Prototype gift tags

I spent this evening working up some rough prototypes for gift tags to make and hopefully sell. I'm sorry the pictures aren't great, but I think the tags came out well.

Matchy-matchy nerds

My husband took the nerd test from the post below. We scored exactly the same except that he is slightly less nerdy than me when it comes to History/Literature (91% vs 99%). The funny thing about his Computer/Technology score is that he works for a software company, doing computery things all day. When he comes home he often does computery things until bedtime. I think if our friends had to choose who was most nerdy they would definitely choose my husband over me any day.

Uber Cool Nerd Queen

Yes, I'm even more than just a vocabulary nerd. According to this incredibly accurate test, I shall henceforth be known as Uber Cool Nerd Queen. I found this on The View from Elsewhere.

Am I insane? Maybe.

So, back in October I signed up for NaNoWriMo. Amazingly enough, I have a plot/story that I think will work. I haven't told any of my friends, because there is a sense of a lot of pressure around trying to do this. Now that I have posted about it, everyone will know. It was killing me not to say anything, but I've been really nervous just thinking about talking about it with anyone. I also put off actually starting to write until today. So far I only have 547 words, so I only have to do what I did tonight slightly less than 100 times in the next 25 days and I will have won. Even if I don't win, I will have a lot written. I'm glad I signed up.

I am a vocabulary geek

A friend sent this link to me the other day for Freerice.com. It is a game or a quiz, I guess. For every word that you correctly define, via multiple choice, they donate 10 grains of rice. The words are ranked into different levels. I made it up to level 50 a couple of times but seemed to mostly bounce around from 44-47. I loved it and played it way, way too long. I hope you have fun with it, too.

Accidental re-lactation

This is the weirdest thing. About three to four weeks ago I started watching a friend's four month old baby, one day a week for five hours. Last week I noticed my breasts felt kind of achy. I thought, oh, it's my period. Sensitive breasts aren't usually my problem, but it does happen every once in a while. I kept feeling hungry, even after a big meal. I watched the little boy on Friday. Friday night I went into my daughter's room to lay down with her and rub her back until she fell asleep, and I had a let down!!! I couldn't believe it. I haven't nursed her since April of this year. I couldn't hand express at all for the last several months that she was nursing. Sure enough, after she fell asleep I got up and went and tried to hand express and there was colostrum. I looked around online and couldn't find any non-nipple-stimulation instances of re-lactation. Hopefully the little let down feelings I'm having and the fullness will go away after a while. What amazing things our bodies are.

Slipping

My organization is slipping. I haven't done my weekly shopping this week, and only did a partial trip last week. I've gone to Starbucks several times in the last couple of weeks. We ordered pizza last week. Aaaahhh. It is ok. A little stumble and I know that I can recover.

One of the things I've been concerned about with having the thermostat set at 60° F is having mold/mildew grow in our bedroom. It is the coldest room in the house and it has the worst air circulation and we spend a lot of time in there. So, it has started already. I'm going to kill it with bleach and paint over the area with some left over Kilz paint and see what happens. I should also search around online. If anyone has any ideas I would love to hear them.

Top 106 Unread Books from Library Thing

I found this meme at Pretty Good on Paper.

It’s another book meme which lists books tagged as unread in Librarything. Bold what you have read, italicize your DNFs (did not finish), strikethrough the ones you hated, and put asterisks next to those you read more than once.

Jonathan Strange & M. Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
*Catch-22
One hundred years of solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
*Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
*Pride and Prejudice
*Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveller’s Wife
The Iliad
*Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A heartbreaking work of staggering genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury tales
The Historian
*A portrait of the artist as a young man
Love in the time of cholera
Brave new world
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
*Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A clockwork orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
*Sense and sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver's Travels
Les Miserables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The curious incident of the dog in the night-time
* Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A people’s history of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A confederacy of dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The unbearable lightness of being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
*The mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake : a novel
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
*Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
The Aeneid
*Watership Down
Gravity's Rainbow
* The Hobbit
In Cold Blood
White teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

Hundred Books Meme

My husband mentioned this meme to me. I'm a sucker for memes and books, so I had to find it. I did a Google search and grabbed this from the first result.

The idea is to review this list of 100 books, then mark all the ones you have read in bold, all the ones you want to read in italic, and leave the rest unchanged.


1. The DaVinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. The Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According to Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

If you would like to do this meme please do and let me know, because I find it so interesting to see what is on someone's bookshelf so to speak.

Out sick

Ugh. Back to back illnesses. I'm feeling better though finally. My sinuses began to feel bruised on Saturday and I thought that surely antibiotics were in my future, but I visited a new naturopath and she dispensed some herbs/supplements and sold me a neti pot. I've done nasal irrigation before, but the pot makes it easier.

My hold for Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning by George Monbiot arrived at the library. I'm going to finish a couple of other books before I start reading it though. The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan is a very good, but very disturbing book. Here are a couple of statistics that shocked me. One-third of American children eat at a fast food restaurant everyday. Fifteen to thirty percent of feedlot cows sent to slaughter have abscessed livers. Just as a reminder, "[The liver is] like a factory that makes vital substances (such as albumin and factors that help with blood clotting). It cleanses the body of toxins and bacteria. It produces bile that helps digest food. The healthy liver also gathers and stores important substances for your body to use later, such as sugar and vitamins." via USDVA

Ball gown gloves

That's what she said they were. She was playing with her ink pads and stamps. It goes all the way up to her elbows. No, that is not a bruise on her face. Maybe she will be a make-up designer for the movies?

