Big ones and little ones

Good evening. I hope Christmas and Hanukah were enjoyable for you all. Although we traveled quite a distance by car, we had a relaxing holiday with friends and family, and just having a little nuclear family time in the car. We spent about 24 hours road tripping, including lots of stops for food, fun, petrol, and shopping. I began knitting baby Number two a baby blanket in the car and Matt drove most of the way, listening to music and cricket. It was by far Jacinta’s best road trip in that she tolerated the time spent stuck in a car seat quite well and even enjoyed herself. Opening early Christmas presents from my family in the USA every few hours was great entertainment, especially the beloved electronic drumsticks (: Cows, horses, sheep and llamas were another source of joy for us all. Jacinta is going through a phase insisting that in every group of animals she sees, there must be a little one and a big one. “A big horse and a little horse, and the baby is drinking milk out of the mama!” Our adult eyes may see four adult horses, but she sees what she wants to see. Any time we pointed out some animals, she curiously asked, “Is there a big one AND a little one?” The other day she saw a big elephant and a little elephant grazing with the cows on our neighbor’s land. Amazing… elephants in Australia (:

Would you also doubt me if I told you our house was miraculously finished? Well, you should. After the amazing floor sander (machine) came to our house for two days, it revealed beautiful colors on the floorboards but also left more work. It malfunctioned and busted a hole in one of the beautifully painted walls and scratches all over certain parts of the floor. Matt and Keith worked constantly for two long days complete with dust masks, ear plugs and sore knees. There are now new places which need more putty, and then more sanding. The following week Matt worked at the bank and had all remaining energy sucked out of him, so our holiday came at a great time. He was just tired of looking at all of the remaining work. We had partly decided to leave the floors a bit shoddy and just move on. While we were relaxing in Canberra, Keith decided to start resanding the whole house with a much less powerful machine that we have here at home. This means sanding the entire floor three times: course, medium, then finishing with a fine grade of sandpaper. This is hard, nasty, dusty, loud work. When we returned home, he was halfway done and poor Matt could only see: MORE WORK! So Keith kept on going with the weak sander while Matt worked at the bank these past two days, and Keith eventually broke the sander. So today, they spent three hours trying to repair the sander. Frustration is a major feeling right now. Major tasks that remain are the beloved floor, the closets, the wooden edging on all of the dry wall and window frames. Matt finished the day on a better note, spending a few hours converting a third of the big garden shed into a workshop and later putting in his first window frame. He also located the carpet snake, who appears to have moved into our shed.

When you go away for a few days you can be assured that your house will not build nor clean itself. But your garden, it will grow and change regardless of your input, this is lovely. The cows could have broken in and eaten the whole thing, but they only trampled the borage and destroyed the mango tree. Returning to a garden after six summer days is quite a joy. We found hidden melons still ripening on the vine and bright red polka dots of tomatoes on the vines screaming out, “Pick me!” Our nighttime tomato muncher only chooses the big tomatoes, and leaves all of the cherry tomatoes alone. Every single regular sized tomato has been either bitten into by a large mouthed animal or dug into by worms. I wish they liked cherry tomatoes, we have many to spare!

The terrace garden corn is now about seven feet tall and a magnificent sight to behold. A few melon seeds I planted last week also popped up. The carrot seeds have finally dried out, Jess and I winnowed them off of the plant today. The citrus trees have fruit hanging off of them: blood oranges, mandarins and lemons, but won’t be ready to eat until winter returns. The bean vines are dripping with purple, green, and yellow beans necessitating frequent harvesting. In the past two weeks Jacinta and I have picked about five pounds of beans, mostly to give away. She searches high and low for “little beans,” and eats them raw in the garden. Of course, she refuses to eat them cooked or raw in the house. Eating vegetables is often a difficult issue at meals, she is not allowed to leave the table until she has a few and sometimes I end up matching her one for one. “I’ll eat one cucumber and you have one too.” She’d rather live solely on pasta, eggs, cheese, bread and fruit. Today she asked, “Is cheese a vegetable?” I had to again explain that it comes from the cows. “Do cows eat cheese?” Just a few minutes ago, after 40 minutes of silence she sleepily inquired, “Mommy, why do we have to sleep?” She was content with my explanation and fell fast asleep.

