moving in

We met some of our new neighbors yesterday.

 They were so kind to stop by unannounced and do a little impromptu trimming of the raspberry patch.

 Things got a little awkward when they spied the old couch {this belonged to Loren's fam since he was a little kid, it now sits in the garage awaiting a re-upholstery job to begin it's third or fourth life}. 

 I guess they didn't care for our taste in furniture, because they up and left without so much as a goodbye.

 Geeze guys...have some vision.

Well at any rate, we are getting settled in.  Who needs furniture when you have a crackling fire?...and dogs who are generous enough to share a corner of their bed.

pause

Things are a little hectic around here lately, and that might just be the understatement of the year.  Packing with a toddler and a newborn...is...well...there are really no words.  Lets just say I am in mothering survival mode.  Sadie has been spending a lot of time watching Curious George on the iPhone and Eli has been spending a lot of time screaming and spitting up and needing to be held constantly.  I am scrambling to get anything done, and this whole week has felt like the proverbial one step forward, two steps back.  At 7 o'clock today I set Eli down in his chair, where he immediately commenced fussing and I sat down to have a moment's rest.  Sadie was intensely engaged in the umpteenth party dance of the day.  Suddenly the song changed to "Atlas Hands" by Benjamen Francis Leftwich and Sadie crawled up in my lap and put her arms around my neck and said, "mama snuggle Eli, mama oozed to snuggle Sadie" and I realized how long it has been since I just had a quiet moment with my little girl.  And even though there were a million things to do and a baby demanding to be held I just pushed pause to enjoy the sweetness of a two-year-old's unfaltering affection.  It was the kind of moment you just want to lock away in your heart because you know that in a blink of an eye your kids will be grown and your life will be calm and settled, but you will miss this moment of chaos and stress because all you will remember is that sweet face and "fruffy" head of curls, and sticky fingers that need washed and how much you love, love love this little person who is having to be so very grown up all of a sudden. That is the hardest thing about going from one to two. But when I see how adoringly Eli already smiles at his big sister, and how sweet and gentle she is when she helps me give him a bath and a baby "sassage" (massage) I know that soon enough all these kinks will smooth out and these two will be thick as thieves--and that they will teach one another so many important lessons of co-operation and compassion. Sometimes you just have have faith that the pieces will all fall together in their own time, and sometimes you just need to pause for a snuggle. 

After all, "gee--I wish I hadn't snuggled and loved up my babies every moment I possibly could" said no mother ever.

this and that

This little bean is 5 weeks old now, and while he is pretty much a good baby, he is a SUPER up-chucker.

That is not hyperbole.  It is a little alarming how much this baby pukes.  On the plus side, he probably weighs close to 14lbs now, so he is obviously keeping some of his milk down... on the downside it seems pretty miserable for him to be such a puker all the time....aaaaand he has a 3 hour bout of fussing to intense screaming in the evenings.  We like to call it Eli's happy hour around these parts.  We make some drinks and Loren and I attempt to have a conversation that goes like this: "WHAT, I can't hear you!" "Huh?" "Never mind." The other night I came out into the living room to find Loren rocking the boy with his noise-cancelling ear phones on--he says, "Man this really takes the edge off."

After lots of reading and research and trial and error I believe that his constant puking is a reaction to something in my diet, and when I eat no wheat or dairy products there seems to be an immediate improvement.  So as of a couple days ago I became a no gluten, no dairy kind of girl.  That pretty much eliminates all good things that I want to eat during the holiday season with my breastfeeding munchies.  Dang.  As far as the evening happy hour goes--I think he is just trying to shut himself down for the night.  Sadie went through a similar spell.  We are all just praying he grows out of it and in the meantime are reciting the age old parenting mantra, "this too shall pass." 

Other than that, Eli is a happy, sweet baby during the day, and a pretty good sleeper at night.  So we are fortunate.  I don't feel wrecked for sleep like I did the first time around, but between Sadie and my pregnancy with Eli I haven't had an uninterrupted night's sleep in two years, so I'm groovy with nightwakings now.  For those of you who are wondering...life with two children is even more awesome and simultaneously terrifying than life with one.  Between packing and Sadie's new favorite activity of taking everything out and putting it to some imaginary use and then leaving it in a totally different part of the house we are living in a disaster area. 

Also, I have been trying to cook good, wholesome food for our family and figure out ways to keep this gluten/dairy free thing real while providing adequate nourishment for the two-year-old.  I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, but I'm a fairly decent cook.  Regardless, some days I can't seem to get Sadie (who has always been an excellent and adventurous eater) to try anything.  And then I will catch her eating a dog biscuit. WTF?  She would be one happy girl if I just served her up a dog treat with a side of butter, because that is the other thing she is always trying to sneak out of the kitchen. Just when I'm about to lose faith, the kid surprises me, by ravenously devouring everything on her plate... like tonight:

bacon spinach salad, figs and plums and wholewheat pasta with sundried tomatos.  All gone. 
The 3 ingredient maple pumpkin souffles I made yesterday:

not so much.  Oh well.  And then there is always snacktime trauma when your banana rainbow breaks in half. 

