Annaliese has three aunts.

This one is K's younger sister-- taken on our VT trip. Cuteness, c'est vrai?

In case you were wondering

It's been a week! Man.

We had a cranky weekend which ended up with everyone getting a cold on Sunday. K's home today-- he is the worst off, naturally-- and we've been trying hard to be kind to each other and rotating extra nap time.

Which we need, because Caspian slept NINE hours in a row one night last week, sending my hopes soaring, and then...

He started teething.

TEETHING!

Several five-wakes-per-nights later, he's got two teeth on the bottom all busted through. Which is NUTS, folks. He's not even four months old. He can't roll over. He can't sit up. But he's got teeth, and he's been eyeing our plates very intently.

We had an oatmeal experiment which was ok but we need to get a food mill (Annaliese's broke) before we commence mush-feeding in earnest.

The last farmers' market is this Saturday. It is a Farmers' Market Fiesta & Antique Tractor Show, meaning I've been doing more work than usual, there's going to be a potluck and hopefully some live music, and one of my farmer buddies is bringing something like ten pre-1970s tractors to line the road next to the market.

Hopefully, a big time. We're going to have more fresh local dairy and a guy selling dressed quail and pickled quail eggs and FINALLY a local honey vendor.

The idea is to go out with a bang.

But Caspian's ready for a nap, and frankly, what with the cold and the last couple of nights, I am too.

Since we still don't have new pics

Look at this one! That's K, about 26 years ago.



Distinct resemblence to the one on the left, eh?



Caspian, on the other hand, looks like me. YES HE DOES.

K, anniversary, four years!

Our four-year-anniversary was Friday, and so K and I got gussied up, left the kids at home, and went walking down to Main Street where we went on our town's first ever Art Crawl, starting at a gallery and then going to five artists' studios on foot. There were cookies and wine at each stop and K and I are friends with all the artists anyhow so it was very informal and very fun. We went to the local tavern afterwards, along with everyone else, and K had a beer ontop of the two glasses of wine and started FREAKING out about a tall skinny girl playing darts, saying "where are her thighs! Look at them, she doesn't have any!" At one point he leaned over and said, "Do you think I should go ask her where they went?"

Which was very, very funny. He is so silly when he has a few. I love this about him.

What I do NOT love is that he has lost our camera's spare battery AND charger, so the grandmothers are jonesing for their kid fix in vain.

But a friend with a camera took our picture Friday night. So here we are, four years in, along with a random reporter guy:


Best decision of my life.

All I know is K. tells me I can't say "Girlfriend wants to get PAID" anymore.

Alright first I would like to tell everyone that I do not want to talk about this on the phone, this is it, this is the conversation, I don't want to hear your side.

Heh.

About six weeks ago I was holding Caspian and it was a humid night and K. and I sat on the porch swing and swung and talked. The baby fell asleep I guess because I don't remember anything about him in the conversation; it was all about me.

At some point he asked me what I did every day that I wanted to do.

And I thought about my days that are full of doing what has to be done (especially at that time, with a six-week-old!) and I couldn't really give him an answer beyond take a bath? Make a nice sandwich for lunch?

That threw me into a big tailspin. I've spent time since then deciding that come next summer, when Caspian is one, I am going to

1. Have two books written that are way better than the ones I've already finished and are much more me! and ready to publish!

2. Give up on writing fiction because it just simply never comes out like I want it to and ends up being this gigantic chore of drudgery with stale characters and flat settings and Oh-My-Lord, it took an hour to write a paragraph which sucks anyhow. SO I will write about things I like! Like my life, and chickens, and babies!

3. Give up on writing about my life, and chickens, and babies, because everyone is already doing this and I hate twitter and the quasi-self-sustainable bandwagon is so very full and Oh MY God, all people do is talk about themselves and how they figured everything out and it's revolting! So I should write superfun fiction! With superfun characters who have crazy out there lives and do all sorts of cool things!

4. Stab myself in the eye.

5. Give up on writing entirely, okay maybe not entirely, but relegate it to the back burner and open a grocery store! Because MY LORD I hate driving to Oxford to get Brown Dairy's milk and I already know all these farmers and it will cost at least 100k in start-up money and so what if we want to move to Europe in one-to-three years? We already have a building and I HAVE GOT TO HAVE A CAREER.

6. Stab myself in other eye.

7. Rinse and repeat.

I wish I had a conclusion for you but I don't. Other than I am out of eyes.

A wee ode

Caspian is such a CUTE BABY!
He's starting to giggle when you tickle him. He is watching everything, including forks to mouths-- (have a hunch that he won't make it to 6 months without solids, the boy is a horse. He's three months old and pretty comfortable in 9 month outfits, with the occasional 6month and 12 month (!) as well.)

He likes his sister. He likes his parents. He likes the sound of his own voice, and getting changed, and baths, and his mobile, and his pacifier, and the hanging stuffed animals on his playmat.

He is so very different from Annaliese already; I used to say that she came into this world suspicious, and you had to convince her that everything was alright, that she was fine. Caspian just assumes this.

His eyes are going to be brown. His ears stick out just like mine. He has delicious fat thighs and a big round belly and after three months of adjustment and waiting and recovery, we are all glad that he is here.

To Vermont and Back

Some technical difficulties with my creaky old Mac, but in the meantime, a few pictures....

Four flights, two kids. Annaliese hellbent on walking everywhere, waving :"HI!" to all who passed. She is definitely a smalltown kid; no one is a stranger.

Caspian, on the other hand, turned the fussiness up a few notches and conserved his poo to once-a-day blowouts at seven am. He was very happy to come home-- literally was carried inside and instateneously got a ginormous smile on his face. He is also pooing several times a day now, per usual.

And as for K and I-- well. Vacations aren't really vacations anymore. But we did get to sleep until 11am on Labor Day, thanks to his mom, and in between the logistics of carting kids around Vermont, we had a pretty good time. Ate some cheese. Hung out with his sisters. And most importantly:

I'd like to say we took Annaliese to Shelburne Farms for her benefit, but let's not kid myself. It was for me. And boy did Mama have a good time at the farm.

The cabin was really, really nice. Annaliese and I spent a pleasant half-hour hanging over the bank of Frog Pond, counting tadpoles and watching dragonflies. And K. walked around looking all sexy, which is always nice.
I, on the other hand, did strange things with Annaliese' hairclips as I sat next to the pond and waited for the fire under our outside clawfoot bathtub (oh yeah we did) to heat up the water. Good thing K. thinks I'm cute, even laden with our offspring.

In our absence, a coffee shop opened on Main Street! And we're having an Art Crawl next Friday! This place is just getting too cool.

It's nice to be home :)