Rain Rain here to stay

Boy oh boy has it been wet! like really really wet, almost like we live in the pacific northwest wet. Hmmm....but it is good for the * drumroll please..*** GARDEN :) yes we do finally have a garden, pretty big and filled with nice dirt, it looks small here only because our yard is so darn big.

And we also have an herb garden, which needs some more bricks but really they can wait as I am more interested in buying plants than rocks :)

And more squash plants! I hope my friends like squash as much as I do because unless the bugs get them there should be plenty to go around.

Other than the rain and desperately trying to mow the half acre of lawn I own in-between rain storms without completely clogging the mower we haven't been up to much. A short trip to Canmore in May to meet up with family was great fun;

Tromping around Canmore with two children who have been promised Candy Apples can be fun too, sort of :) but really the mountains make it sooo nice, and the river flowing into my dad's head? hmmm

And let's not forget sleeping angels on big fluffy hotel beds that look all white and fancy and are hard hard hard with big fluffy pillows that are so very supportive you'll never lie flat again :) lol

And I include this photo of actual happy children in the car because it never ever happens until mom whips out a camera to document the gravity of the screaming and crying. So these little stinkers grin from ear to ear for the lens, well poop on them and their 9 hours of screaming minus one minute for the shot.

 And then my favorite photos ever, Norah calls them Bogles :) lol

And we will end with Sluggy our friendly yard slug who is now the favorite friend of her " whole life" and 'lives in her world" , that's my girl ; pink sparkly rings and brown slimy slugs :) The high heeled entomologist, glamourous snake wrangling dress model, oh Abby I love you!

Pretzels and Komodo Dragons

I have declared today a Mother's Day, no particular reason, we are mostly healed up from our past few weeks and despite being rather tired from all the gardening around here ( another post I promise) we are doing fine. Abby has had a few exceptional moments this week where i am really appreciating this little person that grew inside me. We will start with "Mom, what's it like being an adult?", asked on the way to the swimming pool on Sunday morning it sort of took me off guard. A pretty advanced question I think , I tried ot give it an advanced answer:

Being an adult involves being tired a lot because there is a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it in, like chasing little girls and making supper and laundry and mowing the lawn. It is fun but not as fun as being a kid because there is more responsibility and you can't really do whatever you want, in some ways you are more restricted than when you were little. But being an adult is great because you can have a loving husband and family and terrific little girls who make you smile and fall in love all over again.

But I still think about my response to this question and wonder if I would answer the same thing if asked again this sunday, or next week or next year. I guess technically I don't feel that much different than I did 10 years  ago before I turned 18. Which where I grew up means : Yay! you are an adult and somewhat responsible and we'll give you keys to a car, and you can buy a house and get your own food and drink up a storm if you choose. Many things have changed since that time, I am comfortable with who I am, as a matter of fact I LOVE who I am which I don't think I ever would have said back then. I have these great girls that are amazing every single day even when I want to pull my hair our and hide on my own island . ANd a great husband who not only is my Hubs he is my friend, he is my perfect fit , the other side of the equation, really M=S in this house.

But being responsible sucks a lot of the time in other ways, no you can't play video games all day and order pizza and let the kids run wild and never wash or clean up anything. Well..... okay technically you could and I think I've seen a few "Supernanny" shows where a few if not all of those things are going on at the same time in a home. But we don't do it here. We have agonizing decisions over how to parent, what rashes to pay attention to, which are just from grass, thinking that bump in the night is a child falling from bed, a window being opened by a stranger. Wondering about nutrition, sleepcycles, weaning, nursing, weaning, nursing, about the right school for an obviously sharp little mind asking questions that should be beyond her years. So what is it like being an adult?


Abby: Mom I want to see a real live chameleon right now
Me: Well honey, I'm not in the habit of keeping real live chameleons in the car
Abby: why not?
Me: well I don't think they would like it in here
Abby: Oh, well if there was a chameleon in here it could eat some of my pretzels
Me: well I think they eat bugs Abby, but he might try a pretzel
Abby: do lizards have teeth?
Me: some do, I think Komodo Dragons have teeth
Abby: They are bad lizards
Me: No they aren't bad, they are just aggressive because they eat meat and they have to hunt it to eat it, that's all
Abby: Well do you think a Komodo Dragon would eat a pretzel?
Me: No Abby they like meat
Abby: well what if I threw it at him?
Me: well no probably not because they like meat
Abby: Well what if I threw this whole cup at him? and all the pretzels were in it?
Me: I think he might say , no thankyou I like meat
Abby: Well then I would give him chicken.

