Giveaway

I can't remember any of the things that have been running through my head that I was going to post about, but all I can say is, does anyone want a cute little red-headed almost-two-year-old? She's really cute and fun and good and she always listens and never runs away when you say 'come here' and she never makes messes or destroys things or is loud or is fiendish or demonic or anything. So. Now's your chance for a deal, because she's going cheap. Free, in fact.

cute baby, cute haircut, cute blanket

Talmage has been gaining weight, and it seems like yesterday he hit the perfect squishy baby weight. He was just sooooo cuddly and soft and warm and cushy and sweet and squishy. I just wanted to hold him all day.
I tried a mohawk, but it was kindof just curly. But definitely cute.
You can maybe see it better here.
And on Monday Hazel and I got our hair cut. Mine was just a trim, but Hazel's was pretty significant. I *LOVE* it. I think she looks so cute. So---many pictures. :)
Head squisher sister---so sweet.
This morning Hazel had fun jumping off our picnic table,
and twirling around.
Oooh, I LOVE this one.

And I wanted to show the ADORABLE quilt my mom sent for Talmage. My sister found the material more than two years ago and I loved it, and my mom bought some for me and kept it at her house until I had a boy. THANK YOU my wonderful mother!
Here's a close-up. Oh, I just love it.

Nice Sunday

I had such a nice day yesterday with Brett home. It's sooooo wonderful when he's home, ESPECIALLY after he hasn't really been home for the past week. Kami and I were agreeing on how much better it is when our husbands are home, and we decided that's a pretty good indicator that we made good decisions when we chose to marry our husbands. I also had some friends over to share some cake yesterday and I felt lucky to have such good friends too. It was fun. A very good day.
These are some funny Ethne pictures because...she is funny.
Ethne pulled down the headband I put on her, and pulled on some of Jethro's socks that were lying around. She was stylin'. The other day when she wore this shirt, I said, "Ethne, are you sassy?" and she repeated "Sassy," so clearly! Brett and I looked at each other and started laughing.
And two of my handsome men. Awwwww!

Happy belated birthday to me.

I meant to write a post quite a while back with lots of interesting anecdotes, but never got to it. And now, I am just very very tired and my husband has been working WAY too much this week which translates into me being crabby and not a very good mom. And the other night I watched this quite dumb but sad movie and I was crying (I do not cry in movies, it's the postpartum hormones I'm telling you) and then Brett came home and I went to talk to him for a little while and I was still kindof crying a little bit, and he was trying to figure out why I was crying, and it was really just because I was tired, and unfortunately watching that movie opened the tear ducts. Anyway, it was fine and Brett told me to go to bed while he did all the dishes, which was so nice, but unfortunately Baby Talmage did not cooperate and stayed awake until 11:00 anyway. Ruff.

But Brett is home now, and will be with me all day tomorrow, so things are happy again. :)

But here are a few of the things I was going to write about (cause I'm sure I've forgotten some of the stuff).

1. It was my birthday on Thursday (the night of the unfortunate crying a little bit incident mentioned above. So Brett was concerned that I was sad because he hadn't done anything for my birthday--but it wasn't that. I knew we were "celebrating" my birthday another day and I was just tired. Anyway.) Guess how old I am. Hint--I was born in 1983.

2. You guessed it! I'm 25. Which is sort of weird, because I remember when I was a teenager and Jared, my oldest brother-in-law turned 25, and I mocked him about being a quarter of a century old. But now, a lot of people that I feel like are my age are nearly 30 or older, so it's not as weird as it once was.

3. The other day Hazel said to me, "Will we live with Heavenly Father and Jesus?" and I said, "Yes, after we die in heaven, if we are good." And she said, "I'll be good." Then she paused for a minute and said, "But what about my shirts that are all different colors?" And I (completely baffled) said, "What do you mean?" And she said, "You can only wear white clothes in heaven."

