Sisters

Sisters and friends – Maya (10) & Ellery (7) (photo by Sonya, my sister & friend!)

One of those girls up there just turned 10. TEN. What?!?! I now have a child in the double digits. In her mind, this puts us on the same plane. “We both have ages with two digits now,” says she. Haha. One thing is certain – she is growing up, and quickly.

I’m so happy my girls have a close sister. No matter how crazy these many little boys get around here, they always have each other.

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Summer Twenty-Twelve

Whew, it’s hot out there! We’ve had so many record-setting days this summer that I’ve lost count. Our garden, which is largely resting this year while we adjust to baby number five and patronize our local CSA, looks sad, sad, sad. The six tomato plants we did plant (we usually grow 40) are short and pathetic. But there are green tomatoes on them, so I have hope of doing a little canning. The orchard is suffering from high heat and neglect; the strawberry patches are dead and dry, as are the blueberry bushes, raspberry canes, and Asian pear trees. The pear trees have some life in them and will likely survive, but I don’t have a lot of hope for the rest of them. The chickens are still laying, but not as much, and we have a huge hawk problem this year (this deserves another post). But the heat! I’m incredibly thankful that our circa 1975 central air conditioning is working this year. Though our July electric bill is a doozy…

Silas Five, 10 weeks old, napping on the living room floor.

Silas (11 weeks old!) gave us a scare last week when he woke up at 4:30 a.m. Sunday with a temperature of 103.6. We ended up rushing him to the ER, being admitted, and subjecting him to all sorts of painful and scary tests (bloodwork, lumbar puncture, catheterization). We are blessed and thankful beyond words that he is alive and healthy today. While we will probably never know what he had, we know it was a nasty virus that caused something that resembled viral meningitis. I have only been that scared one other time – when Ellery, then 3 weeks old, had RSV.

Being a parent can be hard on the heart! But the rewards are so worth it.

Despite the insane heat, we have managed to find plenty of time to play outside. (Just not between the hours of 10 and 2.)

Peekaboo! Mommy bought us this great little playset for $50 off Craigslist.

Wheeeeeeeeee!

Getting a good picture of all four of the mobile kids is not an easy task! They have been having a great time with this playset, even though I wasn’t sure the bigger ones would love it. They create circuses and plays all the time. Mostly circuses.

“Ta-da!” [Cal (2) and Ellery (7)]

My two brunettes,  Asher (4) and Maya (9) 

At first, they were content to sit on top of the walls. Now they all try to STAND on top of the walls. Guess how comfortable I am with that.

Maya treed this little (Big! Huge! Fat!) fella the other day. She chased him from the pasture near the chickens; we saw him prowling around the coops and thought he was a cat or other menace. Turns out he was just a scared-outta-his-mind herbivore.

Two staples. This is what happens when you are a wiggly, impulsive two-year-old and you sit backward at the edge of your parents’ bed while your mother is holding your baby brother so her arms are too full to quickly grab you. You smack the back of your head on the floor and your mother feels terrible. You might get a popsicle out of the deal, though.

This is my handsome Asher right after his last t-ball game of his first season. He is SO PROUD of that medal.

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Juney June June

Just a quick mini-photo dump to let you know I’m still alive. I do realize I owe you a birth story, and I’ve been thinking a lot about writing it. That’s something, isn’t it? I think I set high expectation for myself with birth stories, so when things get tough (like with Cal’s birth), I just don’t write them down. Silas’ wasn’t as tough as Cal’s, so maybe I’ll get it written down soon?

Silas with his Grandma (7 weeks old)

Ellery (age 7) showing off the hole where her third lost tooth used to be

Jason had his second (and hopefully final) eye surgery on Monday to remove his cataracts / insert a new lens. We are so happy it is finally done. Another week and he can lift his kids again for hugs.

