A Few Lists

Things That I Neglected to Do Before Our Portraits Last Week

• Lose 30 lbs of baby weight
• Get my eyebrows threaded
• Buy new foundation that is pale enough for me now that my pool-induced tan has faded
• Get a haircut

Things That I Can't Find Around in Our House Even Though I Need/Want Them

• our iPod Shuffle
• the voucher for piano tuning that came with our piano
• my 1st edition of The Tailor of Gloucester (has been missing since our move from Texas)

Things Violet Has Said To Me This Week

• "I looking for my Daddy," upon waking up and coming upstairs
• "Do we go peepee in our panties?!" which she thinks is a hilarious question since she knows the answer
• "Somebody come and play..." sung in her little toddler warble (I admit that song is really moving to me)

Things I Have Done Recently for the First Time Since Lewis Was Born

• Leave him (last weekend when I went to have a massage)
• Go running
• Sit down and play the piano for a while (see above RE: desperately needing tuning)

Some November Portraits

Our friend Michael Friberg here in Salt Lake is a documentary/editorial photographer and is currently raising money to fund a photography project on Mormon culture. Both Rob and I think really highly of his work and we've wanted to ask him to do a photo session of the kids or all of us or something so we were excited to see that one of his backer rewards was a portrait session. We did our session last Friday at a little park close to our house and I am SO, SO happy with his work. I mean, seriously-- are these not gorgeous? I want to get them all printed huge and hang them around our house. (Perhaps I'll restrain myself to just a handful.) He posted some more images from our photo shoot on his Kickstarter page, if you want to see more. There are 11 more days in his Kickstarter project and you should definitely check out his project and consider backing it; there are lots of fun backer rewards.

And if you are local and looking for portraits, family or otherwise, I think that particular backer reward is fantastic, especially when you compare it to what you can spend to get good family portraits. For the curious, Mike gave us about 70 edited images from our session and we're allowed to print them. He might even be able to get things done in time for Christmas cards if you hurry!

Long Time No See, Blog

Things have been rough around here lately and my ability to cope with life has been somewhat compromised, although (spoiler!) the fact that I am now editing photos and sitting down to blog means that I have turned the corner and life is more manageable than it has been for the past few weeks. Rob went out of town for an allergy conference in Boston for four nights, and being on my own with three children proved, ahem, challenging. I did have some friends come over in the evenings to help me with baths and bedtime and then to hang out with me; this helped tremendously and I am very thankful for them. However, I haven't ever been a solo parent with a baby this young before, not to mention two older children as well, so even with some help it was a blow to my equanimity.

On top of the travel, Rob has started working out regularly. The plan is for him to do a Crossfit class three mornings a week before work, which I think is reasonable for him/me/us. I have to get up at 5am on the days he goes to work out if I want a shower that day (which, and here is some insight into me as a person, I ALWAYS ALWAYS DO) and he is then not around to help with breakfast/dressing/etc, which is unfortunate but, you know, life is what it is. So one week he had three intro class things in the evenings (so he was not at home for those three evenings), then the next week he went to work out three mornings in a row to get in his three classes before he left town, then right when he got back in town he again went three mornings in a row to get them in that week. All this resulted in me getting up at 5am for three mornings in a row, then parenting solo, then when he got back I got up at 5am for three mornings in a row again. And then I fell over, dead from the HORROR of it all. No, actually, then we had a weekend and Rob was home and I went to have a massage and took naps and I feel much better about things. I did realize how small the margin has been on my well-being and coping with life, however. Hopefully Rob's new (laudable, admirable) work-out routine will be easier to deal with now that we are back to more normal life.

Now we just have to figure how I can somehow start working out regularly. We left the gym where we were members because it isn't convenient to go to that part of town now that Grace isn't at preschool at the same facility, and Rob has been wanting to do Crossfit anyway. (We can't afford Crossfit AND a gym membership.) It gets dark too early for me to go running when Rob gets home. Running on mornings when Rob doesn't go to Crossfit is a possibility, but I am thinking I may get a regular babysitter a couple times a week to go running and then do a video (Yoga? Pilates? 30 Day Shred?) in the basement. I've tried doing videos on my own and it has not gone super well, what with the baby and his unpredictable naps and the toddler and her desire to climb on me in downward dog. Sigh... I'll forgive them, though, because they are so cute.