4. Do you know the movie Master and Commander with Russel Crowe? Well, for the last few months Brett's been reading the books that it comes from (there's about a zillion in the series), and the other night I started reading one to him while he did the dishes, and on the front flap was the awesomest review I've ever seen. It said, "Some of you…have never read a Patrick O’Brian novel. I beseech you to start now. Start with Master and Commander, which should be available in paperback from your nearest bookseller. And if he-or she-does not have a copy then beat the wretched fellow." --Kevin Myers, Irish Times

5. I hate stuff. Remember how I had set a family goal to be more tidy and have counters cleared off and things like that? Well, I've learned that you have to be on top of it constantly or you're done. You have to be clearing off ALL THE TIME for it to ever work. And let me tell you, lately things have piled up around here. A lot of baby stuff that doesn't have a home, mail, school stuff, toys as always, etc. etc. etc. Grrrrrrrr---I want to throw all the STUFF in my entire house away!!!

6. Talmage is two weeks old today. We still love him.

7. When I have a new nursing baby my fingernails are always just hammered. Worse than usual because I sit there feeding the baby and gnawing my nails. I also probably caused several scars because of all my picking at my poison oak. But, bleeding is better than itching, right? (You probably think I'm so gross.)

8. Well, that's all I can think of. I'm off to write the last letter of Andrea's and my book. Andrea finished ALL the edits on her side, so I finish this letter and it's completely done. Is that not soooo exciting? Well, guess I'd better get it done, THEN be excited. But it (the last letter) already has a good start. woohoo.

Summertime

Then followed that beautiful season... Summer....
Filled was the air with a dreamy and magical light; and the landscape
Lay as if new created in all the freshness of childhood.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"The dandelions and buttercups gild all the lawn: the drowsy bee stumbles among the clover tops, and summer sweetens all to me."

- James Russell Lowell

Breathless, we flung us on a windy hill, laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.
-- Rupert Brooke

Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.
- Sam Keen

I celebrate myself, and what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease... observing a spear of summer grass.
- Walt Whitman

What a beautiful, sunny morning. It makes you happy to be alive, doesn't it? We can't let the sun
outshine us! We have to beam, too!
- Takayuki Ikkaku

Summertime
And the living is easy
Fish are jumpin'
And the cotton is high

Oh, your daddy's rich
And your mama's good lookin'
So hush little baby now
don't you cry

My husband

There's something about my husband that I didn't really grasp before I married him, and that is that he CAN NOT be idle. It drives him mad. He goes on vacations and spends the whole time working on a car or a biodiesel processor or what have you.

So, in the past week and a half since I've had Talmage and he's been home a little more to 'help' me, he has:

Trimmed/pruned the entire backyard (that's a lot of bushes--and given me poison oak after pulling some out--I'll spare you my rant on how much I HATE that stuff)
Put in mulch around the entire border of the backyard, and put in a brick border for the mulch
Sanded/fixed two doors in the house that have needed it pretty much since we moved here
Bottled some tomatoes from our garden (this was necessary since otherwise they'd have been wasted, but we couldn't find our lids that we knew we had, so in his searching, he pulled out the fridge and was appalled by the grossness behind it, and so had to clean it then and there (which was about 9:30 at night))
Scrubbed all the grout in our kitchen floor
Worked on the car of course, and other misc. things
Here's Hazel and Ethne helping daddy with the mulch bordering. I'm not too sure why Ethne had to be clothesless. She's just crazy.
Don't get me wrong, I love and am proud of Brett's industriousness, and he is the perfect match for me, I just think this list is pretty funny for a week that was supposed to be recuperative. And it was--I obviously didn't really do much with any of these projects, except perhaps keep a few kids out of the way for a little while. But still funny.

First Grade

Yesterday was Jethro's first day of Grade 1. I can't believe that I am the mother of a gradeschooler. Not a preschooler, not a kindergartener, but a gradeschooler. I'm too young for this! It's out of control. But anyway, Jethro was SOOOOOOOOO excited. He loves school.
He even wrote this the other night on the computer:

8-17-08

School start`s tamoro. And I am

Aksidid (excited) I kante wate to meete

My classe mate`s

Well I am kindof scard

And I cant wate to do crafts.

8-18-08

Tomaro is The next day of

School I hope library is

Tomaro. I love school it is great.

i kante wate for another role of

crafts.

Here's some pictures of him flexing his muscles. You should click on it to see it bigger, because his face is awesome.
Look at how BIG these kids are. It's outrageous. The other night Brett and I were saying that we were going to freeze Jethro so he couldn't get any bigger, and Hazel said, "But you have to let him get bigger, so he can take care of himself, because someday you're going to DIE!" Okay, valid point. Funny kid.