Riot to Austerity

I realize I've never really talked about this group on the blog. It is a Yahoo group of people who are working towards reducing their impact on the Earth. The goal is to take what the average citizen of their country uses and cut back on that by 90%. The idea comes from a man named George Monbiot and his most recent book Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning.

When I first read that the people were cutting back 90% I thought, wow, they are amazing, it's too bad I can't join, because I would never make 90%. I kept reading some of the blogs of the participants (Casaubon's Book and green with a gun and Simple Living) and then I went and checked out the group page. It is for everyone who is willing to try reducing, even if they know that for whatever reason they won't make 90%. I decided to join. I love reading the messages that come through on the board. It is a great community with lots of wonderful ideas. I've learned quite a bit. There is an intro, a faq and rules for the Riot to Austerity on the Simple Living blog. Just take a peek, come on, I know you want to. All the cool kids are doing it. : )

Rioting to Austerity

I am so happy! We got our electric bill that covers the last two months. We only used 212 kWh per month!!! Last year at this time we used 427 kWh. It is sooo nice to see some pay off for all of the changes we are making. The biggest changes were 1. using the drying rack instead of the dryer, 2. using a laptop instead of a desktop computer, 3. unscrewing all redundant light bulbs (our bathroom fixture has 6 bulbs and I unscrewed all but three then unscrewed all but one).

Gotta run!

Sittin' on the sofa with Fiona

Fiona: Mama, are you going to die soon?

Me: What? No. Most people live until they are about 80 years old. Do you know how old you will be when I'm 80? You'll be 47! Why do you ask?

Fiona: I just wanted to know if you were going to die soon.


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Oh my goodness.

My first from scratch softie!

A little lion in the tall grass.

Even though it has a wonky arm, it is quite special to me. I was rather frustrated with it when I had trouble with the arm, but as I was stuffing it I really had a sensation like it was coming into its own, almost coming alive if you will.

I made it for a friend's daughter for her first birthday. When Fiona woke up this morning and saw it, she was very excited and then very upset. She thought it was for her. She insisted that I make a different one for the one year old and that this one be hers. I promised her that I would make her one just like it. She said to make sure it had one short arm. That made me feel better about the arm. I think I sewed the wrist a little too tightly and I just couldn't turn it right-side out for the life of me. The little arm is kind of hard, because all the fabric is bunched up in there. It will be a perfect little teething lump.

Goodness, what a proud doll-mama am I.

A couple of things

Miss Fi just started preschool today. She is only going a couple of days a week, but I think it will be a lovely change for her, and me, too. While I was lying on the sofa eating bon-bons and watching soap operas, oh no, wait, I was just eating breakfast and reading in peace and quiet, I decided to look and see if there was a way for me to take a bus to pick Fiona up from school. Her dad takes her on his way to work. After fiddling around with all of the trip planner settings I found a way to take just one bus and with total round-trip walking distance of 2.2 miles. I am so very happy! I'll probably bring her little umbrella stroller along with me. And no, I won't do it all the time every time, but every little bit helps.

I've noticed people talking more and more about gray water and reusing it. Gray water is water that goes down the drain from your sinks, showers and bathtubs. What is flushed down the toilet is called black water. Today I caught the shower water that ran while I waited for the hot water to come and used it to flush the toilet. It is silly, but it felt like a little victory. It was something so easily done.

Not having pre-packaged food in the house is the only thing that saves me from serving mac and cheese and the like seven days a week. I had a lovely time off this morning, but I missed lunch, which made me a bit grumbly in the afternoon. When dinner preparation time came and went, I wandered around the kitchen looking for, hoping for, something easy. I ended up making spaghetti sauce from scratch because that was the easiest thing left to make in my meal plan for the week. I didn't really want to, there just weren't any other choices.

Each week I choose 5-6 recipes (for a total of about 8-9 meals), but I don't assign them to specific days, that way there is a bit of flexibility. One of the meals is always something easy like grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup or gardenburgers. I also only buy the things on the shopping list unless a staple is on sale, then I may stock up a bit.

Ok, I'm rambling. Time for bed.

Just dropping by my own little blog house...

I've been having a bit of a rough patch. I got to a point where it seemed like suddenly everything needed doing all at once and that I had no idea where to stop start. A couple of friends took me out for a beer. We sat and talked. Just getting it all off my chest helped me feel better. They also had some good advice to share with me.

I'm working on decreasing our family carbon footprint. It is exciting and empowering at times and at other times I just want to go to Starbucks and get a peanut butter cookie and a venti-no-whip-java-chip-frappucino.

We've had car trouble this last month. It has put a severe strain on our finances. In the past it all would've gone on the credit card without a second thought. Now we are struggling to not add to our debt and eat and pay for all of the "little" things that come up. This makes me want Starbucks more than anything. It is the stress of trying to figure it all out and the stress of saying no to things.

Maybe I mentioned it in the past, but I'm interested in studying medicine. It is so scary though to think about going back to school after all of this time. My daughter is starting preschool this week and will most likely be starting kindergarten next year. I will have the time to actually pursue school.

For all my complaining and sharing too much with the world, I have to say that I am so grateful for what I have, for my family, my friends, my home. We are so very lucky.

I'm going to vent...

We forgot to put away the new stick of butter from the table after dinner last night. I found part of it in the hall. Thanks, dog.

We are very short on money right now. I went shopping to get just a few things to cover simple dinners for the next couple of days. I decided to splurge on one item. Challah bread, that we could snack on and have with soup for the next couple of days. When we got home Fiona had to go to the bathroom. When I get back to the kitchen only half of the loaf is left and it is covered with teeth marks. Thanks, dog.

