You can come out now

Good day folks :) Hope all is well in your land, we’re happy and healthy here. It has been a lazy Sunday, started out at the beach with some friends and has consisted of nothing other than eating, playing and napping, even for Matt! Now it is nap time thus I have the time to sit and contemplate the week’s events. It is slightly windy outside and the sun is shining but it is not terribly hot, as it has been the past few days. The kookaburras are silent, the goat is happily finishing off all of the chicken’s seed.

The chickens are even quiet, they must be hiding under the veranda in the dirt having a midday rest. Somehow, I can hear the heat, the sounds of summer which are indescribable.

For me, this whole week has been a slow one. No great tasks remain that I can do in building the house. My only goal this week besides feeding everyone and taking care of our little girl was to sweep the walls and the floors. Jess and I spent a lot of time playing on the floor. We played with trains, magnets, drew pictures, painted, knitted, played the piano, made bracelets, made bread, ate lots of fruit, and swam in the spa at least twice a day. Although it did rain for a day or so, the rest of the week was incredibly hot. Thus swimming was a necessary pastime and pulled us through the heat. Keith is still trying to fix its innards, but was instructed by Mary to “keep it full for Shana and Jacinta.” We are grateful, for he spends almost an hour every day cleaning and/or fixing little bits here and there. Sometimes we’ll have a five-minute cool down, but most often it’s a long and playful swim. Jacinta is still taking swimming lessons and has learned to go under and actually swim a foot or so. Practicing her new tricks, she will do “Jedda jumps” and dive like the dog from one side of the spa to the other, where Matt or I are sitting. If she is feeling brave, she’ll put her face in and swim upwards, but the jump and the splash are essential.

I did actually devote three hot hours to save the teepee garden from weed takeover on Monday, which easily justified my lack of work the rest of the week. The problem with clearing the ground of weeds right now is that the soil is then left bare to dry out even more. Oh well, most of the plants have had their life down there. I have a few new bean, carrot and corn plants coming up, but otherwise all of my recent seed attempts have failed from lack of water and turkeys digging. I figure given infinite gardening weather, one failed season of gardening isn’t too bad. My focus should be keeping the fruit trees alive and well since they need to last for years if we are ever to reap the harvest. Don’t get me wrong, we are still harvesting good vegetables like carrots, spinach, a few tiny cantaloupes, a few tomatoes, eggplant, a few ears of corn, and the best green peppers I’ve ever tasted. My sadness comes from their inevitable end. I made my first eggplant and zucchini parmesan this week, and Matt and Keith even tried it. I can force Jess to try things, and yes, she may sit for ten minutes and avoid the inevitable, but in the end, she tries it. But you can’t force adults to try new vegetables, and this week I didn’t eat eggplant alone! This is a great source of joy for me :)

Commenting that I have no major house tasks remaining is not to say that we have finished the house. It is to say that all major tasks are now up to Matt. I would install the oven if I could carry it! I would build a sink base if it didn’t require power tools! I would put in the toilet if I could! I would climb a ladder and install new rain gutters if I could balance my huge belly! But the simple fact is, I can not, and for me to learn would be an inefficient use of time at this point. So…Matt carries on while I play, relax, cook and prepare for our new little baby. This week he spent almost entirely building drawers for the bedrooms. It was fiddly, laborious, and by the end frustrating. His goal was to work out the kinks with his own drawers, and improve on mine and then finally perfect on Jacinta’s drawers. Annoyingly enough, it worked out that he started out great and finished on a mediocre note. Jacinta and I are thrilled, but he’d rather not discuss the drawers and just move on to the next task. His part of the shed has become a real workshop. I was shocked to find he had even built himself a veranda, a level floor upon the dirt to make work easier. The next task is the kitchen, so today after lots of relaxing and in between cricket overs he brought our second hand gas oven down from the shed, cleaned it up and put it in the kitchen. Stay posted, next week we may have a sink (plumbing involved, maybe not).