Oh, and after a breakfast of a crepe in the shape of a 1 for first grade, with icecream and chocolate sauce on it, some silly mommy who shall remain nameless, left the chocolate sauce out on the table while she showered. Nice. :)

Another picture update

The day before I had Talmage, Brett took the training wheels off of Jethro's bike. They practiced a lot while I was in the hospital, and now Jethro's a pro--and this is what he's been doing the majority of every day. He's very excited to ride to school.My mom had forgotten what the quilt looked like that she made for Ethne when she was born, so I took a picture for her. Ethne is so "lovely" here that I had to share.
And baby pictures. Because he is so cute and cuddly that I can't resist. I'm going to have to dig out Brett's baby pictures and compare, because I'm thinking he takes after daddy pretty closely.
Awww. Just awwwwwww.
This dude and his killer smiles--sheesh!!
And this one is just to die for. Doesn't it just make your heart convulse? Okay, you're right, I'm his mother, maybe it's just me. Then again, he probably really is that cute. ;)

the story (the birth story that is, with a frightfully graphic illustration by Jethro)

So, do you want the low-down? The down-low? The inside scoop? Well if you do, read on. Otherwise, better skip. (skip to the end...man and wife! say man and wife!)

We really wanted to have the baby on 08-08-08, so we tried everything we could try to make him come to no avail. We kept saying throughout the day, "8 hours left--we could still make it." "4 hours left--we could still make it." But at about 10:30 we had to face the fact we wouldn't make it. We went to bed kindof disappointed.

Then I woke up about 2:00, went to the bathroom, then laid on the couch for a while (this a common habit over the past several weeks). Actually I only laid there for a few minutes and felt about three contractions and went and woke up Brett and said "Let's go." He said "Really?" but started getting up pretty much without further prompting.

We called the babysitter and changed the sheets so she could sleep in our bed, I put my toothbrush and stuff in the bag and when the babysitter got to our house we drove to the hospital.

We checked in, went to our room, I changed, and the nurse asked us all the tedious questions. She asked if I wanted an epidural and I said no. So I had been thinking quite a bit about going without one, but I wasn't entirely sure I would until I actually told her no. (Background is that I've had epidurals with two kids, but but with Hazel I didn't only because we didn't get there in time. So although I knew I could do it without one, I didn't know if I could do it without one by choice--with the offer of one tantalizing me every second.)

So anyway, the nurse checked me and said I was at 5 cm, and she was very surprised by that, saying "I never would have guessed--you're so composed!" Brett was over there kindof shaking his head, and I knew what he was thinking before he even told me (later)--'when will they ever believe us?' We had told her that I have a history of fast labors. Anyway.

Brett said, "That's what I was thinking you'd be at." And I said, "Why?" and the nurse said, "Educated guess?" and Brett said, "No, just a guess." He became very smug by the end of the ordeal with being right so much.

The anesthesiologist came in soon after and went on for awhile about was I SURE I didn't want an epidural---not that she was trying to change my mind, mind you---but if I wanted one I should let her know now, etc. etc. And when she left Brett's like, "For not wanting to change your mind, she sure had a lot to say," but the nurse said, "She just put one in for someone else, and didn't want to get back to sleep if she was going to be woke up again." Basically, that solidified me not getting an epidural, because how could I ask her to come in after I had ASSURED her I knew what I was doing?

Anyway, so the nurse had me sign a bunch of papers, put the monitors on me (which I LOATHE), and left for a while. When she came back in a bit I asked if I could take the monitors off and she said I could, and that I could go walk around if I wanted to. But I just stayed in our room. The contractions weren't really bad for a little while, but as they got worse, I just sat up straight on the edge of the bed and rubbed my lower back really hard. Brett tried to help, but he didn't ever do it the way I liked it, so basically every time he tried to help I just said to not help--but I said it nicely. :)

I was so tired, between contractions I would lean my head against Brett's stomach and close my eyes and wish I was sleeping. The contractions were getting much worse, but not unbearable.

Sometime the nurse came back in and put the monitors back on, which I promptly took off again as soon as she left, "to go to the bathroom." And since the pain in my back was pretty bad the nurse said perhaps the baby was posterior (Jethro was born posterior), and I had read somewhere that it could help to turn a baby if you get on your hands and knees, I tried that for awhile. Brett asked if it was helping, and I was like, "Definitely not for the pain," because they started hurting really REALLY bad. Like I was being wrung in half. About the time when you feel like crying and saying--just kidding, I don't really want a baby, I take it all back, I'm just going to go home now and pretend I never met my husband.

