3 little birds part 2...

Part two of the post I already did this morning, located below.

...my insistence on typing a blog post right next to them awakens the boys:

Har baby wakes up:

I try to withhold morning nursing, this is the face I have to see when I do that and the reason I am no good at this mom led weaning thing:

Can't do it so I give in to the little guy, now I have a cautiously happy boy (I swear he knows something is up with the withholding) :

Big brother wakes, and looks like a certain rock singer (m+rrisey).


Big yawn, getting 12 hours of sleep is so exhausting:

Cartoons on, bright eyed and bushy tailed.

Belly full of mama milk, another happy boy found his daddy.



And our day begins...

3 little birds

Tuesday morning, 8:35 am. If I was more clever or in the right frame of mind for writing I could turn this blog post into a hard boiled detective style story. Sadly, even with two cups of high octane coffee coursing through my veins I still have a half working sleep deprived brain. It just isn't happening.

Both of the boys are still asleep right now. It is very unusual to say the least, the clock creeps towards 9, sippy cups ready in the fridge, cartoons playing on the tv and they sleep. Don't get me wrong, it is really quite lovely. However, as a mom you get attuned to times when the schedule deviates, dead quiet while they play is always bad and sleeping an hour longer than they usually do could be the harbinger of something. I guess I will have to wait and see, and hope it isn't a cold or flu.

I noticed a very distressing thing last night. Har has been waking up at the same times each night for the same comforting nursing back to sleep. This is bad. He sticks to the same nursing schedule during the day, if he is doing that at night I have to nip in the butt. I am hoping that will happen this weekend because we are going away for the night and I won't be able to nurse him nearly at all. I am hoping, hoping, hoping that helps. If it doesn't, I don't know what I am going to do short of sacrificing sleep for an entire week to train him not to crawl into my arms at night. Training a little dude not to crawl into my warm arms at night seems mean to me but I don't have a choice, if it affects the way I parent, affects my own health I have to do it. Doesn't mean I want to but I have to. I haven't slept a full night in over 3 years, I know it has affected my overall well being. I just hope I can do it with compassion and love and the little guy doesn't get his feelings hurt.

On an entirely unrelated subject, I got a strange comment on my last post. It is about hummingbirds, Anna Hummingbirds. I can't figure it out, why someone would even post a whole essay on hummingbirds when I merely mentioned them once. There is no "read your post", or anything that even hints that this strange person read my post or my bio. This is especially true since the first thing she says is that these Anna Hummingbirds are all over Southern California. Hello, smart lady! I say right there that I am in the Sierra Foothills, Northern California. We are at an elevation of about 3200 feet and there is not a thing about this place that even relates to Southern California. In fact, I have often thought that Southern and Northern California should be two different states because we are really so very different. It was, well odd, and I plan to delve into what she says further but right now I am concerned the clacking of my fingers is stirring the still sleeping boys. For now, I am signing off. I am sure I will have more to say later, until then this is what my morning looks like at this very second.

Summertime, and the living is easy....

Ok, I know it is Spring but that song feels about right today. This weather has turned the blood in my veins to maple syrup, I am so, so lazy. I could easily lay down on the deck with a pillow, close my eyes and imagine I was sitting on a beach in Hawaii. Didn't get a wink of sleep last night but drank some great locally roasted coffee so I am doing ok. My dad came over for a nice visit and when he left I switched to Mexican beer, fresh lime and a salted rim. I thank living in the Central Valley for teaching me the proper way to drink a Mexican beer.

I am alternately chasing butterflies and hummingbirds with our camera. Amazing monarchs flutter about, the family that planted our landscape put in tons of butterfly friendly flowers. A huge one landed on my purple freesia this morning but before I could get a picture Dust did his barking impression and it fluttered away. There is a family of hummingbirds that live here, two grown and two tiny. It is not unusual for them to hover at our bedroom window just staring at us, they are around all the time. I am one who believes in signs, spirits, so I always wonder who is saying hi. I cut a bunch of the freesia and put it on the deck hoping the hummingbirds will like it.

Today I feel like this is the day I have been waiting for all week. Some weeks just prove harder than others, this one sure did. The thing that always strikes me is something I noticed as a career barista, people move in cycles. It never failed, bad weeks or days seemed to show in people who had no knowledge of eachother. I have seen this in the blogs I follow lately, the last few weeks have been a bit trying. I wonder what that is? I guess we are all more connected than we think. Today though, I am finally content.

I am excited for next weekend, I am venturing back to the Bay Area with the boys. My dad is driving us in and I am spending Saturday with my dad, mom and sis. My husband isn't on speaking terms with my mom so he is staying here. The boys and I are staying overnight though, and going to Easter Sunday with my grandparents. I am excited, I love going back to where I grew up. I wish in some ways we could afford to raise the boys there but in many ways I think here is better for them. Any way, it should be fun.

There is a mound of laundry to be done, cleaning all over the place, but Har just fell asleep for his nap so I think I am going to head outside with my camera and Dustin....goodbye for now. I leave with a picture from earlier this week, our New Year's bottle of tequila, empty of liquor but filled with purple freesia.

Daydreams

"This capacity of waking up, of being aware of what is going on in your feelings, in your body, in your perceptions, in the world, is called Buddha nature, the capacity of understanding and loving"

Living in the area we do has been the best kind of teacher for me. Being surrounded by such tall pines and strong oaks has been humbling and very peaceful. I will often walk if I have had too much to deal with. Sometimes it helps and sometimes it doesn't. I am trying to learn how to focus on the steps of that walk, to stay in the present. All I need to do that is right in front of me.

I work on this because of my children and my peace of mind. Having two toddlers is crazy all the time. They are boys so they have this excess physical energy I am not entirely sure girls would have. However, not having daughters I guess I wouldn't know. I am a born multi-tasker which is great for mothering but I often have to remind myself to slow down and really listen to what my family and I need.

Yesterday we were outside and Dust had been working in the compost pile with E. He came around the corner with a sad look I hadn't really seen before.

"Dustin in trouble. Daddy hurt. Not shovel. Not shovel" he said to me in a small voice. I didn't know what he was talking about but for once I really heard him. I pulled him onto my lap and he curled into my arms.

At 3 daddy is Dustin's hero. Three is a hard age, much harder than 2 ever was. He wants to do every single thing himself, he is so stubborn and he does not listen. He especially doesn't listen to me, it is daddy all the way. I try to empathize and get it right but it is hard with an 18 month old demanding mommy all the time. Yesterday I got it. Apparently he was trying to dig in the compost pile with a stick and smacked his daddy.

Dust is fiercely independent and not much for cuddling. He didn't stay in my lap long but when he leaped out it made me sad to think that lately I haven't been putting myself in his shoes enough. It must be hard to be three, just as we all have our hard moments. The more I practice on being present for him the better mom I can be.

I think about the same thing with Har. He clings to me at night, a warm sweet smelling little guy. During the day he has begun to push away. He has shown more interest in his daddy and "brudder". I need to pay attention to that, I need to let him go but be there if he needs me.

