about a boy

When Eli was growing in my belly I was pretty sure he was a boy.  So sure, in fact that when Loren announced "It's a girl!" at his birth my first words were, "check again." During Eli's pregnancy in the rare moments I was able to sleep through the intensive tae-kwon-do routine that was going on in my uterus I would have these crazy action-hero dreams.  Like I'd be skydiving into a flaming airplane where I would need to rescue 20 people and fight off terrorists in hand-to-hand combat.  Stuff like that.  So not my style.  And while It may have crossed my mind sometimes that perhaps we would get a laid-back kinda boy... I knew deep down it wouldn't happen.  Some things you just know.

 Eli's verb these days is "DO."  A hundred times a day he brings me something and says "do."  Put on a shoe, peel an apple, change a diaper.  Fix a page he just ripped out of a book.  "Do, mama, do."  It seems fitting.  He is a non-stop do-er.  As is evidenced by the way our house looks most days by 10 am.

But this do-er has a snuggly side to him.  He has taken a shining to this bear "Helicopter, " a hand-me-down with a mysterious name given by a two-year-old Sadie.  It might have been the name that attracted Eli to him in the first place (or possibly the belly-button) because when Eli can't find Helicopter he sleeps with a magnet with an actual helicopter on it.  He likes to hold the bear real tight and say "deeeeze" which is his word for squeeze.

Eli gets a lot of squeezes these days, because sometimes, it's all you can do to save your sanity.  His state of perpetual motion is something to be reckoned with.  Water cup dumped in plate, hands splashed in that water,  giant mess.  Every. single. meal.

Kitchen cupboard unpacked, pot lid flung frisbee-style across kitchen straight into eggs on counter. Epic mess.

Bath time.  You'd think bath time would be neat.  It is either a combination of water being splashed out of the tub--or inappropriate items being added to the tub. Or both.  Recent casualties have included a hair dryer, and a well loved book of dad's "Flying with Floats."  Didn't make too good of a splash landing.  Praying our bathroom floor holds up.  Washing lots of towels.

This week Loren and I have been attempting to renovate our sunroom--just paint and put in a new floor really.  The project is a source of endless fascination for Eli.  He just wants to do.  He watches carefully as I use an exacto knife to cut the molding from the wall before I pry it off.  Without a word he disappears into the kitchen returning with the carrot peeler and proceeds to "remove" the fins from the wall heater.  As we install one plank of flooring we look up to see that he has scribbled on no less than 7 freshly painted walls with a carpenter's pencil.  I should have looked when I heard him saying "paint, paint, paint!"  It's so frustrating, and yet also understandable.  The world looks different from 18-months-old than it does from 33.  I am quite sure that most of what could easily be written off as mischief is actually an attempt to contribute to our household in a meaningful way.

It is a challenge.  Every day with this guy.  I was thinking about it in a brief moment of solitude this morning.  Actually, I was thinking of my youngest brother, on a freighter somewhere between here and Japan, and how as a little guy he never slowed down.  He had a true desire to move and learn the world around him kinetically.  It can be hard to parent this kind of a kid (ask my mom, she can tell you all about it x4) but it can also be so rewarding when their energy is directed into a worthy cause.  Of course, Eli is going to need to work hard and use his hands along side his head and his heart.  I'm not exactly sure how this will look over the years, but I know what it doesn't look like, which is a lot of time spent in front of a screen watching violent images and playing video games.  I feel like that would most certainly spell disaster for a boy as inclined to rough and tumble as Elias.  It is probably a saving grace that he has a big sister who is currently into everything fancy.  As I type this Eli is sporting a Disney princess tattoo on his bicep and wearing a pink t-shirt.  (Thanks to the random lady at the hardware store for introducing my kids to fake tattoos and Disney princesses in one fell swoop! Do those tattoos ever wash off?!)

I'm going to watch this boy so many times, caught between a nag and a sense of outright wonder and amazement at what he is doing.  Today it was standing  in a box on the teeter-toter, on top of the couch (Loren had set it there to vacuum).  Sometimes there just aren't any words.  But lots of times there are, and those words need to be positive, affirming ones.  I can see how important it is to shower love like that on a kid who could easily make you yell and want pull your hair out 20+ times a day. 

