Out to the farm

I love taking Shanna and now Ivan out to my friend's acreage. It's so peaceful there and reminds me of living out of town, plus there is always fun, even if it's just to visit the animals or take a walk- we learn so much. Shanna collected several rocks she found beautiful, we planted flower seeds, visited the animals (I'm proud to say Shanna no longer screeches in horror when they come up to her, like she did when we first went out). Her funniest quote however was "oh snap, they're going to all come to me 'cause I have their bucket of food!" I told her my story how this city slicker was the brunt of one cowboy's joke when he told me to bring in the horses. When I asked how, he sent me out into the field with a bucket of feed and told me to shake it. I complied and yelled "now what?" He was already laughing as he hurled out "run!!!!" I looked over and 30some horses were stampeeding me! By the time I reached the corral, a couple of them were eating out of the bucket and jostling me around as I tried in vain to outrun them.
A couple of smarter and friendlier goats saw Shanna before the others and tried to climb her to get some food, which is so ironic, 'cause we had just poured some new food to distract them as we got in the pen, but I guess her's was even fresher!

Ivan warmed up to Angie after a little bit. He's wearing one of her shirts since we underdressed. There was still a nip of cool in the air in the morning.

He wasn't too sure of the goats at first either, but before too long, he was giving them kisses! Good thing his kisses never make contact! yuk.


Angie also has a pet deer her and her husband rescued from the side of the road, where it was injured. Ivan is always excited about opening his blinds since there are deer painted, so I was glad that he gets to see a real one up close. It's one thing to read about animals and see their pictures, but so much better to have the experience of being with them. For months, we've read animal sounds and they are coming slowly. He learned dog and cat sounds right away, 'cause he hears them all the time. Well, what would you know, it didn't take 5 minutes of being at the farm before Ivan was crowing like a rooster. We could throw all those books away on animal sounds if we lived on a farm. He would just know them and the knowing would be such a deeper, fuller knowing.

I asked Shanna a couple of years ago what meats came from where... bacon, ground beef, steak, turkey meat, chicken, sausage, pork chops... She had to guess at most of them. She got chicken meat, but not turkey meat and started guessing "the pig" for everything else since that answer came up so often! I remember being shocked in Africa to discover that peanuts grow under ground. I had never thought about it or wondered where they came from, apart from out of the plastic bag from the store. I had the same reaction seeing coconuts in trees! At least I had a mom who bought coconuts from the store, so I new what the fruit looked like, not just the shredded stuff of baking.

I took Shanna to the lake a couple of years ago so we could swim for free, instead of going to a pool. I didn't realize she had never swum in anything but a pool. She was terrified. The fish "were biting her" (yeah, right), she couldn't see the bottom (it's a dirty lake), the seaweed flipped her out, the rocks hurt her feet and she either spent the time with her body firmly wrapped around me or walking along the beach, at the water's edge!

Urbanized living has brought a lot of advantages, but in many ways it's made us more complacent and less knowledgeable too. It would probably be worthwhile to have a month of actual farm life as part of any school curriculum.

How farm or wilderness savvy are you? Have you ever gone somewhere less urbanized and had that sick feeling of being totally unprepared, and miseducated? Would you like to try a farm experience or even survivor type adventure?

Snaps: cute and quirky vol.2

Our little poser. It's getting harder to take Ivan's picture. He doesn't fall for the funny noises trick anymore and doesn't want to pose very often for the camera, but when he does... watch out!



Myka and Ivan go for a ride. He can almost reach the pedals and likes to steer.

Life is changing quickly for us around here as we gear up for spring and the baby's arrival. My sister Jenn and her hubby John are coming Easter break to visit (yeah! yeah! yeah!), so we figured this was a good time for Myka to move on to her new arrangements. I think her uncle and aunt are going to start keeping her in the mornings. It was going to be too convoluted for her to go to them for 10 days, then come back, only to have to leave again and I am slowing down in many respects, all while my mind zooms ahead! It will be a good time to spend just with Ivan and also get some of these projects done for room changes. We are also wanting to get the garden in. We planted some flower seeds and that about did me in, so I told Brian he was mostly on his own for the big vegetable garden! More on that later...