Even without successfully exercising, the pregnancy weight is slowly, gradually coming off. (I really do want to exercise, though, because I want to be fit and trim and healthy, not just at some specific weight.) I am still wearing what I think of as my emergency postpartum jeans but they are getting big. They are two sizes bigger than what I was wearing before getting pregnant with Lewis, which is the SAME SIZE that I ended up in after my 1st and 2nd pregnancies. Actually, come to think of it, my final weight at week 39 or 40 was the same with all three pregnancies to within 5 lbs, even though I started from fairly different weights (Grace - lowest, Violet - highest, Lewis - in between). Biology is weird. I am a bit miffed that I have had to buy clothes in this depressingly large size THREE SEPARATE TIMES, because of course I didn't keep them. On the other hand, the clothes that I bought almost six years ago right after Grace was born would not be super stylish now. In some strange irony, the emergency postpartum jeans I have now in the largest size I have ever worn are "skinny jeans". HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA... Anyway, I like them and I wear them tucked into boots with loose tops. It took about two years for skinny jeans to look cute to me but I think I'm a believer now. Of course, I'd always rather wear a skirt since they are so much more comfortable, and just better in general.

RIP, Henny Penny

I promise that this isn't becoming a chicken blog, but we had chicken tragedy strike last week! I was out running some errands and upon returning home, discovered one of our hens dead on our driveway. I jumped out of the car and ran around to the backyard and found one wire side of our coop ripped away and the rest of our hens wandering around the backyard. When Rob got home, it was like chicken CSI out there and he ended up deciding it was a good-sized dog that did it. It was a daytime attack, so probably not a nocturnal wild animal like a raccoon, and there is no way a cat could have done the damage to the coop. Also, our hen was killed but not eaten, which seems more consistent with a domesticated animal. It looked like the dog grabbed onto the chicken wire with its teeth and pulled until the fence staples holding it to the frame popped off. I had a bit of a panic attack this morning when I heard barking outside and suddenly thought, "Wait, none of our neighbors have a dog." I rushed out to our backyard and indeed, there was a dog there! Barking and going crazy! The repair job Rob did with sturdier wire and a lot more fence staples seemed to be working, but of course I ran him off. (Our garage is in our backyard; we do have this pretty metal gate over the driveway but had not been in the habit of opening and closing it every time we drove a car anywhere.) It seems very likely that it was the same dog who murdered poor Henny Penny.

So now we have lost one of our hens to a violent end. I feel mad and a bit sad about it. For us, the chickens occupy a space somewhere on the spectrum between pet and vegetable garden. Losing her was not like losing our dog a while back; they just aren't smart enough to really bond with you like a dog or cat or whatever. I do feel sad that we didn't protect her better and that she died a violent death, however. It was Henny Penny who died, the Buff Orpington who was our first to start laying and who we had just cured of being broody. A short life she lived, a fuzzy little chick a mere 6 months ago:

So what else has happened around here besides death? We had the first parent-teacher conference for Grace, where her teacher said she is a good friend and has a great love of learning. We are about two months into kindergarten now and I feel good about our decision to forego the magnet school in favor of our neighborhood school. Grace is really happy there and she has made great strides in reading and I like the community involved in the school. I talked to her teacher about the math being too easy (I think she could have easily done this work a year or more ago) and we'll see if the teacher can make some adjustments to help Grace develop more.

This is also spirit week at Grace's school, with days for dressing up differently all week culminating in them wearing their Halloween costumes today. One of the days she was supposed to dress like a nerd. I don't think she's ever heard that word so she asked me what it was and I told her it was a smart person who was good at things. "I guess we are all nerds then, sort of," she said. Yes, sweet Grace, we probably are. Rob had a bit of ire about the whole thing and I see his point. We want small children to think achievement in math and science and/or wearing glasses is something to be mocked? Anyway, our first thought was to get a child-sized Three Wolf Moon shirt, but then Rob had the fabulous idea to dress her as Steve Jobs. Voila! Wonderful, if I do say so myself.

Our church is changing its schedule and this weekend will meet for our main worship gathering on Sunday morning for the first time, as well as moving to a bigger venue. We had been meeting at 4pm on Sundays, which was AWESOME. Sigh... It will help with some logistical issues and make things more accessible for some people so generally it is a good thing, but oh, how we will miss our relaxed Sunday mornings... I am thankful we had over a year off from the normal routine, but this weekend it is back to working to get everyone out the door at a certain time. Last weekend we took our final relaxed Sunday morning to go out to breakfast at a great little place we can walk to. A) I love that we live somewhere with great places we can walk to and B) I love love LOVE going out to breakfast.