Silas looking at Grandma (who visited to help out with the family during the surgery)

More Silas (7 weeks; he turned 8 weeks on Tuesday) who is getting lusciously fatter by the second

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Behind the Name: Silas Five

The First Name: Silas

Silas didn’t have a name for a half hour or so after he was born. I know people have waited longer than that to name their children before, but we usually name them right away. So for us, this nameless half hour was a big deal. But see, it was REALLY hard to name this boy. Really hard. I have two sisters, and Jason has three – and neither of us has any brothers. We started out with two girls and just assumed we’d have a girl-heavy family like most of our relatives. When Asher came along, we used our one boy name on him (I’ve had him named since I was 12, basically) and it was fairly easy.

When we found out Callan was a boy, it was tough. I even broke one of my name rules – no two syllable names that end in -en/-an/-in because it rhymes with our last name. But when we finally found a name we both liked, we decided we’d just go for it. Plus, we call him Cal, which makes it feel less rhyme-y to me.

We knew Silas was a boy, as well. And we were/are thrilled. Except for the name! How would we ever find him a name?! It took us all of his pregnancy, and then some, to name him. Lots of mediocre contenders, but The One never popped up. We tossed around Silas several times, and we both liked it alright. Most baby name websites have Silas as being of Latin origin, meaning “forest” or “wood.” Which is really a fine meaning for a name. We do live in the woods, after all. It wasn’t until, during one of my numerous late-night baby name Google-fests, I stumbled across this definition for Silas:

Derived from the Aramaic sh’īlā (asked for).

Asked for. Asked for! It was perfect! For various reasons, we prayed very hard for a healthy baby and pregnancy, which sounds very obvious and common to me now that I type that out. But I guess without going into some personal details, I can just affirm that Silas was very much asked for. He was an answer to prayer, and his name became more obvious after that.

The Middle Name: Five

Silas is our fifth full-term, live-born child. We called him “Five” and “Baby Five” throughout his pregnancy. I, in particular, latched onto “Five” as a nickname for him. (The kids latched on to “Bob the Builder,” shortened to “Bobby,” for what it’s worth. That did not, however, translate into a legal name. Sorry, kids.) My mother is the fifth child in her family, and her name means “fifth” in Korean. In honor of her, we gave Silas his middle name. We think it’s perfect.

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Introducing Silas Five

Born at home on 5/1/12 at 2:42 p.m. (the day after my last post about how he was never going to come), 8 lbs. even, 21.5″ long, 14.5″ head. Cinnamon hair, dark blue/green eyes, 100% gorgeous. He is well loved, even by the toddler (who adores Silas but is generally out of sorts this week, understandably). Labor started at 5 a.m. and was really a hybrid of my previous four live births. He is a strong nurser and I am trying my best to soak up every newborn minute of him. I will blink, and it will be gone!

(Photos 2 & 3 above thanks to my sister.)

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38 Weeks, 4 Days

37 Weeks, 6 Days; photo courtesy of Ellery (7)

Revelation #1: My actual due date is 5/10/12, not 5/11/12. This baby doesn’t care and it doesn’t change how I feel about due dates (they’re not usually necessary or helpful), but it helps me to finally realize why no one could ever agree on my due date – it was Leap Day! That’s why it’s 5/10, not 5/11. Duh.

Revelation #2: My intuition in regards to a baby’s arrival is not always super accurate. Or, at least, I’ve had enough variables in pregnancy/birth to not have any idea what to expect. I have been thinking for weeks that this baby would arrive earlier than May 10/11 and that my labor would be closer to Asher’s in length (just over an hour) than Cal’s (18 hours). I guess we still have time for me to be right, but this baby is just hanging out for now…

First things first: Let’s play the baby guessing game! When’s he coming? How much will he weigh? And, of course, there’s your freebie: the baby is a boy. Don’t forget that. Click below to make a guess:

Some history for you scientific guessers:

• Baby #1 (girl): born at 35 weeks, 5 lbs. 10 oz., 18″ long
• Baby #2 (girl): born at 39 weeks, 4 days, 7 lbs. 10 oz., 21″ long
• Baby #3 (boy): born at 38 weeks, 5 days, 8 lbs. 2 oz., 23″ long
• Baby #4 (boy): born at 40 weeks, 2 days, 8 lbs. 3 oz., 22″ long

The winner of the game wins a great big virtual high five.

