This is what it says, Daddy!

Good evening y’all. I come to you after a long day with no nap with more energy than normal. I attribute my energy to both the joy of being small again and my new diet excluding dairy and most gluten products. Jess woke up at 5:20 today, each day it gets earlier. It’s a good thing I have more energy now, but Matt’s the one that gets out of bed at the crack of dawn with Jess. I have the excuse of having to feed Genevieve and thus stay in bed a little longer. Somehow in my morning stupor, I convince myself that either I am either presently feeding her or just about to feed her. Matt, in his morning stupor, is also convinced. It’s a good system I think! A few nights I have actually slept sitting up with Genevieve in my arms on the breast for over two hours and wake up with a terribly sore bum and very cold arms. I put her back in her basket hoping that it hasn’t been too long. Then the rooster crows and Genevieve starts grunting for her next feed. Does this mean it has been over three hours??!! Have I really wasted that much precious sleep? Living in ignorance without a clock in sight is sometimes better than confirmation of such a terrible waste of cozy sleep.

It has been a great week full of friends and family. Easter Sunday was spent with our good friends Craig and Anissa and their three children. After I wrote last week about a lesson I learned from last year’s Easter eggs, I painted 9 eggs with acrylic paint. I hid them in the garden for Jacinta and her two friends. The children had a lovely time hunting for the eggs, but two minutes into the hunt it started sprinkling. Shortly after, all three children had acrylic paint on their Easter clothes from the beautiful eggs. My new lesson: do not paint eggs if there is any chance of them getting wet. I suppose hiding them in the dewy spinach plant didn’t help. The children had a long fun-filled day: arts and crafts, hot cross buns, a big breakfast cooked entirely by Matt, toys, free play outside, cricket and sparklers (on Easter??!!!). Henry (3 weeks old) and Genevieve (6 weeks old) had a nice day feeding and being held. At one point Matt and Craig were sitting on the couch holding both babies while they slept, drinking coffee and having an incredibly intellectual conversation about all of the books from Matt’s collection above their heads. Anissa and I were both smiling inside thinking, “Wow, my brainy husband finally has someone at his level!” while doing dishes and helping the children make Easter hats.

Later on in the week we had a visit from our friends the Murphy’s and Jacinta had a chance to play with big kids. She is so proud to show people her house and explain each little part. Matt’s sister Allison came for a visit this weekend and when shown our bedroom, Jacinta was sure to point out the most important things. “This is mommy and daddy’s room. This is the dummy (pacifier) and this is the thing we use to pull snot out of Genevieve’s nose, the snotcher.” She says this in a very serious tone. She has made laugh so much this week. Keith and Mary came back from their vacation so now the house is full once again. It’s nice for Jacinta to have the freedom to spread her wings and fly to Keith and Mary when she needs a diversion. We are really loving the multi-generation family situation now.

Jacinta has turned over a new leaf in her play. Previously needing adult guidance and supervision, she is now learning to play with her friends all on her own. If we put the goat away she can play outside in her playhouse, climbing and doing tricks on the gate, chasing chickens and running around. She had a few friends visit this week who made playing outside even better. When at the beach with some playgroup friends her instinct was to hang around the moms and sit and munch all morning, but when told to go and play, she actually listened! No whining, no ifs, no buts, off she ran into the water to play with the other children. It’s new for me to not know about every game she plays. She laughs and creates with her friends and for the first time, she has parts of her life that I do not know. Of course, I can see what she is doing. When she inquires into adult conversations sometimes I tell her that “It’s big people stuff.” Now she says that “it’s little people stuff.”

