Sick days

Random sickness has hit our household.  We have been down the entire second half of the week and the whole weekend, unfortunately missing a birthday party we were looking forward to attending!

I hate seeing my baby sick, but I hate being sick as well.

She handled it better than I did, sadly.  She bounced back relatively quickly. 

Me on the other hand?  I'm still sick.

It's horrible.

Needless to say, we are going to hunker down a bit longer before heading back out in society!  

 Hunkering down means lots of hot tea.  There is nothing better for me than sitting back and drinking a little

And of course you have to drink it out of a cup reminding you to be strong.

It also means not caring that the living rooms is a mess and the kiddo is tearing through it like a banshee on speed.

And this is okay.  

We can always clean the living room later.  Right now, we drink tea and rest.

Snow day!

Part of our rewilding involves going outside and experiencing everything.

Recently we had a "snow storm" (like 3 or so inches!) and I realized baby girl hadn't been out in snow since she was 7 months old!  So we bundled up and away we went!

We had so much fun.  Throwing snow, cleaning off the car, making snow angels!  She was so into it.

And it reminded me of my youth!  Playing in knee deep snow and making snowmen and generally just being a kid and having fun.

I am so glad I took the time to bundle her up and go outside!  Sure, we didn't have "proper snow attire" or anything like that, but that's okay!  We made do with what we had and still enjoyed it!

After an exciting day outside in the snow, we came in, hung up our wet clothes, made hot chocolate, and then enjoyed it in front of the fire place!

What an ending to a great day in the snow.

The new playroom

Ok, how excited are you to see our new playroom?

Probably as excited as I was to create it finally, right?!

Of course right!

So without further ado, here it is!

This is what you see when you come upstairs and round the corner into the room.  Lots of wide open space, a doll house, a corner with chairs and stuffys.

Next to that wall is the play kitchen and dishes, a couple random toys. 

 Then the shelves with building blocks nd the tunnel.  As you can see, baby girl loves this section the most currently.  Mostly because she's all about dumping everything her little hands can get on... and this is prime dumping materials.

 This section will eventually be covered over!  It's a couple book shelves we don't have really any other place to put and our board games.  We plan to put up shelves in that area and then section it off with a curtain tacked to the wall so they'll leave the whole area alone.

This is a radical overview once we added the climbing gym.  Baby girl's awesome aunt got her this and we figured this was the best place for it to be!  She absolutely loves it!

And the awesome wall, as I call it!  So much space to create and enjoy!

planning the garden

I am so excited to get to pour over my new seed catalogue!  We are growing for the first time at our new house and that means a new challenge in learning our hardiness zone and what actually grows here.

It took me a few weeks, but after consulting with everyone, I ordered our seeds!

I am so stoked to get this part going.  I mean, sure, I still have to clear the gardens out.  Measure soil levels and probably replace quite a bit.  Create rabbit fencing.  Check the sprinklers to make sure they even work anymore.  And a whole host of other things.

But we are growing this year if it kills us!

Okay, that might be a little dramatic.

But we are growing this year.  The package arrived today for the seeds!

 Look at them, all bundled up in there!

It doesn't look like much, but I'm hopeful it's enough to get us started.

This is our first year gardening here and it's gonna be a make or break year for me I'm feeling.  I need this garden to work at least a little bit!

Maybe it's more than I thought... haha!

But this is only a portion of the fresh foods we'll eat!

There are also no sweet fruits in here.  Though I did order some blackberry bushes, but they won't be delivered until much later in the year, when it's time!

This is our overview!

So to break down all we got.

In these two rows, starting in the top left corner and going DOWN then starting at the top again.

Bullnose sweet peppers, butter crunch lettuce, Australian brown onion, Orangegelo Watermelon

Carentan Leek, Amish Melon, Strawberry watermelon, Landreth stingless bush beans

Glory of enkhuizen cabbage, Cherokee purple tomatoes, Purple dragon carrots, chives

Waltham butternut squash, Arikara sunflowers, Cherokee trail of tears beans, buttercruch lettuce (another pack... I only ordered one.  So bonus!)