Strangely enough, Jacinta did not ask why we celebrate Christmas. She just anxiously awaited opening the gifts sent from America sitting at the base of the tree and thought of it as a day when she would get her own rolling pin. She asked about the people on the Christmas cards and got confused by the existence of a Mary that was not her Grandma. She knows that there is a little baby called Jesus. Strangers often ask her if she has been good for Santa, or following Christmas what Santa brought her. She knows what he looks like but the whole concept of a strange red suited man bringing her gifts is beyond her, so far. We will never push this idea but suppose we’ll deal with it as others do so. She started opening gifts a week before Christmas so I don’t think she became overwhelmed by the quantity of new toys, books, and clothes. She has a new pram (stroller) for her babies and pushes them around everywhere. She has a new hammer, some new garden tools, and a rolling pin which she has put to work already. When I gave her the long awaited socks, she replied, “Does this one have a toe now?” I worried that she wouldn’t appreciate them amidst the abundance, but she is proud to say that I knitted them for her. A full toddler size cricket set and a bowling set will also keep her busy. Matt had fun trying them out with cousin Ben and Jess together. Jacinta thanked Grandma Shari on the phone for her necklace and new piano book and told her that, “Mommy will help me learn.” Her latest gift was a set of hand knitted nativity finger puppets made in Peru. She loves them, taking them on and off of the stand, setting them up in a little wooden house, taking the holy family for a ride in her abacus (car), and taking baby Jesus for a ride in the pram. Friends of ours suggested a way to avoid too much accumulation and instill a consciousness of balance and giving in children around the holidays. For each toy received, children must choose a toy to give away, either for later use by a sibling or to other children who might appreciate their toy. I think Jess is old enough to begin, perhaps we’ll try it out this week.

Our five night journey was spent at three different houses. Friday night we gathered at our friends’ house with four other couples and their young children for an evening of good food and Christmas carols. People brought guitars, drums, sheet music and voices, and in between chatting, eating and drinking too much, we sang together. It was such an awesome way to celebrate Christmas, especially watching the children play together and join in the songs from time to time. Jacinta, our food lover, just took the opportunity to gorge herself on watermelon and anything else put down low. In turn, she needed to pull me away to the bathroom every thirty minutes. I had to hide all of the food to get her to beat a tambourine. Saturday we drove to Canberra and spent the next three days lazing at Matt’s sister Louise’s house. Louise has a son who is two years old, “Now he’s a big boy like me!” says Jess. The two little ones got to know each other better and had a nice time playing. Ben is seven months younger so he is just learning to share. Jess was patient with him and eventually learned to just give him what he wanted and walk away or play out if his sight. I was impressed watching her learn how to deal with new situations. After a few hours of bickering over her tiny metal suitcase filled with small toys and her sewing kit she said to me, “Maybe we’ll leave this in the car, it makes Ben fight,” as if she was innocent.

We had a lovely time catching up with Louise and Matthew, and Allison, Matt’s other sister who recently moved out to Canberra to work in the government. Matt’s mum also flew out for the festivities. We enjoyed sitting around, resting, and being in charge of nothing. This was the first Christmas that I cooked nothing, and we ate well! We had heaps of seafood, shrimp and marinated calamari, roasted veggie and haloumi salad, corn on the cob, and on and on. Mary and Allison took Ben and Jess to the zoo. Other than that our only outings were to dinner, to visit Parliament House where Allison works and to see where Louise’s new and improved gift basket shop was located. Boxing Day morning we left early and hit the shops (how unlike us, I know) to catch a closing down kitchen warehouse. We bought pots, pans and knives and eventually set off homewards. We stopped for the night at Matt’s dad’s house in Salamander Bay and had a nice time catching up with he and Carolyn. I particularly love their place, a short walk from the water where you can see dolphins, crabs and many birds. Jess had a great time playing in the muddy sand and jumping in the puddles while the tide was out. Her fear of waves is still quite strong though. In still water, just the small undulations from passing boats terrified her and kept her from swimming or riding in the kayak with Matt. She loves playing in the sand. To get her bucket filled with water, she sweetly asks others to fetch it for her. Although she loves swimming lessons and will swim underwater to her teacher, she doesn’t trust moving water. Matt enjoyed catching up with his dad on sports, life, Scrabble (a family tradition), and going for a paddle in the kayak. Unfortunately his elbow is a lot weaker now from overuse on the building site.