Our little house is slowly becoming a home, Jacinta’s room is covered in pictures and artwork. It is a transition though, gradually changing over our comfort zone and where we do things. Jess and I christened the table by making bread on it this week, and all three of us shared a few meals alone in here. We love napping out here with the breeze, and Jess loves being in her own room. She wants to give up on napping but I’m clinging on to the idea, especially with baby number two almost here. The rooms are all so close and comfortable that you can hear Jacinta singing herself to sleep through the walls. She’ll make her animals have conversations using high and low voices, “How are you today?” “Very good, Thank you!” It is so entertaining, and we don’t even need the monitor. She still calls out, “MOM” at the top of her lungs, repeatedly, when she has no interest in napping. I have learned to ignore her and that she will eventually go to sleep, but I can’t help but laugh at all of her desperate attempts. She doesn’t even try to sound helpless or sad, but in her strongest voice, she’ll call out one word very loudly every minute or so in between playing in her bed, either “MOM!......DAD!.....PLEASE!...ANYBODY!” or “I NEED HELP!” It’s hard to ignore that plea, but when we give in and inquire she can’t think of any reason she may need help, she’s smiling and just wants a playmate. “I HAVE TO POO!” That’s one we have to answer, though it’s no excuse to leave the room because she has a potty in her room, she just needs permission to get out of bed. I still have to run to the other house every thirty minutes to use the bathroom as any very pregnant woman does. Speaking of a late night bathroom trip, one night this week I left the bathroom, turned out the light and heard something large slithering in the hallway. Quickly I turned the light back on and saw a foot long lizard, black with yellow spots trying to get out the spa door. I bravely opened the door for him, inside fearing that he might instead choose to slither over my foot as I approached, and he left the house. Nice.

There were no doctor’s appointments or bank work to outline our week, so we had to plan a few outings for sanity. Jess and I went for a river beach trip on Saturday morning in this gorgeous spot we hadn’t yet discovered. We also stopped at the fish shop and the fruit shop en route. There was shady sand for picnicking, even some shady water to swim in, and shallow clean water to play in. To top it off, our best friends Michelle and Rory, having just returned from a three week vacation surprised us and came for a swim. Then Saturday night Matt and I went out to see a movie called, “The Oyster Farmer.” It was gorgeous, filmed on the Hawkesbury River which is about four hours from us and was quite entertaining. Jess had a good time with Mary and Keith going out for dinner and some playtime at the park. Then today, Sunday, we met some friends at a real beach on the ocean and had a great time in the sun. Jess didn’t touch the water but loved the sand, I swam hesitantly due to the waves and my big belly, and Matt had the best swim he’d had in a while. He loves the waves, diving in again and again, resurfacing with more energy each time. He also said his hands hadn’t been this clean in weeks. Salt water is incredibly purifying. I got my first real sunburn in a while, on my feet and shins, ouch. Luckily we have quite a few aloe plants around.

Jacinta keeps us laughing these days, and always thinking of course. Her funniest comments lately go like this, “In America, they call these, ‘nungay.’” That time she was talking about noodles, and obviously she invented that piece of information. She knows we call things by different names in America because I’ll often say my word for something and then have to explain that my word is different to what people here say, like capsicum and pepper. She now takes liberties just making words up and pretends she is a language teacher, but the words usually sound Chinese to me. It’s pretty funny. She’ll also ask what Ulysse, her little French friend from Michigan might call something. The other day we spotted a new baby brush turkey. Matt asked her what she wanted to name him. Last year she named the baby, “Bummer,” but this year she chose, “Un-yung,” again sounding very Chinese to me. Right away, we all heard a resemblance to “Onion,” and thus, he is called Onion.

I mentioned already that it rained this week. Although most of the rain had gone, Jacinta and I ventured out on a muck-walking trek both in our big black gum boots and junky clothes. We were ready to get soaked with both rain and mud. We walked down the hill to find the cows, play with pebbles on the path, jump in puddles and just play. I haven’t taken a real walk in a while due to the heat and the hills, but the rain and clouds were inspiration enough. We walked (Jacinta ran in between puddles) quite far out and then on the way back, we sat down and watched the “mommies and the babies,” in the light rain. One white mama was giving her little white calf “a bath with her tongue.” Another mama was giving her baby some milk. These are exciting moments for Jacinta to witness, and for me also, I grew up in the city with no cows. Following this little rest, we got up with our wet rear ends (actually Jess was completely soaked from landing face first in a puddle) and trudged home. We were both a little tired, so Jacinta became my sweet cuddly daughter. This part of her only comes out when she is in need. She grabbed onto my belly and said to the baby, “Ok baby, you can come out now.” It was very sweet. I explained to her that it couldn’t come out for a little while longer, otherwise it would be like the corn that we sometimes pick which didn’t fully develop, with half of the kernels edible and the other half flat and white. So then she said, “Well, I want to go inside with the baby.” Really, I think she just wanted a lift up to the house but she knows I can not carry her right now and she was tired. She also gets a kick out of feeling my belly button and how it protrudes now. Being her cute needy self, she stopped me every few steps and tried to hide under my shirt and “hide inside with the baby.” Eventually I had to limit her, as I too needed to make it back up the hill. We did make it up the hill, luckily it was before the sun came out and the heat returned a few hours later.

