of 700, not on any major freeway, and over an hour from any smallish-city, I hope our chosen place will not fall prey.
• More than likely, we will be living rurally by this July.
• Sometimes I get scared about being stranded: my MIL & FIL and Squeeze's grandma live in the town 1/2 hour north, but we don't know anyone else. I am used to being very social, seeing people as I please and going to any store as I please (not to mention any library I please). I know this is going to change and it frightens me a little.
• But it isn't going to stop me.

THE END.

A newly discovered book, which I plan to buy

Published by Garden Way Publishing in 1983:

Food Drying: How to Dehydrate, Store and Use Vegetables, Fruits and Herbs

5/3 update: I bought it over ebay on a Buy it Now for 1 dollar, 5 dollars total. The poor sucker doesn't know what he'll be missing (but I do). Yippee!

Nursing multiples

Starbeans started doing the cutest thing within the last couple of weeks. He brings his dolls into me to nurse them, saying, "Mee! Mee! Mee!" [this of course, means "Milk! Milk! Milk!"]. It all started one night when he wouldn't settle down and I used the Doll-baby Jealousy Nursing Technique, bringing his dolls to my breast to make him calm down and want to nurse (and therefore get sleepy and go to bed). It worked.

Now, almost every day, he brings them to me for "Mee!" He has even started nursing them himself, lifting up his teeny shirt and holding them to his little baby nipple. It is unbearably adorable. He pats their backs while he holds them there. It brings a tear to my mothery eye.