Our time away was lovely and the perfect amount of time to enjoy returning, yet give thanks for the change in pace for a few days. We are anxious to move in to our new place, and in preparation did some major shopping just after our return. We bought a refrigerator, a mattress for ourselves, a futon mattress, and a new camera in preparation for the new baby. We figured that after all of Matt’s awesome photographic endeavors with Jess, it might be insulting to baby number two that all of its pictures have lines across it from a camera that should have been better made to last. I may sound old, but it is sad that things are not made to last. I don’t know what the answer is though, perhaps buying the most expensive option will mean it will not break down. But maybe not, perhaps even that camera would need to be replaced every four years. Then how stupid would we feel four years from now?

In any case, I must close here. Although this journal is covering two weeks, I shalln’t go on for another three pages to make up for lost time. I’ll just give thanks that our friendships and family bonds last a lot longer than the junky things you can buy in the store. We wish you all a joyful and fulfilling New Year and to see you soon!

Putty and paint

Good day y’all! Hope all is well in your land, no complaints here. Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat. Actually, we have no geese, but the chick that hatched last week is still alive and getting fatter. The clucky gray hen is seemingly pleased to finally be a mother after all of that effort. I wonder if she’s disappointed that she only has one chick to look after. Perhaps she had a few more starting out but lost them to snakes and lizards. One chick will surely be enough for me!

This week was cooler than most and feigned signs of thunderstorms almost every day. Matt and I have decided that most people who assure you that a storm is coming from this direction or that and that it will surely arrive by the afternoon, are full of it, even people who are paid to predict the weather. My theory has become: it will not rain. If dark thunderclouds hang directly above, hang the laundry out. It will rain five drops, then blow over and completely skip our little five acre lot. Our poor garden looks amazing for the dryness it has withstood. Lo and behold, last night it rained! It rained more than five drops, perhaps millions! It was enough rain to worry us while we puttied the floorboards next to the big window with two sections of glass missing. Today it rained again, enough to help out the water tank and surely enough to make the plants smile! The garden doesn’t get much help from me these days, but the rain has pitched in a bit. The cows came in again and left their mark, more lost corn and a nectarine tree branch. Harvest is about all I can do right now, it has been fun picking corn, peppers, lettuce, beans, swiss chard, squash, tomatoes, a strawberry here and there, and loads of cucumbers. Munching on borage flowers in the garden is a new thing for Jess and I, they are lovely to look at and in salads. We have nasturtium flowers everywhere but they are a bit spicy for our taste.

Most of our time has been spent on the house, its completion is getting so close we can taste it. Matt has had another week fully devoted to house building and has pushed himself to make it worthwhile. We’ve had a few less naps and a few late nights, but what has been done is shocking. All of the dry wall has been installed, glued together with putty, sanded, and painted with two coats. The ceilings are all white, the kitchen/living room is a salmon-like orange, the hallway is purple, our room is a sage-like green, and Jacinta’s room is yellow and blue. Matt is out there right now finishing up second coats on the hallway and then, painting will be complete. For the time being, we’re skipping the bathroom completely. Tonight we will finish puttying the floor and tomorrow, Matt will sand the floorboards. In doing so, we will discover the true color of the hardwood which has been either dirty or covered in floor putty since we found it in the building pile outside. By Monday morning when the rent-a-sander needs to be returned to the hardware store, we’ll have walls, windows, floors that are nearly ready to be used. Matt goes back to work at the bank next week but will try and build closets in the evening so that we can move into the bedroom section sometime soon. It is hard to believe, yet very exciting that perhaps next month we will be in our own space.