So there it is, another week down and one week closer to the birth. Thank God!

The hottest month will be here in a few days, and at the end of it, we may have a new little being in our midst. I hope you’re all enjoying life and laughing along the way. We think of you all often.

Peace,

Shana

Closets and curtains

Hello loved ones :) Here I sit at the computer at our kitchen table, writing as the sun is setting outside of our enormous windows. You can still see the dim reflection of the light on the water in the dam, through all of the lily pads. The cicadas are buzzing away and the wind is gently blowing. The banks of the dam grow larger each day as the level of the water continues to fall with each dry day. Our water tank is almost empty, but luckily, we have the option of calling the “water man.” We are very lucky to be able to water our garden using dam water, most people are forced to watch their gardens to die. Drought is nothing new here though, smart people try and grow native and/or drought tolerant plants and trees.

Although it hasn’t rained in weeks, we don’t feel too dried out here. The spa is filled, even with its daily needs of repairs, this pipe leaking one day, the motor broken the next, the pump leaking the next. It’s not a very wise use of water in our situation, but we’re all desperate to have somewhere to cool off, albeit a little dirty. It’d be great if we could swim in the dam but the cows and all of their “baggage” have made that impossible. Perhaps someday we’ll fence them out. Jess and I cooled off in two different rivers this week, one in Kempsey after a doctor’s appointment and another in Bellingen after we visited the open air markets. She also had swimming lessons at the local pool, so she’s becoming a little fish. She’ll dive across the spa and put her face in the water while jumping to you, depending on the mood you catch her in. In the rivers she loves to play with the rocks, sand and sea weed. No matter which water she swims in, she will stay in for hours if allowed. Today at the river we met a few friendly families and had a lovely time paddling around. She was smitten with one little girl about her age and watched her play with her family, overlooking personal space boundaries that adults obey. After a while Jacinta hopped over to the little girl and poked her. She immediately swam back to me and proudly stated, “I touched her!” How sweet:)

Jacinta seems much more interested in social interaction these days. She had a few friends over to play in her new room this week. Lily and Aidan came for a visit, ages two and four, and I must say it was wonderful to hear them playing in another room while Anissa and I knitted and chatted on the couch. Even so, they spent most of their time near us. At one point all three children were banging on the piano and singing at the top of their lungs. Lily joined Jess in singing “Where’s my Bear?” while Aidan stayed with the more traditional, “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.” Eventually Lily went into the bedroom and found Jacinta a bear, perhaps to entice her to stop singing the same sad song. Josephine, our only young neighbor (five years old), came to play this week. Jess also went to Josephine’s house one morning, so it was a playful week! We are very happy to have some children for her to play with because living with a four to one adult to child ratio can do strange things to a child’s ego. She gets a well deserved reality check when she tries to tell a five year old what to do. For example: when she plays her cute piano songs for us on the piano, she gets cheers and smiles. When she plays for Josephine, her older friend half smiles and cringes commenting that “It’s a bit loud.” I’m sure baby Henry #2 will help with this.

After cleaning out our old bedroom and scouring it in just two days, this week’s tasks seemed to go on forever. Cleaning windows and making pillows don’t sound like they could take up and entire week, but they did! I did do a few other things like cook, play, read, garden, laundry, hang a few pictures, knit, and relax, but I spent most of my energy trying to achieve these tedious everlasting easy tasks. I did actually finish what I set out to do, with lots of “help” from Jess and a good sewing machine. We made four huge pillows to make the futon couch more comfortable and one long pillow to keep Jess off of the wooden bar in her bed at night. I used scraps of old material and stuffed them with the foam out of our old futon mattress. Jess enjoys sticking pins in cloth but as you can imagine, loved playing in the foam. She cooked with it, rolled in it, threw it, climbed the “mountain,” and put a little bit in the pillow cases. I can’t tell you how glad I was to pack it all up in a bag and send the remaining foam to be recycled today.

