Can I breathe?

Good evening y’all! It is Sunday night and it is raining! It started pretty heavy but will perhaps only last about ten minutes total. Each day we watch the clouds gather, and later watch them blow away sometimes leaving us with a few drops of rain but no more. They say March and April should bring rain, this will be good for all things, but especially for our dam which looks like a once beautiful piece of land being cleared of all life for a subdivision. Each time it spits a few drops we all get excited and Jess will comment that, “It’s raining! The cows and the ducks say yay! The garden is so happy!” It will take months to refill the dam especially with its new depth, but Jess tells people that our dam is now full because it rained. I love her naïveté and will treasure it for as long as I can.

All week long we had an immense orange excavating tractor sitting at the base of our dam. Jack, the dam digger, finished most of his work on Tuesday, but the machine broke down just as he was wrapping up. It became part of the scenery and added to the dramatic demolished look. Jess started referring to it as a dinosaur. We joked that we could have made a lot of money if we had sold it, but that would have been nasty.

In addition to adding ten feet to its depth, we paid him extra to knock down many dead trees and many non-native trees such as camphor laurel. It was sad and impressive at the same time to see these big monsters fall to the earth. Keith, being the primary land lover here for the past ten years, stood by for days as the work went on watching every little change with great love, sadness, and hope for the future which will fill the land with more native trees, preferably more rainforest trees. Matt actually took a few breaks to sit in awe and watch the great machine work, likening it to a clever insect that maneuvered itself with amazing skill. The landscape is very different now, but will become lush and beautiful once again, in months to come. We will post pictures sometime soon.

Other than the dam’s transformation, the land looks lovely, even my gardens. After days of sprinklers using up the dam water, the mango tree has come back to life, new little tomato seedlings have sprung up, new peppers are growing, and a few corn plants are growing strong. All of the garden life is purely the work of the earth with no help from me. I love the volunteer plants! Pumpkins grow vigorously here and sprout out of compost which was spread in the garden and crawl beautifully covering the ground. Strawberries which I planted months ago underneath fruit trees are spreading their little tentacles and giving us grand hopes for the next strawberry season. The weeds are still volunteering their services with great zeal, so I have done more weeding in both gardens. Foolishly I sometimes feel as if my work is done in that department! The hot sun is also still offering its love, as are strong winds which dry out all of the water in the ground. I thought last week’s sprinkler showers would last longer, but I ended up spending a few hours watering trees this weekend while Matt took Jess to the beach for a swim. Besides the fruit trees there aren’t many plants I have the energy to care about at this stage, being so close to birthing a baby.

We are at 37 weeks now, and have gotten serious about preparing for the little one to move in. Jess and I did the last load of baby laundry, folding each little onesie and pair of booties and placing them lovingly in the drawer. Jess loved this job, placing each little item in the two drawers above her own. It was actually a week long game, “Mommy, can I play with the baby clothes?” The diapers are all clean, folded and ready to wrap another cute little bum. Today we sanded, scrubbed and painted Jacinta’s crib blue. Jess has been asking to paint all week long, and I have been planning to do this for months, so we finally did it. Done, ahhh. Another thing on my mind for the last few months was planning a Blessingway to celebrate the coming of this baby. It’s like a baby shower, in that someone else is supposed to plan it for you. Rather than offering gifts for the baby, a few female friends come and bring birth wishes, comfort, strength and inspiration to the mother, along with some good food. A few friends had planned one for me in preparation for Jacinta, but she came the day before it was planned. So to avoid this, I decided to invite some friends over. I realized that no one else was going to plan it for me, it being a new way of celebrating birth to most people and these being new friends. So I will have my Blessingway next Friday morning on my 38 week mark opening the way for baby Henry #2 to come into this world safely.

Jacinta and I made our last trip out to Kempsey to see my kind obstetrician, Dr.Lunnay, accompanied by my friend Trish who will attend the birth as Jacinta’s caregiver. The waiting room is always full and quite an experience: watching unruly children and crazy parents giving their two year olds Coke and candy, wondering why they were so full of strange energy. Hmmm…I am judgmental on these matters, yes. We’re always fortunate enough to spend at least thirty minutes here. This time after an hour, we made it in for a short and sweet appointment with the most relaxed doctor I’ve ever known. He’s very honest and seeming defeated, admitted that he had nothing more to tell or ask me. Other than saying hello to a kind doctor, it hardly seemed worth the effort of driving 45 minutes each way. We did enjoy visiting the normal places, the natural food store which sells dry red and black beans (they do not exist in Macksville) and the river for a picnic and a quick swim. There are also quite a few farm stands on the highway so we bought some corn, tomatoes, and watermelon. I suppose it was worth the drive but we are hoping that the next time we return to Kempsey will be for the birth and not to the dreaded doctor’s waiting room.