Motherhood is mindfulness. Mindfulness is a practice, I just keep at it.

As for me, when I pay attention to what speaks to me I daydream while I hang the laundry on the line. I dream about this beautiful farm being a commune. Communal living. Buildings all spread out with amazing friends living here. Growing and baking our food. Children of varying ages running around, mothers helping eachother. Women and men coming together, music, laughter. Conversations about stuff like this, kids playing naked in the mud. My idea of heaven. It takes a village. As much as I focus on paying attention to my family in this moment, it doesn't hurt me to dream...

Getting there

It is a shame I didn't get my post finished yesterday. Yesterday I had actually gotten some sleep the previous night. Har only woke me up one time and waking up only one time is like winning the lottery for me. I have most of the post in my saved folder on here but am not in that place today.

Today, sleepy but happy.

Definitely getting back to a place of balance and while it hasn't all come together yet I feel it just beyond my reach. The key is to get some sleep for once. Getting sleep means trying to teach Har to fall asleep on his own without using me. Each time we go to our favorite super fancy grocery store I look at all the organic beautiful teas. In my mind I am supposed to get a peppermint tea, peppermint is supposed to be an herb that reduces milk, so is sage and parsley but you don't find those in a tea aisle. Strange random fact about me, I hate peppermint tea. I spent a lifetime in the coffee and artisan tea industry, I should like all teas or at least appreciate a really good one. Not so peppermint, and because of this I grab the Mother's Milk.

I am sorry to go on and on about this but some things just kind of are the center of your life for days, weeks, months or years. Weaning and the lack of sleeping because of not having done it has been in the forefront of my mind for the past few months and it is hard not to blog about it on here.This is where I can vent.

Anyway, I think on some level he isn't ready and I sense that. So I pass on the peppermint, and the sage that is growing in our yard.

The weather is kind of funky today, it teases the boys and I with a bright blue sky but when you step outside you are nearly blown away by the coldest winds. A day of contradictions. I guess that may be the theme of the last week, needing or wanting to do something but doing something else. I just made a cup of coffee because I am so tired and when I finished it decided I would love a beer.

Lately we have been enjoying seeing what is popping up in the yard. We rent this really amazing place, it is a 5 acre former organic herb and vegetable farm in the foothills. The woman who originally started the farm had 2 sons and when she died they basically abandoned the whole place to our landlady who bought it. Our landlady is old, she couldn't keep up the farming so the place basically went to seed. When I talk about the sons of the woman abandoning the place I mean they really just up and left, there is a storage house on the property that was their workshop. It hasn't been touched, all the herbs are still there and the only thing that bears witness to the fact they left is the coating of dust on everything. It is really wild.

They marked all of their herb patches with metal signs so if we rake or move some leaves we find these signs that speak of the work that went into the garden, "mugwort" "horehound""hyssop". The list goes on and on. We don't know out of the fruits and vegetables they had what survived being left for a few years so we are watering and a giving the grounds some love and stuff is springing up.

It is like a mystery unfolding in front of our eyes, and always a reminder that no matter what road things take, if you have strong enough roots you will survive.

Unbalanced

Tomorrow is another day.

Tomorrow is also, thankfully, Monday. Monday is one of my most favorite days because a whole new week stretches out in front of you, full of promise, excitement, mystery.

This week I plan to find myself again. Somewhere in the last 4 days I seemed to have misplaced "me". Instead I have found myself in front of a counter wondering where my iced coffee was as it sat under my nose. Then flash! I am wandering aimlessly in our yard wondering idly why I can't find the herbs I want to plant for sale in the places we look for them.

Do not be alarmed, this happens from time to time. I always go from periods of serious grounding to head in the clouds daydreaming. I once read a really great book on how creative minds often do this, and out of this foggy sort of haze (which can sometimes be a depression for some people) their most intense creativity can arise. This has not happened with me in the last 4 days though.

I feel more like a chicken with her head cut off, searching and searching for my head. Or perhaps a shopper in a grocery store searching so carefully for something they desperately needed to buy but can't remember what it is for the life of them.

The other day my dad and I took the boys to a rock show. It was a lot of fun and I found myself staring at a display of beautiful pendulums. My mind said to my purse, "I really need to have one of those." but the two never got it together to buy one nor could my psyche put it together why I needed one in the first place. Now, sitting here I get it.

Unfortunately this misplacing of "me" has led in a nasty fight with hubby, frustration with the boys and serious dissatisfaction with the cleanliness of our house. The deep down core Diana is more aware of her mood approaching those things.

For now, I am writing off the rest of today. I think I can hang with this pseudo self until morning. Luckily, tomorrow is a blank canvas I just might paint with bright spring flowers...or a nice fistful of dirt. We shall see.

Sibling Rivalry under a clear blue sky

Where to begin?

This morning I am back after an 8 day internet hiatus. It wasn't on purpose, our home is tiny and very disorganized (due to a simple lack of space) and we misplaced our internet bill. 8 days later we finally got it together and here I am.

The first few days were nice, I got a lot of spring cleaning done but I really started to miss a world that isn't brimming with sibling rivalry, food strikes, weaning, lack of sleeping and a refusal to listen to anything I say. I also keep in touch with pretty much all of my real life friends through this thing so I was feeling very out of touch for those 8 days.

This morning I am catching up on e-mails and playing with fire in doing so but I am well aware of that. So many blogs to catch up on! So many e-mails! It is a little bit overwhelming, the house is really messy and I have had 3 cups of coffee. Both of the boys are fussy and my little guy has been refusing to sleep for longer than an hour for the last 4 days. I am playing with fire because I have a feeling everything is going to fall apart while I catch up and patience on all fronts seems to be running as low as the groceries in the fridge today.

Deep breath here...

When friends would sigh and ask me, "How do you do it with two kids so close together?" I would always have a stock answer,

"Actually the fact that they are 20 months apart makes it easier, they are really in the same space so it is easy to kind of group their activities and have them play together."

Every time I said that I knew it was only going to be true for so long. It was really easy in the beginning for that exact reason but in the last few weeks sibling rivalry has reared its ugly head.
Sibling rivalry from Dust, my 3 year old. Every single thing is "HIS!". Compound this with the fact he has decided to no longer listen to mommy and will only listen to daddy. I don't know if this is a normal kid phase or a phase that only boys go through since I only have boys but I am thinking it is a boy thing. While that issue surrounds Dust like, well, a nasty cloud of negative but normal Dust, Har is full of his own issues...not sleeping and not weaning.

I am not going to complain too much today, that is my mantra for this beautiful Friday, but I will say I am having a hard time with this weaning thing. Dust just stopped nursing one day at 7 months and never looked back, the more I try to cut out feedings with Har the more he wants. He fusses, he refuses to drink out of his bottle, he gives me this pained look like I am taking away the most important thing to him and he nurses all night long like it is going out of style. I vacillate between being done with nursing a 17 month old and still wanting to give him at least one special feeding a day. The problem is I think he is going to be like his brother, all or nothing.