For the time being, we are still in shared space, not only with kind Keith and Mary, but with a rat. This week, it decided to come and live in our bedroom. At nights, I would awake to him either rummaging in the garbage basket, Jacinta’s musical instrument basket, Matt’s closet or under the couch. In my frustration I would try to scare him off by throwing things at him and making him run from one side of the room to another. My goal was to oust him from the room, but it didn’t work. I actually stepped on it at one point and screamed. It is summer and we have no food in our bedroom, I do not understand. The traps don’t work, they don’t take the bait. Hopefully our section of the house will be rat-proof. Keith found a rat’s nest behind a couch in the lounge room. Contents: lids to dog food tins, a few of Jacinta’s toys, a seashell, the box from the rat poison, a piece of paper that was originally taped to a cupboard saying, “Keep doors closed to keep out mice!” and an empty packet of corn seeds. I was actually elated to find that corn packet as I thought I had gone crazy having placed it on the cupboard one night and the next day searched the house for the seeds to plant. I haven’t gone crazy, the rats are just good thieves.

Speaking of rats, Jacinta’s newest phrase is, “Something stinks in here!” It could be anything from a dead mouse to the normal passing odor coming out of a busy bathroom. Never fear, Jacinta will not let it go unnoticed. Nor she will be unnoticed every ten minutes saying, “I need something to eat,” or “I wanna eat some fruit.” We are trying to teach her the difference between needs and wants, but I don’t think she really understands. She is also learning to ask other people to get what she wants. On Friday my friend Trish accompanied Jess and I to Kempsey for a doctor’s appointment and a picnic at the river. Trish will assist at the birth so that Jacinta can come and go as she is comfortable in the room so they are spending more time together in preparation. Jess has learned to ask sweet Trish even when I am present, “Trish…I’m hungry. Can I have something to eat?” It may be fruit and crackers she’s after and not candy and cookies, but it’s constant and used as entertainment rather than nourishment. Even at playgroup, she’ll hang next to me begging for any handouts until she is firmly told she MUST go and play. Then she’ll come back ten minutes later and try again. I assure you, she is not starving. It may be that I used food too often as appeasement when she was younger. I love food, yeah, that’s probably it.

Thursday night the Yarahappini acapella choir in which I sing did a little show for our families. We sang about nine songs, none of which had anything to do with Christmas and had a nice time. We had all brought food and wine, so there was quite a spread before us as we sang. Jacinta was in hell looking at the table full of fruit, cheese and crackers for all nine songs having been told that she must wait until we had finished singing. She hung on me for half of the songs, but luckily I escaped her for the one Zulu song I had just learned the lead for. It was great fun singing the lead in this lively South African freedom song, having the choir follow a few beats after me. African music makes me so happy, the harmonies are just so different to Western music. Choir and playgroup will come to halt now as school children go on holiday until February. I suppose this will make me relax more at home which can only be good for me and the baby.

Matt and I have now had three “Calm Birthing” classes and are truly enjoying the opportunity to relax. The last two times we have brought Rae, the midwife down to the shed near the orchard, and had our classes in camp chairs. It’s so nice to sit and watch the garden for a few hours while we talk, learn, listen and meditate. Rae is very kind, experienced, and humble. We hope to have her at the birth as a doula if she is not on shift at the hospital. My health is fine although I’m low on a few vitamins and am working it out with the doctors. It makes me sad that I must get a shot of vitamin B12 rather than eat it, but I’ve tried my own way and it’s not working. So I suppose I should just be grateful for the help. I had a 24 hour nausea experience, but luckily it washed away when Jess and I went to the beach. Other than that, I can feel the baby’s head from time to time, feel great and have enjoyed life and especially, helping out on the house this week.

