Baby Chicks!

Apr29

Today our new baby chicks arrived in the mail! We have had chickens for about six years now and at least one of the hens hatches a small new batch of babies every year. As is the case with naturally incubated eggs, many of them end up being roosters though. Our original chickens are slowing down egg production now after six years of work and several of our older hens have suddenly died during the past year. So, we decided it was time to introduce some new stock! We ordered 15 buff orpington pullets from Cackle Hatchery. Coincidentally, in the month that we waited for them to get incubated and shipped, one of our existing buff orpington hens got broody and is currently sitting on 18 eggs! I have no idea how successful she’ll be with that large of a nest, but she has hatched babies in the past and been a good mother. Last year, the baby chicks hatched on my birthday (May 3) and it felt like a birthday present. There are few things I like better than a new baby chick! 🙂

We decided a couple of months ago that our kids should join 4-H and so we’ve been getting started with a local club. We joined the crafts and cooking projects to start (the 4-H year begins in October, so we are way behind to be joining and starting projects) and conveniently they have a poultry project leader too—they said as long as we had the chickens before the end of April we could use them for a project this year. We barely made it, but here they are!

I love this picture of all the heads looking in the box!

One of my most “classic” blog posts describes the birth lessons I learned from a chicken during our first experience with a broody mama and a natural incubation:

Then, as we continued to stare in amazement, the mama hen clucked to her baby softly and fluffed her wings around it until it disappeared beneath her with the others. Isn’t this the birthright of every new baby of any species? To be snuggled immediately after birth into the warm embrace and near the breast of the female body that has given it life? The body that has cared for and nurtured it so lovingly so that its head may finally peek out into the world?

via Birth Lessons from a Chicken | Talk Birth.

And, then last year I learned some more lessons from another chicken mama and her baby:

[Last] summer, I had another profound birth-mothering experience with one of our chickens after she hatched her first baby. During the last several days of incubation, mothers hens “talk” to their babies a lot through the eggshells and the babies respond. It is part of how they get to know each other and imprint before hatching. Then, after baby hatches, the mother hen continues to talk and cluck to the baby in a reassuring manner—she calls to the babies when separated and she calls a special call when there is something good to eat and she clucks softly and reassuringly at bedtime as she snuggles them all beneath her. There is a specific type of “soothing” noise they make to stressed or lost babies and a specific sort of excited sound they make to let the babies know something good is happening. There are also distressed sound that means, “run to me now, there might be danger!”

We had three broody chickens at the time, each in their own little separate nest box in the broody coop. One of the hens had hatched a baby already and was in the neighboring box. The inexperienced mama hen hatched her baby and she would not talk to it….

via Talk to Your Baby | Talk Birth.

Kidbits

Apr16

I post a lot of little things on Facebook about my kids and the funny things they say and do. I decided to compile some reason moments into a “kidbits” post for today, so that I have it all in one place instead of lost in the Facebook ether!

When I finished getting ready for bed a few nights ago, I discovered Alaina was not in bed waiting for me, but was in the kitchen diligently working on painting her “fingernators.” She’d also put on lipstick, powdered her nose, and put on a hair accessory!

Speaking of Alaina, she’s weaned, by the way! It was not without some nudging from me, as it was definitely time and I was feeling so done. She still has to “snuggle nonnies” to fall asleep and the hands-down-the-shirt thing is another weaning process that in my past experience takes practically a year as well! Turned out that my middle child was the one who nursed the longest (2y9m for the first, 3.5 years for the second, and 3.25 years for the third!)

Earlier in the month, a family fun cookout/campout day turned dramatic when Alaina found an ancient bead in the bottom of the tent and put it in her nose! (First nose incident in ten years of parenting!) Luckily, I am married to a genius of calmness and smooth thinking. After some quick googling, Mark laid her back and blew into her other nostril with his mouth and the bead came out! Saved a trip to the doctor, plus sweet relief! This kid has spent an awful lot of time around beads to suddenly do this. It was too weird!

Last month, she conked out before 10:00, but then woke up complaining that her knee hurt and wouldn’t fall back asleep. She started singing a little tune, “beautiful day, beautiful day, beautiful day.” I asked her about it and she said, “it my favorite day!”

Lann finally talked me into setting up a youtube channel for him: O Zander Squadron. So far, it only has a couple of silly, weird little videos on it, but he would really love for people to subscribe and like (Rules for future are no real names and comments always have to be disabled.) He also got me to set up his own website and blog and is having fun adding content to it: O Zander Squadron | Fun movies and fun things to buy.

Lann and Zander frequently play sort of a live-action, talk through video-game-esque game. They earn different skills and strengths, one of which is apparently VIP. Last week, as they played, Zander was exclaiming over and over to Lann: “you got VIPness, you got VIPness.” And, Mark and I ended up cracking up in a very mature fashion.

After my class last week, I weirdly stopped at McDonald’s at 10:15 on my way home from class to get a strawberry pie (I know. But, they’re super yum). I saw a sign in the drive thru for My Little Pony happy meals and went in to ask if they’d just sell me the toys. I was super impressed by three friendly employees who actually went through every Happy Meal box at the counter to make sure to find all the different ones for me and even went to the back to dig out a Princess Twilight Sparkle for me too. I drove home feeling like The Best Mom Ever ™ and the kids agreed. Speaking of MLP, I am a little sad to see how my boys are kind of embarrassed about their love of MLPs. When they buy MLP toys, they put on sort of “quick and casual” persona and toss them lightly and nonchalantly into the cart. And, they asked me, “if you get Zander some ponies for his birthday, can you make sure to give them to him when other kids aren’t here yet?”