As for the not sleeping, they are hand in hand since he can't fall asleep without nursing himself to sleep. I have given myself exactly one month to both wean and teach him to sleep on his own. Let's see how that goes! I am not a mom who is usually strict and I am going to have to be, I might need to take up meditation to get this done.

Today really is perfect in other ways though. It is one of those days I feel really lucky to live up here in the mountains, butterflies, blue skies, warm sunshine. Things are crazy with the boys but in general our family is doing really good so I remind myself with a quote from one of my favorite writers and poets:

"Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens."

So I am going to keep a positive attitude about all that is going on today and in general, mindful of where my feet are. I am going to wrap this up and fix a great big lunch and try to get as much time outside today as possible.

Happy Friday everyone.

Nostalgia and Fire

Today I stepped outside and it was just gorgeous. I grabbed my nursing tea and Har and decided we would head down to the forresty area of our property to gather incense-cedar to build a big beautiful fire. I had him in the wagon and we got down to a clearing where a lot of wood is already cut and piled amongst the trees. I set him on the ground so he could toddle off and gather his little pine needles and stopped, nostalgia. Pure nostalgia.

We live in a place that is in the same area that I met some of the most important people in my life. I was a raver in the 90's (yeah, yeah I know), they were too, and by chance we all attended a phenomenal outdoor camp out rave where we met in the oddest of circumstances. I am not going to trot out the story, no one really cares about it but us (and this has been proven because any time any one has a couple too many beers, it comes out and the only one who wants to tell it is us girls, not the guys-they like to tease us and roll their eyes). The people I met there were an established group, they all went to high school together for the most part but I just fit in. We spent years going to parties, then made it past the rave friend stage (that says a lot) and into marriage, death, kids. They are my best friends and I love them to pieces. We have been friends now for going on 11 years.

Something about the air today, the temperature. It put me right back to when I first met them.It made me a little sad that we aren't closer so I had to call the best of my best friends and had a nice chat with her, we try to talk once a week and we are both stay at home moms. She has a 10 month old boy and we need to keep in touch to keep our sanity.

Nostalgia. Not necessarily a bad thing though, a whisper of some point in time. Har helped me build the fire, well he added his precious pine needles, and it has been burning all day.

Big beautiful wisps of cedar smoke sent out into the air. I go outside to throw some fragrant rosemary on, sage, bright green bay leaves. I cracked a beer as an homage to friends who would be here if they could. I drank with the trees, the sky, the woodpeckers and blue jays who eye me warily.

Something about a fire, does it remind everyone else of friendship too?

Yes, today I am nostalgia embodified.

The rest of my life consists of weaning which is not going so great, that little stubborn boy will not give up his prized "lovey". Money worries which still seem kind of in the back of my mind and are made much worse by the fact I know my husband is seriously stressed. It is even harder today since he ran into the Realtor yesterday and she told us if we came up with 10 grand she could guarantee getting our landlady to carry the paperwork for the mortgage. That is not a lot of money at all, we would have had it, we should have had it had we not gone through all we did. It just makes us feel kind of miserable about all we have had to go through.

No wonder I am nostalgic. Sometimes it is just nice to think back to an amazing time while a sweet fire slowly burns.

Now I think I am going to head back out there, Dust is running around playing in his little way and I want to sit by that fragrant smoke and think a little more. Remember a little more.

Before I do, I would like to take a moment to thank the two wonderful women who follow my blog and have commented on my posts. Thank you for your words, they really mean a lot to me. I enjoy reading your blogs and I thank you for taking the time out to give a little inspiration, support or humor. I would like to encourage anyone who is reading but hasn't commented to do so and I will make a space next to that big great fire I built and we can sit virtually, clanking beers (or wine, or water) and talking about the great moments in our life, or maybe just about the stars or something mundane but comforting.

Cheers,
Diana

Tiptoe

Went to bed last night and an overwhelming sense of peace washed over me. Who knows where it came from but I am so very thankful. Today is cloudy and grey and seems like the kind of day the boys and I should tiptoe through, taking our time, enjoying the birds, the trees, the flowers.
It almost seems as if some kind of response to stress on days when I am lucky enough to feel that way. There are certainly days I wish I could channel this but it seems to be somewhat beyond my control.

I should be a ball of nerves. The last few years have taken it out of us financially. We used to have so much materially, stocks, land, a home, retirement, 401K. All of it has been wiped away and we have yet to recover. We haven't been fiscally solvent in years, and are a few months from that. Today we took money out of our savings to pay rent, a lot more than we thought we would have to. It was hard but at least we had it. We always try to have enough to cover the next 1 or 2 months which we about have. I know we are lucky to have that but it still stings.

So many people are struggling. I have mentioned a lot that I grew up in the Bay Area. All of my friends are there, my family is there. Whenever I talk to them the biggest complaint is always money. I always tell them I know exactly how they feel. We felt the same way when we tried to raise Dust in Alameda. $900 a month for a 600 square foot one bedrooom apartment in a sketchy neighborhood. Groceries killed us. We split, we went to where it is cheaper. I wouldn't be completely surprised if we had some people follow us.

Who wants to think about money on a Monday morning though, right? As far as money goes we have found it comes and goes. The good thing is it usually has a tendency to come out of the blue when you most need it. This has happened to us several times, down to our last $100 or so dollars and something we had listed sells, boom, money for the next 6 months just like that.

Maybe that is why I still feel peaceful about everything going on. My mom is a worrier so I have always been the opposite of that, worrying doesn't help. Worrying is bad energy.

The picture I put in this post is one I found somewhere on the internet. I am not necessarily a religious person, I don't go to church or belong to any organized religion. If I had to choose a path to follow it would probably be along the Buddhist lines but I like this picture. I like the imagery, a talisman of faith on a road to who knows where. Just what is needed this Monday morning.

You can't always get what you want

It occured to me that I could probably name every post I do either a Stone's song name or lyric. There is really no shortage of material there.

I am doing better, especially after my big ugly day a few days ago. We seem to be on the mend although 9 days of solid flu in our house has really wrecked everyone. Now that we seem to be healing and I write this blog nodding in and out after waking up no less than 4 times last night to nurse Har baby, I have absolutely 100% decided it is time to start weaning.

I have felt this way on and off since the time a few months ago that I made cookies and Har, cookie in hand, made his way over to me and pulled up my shirt and decided to add some milk to his snack. Um, too much information? Sorry. Anyway, I looked down at him and thought "Buddy, your days with this are numbered."

The problem was I couldn't manage it then, or maybe I wasn't really ready. It was still snowing quite a few days and still flu season, Har is woefully behind on immunizations since we lost our health care (President. O- please fix this!) and I wanted to keep nursing him through the snow and flu season. Well, that totally backfired because due to my lack of sleep my immunity is shot and Har got sick anyway.

I am so sick of not getting a full night's sleep. I could be such a better mom if I slept. Having fun! Baking! Running around! Firm voice instead of screaming time outs! I do manage most of those things but it is only due to the magic of coffee. I want to sleep. I want my bed back, um our bed back. If Har slept I could keep nursing him but not sleeping and still nursing is hand in hand for him, so I begin.