But it was while I was like that that I felt like the baby was really coming down. I went to the bathroom then and felt a teeny bit like pushing, so I told Brett to call the nurse to check me. So she did and said I was at a 8-9, so "No drugs for you now,"-- okay lady, cause I didn't say anything about drugs? Anyway, she told me not to go to the bathroom or anything without calling her first, and she'd come back in a while.

Well, about the next contraction I felt a stronger urge to push, and so Brett got the nurse to come back, and just in time, because Baby was going to be coming out very soon--so she said to not push (they always say that!) and the doctor came in (an on-call doctor, not my regular one), and as they quickly pulled out the bed and everything, the nurse was telling me to say "hee hee hee" and I said "NO!" and Brett was over there trying not to laugh (later he said, "Why do you bother saying no? Why don't you just not do it?" I told the nurses 'no' a lot when I was having Hazel).

The doctor broke my water, then really quickly they were ready and had the mirror down so I could see, and said "Push" which strangely, I was surprised at. I guess I thought they would say to wait for the next contraction or something, but anyway, I pushed, it hurt like the dickens, and his head came out. Brett said, "It's a boy," and then I pushed again and the rest of him came out, and it hurt like the dickens but not quite as bad. Then the doctor said, "It is a boy." (Later she said to Brett, "You said it was a boy before you could even really see," and Brett was like, "I saw the face." I guess we would never have a baby girl not pretty enough to be taken for a boy, even milliseconds out of the birth canal.)

Then they gave me the baby for a little while, while all the other mumbo jumbo was going on, like the placenta and everything. They swabbed me and pushed on my stomach like they wanted it to pop and it was extremely rude of them (all of which hurt much much more than I remember it hurting with my other deliveries), but Talmage was doing well and I didn't tear, so it was all good really. Oh, and he was not born posterior, so either the hands and knees did the trick, or he never actually was posterior. You'll have to stay up at night and wonder, because we'll never really know.

Brett said this was the first time he teared up a little bit, when they handed him to me right after he was born. I thought it was a pretty awesome moment myself.

So he was born at 4:37, and Brett was all pleased with himself again because when we had got to the hospital he said that he thought we'd have the baby about 4:30 or 5:00. I was like, "You're a genius," because I wasn't in a mood to really be congratulatory about his mad predicting skills. :)

Anyway, and that's about all of the story. A 2 1/2 hour labor. And actually, the part from where it really killed was only about 4 contractions or so, and then two pushes and he was out. Even I was a little surprised with how fast it all happened (and that's after Ethne's 3 hour labor). Crazy stuff. I remember thinking when I was pushing his head out that it was a familiar feeling (because once you've done it one time, I guess you remember it when you feel it again), and thinking how awful of a thing to be familiar with. :)

So, am I glad I didn't have an epidural? Yes. Will I always go without after this? Maybe, maybe not. 2 1/2 hours is pretty quick, I can't imagine if it was a longer labor to not have one. But it was definitely more handleable knowing that I wasn't going to get one, versus just not getting one because you can't (like with Hazel--where I had no time to think or focus or anything).

And here's the appallingly graphic illustration by Jethro, as promised. The kids were given a Big Brother/Sister coloring book by the hospital, and without help or prompting of any kind, Jethro read the page and drew this. I have no idea where he got this. Wow.

Baby Talmage pics

I have been harassed for more pictures. Here you go.

Brothers...they are just the cutest thing ever.
Love this one.
Cute family.
Group hug.
Ethne learned how to cheese for the camera just in time for all these pictures. :)
This one was at the hospital.
And more of the star himself--here's a big smile from the happy chap.
Isn't he just the cutest EVER?!

Bear Cub

aka Talmage.

Thanks, thanks, thanks for all your congratulations. It makes me feel so loved. :)

I'll write more hairy-scary details later, but for now, I'll give you a few pictures to drool over, since he's pretty much the cutest baby since sliced bread (and definitely not, as my dad would say, as homely as every other newborn). :)
His super-stylin' frosted hair: