Finally, a post with pictures.

This blog has been sorely neglected. Not unlike everything else in my life lately. Basically right now we're all just focusing on keeping our heads above water until this baby comes! I seem to have delusions that I'll be able to get so much more done once she's out of me. While the crazy vomiting that was ever-present in the beginning of the pregnancy has subsided I still have a love/hate relationship with food. I love it. It hates me. I feel sick all of the time regardless of what I do or eat. Obviously the only solution is for this kid to come out. Luckily that is quickly approaching!!! Less than three weeks til the due date, and less than four weeks til the mandatory scheduled c-section (lets all hope she comes before it gets to that point!) This wee one seems far more eager to arrive than the last one, then again she could just be a tease. Doc says the baby's shaping up to be about nine pounds. She seriously doubts the baby will get all the way to ten the way Jonas did. I've heard such promises before. Jonas was supposed to be, "8 pounds at the MOST." Whatever, I've got no problem with nice, big, sturdy babies.

And now the promised pictures.

Here's a picture of how fat I am these days...and by "these days" I mean, like a month ago.

Here's a picture of my kids face with marker all over it. Dry erase does not come off little kid skin as easily as one would think.
Here is a blurry picture of a doll I made for our friend's third birthday.
Here's a doll I made for our other friend's fourth birthday.
Full body shot. The little cape comes off. Adorable, right?
Here's a table runner I made my mother-in-law for mother's day. I've been meaning to make this runner for forever and I finally got around to it.
A little bit closer picture of the fabrics used.
Here's what the easter bunny left Jonas.
Here's Jonas thrilled with "easter hunting," as he calls it.
Here's Jonas actually hunting. We practiced hunting for about a week before easter actually came...and continued to hunt long after.

That's our life lately. There's actually a lot more lying on the couch and sleeping than is pictured here, but you get the idea. Our chickens are doing great. We call one Houdini Chicken, because she manages to escape from the run no matter what we do. They eat scraps like champs and somehow managed to completely destroy their seemingly indestructable waterer. So there are trade-offs. The eggs should start rolling in around August. The garden is not to be this year. Which KILLS me. We have a gopher. I hate him. We bought poison but have yet to stick it into his hole due to lack of reassurance that said poison won't toxify the soil. Toxify? You know what I mean. He's eaten a large chunk of what was planted. I pulled out several plants and fed them to the chickens just to spite the gopher. I really do hate him. Jonas hates him too, and asks every day when we are going to kill it. I have doubts about how healthy this is, but the kid's pretty upset about his pea harvesting being cut short. And lastly, we're all recovering from a horrible cold that Jonas spread around our house. When it rains it pours. This happens every time I let him ride in one of those shopping carts with a little police car on the front. Seriously. Every time.

Our Baby

It's a girl! I know I could have posted this a long time ago but decided to keep everyone in suspense. Honestly though, the reason I haven't posted until now is because I pass out at about 8 every night. She's sucking the life out of me!
We're very happy that this one is a girl, since she will be our last, and it's nice to have one of each. We have absolutely no idea what this child's name is going to be. I have names I like, the hubs has names he likes, there are even names we both like! We just can't pin it down to THE name. I hope she's a red head, I deserve to have a child that looks like me, since the boy is so clearly the spitting image of his dad. Down to his toenails, no joke. I've been told he has facial expressions that are similar to mine, but it's not really a consolation. Those paternal genes are hard to break. It's ok though, he's cute...like his dad.

Pregnancy Slogan

Here's a new pregnancy slogan I came up with today after church. Pregnancy: the only time people think it's "socially acceptable" to say things like, "wow I'm so glad you're fatter than I am!" I admit the slogan is still a little rough around the edges, but you get what I'm trying to say.

People keep saying crap like this to me. To make it worse OTHER PREGNANT WOMEN keep saying crap like this to me. The line from the slogan was actually said about a month ago. Today another pregnant lady flattered me with, "You're really poppin' out a lot more than I am these days." Thanks.

The saddest part is I am way smaller with this baby than with the last one. Hopefully that means this one will be smaller. Nothing against ten pound babies but...they are HEAVY! Especially when they hit 20 lbs by the time they're 2 months old. Trust me, I've heard enough jokes about how my breastmilk must be heavy cream (from people who I'm only mildly acquainted with) to last me a lifetime. Seriously you wouldn't believe how many people said something like that to me. They all thought themselves very witty. Uhhh...please don't comment on what you think my breastmilk is like, it's awkward. Boy I'm cranky.