I started making dinner. No onions for the soup. I added a couple of bouillon cubes and some hard cheese to add some flavor. I pulled out the greens I had just bought. I hadn't checked them when I bought them. I was rather distracted. There were THREE different kind of bugs all over the undersides of every leaf. I just couldn't handle it. I will throw some parsley in the soup for a bit of green and some flavor.

Now, I know that every one of these things is my fault, but I am so very, very frustrated. It makes it feel as if the day has been a waste. But it hasn't.

I was driving by a consignment shop and saw a toy organization shelf/basket combination. It was $30. I didn't know where the money would come from. Then I remembered we had a collection of coins sitting in the linen cupboard. We took them and turned them in at the store. There was $47. We went and bought the shelf.

The co-op we shop at gives a coupon once a month for 10% off. You can save the coupon and bring in the receipt with the highest value. I had neglected using these for three months. I turned those in at the grocery store and only had to pay $7 cash for the groceries I bought today.

My neighbor brought over some rhubarb bars she baked. So, we have something for dessert.

I told a friend that I was thinking of making a doll for a friend's child, and I asked if I could have her coupon for 40% off at the fabric store. She said she had some fabrics I could use. She brought them over. I mentioned I was thinking of going to the thrift store to try and find some funky fabric. She said she was going to drop a bag of stuff off. I offered to take it. When I went to put the groceries in the trunk, the bag had fallen over and I saw some cloth napkins that I liked. I called and left a message asking if it would be ok if I kept them.

So it was a bad day and a good day.

My hold on The Tightwad Gazette came in the other day, and I've been reading that the last couple of nights. I also joined the Riot for Austerity. I won't make 90%, but I'm working on reducing.

Change

I was sitting here looking at my Bloglines feed and wanting to read more, but I've read everything. I realized that maybe I should post.

I've been very busy this last month. About a month and a half ago I found an article about plastic and just how awful it is for the environment and people. Amazingly, I was able to find it again to link to it here. I think I originally was pointed to the article by Causabon's Book via Little Jenny Wren. In one of the posts on Causabon's Book there was a mention of a woman who is trying to live plastic free for one year. The woman who writes Causabon's Book also writes a lot about peak oil. I had a general idea before of what it meant, but now have a much greater understanding. All of these things started me thinking about what I could do to change how we live so that the world would be better off.


I decided that we were going to avoid plastic as much as possible. I would occasionally forget my tote bags at home when I went grocery shopping in the past. I haven't forgotten since I've actively started working on eliminating plastics. I am not buying processed, prepackaged food if at all possible. We are vegetarians so, even though tofu, tempeh and seitan are all packaged in plastic I will still buy them. We used to go through two loaves of bread a week, but I buy only one now. I'm trying to bake bread, but I'm making lots of changes at once so I'm giving myself a break here and there. We are lucky to have a wonderful co-op grocery store that focuses on organic foods. They also have a great bulk foods section. We've been taking glass containers or plastic containers that we already have so that we can take advantage of the bulk foods. I've been doing meal planning for a whole week. We are also only going to the grocery store once a week. We used to go several times a week. We aren't ordering take-out. I'm not going to Starbucks three to four times a week. I still go once a week as a treat. We shop at the local farmer's market first then go to the grocery store. That way I know that we are supporting local organic agriculture as much as possible and filling in the gaps at the store. I bought a used deep freeze with the idea of freezing some things such as local organic fruits and vegetables for use through the winter and spring. I've been washing out our plastic milk jugs and filling them with water and putting them in the freezer. They will keep the freezer operating most efficiently and we will have an emergency supply of water if we ever need one.

The Idyllic

The Reality

More specifically on the energy saving front, Monday is a no drive day for me. We've also been hanging out the laundry to dry. I've only used the dryer twice in the last month and a half. This coming from someone who has never hung out a load of clothes to dry, except while on vacation in France, is a pretty big accomplishment.

I found a book at the library called Not Buying It. It is about a woman who didn't purchase anything but the necessities for a year. There were parts I liked and parts I didn't, but one of the things that popped out at me was that her friends kept asking her how much money she saved. One day when I was feeling down about all of this work I sat down to write in my journal. I decided to figure out how much we were saving. I was shocked. By week two, we had saved $274 by meal planning, not eating out and not going to Starbucks. I'm sure we are saving a bit more on gas because I'm not constantly going out and "running errands."

About a week ago I noticed that some of my pants felt more loose. I asked a friend if I could use her scale. I don't know exactly where I started weight-wise, but I've lost somewhere between eight and ten pounds. It is amazing, and it isn't. We used to have ice cream most nights for dessert and the multiple trips to Starbucks didn't help. In my new way of doing things, I have baked cookies at home and made homemade jam for the first time.



Let me tell you, homemade raspberry jam is so very incredible. I guess, what I'm trying to say is that I haven't necessarily cut back on the quantity of food, but I have changed the type of food I'm eating.

One day Fiona came out of her room with a random assortment of toys. She informed me that she was Mama and I was Fiona, and that I could help her bake tea cookies. After she finished baking the cookies and serving them all around she said she was going to make risotto for dinner. That made me so happy. She was emulating me and it was a positive thing.

I love that so many positives come out of these changes.

It has been difficult in one way I hadn't anticipated. Fiona and I stay home a lot more. She wants to be entertained and played with more than before. I know it is because we would hop in the car to go run errands at the drop of a hat. During the second week of all of these changes Fiona said, "Mama, let's go to the store." She didn't need anything or want anything. She had already figured out that when you are bored you go shopping. I guess it is being nipped in the bud, but it was pretty distressing to realize that I had taught her that.

Here are some photos to back up my last post!

The first time I saw a passion flower I couldn't believe it was real.


The first little rose bud. It is a David Austin climbing rose called 'Mme Alfred Carrière.'


Three ripe little strawberries from a woefully neglected strawberry plant.

Ta da! Our first true leaves on some Thumbelina carrots.

A baby Limmony tomato!

Grow, Beefsteak, grow!


This is rather interesting. We have a crab spider that lives in our large lavender bush. The crab spider is mostly or all white and it doesn't spin a web. It sits in the same spot with its arms stretched out and waits for a bee to fly into them. She had this bee by a bite just above the eyes. The next day I went out and she had caught another, and it was still alive and kicking. She had a hold of it around its head and was biting in the same spot that she bit the one below. (I don't know why, but I think of most spiders as a she, but not all.)

Summer is here!

Happy Solstice!

After two warm days, there are a couple of little baby tomatoes on the plants, three ripe strawberries, true leaves on many of the carrot seedlings and the passion flower vine opened! I also noticed the first rosebud on my new climbing rose!

What would a 50s housewife do?

Growing up, I didn't have a particularly good role model for keeping a neat house, unless of course, you count June Cleaver.


I have always idolized her and her perfect (TV) house, but never thought I could aspire to such perfection. Then yesterday, I read a post over at Little Jenny Wren and in her post she linked to another's post. I must say, I admire the woman who wrote it. She is doing more than I would ever consider doing towards keeping a June Cleaver home, but what really struck me was the pride she had in it all. I could really use a helping of that. Now, I am not going to get up before everyone, shower, dress, put on make-up etc, to put breakfast on the table, but I started thinking "What would a 50s housewife do?" or "Would a 50s housewife do that?" when I was going about my day. I felt like I was working on something positive. I started expanding that thinking.

I realized that a 50s housewife wouldn't have a pile of garbage sitting in the hall from the remodel, just because no one had taken the time to put it out at the curb. The bedroom closet in a 50s house wouldn't be filled with boxes. There would be clothes in the closet. (We have a garage where boxes etc could go, but it is in a pretty disastrous state, too.) I thought of our linen closet which has house painting supplies, a broken clock radio, a light fixture cover etc, and yet our towels are piled on a bookcase in another part of the house, albeit close to the bathroom, but not actually in a closet built for the purpose of housing them. If I start putting things where they belong, towels in the linen cupboard, clothes in the closet, and removing things that don't belong, paint supplies to the garage, broken clock radio in to the trash, we will be able to not only find things, but find places for all of the random things, even if that means donating them or putting them in the trash.

Reading back over this, I know what I have written would be obvious to most, but I am rather excited that I've found a new way to look at it all.

p.s. A friend of mine is working on getting her family's finances in hand. One idea she had that I thought was particularly clever was to have the homepage of her web browser set to her bank account, so that whenever she went to check email or whatever she would see it and be aware of what was going on in her account.

There have been a few drafts

since the last time I posted but none have been posted. I haven't posted for a number of reasons. None of them are sinister. A bit of the energy I used to put toward blogging has gone to librivox.org. I've recorded a few things (I'm not saying which) and I've listened to a fair number as well. There have also been the usual hobbies, knitting, reading, gardening and life, that have gotten in the way.

There is a knit baby gift that is in the offing, but it is taking a long time. I'm quite pleased with it though. Soon I will be able to post a picture of it. The baby has been born, and I was lucky enough to be present. Can I tell you, there are few occupations more worthwhile than being at a birth and being useful. I have acted as a doula for several of my friends, but now I think it is time to branch out. I can't do it too often, but about four to six times a year will be just right.

My next knitting project will be Monica from the Spring edition of Knitty. Fiona and I chose Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece Cherry Moon and Prosperous Plum. Here is the color card. I'm going to take a chance and work this in the round. I just don't feel like doing all of the knitting then purling. I want something mindless and relatively quick. I'm setting her birthday as my finishing goal.

The garden. I've planted a passion flower vine in the front to climb up the wires from the utility pole that is on the property line. It looks as if the buds will open any day now. June weather is never particularly warm here, so I am waiting for July. The heat it brings will surely open up the flowers.

My husband helped me plant a climbing rose. It is looking a little pale, but I think I am just nervous about it. The trellis/arch for it to climb is laying in the front yard. It has been a bit challenging to get it up, just right. We will try again after the first of the week.

My brother built a lovely raised vegetable bed for me, and my husband moved 5 yards of dirt into it. So far I've planted four kinds of tomatoes and two kinds of carrots. The tomatoes are Sweet Million (cherry), Egg Yolk (cherry), Limmony (slicing) and Beefsteak (slicing). The carrots are Thumbelina and Yaya.

Our main bathroom has been torn apart for remodeling for ages, and recently we have started making some progress. We have a lovely tile floor now and a re-glazed bathtub. We've had one plumbing contractor in for a quote and we will be having another soon. Our kitchen sink drains into the same pipe at the same point as the bathroom sink. This wouldn't be too much of a problem, except there is a garbage disposal in the kitchen sink that shoots chewed up food bits and yucky water into the bathroom sink. Charming! So we are going to get it all magically rerouted so we can have the garbage disposal and a food-free bathroom sink. We also had an old toilet that used something like 5 gallons of water per flush. That will be replaced with a 1.6 gallon toilet. I'm hoping we can find a good price on a dual flush toilet.