Matt had the same everlasting task issue this week, but seemed to accomplish a lot more in the end. Everything seemed to go slower than he wished: staining wooden dowels as curtain rods, building bedside tables and staining them, building Jacinta’s closet, and mounting poles in our closets for hanging clothes. Looking today though, we now have beautiful bedside tables, curtains hanging in both bedrooms (also thanks to Mary’s hard work in sewing them), poles to hang our clothes upon, and even a ramp leading up to the front door so we don’t have to step eighteen inches up to enter the house. The ramp was a quick build, probably very gratifying compared to the long drawn out tasks. Jacinta likes rolling cars and trucks down the ramp. She commented on her closet today upon first sight, “That’s cool!” and gave Matt a good laugh. Right away, she tried to hang her underwear on the pole, but later excitedly hung up all of her dresses and sweaters on the little pole just her size. In addition to all of that work, Matt got to work at the bank one day this week, he describes it as terribly boring, but a privilege to get paid and get out of the house, “going to the bank to plan the closets.” Televised cricket and tennis matches kept him entertained in the downtime, as did Jacinta and I! He even made time to weed-whack the entire orchard for me, in the blazing heat. Playing in the spa with Jess following that task was a good inspiration.

Our first week in our own space had many perks, one of which is musical. A stereo in the living room is essential for me, I NEED music at most times in the day. I guess I don’t need it, but I thrive on it and love cleaning, playing and sewing with music playing. It makes mundane tasks much more enticing. Having a piano in the lounge room is lovely, I’m starting to play at night while Jacinta is falling asleep. The walls aren’t sound proof, but I figure it won’t bother her too much. Last night in her sleep she called out, “mommy, play the piano” and said nothing else. It made me smile. My mom used to play piano at night while I was going to sleep, She still plays me to sleep when I go home to visit and I’m almost thirty. Matt can play the guitar more now, as he likes privacy. It is beautiful watching Jacinta watch him play, she closely follows his fingers, his eyes, his mouth and listens.

The breeze in our new place is great, but the roosters still insist on cockadoodle dooing into our window. I have started trying to scare them away, meager attempts though. They are creatures of habit. Another perk is that we can lock the door and keep Jacinta all to ourselves when need be. She is accustomed to being able to freely circulate to any of the four adults who will most likely give her what she wants. At least we can now begin slowing her down on instant gratification. The change will be good for all of us.

The garden grows on in the dry heat with a little help from Keith watering and Matt and I using the sprinklers. We ate a few ears of corn this week, and surprisingly enough, there were no caterpillars inside. Perhaps they weren’t brave enough to crawl seven feet up. I convinced Keith to come out and harvest with me one evening while Matt stayed with sleepy Jacinta. We brought in tomatoes, pumpkins, beans, and cucumbers. I stayed on weeding until it was too dark to see the weeds, but that was the only weeding I did all week. Que sera sera, whatever will be, will be. Jess and I made the best pesto yet from the basil in the garden. I think the reason was that I put in more oil, more parmesan, less garlic, and toasted the pine and macadamia nuts. Another excitement was the arrival of some French books we ordered from a gift certificate from my dad and his family, three little books for Jacinta and one Senegalese book on the art of their cuisine. Jacinta loves the simplest book and asks to read it at every sitting. It’s about little bear getting used to the new tiny baby bear. She doesn’t mind that I read it in French, this makes me very happy!

Speaking of that tiny baby bear, it is kicking and moving around like crazy! We are approaching our due date and can’t wait. It should be another six weeks or so. So send us some cold weather if you don’t mind and we’ll try and send you some of our sun.

Check out the paintedguitar.com website sometime this week. Matt will post a new photo album this evening. Have a fulfilling week and we’ll talk to you soon.

Room to create

Good evening y’all. Speaking of “y’all,” Jacinta has somehow picked up a southern American accent when she says certain words like “rice, ice, and smile.” It’s pretty funny, as if she doesn’t have enough influencing her tongue, I think she made these sounds up on her own. Sometimes she speaks a more relaxed Australian language learned from Keith. “I’m going to wash me hands.” She is showing an interest for what certain words are in French, but I haven’t done much with that thus far, besides lullabies and a few little poems.

Back to the big stuff, we are living in our new house now! How did it all happen so fast when it felt as if it could drag on for a few more weeks? Matt decided to give up the idea of finishing closets before moving in and found the renewed energy for the floor which was the last truly necessary task. Sunday and Monday I finished off a bit of puttying and Matt finished the remaining fiddly tasks and cleaned up. Monday night Matt and I stayed up late and washed the whole floor and then….he stained it with tung oil. Twelve hours later after another coat, we then had to leave the floor to cure for three days. No major work on the house for three days, how very strange, liberating and relaxing. We spent time packing up the old room and playing with toys that we discovered in hidden-away boxes. Jacinta was quite helpful crawling under couches, and dropping things in different boxes, but also at removing items which had already been packed. Matt and Keith moved the piano into its new home, no small task. Matt also started building his workshop down in the shed so that he could empty our new bathroom of all of his tools. The 4WD child’s wagon again came in handy toting heavy tools down the hill. Once the floor cured, we began moving in on Friday, what a joy! Jacinta helped Matt assemble her big girl bed and put our mattress in our room. The futon was moved into the small lounge room, the kitchen table assembled next to the huge kitchen window and the refrigerator moved to its new home. I left for an hour to visit the naturopath and came back to all of this newness and excitement. Friday night we ate our first dinner on our table and slept in a place we helped to create. Jacinta took part in so many steps along the way that she seems to feel no remorse in leaving the big family bedroom.

It will take us another day to completely remove ourselves from the old room, and then a while to build the means to organize our things and cook in this part of the house. One of these days we’ll get a composting toilet. Moving has been fun, I sort, carry small loads and waddle back and forth while Matt does all of the heavy work. Jacinta is spending a good deal of time just enjoying her space, her own room filled with only her things. At first when the room was empty she just danced and spun around happily while I swept up the last remnants of construction for over forty minutes, just feeling the space. We have been cramped for a while. Her toys are now spread around the perimeter of her room rather than hidden underneath couches and at the bottom of our bookshelf. Our hope is that she’ll learn to spend more time on her own given the space to do it. It seems to be happening already.

We were pretty focused on moving this week, but in our free time went to Nambucca (the nearest beach town) a few times: once to meet some friends with children Jacinta’s age and another time for our first ultrasound. We didn’t really want to bother with ultrasound but were told that some conditions can develop in a baby that hospitals out here can not deal with. So we took it in stride and made it a fun family event, Jacinta in Matt’s lap listening to him “ooh and ahh” and explain to her all the things we were seeing. The little child in my belly is healthy and developing just as beautifully as we expected. It was quite strange to look at moving pictures of this little being I had been feeling internally for so long. Following the appointment we went to relax at our favorite park to play in the sand and swim in the river. It was a lovely cloudy day, and although Jess had no interest in swimming, I enjoyed my leisurely float out in the river. Matt, exhausted from the race to finish the house, relished the peace there on the river bank, playing with Jacinta in the sand and reading the paper.

The garden grows on, slower now than before as the tomato and cucumber surge comes to an end. The dryness hasn’t helped much, nor have the chickens sneaking in to dig up garden beds. But the cows did not cause any trouble this week! Fearing that in a month or so we’d have nothing to eat in the garden, Jess and I planted some more corn, beans, carrots and spinach. It’s hard to keep the moisture in the ground though with the wind and the heat, so perhaps none of the seed will ever sprout. I shall be thankful for any results! This week we harvested our first eggplant, a whole bunch of strawberries, tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, lettuce, spinach, and a tiny cantaloupe. While Jess played with her plastic pigs in the water, I continued my meager weeding effort in the hopes of preventing the teepee garden from being swallowed up by a creepy crawly grass that is taking over. I need about twenty four hours of straight labor to get it done though. All I can do in this heat is about an hour. Oh well. Long live the weeds, powerful, vibrant weeds, we have a house now!

It has been a great week, a lovely way to begin 2007. I talked with a few loved ones from the Midwest and received a package full of pictures and summer maternity clothes from a dear friend. We’re free to create in our own space now. The breeze is awesome from this end of the house and the cicadas and frogs sing louder here as we are closer to the dam. The rooster’s early morning crows are also more prominent here, but you can’t have it all. It’s starting to rain! How lucky we are.