I'm not usually one to take pictures of my crying kid... I was actually trying to snap a picture of Sadie because she looked so pretty with the sun coming through the window with the Christmas cactus blooming, but then this happened. Yep.  So that's us right now, in a state of beautiful upheaval and continual chaos, but happy, and thankful for family and a break in the weather, and two healthy kids, and our wonderful CSA box that is full of fresh goodness every week--and excited, so excited for our big move and a new home to settle into.  I think it was NOFX who sang that "life is like chinese food...it's sweet and sour..."  but mostly sweet, and I'll have mine without MSG, or gluten, or dairy. please.

its for the kids.

sesame duck

I love me some subsistence foods, but I won't lie, duck is not my fave.  That being said, my fella sure does like the waterfowl hunting, so in spite of my best efforts to persuade him otherwise, our freezer is very full of quackers. I am a firm believer in making the best of what you have, and not letting anything go to waste, so I am always looking for new and tasty ways to cook duck.  This one is good.  It is a recipe designed for chicken--but it was very delish with waterfowl.  Let's just say there were no leftovers.

Sesame Duck- Adapted from Doreen P's Perfect Sesame Chicken:

four weeks

A handful of crooked, priceless baby smiles

Infinity kisses on sweet baby cheeks

Not so infinite naps and stolen moments of peace and quiet

Diaper changes too numerous to count

days of not being puked on.. too few to count

Two-kid melt downs more frequent than I can admit to on this happy blog post

Two wide eyes, starting to check out the world around

Five hundred meditations of mothers' gratitude for the gift of two healthy, beautiful children

Four weeks of falling in love with this sweet boy.

Sadie's Dreefees

“Most kids have a special stuffed animal, ratty blanket or dog-eared book they take to sleep with them – and a lot of kids, lacking this talisman, go berserk and scream themselves to sleep. Bill Bob had no one special talisman: Bill Bob had dreefees. None of us ever quite figured out the etymology of that word, but when I asked him years later Bill Bob thought it might be an amalgamation of ‘dream’ and ‘feed’ – food for dreams you might say.”

 David James Duncan

 When Sadie was little we tried to get her to take to a particular lovey--it was a mild mannered teddy bear named Murray.  But Murray never stuck.
For a long time, Sadie didn't have bedtime lovey at all, but around 19 or 20 months she began to bring "self-proclaimed loveys" to bed with her to snuggle with.  First it was a bunny I made, then, a wooden sea otter my brother Gabe carved--which was cute, until you woke up with it wedged under your back.  For a while it was a favorite ABC book, or another toy from the rotation of stuffed animals.  This summer, the list of things that need to go to bed with Sadie has grown a bit, and become more random.
For example--sometimes we need "ALL Sadie's friends" which consists of Tiger, two stuffed Dogs, Joey doll, Elmo, Owl, Baby Blue (a rubber whale that goes over the spout of the bathtub so kids don't bonk their heads) and a Curious George book.
Last night, there was just Tiger, a harmonica, two kitchen spoons, and a rat-tail comb (I had to take the last three things out after she fell asleep for safety sake) 
I was feeling a little disconcerted by this rotation of oddities in the bed, and then I remembered the little brother from David James Duncan's The River Why and his dreefees, and I realized, that is exactly what Sadie has.
Like many things about getting to know the small humans you are raising, Sadie's selection of dreefees is a source of amusement, wonder and curiosity to Loren and I...and even though lately we have been moving her into her own bed after she falls asleep, sometimes we still find strange things in the bed come morning.
At least we know how they got there now.  

the summer that came and went

The summer kind of got away from my camera this year.  I guess that happens when you are umpteen months pregnant and chasing a two-year-old, not to mention trying to buy a house in a different town over 500 miles away from the one you live in.  But it really was, all in all, a wonderful, delightful summer--especially the month of August, which we spent mostly together as a family and Sadie got unlimited dad time, much to her delight.  I think we visited every other playground and walking trail in the Anchorage area.  Sadie even told me that the baby needed to come out of my belly so I could start going down the twisty slide with her.

Among our adventures, we happened upon the gem that is the Anchorage Botanical Gardens.  While I'm sure the prime time to go is early summer, it was stately in it's late August colors, and I just happened to have my camera with me. Some of the photos were quite lovely--I thought I'd share them here, so I can sneak back in the white months that are fast approaching for a warm dose of colors.  If you let your mind wander you can almost smell the peppery nasturtiums and hear the hum of the bees.

 And for this girl...I photo-documented the mushrooms.  She was quite enamored with her fungi on this trip.  She can even tell you why you shouldn't eat them.

But they sure are pretty.