City Rat

Good evening loved ones :) So daylight savings has come and brought us all something new: shorter days for you and longer days for us. It’s good news for our chickens who wait on our lazy butts to get out of bed for hours after they arise. Now they’ll have one less hour to wait. Matt is happy because it gives him one extra hour of daylight to build our house, and of course, that makes me happy too. One nice thing is that Jess and I can spend time right before dinner in the garden, on the rare occasion that dinner is prepared or in the oven.

We have had a great week together, enjoying the familiarity we have found in the year we have been here, and also the solitude in our home right now. Some highlights are Jacinta’s new talent of sleeping with no diaper. I haven’t yet gotten rid of the diaper bin, for fear of jinxing it but will, soon. Matt zoomed ahead on the house and completely enclosed the kitchen/living space with house wrap. He finished the roof on this section which now means that all of the roofing is done, save a few fiddly jobs and some rain gutters. He took down the wood paneling in Keith’s old room and built an interior wall dividing the room in half, thereby creating the space for our bathroom. He also found time to work three full days at the bank. I did some major cleaning, cooking, playing and some relaxing.

Friends also made our week fun, starting out with my knitting friends bright and early on Monday morning at 9:30am coming and going until 2pm. I’ll admit I’m losing some social energy being out here. It may also be due to constant interaction from Jacinta, but now I need a day of rest in between visits. Saturday night we had another drumming potluck with my knitting friends who brought their partners and had a lovely time. The food on these nights is so lively, you’d be out of luck if you didn’t like spice; there was Middle Eastern, Indian, Greek, and Japanese followed by sugary Lemon Lime Meringue Pie. Jess loves making music with all of us and has a chance to relish her huge basket of musical instruments. Sunday morning we had a breakfast picnic with our next door neighbors at the edge of our dam. We had great food and awesome company all weekend.

Gardening this week was slack, although it still looks beautiful, just weedy. Tomato plants are popping up everywhere. Perhaps we have over 35 now due to the fact that our soil is compost which is made up of rotting vegetables. Jess and I found 3 blueberries on the bush and excitedly gobbled them up. The corn is almost as tall as Jess now but some critter gobbled up a few of these precious plants. I did actually do some work in the house garden, preparing the ground for transplants and herbs. One load of compost and one load of mulch was all I could do, but it’s good enough. I planted my few successful basil seedlings here and have brought up a few pepper and tomato plants to transplant. This garden does not necessitate a walk up and down the hill, but has no easy watering options. We shall see how the rainfall is this spring. We had a few days of rain this week, which was great for the garden. Unfortunately the neighbors’ cows broke in and knocked the pipe out of our water tank, and then I completely detached it from the connecting pipe in an effort to repair it. Thus we missed out on collecting most of the rain that fell this week.

Matt has had more quality time with Jess these past few weeks and hashad a few stories to tell. She is constantly calling out to him on the worksite, “Daddy! What are you doing up on that ladder?” “What are you doing in there?” She’ll call him to dinner long before it is ready, probably because she is ready to eat it and she thinks since we’ve stopped chopping vegetables that it must be done. Tuesday afternoon Matt took Jess to Bunnings, the hardware superstore and they stopped for some ice cream on the way home. She has gone along to Bunnings a few times now, (it’s quite a journey being 40 minutes away) and takes great pride in telling me that she bought those nails with daddy. On this last trip Matt said he heard the longest sentence come out of her mouth, “Sometimes when I’m with pop, I sit in the front seat in the big truck when we go to Noel’s to see the cows.” He had asked her why she insisted on sitting in the front when she never gets to sit in the front seat. Matt drove on in amazement at the coherence of her speech. Before bed each evening Matt and Jess have taken on a new activity. I’ll finish brushing my teeth or cleaning the kitchen and come to the bedroom to hear, “Sshhh! Let’s hide from mommy.” Every night they hide in the same spot, under the covers in the bed. It will be interesting to see how the realization comes about that hiding spots must change to be a real challenge. I suppose now it’s not about challenge, it’s just about amusement, and that, it is.

Jacinta amuses us and brings us so much joy, as do all children. There are so many funny stories I must share before I forget them. First off, I told Jacinta that we may go to America some time after the baby is born. She was very excited about having her own suitcase and her own seat to share with the baby. She went on about all of the people she would be able to see in “America.” I didn’t think about the concept of time and how difficult it would be for her to wait once I told her. Each time I start to pack a bag to go to town, or we put boots on to feed to the chickens she asks, “Is it time to go to America?” The funniest instance happened after a nap when she came straight out of sleep and asked, “Is it time to go to America?” She’s learning what “a long time” means and now speaks of the voyage using the term, “in a while.”

She said a phrase a few times last week that I did not understand and this week, I caught on. When there is a noise or something unexpected happens, Jacinta will now say, ‘“What was that?’ cried Flap.” This is a line from a book called Stellaluna in which a baby fruit bat falls into a nest of baby birds. I can see how children start using cartoon character or movie language, anything repetitive that they like the sound of is worthy of adding to their vocabulary. Thanks to the mice scaring me with their boldness, Jacinta now says, “Oh my Gosh!” and “Oh my God!” The mice are still here, and even stole a trap the other day.

Language learned from repetition is fun to watch but when new phrases are created out of these words it is even more exciting to hear. I found this same revelation when teaching French to my third graders. After three years of repetition, they began putting phrases together that I had never taught them and it warmed my heart, as Jacinta does now. One evening while preparing for dinner Jacinta said, “I like cooking with you.” How sweet, and she wasn’t even eating at the time! Tonight after dinner we were playing in the lounge room and she started to dance, twirling around and around, tooting with each step. We both giggled and Jess said, “I toot while I dance!” The other day she was watching the chickens while I finished my lunch out on the veranda. “Mommy, why is Little Mister sitting on Major (a hen)?” Laughing inside I replied, “He’s cuddling her.” Jacinta wisely remarked, “He cuddles Mrs. Red and Painted Lady too.” “Yes he does.” Speaking of the chickens, about four have disappeared in the past few months. Iris, our only surviving chick has also gone missing. We hope they’ve gone wild, but it could have been a fox. Bummer.

I’ll close with one more Jacinta creation. We sometimes talk about being city people. A lot of our friends here came from the city also so the term city girl is common in my vocabulary. Jacinta knows that she was born “in the city, in America,” and talks about how tiny she was. She loves to show you with her hands how tiny she was. With her new habit of making up silly stories she decided that “When I was born, I was a city rat.” Rat? “Aren’t you a big girl?” Matt will ask. “No, I’m a big rat.”

So our daughter has turned into a rat and my belly is so big I could be bearing a horse.

Our goat is learning to eat the grass, our chickens are disappearing, and our dog is spoiled and snoring. What can I say about Matt concerning animals??? Well, he actually likes the goat that I find obnoxious. He may work like a dog but is getting happier and more settled each day. We miss you and wish you all a fulfilling week with your shorter days and colder nights.

Love,

Shana