Christmas is almost here. Typically I busy myself in preparation for this holiday making gifts for loved ones. This year, I can find time only to build the house, nourish myself and my family (when they want something healthy), and keep our living space slightly clean. It is a different year, and I will welcome the free time again when it returns. It’s hard to contemplate how different life will be three months from now, but I surely am excited for the change! Hot Christmas will never mean much for me unless I can dig up some inner meaning to connect me to all I know and love about Christmas with my mom, dad and sister in the Midwest. As I grow up and experience it with Matt and my children, I suppose it will be my children’s only reality, not just a poor substitute for a white Christmas. All things in time.

Blessings to you all this week.

Peace,

Shana

Wandering chick

Good evening y’all. I hope this letter finds you happy and healthy as we are all here. Hearing about snow days make me miss home even more, snow days are the best kind of unplanned fun and relaxation. We’ve had a moderately hot, but slightly cloudy week with no rain. It has been breezy on some days and for these days we give thanks, especially when we’re in the new part of the house which actually benefits from wind. The rest of the house is poorly insulated from heat and well hidden from most potential air flow. I suppose if we hadn’t suffered through one summer in this heat box, Matt mightn’t have had the foresight to build as well as he is now.

Starting out on house progress, much was accomplished this week. Matt had a few days of work at Macnuts, and no bank work so he had more time to dig into the drywalling task. We halted floor putty, the interior walls were more important to complete. With help from Keith, the ceilings have all been finished. Then single-handedly, Matt has just finished dry walling the whole house. He is out there right now (8:30pm), he has been staying up quite late working each night. The silent nature of the task gives him the freedom to take sanity breaks throughout the day for food, cricket, painting with Jacinta, naps, newspaper perusing and the like. This explains the late night dry walling. The tasks all seem to become mundane after a while and take a lot of time, but it sure feels good when each one is finished. The tiny little details are the most time consuming though, and aren’t as gratifying for they don’t cover much space.

I, for once, can say I actually worked quite a lot on the house this week. I am not underestimating the value of the other things I do like cooking, gardening, cleaning and Jacinta-caring, but it does feel good to actually be vital to this part of the building process. My all important task is puttying dry wall, covering up the seams and cracks. It is the type of job that would drive Matt to complete insanity to do it alone, but one that I can do quite well and without much pain to my pregnant body. I will soon go back out to putty this evening. I love spending the evenings out in our own little space listening to music with Matt. Next year though, we’ll be able to relax and play guitar out there with our little girl and our new little baby, rather than working all of the time. It’s surely worth all of the work, I just wish I had more energy to contribute.

Thursday evening we decided to go out for pizza in order to free up more putty time for me, and just to get out of the house. In the past few years I haven’t really appreciated the “all you can eat” style of dining, but right now I can say that showing up at a restaurant with your hungry two year old is really exciting when you don’t have to wait to eat. The owner was also very kind responding to the fact that I was a vegetarian, I think it was because I am so obviously pregnant. He cooked me a special pizza and put the whole thing on our table, rather than placing it in the warmer with the other buffet items. Following our nice quick meal we stopped at the beach and ran along with Jacinta jumping from puddle to puddle. The tide was out, leaving in its wake hundreds of puddles filled with hermit crabs crawling along in their shells in the sand. Jacinta, of course, fell into the water face first and soaked her clothes, but didn’t mind. The sun was going down and left us feeling even more peaceful than the pizza did, and re-energized to go home and work on the dry wall again.