Hormonal Fowl and Staples

One of our four hens went broody. Not all of our hens have even started laying yet and yet one of them decided that she would like to incubate some eggs and hatch some little chicks. She sat in the nesting box all day, even when there were no eggs there, all hilariously flat and short and spread out. Apparently this is a hormonal thing; the hormones of this particular hen must be a bit wonky because she started laying eggs a month before we expected her to and now, the broodiness. Apparently the likelihood of a hen going broody varies from breed to breed (our broody hen Henny Penny is a Buff Orpington, a breed known for a tendency to broodiness) and there are a variety of things one can try to cure a hen of this habit. We tried removing her from the nesting box several times a day and letting her run around the yard for a while. It seemed to work for a while, but a few hours later, I'd always find her back upstairs. We ended up raising the ramp of our coop (which looks like this, as a reminder) during the day with them all downstairs to force her away from the nesting box upstairs during the day. Then one evening, we forgot to lower the ramp to let them upstairs for the night and they spent the night (fortunately, a warm one without predators around) down on the grass. Ever since, Henny Penny has been cured! Right now, in fact, I can look out the window in our computer room and see four well-adjusted hens strutting around downstairs.

Lewis is seven weeks old now and we have reached the end of our new-baby meals. What a huge help that has been! Is there anything nicer to have a lovely dinner arrive at one's house when evening rolls around after a day of navigating life with a newborn and other small children? For a while there we were actually up to our eyeballs in food, because there were a number of weeks where we still had our CSA share. The last pick-up for our CSA was in early October so the slightly overwhelming deluge of wonderful organic produce has ended. What a first-world problem-- too much delicious, organic food! Whatever shall we do? And we haven't even really started in on the meals in the freezer from my baby shower.

Today Violet had staples removed from the back of her head. Yes! Staples! From my precious little girl's scalp! Last week, she was climbing over the arm of an upholstered chair and fell, hitting her head on the way down first on the wall, and then on our wooden baseboard/trim. The trim in our 1917 house is pretty thick and tall and substantial and it cut the back of her head. At first, I thought, "Oh, poor Violet, come here for a hug." In hindsight, she was crying more than usual for a tumble, but that wasn't my first thought. When I saw that she was bleeding, I thought, "Oh yes, the scalp bleeds so much when it is cut." Then I found the cut and thought, "Oh crap. That is not part of the human body that is supposed to be out in the open." It was only about 1" long but it was very deep, split wide open, and you could see the fat. Blech. She was really upset and in pain, and in adrenaline overdrive, I gathered all three of them up and headed to the urgent care place. Rob couldn't come because he had patients scheduled all afternoon, but he put a plea out on Facebook and a sweet friend from our church met me there to help manage all these children. They numbed Violet's scalp with some gel stuff and after about 5 minutes, it was obvious that she had forgotten all about it. They left the numbing gel on her for about 20 minutes and then took us back to put the staples in. Apparently they use staples instead of stitches under hair because you don't have to shave the area to put them in; they scar a little more but it doesn't matter because it will be under her hair. She had four staples put in and just cried a little during the last two, more from the weirdness of the sensation than from any pain, I think. After a day or so, she totally ignored them and her cut has healed very well. She cried a little more during the removal of the staples today than when they put them in, I think because she wasn't numbed up at all, but she did very well and her hair escaped without getting all matted or becoming dreadlocked or anything. So, all in all, a not-terrible conclusion to our family's first medical emergency type thing. Not that I am going to start encouraging climbing the furniture or anything.

I notice that in my last post I went on and on about a baby swing, and then immediately afterward I became obsessed with researching and then buying a double stroller. Ah, the siren call of baby gear... I am very happy with the double stroller we got (this one, in turquoise, with the second seat, which came for free on a promotion that they were running earlier this month) and I have since cooled on the idea of a baby swing. I am normally a huge babywearing person and I don't think Violet even got in a stroller until she was 8 or 9 months old, but the 1-mile walk to fetch Grace from school was turning out very uncomfortable with my newborn babywearing options, pushing Violet in my cheap jogging stroller. Once Lewis has head control, we can move to the Ergo or similar, which is quite comfortable even on long walks with a toddler, but for now I have a borrowed Moby and pouch and ring slings, none of which were cutting it for me.  Anyway, I spent waaaaaaaay too much time and energy researching which double stroller to get; it is a big enough purchase that it stresses me out that I will pick the wrong one. I did eventually decide and now I am the proud owner of our first "nice" stroller, which is awesome. A daily-use stroller is something that it is worth spending money on for good quality, I am coming to believe. Using it makes walking through the neighborhood such a nicer experience and I have a rain cover and all the things I need to use it in all weather, so I am going to do my best to keep up with the non-fossil-fuel commute for Grace through the whole winter and in all weather. So apparently you can solve some problems by spending money.