17 months, such a stubborn age. He is just finding his voice for what he wants. He hates bottles, he also hates cow milk. I need a plan, and I may have to do the geeky former Admin Assistant thing that I would do for our Sales Reps, a spreadsheet.

They say to cut out one feeding a day, I decided to start with all feedings between his favorite 10 am one and any before 4pm. Just writing that I see how hard this going to be. I feel I am ready though, he will probably never be so I just got to do it.

I need to power through the stress of his crying. Maybe I should take up meditation, that might help. Or medication, I could have titled this post "Mother's Little Helper".

Other than that E took Dust for a very special father and son day, sitting on the tractors at the Hardware store. There is nothing Dust cares about more right now than hanging with his hero so hopefully they will both come back in a good mood. As for me and Har, operation W has begun.

Waiting on a friend

I want to be sensitive to my wonderful readers so here is a warning, if you aren't up for reading this today. This is a post about dealing with the death of my friend. I know some days these things are easier to read than others.

After I wrote that seriously cleansing post yesterday I decided to go outside with the boys and get some sun. I have this habit of going outside when I want to be uplifted, it is something that I only started doing when we moved up here and is because there is something magical about this little place we have found. I dried my frustrated tears, went outside and headed with the boys down to the rosemary and tarragon fields. In moments like these there is always something that lifts me up, I am never sure if it is a sign from my friend Kathy that I mentioned, my aunt who passed from ALS a few years ago, the spirit from the lady who ran this farm, or anyone else for that matter.

Yesterday, a monarch butterfly.

It flew around us making sure it was known. This was most surely sent from Kathy as she was still very much on my mind. Butterflies are her thing. I started thinking how I was so surprised that I would think of her in that post yesterday and in general. How it can still be so many years and some days I just really miss her.

Kathy died at what we thought was the height of her life. She had just turned 21. She wanted to go to B-Man so bad (I normally wouldn't abbreviate anything but there was a lot of junk surrounding her death and I don't want anyone to find this blog by googling that "August-week long celebration in the Nevada desert"...you get the idea for what festival I am referring to). She went by herself, all of her close friends stayed back here. She was a talented photographer, made it to almost the end of the festival. Then she suffered a terrible accident while trying to get a closer look at a temple she wanted to get a picture of.

All of our friends and me included went through a lot when she died. It was really hard having someone die who you love but their death is permanently attached to such a famous festival. When you tell people how she went and they say, oh! I was there that year/I met one of the paramedics who worked on her/I met someone on the bus who had her scarf...blah blah blah.
Then that week comes and you are living in the Bay Area and there are legions of cars so proud to show off their playa dust. I am fascinated by that dust. Her stuff came back covered in it. It is so otherworldy, and seeing it on cars is such a bittersweet reminder.

I guess I just want to remember her today. It can be such a minefield when you lose a friend and there are all of these close friends involved who are grieving in such vastly different ways. I learned very quickly who I could talk to about the signs I would see or the dreams I would have. I learned who wanted to celebrate her life or talk about how this all sucked so bad and she should be there with us getting married and having babies and taking shots of tequila on New Year's Eve. I learned who didn't want to talk about it, who would rather keep quiet.

Her long time boyfriend/fiance really took it hard. I tried to be there for him after she passed as much as I could, I sent cards for months, I called to just see how he was, I sent little gifts. Then I couldn't do it anymore, I needed to grieve myself. I was always worried he didn't think I had kept that up long enough. We have recently reconnected and he was visiting us with our other best friends on New Years. Almost 6 years and with me and my best friend there he started crying, worried he had missed his chance with who was supposed to be his wife. We tried to soothe him and tell him, no, there was someone out there for him. It is still so damn hard sometimes and the hardest part is we didn't know the answer for him.

What I was thinking about yesterday was how I am 2 people, and it isn't "before kids" and "after kids" like I thought it was. It is "before death touched my life" and "after". I hope that doesn't sound morbid to anyone reading this. I always have had a thing for Day of the Dead and my beliefs on death pretty closely mirror that, celebrating life. Death as a passage to something. A passage that sometimes I can take and sometimes I want to revoke, preferring to have my talented friend here with us instead of sending signs.

Before her death touched my life and touch is a mild word (I would probably use something more vivid if I could think of just the right word) I can't remember exactly who I was. Probably happily unaware that life is so tenuous. If I try really hard I can imagine that Diana, skipping along, hoop earrings and a long brown ponytail, cool jeans, a white tank top, beers and music in SF bars, doing way too much partying, being way too hard on herself and seriously lacking direction. Kathy's death saved me from heading down a slippery slope. Now I look in the mirror and I see me, weary from a different kind of all nighter, much more peaceful, always with the taste of death in the back of my throat but knowing there is not a thing I can do about it. Loving and crying all in one breath, even crying because of beauty sometimes.

Don't get me wrong, I would love to have her back. One day, grabbing coffee and catching up before she had to head back to wherever she is. I am thankful for how her death shaped me but no one ever wants to be shaped that way, baptism by fire. I would much rather have her here, taking pictures of my family, she was such a talented photographer. Instead, I am learning how to take pictures myself.

Almost 6 years later and I still think of her so often. Other people close to me have passed but she was so young that it is much harder. Thank you to the universe for allowing me to remember her this morning.

I want to include some of the pictures she took at B-Man that we got from her camera that came back with her stuff. Also, a picture of me and her (she is on the left). The very last picture is a picture of her at the festival and she is in the red.

Now, on to the day. Whatever it brings.

Honey

This morning I woke up and while sleepily getting Dust's vitamin I noticed somehow during the night the honey which had been sitting on the shelf undramatically for the past week had gotten cut. Honey was leaking out into the cupboard and dripping onto the counter. The sort of amusing part is I had set my coffee unknowingly under the leak and honey was dripping into the cup. I investigated the plastic bear container and noticed a clean slice. How on earth that slice got there is beyond me. I stuck the container into a bowl and went about my morning.

What a morning it has been. Let's just say when I got out of the hot, hot shower I had dragged myself into I burst into tears. I cried and cried and cried. I caught a glimpse of the bowl filling up with honey rapidly and felt that was me, somehow I had gotten cut and hadn't noticed it. Now my normal calm and happy state of mind towards motherhood was leaking out at a rapid pace and spilling onto the floor.

Sleep deprivation. Children crying to me to cure their terrible flus. A 3 year old boy who has decided not to listen to a word I say and only be happy when daddy comes home. Loneliness. Missing my friends and family, it has been so long since they have been able to visit. Having to write the rent check (a mortgage payment I would not mind, at least that has some sort of permanence). Not knowing any other moms up here. Not being able to keep the house clean or the kids fed because my own sinuses and head are so painful I can't think straight.

If there is anything that can do me in it is these things, all happening at once.

You have to be so careful in walking this minefield of motherhood, of 2 so close together (although it can and does happen as equally with those who have 1 kid or women in general.)