How am I doing? Eh. Hanging in there. The end of pregnancy has never been my forte; I am always ready for the baby to come out at around 30 weeks. I know this about myself, so it’s no surprise to me that I’m anxious for Five to come out. (No, he doesn’t have a name yet, and even if he did, I wouldn’t tell.) I am huge; my belly is bigger than it’s ever been, I’m nearly certain. He just feels big for his gestational age – not that he’s going to be a world record setter, but that he feels ready to be born earlier. My very relaxed midwife, for the first time in all of the pregnancies that she has seen me for (three now), actually agrees with me. Usually, I say I feel huge, and she says no, you are normal, and the baby feels normal. And she’s always been right. But this time? She observed last Monday, “Have I mentioned that this baby feels bigger for his age? He’s ready.” Yes, I think he is.

Or at least I thought he was. Last Monday, I was 3-4 cm dilated and 75% effaced, but the baby’s head could still float when she pushed it. She said, “You’re body’s definitely doing something. If you go to 40 weeks I will be on pins and needles.” I have been feeling closer to birth than normal for the past couple of weeks; lots of practice labor, twinges, cervical things, you know. The stuff that gets you ready. I felt a lot like this for Asher’s labor, and you can’t get much more perfect than his (just over an hour long, water broke at 9 cm., then I pushed him out). I am praying and hoping for a birth more like his than Cal’s, who had a birth so difficult for me than I still haven’t written it down. I may never. I remember thinking, “I can never do this again. He will be my last” for months afterwards. It was 18 hours long, and he was born in his bag of waters (a very special thing that rarely happens today, and probably never in a hospital setting). He is a special child and his birth was definitely his own; needless to say, I don’t necessarily want to replicate it.

Physically, my body is ready to not be pregnant. My back hurts a lot, and I blame that mostly on having a weak core prior to pregnancy. (Work that core, ladies! Five full-term babies has not affected my body in any other significant way. I need to strengthen my abs after this baby.) I have a large diastasis recti that will take some significant work to heal. I have struggled with back pain more than anything else difficult this pregnancy.

Prodromal labor: I have regular contractions, even timeable, every night. Sometimes they feel crampier than others, but they are rarely what I would call “painful.” There is stuff going on.

The kids ask every day when the baby is going to come. “Do you think the baby will be born today, Mommy?” And they don’t like it when I say that I don’t know. I keep telling them that only God and the baby know, but I’m pretty sure they think I’m holding out on them. Cal observes my belly size nearly every day (“You have a big belly, Mommy”) and loves to hug/pat/kiss it. I don’t think he gets it, not really, but he’s having fun with the belly part. The actual baby might be quite an adjustment for him. He’s very much the baby right now.

We have moved into the bedrooms that we’re going to have for the next couple of months: four kids in the big room, Jason & I in the other (soon to be joined by the baby, we hope!). The two downstairs bedrooms and bathroom are still unfinished. We cleaned out the smaller downstairs bedroom and made a comfortable (if not glamorous) guest room for my mother-in-law, who has come to take care of my family and household after every baby I’ve had. (Yes, she’s wonderful, and no, you can’t have her.) We even re-installed the toilet in the gutted-to-the-studs bathroom, because we are classy. A toilet for every level, see. No turn-down service or chocolate roses, but you can go potty in the wee hours of the morning without climbing stairs.

The baby clothes and diapers are washed; the homebirth supplies are purchased and in a bin in the bedroom; the baby slings are in an identifiable location. We are as ready as we’re going to be. The kitchen is not done, but it’s moved into and functional. The old kitchen/new play room is taped off with plastic and makes our house look like the construction zone that it is, but it’s safe and out of the way.

I had a lovely baby shower last Sunday at church, thrown by my sister and the ladies at church. It was so special to be honored and blessed for this fifth baby; I haven’t had a shower since my first baby, almost ten years ago! Stuff wears out, and I had given away all of my baby clothes, so it was very nice to have new clothes and assorted other necessaries given to me. I am very, very grateful.