Matt stayed home all week and labored on the kitchen island. This is a work of art, and it is finished! It included some mundane tasks such as sanding each individual board, gluing, and staining numerous coats on each surface. But Matt enjoyed this creation, as it involved a lot of imagination. It is shaped like an oval with one edge chopped off. The top is a clear work space including an awesomely heavy chopping block, built in and made up of twelve squares of hardwood each lovingly sanded and stained over five times and glued together. Under this there is a drawer for utensils and space for cups. On the bottom there is a shelf for plates, bowls and more cups. It is all open, so we’ll have to forbid grabby children from this space. Today Jacinta and I excitedly filled it up with silverware and all of the above. She ran jubilantly to the old kitchen fetching our things with me, to place them on the masterpiece island. Matt enjoyed watching us jaunt by as he watched some Sunday cricket. This morning he picked up a shelving unit which our friends donated to the kitchen and began painting more glass panels to put up in the bathroom. The kitchen is now working, the fridge is on and full, the island is ready, the counters are finished, we lack only water, which we can get two rooms away. I do all of my cooking in our lovely kitchen now, and am much happier sitting at the table chopping with a beautiful view of the dam, well, it’s still something to look at. I’ve finally opened up my new knife block and I love chopping! Jess and I cooked for three hours yesterday, she took breaks though. We made tortillas, salsa, guacamole, and Mexican rice; we’ve been into Mexican food this week.

Last night we took our tortillas and all of the fixings and went out to our friends Anissa and Craig’s house for dinner. I made quesadillas, which they had never had before and Craig made a real Spanish paella. I have mentioned that this country is deprived of Mexican food. The children played hard until dinner, and dove straight into their quesadillas, but moreso into the plate of sour cream (and guacamole and salsa). Lily and Jacinta are the same age and like playing with the same things: dolls, kitchen toys, play dough, and music. Aidan is a few years older and seems to be noticing that he is a boy and that he likes different things. It’s interesting watching him grow slowly disinterested in playing with the girls. But they all like books and certainly Craig’s homemade honey ice cream (they have their own beehives). Matt and I always have a great time chatting with Craig and Anissa. It was strange pondering that this may have been our last weekend gathering before each of us have new babies (they are due three weeks after us).

Jacinta had another playful week with friends visiting, playgroup and a choir outing. One of my choir friends noted that Jacinta is becoming more conscious of people are staring at her while she plays with her trains and draws while we sing. I’m so busy entertaining her though, I took no notice. I did notice her silently mouthing the vocal exercises for the first time as she carefully watched and imitated the shape my mouth was making while I sang. She proudly progresses in swimming lessons, her newest move is “paddling,” underwater swimming using both her arms and legs and actually propelling herself forward. She has her moments of snottiness: ignoring orders, doing what she pleases and ignoring family members addressing her to go on to more interesting activities. She actually slapped Matt in the face at one point and although it was gentle, she was quickly corrected and sent to her room. Matt and I are trying our best to keep her from constantly getting her way but there are more than two adults in this house. We are trying to teach her that she need not repeat the same comment to each of the three or four adults at dinner. Sometimes you’ll say something in response to her comment and she’ll snottily reply, “I was talking to POP!” Then if it is something she wants to share with everyone, she’ll go on down the line. “Daddy, Onion (the baby turkey) is having his dinner. Mommy, Onion is having his dinner. Grandma, Onion is having his dinner.” It’s humorous, but seems to be a necessary lesson in avoiding redundancy and rudeness.

Most often, Jess is very polite and says, “please” and “thank you” for everything. She is very good with words and uses them wisely. She may cry when she doesn’t get her way, but she comes up with some shockingly submissive questions. She has started to ask, “Mommy, can I breathe?” This is in response to me once telling her to slow down at dinner and take a breath. It’s pretty funny though, she only asks at meals. Once told that, “Yes Jacinta, you should always breathe, but if you’d like to take a break from eating, you may relax and take a few deep breaths,” she’ll take a few big yoga breaths and move on. She has a really positive take on cuts and abrasions, in the knowledge that they heal and don’t hurt for very long. Yesterday in the car she looked at a mosquito bite on her leg and said in her best teacher voice, “My booboo is healing. That means it is almost better.” She impresses us with her understanding in so many ways, but this next one was shocking. We had been cooking for a while listening to music when the CD changed. After a few guitar chords were played and a few words sung, Jacinta curiously inquired, “Is this the Indigo Girls?” Although I don’t listen to them that much these days and didn’t know how she picked up so quickly, I laughed and said that it was. She went on, “Where are the Indigo boys?” I told her that I didn’t know any but that there probably were some indigo boys somewhere out there. Today she asked where the thunder comes from. I explained that many questions can not be answered and the concept of mystery. She seems at peace with this idea because she answered a question later on saying, “It’s a mystery!”

If you have any thoughts on where thunder comes from, let me know! Otherwise enjoy the beautiful mysteries of life this week and let us know how you’re doing.

Peace,

Shana