Every morning Eli sits straight up in bed and says to me, "wake!"  After all, a new day awaits. Why linger in bed, right?  Then he goes out to the kitchen and tells Loren who is usually up making coffee "Joe!"  He helps his dad (and sis) bring me a cup of coffee and hauls his favorite books into bed where he flings them over to me too roughly (usually spilling some coffee) and snuggles in for a read. In these sweet moments, with only a little spilled coffee burning my arm, I feel like the luckiest mama in the world--call it what you will, snips & snails, zen or straight up grace, whatever it is...it's good stuff.

Did you ever grow anything in the garden of your mind?

This week as I was picking up some seed starting mix at the local garden center a bag of bulbs caught my eye:

Lily of the Valley (that's Convallaria majalis, for my fellow botany geeks).  Sigh.  How lovely.  And I'm always on the lookout for some shade loving plants to beef up my cottage-style (read: chaotic and rambling) perennial garden.  How perfect would these be... and hardy to zone 2 none the less!  I asked the garden lady if they were poisonous, and she looked at me like I was crazy.  "You're not planning to eat them are you?" she says. "No," I say, "but my 18-month old might give them a try."  "Now why would he do that?" she asks.  I bite my cheek to keep from asking, "are you serious? Because he's 18 months old."  But thankfully Edward Scissor Hands aka The Christmas Tree Guy steps in and says, "I ate every plant I could get my hands on for the first 5 years of my life.  At least that what my mom tells me. I turned out okay for the most part. Just keep Poison Control on your speed dial."  I pull out my phone--and show them both that poison control is indeed on my speed dial already, and then I google convallaria and as it turns out it is poisonous.  Very poisonous. And as an added bonus, when it's done flowering, it grows delightful looking red berries.  So I guess it's out for the time being.  It does bring up an interesting point though, when you are a mom of littles who love to ramble outside all the livelong summer days where there are plenty of poisonous native plants even if you don't intentionally grow them in your garden:  How do you keep your kids safe from accidental poisoning?

With Sadie, who has a very well established sense of caution, it was enough to give her a blanket warning on eating any mushrooms, and then begin situational berry identification guidelines with her.  She can now accurately identify dogwood berries and baneberries, which are two of the main poisonous around our place.  We are working on wildflowers now.  Currently her favorite book is a plants of Alaska flip guide, which is coming in handy as a teaching tool.  She's also big enough to know to ask about a plant if she has questions.  Not sure how it will go with Eli. He is more of a caution to the wind fellow.  I'm banking on close supervision and lots of yummy and edible landscaping that he can safely browse close to home--and a whole lot of grace.

But back to the edible landscaping idea, I really am trying to establish some permaculture on our land that is edible and kid-friendly.  As evidenced by the fact that my kids will happily eat raisins and week old potato chips out from under furniture, it is clear that young children have a very innate desire to forage in their environment.  I'm sure there is more scientific evidence that points to that fact out there somewhere (a study in Scandinavian countries comes to mind) , but I have met my google question search quota for the week already. 

There's a lot of thought that goes into establishing your permaculture, and it's intimidating, and I just don't have the time or $1600 to take the local class this spring.  That's why the book Edible Landscaping with a Permaculture Twist is now at the top of my homesteading reads wishlist.

 

early Mothering Day present...hint, hint?

Lastly, in the garden of my mind I'm trying hard to make a spot for some honeybees.  I've been told  that beekeeping isn't rocket science, but there is something about it that sure intimidates the heck out of me....but oh to have some fresh, home-grown honey... and your trees and cane fruit adequately pollinated to boot.  Almost too good to pass up.  I'm currently plowing my way through the Beekeepers Bible.  Holy tome of amazing information!  Still, thinking the safest bet in the end will be to hit up some local knowledge.

And finally, to round things off, we decided to host a little seed/start swap potluck here at the end of the month to celebrate the kickoff of growing season and be a grounds for exchanging knowledge & ideas.  If you're local and want to attend leave me a note and I will get you the info.

Happy daylight savings, and may the garden of your mind be a source of pure delight in these last winter months.

nature tables

The sun has been shining and the weather has been trying to fool us into thinking spring is finally here.  It's not.  Not in early March in Alaska unless the world's weather has just turned on its head for good {can't entirely rule that possibility out at this point}.  The kids have been collecting treasures and Sadie and I have done a couple crafts to celebrate nature in this inbetweener season.

