Three

I love all my kids...equally.  Though perhaps not at the same time, but that's another post. I love Maggie.  She's spunky and sassy and fun.  She loves babies, animals, tattoos, her blankie, dark fingernail polish, chocolate, coffee, and Johnny Depp.  Yep, she's my kid.  She also love to cuss, and spit, and alternate beating up on her brothers.  She's cuddly and sweet, but she has quills and she won't hesitate to let them fly.  She's got an elaborate, explosive vocabulary.  Here's an example of a few Maggie-isms we've heard lately: "I'm gonna kill those cops....with a sharp knife." (we were watching the Santa Clause on Christmas Eve.  There's a scene where the police actually arrest Santa.) "Hee hee....get off of me before I rip your face off"  (said while I was wrestling with her on the floor) Me: "Maggie, pick up these stuffed animals."  Maggie: "Um, actually, I'm going to suck my thumb." "Where is my f*cking horsey?" Maggie is three, and as much as I LOVE my kids, I do not like three.  Three seems especially difficult for my little curly-haired spitfire.  Maybe we'll make it to four, but I'm sure we'll all be a little scarred, both physically (she packs a mean punch) and mentally (like the mortification that occurs when she lets fly with a "dammit" just as the priest is performing the consecration).  Maggie's always been demanding.  Remember this is the baby the neonatal nurses spent the night bouncing up and dow the halls when she was 12 hours old. This is the baby that screamed when strangers *looked* at her.  This is the child that has always, always been able to look a hole through you.  I'm interested to see what the future holds for her.

Happy Solstice!

The kids and I started a fire outside in the chimnea (can't wait to have an actual fireplace), and threw in the log from last year. I fully intended to keep the thing going all night, but jeepers it's cold out there. So I let it die and lit my candles inside instead. I'm sipping hot spiced cider, watching the flame, and anxiously awaiting the Sun's return. Happy Solstice everyone!

Preparations

We've been knee-deep in getting ready for Christmas here. Usually, this time of year I'm stressed beyond belief, but I feel somehow better this year. We've been taking it slow and easy, doing little things everyday to get ready, reading lots of stories, decorating, baking and doing some simple crafts. It's been very relaxing and fulfilling. I'm not feeling the need to go crazy trying to get every little thing done. I've slowed down. We string popcorn for the tree in the evenings. I'm crocheting Bodie a pair of mittens. I won't get the rest of the outside lights put on the fence, and I don't really care.

Two weeks ago, Dave went out to get a tree. I knew when I saw it hanging off the bed of his truck that it was going to get interesting. This is one gargantuan tree! I grew up with a huge tree, so I'm used to it. It smells wonderful!We made orange pomanders a few days ago. This is such a stress-relieving activity! Even the littlest ones can take part - just pre-poke the holes for them. Or if you're like me, heck, just hand your 20 month-old a metal skewer and let him do it himself!
Remember this ? Here's the sequel. Note that this year, Mommy's nativity is up high, and the kiddie nativity is on their level. Did that stop her? Of course not. Look closely and you'll see that there is a pig hanging where the angel goes, and the angel is in the manger. Today I woke up to Balthasar making an offering to what appeared to be either a dead or very tired sheep.

Last night we hosted a playdate and made sun ornaments to celebrate the solstice. It was a lot of fun and very messy. I love hosting playdates because having people over is the only thing that will motivate me to really clean my house. The fact that 6 preschoolers have a tendency to wear each other out is a nice bonus.

Green Works

You all know me and my weirdo hippy amish ideas about cleaning and just life in general. I really do try to stay away from all the icky chemicals when it comes to household cleaning. I've had to make a few concessions along the way, mainly because we have hard (HARD) water and nothing bug Cascade will clean my dishes. In general, though, I lend toward natural stuffs - we use a lot of vinegar and baking soda.

This weekend I bought some of this stuff. Usually I buy cleaning products from Vitacost but we had just placed an order for vitamins and I didn't feel like paying shipping for toilet cleaner. I had heard about the supposedly "green" products from Clorox and it just seemed a little hypocritical that "Clorox" and "green" should be mentioned in the same sentence. However, they are readily available here in BF Nowhere, Ohio. And, there is something to be said about a company completely saturated in known carcinogens at least attempting to make products that aren't going to kill us all. So I gave it a whirl and got some of the all purpose cleaner and the toilet stuff.

So far so good, it works well, smells nice and doesn't contain anything horrible. Or at least nothing horrible that they're divulging on the label.

In completely unrelated news, I'm going to attempt to make the kids advent calendars this year. I've racked my brain trying to come up with something of manageable size that will fit four peppermints or chocolates in each pocket but I've got nothin'. Plus, I think it would be a neat thing for them to pass on to their children if they each had one of their own. I think I'll let them pick the pattern themselves, but with some guidance. As in "You can either make yours a stocking or a snowman" that way I won't end up with advent calendars shaped like a fire truck or a chicken.

