* Gratiude Sunday *

Joining Taryn from Wooly Moss Roots for Sunday's heart felt tradition. A time to slow down, to reflect, to be grateful. A list of gratitudes.

~ For my dad keeping his swimsuits for 40 plus years, that meant we had enough suits for swimming in my parents pool when we left our stuff at home.
~ My husband for picking up the slack as I lay about growing a baby
~ Gladiolas
~ Cupcakes and cheesecake
~ Pizza delivery
~ Clean clothes
~ The wonderful blogland ladies who cheered me up the other day... thank you a million times
~ Fireworks
~ Eureka on Netflix
~ Having a mini vacation planned for the end of next month, just knowing we will be able to get out of town for a few days makes this heat bearable.
~ Naps

Independence and Interdependence

This last week was rough, I mean really rough. I am worn to the bone. I feel like a failure as a mother and a wife. Pregnancy depression is hitting me hard and I am wondering... is this a HUGE mistake? What was I thinking getting pregnant in my 40's?? I have 6 healthy children, why am I tempting fate?
I have cried a lot and been alone a lot. I feel like I am lost.
And I think part of this is because I am afraid to ask for help, I mean real help. I think the way we have set up society in these little isolated "nuclear families" leaves much to be desired. I feel vulnerable and scared. How do you really truly ask for help? When the expectation is that you NEED to be strong and do it all yourself. There is such a stigma on needing help in this country. I think many people need more community they just don't know how to make it happen, how to ask or who to do it with. Because your not suppose to need anyone. Your suppose to be independent. In reality we are not, we all depend on each other, but we have to keep up this facade that we are perfectly happy doing it all alone.
But the thing is, I am not happy. I am lonely and sad and feel isolated. My nausea and overwhelming tiredness and bizarre car sickness (even when I am driving) makes it hard for me to go anywhere or do much of anything. I want to ask for help, but everyone seems to always have their shit together, and I am over here flapping around like a fish out of water. My house is a mess, we are eating poorly (in fact I must confess we are eating waaaaaay too much fast food because cooking makes me feel terrible, most foods turn my stomach, and I am too tired to care most of the time), all of the things I want to be doing (like the pool, and hanging with friends, and books I want to read and need to read, and knitting projects and canning etc etc etc) are just sitting undone as I bury myself in Netflix and naps. The kids are on the computer ALL THE TIME.
I just keep telling myself I am 10 weeks now, just two more weeks, we can do this... two more weeks and this will pass. But I feel like it shouldn't have been this way. I should have reached out, embraced the interdependence, shared my vulnerability, asked for the help we needed... the help I needed. Being a mama is hard, feeling like crap is hard, doing it all alone sucks!

Yarn Along

Joining Ginny from Small Things for the Wednesday Yarn Along.

This last week I started a wee little pair of baby socks with this wonderful cotton rainbowy yarn. It knits up so great. Sadly I am just not super motivated at this point to pound out the socks, hopefully the knitting bug will hit again soon and this sweet pair of socks will be finished.
I have been thumbing through "I Love Dirt" such great ideas, I wish we lived some place where we could do more of this stuff. I have yet to dig up dirt in our yard and find any living things. Still, loads of great ideas for fun stuff to do with kids while playing in the dirt.

Get the funk out

I have been wallowing a bit in a nasty funk. This nausea, extreme sleepiness, and over all yuck has taken its toll on me emotionally. I have been almost unable to enjoy our life, it has sucked, and sucked bad. I have cried a lot, and napped a lot, and stayed home a lot. But something switched today, this morning... I don't feel any better physically, but emotionally, about 1000 times better. Maybe it was reading a few blogs of people actually enjoying life, or the news that we might be able to get our hands on 40 ears of corn (grilled corn and ice cold melon anyone??), or maybe, maybe it is just that I had to pull myself up by my boot straps, and get the funk out.
Plans for the day include getting a kiddie pool for the back yard, and making sure the freezer is stocked full of popsicles, maybe an evening walk once the sun is down, and possibly starting to dig the fire pit we have talked and talked about so it will be already for the summer solstice.
We have even be toying with a small summer vacation to northern Arizona where it is cool and green and foresty later in the summer. Just thinking about a long weekend in the woods, going on hikes, afternoon rains, and evenings under the stars... just fills me up.

In the Garden

melon plants

GARLIC!

harvesting the one and only pumpkin

fiona with the pumpkin

eggplant doing it's thing

herbs doing great, loads of mint and cat nip

Ahhhh, the blazing summer of the Phoenix area does a number on the garden. Everything sort of slows down. A few heat hardy plants seem to still be chugging along growing some food for us. The Japanese eggplants seem to like the heat and keep growing and are actually continuing to bloom and produce fruits, which is really exciting. The harder herbs, like mint, thyme and catnip, are still growing by leaps and bounds. The tomatoes are ripening, but have otherwise given up the ghost on producing any more fruits, they just do not like 110, go figure. My hope is to keep the plants alive until the weather turns (sometimes in September) and we might get them to bloom and fruit again. We planted some melons about a week or two ago (I have such a hard timekeeping track of the days anymore... baby brain maybe??) and I am delighted that they are actually GROWING! I was sure it would just be too hot for them, but my planting guide said you could plant melons this time of year, so we gave it a shot.
I gave all the plants a watering with fish goo (some sort of fish emulsion, it is nasty) and then mulched with some straw that also contained chicken poo, so here is hoping they like the goodies.
We picked our one and only pumpkin, it is sitting in the fridge right now so it won't rot before I can bake it and make a pumpkin cheese cake with it (Caelan's request), and I harvested the last of the garlic, I know 5 heads is not a big deal... but I have never actually grown garlic before, it is so super exciting. I have them drying in the laundry room/pantry area and it smells heaven back there now. I am planning on planting some more this weekend and seeing if we can't get a few more to harvest for fall/winter.

