Stumbling along

Our homeschooling journey is still young, as my oldest is only 7 years old. We’ve basically been unschoolers up until now. I have been craving some more structure, and it sounds like River was as well. So, I decided to give Oak Meadow a go. We’ve only just begin (like, THIS week). We are doing 2nd grade, along with the 1st grade readers. I know it seems funny to start at a time when children are getting out of school (almost June now), but we take such a laid back approach, that I figure we will work through the whole 2nd grade in about a full year. When the sun is shining, our kids tend to spend their time outside, and I am cool with that. I am grateful that they have a place to roam, even if it is our little back yard in the middle of the city.

River has his own vegetable garden plot this year. He is very excited about this! So far, he’s planted potatoes and carrots, along with some calendula flowers. He really enjoys growing vegetables.

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I’m hoping to bring this blog back to life. I’ll post picture and updates about what we are up to when I am able. Of course, the belly babe shown in my last post is now nearly 23 months old! We’ve been busy!

Belly photos

I wish I had my pregnancy photos from River online. They are so starkly different this time around. I’m a bit heavier this time around, but my belly seriously popped out so much faster this time!

7 weeks pregnant (back in November)

9 weeks and 1 day pregnant

How I spent most of November, all of December, and most of January....

14 weeks pregnant. January!

17 weeks 1 day pregnant.

And just because its too cute to pass up, here is a photo of River and Milo as we found them asleep one night:

I am almost 19 weeks now, and another picture is in order. My belly just keeps growing! The fact that all of my belly shots have me in my pjs? It hasn’t gone unnoticed by me. I’m hoping to remedy this, likely by having River take pictures of me during the day time.

Books tag

I don’t remember where I got this list, but I thought it would be fun to do.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.
4) Put 6 stars next to the ones you are reading******

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins-
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams –
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

I’m not even sure if anyone is still reading my lonesome blog anymore, so I won’t tag anyone. But, take up the tag if you want.

(Yes, I am finally coming out of the pregnancy-induced nausea and vomiting fog. Horray!)

Where I’ve been….

Mostly laying in bed, trying my best to not get sick.

I was sure that morning sickness wouldn’t hit me this pregnancy.  I’m not sure why I thought this.  But, anyhow, I was completely wrong.

It’s not the end of the world, and I feel ok enough as the day wears on.  But, the really bad thing is my inablity to cook….so my food options are VERY limited.  Walter isn’t a cook of any sort, so all he can do for me is make smoothies, toast, and frozen food.  I’m SO done with all of this food.

What I would really love for the next 2 months is a personal chef.

Go, Blossom!

I can’t really rationalize why I get so excited when I hear about ‘stars’ homebirthing and breastfeeding their babies.  They are people, just as you and I, and there are people homebirthing and breastfeeding everyday, all around the world.

But, I can barely contain my giddiness when reading this update about Mayim Bialik’s new baby.  Maybe it’s because she talks about her baby being born in the caul, about her 3 year old being present, about how her baby is exclusively breastfed, or the fact that they actually have a photo of her nursing her baby in an Ergo!!!  But, all together, I now love Mayim even more than I ever knew.  🙂  Oh, and she also has a PhD in Neuroscience.

Announcing

I guess it’s time for me to formally share with everyone that these little socks will have little baby feet in them come July.

I can still hardly believe it!!!  River is so thrilled about soon becoming a big brother.

Family

Ok, I know. I suck at NaBloPoMo. I could use the excuse of chicken pox, but the truth is that River didn’t need much extra mothering at all! He barely acted sick, didn’t complain of itching, didn’t make his pox bleed from scratching, and overall felt ok. Perhaps he slept a bit longer than usual, and I sure did let him watch WAY more movies than is normal for us. But, on the whole, it was a MUCH easier experience than I had prepared myself for. He still has some scabbed-over pox that are healing, but nothing more.

I don’t have any pictures of his chicken pox, since he was adamant that he did NOT want a picture taken. 🙂

In total, we exposed 4 kiddos who came over to play and share a lollypop. We’ll know in a few weeks if it worked. I have my fingers crossed for them.

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In other news, I found out this morning that my father’s father died yesterday. He lives in Florida, and I haven’t seen him since I was 3 or so. My dad isn’t very close to him, either. We knew he was sick and in the hospital. Just odd to think about. My only living grandparent is now my mother’s father, who I would never let near my family. He sexually and physically abused about half of my aunts. He lives far, far away, thankfully.

I never grew up with ‘real’ grandparents. I’m grateful that River knows all four of his grandparents, and two (my mom and dad) live within about an hour of him, and my parents are young enough that I expect they will be a part of his life for a very long time. Yes, for this I am grateful.

It happened!

We have a new president. Americans did what I was worried they wouldn’t! I’m so happy and relieved. There is much to be said, but I feel overwhelmingly grateful!!!!!!!

What else happened today? River woke up this morning with a handful of spots! Yipee! They are multiplying as we speak, and I am curious to see how many he will have tomorrow morning. Maybe I’ll take some pictures if he lets me.

In the mean time, I was tagged by Angie!

The Rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Mention the rules.
3. Tell six quirky yet boring, unspectacular details about yourself.
4. Tag six other bloggers by linking to them.
5. Go to each person’s blog and leave a comment that lets them know they’ve been tagged.

my six boring things:
1. I was so happy to see spots on my son this morning!
2. My cats fight, and I don’t know what to do about it.
3. I hate avocados.
4. I don’t like to sleep with heavy blankets…warm, yes…heavy, no. The weight bothers me.
5. The latest book I started reading is American Jezebel.
6. when I’m angry, I grind my teeth together.

I’m tagging: Sanquinetta, Lee, Amy, Megan, and Tiffany (yes, I know that’s 5, but that’s as good as it’s gonna get)

Waiting for the pox

It’s been 12 days since I exposed River (on purpose) to chicken pox.  This is our second attempt to have him catch the disease, so that he will then have life-long immunity.

I noticed he has a very mild fever tonight, so maybe (fingers crossed) he will start breaking out with spots in the next couple of days.  If it doesn’t work this time, I’m going to be convinced that chicken pox isn’t all that easy to catch, after all.

I can’t say that I am looking forward to him being sick and uncomfortable.  But, I do look forward to getting it done and out of the way while he is still young.  He will be 5 in two months.  I was 5 when I had it, and my sister caught it from me, and was 3 at the time.  I brought it home from kindergarten, I remember it so vividly!

I’m hoping to post some pictures and an update on his stauts in the next few days.

Some random recent photos

It’s nearly 11pm, and I am seriously ready for bed. But, here I am posting for the second time on the second day of November.

our last csa haul, from about 2 weeks ago

River playing dress up, as a knight

yes, our cat really does sit like that

vegan pumpkin cinnamon rolls!!!

(recipe found here)

I apologize for the ENORMOUS pictures.  I don’t have time to compress them down at all, and our camera was apparently on the wrong setting.  oops!

I’m hoping for a more interesting post tomorrow.  Stay tuned.