I’ll close on a story about our wedding ring. On one of Matt and Jacinta’s outings to the park, while playing on the swings Jess asked Matt about the six symbols on his ring. He first had her guess what she thought each one was, she saw bandicoots and kangaroos in addition to the heart and tree. The cross, the human, the music notes, and the pair of holding hands all had to be explained to her. These symbols are all very important to Matt and I so it was very special to let her in on them. Today as Matt was pulling down boxes which had stored things we didn’t need over the past year, he found a very special batik I had made in Senegal. It had five of our wedding ring symbols surrounding a big beautiful Baobab tree. It was a gift to both of us for our wedding and has hung everywhere we have lived over the past eight years. Today we found that the mice had destroyed it while it lay unused for the past year. It would be nice if I had really learned how to “batik” so that I could remake the cloth, but I was guided so heavily that I could never repeat this. So as we slowly move into this new life, I will slowly try to let go of this meaningful cloth and further practice the belief that material things are nothing. Most often they fall away from us or end up cluttering our lives so entirely that we have no room left to create. But as I tend to lose things...I’ll admit that I am elated to still have both of our rings, the mice can’t eat gold. (The original ring flew off of my finger in the Mediterranean Sea a few years ago, but we had another one made!)

Wishing you peace, joy and passion,

Shana

Jumping in 2007

Happy New Year loved ones! Hope you’re content with the fruits of 2006 and ready to leave it behind and move on to 2007. We sure are, 2006 was our first complete year as a family in Australia. 2007 will hopefully bring us a healthy new baby and a new house. We are still celebrating Christmas, funnily enough, receiving a few Christmas cards from beloved friends in America in the mail each day and even a few more gifts! Jess still carries around baby Jesus in her stroller, but now locked up in a tiny box, “so he won’t get dirty.” New Years Eve we celebrated with some friends at a park on the river. This gathering was filled with lovely food, as these friends were all healthy food lovers and cooks. Jess went straight to work in the sand with her shovel and bucket. All she needed to know was, “Where’s the sand?” Matt happily played with her on the swings and the “slippery slide,” marveling at how long she can now enjoy just swinging back and forth. We left just after dark for home so Jess and I could go to bed early. Party animals, yes.

Jacinta is a very confident little two and a half year old now. She’ll tell you anything you need to know and if you let her, she’ll tell you what to do, exactly how and when to do it. Sometimes after dinner Matt takes Jess out on a bike ride to the park, to town, to the river, or on a walk. One night this week before dinner she informed me that, “Daddy will take me to the park after dinner.” During dinner it was discovered that she had come up with this plan on her own, so she had to then ask him for an outing. Of course he happily obliged, after a monotonous day of fiddly tasks building the house going out with Jacinta is the best option for release. Last night they went down in the gully to play in the mud and also play some cricket. Matt says that she already shows a partiality towards fielding and bowling, leaving Matt to bat. He found it pretty funny that every single time he hit the ball, no matter how far or close it was to her she said, “Hang on…I’m going to get it.”

As she learns cricket from Matt, she has just begun “pano lessons” with me. My mom, the piano teacher, sent Jacinta this cute little piano book for little ones with Mozart Mouse and Beethoven Bear. Jacinta was very excited about this new idea and since the piano is out on the veranda, asks every few hours for a piano lesson. She is a lot like me in that she tries to tell me what to do rather than listen to instruction, as I did to my sweet mommy. Don’t get the wrong idea, we’re not trying to make her a Mozart. She is just learning about high and low notes, and soft and loud sounds. She composes her own pieces now, “Big Bears and Little Bears….big bears and little bears,” she chants over and over while playing a few random keys here and there. Her other song is, “Where’s my Bear?” She can only sing at one volume level, LOUD! She thinks about Grandma Shari as she practices and talks about how Grandma will teach her on her next visit. It’s fun for me to have my mom live through her in this way. She’ll be happy to see that my dad also plays the piano on our next visit to the States.

Besides cricket and piano, Jacinta has been keeping busy just playing. She loves to play with Pop and Grandma, and do whatever comes to mind. Her most common pass times these days are riding on the rocking horse and jumping. She can usually convince “Pop” to let her jump on their bed and giggles uncontrollably all the while. She loves jumping, she jumps off of steps, into your arms, on our bed with Matt, and on a little trampoline. I just moved the trampoline into our bedroom and she has a big jump every time she enters the room. Her animals jump with her, she sings songs while jumping, she talks about how high her friends with big trampolines can jump. “Helena jumps like this!” She shows me, and realizes that it should be higher, so she gets down on the ground and tries again. Cooking is not her favorite pass time, nor is gardening, but once she gets into it she surely enjoys herself and brings her imagination into the task. The only problem with cooking is that she wants to eat everything and it’s usually right before mealtime.