Yarn Along

Joining Ginny from Small Things for the weekly Wednesday Yarn Along, and joining Frontier Dreams for Keep Calm, Craft On.

This photo is a bit old, I am just about finished with the Puerperium newborn sweater, it is so lovely. I just have the sleeves to complete. I am thinking of just doing short sleeves do to the fact that although this wee babe will be born in January (possibly), we do live in Arizona and s/he probably won't need too many long sleeved newborn sweaters. I used Manos del Uruguay yarn in the colorway "Flame" and I am trying to figure what sorts of buttons to use, I decided on only doing three button holes up at the shoulder instead. Soulemama had posted about buttons she had picked up from Melissa Jean , so I have been toying with these little star buttons.

And, I have been working on a craft project for a craft circle I am in. When we lived in Maine I would be a part of this at least once a month, I especially love the seasonal nature table themed crafts. So when an email popped up that the summer nature table craft swap was open I joined. I wasn't sure what I was going to do, then I stumbled upon a wool felted bowl pattern on Ravelry I was inspired. (I wish I could remember which pattern it was, it is super super easy and they turned out PERFECT!) I knitted the bowls in Manos del Uruguay in the colorway "Agua". They were so super quick to knit, I knitted two of them while waiting for Logan as he was having surgery, the other 4 came along a bit slower but still took less than a week to get done. I am really happy with them, I hope the people who get them are happy as well.

And, as has been my usual, I am not reading much of anything. It is hard for me to focus on reading for some reason lately. I have thumbed through the newest issue of "Taproot" and read bits here and there of some of the books I need to read for my Breastfeeding Counselor training, but mostly I am knitting and trying not to throw up. LOL

* Gratitude Sunday *

Joining Taryn from Wooly Moss Roots for Sunday's heartfelt tradition. A time to slow down, to reflect, to be grateful. A list of gratitudes.

~ I am oh so grateful that Logan is home and doing so well after his Nuss procedure
~ For my friends who brought dinner over and watched the kids so we could be at the hospital for the better part of the week
~ For Audrey and my Dad who stayed the night at the hospital so Mike could go to class and I could be home with the littles and so that there was someone there with Logan
~ To the wonderful surgeon who did the surgery
~to the pain team who kept Logan's pain well managed
~ To the kids for working together so well to make this a relatively easy week, I know it was a challenge
~ for Trader Joe's Caribbean Popsicle, they are about the only thing I can stomach these days
~ for ice cold water, another thing that feels good on my tummy
~ naps, wonderful wonderful naps

MIA this week

This will likely be my last post for the week, we will be spending most of the week in the hospital with my dear sweet Logan. He goes in for his Nuss Procedure this afternoon and will be in the hospital for the next 5 days. Good thoughts and healing vibes would be most appreciated. 

* Gratitude Sunday *

Joining Taryn from Wooly Moss Roots for a Sunday heartfelt tradition. A time to slow down, to reflect, to be grateful. A list of gratitudes.

~ All the little birds in the yard
~ Getting Audrey all moved in to her apartment
~ Having a freezer full of food
~ The CSA finally not having beets
~ Lots of time to knit this week
~ The pool being open again
~ Spending the afternoon at the pool and NOT getting burned to a crisp
~ My dear friends in Tucson having Logan for a week so he could do something fun during the summer before his surgery on Tuesday
~ Ice cream, lots and lots of ice cream
~ Naptime
~ Getting all the books put away
~ Slowly organizing our house again

Funny things my children say...

We have all been there, having a rough day, a day where you just might be tempted to give the children to the next band of wandering gypsies, possibly to the next traveling circus. And then it happens, they are saved by the very fact that they can say the darnedest things, and when you think about those things, no matter how maddening the day has been, no matter how you have wanted to run screaming from the house with your hair clutched in your hands, you stop and you laugh until tears run down your face.
The funniest things my children have said recently are:
Rowan: "In the backen days, when people pooped their pants." You know those days, the waaaaay back days when everyone pooed on themselves.
Audrey: "I am so done with sloths." The animal, not lazy people. How can you be done with sloths? I don't know, but every time I think about it I start laughing.
Logan: "Shaving a hair cut to bits." This is what Logan thought the "Shave and a hair cut" song actually said.
Fiona: "You be the mama."

This guy, this Fisher Price Robin Hood guy... this is the mama. Makes me wonder, do I need to wax more often?