Come on out, Baby! Besides your name, we are ready for you. If you are waiting for a name to be born, you will be waiting a long time. I think I need to see your sweet face before I can really decide.

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Kitchen Disaster

Hi there! I’m your friendly neighborhood blogger, around since the dark ages of the internet, prone to large and unexplained breaks. Remember me? I go through blogging seasons…I’m sure you understand. But I’m always back, aren’t I?

Take a gander at that photo up there. That’s my “dining room table,” in quotes because, obviously, no dining is going on right now. Right behind it is the kids’ table, also more of a shelf than a table currently. My dishwasher leaked last Thursday, and my kitchen is torn apart and covered with dust and plastic, and in response, my already-stuffed-to-the-gills too-small kitchen vomited all over the rest of my house, so as to prepare for purging and drying, so that picture above is only a small glimpse into my life right now. (Whew.)

But, we trudge on. We are still waiting on the insurance adjuster to come back with some numbers, but I am not optimistic. We have done some creative cooking and cleaning (mainly involving slow cookers, toaster ovens, and bathtub dishwashing), some accepting of tasty treats from friends, and more than our usual share of eating out. Now that the big industrial-strength fans and dehumidifiers are turned off, I can get back in and scrub things clean. Then I can cook – on an ugly subfloor, mind you, with holes in it, and no dishwasher, and a missing cabinet – and it will be so nice to cook again. It hasn’t even been a week and I’m already tired of this. A planned kitchen remodel is one thing – you get a new kitchen in the end, and you planned to be creative with your meals! – but surprise disaster that doesn’t result in anything cool like a new kitchen is a bit of a drag.

Better things: I am 26 weeks pregnant and doing great. Here, let me show you a picture of me (all the way on the right) a week and a half ago, with four friends (three of whom are also pregnant!):

Aren’t we cute? That was our Bible study reunion. That group of 5 – 7 couples has grown to over a couple dozen people, including the 18 children present at our reunion. Great fun!

The pregnancy is going pretty well. I just re-connected with my homebirth midwife, and we’re all set to go. She’s lovely, and has attended two of my prior births (#2 and #4, though she missed the actual speedy birth of #2!). The big three kids are all very excited for this little boy to arrive, but little Cal (2) has no idea what is about to happen. His life will change, big time, and he’s the first toddler we’ve had that really concerns me, in terms of the transition from baby to sibling. He’s truly our baby, and has the personality to go with it. Maybe it’s that bleach blond hair and blue eyes – are Swedish babies quite temperamental?

Baby Five has no name yet and may not for quite a while. Boy names are hard, and always have been, such that our two current boys are lucky to have names at all. This most improbable of boys (I have two sisters, J has three, and neither of us has any brothers) might just be called Five for a while. Or for good; who knows?

We are gearing up for seed starting and chick hatching. Or, we were, until the kitchen exploded. I can’t wait to spend more time outdoors, because this house is  depressing me a little right now!

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20 Weeks, 6 Days – Ellery Feels Movement

Big news around here – we had our 20 week anatomical scan yesterday, and because of our wonderful friends watching our children, Jason was able to go. The baby looks great, measuring standard for everything, and it’s a BOY! Asher is thrilled (“I said it was going to be a boy, and it IS!”) and the girls seem just fine. They really just want a little baby to hold, so the fact that it’s not a girl didn’t seem to bother them too much.

(Unfortunately, Ellery and Callan puked in the van on the way home from our friends’ house last night, and continued doing so throughout the evening, so it was a bit of an interesting day, emotionally. My stomach is still not back to normal, unfortunately. I miss eating…)

Today, as I was lying on my bed, moaning and whining from my stomach pain, I realized that the baby was kicking up a storm. A storm that I could feel from the exterior, not just the interior. This is notable because I have an anterior placenta, and it took a long time for me to feel strong movement this time. Like, I just started feeling it regularly within the past week. It was very discouraging. But today, I grabbed the closest kid (“Ellery! Come here!”) and put her hand on my abdomen. She gave me a big grin as she felt three strong kicks before she ran off to resume whatever I interrupted her from doing. (She feels better today, thankfully.) So she became the first to feel the baby kick from the outside. Maya came over and tried, and she felt one or two light kicks before the baby was done. Jason was too late; Baby was asleep. But I have faith that he’ll get a chance soon.