Our house didn't really seem like our house until we started doing things to it. We painted the bedrooms and then the living room. That really made it feel like home. The more we do to it, the less I think of leaving it. When we bought the house we only expected to stay in it for 5 years, and then find something better. It's been three years and now I only think about staying.

Here is a picture from earlier this spring when we went out to the tulip fields.

Weaning

This is probably more than you want to know, but I feel like sharing.

I have been lucky enough to be able to breastfeed my daughter. I decided before she was born that it was just going to work. I wasn't going to read anything about bottle feeding or formula or supplementation.

Breastfeeding was really difficult in the beginning. I would say that it took a good 8-10 weeks for it to be a comfortable thing for me. There was cracking and bleeding and then a period of pain only on latch that lasted for several weeks and then went away. From the beginning I talked about doing child led weaning. I wanted this to be a journey for the both us, and something that I could give her for as long as she needed and wanted it.

Then January of this year came and I felt so done. We were only nursing at night before bed. It had been like that for at least a year. I felt antsy and uncomfortable. Then the daycare she was in said they were going to close and I had to decide what to do. I quit my job at the end of January, and we continued nursing because of the tumult in our lives. I was fine. I began to be comfortable again, but at the beginning of this month I had that strong I'm done feeling again.

I talked to Fiona and told her that I felt that my body was almost done making mama's milk and that she was such a big girl that I thought it was time for us to be done. We talked about how I could rub her back to help her fall asleep. I suggested we celebrate her being such a big girl. She said she wanted a party with cake, apples and Pirate's Booty and that she wanted to invite all of the moms, dads, kids and babies (our group of friends). So I chose last Saturday as the day for the party. We invited our friends and some family. For the week before the party, every night as we went to bed I reminded her that after Friday night we weren't going to have mama's milk anymore and that I would rub her back. Friday night came. She nursed briefly on both sides and said, "I'm all done. Would you rub my back mama?" She went right to sleep. That night when I got into bed I cried. I even thought briefly that I didn't need to follow through, but there was a very strong voice in me that said "Oh, yes, we are done."

Saturday came and we had a great party. We ate yummy food and had lemon cupcakes with whipped cream frosting. There was lots of talking, laughing and playing. There was almost no mention of what the party was for. Fiona's grandma brought her a beautiful paper crown that said "The Queen" on the front. She had a great time.

That night as we were reading bedtime stories I reminded her that we weren't having mama's milk anymore. She said, "That's right and you are going to rub my back to help me go to sleep." That is just what we did.

Sunday we went out to breakfast and she was wearing her crown. Someone asked if it was her birthday. She didn't understand that they were asking because of the crown. I said no, that she had had a weaning party yesterday. I was nervous. I know the average person in our society doesn't advocate extended nursing, but this woman seemed genuine in her congratulations.

Fiona asked at bedtime if she could have mama's milk. I said, "Nope, but I can rub your back and if your thirsty you have your sippy." She was fine with that.

Tonight she fell asleep in the car on the way home. When I got her into bed, she just rolled over and said, "Mama, would you start rubbing my back."

Weaning has worked, I guess. It hasn't been traumatic. There have been no tears shed on her part. I wanted her to be in control, but it takes two to nurse. I think we have done ok. I'm proud that I was able to give her what I did for so long. I'm proud of who she is and of who she will become. She's my strong girl, and I love her so much.

It's seven minutes after 10pm

on April the 17th and I am working on our taxes.

Now it is ten minutes past 11pm and I am done. Thank goodness.

I usually don't procrastinate doing taxes, but this year I decided to do them myself instead of going to H & R Block.

Please cross your fingers for me. I hope it will all be ok.

I'm an Intermediate Knitter (almost)

I had signed up for an intermediate knitting class a couple of weeks ago. The first class was tonight. I wouldn't say that it was earth shaking, but it was so good to be in a room with knitters and be trying out a couple of things. I knit my first cable. Woo Hoo! You never know, I might knit an Aran sweater for someone now. We also learned to do the Suspended Bind Off. It was pretty smooth. I didn't like the Cable Cast On as much though. It just felt kind of awkward.

Next week we will learn about intarsia and fair isle. I'm rather excited about fair isle. I want to try to knit Eunny's Anemoi mittens and her Endpaper mitts someday.

I've been reading up a storm. I finished Monstrous Regiment and liked it. I re-read Mort and The Fifth Elephant. Then off to the bookstore, where I bought Lords and Ladies and Pyramids. I've finished Lords and Ladies and am about halfway through Pyramids. All of the above are by Terry Pratchett.

I also picked up Marie Antoinette: The Journey by Antonia Fraser and The Islandman by Tomás O'Crohan. I'm enjoying both of them. There are sooooooooo many names to keep track of in the Marie Antoinette book, but it is nice to be reminded of the politics of the time, it helps to make things much clearer. The Islandman author's name caught my eye. I picked it up from the shelf and proceeded to read the first twenty pages while standing there. I can't explain what it is about it that is so interesting, maybe after I have read more I will have a better idea.

Hiatus

I've taken a bit of a blogging and knitting hiatus. A week and a half ago I knit an entire row wrong. 203 stitches to undo. I finally undid them, but then half of them are twisted so, now I have to untwist them. It really isn't that big of a deal, but I've been reading a lot instead. I've read Equal Rites, Wyrd Sisters, Witches Abroad and Hogfather. They are all Terry Pratchett novels, quick reads and very silly. I'm still listening to Vanity Fair when I do knit. Librivox.org is such a wonderful thing. Yesterday I started reading Monstrous Regiment, another Terry Pratchett and The Prestige by Christopher Priest.