The garden has been bountiful this week providing us with salads, beans, potatoes, our first green peppers and tomatoes, squash, carrots, beets, and loads of spinach and cucumbers. No one vegetable has yet become overwhelming but perhaps the cucumbers will be the first to do so. I feel obligated and lucky to serve cucumbers at every meal. Hopefully we’ll soon be overwhelmed with tomatoes. One night I made a potato salad all from the garden with garlic, green onions, celery, dill, homemade mayonnaise, and potatoes. Lettuce is hard to grow here in the summer because it gets too hot, so we only have lettuce in salads once in a while. I’m almost over my silly notion of scarcity in the garden and just pick things as I want them, rather than saving them just in case they may grow bigger or just in case I might really want them on a later day. One thing that helps me is predators. If I wait another the day, the slugs or caterpillars may indulge, or perhaps the cows will break through the fence and demolish a patch of corn. In fact, the sweet little calves did this on Tuesday. For a day or two, I couldn’t bear to go and witness the damage, but eventually I had to because there were more calves in there trying to finish the last few stalks of corn off. I take silent pleasure knowing that after ripping open a few corn cobs that were not yet ripe, the cows didn’t get lovely ripe sweet corn, it was white and not sweet.

All week I have been dreading fence reparation and could not summon the energy to do it. I prefer to watch from above and chase the cows away when they come. Today Keith dove into the task and Jess and I, out of guilt, joined in. We finished half of it and in the end, it wasn’t so bad. I think perhaps that I’m just bitter that most of the damage is from the stupid goat rubbing her horns and scratching her back on the chicken wire. The cows rub up against it also, chicken wire is called chicken wire for a reason, not cow or goat wire. It is all a learning process. How strong does your fence need to be to keep cows and goats out? Farmers know this, it has to be electric or take long hours of labor in upkeep for any other type of fence. But, alas, I am not a farmer. I am a simple gardener that needs to learn how to deal with other people’s livestock.

Real farmers would not keep old chickens that did nothing but poop and eat seed, nor allow them to free range if they continued to disappear. Real farmers may question the logic of paying for large quantities of seed in return for one to three eggs a day. We now have 13 chickens in the pen, down from 21 a few months ago. Three chooks are now clucky, which means that their instincts demand that they sit on a nest of eggs and keep them warm. Problem: these are unfertilized eggs, and none of the clucky hens can even lay eggs! One is the grandma chook, Old Mother. She sits on top of other chickens while they lay, and sometimes eats their eggs once they vacate the nest! Last night before bed Jacinta dismounted her rocking horse and said, “Mommy, look at that!” A tiny black chick was beneath the veranda, chirping and blindly trying to make its way to a mom of some sort. We all figured out that it had probably hatched from the gray hen who had disappeared about a month ago. We thought she had either gone crazy or was sitting on eggs, but we could not locate her nest. She runs out of her hiding spot like a mad chicken for about thirty minutes each day to scarf down seed, chug water and take a quick dust bath.

So with a cold, lonely chick as an impetus, we earnestly looked for Mrs. Gray’s nest last night and found her under a pile of lumber and tin. Keith had a good idea of where to look, Jess held the torch, and I had the honor of sliding the sweet chick under her mum’s bum. It was all very exciting, especially for Jess who saved its life on her way to bed. She was able to hold the chick close and feel its softness. She is learning to handle animals very well, from holding a big stick to ward off the goat to picking up and carrying clucky little hens away from the nest. She has seen death in the animals here and so far, is quite comfortable with the circle of life. Not having grown up with this experience myself, I find it strange when Jacinta wakes up happily and the first question she has is, “Is the birdie dead?” To my surprise I soon found out, she was talking about Grandma Mary’s new parakeet who lives in a cage. It was still alive, unlike some of the injured birds that Keith tries to save. We also checked on the little chick and yes, it was still alive!

New life is actually a common theme this week. Our friends Carrie and Chay had their second baby, a little brother for Otto, one of Jacinta’s best buddies in Michigan.

I feel a little life within me and can’t wait for the day he or she will come to join us outside of my womb. I think about how much relaxing is involved with caring for a newborn and think, “ahhh…that will be nice.” We shall see. I also heard from a friend who made some major life changes and as a reward, found renewed joy and calm in everyday life.

I hope you all find new life somewhere in your daily routine for it doesn’t just come out of big pregnant women and broody hens. It’s everywhere!

