hippity hop

when adah was at the airport this afternoon saying goodbye to cuncle kai, uncle darren, and pa, i took the opportunity to put away some of our easter stuff. i have no idea how, but the kid has accumulated a TON of stuffed bunnies and easter decor, and because she gets attached to things ("this is adah's!"-- three of her favorite words), i knew it would be hard to get those things back into our basement with her in the house. thankfully when she came home, there were enough distractions (first breastmilk, then having to feed three of her puppets) to keep her from noticing that i hijacked not only a collection of bunnies, but also swept through her room like a tornado, gathering arm loads things to give away to other kids. for a family interested in living simply, i often wonder how she has acquired so much stuff...

anyway, easter was lovely. liturgically vibrant, as usual, and very family-centered. the cold morning before easter we went to the garden to find beets, red cabbage, and nettles to use for egg dye, to which anne responded, "why can't we do anything normal around here?" i was super enthusiastic until i realized that the nettle color turned out to be a light pukey brown, not the bright green i hoped for, and we ended up using food coloring for a couple more colors. The familial entourage arrived just in time to watch the eggs steep in the natural dyes for a long time... so long that we felt longing for toxic chemicals of the good old days.

we started off the actual morning of easter in the emergency room because of the back injury anne acquired at work. i dropped her off and stayed until the bug was about to wake up, and left her with a tangerine and a salinger book-- not sufficient gems enough for having to miss the kid find the eggs. i ran home, filled the basket with seeds, carrots, celery, a toothbrush, and a stuffed bunny. christmas in march. it's april and we're still hiding eggs each day...

digging deep for the farmer in me

yesterday, in all of its hecticness, adah and i dropped by linnton feed and seed. though not so local, it's our favorite place to get chicken food and a few starts, like heirloom tomatoes and onion bulbs. the people there are knowledgeable and down to earth, and let us roam around their private yard as we yearn for additional chickens and watch the ducks. before we left, anne reminded me that i am not allowed to bring home any more chickens, even an americauna, my current sought-after breed. while we were there i talked to dan about our current chicken dilemma, which i'm sure everyone is sick of hearing me talk about: after a year of free-ranging it in our backyard, the girls have figured out how to escape, and now they can frequently be seen wandering down our busy street where they have full access to edible cigarette butts and traffic. several times a week we get a loud knock at the door: "hey-- are those your chickens? they're walking down the street" or "um... i just saw some kids throwing a basketball at one of your chicken's heads..." no kidding, this actually happened 2 days ago.

the problem is, i feel terrible keeping them in their pen, and i can't decide which is worse: them getting physically assaulted by sports equipment or the threat of a hit and run or being locked up all day, where they have limited access to worms and dry dirt to take baths in? i'd ask for advice, but no one on earth knows i'm writing this blog except for anne, and we all know what her opinion is on the subject.

so, dan at linnton recommended that i get a small pair of plyers and cut their primary flight feathers. i'm not very good at this sort of thing, because i'm very afraid of hurting things, so i immediately began thinking who else i could get to do this for me. he said, "it's just like cutting finger nails!" so, folks, i decided i should maybe give this thing a try, in a small effort to become more self sufficient. if there really is a farmer in me, i'm sure i can find a way... if someone holds the cute little fuckers.

a tangential rainy weekend review

saturday is my sleep-in day (thank you, beloved), so i bolt the magenta curtains closed and hope for the best. i still have a little leftover sleep trouble from the good ol' days of adah's early months when she didn't sleep so well. a year of dreamlessness and sleep walking, the 10:00 p.m., midnight, 3 a.m., (etc.) discussions of, "should we let her cry? i don't think i can get up one more time...", back and forth, back and forth, and ultimately back to, "i just can't...."

recently adah found her baby book under a pile of magazines in the living room and she wanted me to read it to her. the problem was, there were only like 3 pages filled out in it. one was, "what was your favorite type of milk?" (duh), one was a beautiful letter from maddy, her mom-dad, and one was an insert from a sleep diary i kept from when she was around 5 months old. it was during a time when, while she profusely nursed, i read sleep books religiously, and i was dutifully following what some attachment parenting book said about the importance of keeping a sleep journal to see a baby's progress after employing the un-traumatic tactics described in the book. it's tattered and written in chicken scratch-- 6 or 7 wake-ups a night, with special commentary that included things like, "fuck martha sears," "even the vacuum isn't working. am fried and can't do this anymore." there were some other symptoms of psychiatric distress in there that i won't mention here. and by the way, i don't recommend keeping a sleep journal because it causes more infuriation than the already infuriation-induced situation of having an infant who needs a vacuum cleaner running throughout the night and a summer swaddle to keep her asleep for more than an hour at a time. and yes, we tried co-sleeping. sounds so sweet and romantic, but really kills your neck. plus, if you snore, or have to sneeze, there's a few more wake-ups for ya. hallelujah to all the co-sleepers of this world, but i just can't cope with it, even in a king bed.

well that was a tangent. back to our weekend update. i slept in after a massage from godmamma on friday night, and woke up to make biscuits and a couple of scrambles from what was left in our fridge. adah cracked the eggs and added each ingredient, yelling "ADAH!" after each new one was introduced. the kid likes to cook. we spent the afternoon riding the train (getting off and getting back on-- we had to stop at saturday market for chai and listen to the bucket drummers) and ultimately ended up at the war protest downtown, our final destination. we strolled through mud for an hour of visible resistance, and came back home to play with puzzles next to a fire. i was determined to go hear matt hern ("the world's most affable anarchist") speak about deschooling at the village free school, but after being rained on and sunned on and rained on (these things alternating every 5 minutes), i was kind of wiped out. sunday was palm sunday, and my mom, anne, and i were so moved by the singing that we simultaneously cried at church. afterwards, the dad brought by a gorgeous set of homemade blocks (never ceases to be thoughtful) while i half wrote 19 report card narratives and half procrastinated, at which i am very skilled. lesbian family playgroup in the afternoon, followed by an early st. patrick's day dinner in honor of grandpa jim. we miss that angel.

happy birthday, kiddo!

today was 2 days before adah's actual birthday, but since it was a sunday, we decided to celebrate today-- a day when the three of us could wake up leisurely together and a have a special breakfast, open gifts, make cupcakes, and play at the park before friends and family arrived. it was lovely. when adah woke up and we asked her how old she was, she said, "six" and laughed. she painted while i poured the crepes too thick and anne came to the rescue.

march was a perfect month for adah to be born, a time of glowing hope.

is it because i'm a new(ish) parent that i get so emotional about her special day? i get out the birth video, re-live the painful (for me) reality of how she came into the world via an (unnecessary?) surgical procedure, give my speech about the increasing medicalization of childbirth... and then, in contrast, once i see the first daffodil of the season i get entirely giddy with the memories of meeting her for the first time, driving the 2 mph ride home from the hospital, and sleeping peacefully with her until the colic arrived. during the aforementioned fit of crying and fussing, we wondered, "will she always be this difficult?"

the answer was no. we are so lucky to have such a superbly healthy, vibrant, smart, and funny little spark of a kid. some nights we ask ourselves what we'd be doing if we were childless, and we have no clue. there was life before adah?