Hurray for healthy babies; boo for intestinal distress.

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Baby Number Five

I’m out on Facebook and in real life, but not on the blog…until now. Cal’s going to be a big brother! I am pregnant with what will be our fifth babe here on earth, and we are very excited to meet this little one in May. I am almost 14 weeks and feeling a little less like dying every day…looking forward to that honeymoon trimester. Very much. Not quite feeling it yet, but I know it will keep getting better. (Unless it’s another little Ellery. She had me sick for 20 weeks!)

The girls are lobbying for a girl, and Asher is lobbying for a boy. Callan is clueless, but he likes to say baby and feel like part of the crowd. He does enjoy babies when he sees them, so I have hopes that he’ll make a very fine big brother.

I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s Disease early on in my pregnancy and immediately put on a medication to manage it. My thyroid is now behaving nicely, and we may have a clue as to what has caused miscarriage for me in the past. I am just thankful that this baby is growing well. I will likely be on a thyroid medication for the rest of my life, but prayerfully, that will be the extent of my care. The outlook is very good.

We have not made a final decision regarding birth place yet. As many of you know, we have had one hospital birth, two homebirths, and one freestanding birth center birth. My heart’s desire is to give birth at home, and providing that everything continues to go well and my health is stable, that is likely the direction that we will go. At this point, I am continuing care with my hospital-based midwifery practice until we make further decisions.

Enjoy a couple of snapshots from an ultrasound I had on Monday:

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Fall, Farmer’s Markets, Fruit.

I love fall. Favorite season. I think it started as a child, because of course, my birthday is October, so I always looked forward to fall. But I loved the leaf piles, the pretty colors, the cooler weather, Halloween. Now, as a grownup, I still love all of those things (except maybe Halloween, which we do, but not the spooky stuff), plus more. I hate being sweaty hot, so the cooler weather is more welcome than ever. The fall colors are still a favorite, especially on a cool sunny day. Brilliant. As a gardener, I love the last of the fall harvest coming in, the abundance, esp. all those winter squash. My birthday? Meh. I could take it or leave it. Two of my children also have birthdays in October, so there’s always a lot of excitement in the air this month, whether I’m excited about leaving 31 behind or not. Jason’s birthday is in eight short days, as well, and let’s just say he’s even older than I. But he takes it all in stride. I think about aging more than he does.

We went on vacation last week, and after we returned (9/26/11), I noticed the swans were no longer hanging out at the pond down the road. Gone south for the winter. We’ll see you next March, swans. There are some beautiful white crane-looking birds hanging out in area ponds still, though. I wish I knew what they were.

This morning, we divided and conquered our gardening and harvesting. With frost predicted tonight, Jason took the big kids out to the garden/weed patch/rabbit and small rodent sanctuary to get the last of the tomatoes. They are already pretty dead from blight, but there were still a lot of them left (both green and ripe). I will be canning sauce and green tomato relish (really more of a salsa, and a family favorite) so that we can use our counters and dining table again. We also have potatoes, dry beans, cabbage, and onion/garlic (if they are still out there amidst the weeds) left to harvest. I think those will keep, as tonight’s low is 32 and probably won’t get down that low until morning. But the tomatoes will be all done. And the next few nights aren’t supposed to get nearly as cold, so we buy ourselves some time. I just brought lunch out to the garden, and the kids are having a blast harvesting potatoes. They are filthy dirty and elated at all the delicious looking spuds. I guess they are harvesting potatoes after all. The beans should be “fun” to harvest, as we never trellised them, so they sprawled all over and climbed weeds and fences as necessary. “It’s kind of like a game, finding all the pods, ” Jason said. He’s such an optimist. I would be whining.