Love and Peace,

Shana

Blue boots and bindies

Good evening loved ones (: I hope this December has started out slowly for you. Since we have no Thanksgiving here, people have no qualms about starting Christmas parties in early December, even late November! Today is December 2, my sister’s birthday, and in one day we had three Christmas parties. Don’t get me wrong, our social calendar is not that demanding, we have no other parties on the calendar. Our next engagement is to travel to Canberra to celebrate Christmas with Matt’s sisters. I just find it shocking to have three Christmas parties on one day so early in the season. Playgroup’s party was this morning at the beach and the neighborhood party was down the hill this afternoon. Right now, Matt is at the third party, a bank dinner and has ridden his bike. I hope he brought a head lamp with him!

A neighborhood party is an interesting occasion out here in the semi-bush. I suppose all of the people who came live within a mile of us on our side of the river. But we are all so isolated and hidden behind the trees that we might see each other only once a year, at the Christmas party. Some people you might see in town, like Matt, since he works at the bank or Jenny who works at the art shop. But others may introduce themselves by laughing and saying, “I have no idea who you are, but I’m Bill.” There were probably 25 people there this evening all chatting in little groups and having a great time (with alcohol and food helping the situation for the shyer ones). There are those who are so shy or uninterested in annual small talk that they don’t bother coming. Then there are some who are new to the “neighborhood” and are eager to see the faces behind all of the hidden mysterious houses. After this party at which I spent most of my time swimming with Jess and chatting with the few people I do know, I desperately want to know more of my neighbors’ stories. As each couple left, I found myself saying, “Damn, I never even got to say hello, find out their names or which house they live in!” I hope I don’t have to wait until the next Christmas party.

The season of Christmas also means the return of cricket tests, joy for Matt. There always seems to be some sport to discuss in great detail with anyone who cares and read about in the newspaper. Matt played cricket as a child and teenager so it is even more enticing to follow. At the moment he dislikes the arrogant Australian team and cheers for any other national team they play. Go England! The Christmas season also means heat and humidity. Jess and I gave up on napping for a few days for in the heat, some days it is not worth the effort. Since the spa is broken, we have taken to running through the sprinkler down in the garden using the dam water, the only water which can be wasted in good conscience. This is a new phenomenon for Jacinta, and has been quickly embraced. At first she was hesitant to get her face all wet, but as I passed on some of the fun games my sister and I used to play in the sprinkler, she lost all fear. It is a funny picture though, a little girl in blue rubber boots playing in the sprinkler with her big pregnant mama wearing garden shoes. You may ask, aren’t you supposed to run barefoot through the sprinkler? We have an evil thing growing in the grass here in Australia called bindies. They are tiny little burrs that grow abundantly in the grass and blend right in. To get rid of them you need poison, or thick gloves and a lot of time down on your knees to dig them up. As I won’t do either, we have bindies everywhere and cannot go barefoot in the summer. Bummer. Oh well, Jacinta quite enjoys the sloshing of water in her boots. Every few minutes we tip them out and water the plants.

Speaking of the garden, it has been a lucky harvest week. We had no rain, only a few teaser wind storms so water was an issue. With a sporadic, overgrown garden full of vines obscuring other plants, and limited energy to daily watch each inch grow, there tend to be a lot of surprises. If this dry spell keeps up, the surprises may not always be so lovely, but for now, they are. We found our first cucumber this week and didn’t even know the vines were cucumber plants! We grew lemon cucumbers, little round yellow ones and Jess and I each ate one in the garden to celebrate. A few days later we noticed that our bean vines on the teepee were dripping with six inch long beans, yellow, purple and green. How did I miss them when they were small? Hmmm… That same day we picked a few corn cobs that showed signs of maturity, but they were not. It was a beautiful surprise harvest that day, cucumbers, beans, corn, squash, carrots, zucchini, spinach, lettuce, parsley and a few cherry tomatoes. That evening Jess, Matt and I celebrated with our first all garden salad.