I have to fight and remind myself to take moments of "just me". I think I do a pretty good job although Har is so attached to me it can be too much sometimes. 17 months and he won't sleep without me. 17 months and he is still so attached to nursing. Daddy can't calm him down, only me. E has been working a lot lately which is great because it was even harder when he was here all day, but it doesn't help with the bonding between him and Har.

What does the "me" time look like? I don't need much, my favorite herbal tea, time to read my favorite blogs, drink a really special beer I have picked out, watch one of my favorite shows.

The problem is when kids are sick it is like motherhood x 4. They need so much more and it is so hard to just carve out time.

When I was sitting on the floor of the boys room, now turned into a playroom but to be turned back into a bedroom when the nights heat up, and I was crying I halfway hoped someone would call at that very minute. Someone would call and I could be a blithering, sniffling Diana so someone else could witness how hard it is to do this when you haven't slept in 3 years and 11 months.

Somehow I have to find a strength within me to make it through today. Writing here helps. A nap would really help if I can manage it. So would a plan, something to give me back some of me before I had these two wonderful boys. And they are wonderful. Har may be a study in attachment parenting but this longtime nursing, this co-sleeping have made him the sweetest little boy. He is so quick to dole out hugs and kisses. And Dustin? Well, he may have a total case of hero worship with his dad right now but ultimately that is good, healthy.

Where to go from here? Another cup of tea. I think we need some time in the sunshine. Taking away the syrup bottle that Har is drinking from. Finding out what Dust is up to with the strange noises I hear from the kitchen. It never ends. Planning my trip back to the Bay Area in April. Hoping against hope this flu goes away. Feeling good about being able to cry. And for some reason, really, really missing my friend Kathy. How I can still miss her this much after she has been gone almost 6 years is beyond me. Maybe because I know she would be a shoulder to cry on, or maybe because she reminds me of the wistful and free times we had before kids and before she died at B-Man.

Who knows. Maybe she can send some strength my way today.

Germs, germs and germs

These last few days have been miserable for our entire house. Like many other bloggers I have been reading, and friends I have been hearing from, we have the flu. Baby flu, toddler flu, mommy and daddy flu. 3 years of the cold season with a little one and I am still surprised when we get sick.

I expected it when we lived in the petri dish of the Bay Area but up here? Seriously. Somehow I think living in a county that has only one single town that is incorporated should keep you from getting this sick. It doesn't. The only plus we have is the fresh air, currently filled with the scent of warm earth and pine. If I could manage to drag my achy muscles outside, carrying the little one who has refused to do two things since he has been sick, 1. Stop nursing 2. Be put down, I could probably really benefit from that fresh air.

Dust started off with the flu first so he seems to be getting slightly better and I am thankful that he is a fairly good patient. I feel so bad that I haven't been able to take care of him like I would like to, I can't because Har needs me to carry him everywhere or attach him to me so he can eat and eat and eat. I don't think that Dust minds though, he was pretty content to help himself to popsicle after popsicle yesterday, commanding ownership of the living room and watching his favorite cartoons while either curled up in our comfy chair or drawing self portraits of himself with sharpies (thankfully on paper since the only pens he will draw with are sharpies).

I lay in bed this morning, sore throat, runny nose, trying to calculate how much sleep I got between arguing with E (because he loves to argue in the middle of the night, so much fun!), cradling Har and angling myself so he could attach himself to me and eat all night.

E, in the middle of the night, goes "Has he been nursing all night?" me "No!" him "It sure seems like it!" to which I want to smack him in the face because hello a really sick mini toddler (17 months- not quite a toddler, not quite a baby) is not the ideal situation in which to induce weaning, or sleeping in their own bed.

It is always at this point that instead of unleashing on him like I really want to I think about my sister in law in Florida who upon having her kids move out set up a room for herself to sleep in when her husband snores. Oh, to have a room to go to when E is grumpy and tossing and turning. Then I think about an article I read not too long ago about the resurgence of couples having separate bedrooms and how it can really help a marriage. That article was really funny because they had done a lot of studies and concluded wives sleep less better while in bed with hubby while hubby sleeps much better. Figures.

Anyway, I digress. Sleep has been hard to come by these last few days, but coffee? Nice and fresh, two cups doing me just fine. Sleep, who needs it when you have coffee. Of course right now Har is snoring away and has been for the past 2 hours. He really does sleep better when I am not next to him, this I know, but we have to wait until he is better before training him to sleep on his own. Oh, that is not going to be fun. I was terrible about teaching him to self soothe, he has zero ability to soothe himself and relies entirely on me to comfort him. A whole other blog posting, a whole other can of worms.

The only sort of silver lining about us all being sick is I have been finding a lot of great new blogs. I added a bunch more to my follower list. I am not a good commenter on blogs, I guess I only write things if I feel I have something to offer, but I love to read them and follow them. Sometimes I think people may think I am weird if I start following their blog and they have no idea who I am, I hope not. I wouldn't feel that way if someone followed mine.

I guess it is about time to wrap up this blog post, it seems to be heading nowhere fast. Hopefully we will have a nice quiet day today and can enjoy some of it, albeit it behind runny eyes and sore throats. I will close with a picture of my sick, sick boys. No pictures of me, I hate being in them.

Limbo

Sitting here, 5 pm and in front of me is a nice cold Mexican beer in a glass with a salted rim and a fresh lime. The boys are very docile because of their colds. The weather has been very indecisive all day, bright sun then black clouds. It is unsettling me. I can't shake the feeling of being in some kind of limbo. The weather can't make a decision, and a large number of my friends and family seem to be hanging in a place where nothing is going on but everyone is waiting for something.

I wish I knew more about stuff like cosmos and planets and their alignments and what-not. Perhaps there is some kind of an explanation for why everything seems a bit off lately. Is it just me?

Tonight a fox was digging through our compost pile and we haven't seen the fox except for the first time we moved up here. It was so beautiful and sleek and absolutely aware of us watching it.

I never discount the feeling where you think something is going to happen. One of my best friends died when she was 21 years old. She died at Burning Man. It was the hardest thing I ever had to go through and I will probably do a post just on her sometime. The point of bringing her up here though is that one night about a year before she died we got to talking. I don't remember who brought it up but one of us mentioned feeling something really huge was going to happen that year. HUGE we would say to each other when we got to talking about it which got more and more frequent the closer we got to when she died. We would marvel about how we could always feel something just at our fingertips ready to happen, something we had never been through before. Then she passed and the feeling went away. I always felt that is what both her and I had been picking up on.

This feeling, this sense of limbo in the day today, I can't help but feel it is leading up to something amazing. So much went wrong last year, but it also went right. It was like waves all crashing against each other. Wild, one day black clouds and the next bright sun. It feels like things were unsettled and are starting to settle back again.

We just have to hang on, it is going to get wonderful. I just feel it.

Spring

A day in pictures. Once again so humbled to live surrounded by so much beauty.
Too tired and all out of words but the mere hint of Spring makes me so excited.

Honest Scrap Award

I recently was honored by a fellow blogger with the "Honest Scrap Award".