Mother's Day

Well I've been avoiding posting about Mother's Day as it wasn't really all that great over here, actually it was downright dismal. Seth has had a headache for the better part of the last week complete with dizziness and nausea and.. well yes vomiting too. All those quirky side effects of a brain injury that no one know how, or why, or when they happen but they do. SO Sunday morning was filled with leftover coffe, make your own breakfast and get the kids out of the house so that Seth could rest. We went swimming which was pretty fun, the kids are great at the pool and we have a good time. Then back to the house, scrounge up some lunch, put Norah down for a nap.. oh wait she isn't napping this week. Anotehr fun side effect of feeling discombobulated because her dad now lives in the bedroom with the blinds closed. So get Norah up after an hour of singing the alphabet, head out to Lowes to buy myself some flowers. Okay just so everyone knows, Lowes, on Mother's Day, which was warm here in Spokane, in the Garden department with two kids both tired from swimming, freaked out from no daddy time and both napless...... bad. bad bad bad. I got tired of Abby continually running away bu hersell so I let Norah get out of the cart too so they could run away together. I figure if anyone tried to nab them they would have their hands so full by the exit they would ditch the kids and run for their lives. So we got some nice plants, and some cow crap, and the oh so nice lady at the checkout asked very sweetly how my Mother's Day was going and she got an honest answer. She may think twice about asking again, or at least check for the level of harried involved before opening her goddamn mouth.


Then we trouped home, and then voila, Norah fell asleep.. great right? Well at 3:30pm .. not so much. SO she napped for a whole 40 minutes which was just enough time for me to get elbow deep in making dinner on the barbeque because my *&%(*& oven STILL isn't working. Well that's another post entirely. And when she woke up she was oh so friendly and smiley, I mean she might have been underneath all the whining and the crying and the moaning and the cranking. I hel dher on my hip while I chopped vegtables and barbecued meat and then we all sat down to eat dinner, with the blinds closed. Not sure if the blinds were closed to keep the sun out for Seth or so I could pretend to be on an island, in the dark, by myself. BUT managed to wrangle the kids into bed so they could scream and whine for an hour before finally falling alseep. And the best part? well falling asleep at 9pm of course.

These photos are not from Mother's Day, I decided not to take any photos because something about documenting such a disaster seemed morbid. But these are some great dress up shots from earlier this week and sometimes we all need a Giraffe costume.

That New Baby Sweetness

Ooooohhhh goodness, and there is a new little one among us: welcoming Rebecca Coghlan, the newest cutest sweetest loveliest baby girl you ever did see! She finally made her appearance late on April first after much anticipation, girl three for Tom and Ivory! Yay!

Such a new and exciting experience to have a dear friend have a baby, I mean most of my friends already have their children, and those that don't.. well I haven't been informed of plans :) lol There is a strange vicaryous excitement involved, you can't wait to meet the new little fusion of some of your favorite people, you know that it is going to hurt and by proxy you get some cramps ( seriously). Then there was that strange moment when touching the belly in the food court at Costco you , know, just know that today is the day, but there is nothing to be done, just waiting... I'm not so great at waiting. The actual onset of the event is overwhelmingly exciting, labour has started! alright ! all systems go! DO SOMETHING....  but really... you're not supposed to be there...The only other labour you've ever been a part of was, well, your own! you were definitely there and fairly important. But this is different, not yours, not your fight, not your pain, not your experience, you are the periphery, a bystander, a superfluous watcher.

 You can wait and hope and pray for safety of your first friend you ever made in this city, you can worry when after checking your email 8, 20, 50 times that night you have nothing before going to bed at midnight. And you can rejoice! when you wake up to find a welcoming email.... relief....