This week’s construction is also a cause for celebration. We had to take a break from floor puttying for lack of putty and moved on to more exciting tasks. I found a few screens that fit out in the “pile” and made the rest, so now we are screened in. Matt refurbished the old church doors and turned them into our front door, put on a door knob and made a screen door. Our only problem is now that we have locked out the bugs, we have also locked quite a few of them in! Matt ordered all of the dry wall we need and worked with Keith and Michelle to put up some of the ceiling in the kitchen/living room. It is a cathedral ceiling and is quite high, so this is no easy task. Other than that, he did quite a few “fiddly” tasks and worked at the bank two days. We are getting closer each week, we are even discussing colors to paint the bedrooms.

Matt, in addition to building us a house, is, as usual getting some good quality time with little Jacinta. She may disagree with the “little” part of that, “I’m a big girl!” We are trying to explain to her that she may be a big girl in some ways but most of the time she is a little girl. Even though he stays up strangely late at night, Matt will wake up with Jacinta on mornings when she gets up too early for my pregnant self to rise. They have breakfast together and then come and wake me. In the evenings he sometimes takes her out to the shop to buy milk and his daily chocolate fix. They attached the baby seat to his bike and went out for their first ride since I have stopped riding my bike. Boohoo, I do miss riding. They go to swimming lessons and the hardware store together too. Sometimes Jess cries if she can’t go to town, it’s pretty funny. On choir night they once again went for a swim at the beach and got chips (french fries) as a treat. “Chips” are a funny thing here, you can buy them at any take out shop, and by the dollar. It’s not small, medium or large, you tell them how much you want to spend and they give you that amount of chips and it’s quite a few chips for the dollar. It’s a good system, but not for your health of course.

On health, we are all well, but had a few issues this week. Our poor little friend Rory was here on Tuesday and vomited quite a bit from something he ate the day before. Sweet Jess, obviously with more vomit tolerance than her pregnant mom, stayed with Rory and Michelle throughout, curious and trying to help, just about got hit with one episode. Two days later she came down with a fever and got through it in less than eight hours. It is strange to see your energetic toddler so disinterested in everything, so tired and helpless. Unable to sleep, she lay on her wooly on the kitchen floor and watched me cook for three hours. Rest, cherries, echinacea, vitamin C, bread, zinc, water, and peppermint, lemon balm, chamomile and licorice tea seemed to help her through the fever quickly. Matt’s elbow is still giving him troubles, but rubbing it with cream helps somewhat. Speaking of Matt, he just made it home safely from dinner on his bike and luckily, the moon was bright enough to light his path. My heel has almost completely healed from the screen door incident, and I can almost wear normal shoes again. My belly, naturally, is bigger and full of life. Sleep is hot and uncomfortable, but the baby moves around quite a bit now. We only have about three months left!

Last Sunday a midwife from the birthing center came over to begin teaching Matt and I “Calm Birthing” classes. Mary and Keith took Jess out for a beach and lunch outing and left us to our business. We spent three hours just chatting about our past birth experience, the facts about what goes on in the body, and what we can do to relax and let the body do what it knows best. We did some meditation exercises and conscious breathing and it was lovely. Spending three hours in our own home with an awesome, humble, experienced midwife on the back veranda with the birds singing and the wind blowing was calming in itself. We talked about the history of birth in different cultures and how fear plays a major role in increasing real pain, not just perceived pain in birthing women in Western cultures. It was a great way to start the week for us by consciously relaxing. It paved the way for a calm week for me. On choir night I went to the river an hour early and sat on a rock knitting, breathing, and watching the storm roll in. In that peace, I happened to finish knitting a pair of socks that I had been knitting for Jacinta for over six months. It’s amazing what you can do and feel given such amazing peace.

So, as usual, we’re all well and content. We think of you often and miss many things about life in the US, but know we’ll get back to visit soon. Wishing you all peace in a season that should be full of peace, but sometimes gets too busy for peace.

Love,

Shana