 We painted these birdhouses and decorated them with twigs and moss.  Sadie did the green one and I did the other one. 

Loren found this tiny birdhouse blown down in the woods after a big windstorm a few weeks ago.  We've been admiring its remarkable craftsmanship (even some horse hairs in there).

 This is Eli's nature table.  Sticks and pine cones he's collected and some birch bark that came off the firewood.  A nice yellow backdrop painted by Sadie at preschool reminding us of the spring sunshine.  This nature table gets taken down and reassembled by Eli about 5 times a day, so it is in a constant stage of evolution--kind of like nature. 18-month old kids are miniature zen masters.

I finally got around to staining the shelves I built in November....Yikes!  They are housing the kids treasures and some very wonderful driftwood as well as our Valentines willow, which is growing leaves!  The kids are in total wonderment that you can plant a bare stick in water and in a few weeks it will sprout.  I'm sure there will be all kinds of sprouting experiments to look forward to in the very near future, what with seed-starting season just around the corner.

and speaking of seed starting.  This is Sadie's new self-designated project.  She has been cutting out all the flowers she likes from the seed catalogs {all of a sudden she can do scissors quite proficiently!} and pasting them into this book.  Yesterday she asked me if Marry Poppins could bring some magic water and sprinkle it onto the book to make the flowers grow into a real garden.  I love the three-year-old world of magical realism.  I see an all-pink flower growing plot for Sadie amongst the garden projects this year.  I love that she is a February garden dreamer just like her mama.  But March is not just dreaming time, it's planting and building and scheming time....It feels wonderful to have some purposeful, satisfying work ahead--like we've finally rounded the corner on winter and are heading full-speed ahead to spring! 

The Bigger Picture

As I write this I am enjoying a quiet house (Loren put himself to bed with the kids) and a cup of herbal tea.  There have been very few moments of stolen solitude this month.  February can be a tough month for me, smack in the middle of winter and prone to the post-holiday blues etc.  I vowed to make it different this year, and different it was.  We came down with round two of the stomach flu.  I didn't even know you could get it twice in a winter. You can.  That knocked me out.  For two weeks.  I was so tired I could barely get through the days.  I think it terrified me--a glimpse of what it would feel like to not be able to care for my family and self--that threw me into an emotional tail spin and just as I was getting back on my feet the kids came down with a hacking cough, irksome enough to keep us all awake at night. I did my best to snuggle them and humidify them and use homeopathic remedies galore.  I even slathered them in garlic-infused coconut butter before bed (this actually kind of worked, and made them smell like scampi).  It seems like--knock on REDWOOD--that everyone is on the mend. Except that poor Eli is now undergoing a major sleep regression.

 He has decided he is too big for naps, and after a crappy 30 minute morning nap he refuses to sleep for the rest of the day. I might be more willing to roll with it if he weren't so fiercely grumpy.  Like sister looks at him wrong and he flings himself onto the floor in a writhing tantrum of agony grumpy.  Ugh.  It's not pretty.  And nap time involves an hour of screaming, thrashing and pleading--and that's just my role.  All this attention aimed at the youngest has left the eldest out of sorts, and she has decided to embark on a journey of a thousand whines.  I'm not going to lie.  I have locked myself in the bathroom more than once this week, and turned the fan on just to have the impression of quiet.

Weeks like this are hard.  They make it hard to see the beauty in the journey. It becomes easy to loose sight of the forest for the trees, as the saying goes.  

But these little people who have pushed me beyond my physical and mental limits this month also anchor me with the daily reminder to celebrate small triumphs.  A peaceful bedtime, a dinner cooked that everyone ate and enjoyed (so rare these days).  The delight of a pocket full of Valentines brought home from preschool.  Polka-dot socks and a twirling dress.  A hot cup of joe in the morning.  Pine cones.  It doesn't matter how many pine cones there are in the world, Eli picks each one up and treats it like its the finest treasure in the kingdom. 

And isn't that how we should approach our days?  Each one a precious gift--a rare treasure to be clutched tightly even though it will inevitably crumble a little in our awkward, well-meaning fingers.  Many times this week I have had to scrape myself up out of a self-pitying heap and remind myself of this. Take a breath, start over.