You can have the older kids to play in the afternoon, feed them, cuddle them, give them ,loads of high fives and recognition that this, this huge event is theirs too! That it is so special to be a big sister twice , and even more to be a big sister and a little sister at the same time :) You can watch them swirling in their newfound sense of... different, and feed them and bathe them and give them loads of pie, them pack them up and send them off. Not yours, but so worth the time and energy it takes to have four kids running around like banshees for a few hours. :)

You can make a huge pot of soup and pack every vegetable cut with caring and concern, loads of vitamins and love, sustenance to help heal after the fight.

It is different , it's not your time but it is still so special and exciting and makes you want to grab the whole family and hug em tight! but instead I give Abby and Norah extra special love and hugs and wonder. ... the last time Ivory had a baby, someone else got pregnant :) lol

I can't keep it all together, so I've given up the power to the little people

Blahhh.... definitely coming down off a creative high, I've been working my butt of these past two months at 4 designs for Knitpicks amid three contest entries and don't forget some baby gifts. Now I still have to finish two of said contest entries and hopefully not die of stiff neck disease. All I really want to do is curl up with my new book, Knitting Workshop by Elizabeth Zimmermann who is perhaps the goddess of knitting. There are so many lovely patterns in it, so much to aspire to :)

Since I've been so busy and tired the girls have been taking over some of the household chores for me..

 Someone has to mow the lawn with bubbles

And slide excessively

Not to mention modeling new haricuts, these are things I'm just not good at so the girls have been helping me out

Another great example is sneaking pasta from the strainer when mom is busy stirring the sauce, I knew it was toooooo quiet in there.

And since all my creativity is used up the Daddy had to find new ways of playing Nemo, we call this the lazy-man tug-o-war

Don't forget vacuuming, at this I am hopeless, good thing Norah helps out

Other things I am not so hot at: maintaining a rollicking living room ocean boat with fish crackers and a broom mast, nope I'll leave that to the experts.

How about Giant Water Bottles?

Also I've been far too busy to be as cool as this

And let's not forget the necessary brick standing (?)  Apparantly it is an important part of our lives :)

This however, this relaxing in a hammock thing I would love to do, if there was only room :)

Dancing in the Street

Alright so this may come a little late, like perhaps a week, but remember that my T.V. was broken and I was enjoying all the quality time with my children... yadda yadda yadda.... SO very proud to be a Canadian this week after winning so many Gold(s) in the Olympics and really why not an impromptu street dance??

Broken Brain

Well our tv has been broken this week, which has been a very interesting process for all involved. Sort of a new and terrifying experiment that I never really had the guts to try out on my own but once forced to attempt to live without the brain sucking robot things have been a little different. Abby and Norah have been playing more and more, no more mid-morning meltdowns about getting to watch a movie, or seeing one more episode of Diego. This amazing product placement advertisement took place in my very own living room the night before the T.V. stopped working and considering how effective television advertising is on young children I'm glad mine had to go without for a week.

february2010

Now there are barbies and G-I Joes in the Jeep racing around the house at top speed with baby tigers and the odd lizard giving chase. A play tent has appeared in the bedroom which is the subject of a botched game of house where Abby is the mommy Norah is the Abby and Dotty ( her dolly) is the baby. Much cutting of paper into teeny tiny little itty bitty pieces just to practice scissor skills and to have the sheer pleasure of sanctioned destruction. Not that these things never happened before but now they happen without T.V. drama first, which is a much nicer way to start the day.

And then of course there was the 10 dollar slide totally scored from Cragslist thanks to our bestest slide hunter friend Ivory. Norah has been playing on the slide at Abby's playschool when she goes for family day on Friday and she's gotten so good at it she can go up and slide down all by herself. She is so much more of a climber than Abby ever was, I frequently walk into a room to find her standing on a chair, or halfway up the couch, which is scary. And not to mention that Seth and I are home a lot and we barely ever don't have eyes on the kids so for her to be up the chair it means she is scary fast.

The only thing that has suffered from the lack of T.V. time is my knitting, I not longer have hours of brain numbing time to knit knit knit away while we watch some ridiculous Monsterquest, or equally brain numbing episode. Oh well, tomorrow is a new day more specifically the new day that the T.V. gets fixed and I have a lot of catching up to do on a few projects. :) lol but I think we might just tell the kids it is still broken.. ahem until we get busted... because we will at some point or another. :)