And the last column is:

Danvers 126 half long carrots, giant noble spinach, half long guernasy parsnips, delicacy white kohlrabi
















How delicious is our garden going to be this year?!!!

On top of that, Baker's Creek seeds sent us three "free gift" seed packets.

 

For us they sent: Brunswick cabbage, Black Vernissage tomatoes, and cosmic purple carrots!

How awesome is that?  THREE free food stuffs.  I like free.  It's one of my favorite ways to pay for things.

So now that we have the seeds and I am reading up on how to keep them, it's time to get the garden into order.  

Or it will be, once it's warmer than 19 degrees outside!

Just how things are going right now...

I took a peek over at the hamper of the kiddo the other day.

And couldn't help but laugh.

This about sums up our life right now.

Her hamper overflows.

And it's so much our life as we take on project after project just to turn our home into a livable space again.  

But it's working!  

We've got the playroom up and running! (post to come sooooon)

We've started tackling the office.  

It's amazing how a little determination can make shit actually get done around here!  

So here's to a continued exciting and cleaning up 2018.  

Goals for 2018

I'm not great at following the advice in fortune cookies...

Everyone always asks me my goals or new year resolutions.  I mean, isn't that what you do on January 1, decide you want to change everything about yourself and get to it?!

Yeah, me too.

And I fail every year.

Because my goals are always based on superficial things.

I want to read more.

I want to lose weight.

I want to cook more.

Those are all great things, but they have no intrinsic value to me.

So this year I am trying something new.

First, I'm not setting stone resolutions.  I'm setting goal ideas for myself.  Really only ONE goal idea.

And I'm hoping that works better.

As I have grown over the last few years, I have learned so much.  And becoming a parent has made me want to reconnect with my own heritage a little more.  We spend so much time making sure baby girl is connected to her people, that I realized I was not as connected to mine as I wanted to be.  As I still WANT to be.

I have found myself on a radical shift in my focus of life since moving to this home.  I want to connect in ways I never wanted to before.  Call it a quarter life crisis (I am not quite middle age yet.. at least I hope not!), call it a weird reaction to having a kid, call it whatever you want honestly.  But I have a need to reconnect in ways I didn't before.

So that is my goal.  My idea for 2018.  Reconnect.

My word this year is health.  But it's so much more than physical health.

It is mental and emotional health.  It is ancestral health.  It is finding where I fit in this world and exactly where I want to go with my life.

It's whole being health.

And that is it.  That's all I want this year.

To find more of me in this great big world.  To lose more of who society expects me to be, who I've been for other people, and who I continue to try to avoid being but sometimes fail.

I want to be more me.  And proudly more me.

As flamboyant as I am naturally.

As quiet as I am naturally.

As honest as I am naturally.

Those are all things I want to be more of.  And I'm okay with the fact that not everyone will like that.  It's okay.  You don't have to like me.  But I can no longer pretend to be the me you think you like.

Anyway, that's my 2018.  Whole being health.

Jealous of my kid part 2

Or alternatively titled "The big brother she didn't know she needed, but loves anyway"

Along with her bestie, Baby girl has another great friend that we affectionately refer to as her "big brother".

This kiddo is about a year older, so not much, but he very much takes on the role of big brother and protector.

While also being the person who "picks" on baby girl the most.

Classic big brother behavior!

This kiddo completes the trio, the 3 amigos if you will.

And really if you won't.

That's what we call them because we are SUPER original.

We are dammit.

Anyway, I wanted to take a moment and just confirm that yes, I am once again jealous of my kiddo in her ability to make such great friends.

Another friend to be able to say she grew up with.

And had forever.

How special is that for her?

I am hopeful that as all our kids grow, they continue to understand the friendships in front of them.

How important they are.

How much they are loved.

It so nice that we have the ability to find our people, our group, our family.

The three of them together.. getting into all sorts of stuff!  And loving every moment!

Happy new year!

Happy new year everyone!  May you have a peaceful and prosperous 2018!