I know that someday in the not-so-distant future I will get to have an uninterrupted conversation with another grown-up.  Go on a date with my husband.  Make some friends here in Palmer.  Finish some of the house/woodworking/sewing projects that need to be done.  But for now we just need to find our rhythm again. 

and we will.

a tale of two hats

I'm on my third attempt at this qiviut hat for my husband (In the back).  First try was way too big, second try, sized down to smaller needles was looking like a newborn hat, and this third time around (after a year's intermission) I forgot some of the pattern notation and ended up ripping out a sizable portion of it. This hat and I, we are not best friends, to put it mildly.  It was slated for a Christmas present, then a birthday present, and now with only a few rows left to go, it's looking like it might be a good Valentines Day gift.  But for some reason, known to and understood only by knitters, I decided to start making another hat in the interim.  Because you know, with this really tough stretch of balmy winter temps we've been enjoying, I'm sure you can't have enough hats.  Maybe this spring-like weather just made me long for some colorful yarn... yes, that must be it.  All that qiviut knitting was starting to make my fingers sweat anyways. 

winterlude

 The kids could hardly believe it this morning when daylight revealed an expanding patch of green grass out the front windows. 

 I can hardly believe it myself, this long spell of 40 degree weather.  I just need three inches more of my raised beds to thaw and I can plant some tulip bulbs.  This will probably happen, because this warm spell is supposed to continue on for at least another week. 

 It's lovely, this mild month in the middle of winter, but I do believe it has confused my circadian rhythm to an extent, because I have been going through a dismal patch of insomnia this last few weeks.  At least with the stomach flu, head cold, teething toddler and so on I have had lots of company in the long watches of the night.  I guess this strange weather is interrupting our Alaskan hibernation period.  Frankly, it has been a rough month for sleep. 

 But it sure is nice to get outside in the mild temps.  The hobbits are loving it.  Exploring our wooded paths we've seen all kinds of things that continue life as usual over the winter.

 Like this patch of evergreen (some trumpet lichens I think?)

And the chickens have been ever-so-kindly laying us an increasing supply of eggs (8 yesterday!) Eggs so beautiful that it feels like Easter every time I look at them.  So I guess every cloud has a silver lining.  And as this record-breaking warm January winds down to an end I know that this rough patch of sleep and sick kids are things that will soon become distant memories.  And in the meanwhile, I am so thankful for good breakfast coffee and fresh eggs.

warming

I'm having a hard time believing that this is indeed Alaska in January. Yesterday it warmed up to close to 40 and rained off nearly all of the fluffy white stuff that has adorned our yard since November.

I'm not complaining...really.  It feels downright balmy out, and on Thursday there was great fun to be had building snowmen, and yesterday the road was clear enough that I actually took the kids for a walk with the stroller.  It feels like spring time, but we all know just what kind of a trick that is.

It has the chickens fooled.  They are a happy bunch and have been steadily laying more and more eggs.  Today there were 7; even the first much anticipated blue one from "Sweety" our only Ameraucana hen.

The weather forecast is calling for at least another week of this. 

Stay asleep trees!  There are months of cold ahead yet. 

Speaking of sleep, I was able to make Sadie's new big girl bed a duvet cover this week.  

 

She calls it her patchwork fairy and butterfly garden. 

Can you tell that my soul just craves bright colors on these short winter days? 

I just loved this piece of fairy fabric from Hawethorne Threads, and I made the bright patchwork so it was reversible (per Sadie's request).  This turned out to be a quick project with the help of my trusty serger.  This is the second "quiltish" thing I've sewed with it, and I have to say that as long as you aren't sewing anything complex or small this thing makes the projects just fly.  The kids had lots of fun helping me with this, rearranging the entire contents of my sewing room, and also the arrangement of the patchwork squares so many times that I have no idea if the final product even closely resembles the one I thoughtfully put together during nap time. I also discovered that Eli really likes to lap sit and watch the sewing process. It's a little nerve racking at times because his curious little hands get waved closer and closer to the needles as he shouts "round and round!" with glee. 

 It made for some interesting seams, and one Amish style mistake that I left in rather than rip out a whole seam of serged stitches and re-adjust all my binding pieces.  

oh well.  No duvet covers are perfect.

But this one works just right to warm up Sadie's big girl room.  Now I just need to build her bed frame, finish painting her shelves and sew some curtains.  Oh, and figure out how to arrange everything with some groovy feng shui. It'll get there.  Eventually.