My part of the harvest this morning was to take Cal with me to the farmer’s market. I love that place. It’s only 3.5 country miles from our house, so maybe a 5 minute drive with absolutely no traffic, and I’m able to stock up on things I didn’t or couldn’t grow this year. I always chat with farmer friends and enjoy a muffin and/or coffee. It was freezing this morning; I wrapped Cal in a blanket in his stroller and stuck his hands in, figuring he wouldn’t keep them under the blanket but it was worth a try. He kept them under the blanket the whole time! For a toddler, that’s pretty amazing. It was that cold. We were on a mission to buy some things we didn’t grow this year: squash, peppers, beets, and even a watermelon. I figured it was the last week for peppers, so I’m glad I got some. Lots of pretty butternut squash on display, and I bought from two of my favorite organic growers.

I used to think that my goal as a homesteader was to never need to hit the farmer’s market. But I’ve since changed my thinking. No matter how avid of gardener you are, no matter how much time you have to tend your plants, things happen. Blight takes the tomatoes, squash bugs decimate your pumpkin patch, mice take the potatoes. Whatever happens, there’s likely another area gardener/farmer at the market who didn’t have that problem. So you buy their’s instead. This was a difficult year, Cal being a handful, and a wet, cool spring that provided rain and wet soil whenever we had a free weekend, so I didn’t plant my pepper seedlings (I let them die, sniff), and we didn’t even plant winter squash. I know. It makes me really sad. I still have a little butternut squash from last year’s harvest – over a year old! That is one hardy squash. I love our butternuts; they taste great and last forever. I know the soil they grew in, I know that they were cured properly for best flavor, and I can make sure they’re stored to the best of my ability. And it’s way cheaper than buying it. But it didn’t happen this year, so I’m happy to buy from those who had a better squash year than I did. I can still make sure they’re cured, and they’ll taste great, even if I had to pay for them.

And it’s apple season! I forgot that that’s definitely one of the top five reasons I love fall. Apples are my favorite fruit, and living in the Fruit Belt means that there’s a lot to choose from around here. Most of it is conventionally grown, for sure, so we do a lot of washing and peeling. And when we u-pick, we only go organic, so no pesticides on the kids’ hands. There are a few organic options around here, thankfully. Organic apples are hard to grow, so I’m thankful for those who do it. We hope to go picking in the next couple of weekends; here’s hoping the harvest holds out until we can get there.

Our own fruit trees are growing, slowly but surely. We have two Asian Pear trees, and they are still small. But one had dozens of flowers on it this year! I didn’t want it to put all its energy toward fruit (at the expense of the roots/tree growth), so I removed all but 10 buds, figuring spring storms would blow some more off. It worked. We ended up with four tasty-looking Asian pears, just enough to try our first harvest without compromising the growth of the plant. Before we left on our trip on 9/19, the four pears looked delicious, but not soft enough, so I left them. Upon returning, they were gone, and I was really sad. I figured a deer got them? But if he did, he left no trace. Weird. Then Jason and the kids went to the garden today, and behold, the four pears were just sitting on the ground! They were so ripe they fell off. And they were in perfect condition – no bruises, no bugs, nothing. Asian pears are known for being extremely pest resistant and for storing well, and I can testify to that now. We immediately peeled them up and ate them for lunch, and they were  THE BEST ASIAN PEARS I HAVE EVER EATEN. It’s true. I can’t wait until those trees grow bigger and give us more! We don’t do a thing to those trees – haven’t pruned yet, don’t spray anything – and so I know this is a fruit that I chose well. (We don’t have an apple tree because I’m pretty sure I won’t take care of it properly, and I won’t spray, so we’ll just be feeding worms and deer. =)

It’s days like today that make me so happy to live here. Yes, the house needs work, and it’s not a style I would have chosen, but this land – it’s amazing. The turkeys are getting nice and fat, roaming around and eating grass and bugs, and the chickens are pecking through the dirt and roaming the woods, some looking tasty enough to eat (soon, soon). The garden harvest, even in a year when the garden was largely ignored, is abundant and delicious. The eggs we get, though few due to molting, are so flavorful and full of nutrition that I don’t think I can even return to store bought eggs. I’m so happy about the choices we’ve made and the blessings that God has given us.

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