I have put off doing it not because I like talking about myself since I obviously do but because all that blogs I read have already done this survey thingy. I decided while I have one kid asleep and the other watching a movie I may as well do it even though I have no one else to nominate :(
I guess every survey ends somewhere though, right?

Honest Scrap Award.

The rules for Honest Scrap are:
1) Choose a minimum of 7 blogs that you find brilliant in content or design.
2) Show the 7 winners names and links on your blog, and leave a comment informing them that they were prized with “Honest Scrap.”
3) List at least 10 honest things about yourself

10 honest things about me:

1. I love beer. Really love beer. I have a thing for micro breweries and hunting down and trying new beers. The downside is that it is almost impossible for me to drink anything substandard since I have tried so many great beers. I have almost got it to the point where I can pinpoint the ABV in a beer and due to my long career past in the coffee industry I have a knack for tasting all the nuances and tastes in beers. Mine and my husband's next hobby is going to be growing hops and then I want to learn how to brew beer. I think growing hops will be amazing but I won't be heartbroken if I am not good at brewing beer because there are millions out there I have yet to try.

2. I have this habit, not sure if I love it or if it is annoying, of taking on way too much when it comes to chores. When I start something I will not stop until it is finished. I will do things like take 10 shopping bags all hanging off my arm into the house at once. The other day I decided I didn't like the look of a dead tree in our yard that we have been trying to get rid of so I dug it up. Dug up an 8 foot tree, the roots were huge and it took forever but I wanted to get it done. I will completely rearrange a room even though I am already exhausted, moving beds, bookcases and more. I have done this forever and am never sure what to make of it but it is totally me. I guess you could say I am a workhorse and pretty strong when it comes down to it.

3. The thing in my life that I have to work hardest at with regards to relationships is being a wife. I am a natural mom, friend, sister, daughter but I grew up with a single mom (my dad was in the picture albeit he had his own problems) . My mom and dad divorced when I was 3 so I never saw a marriage up close. This has been really hard for me to learn, I used to think every time Evan and I fought it was the end of the world. I really had no idea how marriages work. He has been a great teacher though, and I have worked really hard at learning how to be a wife and how not to do everything by myself like my natural inclination is.

4. My favorite fantasy is winning a lot of money. When I think about this the first thing I think about is what gifts to shower my friends and family with. So many people are struggling right now, we are actually doing ok which is great but almost everyone we know is where we were two years ago and that was living paycheck to paycheck. If I can't sleep at night I think about winning the lottery and sending my best friend a check for 15,000 or buying my mom and sister a house. When it comes time and I have fantasized about everyone else and I can think about my family the first thing I drool over is being able to go to Whole Foods and fill the cart up with anything and everything I could possibly want. That would be my personal lottery dream.

5. I am a huge believer in signs and I see them a lot. I don't believe in coincidences at all and I am very supertitious. This has been a great way to live my life, I feel the universe will provide what we need and as cliche as it is- everything happens for a reason.

6. I have only 2 regrets in my life and they aren't really regrets as much as things I learned from but wish I had done differently. The first being not graduating SFState like I set out to. I went for 2 years for the Cinema program and then got kicked out for grades. I was too into partying and that was dumb, I should have stuck it out. The second is when I was 19 I inherited a nice tidy sum of about 60,000. I should have invested it in real estate or put it away but I was 19 so I did stupid stuff like buy a brand new car and fritter it away. Of course both of these decisions led to me ending up at school for Audio Recording which is how I met my husband so I can't "what if" them too much. Still, I think one is entitled to have a few things they "regret".

7. I am very long winded on the computer, e-mails, surveys, facebook. I just like to talk and comment on stuff. It is my pet peeve when people don't answer you backor leave questions hanging. I was like this at work too, always needing to end computer coversations in a definite and polite way. You wouldn't just walk away from someone who said something to you in person, why do people feel it is ok on the computer?

8. I have an obsession with nursing tea. I will drink 3-4 cups a day whenI have it. The combination of herbs are perfectly suited for some issues I had, anxiety and an irritable stomach, and the medicinal nature of the tea has made my overall health feel great. In general I love tonic teas for the fact that they do that. Also, sentimentally the tea grounds me and puts me in that motherhood space. I will probably continue to drink it even when I stop nursing and I find that totally normal.

9. When I am at my wits end I always picture that scene in Tampopo where the mom is dying and to keep her from collapsing they have her cook noodles for dinner. She feeds everyone and then she can collapse. That is how motherhood is to me, sort of a dark humor sometimes.

10. I love having a house filled with people, I think I would have lived in a commune if I had grown up in the 60's. If I had it my way now we would have a gorgeous 15-20 acres up here with several houses on it, chickens, vegetable gardens, and friends and family who fit in with all that living in each of the houses. There would be moms helping moms, kids running around and a real sense of community. I would love that.


Thanks for reading, I will edit this to award to bloggers if I have found any who haven;t done it.

Patience

I have got to be more patient today but that is so hard when you have only gotten a few hours of sleep.

Dustin is sicker than yesterday, you can see the stuffiness in his face. His cheeks are bright red and he is leaving a trail of germs around him that resembles a snail trail. Harlan now has it but seems to be doing better which is probably due to the antibodies in the breast milk he has been demanding for the last 24 hours. He woke up last night after spiking a fever and tossed and turned for hours, since he would only sleep in our bed it kept me up.

Oh, my patience is so worn thin by that. My husband had to go into San Francisco, 5 hours alone for the drive so I am going to be solo all day. Normally my nursing tea would keep me sane (some of the herbs in it reduce anxiety) but they ran out of it at the store.

I will have a shot of trying to meditate a bit to get a handle on this if I can get both of them to sleep at the same time and I can get a nice hot bath. If is the question. Harlan is just about out but Dustin is insisting on laying on the floor, runny eyes and nose and singing while he sucks loudly on his fingers. I know I shouldn't be grossed out by that but it is like fingernails on the chalkboard with no sleep. Ugh.

If I can make it through today with only the tiniest amount of patience I have I will be very proud of myself, very proud indeed.

Longing

I have my kids. The sky. My husband. Beautiful scenery. I miss my friends though. My mom's group. I have decided to try and find other moms up here. There is 1 person per 14 acres where I live, there are other moms I just have to find them.

Do I have readers? This makes me curious. I follow many blogs, if I follow yours it is because I admire you. I like your words, your sense of being. I may never have met you but I like you. Something about you compels me to follow but I am shy so I don't comment.

I am working on it, but I'd like to know...who are you? Is there anyone who reads that I haven't checked your blog yet? If so I would love to meet you.

So if you are brave humor me, this rain is making me stir crazy and I wonder...if there are new friends out there I have yet to meet.

The way my mother did it

When my kids get sick I turn into my mother.

I had asthma when I was younger that was really bad and when I grew up both my sister and I had chronic bronchitis. We used to get sick every year for what seemed to me like 6 weeks at a time, but was probably more like 2. She used to create a "station" for us in which we had books, piles of blankets, snacks and tons and tons of liquids. She was unflappable, a single mom who was (and is) one tough lady.