Lann still loves cooking, a while ago I heard him in the kitchen kind of talking to himself: “this is just how I roll. I’ll put anything into a cake pan…” A little while later he arrived with mini chocolate cake on a plate for me. (He made one for each person in the family.)

They also teamed up on another gruesome movie make-up job. My kids are…awesome? Weird? Funny? Creative? Horrible? I can’t decide…!

In February, the very super-desired Furby Booms arrived! Bro and sis-in-law, Skyler and Jenny, felt sorry for the kid sharing their one tiny Furbling and decided to grant their wish for like a magical cool uncle and aunt.

So, on my way to a faculty meeting at Fort Leonard Wood several weeks ago, three Furbies ended up left in the back seat and riding to FLW and back home again. The jostling from driving kept them constantly awake and conversing from the back seat. Sometimes I couldn’t hear them over the traffic noise and therefore alternately experienced adrenalin-spiking incidents of momentarily thinking I heard: sirens, someone else’s radio, the screams of a small child being run over, someone yelling at me, and something being terribly wrong with my car. It was a long 1.5 hours…

Look what I got last week! Red tent on the go (for vending at festivals, but maybe for using at women’s circles or events too). First picture had photo bombs from all three kids (can you find them?) and last picture was trying to show the shadows from the trees on the inside. (purchased from ebay via this seller.)

I also got a lovely new dress from Holy Clothing!

This month we’ve also flown kites:

Taken a semi-torturous hike at Blossom Rock:

Picked kale from the aquaponics greenhouse for dinner:
April 2014 073 Been pleased to see my grandma’s memorial hydrangea coming back! And, delighted to see blooms on Noah’s memorial magnolia tree:

Mark and I have created several new pendant designs this month that I am SO excited to unveil over the next couple of days (our spring newsletter will be out soon and will feature our new pieces as well as new free poetry book):

We’re getting ready to visit family for the day and I’m very much looking forward to a day off to rest, visit, and enjoy everyone’s company!

Talk Birth Wordwalls

Mar19

In the
womb
we begin
enclosed
and safe
nurtured
by our
mother’s
body
soul
connected
to soul.

We are fed
and
encouraged
to
grow
to take
the
steps
to life
beyond
the womb.

–Linda Ervin quoted in To Make and Make Again: Feminist Ritual Thealogy by Charlotte Caron

A couple of days ago, my brother was home sick from work and sent me an email with two photos attached. He said he was sick and messing around with different things and made me two wordwalls using the most commonly used words on my blog. Not only that, but he made them into cool goddess shapes also! What fun. 🙂

Aside from things like “posted” and “February,” I really got a kick out of seeing the words that were the biggest (meaning used most frequently in the last several weeks of my blog).

I am getting read for a new session of classes to begin as well as working feverishly on my own classwork. Today, I spent many hours working on my fourth paper for my Ritual Thealogy class. I realized I hadn’t made a post this week yet and it is already Wednesday and then as I closed To Make and Make Again, which was my text for this class, the little poem I opened with caught my eye in the Appendix of the book.

This past weekend I was in St. Louis where we had a booth for Brigid’s Grove at a women’s spirituality gathering. It was very successful! But, not a lot of time leftover for blogging!

Wednesday Tidbits: Pregnancy and the Sacred

Feb26

“I see the beautiful curve of a pregnant belly shaped by the soul within.” –Hafiz
(quoted in The Art of Pregnancy)

Today we’re heading over to my parents’ house to see my brother and his wife for the big “gender reveal” of their baby! They had an ultrasound last week and had the sex of the baby sealed in an envelope (and then baked into cake pops) and are traveling here to share the surprise with their family. While permission has been given for me to talk about their pregnancy in my blog posts, I find myself hesitant somehow—this is their journey and their experience! However, let me just say that I had no idea how excited I’d feel about their baby. I really look forward to having a niece or nephew! My brother is nine years younger than me. I also have two sisters. My brother and I had a conflictual relationship in childhood and our personalities always clashed a lot. I occasionally worried about who he’d end up marrying, because I was pretty certain that he’d choose someone “clashy” and we’d gradually drift apart and rarely see him. However, my brother grew up to be an awesome man (he was actually an awesome kid too, he was just high impact—much like my second child is—and it was hard for me to cope with that energy as a pre-teen/teen/young adult woman) and now he has an awesome wife who is not clashy at all. In fact she pretty much feels just like a sister and I love and appreciate her. They are planning a homebirth with a midwife and I can’t wait to keep talking birth together! On New Year’s Eve I helped them listen to their baby’s heartbeat for the first time and it was one of the best experiences of my life 🙂 There is a lot of “everyday sacred” to pay attention to pregnancy as well as in parenting (and life!) and several topics caught my eye this week. The first was this short post on First the Egg:

The person leading the service asked the congregation to think about and support, among other groups, “parents and all those whose primary spiritual practice is caring for children.” And I’m so tired–so tired–because we never get decent sleep and we’re always ‘on,’ and I have so little self left over for creativity or meditation beyond the practice that is parenting (one act of care and then the next and then the next) and the practice that is writing (one word and then the next and then the next). And it felt goofy even at the time, but a wave of gratitude washed through me. I felt recognized in a way that I never, ever do outside my household. I felt like I was sitting amongst a community that could see what parenting is and what children are. Articulating that parenting is an intellectual, emotional, spiritual discipline and practice is both powerful and rare…

via parenting as a spiritual practice.

Reading Molly’s post brought back to mind my own post on breastfeeding and parenting as spiritual practices:

I calculated that so far in my life I’ve put a baby to my breast more than 12,000 times. Even if I only experienced a single moment of mindful awareness or contemplation or transcendence or sacredness during each of those occasions, that is one heck of a potent, dedicated, and holy practice. In the unique symbiosis of the nursing relationship, I recall a quote from the book The Blue Jay’s Dance (1996) by Louise Erdrich about male writers from the nineteenth century and their longing for an experience of oneness and seeking the mystery of an epiphany. She says: “Perhaps we owe some of our most moving literature to men who didn’t understand that they wanted to be women nursing babies.” (p. 148)

via Breastfeeding as a Spiritual Practice | Talk Birth.

I also absolutely loved this blog post on bringing the sacred into a hospital birth:

As a doula, one of the largest roles we take on is the job of environmental modification. In simple terms? Atmosphere.

Many times, we are the weavers of the “bubble”, so to speak, that mother will labor in – be it the physical atmosphere (furniture, objects, beloved items), the sensory atmosphere (sounds, smells, textures), or the emotional atmosphere (tension, ease and calm, excitement, and love).

All of the amazing doulas I have come across use elements of the above principles. Time and time again, I hear stories of “my awesome doula who used a soft voice when I felt frantic” (setting the emotional atmosphere), or “the soothing sound of piano that really grounded me in early labor” (setting the sensory atmosphere). We can be the key builders, setting the tone for the overall experience, utilizing whatever mom has discussed early on as her needs, wants, and wishes…

via How to Bring Sacred to the Hospital Setting — Lauren A. Condron, MOT, OTR/L.

Tuesday Tidbits: Birth Art, Retreat, and Free-Range Husbands

Feb11

“Let us initiate our daughters into the beauty and mystery of being strong and confident women who claim their right to give birth and raise their children with dignity, power, love, and joy.” –Barbara Harper

I’ve been getting a lot of requests lately to make more birthing mama sculptures, so I spent some time on Sunday sculpting up a new crew of them!

You know how they say that birth art is as real, messy, raw and spontaneous as birth itself? Well, this birth artist doesn’t always gallivant around in the snow with tiny, empowered art pieces. Instead, sometimes I post things like this on Facebook: my toddler has been screaming because she wants to, “make a blue doddess RIGHT NOW” and when the sole cheerful sibling in the house attempted to make one for her she said, “it ball of poop” and squished it in the pasta roller. Ahhh. This is the life…

“Rigid plans work best if you’re building a skyscraper; with something as mysteriously human as giving birth, it’s best, both literally and figuratively, to keep your knees bent.” –Mark Sloan, MD (Birth Day)

via Brought to our knees | Talk Birth.

I recently read an article about spirituality and birth that is going in my dissertation work file:

“She remembers one devout Catholic who birthed holding rosary beads. Propped up on the bed, this mom-to-be rocked and hummed softly during contractions. During her home birth—which lasted only a few hours—she gazed at the three-foot-tall statue of the Virgin Mary in her room. “I felt I was in the palm of the Virgin Mary,” the mother explained to Vincent afterward. “She was protecting me.”

It is not a particular religious denomination that helps women have enjoyable, vaginal, and medication-free childbirths. Rather it is the belief that their bodies are doing what they’ve been made to do and that they are connected to something higher—be that God, the spirit, the universe, or even an awareness of women in the past who have given birth before them…”

Special Delivery | Spirituality & Health Magazine | Page 1.

My first ever miscarriage sculpture when up on etsy this week too. While, I made one like this for myself last year, I’ve never made one for sale until this week. This past week actually marked the fourth anniversary of my second miscarriage. When I took my photo of the new sculpture out in the snow, I reflected that this is how I felt after my second miscarriage–cold and alone. Trying to stand steady and find my ground, even though I felt as if my legs had been kicked out from under me…

Photo: My first ever miscarriage sculpture is also up on etsy today. I made one like this for myself, but I've never made for sale until this week. This week marks the fourth anniversary of my second miscarriage. I took this photo of the new sculpture out in the snow and reflected that this is also how I felt after my second miscarriage--cold and alone. Trying to stand steady and find my ground, even though I felt as if my legs had been kicked out from under me...

This is part of what I originally wrote about that experience:

I just want to say two things again:

I do NOT want people to feel sorry again for me so soon.

I feel DUMB

I do not feel like I am handling this well or with strength. I just feel numb and dumb and done and done for. I am bottoming out right now. Bottom. Pit. Despair.

It is hard for me to read this again, to type it out, and to remember these feelings. It still feels strange or confusing to me about how Noah’s birth was “easier” for me to cope with emotionally—even as it was the most fundamental and profound grief I’ve ever experienced, it was clean. It felt meaningful. It also had a distinct physical, embodied connection via having given birth to him. The second miscarriage felt like being kicked while I was down and being erased.

via The Amethyst Network February Blog Circle ~ Sharing Our Stories: A Confusing Early Miscarriage Story | Talk Birth.

This time of year, the first week of February, is when I have a personal tradition of taking a week-long computer off retreat. Even though I felt the same call to retreat this year, I didn’t do it. I’m not ruling out the possibility of still getting to do so because February isn’t over yet, but I reached the point where I realized it was stressing me out more to feel like I “should” be planning a retreat than it was not to do it. Since we planned our business launch to start on February 1st, it also just didn’t make practical sense to suddenly disconnect at exactly the same time! What I did do was a family ritual on February 1st and also I did a single-day “email off retreat” that was really amazing. I would like to make that a regular part of my week, perhaps every Wednesday or something.

The merry-go-round of work never stops. There will always be more work than we can handle, more emails than we can ever manage, more projects to juggle. It’s up to us to heed our inner calling, whether that voice is saying, “You’re starving creatively … you can’t keep pushing, your body can’t do this anymore … if you look at one more email, your mind will explode … or, you have got to slow down and rest,” and take action.

via Why I’m taking a sabbatical – Renee Trudeau & Associates.

This reminded me of two past posts about the classic memoir, Gift from the Sea:

“With a new awareness, both painful and humorous, I begin to understand why the saints were rarely married women. I am convinced it has nothing inherently to do, as I once supposed, with chastity or children. It has to do primarily with distractions. The bearing, rearing, feeding and educating of children; the running of a house with its thousand details; human relationships with their myriad pulls–woman’s normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life, or saintly life. The problem is not merely one of Woman and Career, Woman and the Home, Woman and Independence. It is more basically: how to remain whole in the midst of the distractions of life; how to remain balanced, no matter what centrifugal forces tend to pull one off center; how to remain strong, no matter what shocks come in at the periphery and tend to crack the hub of the wheel.”

― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

via The Revolving Wheel (Gift from the Sea) | Talk Birth.

Even though she wrote the book in the 50’s, the sense of fragmentation and balancing that many mothers today experience was her experience as well…

For life today in America is based on the premise of ever-widening circles of contact and communication. It involves not only family demands, but community demands, national demands, international demands on the good citizen, through social and cultural pressures, through newspapers, magazines, radio programs, political drives, charitable appeals, and so on. My mind reels in it, What a circus act we women perform every day of our lives. It puts the trapeze artist to shame. Look at us. We run a tight rope daily, balancing a pile of books on the head. Baby-carriage, parasol, kitchen chair, still under control. Steady now!

This is not the life of simplicity but the life of multiplicity that the wise men warn us of. It leads not to unification but to fragmentation. It does not bring grace, it destroys the soul. And this is not only true of my life. I am forced to conclude, it is the life of millions of women in America. I stress America, because today, the American woman more than any other has the privilege of choosing such a life. ― Anne Morrow Lindbergh

via Tuesday Tidbits: Gift from the Sea (Communication Overwhelm) | Talk Birth.

Check out the stack of orders he’s taking to the mailbox! Also, note PJ pants still on at noon, no breakfast (for him, I fixed my own), no shower, but also no need to drive through the current snow and ice to get to work…

I’ve been reflecting a lot recently on the household navigation of being an introvert mama with now having my also-introvert husband home full-time. Turns out that both parents home doesn’t magically extend the hours in a day (actually seems to shorten them) and it means both parents end up feeling pretty maxed out by kids and in need of somewhere quiet to recharge! 😉 I love having a “free-range” husband and I’m blown away by our joint creativity, which is an energy we’ve never experienced before at this level in our 19 year relationship because he was always at work all week and we had to squeeze everything else in around the edges. I also notice these interesting facts about having us both home all of the time: the house is way messier, we consistently stay up “too late” and sleep “too late,” it seems harder than ever to cook/figure out meals, we have less time to spend on homeschooling (!!), we still don’t feel like we have enough time to talk to each other, I seem to have less time to write and focus on writing, I feel like I give my kids less attention than I did when I was the only at-home parent (because I now have Mark to pay attention to too and I really like him), it is perhaps harder than ever to get the TWO HOURS I desperately need, I feel as if I have less time to focus on my teaching work, we argue more over household and parental responsibilities, we laugh way more and have more fun with each other and with our kids and we do more spontaneous, relaxed and fun stuff with our kids. It has been an interesting experience!

Related reads on introvert parenting:

I hate that as a mother, I felt like I had to choose between caring for my child and caring for myself. Because really, I can choose both. I can teach my kids—by example, which is perhaps the most potent way of teaching—that they are worthy of listening to their own needs. To the quiet, sure voice that might tell them they need a break. To lie on a yoga mat and sink deep into their own body and breath. To wander through a cemetery, alone, slowly enough to read the names on the gravestones. To sit down and write about how they’re feeling, or to surrender to sweet sleep for an hour.

via High Needs Mother | Brain, Child Magazine

—

So, sometimes when I start feeling ragged and can’t put my finger on exactly why, it comes to me: “I WANT MY TWO HOURS!”

via The Ragged Self | Talk Birth and Taking it to the body… Part 2: Embodied mindfulness, introversion, and two hours! | Talk Birth

—

More time for spontaneous fun: she set this up yesterday and called me to come, “have ceremony!” and so we did. And, we drummed and sang too. She has a made up song she sings lately: “Oh, I’m her little daughter! Oh, I’m her little daughter!”

Toddlerhood and Beyond—Oh dear, now is when “no time to think” starts to wear on Introverted Mama’s nerves and stamina. I’ve met some awesome mothers of large families who comment on how they, “love the chaos” of home with lots of children. “Our house is wild and crazy and full of noise and I love it,” they may be known to say. Thinking of how desperately I crave silence and solitude, sometimes with an almost physical pain and longing, I feel inadequate in comparison to these declarations. Is this too simply a function of personality? Can these chaos-thriving mamas be extroverts who gain energy from interaction with others? I find that my own dear children, my own flesh and blood and bone and sweat and tears, still feel very much like “company” in terms of the drain on my energy that I experience. Whether it is socializing with a group or friends or spending the day with my energetic, loveable, highly talkative children, I crave time alone to recollect myself and to become whole once more. I once commented to my husband that I feel most like a “real person” when I’m alone. That means that the intensiveness and unyielding commitment of parenting can be really, really hard on me emotionally. Maybe it is okay to “own” that need for quiet, even as a mother, rather than to consider it some type of failure or an indication of not being truly cut out for this motherhood gig. (See more in a past, lengthy, navel-gazing post on why I need my “two hours”.)