Trick or Treat?

I finished the monkey, so there! Isn't he cute? And check out my little Witchlings! No one "got" the theme we had going on. Maybe if Owen had cooperated and dressed up like a Winkie Guard instead of this....whatever this is...super scary skeleon man, I guess. Anyway, I took about 400 pictures on my parents' front porch and this was the best I could get. This Halloween was just plain insane. Each year I think maybe it can't get crazier, but it always does.

Those of you who know Bodie know he's a man of few words. He really only talks about things that are important to him. He added another phrase to his repetoire: "treat-treat". And he perfected "thank you" and "bye" while he was at it. It took him one house to catch on to the idea that this whole dressing up like a goof and knocking on stranger's door equaled candy. And it took him just a few minutes to discover that if you chew a small hole in the corner of a Hershey bar wrapper, and then squeeze the bar in your hands, you can actually suck the chocolate through the hole.

You thought I was kidding about the brain for dinner, didn't you. Well, it's true. And here's picture to prove it. The really funny part is that I managed to actually convince Owen that I had slain a monster, cooked its brain for dinner, cooked some bats (bowtie pasta) in its guts, and floated its eyeballs in a dish. Seriously. Funniest. Thing. Ever.

Have I mentioned Maggie really loves her cat? But what Witch doesn't love her cat, right?

Where have we been?

It's been four months since my last entry. And there is a good reason for that, which I'll get to in a minute. But let's recap where we've been.First, there was the county fair. It was our first fair as a 4-H family and it was lots of fun. Hot, sticky, dirty fun. Except for the fact that someone stole our single stroller out of our front yard coupled with the fact that the van was in the shop all week which equaled me trying to schlep a double stroller out of the trunk of a VW Jetta everyday, it was wonderful. Molly did really well with her projects and had fun riding and running around with her friends.
Then there was this, which was considerably LESS fun. That's what I did to my hand trying to kill one of the leftover 4-H chickens. It's not just a cut. I lacerated the tendons to my index finger. One surgery, and approximately three-thousand occupational therapy appointments later, and I still can't make a fist. Not even close, really. My surgeon is talking about going back in to free it which is just joyous. Fun stuff.

So that, really, is what's been happening here. I was one-handed completely for 6 weeks. Have you ever tried to change a diaper one-handed? Wash a pan? Fold a towel? It gave me a whole new outlook on how much you really do need two hands. How many times as a mom have I said "I need both of my hands"? "I can't pick you up, I need both hands." "I can't do ___ while holding the baby, I need both hands." Lemme tell ya, folks...you NEED both hands. Really.
We're hanging in there, though, and getting back to normal. It's fall, which is my favorite time of year and Halloween is this week, which is my favorite holiday, so we're up to our eyeballs in being all crafty and fun. Yesterday we did handprint bats, and skull cupcakes. Tonight we're having bats, cobwebs and brain for dinner.



Oh, and for those of you wondering...trick or treat is tomorrow, and no, I have not yet started Bodie's costume. It wouldn't be a holiday if I didn't spend the night before pulling an all-nighter in front of the sewing machine.

We also have a new addition to the family. No, the vasectomy didn't fail, much to my disappointment. This is Lexi. Lexi is Maggie's cat, and Maggie loves her very much. So much so that she may, in fact, kill her with love. Or by some other means. This morning I found Lexi in the washing machine. Later I found her in the end table under two quilts, a sleeping bag, a stuffed bunny, and one of the skull cupcakes. She gets carted around in this pumpkin a lot, and when she's not in there, she's in the shopping cart, or being drug around by her neck. Lexi takes her frustration out on Dave and myself by randomly attacking our toes and eyeballs in the middle of the night. Isn't she cute, though? Dave talked me out of putting her inside one of the actual pumpkins we were carving. Puh.

Still Here

Ack! We're still here. We're running around like crazy, but we're alive...in case anyone was wondering.

Softball is over. Swimming has started. We have two goats now, and I'm milking one of them. I want to learn to make cheese, and I've made yogurt and fudge and just got an ice cream maker. I have six chickens living in my bathtub. The mudroom is this close to being finished. The land is almost ours. Not long now. I'm trying hard to garden organically, but my hatred for both potato bugs and Johnson grass knows no bounds. Sevin dust and roundup are sounding very very appealing right now.

The pool is open, the kids are barefoot, and suntanned and dirty, and their knees are skinned. I have...ahem..."flowers" (wild carrot weeds and stalks of johnson grass) decorating my island, clothes on the line, and lightening bugs in a jar...crap...I knew I forgot something last night. I guess summer's here!

Hope life's treating you all well!