It always seemed like nothing fazed her when we got sick which is surprising because nowadays she is a bundle of nervous energy. When things got really bad she had us listen to Bernie Seagel tapes that directed us on how to meditate and take our minds off of being sick.

There is a picture of my mom and dad that is my favorite picture of all time. They are sitting on the steps of the Victorian house in Alameda that I grew up in. Both of my parents were hippy types and in this picture my mom has long straight red hair (she is a flaming redhead) and my dad sits with his black mustache and longish black hair. My mom's legs are crossed and both of them are looking down and reading something and clad in typical hippy 70's clothes. I don't know what it is about this picture but it captures their personalities perfectly.

Now that I have had kids I am even more thankful of the way my mom raised us. I would call it a "Berkeley type of parenting" since that is where we grew up.

She treated my sister and I like we were little people instead of kids and she could be heard saying often that "kids could do no wrong". We listened to music from all over the world, favoring the Gypsy Kings and the soulful voice of Nustrat Fateh Ali Kahn. She toted us to Ethiopian restaurants, Indian restaurants and Thai.

She let us run around naked when we were little and there are many pictures of our little bottoms in the backyard. She let us snuggle in bed with her and when my sister was born she let me nurse while my sister did even though I was slightly over 2 years old.

I loved all the Bay Area had to offer us and working for a newspaper my mom took us to it all. We went to a Christmas Waldorf fair, interesting lessons, and tooled around with just the three of us, my mom, my sister and I.

So it is with great pride when my best friend called me a "hippy mom" I agreed. I hadn't really realized until she said that how much the way my mom raised us was coming out with my own kids. "Hippy" in the kind of attitude she had about us, letting kids run free, exploring, letting us lead our own path. The only difference being that she had girls and I have boys.

When we moved up here (we rent an old organic herb farm) I found a patch of sage. I wasn't sure if it was sage so I decided to burn it because that would tell me. I kind of chuckled that I knew more about the scent of smudge sticks than the way it looked. It was and I dried some and taught Dustin how to smudge. I was so proud of that, teaching him something I grew up with.

At night when I think about getting Harlan to sleep in his own bed like he "should be" but instead secretly treasuring the feel of his warm body clinging to mine in the dead of night I thank my mom for instilling in me the confidence that when he is ready he will find his own bed. When I get frustrated that Dustin won't eat I hear my mom telling us how children are little people and I relax just a little. I idly thinking about weaning Harlan and remember how comforting being an older nurser was.

This whole piece is an homage to the best gift my mom could have ever given me, a wonderful view and ideology about raising kids.

For that I will be thankful in every smile I get from my own two little ones.

Thanks mom, and Dustin and Harlan thank you too.

Now I have a sick boy to tend to...

Portrait of a strange and slightly ugly morning

Stumble out of bed due to 16 month old kicking, hitting and fussing to be changed and fed. Make my way to substandard coffee grinds of which there is only enough for 1 cup, not the usual two. 3 year old wakes up and decided to smash a leggo into the door instead of opening it like a normal human being. Recently grumpy husband sleeps.

Make 3 varieties of breakfast for the little ones, french toast a hit with the littlest and categorically refused by the oldest. Sugar laden "Grape Drink" is instead demanded by said 3 year old and emphatically refused by me.

Then on to "damn tooth brushing" time while I struggle to remember if I have eaten anything and decide that I sort of have. Make a mental note to eat more. Fight to brush two sets of little teeth. Wrangle cranky children into new clothes. Grumpy husband continues to sleep.

A glance outside reveals gray skies, more rain. More stir crazy boys desperate to run around, great. Make a cup of Yogi tea since I want to save the last cup of coffee for tomorrow (or do I?) Fortune on tea bag string says:

"Your destiny is to merge with infinity"

Decide that I don't like the sound of that, it sounds a little foreboding which gets me thinking about my dream last night of which the number 30 glowed brightly 3 times. It was such a vivid dream I separate the boys, putting each one in front of a different tv babysitter and look up the meaning of the number 30.

Perhaps no single number more fully embodies the essence of the rhythmic fluctuations which characterize human affairs than that of the number 30. Its significance to the realms of finance, economics, physics, mathematics, astronomy, and religion is integral to a full comprehension of each field, and almost mystical in its import....While the number 30 has many significations, its most fundamental significance is the fact that it is the number of the circle, or cycle. The circle, it will be noted, is the geometric expression of absolute completion and infinity.

In doing that just now I noticed for the first time it talks about infinity. Ok, that is a little weird. Mental note to ponder all of that later on, hopefully with nice cold beer in hand.

Anyway, morning chugs on. Husband wakes up, doesn't seem too grumpy and does me the great favor of taking 3 year old up to the preschool. Poor little brother is so sad he can't go but I ensure him this means he gets full reign of the toys in the house, especially his brother's prized Cozy Coupe of which we have only 1 (so far).

Check some e-mails, relax a bit and decide to make another cup of tea. Fortune this time says:

"Old age needs wisdom and grace"

Which at first makes me annoyed because although I feel so much older I am only 29. Then I reread it and decide it is an ok one. I can't resist one peek at the next bag in the box though:

"May this day bring you peace, tranquility and harmony."

Now that is a fortune I can look forward to. 10 am and I am hoping this ugly/strange morning has taken a turn for the better. Even if I have to base that assumption on a cup of tea and the fact that the house is half empty and no one is screaming at me.

Note to readers (if I have any) possible reflective post on dreams from last night to come later today...

Our first home

I wrote a whole long blog on how terrible last night was sleep wise and how I was going to try and train Harlan to sleep in his own bed and blah-blah-blah. Luckily I had to do stuff midway through and by the time I came back to it (right now, 6 hours later) I decided I am done with complaining about not sleeping and really want to write about something that has been a huge part of our lives for the past few years, the first home we bought and also the first (and last!) home we had to give back to the bank a few months ago.

E and I met in the Bay Area. I grew up in Alameda myself, right across the bay from SF and right next to Oakland, he grew up in Florida but came to live in California. We had a lot of fun dating because of all the great shows and bars and things to do in the Bay but when we had Dustin and got married we decided we wanted to buy a home. That was in 2006 which was about the top of the market for California and all the homes we looked at in the Bay were in the 500 or 600, 000 range. We only qualified for 320,000 so we were priced out of the Bay. We joined a legion of people who bought homes in the Central Valley.

We managed to purchase our first home only 7 months after Dustin was born and only a year after we got married. I still will never know how E finagled it because he is self employed and we had to go for a no down, no document loan. Many, many phone calls back and forth between the lenders and him and we had our house in a tiny Central Valley town about an hour and a half from Oakland.

For the first year we rented it to a crazy old lady but we couldn't rent it to her for our mortgage because of the going rates in the area. The money spiral downward began. We packed up our stuff, moved to a 1 bedroom (in order to afford the gap between her rent and our mortgage) and made plans to move out to our home in a year. Then I got pregnant again. Thankfully that was right before we were planning on making the move to our home and the timing couldn't have been more perfect. I went on maternity leave hoping to come back via telecommuting. We brought my mom along to help with the mortgage (huge mistake I won't even go into) and we moved.