How do you experience (and honor) introversion in your life as a parent? Sometimes I feel like being an introvert and being a mother are not very compatible, but as I learn to respect my own needs, to speak up for myself, and to heed that call for silence and solitude, I realize it is compatible after all. My children have two introverted parents and will hopefully grow up feeling confident in the knowing that there is profound power in being quiet, in taking time to think deeply, and to respond to the call of solitude if it comes knocking at the door of their hearts.

via Introverted Mama | Talk Birth.

I was looking through a new women’s circle curriculum I bought a couple of months ago that is about “becoming women of wisdom.” It is for older women and it takes your through a journey from your teens through your 60’s and beyond. Each “lesson” is illustrated with a drawing for that life stage. This is the illustration for “Remembering Our Thirties”:

It is so spot-on that it really made me laugh! I was encouraged to see the one that followed for your forties. She looks both chill and sizzling with her own power:

Finally, cycling back around to birth art, next up on our month-long launch-month giveaway agenda is one of our brand new womb labyrinth pendants! To enter, just click on the labyrinth picture below to go to the Facebook contest. As a special bonus, I’m holding a “secret” companion giveaway via this blog! For an entry to win one of our tree of life pendants, go like our new Brigid’s Grove Facebook page and then leave a comment here letting me know you did so. Double chance to win a prize from us this week! 🙂

Also, there is still time to get our free Ritual Recipe Kit! (just sign up for our newsletter).

Birth Labyrinth

Feb1

The labyrinth is a powerful metaphor for each woman’s unique journey of pregnancy and birth. I first discovered the “LabOrinth” via Birthing from Within and Pam England and I quickly incorporated into my birth education classes, making two homemade posters to discuss in class—one illustrating “clock watching” birth and one illustrating birth as a labyrinth. When I send gifts to long distance pregnant friends, I usually include a drawing of a womb labyrinth and this quick explanation:

The journey through birth is like a labyrinth—it has unexpected twists and turns, but it takes you where you need to go. You can find your way blindfolded if you need to, you can walk, run or crawl, and you’ll get to the center—to your baby—in your own time and in your own way. The postpartum return is also a labyrinth, one that can take some time to integrate into your life, being, and “new normal.”

Based on a drawing from my second pregnancy of a womb labyrinth, my husband carefully worked carving a small womb labyrinth design into clay and then making a mold from it and casting the design in pewter. The result is a little uneven and asymmetrical, much like life itself, but I love it! I took the new pendant to the woods with me and this is what I said about it’s meaning…

Womb Labyrinth

Birth journey. Each of us walks our own path. In the center, a baby waits. And, so too, wait deep truths about ourselves. Our own courage, our own fears, our own strength, our own power. One foot in front of the other. That’s how the journey is made. You set out for the threshhold, unknowing. Maybe a little fearful. Maybe intrigued. Maybe anticipatory. Maybe excited. And you start to walk. One foot in front of the other. Sometimes our journeys drop us to our knees. Sometimes we feel around in the dark, searching for something to hold onto. Sometimes we skip and twirl along the path. Sometimes we run. Sometimes we pause and sit down and wait. Sometimes someone walks with us, holding our hand. Maybe even giving us a little push from behind. But, ultimately, it is our own private journey. When we get to the center, we will discover what it is that we know that no one else does.

As I mention to pregnant women, the return journey of postpartum is a labyrinth as well…

Postpartum Labyrinth

The journey of postpartum is a labyrinth too. Carrying our babies in our arms, past sleepless nights, through endless days. Through worry and tears, through sharp, sweet, timeless moments of a joy so bone deep it knows no words and in a love so endless that it defies description. And, we walk. Sometimes we bounce. Sometimes we sway. Sometimes we sing a little tune. Sometimes we beg. Sometimes we scream. Sometimes we sit down and say we can’t keep going. Sometimes we skip through the sunshine and dance in the moonlight. Sometimes we can’t believe how much fun we are having and how wonderful this is. Sometimes we feel so alone, we think we might break. And, yet, we keep going, and we emerge, blinking at the newness of it all.

This new pendant is one of the designs released for the launch of Brigid’s Grove, my collaborative project with my husband. We’re hosting giveaways on our website throughout the month of February to correspond with our launch and one of these pendants will be offered as a giveaway! We’ve also got an etsy discount code, a free digital Ritual Recipe Kit, and more to check out on the Brigid’s Grove website and Facebook page.

Third Birthday!

Jan19

“Growing, bearing, mothering, or fathering, supporting, and at last letting go…are powerful and mundane creative acts that rapturously suck up whole chunks of life.” –Louise Erdrich

Somehow, my little rainbow girl is THREE today! I can hardly believe it!

(As is my tradition…Alaina’s Complete Birth Story)

On January 2nd we had a family photo shoot…in the snow! It was 14 degrees outside. But, my brother and his wife and my sister and her husband and my parents could all make it work to get pictures taken together, so we did it! Alaina was really cold and we only got part of her face in the outdoor shots…

This was the “act cold” picture, but we didn’t have to pretend much!

When we went over to the photographer’s house, we got some cute indoor shots of the kids too though:
One of my favorites is actually this picture of our family’s socks together (my mom is a world class sock-knitter and we all wear them!):

Just look at that little person in her pink sparkly socks!

Here are some things to remember that I’ve written down over the last couple of weeks:

Heard Alaina yell at Zander (while working on making a marble maze together): “you ruin my ex-perience!” ;-D
Made brownie cookie sandwiches and she said,”these so strong they make my ears jiggle!”
Has excellent vocabulary and communicates well, but still says “me” instead of “I.” I haven’t worked on it too much with her, because she is the last little, “me do it” person who will live in our house and I’m not quite ready to stop hearing it! I wish I’d taken more videos of her talking (I’ve tried and they just don’t turn out. Or, she says “poop” too much to put them on youtube!). I missed out on video of “Happy Hall-o-yeen!” and “Merry Cwistmas” both and now those moments are past!
Later realized that when Alaina talks about her “experience” she actually means experiment! Pretty cute! (We were working on a make-your-own-bouncy-ball kit and she kept calling them her “experience.”) She can also open doorknobs now. I remember writing that milestone down for each of my kids at about three AND it usually exactly coordinated with a big leap in drawing skills. Better get this girl some paper to experience with…
She loves making “sacred bundles” lately and currently has three that she carries around and puts on my altars, says, “have yittle ceremony, Mama?” and, “me want make this yittle bundle for tiny baby.” (my sister-in-law’s baby) She plans ceremonies all the time and want to sit around with candles holding my hand.
She likes to help me with my sculptures too!

She still nurses, but we night weaned at some point in the last couple of months. I find myself increasing unenraptured with the toddler nursing experience and have been actively discouraging it in recent weeks. We go many days now with no nursing during the day after morning wake-up snuggle time. This also coincides with sleeping most nights in her own little bed from about midnight until 7-9. She is still the same little night owl she was the day she was born. Early this week she actually fell asleep on her own waiting for me to come to bed and I moved her to her own bed where she slept until almost 9:00. When she woke up and climbed in with me, I realized that that had been the first night in almost exactly three years that she hadn’t fallen asleep on my arm. This little girl has slept in my arms every night of her life until this one night! And, while I have a little pang of nostalgia and memory to see that time in our relationship slipping away, I’m also pretty ready. I’ve had a child sleeping in my arms for most of the last ten years and it feels like a good time to now just sleep. 😉

All that said, last night on the eve of her birthday, I had Mark take a couple of pictures:

Nostalgia. I so enjoy this little person as she is now and that I feel is quickly passing by, but I also think about the boys and I know that who my kids are now fills me up so much, that I rarely ever have much time to miss their old selves! There is a special poignancy though to this little girl’s infancy and then toddlerhood and then little girlhood. I have marveled at her existence and some element of her sweetness every single day of her life. Consciously and genuinely. I do not remember this sharp clarity of daily appreciation with my other kids. It may be as Barbara Kingsolver wrote, that the last baby trails her sweetness through your life like a final flag of surrender. And, it definitely isn’t that I didn’t appreciate and marvel at the the boys—I remember plenty of sweet moments of appreciation and marvelment of them too—but when Lann was little I felt like I struggled so much with the adjustment to parenthood and the struggle over my own identity and sense of loss, that that is almost my main memory. When Zander was little, I also had toddler Lann to occupy much of my attention and time and I was much more splintered between the needs, sometimes conflicting, of two small kids. The age difference is big enough between Zander and Alaina that I simply have more energy to savor her than I did with him.

“A mother’s body remembers her babies–the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has its own entreaties to body and soul. It’s the last one, though, that overtakes you. I can’t dare say I loved the others less, but my first three were all babies at once, and motherhood dismayed me entirely. . . . That’s how it is with the firstborn, no matter what kind of mother you are–rich, poor, frazzled half to death or sweetly content. A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world.

But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after–oh, that’s love by a different name. She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she’s gone to sleep. If you put her down in the crib, she might wake up changed and fly away. So instead you rock by the window, drinking the light from her skin, breathing her exhaled dreams. Your heart bays to the double crescent moons of closed lashes on her cheeks. She’s the one you can’t put down.”

― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

She wanted to have a tea party for her birthday today and specified it be with “little girls,” so that’s what we did! She did not get a pocketknife like she requested, but she did get a ferocious mom and baby t-rex as well as many other lovely and thoughtful gifts from family and friends. 🙂 I was glad to have a friend and my mom who took some cute pictures for me!

: Dino egg hunt outside.

: (The t-rex in the front is actually an ancient family relic from the Jurassic Park movie, but the others are beloved new ones)

After the birthday extravaganza she requested music so she could dance in her new “mermaid dress” (hand-me-down from friend). The girl has moves and I videoed them (random radio music happened to be Material Girl):

And, then it was time for bed…

Yes, those are three t-rexes nestled lovingly in her arms.

Happy Birthday, sweet girl! 🙂

—
Postscript: after originally posting, I remembered a couple of things. First, she totally had a big girl overnight at my parents’ house in December! Somehow I forgot about this while waxing nostaglic about her sleeping in my arms. We didn’t expect her to stay and kept waiting for “the call” telling us to come back and get her, but she stayed all night. I was freaking out! (And, I couldn’t fall asleep. It was totally a shock that she stayed.)

I also wanted to remember her adorable way of calling bamboo “pandaboo” (!! The cute!!!) and her speculation that dog toys “prob-ly have dognip in ’em.” Less adorable is saying, “get out of my face” to me recently while making cookies and I told her not to dump all the chocolate chips in yet. And, flinging herself dramatically on beds or couches or in cracks between furniture and sobbing loudly when told she shouldn’t have done something or that she is, in fact, in the wrong about something (such as slapping Zander’s face while playing dinosaurs and then yelling at him that it is his fault). Back to adorableness is the frequent reminder that, “me only little person” when asked a variety of things (such as, “why did you do that?!”) or when requests are made she does not want to fulfill (such as, “please don’t throw string cheese wrappers on the floor, take them to the trash”). But, it is also often a very good reminder. And, finally, we’ve noticed within the last week that she can roll her tongue! Mark can roll his and I can’t roll mine. It has always been a tiny little sore spot for me, because I just don’t like not being able to do something. My dad can’t either and said when he was a kid he was pretty sure only bratty people could roll their tongues, so we exist in non-tongue-rolling, recessive gene solidarity together. Lann can’t roll his either, but Zander can and now Alaina can too! (I feel a little betrayed ;-P)

And, when we toured Bass Pro in conjunction with a homeschool field trip to Askinoise Chocolate Factory in Springfield last week she did get a little pink pocketknife after all.

New Projects!

Jan17

“Grace reveals to you a great mothering love that you can step into, that’s been here before you and will be here after you. Grace will be with you as you open your arms, as you release your children and send them out into the world. If you listen carefully, you can hear grace whispering its thanks to you for being a mother to these souls.” –Denise Roy (Momfulness)

As we enter 2014, I’ve got a couple of huge projects on my priority list. One is that I must commit to using my writing energy to focus on completing my thesis project, meaning thesis is first, rather than what I do with my leftover time (and thus blogging, by necessity, moves into the “leftover” time slot). And, two, after having quit his job this summer to join the rest of our family in our home-based life, Mark and I have been very hard at work on our new, shared project: Brigid’s Grove! This site will be an “umbrella” to embrace all of our projects, particularly our shared endeavor of pewter-casting and jewelry-making. Brigid’s Grove will officially launch on February first and we’re working on some launch products for our etsy shop as well as a special site launch discount code AND a fun and useful freebie, which will be a collection of my ritual “recipes” (outlines for mother blessing ceremonies and other rituals, not food recipes!). You can sign up for our newsletter now and you will then get the ritual kit on our launch day.

We’ve also been working on a new womb labyrinth pendant to have ready as one of our official launch products! It will be ready for Feb 1st and we will have a brand new nursing mama pendant design to unveil then too.

As anyone who has given birth knows, it can feel hard and even scary to let go and transition into new things. I’ve written about how I’ve recently retired as the FoMM newsletter editor after seven years of volunteer work. Last year I stopped offering birth classes and this year I’ve stopped offering birth classes. However, I’m also recognizing that letting go of some things, opens the way for new things to be born. One of my fears in letting go of my face-to-face birth work was in letting go of the opportunity to “make a difference” through one-on-one connection with pregnant women. Well, surprise! There are lots of different ways to make a difference and that can even be through jewelry and art. For example, this week one of my etsy customers sent me a picture of her laboring while wearing one of our birth goddess pendants! (And, she DID IT. I got a picture of her beautiful baby too. ♥) And, Rolla Birth Network has also started offering a free monthly mother-to-mother Birth Circle and I’m excited to be a part of that project too.

The colors of creativity!

(I can’t sculpt now without thinking about my Rainbow Way “releasing our butterflies” post. These are my “butterflies” and they’re flying! ♥)

I’ve got more on my mind, like the fact that my baby girl turns THREE this weekend, but this is all I’ve got in me to write for now! 😉

Year in Review (according to Facebook anyway!)

Dec31

From Facebook’s year in review feature, here were my top 20 moments of 2013. Some of them are pretty right on, others are unintentionally hilarious…

January

Working on her own birthday cake!

Photo: Working on her own birthday cake! :)

February

15 years ago today, my sweetie asked me to marry him! I love the life, home, and family we’ve built together. Photo: 15 years ago today, my sweetie asked me to marry him! I love the life, home, and family we've built together, Mark Remer! <3

March

Today marks my eighth anniversary as an LLL Leader and it feels fitting that this month LLL of Rolla welcomed a new Leader! I never thought I’d see the day when we actually had THREE co-Leaders here in town. I’m so excited! When I began, I didn’t how long I’d keep doing it and I’ve had a lot of discouraging rough patches where I felt like giving up, but now I suspect I might end up as a “lifer.” I’ve logged over 1200 contacts since my accreditation, I’ve learned so much from the mothers I’ve worked with, and I continue learning new things all the time. I’d hoped to have a chance to finish a blog post today in honor of the occasion, but I’m bogged down with end of the session work instead. So, here’s to all the amazing women I’ve had a chance to meet, help, become friends with, and learn from!

(really close to 2000 contacts since accreditation now)

March

I was asked to be a permanent contributor on the Feminism and Religion blog and I feel pretty proud of myself about that.

March

My blog hit 400,000 hits today and my FB page hit 1700 “fans” (up from just 1300 in November!) Those both make me happy.

(now almost 600,000 and 2200)

(not sure why so many “big events” for March)

April 5

At Columbia College Main Campus for a faculty conference. Had to get a photo by iconic Rogers Gate in front of St. Clair Hall to post in my class!

Photo: At Columbia College Main Campus for a faculty conference. Had to get a photo by iconic Rogers Gate in front of St. Clair Hall to post in my class! :)

April

First day of Shannondale Craft Camp felt like a success! We did it anyway.

(this was immediately after my grandma died. It is an event we work all year on and we proceeded with it anyway, while my mom was still in California)

April 29
Today, Alaina went to the Dr for the first time ever to have a pre-op checkup (for her tooth work on May 14). When we left, she kept repeating the doctor’s verdict over and over and it was adorable! 🙂 (click for video via FB)

May

Happy Mother’s Day!
Photo: Happy Mother's Day! :)

(this one is only hilarious if you know how hard we had to work to prop up my iphone to take this picture! This was actually taken after our small family home memorial service for my grandma before we went to California for the large one)

May

I guess it wasn’t so “little” of a story about my class–just found out it was front page news! The Columbia College PR rep also emailed me about it!

June

June

Woohoo! Now, THAT’S what I’m talking about. Tonight’s wild raspberry adventure was pretty productive!
Photo: Woohoo! Now, THAT'S what I'm talking about. Tonight's wild raspberry adventure was pretty productive!

July
Not sure what exactly I’m thinking after our big CA trip this year, but I just booked a room for a mini-vacation to Arcadia for our 15th wedding anniversary on the 25th! The last time we went to Elephant Rocks was when I was pregnant with Lann–time to go back and this time bring THREE kids with us! Rather than go with a chain motel, I reserved a “third floor apartment” at the historical Arcadia Academy. I think it is going to be super fun!

July

Fifteen years ago today we got married in the rain! Today, we got home from our mini vacation to Elephant Rocks and Johnson Shut Ins.

August

Screen shot just from this weekend. 😉

After 18 years with Mark and almost ten years of boy-momming, they’ve finally rubbed off on me–just now I danced around the kitchen in genuine triumph and excitement because I beat Nerezza the Assassin in Knights and Dragons. ;-D

(side note: Facebook is correct that this was a pivotal life event, because I’m still playing this game—indeed, I’m over level 100 now and the Guild Master of my guild!)

October

Lann’s bday choices courtesy of Skyler, Jenny, Shasta, and Sean arrived this afternoon! A small cotton candy machine and a blue morph suit (for making movies and using himself as a blue screen). We’ve made cotton candy with Werther’s and peppermints so far!

Photo: Lann's bday choices courtesy of Skyler, Jenny, Shasta, and Sean arrived this afternoon! A small cotton candy machine and a blue morph suit (for making movies and using himself as a blue screen). We've made cotton candy with Werther's and peppermints so far! :)

October

Zander is a playdough master!

November

We’ve spent ALL day on a major household reorganizing project converting our extra bedroom into Alaina’s room!!!
Photo: We've spent ALL day on a major household reorganizing project converting our extra bedroom into Alaina's room!!! :)
November

All my kids skated for the first time ever at playgroup at the skating rink today! (We’ve been going to said rink for playgroup once a month for about 7 years, so this is a big deal!)

Photo: All my kids skated for the first time ever at playgroup at the skating rink today! (We've been going to said rink for playgroup once a month for about 7 years, so this is a big deal!)

(they all got skates for Christmas and skate all over the house now)

November

My sister already outed my Thanksgiving shame, so I might as well too. Several hours in to our family gathering yesterday, I noticed my shirt was on backwards. (The “shame” being that Mark had already expressed puzzlement over me having had my pj shirt on backwards on two different occasions this week and also gone to class with inside-out undies on.) Then, as I was switching the shirt around in prep for family photo op, she came running in to show me…the tag sticking out of the front of her own shirt! What would Thanksgiving be without an opportunity for fun family ridicule as well as thanks?! ;-D

(this moment making the final slot on my FB “top 20 moments from 2013” auto-generated list was the icing on my shame-cake!)

It is funny to me how many of these moments did not make it into blog posts and for that I feel grateful for Facebook (I guess). I’m a personal archivist at heart. I love the opportunity to remember, to not forget things, and to capture slices of my life and world.

I also wanted to mention the cool video slideshow year-end tribute that our friends made of all of our work party projects over the past two years. Pretty incredible: Work Party Tribute | Our Hand-Built Home.

(clicking the screengrab below should take you to the video too)

None of our pewter-casting pix or updates made FB’s list, but that was a pretty great part of 2013. My husband quit his regular job in July and we’ve been enjoying our home-based life ever since. Our sculpture and pewter-casting collaboration has been very fun and rewarding. This year as a whole has been a creativity-rich one.

New pewter work! I ❤ her!

Notably absent from my FB moments too are any mentions of my own classes (either those I teach or take) or of the women’s rituals/ceremonies I priestessed (I guess because that concentrates in my other blog) or birth-related stuff in general (because that’s all on this blog).

And, on Thanksgiving this year my brother and his wife announced that they’re having a baby! This is probably the best moment of 2013! More about this soon…

Happy New Year!

Oh, and after getting this post ready and scheduled, I got a year-end summary from WordPress also…

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 220,000 times in 2013. If it were an exhibit at the Louvre Museum, it would take about 9 days for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Product Review: Squeez’Ems

Dec27

There’s something about kids and squeezable pouches of food. There’s also something about toddlers and not eating. Therefore, when I got a request to review Squeez’Ems reusable food pouches, I suspected this might be a winning combination. At around 2-3 years old, I’ve noticed that all of my kids sleep better at night if they eat a good bedtime snack. This is also the age at which I night wean them, but then find I’m still awakened all night by a kicky toddler who seems to be hungry. So, we work hard to get a nutrient dense bedtime snack in them before bed and eventually the sleep for all improves. The sticky point can be what snack to offer. When Zander was little, we tried all kinds of different smoothie recipes, hoping for a magic combo. With Alaina, we do string cheese a lot and she rejects a lot of our other suggestions. Enter these little reusable pouches. Food is infinitely more intriguing to a little child when it is in a squeezable pouch. The first night, I filled it up with Greek yogurt and she slurped it all down and asked for more. Zander, who is seven now, also enjoyed two pouches worth of yogurt. See what I mean? Instant intrigue! However, there are two other great features about using the Squeez’Ems pouches instead of buying pre-pouched food: you know exactly what is going into it (no weird, additive-filled store purees) AND you can just wash it out and refill it, rather than trashing pouch after plastic (or foil) pouch! I call that a win for the ecologically-minded as well as for the bedtime snacking toddler. The company also notes that they are a good match for children with food allergies who may not be able to eat the same pouched foods being eaten by their contemporaries. I look forward to experimenting with some additional smoothie recipes and trying them out in these pouches!