I'm Back!

Some of you may have noticed that I took a brief (four month) moratorium from this blog. It's because I've been a little bit preoccupied. Puking my guts out. Who doesn't love four months of that? The Mr and I (and Jonas) are expecting baby number 2! The last and final child. No WAY I'm signing up for this again. Last week I overheard a pregnant woman say that women who are sick when pregnant need to, "just get over it." It was all I could do not to strangle her.
It's been hell to say the least. I keep going back and forth between which is worse, the overwhelming sick feeling/constant malnutrition/dehydration bit or being utterly useless. For four months I haven't been able to do much of anything, which can wear on a person. You should see my house. You should see my garden. I, myself, am afraid to look in the chicken coop. The Hubs has been AMAZING, doing laundry, housework, shopping, learning to cook, being my constant nursemaid, cleaning puke out of the carpet and all with nary a complaint. What a stud I married!
My in-laws have been great as well. If not for my sweet, sweet mother-in-law poor Jonas would have gone without much of a halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas because goodness knows I've been in no shape to cook or make a costume. She also scrubbed my kitchen to within an inch of it's life, made us dinners, shopped all over to find whatever I wanted, took Jonas so I could rest. And that's just the beginning. I'm so grateful to have married into such a wonderful family, and to live so close to them.

So that's been my life for the past four months, just gestating away on the couch. But now I'm feeling much better, fighting the tail end of a crazy cold and constantly snacking so I don't puke but it's miles from where I was. I'm so ridiculously excited to be able to clean my house and get back to life as it should be. Jonas has been begging me to plant peas with him in the garden. The kid loves his peas.

I don't mean to complain, I've really learned a lot this past season. Mostly about myself. Not the least of which, how blessed I am. And to blatantly steal from Modern Family: I wouldn't make a very inspiring disabled person. Seriously, I've really taken for granted what a gift it is to be able to work, to vaccum, to plant a garden, to cook a meal.
So in conclusion, we look forward to welcoming another bundle of joy in mid June! We find out what the sex of the baby is tomorrow!

Happenings and Lentil Stew

"MOM! I caught a chicken!!!"

It's been a crazy few weeks aroung here. Jonas andthe chickens got sick last week. Separate illnesses. Jonas had a flu bug, most likely from sticking a child strap from a grocery cart in his mouth. YUM! And the chickens had Coccidiosis. Which, as it turns out, is horribly gruesome. The inside of the coop looked like a bloody horror film. I hunted down some Corid (albeit for cattle, but I diluted it in their water and it worked like a charm) and now the girls are back to their old, noisy selves. Still no eggs.

The garden is winding down. Jonas and I are out there every day (per the usual) clearing things out and prepping for the winter garden.

I may (or may not, who can remember these things?) have mentioned that the Mr and I are going to be trying for another baby. Jonas is NOT happy about this and makes no bones about it. He tells me almost daily, "I do not want a new baby to come to our family. Just me!" There are different variations of this. Boy is he in for a rude awakening. But I digress. The reason I bring up the impending pregnancy is that this week I am doing a detox in preparation for it. It's going splendidly! It's not an intense detox or anything, no lemon/syrup/cayenne/water craziness going on. Just super healthy, raw stuff. Well, ok, raw food and beans. Because lets face it, beans are good for you and I'm not going to exclude them. I've been having green smoothies for breakfast, salads for lunch, lots of fruit, and tabbouleh and things for dinner. I'm not playing this detox hard and fast so don't judge me. I had lentil stew last night. It was WONDERFUL! So here's the recipe. Obviously I made a few changes to the recipe so it would be "detox friendly." Veg stock instead of chicken and no bacon. Enjoy!

Chickens

We finally got our crap together and our chickens are here! They are even more awesome than I ever imagined. We only have two right now. Two Rhode Island Reds from my pal Ingrid. (Thanks Ingrid!) We plan on adding one more pullet later.

Jonas named one Brownie -because it's slightly browner than the other chicken. And he named the other Ginger -because it's the name of the main chicken on Chicken Run...and he's a little bit obsessed with that movie. But the name ginger totally fits because the chicken is burnt orange in color.

This kid LOVES the chickens. I'm starting to become slightly worried that he thinks he's a chicken, at least on some level. The chickens roll in the dirt, Jonas rolls in the dirt. The chickens scratch in the compost, Jonas scratches in the compost. The other day he came inside asking for a new shirt...because his current shirt was soaked with filthy chicken water. Oh yeah. He drank it. We monitored him closely for signs of chicken induced diseases for the first few days, because I'm just a little bit paranoid. More than once I've caught Jonas chasing them around with a scrubbing brush (terrorizing is probably a better word) saying that he needed (NEEDED) to brush their hair. What am I going to do with this kid?

The chickens seem very happy. They run to us when they hear our back door open and follow us all over the garden. They finally found the compost today, after exploring the yard for several days. Chicken Heaven. Their favorite place seems to be underneath one of the green bean teepees. Go figure. And their favorite treats are the sprouted legume/grain mixture I've been giving them, and tomatoes they find on the ground.

We've had a few predator run-ins. One morning after letting the chickens out of their coop I went inside to fetch laundry to hang on the line. When I returned there was a hawk watching the chickens from our garage roof. I threw a zucchini at it and it flew away (anyone who says they're overrun with zucchini isn't thinking of ALL it's practical uses). Then THREE more hawks flew out of our neighbors trees. We haven't seen them since but SHEESH! That night a skunk sprayed our coop. The chickens were safe inside but oh my. Who knew that skunk spray smelled like fire at point blank range? Tis true. Mercifully the smell had completely dissipated by the next morning.

In other news...remember my last post, how I rambled on about the strange weather? I've since decided that this blog has magical powers because it has been 100 degrees outside EVERY DAY SINCE. What is that about?

So how are your lives lately? I was having a facebook conversation with my friend Siobhan the other day about chickens. I told her Jonas and I had spent the entire day outside watching the chickens, interspersed with bits of hanging laundry on the washline. Siobhan also has chickens and totally gets how awesome they are. "We're livin' the dream!" I think is an exact quote from that conversation. And we totally are! And while the phrase "livin' the dream" is fine I read a line on another blog today that I like even better, "life right now is dope as hell." Indeed it is.

Summer So Far

I've been a lame-o again. I can't even remember the last time I posted on this blog...and I lack the motivation to go and look at the previous post. Anyway. I've been extremely busy -isn't everyone?

Well over a month ago I went camping for a week with a bunch of girls from our church. It was quite an experience. These were my cabin girls for the week. Sometimes they were awesome, sometimes they were downright rotten. But I loved them through it all. At the end of the week they were awarded the "Night Owl/Party Cabin" award if that gives you any idea of what the week was like.

Here's a shot of me and my pal Cous Cous (no,not her real name) waiting to go home. We were ready.

Camp was fun, but back on the homefront this has been happening every other day. Keeps me busy canning and pickling and roasting and dehydrating and freezing.



The southern california weather this summer has been the strangest I can remember. Perhaps strange is the wrong word, but "cold" doesn't exactly fit either. Anyway, it's been the coldest summer since the 1930's. While not frigid by any means it's still unseasonably cool. 70's most of the time, when it's usually in the 90's and 100's. The plants are loving it. The tomatoes haven't had a bit of blossom drop, there was a small bit of blossom drop with some pole beans but they're back to normal already.

At the beginning of the season I planted equal numbers of small red and yellow tomato plants. Red and Yellow jelly bean tomatoes and red and yellow pear tomatoes. I didn't keep track of which was which, and only planted out the strongest seedlings. I don't know what happened but EVERY SINGLE small tomato plant is yellow. Even the volunteers. Maybe they just like the weather better, or the soil, or the yellow plants are stronger by nature. Whatever happened we're up to our eyeballs in yellow jellybean and pear tomatoes. What a hardship:)

Here's a shot of our sunflowers! I have a spot of soil that is riddled with fusarium wilt. It's hard to find things to plant that are unaffected by it. Sunflowers are one of those things. So voila I planted a bunch of black oil sunflowers to feed our impending chickens. They look beautiful! This is not the best of pictures, they obviously need a good watering. So just take my word for it. Oh, and the bees LOVE them. Hooray for pollination!

Speaking of chickens... Here's the coop we broke down and purchased. I'm VERY happy with it. While the other coop we received is AWESOME, it needed some work to be chicken ready, and a run, so we just bought this, though we'll probably be keeping the other one as a place for baby chicks when the time comes. Anyway this new coop...LOVE it! Love the size and attached run and pull out tray for cleanup. While the run is small it shouldn't matter too much since we plan on free ranging the chickens and the run will only be used on specific occasions. Plus it's the perfect sized chicken tractor for our yard. The benefits are just endless. Can't wait for the chickens! Can't wait for the eggs. Can't wait for the weed and insect control. Can't wait for the MANURE! Stay tuned.