It was ok, for the first 5 months we enjoyed the little town. Then I lost my job and my husband couldn't get work. The housing market tanked. Somehow really crazy people kept getting dumped in the town. We now had 2 kids, no job and faced a $2000 a month mortgage on a home that was now appraised at $155,000 when we had paid $320,000 for it. We needed a fence, we were on a busy street and if anyone ever forgot to lock the door the kids could have been killed.

This is the whole point of the blog, trusting your intuition. E and I looked at our situation and said we had to get out of there. We had to leave and we had to do it now. There was no work, we wouldn't have been able to re-sell for years, probably about 10 to get what we paid for it. We had to go before the little bit of money we had ran out and we wouldn't have been able to afford to move at all.

We sold everything we didn't need. Our minivan went, tons of his audio and visual equipment, kids stuff, you name it. We took a trip up to the area we live in now, found a home we fell in love with, qualified to rent it and bolted. We had to leave stuff that wouldn't fit in the UHaul and that was really hard for me. Leaving at all was hard but we knew we had a tiny window because we were running through our money.

Today I was tired and slightly morose because of the terrible weather and I looked up our old home on a whim because we knew it had gone into foreclosure. I found it listed for $99,900. That works out to less than $700 a month in mortgage. They had pictures of the way it looked, the dead lawn, the dead roses and orange trees we had so lovingly planted when Harlan was born.

The crazy thing was losing this house had been something I knew we had to do but I hadn't come to peace with. When I saw that listing and how much the house was for sale, something clicked. I said to myself "Well, that is more in line with what that home is worth but you know what? I wouldn't even want to live there for that little." Even for $700 a month in mortgage, that wasn't the house for us and I am at peace with that.

I hope more than anything some great family buys it and it is meant for them since it wasn't meant for us. With all we have gone through in the last few years I am thankful for where we have ended up even though sometimes we didn't know how on earth we were going to make it. We did and we will.

I look forward to dreaming about our next home, the home that will undoubtedly be the home we will have forever. I don't know when that will come, in fact I don't know what tomorrow will bring at all for any aspect of our life but I am ok with that. I am happy right here right now, even without the sleeping.

To wean or not to wean...

I haven't posted a blog in a few weeks because for one week we didn't have propane and we were freezing cold, much too cold to be clever. The other week I was so sleep deprived I could barely hold my eyes open. Today is not much better, last night I woke with the familiar ache of some kind of flu or cold. Immediately I hoped that this whatever I have was the reason H hasn't been sleeping very well and not that he was about to get another cold/flu and we would be up for another month. Seriously, he was sick the entire month of January which is just crazy because we live in the mountains. There is one person for every 14 acres of land, yet as soon as we go grocery shopping (or when I went into the Bay Area to visit) he gets a terrible sickness. I really hate this season.

However, this post is not about colds or the flu but about what has been going through my head lately, weaning the little guy. When I had Dustin I went back to work when he was 3 months old and my supply wasn't that great to begin with. He drank more and more formula when I was at work, my milk supply got less and less and when he was about 7 or so months old I was trying to nurse him before bed and he just wasn't into it. I knew at that moment that he was done so I breathed a sigh, I wasn't even really that sad about it because with him it was such a natural evolution. At the time I knew I was getting off easy with that and I made a mental note to be thankful. That night I just held him close and said goodbye to nursing, and it was done.

H is such a different story. I found I really love nursing tea, the mixture of herbs has done so much for my anxiety, digestion and I love the way it tastes. In fact I know I will continue drinking it after H is weaned. This does not bode well for trying to get H off the booby though because my supply is so plentiful and the tea makes the milk taste so sweet. I didn't stop nursing him at a year old because we live where it snows and the nights are so cold and I thought it would be practical to be able to nurse him through that. Instead I made a decision to nurse him through the winter and then wean him.

How though? I love nursing a 16 month old because he is so much more appreciative of it. He gives me kisses on my chest, and sometimes he even says "Momma Yum" or "Yum Num" when he is done. If I take a bath with him he latches on himself and snuggles so close. Plus, it gives me a chance to take a break and hold him close since he is growing so fast so quickly. My natural inclination (being the type of Berkeley mom that I am) is to let him self wean. In fact, he already nurses a lot less during the day, maybe only twice a day unless he is sick.

It just tears me apart to think of stopping him forcefully now. The other day he fell on the concrete and busted his lip and although his mouth was filled with blood all he wanted to do was nurse. Those are the moments that keep me from starting the weaning process.

The times that make me want to do it is the middle of the night feedings. This is where I have read you are supposed to stop but that is the hardest one, mainly because I am so exhausted that nursing him is the easiest way to get him back to sleep, I don't know that I have the energy to keep him from nursing, make him a bottle and stay up rocking him to sleep in the chair. He is in a toddler bed so he just climbs out of his bed and into ours, latching on and heaving a comforted sigh. I don't mind it if it is once a night but the nights when he doesn't feel good and he is up 5 or 6 times are really hard, although I suppose he would be up then even if he didn't nurse.

I have seen there are teas you can drink that dry up your supply and that is an idea I have been knocking around in my head. Dustin stopped nursing when there wasn't enough milk so I may try that. He does seem to be making small steps and he is one of our boys in the fact that he is finding his independence now so there may be a day he just stops, who knows what tomorrow will bring.

Another thing that has been making me think is what I will do if we have another kid. I would really like to have another baby in the next few years. Ideally when Harlan is off in school as well as Dustin so I am not running around after so many little ones here. I haven't really decided yet if we will have more because frankly I am nervous about another c-section. I am worried about the lasting effects that will have on my body and wish I could VBAC but with two prior c-sections don't know if that would be a good idea or if it would invite a rupture. I also had a hard time with H's pregnancy so am not looking forward to being pregnant again.

I am also very worried about my lack of sleep in caring for another child. H has never slept through an uninterrupted night. When D started sleeping uninterrupted I got pregnant with H and I don't sleep a full night when I am pregnant, ever. That leaves me with a total of 3 years and 9 months without a good nights sleep. It is not ok, but when I am here all day with the boys it gets me by. Yet I could never go back to work, and I can't drive because I fall asleep so I am kind of handicapped. I really need to start getting sleep and catching back up, which means I really need to wean.

I digress though, I was talking about future kids. I always have to supplement nursing with formula because I don't pump and need to give bottles here and there to stay sane. I have thought a lot about this and it will be counter intuitive to the way I have raised H and D but if I have another baby I am only going to give them formula at night and nurse during the day. I know formula fed babes sleep longer at night because I have done both and as hard as it would be to not have that snuggly nursing time at night, I need my sleep to come first because I am a mommy of more than 1. I don't know why I started thinking that, but I have.

Anyway, H just nursed himself into lala land and D is watching cartoons. I think I am going to pop a beer and climb into bed hoping it will knock me out (I have the worst time taking naps despite the deprivation, so anoying). I hope D will fall asleep too, that would be perfect..