What an interesting time, to have my big girl growing more and more independent each day, while my new tiny baby is so entirely dependent. Sometimes we’ll ask her what she said and she’ll reply, “I’m talking to myself.” She is very interested in learning the letters of the alphabet right now. We have a puzzle and some foam bath letters on the wall. When showing Allison the bathroom yesterday she pointed out the sink, the toilet and “this is I for Iris.” She is learning which letters belong to her friends’ names. She knows that J is for Jacinta and G is for Genevieve. Noticing the similarity in the sound yesterday she asked me, “Why is it not J for Genevieve?” Drop jawed, I could not answer. I just replied, “That’s just the way it is.” I’m not about to start explaining phonetics to my two year old. She pretends to read, mostly labels not books. Often she’ll read out loud, but softer than a whisper and I’ll ask her what she is doing. Aghast at the interruption she replies, “I’m reading!” and continues under her breath. Today we bought a special jar of mango paw paw jam at a festival. She was very excited to try the jam as she’s probably had jam five times in her life. This evening she grabbed the jar and held it out to Matt. She “read” the label to him, “Make some toast and put jam on it. That’s what it says Daddy.”

Speaking of food, we harvested green peppers, eggplant, pumpkin, green onions and mammoth cucumbers in the garden. Jacinta and I spent a few hours down there this week telling stories while weeding and playing with eggplant. We picked about 20 small eggplant. Naming them silly names kept us in the garden working for a good while. Jacinta is slightly obsessive about naming everything from animals to seeds to bits of paper she has cut, “This is the mommy, this is the daddy, this is the Jacinta and this is the Genevieve. I actually had to convince Jacinta to come back up to the house. What a nice change!

With Easter came a reason for Jacinta to have chocolate. She was given a tiny Easter bilby (bunny) with which we played hide and seek for over a week. I rediscovered the bilby yesterday and surprised Jacinta with it telling her that she could have a few bites. She bit off about 3% of the bilby amounting to less than 1/8 of a teaspoon and handed it back saying, “I’ve had enough mum.” Really??? Today she had the same amount and then asked if we could feed some to the fish while we were at the river in town. Laughing inside at what a sacrilege this would be deemed by many, I thought I’d humor her. Lo and behold, the one fish near the dock actually ate the small bit of chocolate. Who would have thought to feed a fish chocolate? Of course we’re proud that our little fruit bat is satisfied with so little. Matt takes credit for this, having taught her to take teeeeny bites. Maybe it’s really that he didn’t want to share.

Enough about our big girl, our little Evie is also well and growing like her big sister.

She doesn’t say funny things or test our boundaries, but moves along at a slower pace. Tortuga is what Matt calls her, his little tortuga (Spanish for turtle), it suits her at this stage. She is starting to make cute little sounds, trying out her vocal chords. It’s as if she is shocked after she makes a little noise (besides crying), perhaps wondering, “Hey, did I make that noise? How did I do that?” She is very cuddly, like a little koala. She is sleeping well at night and every other day catches up on sleep. She is much less colicky now and the last two days has shown no signs of unhappiness at all. It could just be a coincidence, but again, it is exactly two weeks since I broke my dairy fast and had lasagna. I kicked myself and said, well it will be another two weeks and it has. We’ll see if it works out. Wish us luck!

Matt worked a lot inside this week: preparing thoughts and material for camp, writing, and recording songs. He hopes to compile a few new cds for this summer when we come out to the only listeners we’ll ever have: church, camp and creation spirituality people. It’s been fun for me to hear the songs because typically he does not share half baked ideas, only completed songs so they’re all new and beautiful to me. One major drama came upon us about 30 hours ago, an urgent need to get Genevieve an American passport. Matt has done all of the work to obtain her birth certificate, Aussie passport and then an American visa in a timely manner. We were then told that a US visa would not be possible and that our dangerous 6 week old baby needed a US passport to gain entry into the US. It must be applied for by Monday to give us a chance to leave for the US on our planned date. We all have to be present so we will leave for another 6 hour drive to Sydney tomorrow morning at 6am. Matt is an amazingly efficient application preparer. In one day he filled out five applications, located all supporting documents, made copes of everything and listed all dates that we, as Genevieve’s parents, have been in and out of the US for our entire lives. I was proud that I actually got myself and the girls dressed this morning. It is indeed a good thing that I am not a single parent, I can’t imagine ever accomplishing anything outside of eating, cleaning and playing.

We are blessed to be free enough to drop everything to run to Sydney for a document.

We are blessed to have beautiful people to keep us happy in both Australia and the USA. Enjoy your many blessings for we all have quite a few. Wishing you all a lovely week.

Peace,

Shana