The most exciting thing is that I have started spring cleaning/reorganizing. It is always daunting because we are not very good housekeepers and there are two cats, a dog, a 3 year old and two untidy adults.

I'm supposed to meet some friends at the zoo in twenty minutes, so I guess I had better go. Sometimes I find it easier to write the blog as if it were a letter or email to someone.

A question regarding hanging out the wash

Being raised around clothes dryers, I have never hung clothes out to dry on a clothesline. I'm going to put one in the backyard this spring/summer and give it a go. I've noticed when people have shared pictures of their washing hanging out on the line that socks are pegged by the toe. I've hung my wool socks up in the past, but always by the cuff. This leads me to believe that there are handy dandy tips out there for how to hang what so it isn't stretched out or damaged. So, to anyone who has any hints, please fire away.

Look what the postman brought...

I joined Flibbertygibbet's fabric swap on something of a whim. My swap partner from London sent me these lovely things. Thank you Abi!



Fiona squealed with joy when she saw the fruit leather. She was even more ecstatic when I told her it was for her. It was promptly devoured. It is kind of hard to see, but there are some really cute buttons attached to the postcard. It was hard for me to stop at each step and take pictures, so I'm afraid the pictures aren't as good as they should be.

And for the grand finale...



I just don't know what I am going to do with it yet. For whatever reason I keep thinking of some sort of skirt for Fiona. There isn't enough of course for a whole skirt, but maybe I can incorporate some patchwork or something. Ponder, ponder, ponder.

Thank you for the fun Gail! Thank you Abi for being such a great swap partner!

Some lovely new life...

Here are some things from my garden (front yard). I don't know what this plant is, it was here when we bought the house. This is the only time of year I like it, because of its sweet little flowers. Really, its only offense is that it is in a bad location, and I could certainly remedy that.


This was one of my favorite surprises when it bloomed the second year we lived here. Again, I don't know what it is, but it makes these lovely purpley-blue flowers that last for a long time. There are blue bells coming up around it. It was hidden in a hedge. The hedge started to die off and then we saw them.


Here are some of the crocuses that I planted last fall. I love this picture.


Here is my clematis (macropetala) that I thought for sure would not survive our winter as it was in a pot the whole time. Just look at that litte flower bud.


Here is a little fern frond. I believe it is a wood fern.


The lovely orange crocus with the crimson stripes up the side. I haven't been able to get a good picture of it open yet. I will keep trying.


Here comes a tulip, again planted last fall. I didn't mark where I planted what, so it will be a nice surprise.


Here is a little hyacinth just peeking its little head out. Come on out, the weather is fine!

Death, again

The former co-worker I was knitting a scarf for died this past weekend. He was 36 or 37 and had cancer. The doctors had told him he had a year or two to live. I keep thinking "this sucks" and yet those words are so completely inadequate.

Reading leads to rambling

Lately, I have been on a classics kick when it comes to reading. First, I have to say that I have read most of these books before, but I have a memory like a sieve, so that often it is as if I am reading a new book, or a book that I keep having a strong sense of deja vu about. Anyway, it all started with the Which Jane Austen Heroine Are You quiz. I simply had to read Persuasion, then I moved on to Pride and Prejudice (which I really enjoyed), then Emma (I didn't like her a bit), then Northanger Abbey (it was ok). I felt as if I were getting into a rut with Jane. Now I am reading Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell. It is interesting to me that the discussion of whether women should work outside the home, and what the benefits and the problems are, were being discussed back them. The problem of urbanization and industrialization and how that impacts society is still being played out today.

I have been working at being more environmentally conscious and remembering to donate food to those in need. Oh, that sounds so self-important, but that really isn't my intent. Fiona really likes to pick out things to put in the donation bin. It is pretty cute. She seems to pick out the things that are her favorites. This last time it was tomato and roasted red pepper soup, two kinds of macaroni and cheese and a jar of pickles.

One of the first times she noticed one of the people who stand at freeway on/off ramps asking for food/work/money she said that the construction people would come and help the person and build him a house with his own bedroom and they would build him a bed and they would build him a blanket and then he would have his own house and be warm.

Why doesn't it work that way?

A victory

I was sure that this post was going to be about failure, and yet it isn't. I started knitting something a few days ago, I can't really say what though. It has some YOs in it. I forgot one. I didn't realize until I had finished the row, and of course it was at the other end of a lot of stitches. One imperfection isn't too big of a problem, so I decided to pick up the bar where the YO was supposed to be. I thought that would add the stitch back and things would be ok. It looked terrible after I finished another row. It needed to be fixed. To write it out, that I needed to make a YO, K1, YO and then purl those three stitches for the row above, sound easy and straight forward. It wasn't. I've never done anything like this before. First, I confused the which yarn was for which row and it was a tight, awful, twisted mess. The second time it wasn't as bad as the first, but it was still not right, then I realized I had forgotten to take out the stitch I had added to make up the for missing YO. I tried again. Third time's the charm. I wanted to have a glass of champagne afterwards.

Thank you

Thank you all for the thoughtful, heartfelt comments you left regarding my cousin. He was very loved in his community. There were probably 400 people at his funeral. His parents are doing amazingly well, and I am sure it is because they are surrounded by so much love.

A slowdown

Sorry for not posting for the last two weeks.