I haven’t had much energy for cooking either, but hopefully it will return once we have our own kitchen with counters made for short people and I am not so heavy on my feet. I do have that funny nesting energy though, I have been doing any task I can to help prepare the way for a new baby and a new living space. I just finished my first pseudo quilting project using the face of one of Jacinta’s baby quilts. I placed this little quilt in the middle of a large piece of fabric, edged it, laid some wool batting beneath it, and then an old sheet beneath that, quilted the whole thing together by tying string through the layers at regular intervals, then bound the whole thing together. I can now begin to understand the difficulty and satisfaction of quilting, and have gained a lot more respect for real quilters. Jacinta also has her first big girl blanket for her new bed, when we move in. Curtains are my new project, resizing old curtains, comparing hardware prices, measuring for curtains which we must make, trying to find affordable material and so on. Luckily we have Mary to help with the sewing, and Matt found a few huge bolts of decent fabric on Ebay, so we are on our way.

One fun task this week was sorting through boxes looking for newborn clothes to wash BEFORE the baby arrives. Last time I did it while I was in labor, but this time the clothes are not new. They are all lovingly stained with Jacinta’s dark yellow spit up, so this weekend Mary is helping me try to save them. Jacinta enjoyed seeing how tiny everything was and tried on a few hats and socks just for kicks. We were given a big gift certificate to the local kitchen shop for Christmas. This week Jess and I had a nice time spending “free money” on all of the random kitchen items we still needed, mostly utensils, baking pans, and little things which I should have saved from Michigan. I kick myself for leaving a lot of things behind, but what’s done is done. I never contemplated the blessing of living in a place with so much abundance. People around Detroit give away a lot of good quality items. Not here, anything free is often junk and everything else is for sale. Perhaps it’s the difference in economic status, or just a different way of life.

We’re surely living a different life than what we had in Detroit! Rather than hanging out with teenagers, Matt’s week was spent just trying to get through all of the annoying little tasks such as making window frames, door frames, hanging doors, putting in doorknobs, and putting up cornices (long, thin curved strips of drywall which cover up intersections of drywall sheets). He began the closet/bookshelf wall which separates the two bedrooms. He achieved quite a lot, but these are the kind of tasks which one might think would be quick and easy but they all take time, more time than we really want to spend. Jess and I didn’t help much on the house this week, but we did one thing. We painted Jacinta’s bedroom door. One side is blue and the other is creatively painted by Jess and I. It is quite a sight to behold, and this is why the interesting side is inside Jacinta’s room! The floor remains unfinished and will be the last thing we do, well, almost.

Rather than cooking for school children and taking Jacinta on walks through the nice flat suburban streets, I am huffing and puffing up our little hill with loads of tomatoes, cucumbers, and beans in a large basket. I am getting discouraged by the early morning calf that has broken into the terrace garden every morning this week and systematically eaten every corn stalk he could reach, leaving only the four which reach seven feet high. Keith tried his best to chase him out, and spent a lot of time trying to repair the fence and stop the naughty cow. Michelle and Rory came for a visit Wednesday. We all worked together to fence the garden African style, by stuffing branches and brambles into the chicken wire to pump it up and make it more of an obstacle. I didn’t do much fencing, some wedding though, but Keith and Michelle did great work! It felt great to actually do something to stop the problem rather than just feeling fat, pregnant and helpless and angry at the cow. Then the next day, and the next day, the calf found its way in through another hole. Oh well, we’re having a good tomato harvest, found four strawberries today, picked our first cantaloupe and can try planting more corn, again.

So here it is, the new year. What does it hold? We never know, hopefully a baby, a house, a trip to the US, some visitors from the US and a few ears of corn. I hope you all find what you hope for in the new year. I’m sure this is not one of your grand hopes and dreams, but for some entertainment from Matt, a new video, see our website, www.paintedguitar.com. Look on the blog for videos, it is the sanding video. It is exhilarating (:

I’ll leave you with a funny animal story. “New dog,” the visiting dog that never leaves was lying on his outdoor bed this morning, sleeping. He stinks so he is an outside dog. Mrs. Red, a hen, came up onto the veranda in search of a nice spot to lay an egg. Mary was sitting in a chair next to the dog, and curiously watched what the chicken would do. The hen snuck around to New dog’s bum and bit him. He jumped off the bed, squealed and went away. Mrs. Red took his place triumphantly and laid her egg.

Love and Peace,

Shana