Not like a camel's hump

I'm in the home stretch and it's easy to tell. I've had a couple of instances of what I think is the weirdest pregnancy symptom, (apart from having a human being move, roll and grow in your belly). I call it having poorly attached stilts as legs. Sometimes when I've been in a position for a while, like on the floor, laying down or sitting and I try to get up, my legs won't work at first. I can feel my hips all weird and have to make sure I get my footing before plodding on. I guess this has helped me identify with our elderly neighbors and with some ladies I've met with multiple sclorosis. Well, at least mine is a passing phase!

I made a pretty big mistake yesterday and felt the consequences into the night. At first I wasn't sure what was wrong. Brian was feeling sick too, so I thought the fish we'd had may not have been good. I felt queasy and hot, had heartburn and was a little thirsty. I couldn't sleep, so I got in the recliner, which was WAY more comfortable than the bed (again, I can see what Mr. Griffin means). After a little while though, I felt short contractions, like what I had the day before I had Ivan. I thought, this is way too soon for this, although I have friends dilated a month in advance and have been having normal Braxton Hicks contractions, this was different. They were only seconds each and lasted only about 30 min. I contemplated going to the hospital, but it was 3 in the morning, did I really want to get Brian and Ivan up and spend the rest of the night in the hospital with them? Definitely not, plus I had an appointment today, so I could ask my doctor about it.

Looking back, I deduced that I was dehydrated, which can cause contractions. It's hot here, I'd drunk a Dr. Pepper in the day which I don't usually do, not enough water and had fried fish and spanish rice (both salty) for supper. Then with the heartburn, I hadn't drunk much. Dr Mascoro checked me and said everything was fine. I'm not at all dilated and everything was where it should be. In fact, when she went to listen to our daughter's heartbeat, it was racing. The Dr. said that was a good sign and she'd wait for it to calm down. Apparently little missy new someone was disturbing her cosy little home and got riled up about it.

I've been subbing a lot for other water aerobic classes (and declining a bunch- enough is enough), but the Dr. didn't seem distressed about that. She agreed I had probably gotten a little dehydrated. So, all is well. I'll be going every 2 weeks now as I'm in the last trimester (all ready????- that's what I said!). So the lesson of this story is... drink lots of water and don't mistake the hump in front for a camel's storage tank, it's more like a thirsty SUV that keeps needing refills!

Beautiful but blustering

We were wore out, but it was worth it. One of our adopted grandmas, Wynetta and I like to make a drive out to Anson to visit our friend Mary, once a week or when we can make it. We've been going since she was placed there, before Ivan was born and everyone loves to see Ivan come in! A couple of weeks ago, we went without Ivan, since he was in the middle of a nap and Brian was available to stay with him. The first thing Mary said was: Where's Ivan? Like we don't matter or anything! During this visit, Mary's speech therapist asked her who came to visit her, since she had seen us... again Mary replied: Ivan. Yep, we're just chauffeurs!

Ivan and Mary rode in style, while Wynetta and I pushed them over rocky terrain into the center of town where we've found this cute park. It was very windy, which made it a bit miserable, but it kept the heat at bay. We were hoping Mary would get to see some bluebonnets. We had seen some in the ditches along the highway, but not many since it has been so dry. The park had beautiful smatterings of the state flower, so we were very happy to have made the effort to get there!

Ivan and Wynetta enjoyed feeding the fish in the pond. Ivan kept scaring me when he'd run off to check them out, but we didn't have to fish him out ;) We met world travelers once at this park. The retired couple were on bikes and spoke with european accents. We asked them where they were from and where they had been. They were from Germany and had been biking and camping 1 1/2 years visiting Germany, Austria, India, Afghanistan and other amazing places, then flew to the states and came from California to Texas (by bike) to eat lunch in the little park we had a hard time finding in this tiny town called Anson! They had another 1/2 year to go and were going to tour more of Europe! Can you imagine?

If money and time were not a problem, would you bike all over and camp like that to see the world? What would you like to do for a year for fun?

The clock

The idea to make my children clocks celebrating the moment they made their beautiful appearance on earth came to me before we even knew Ivan was a boy. I made his Texan style and painted his name, place time and date of birth on it. We're doing the same with our daughter... only you can't see the words yet, 'cause I'll only paint them after birth. I'll paint hands on the clock pointing to the time of birth with the date on the hands. Her name will go accross the top and the place near the bottom.

I discovered it is a lot harder to paint with Ivan in my life (go figure). Some projects that require sanding or drilling, I can do with him since he loves all the gadgets and action, but painting I have to hold off on until he's asleep, since he loves all the gadgets and wants to be in the action! This means nap time or after he goes to bed. Often lately, by the time nap time comes, I no longer have the creative or physical energy to paint and try to nap along with him, or get something done in the house.

I painted this one night when he went down early and Brian had a gig. I was just going to paint the bottom dark part, but then started on the sky, only to discover that I had to do the rest for it to blend well. It's not perfect, but as with all my very amateur creations, I reach a place of being satisfied with it (ie. it requires more work to fix than I'm ready to put into it- and I'm happy enough with the overall effect). Unfortunately, I learn as I'm going and am confident I could do a better job if I tried it again, but that is not going to happen. I did all the painting that night, minus the numbers, then had to drill the hole for the clock mechanism and a hole for it to hang from. I'm getting excited for our daughter to be here. She moves a lot now and can be seen pushing and moving even through my clothes. That must be a weird sight!

How much is too much?

So one day I thought I'd make some popcorn on the stove, like they did in the olden days, when I was a kid! I remember mom shaking and shaking that pan over the burner for what seemed forever. Did you try it on high heat, mom? It took about 2 minutes when we did it and what an exciting 2 minutes it was! Of course the hardest part was figuring out how many kernels to put in the pan. I thought I had tons of space, so I put as much as I usually do in the microwave popcorn container. I put too much- and I hate to waste any kernels. At first, they weren't popping up very high, just making my increasingly huge mound jump a bit. Then some started to really fly. Ivan thought it was awesome! He was laughing and running around on the floor, picking up the popcorn and eating them. Talk about fresh out of the pan!

The popcorn was oh so delicious and lasted several days. We'll have to do it again some time. Maybe with a little less kernels this time.

I also made muffins a couple of days ago. Question: Where do 2 dozen muffins disappear to in about 48 hours? I just can't keep baking around here. I don't bake often and this recipe was really good. Ivan's been eating them for lunch and snack and so have I. Brian's gotten a couple I think... poor guy, you have to eat them quick around here. We shared a few with Big Buddy and I think there are about 4 left! Well, 3 in a few minutes ;)

Here's a question for you... what item will you make a special trip to the grocery store to get because you ran out? See your response (and mine) in the comments.

learning from others

Ivan picks up on so much and imitates everything, which is good and not so good. He saw a friend of our's daughter climb up on his train table, so a few nights later, there he was sitting on his table. She didn't teach him how to dismantle it, he has that mastered already! We look forward to the day when he tries to build things and put them together instead of always tearing apart, but you have to start somewhere. In the meantime, I'm excited that he will put things away in the garbage (most of the time) and help pick up (on occasion).

We don't do much tv watching, but when we visit one of our adopted grandparents (Big Buddy), he always has the tv on. Tonight one of Brian's favorites was playing: Criminal minds. I try to shield Ivan from the gore and intensity as we attempt to visit over the roar (Big Buddy is partly deaf, so the tv is really loud), but to my horror Ivan glanced as some guy chocked to his death on tv, Ivan threw his head back and stuck out his tongue and made chocking noises like the man! Maybe I could turn this into an opportunity to teach him the universal sign for chocking??? Yuk, sometimes, most times, I have tv.

Ivan has really taken to books and has gravitated to a dozen books in particular. Here is another adopted grandparent who came to visit. Ivan decided she would be a good reader and brought her one of his favorite books. Maybe he has a sixth sense about teachers, because he did the same with another teacher friend another night. He had her reading a good 20 minutes I'm sure, maybe he knew this was her specialty (she teaches teachers to teach reading- got it?)

It's beautiful to see Ivan pick up the good around us and I'm seeing more and more it's up to us to help him filter the bad. We know lots of people who homeschool, and while that is a long way off for us and we may change our minds, we tend toward a different philosophy. In our eyes, we are called to be involved, to be relational and to be different all at the same time. We take him in homes some people wouldn't go to because we love the people there and hope to teach Ivan to see past the exterior, the language or behaviors and realize we are all the same in the end. We all have hurts and victories and show it in different ways.

We've learned a lot from "the poor". They may not keep their homes like I do, talk like I do and may do a lot of things differently than I do, but so many of them love so much more, give so much easier and know how to celebrate life without all the material trappings I hold too dearly to. Some of these lessons are the most important in life, and what better place to learn it than among those who truly live it- sometimes you have to see through the harsh rudeness in life to behold it's greatest treasures.

hot, hot, hot!

We've been having unseasonably hot weather. Saturday was a scorcher. With weather like this, it makes us want to plant our garden, but we learned the hard way after lovingly nurturing little seeds, into little plants which we transplanted before Easter and to our dismay became little, withered, pathetic, dead, leafy somethings with the last freeze of the season. So, we're sitting on our hands and scheming about what to plant.

Meanwhile, I took Shanna and Ivan to the park, where we wilted and boiled. It was 88 degrees out (33C. for you canucks). Ivan had fun, but it was really too hot to be out much. I tried to convince Shanna to walk with us along the water, where it would be cooler, but she didn't want to get dark!!??? I told her that it was too late!




Ivan wanted to give hugs to the geese and was quite perturbed when I would come up to make sure he didn't get too close to the water since I scared them away. They seemed quite comfortable with Ivan, they probably thought he looked sweet and wanted to try a nibble of him. I feel that way too and have to nibble an ear or toe or just smother him in kisses sometimes.

Parting is such sweet sorrow

I realized that I should share the wealth and divulge of some of Ivan's baby clothes. Despite the fact that we have "our girl and boy" now, or will soon, we still want more kids, so I had thought of keeping Ivan's clothes for the next boy. But, all our clothes were given to us and I already see where the Lover has started even providing for our little girl, so it's only right that I keep the flow going and share with some who I know could really use the clothes. Shanna's twin sisters are both expecting, one is having a boy in the next couple of weeks, so I went through Ivan's closet, down memory lane and packed up any blatantly boy clothes.

It was hard. I'm excited (now) to share, but these are no longer just clothes. They are links to Ivan's babyhood, his growing up and our memories. I would pick up an outfit and remember him in it, how cute he was and how I loved seeing him in it. Of course it was him, not the clothes that was so cute, but they took me back in time, like a song that triggers fond memories. If I'm going to teach Ivan that not everything is "mine, mine, mine", to share and that he is not the center of the universe, I have to start by example. It's healthy for both of us. We know so many people with open homes, hearts and who would honestly give you the shirt off their back, even if they only had that to give. I'm not that way naturally. I hoard and collect and keep. I have to force myself to give, but now that I am sharing these clothes that I know were such a treasure trove for us and I know will be equally so for another, I feel freer and happier. For one thing, we won't have hoards of clothes stacked in closets in the eventuality that we'll have another boy, some day. Plus, we will bring this wealth of clothes to another, bringing them joy and some necessities of life. Most of all, it reminds us and affirms in us that our confidence is not in WHAT we have, but in Who we know. We see the Lover taking care of us daily and can trust in that relationship more than in something physical, but oh, so fleeting.