My 17 year old cousin commited suicide last week. Things have just been kind of chaotic all week. I hope to be back to posting at least twice a week very soon.

Thank you to everyone who still visits my blog.

I felt like Lucille Ball the other day.

A friend gave me her breadmaker a couple of days ago. I decided to try it out right away. I had everything to make Yogurt Whole Wheat bread. Yum. I was adding the ingredients, being very careful while measuring them out. I picked up the flour bag with one hand to pour some flour into a measuring cup when the bag started to slip out of my hand. My reaction was to clap two hands together on the sides of the flour bag to catch it before it fell. A great cloud of flour shot up out of the bag all over my head and shirt. One nice thing is that it didn't hurt to get flour in my eyes, but it did make it a little hard to see.

The bread was quite yummy.

I finished my first sock!

And I have already cast on the second.

The kitchener stitch looks like crap and I don't know why. I don't have anyone to ask right now, so it will have to stand as is.



As soon as Fiona put the sock on she said, "Mama, you have to make me another sock, my other foot is cold!" I think she was a little disappointed when I explained that I couldn't just make one right now it would take a little while. At least she likes it.

I don't think I'm Anne, but then again,

I don't think I could possibly live up to any of Jane Austen's heroines. I read the book and watched the movie. I love to read, but I can read a book and have it go completely out of my head, even if I like it. As I was reading Persuasion, I would suddenly have an inkling of what was going to happen. I love the tension in Jane's, or should I say Miss Austen's, books. We all know that it will work out in the end, but the possibility of two people who really should be together, not getting together is almost too much to bear. I have to admit when watching Wentworth lean down to kiss Anne at the end of the movie, I got that tingly in my stomach feeling as if he was going to kiss me. I guess I got pretty wrapped up in it after all. The movie was a little disappointing, in that Anne's sister was a gross caricature of how I perceived her in the book. Anne also seemed to be rather mopey in the film, and I just didn't read her that way.

I read this article on green cleaning in the Guardian via The Worsted Witch. It was interesting, but mostly things I had read before. The one exception was the part where the person was cleaning her hob. I've never heard of a hob before. After a little googling, I found out that it is what I might call a stove top or cook top or a range.

England and America are two countries separated by a common language.
--George Bernard Shaw

Nameless post

There is a story that Fiona has that has a witch in it called Louhi and at one point she shakes the nameless finger at someone and it is the most powerful finger. I don't know which finger it is though, the picture isn't very clear.

This is a post for the sake of posting, with no particular intent involved. (What a strange choice of words. I can be kind of weird at times. The word weird, always looks misspelled to me.) I had some free time today and I went to my LYS. I wandered for over an hour. I walked out with only five ounces of merino roving. That's not too bad, especially since I was able to use a gift certificate for it.

On reading Elsewhere this evening, I decided to take the Jane Austen Heroine Quiz.

Take the Quiz here!

It has been a while since I have read Persuasion, so I honestly can't say if this is good or bad.

I'm finding it much harder now that I am home to keep up with all of the blogs I used to look in on everyday.

The scarf that I am working on is, after a fashion, a prayer scarf. The funny thing is that whenever I try to knit it while chatting, or watching a movie, I always make a mistake. My subconscious is probably trying to tell me to pay attention to what my initial intention was with this scarf, to focus on it and pour love and hope into it.

Oh yes, ostensibly this IS a crafty blog

Pictures are nice, too. I apologize to anyone on dial-up.

First are the socks, and by socks, I mean sock that I have been "working" on for Fiona for a while now.



They are based on this pattern. The yarn is the Fig and Plum colorway from Yarntini. I absolutely love the yarn, love, love, love it! Anyway, I turned the heel, it went so well. I knit the foot. I thought at one point, I wonder if this is long enough and it was precisely the right length. There were no ladders. No holes in the heel. I was so happy. I thought, I'll just figure out how many stitches there are. I checked gauge. I had apparently gone from knitting 8 stitches to the inch to 10 stitches to the inch by the time I got to the foot. I did some math, I had knit 5715 stitches. Then I thought, Fiona should try this on before I graft the toe. The foot is snug. Not tight, but snug and I think it would be uncomfortable. The foot will have to be reknit. I'm hoping that if I go from US size 0 (2mm) needles to US size 2 (2.75mm) that it will be ok. So knowing all of this, the sock has just been sitting. I don't have the heart right now to rip back all of those stitches and start the foot over. Picking up such small stitches is a nightmare to me.

Here is a little magic, the color changed just as I was doing the short rows for the heel.



Here is a photo of the scarf I am working on for my sick co-worker. It is going slowly and I feel terrible about it.



The yarn is Louisa Harding Kashmir Aran. The pattern sort of evolved through swatching. It is reversible. I will write it up one of these days.

I've been interested in spinning lately. You may remember that a coworker invited me over to her house to try out her spinning wheel. Since then I have wanted to try out my spindle again. We didn't really do well together the first time. So I pulled it out a couple of weeks ago and spun, and it/I worked. I think spinning with the wheel helped me understand. Anyway, I decided that I wanted to wind off what I had spun so I could practice plying sometime. Since I don't have a nøstepinde I looked around the house and used this instead.



The sad thing is the relatively well spun fiber is at the center of that little wad of yarn-to-be, so you will have to use your imagination.

For Christmas, I made a patchwork doll blanket for Fiona to go with a doll bed she received.



This is only the second time I've touched a sewing machine. Not bad, if I do say so myself. It is based on the tutorial at Happythings. It is backed with off-white chenille.

While reading Feministe I came across a post about this Face Transformer. It was really interesting seeing myself as an Afro-Carribean or West Asian. They also had a couple of artistic options.

Here I am as Botticelli might have painted me:



And here is a Modigliani me:



And the last picture is of little bird foot prints on my doorstep from when we had snow eons ago.



I love watching birds and have several feeders including one just to the side of my front door. This morning at breakfast we saw a Varied Thrush digging and pecking in the duff beneath the large firs we have in our backyard.

I quit my job

Last week when I took Fi to school, I saw her teacher speak to several children in a way that was horrible. He obviously had favorites and ones he didn't like. He may have been having a bad day, but that isn't allowed (to the extent I saw) when you are the main adult around two and a half to four year olds. The secondary teacher didn't even react when he was talking to the kids, so to me that says that it is something that happens with some frequency.

So, the next day I quit my job and she is no longer in daycare. It is a relief. Of course, when it comes time to pay the bills next time it won't be fun, but we will manage.

Much better thank you

As I said, I am doing much better. Fiona and I went to the park yesterday on a last minute whim. We had fun. Then there was grocery shopping, amazingly that was mostly fun, too. We belong to a co-op that offers all kids a free piece of fruit when you come in to shop. It is a lovely thing. As we were going through the store she kept telling everyone that her apple was a piece of candy.

She has been very interested in the story of Heidi. She has a Little Golden Book version, the full story and we recently checked out a movie version. When we were at the store I asked her if she wanted to buy some goat milk. Now, I have to say she likes goat milk, so I expected her to say yes, but with all of the Heidi influence she got more excited than I would if someone offered me a free vacation, alone, anywhere. "Goat milk?! I LOVE goat milk!! Hurray, goat milk! Goat milk, goat milk, goat milk, goat milk! People in the dairy section were either looking and and smiling or staring and confused.

I just finished reading the Unprocessed Child by Valerie Fitzenreiter. It is about how she unschooled her child, what their values were and how things turned out. She is a bit fanatical I think in her approach, but I came away with some things to think about. Specifically, that if you want to homeschool you have to really enjoy being with your kids and you have to respect them. I've been working on these two things. I often find myself tired at the end of the day and I don't feel like I have enough energy. At least once or twice a week I look at the clock and think, "Oh, thank goodness, only an hour til (her) bedtime." It makes me think of the times when I have read Thich Nhat Hanh's writings and practiced as I could. Maybe it is time again.

I keep seeing the Six Wierd Things meme. I don't know why I like doing memes, I just do.

1. Most people are quite surprised when I tell them that I was in the army

2. One of my favorite snacks when I came home from school (I was a latch-key kid) was a head of iceberg lettuce and a bottle of red wine vinegar. I would tear off a leaf, then pour vinegar into the bowl made by the leaf, drink it and then eat the lettuce. I really, really like the taste of vinegar.

3. I dyed my hair "Atomic Pink" about two years ago. I always wanted to have crazy colored hair, but I was too afraid to do it. I realized that as a stay at home mom I didn't have to worry about my job. I also figured out it would only look sillier the older I got, so at the ripe old age of 35 I dyed my hair pink.

4. I only had three wisdom teeth and they were laying completely on their sides inside my gums.

5. My husband and I worked together (while dating and married) at three different employers. We have finally figured out it isn't the best idea.

6. When my husband was a freshman in high school he visited my high school when I was a senior. We met for the first time in a different town 13 or 14 years later.

Food poisoning

Yep. I ate at the company cafeteria and I got food poisoning. After I was sick the first time and feeling a little better, I thought, I might actually knit while I'm home from work. I'm afraid not. I have, however, read most of Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. It has been an interesting ride and read. I wasn't sure if I was really enjoying it until about a third of the way through. I would definitely recommend it.

I'm still "working" on the scarf for my co-worker.

Fiona's daycare is still closing. We haven't quite found the best solution yet. Thinking about a new place for care then rolls into pre-kindergarten and kindergarten. I don't want her to go through more changes than necessary. I went to 14 different schools between kindergarten and high school, and I went to the same high school for three years. I don't want that for my child.

I have lately been intrigued by unschooling/homeschooling. Am I a nut? I don't know. My husband doesn't like the idea one bit.

Be well.

I am here but...

things are kind of crazy right now. Work is busy and my daughter's daycare decided to close in a month. Nice.

I just picked up some Louisa Harding Kashmir Aran in a lovely gray. I'm going to try and knit a scarf in the next two weeks (deadline is set by others at work who are also knitting) for a co-worker who had cancer a couple of years ago that has come back with a vengeance. The doctors say he has 1-2 years left. He and his wife of only 3 years, were in the process of adopting a child. He is on chemo and still at work. He says he keeps coming because every minute he thinks of something at work, he isn't thinking about dying.

We are so lucky

When I was pregnant with Fiona I took a Birthing From Within childbirth class. There I met two wonderful couples (who also had the same midwives as we did). We all stayed in touch after the classes were over. All of the moms and babies went to this wonderful support group for new parents here in Seattle at the Community Birth and Family Center. The group was called First Weeks. There we made friends with a couple of other mothers. After First Weeks was over we decided to meet at a coffee shop and hang out with our babies. We picked up a couple more people along the way. Three years later we are all still friends. We don't get together as often, but it has been such a blessing for all of us. We found kindred spirits. These are people I expect to be friends with for the rest of my life. Here is a picture from our second annual Christmas party. There are the eight original children (all born between June and Sept of 2003) and now four second children join the ranks.