Toilet tricks and kangaroos

Good evening loved ones! It is the last week of February, it is hot and dry again and the mosquitoes are out in full force. There have been no signs of labor, yet I feel great. The plumbing is in so now we are well and truly ready for this baby to come on out. Of course we know that he or she will join us when the time is right, but we joke that it should have come earlier since Jess did and now that the plumbing is complete. We even have a toilet to tip out the baby’s nappies! Our friends Jenny and Ted from Sydney have brought up their little baby boy to spend the week with us and perhaps assist if there is a birth to occur this week. Matt will have another birthday on Monday, and he said he’d rather not receive any gifts, but perhaps a baby to share his day. Que sera sera.

It has been an eventful week, starting out sadly and finishing on a joyful note. On Monday morning Matt left bright and early to make the five hour trip to Sydney to join baby Teresa’s family and friends at her funeral. Unfortunately twenty minutes down the road he hit a kangaroo, which would be the equivalent of hitting a large deer in the US. As you can imagine, his major sadness was the realization that he would not make it to the funeral, be able to play guitar for Teresa, nor join his friends in their grief. Another sad part is obviously the death of the kangaroo. Then to top it off, he had to wait a few hours for a tow truck to tow him back to Macksville in the knowledge that we would no longer have easy transportation to the upcoming birth.

He was amazingly calm about the whole experience just knowing that accidents happen and there was nothing he could have done differently. What was strange was that two different friends of ours had premonitions that something was happening to Matt around that time of day and called to check on him out of the blue.

Matt pointed out one benefit of living in a small town in that he could be dropped off by the tow truck at the repair shop and walk over just in time to catch his daughter’s swimming lesson and hug his favorite females after a rough morning. Although he missed the funeral, Teresa’s parents are coming up the coast for a holiday and will drop in sometime this week. Regarding the lack of a car, we live with one of the most giving men I’ve ever known. Keith has dropped all engagements that would take him and his truck more than ten minutes away so that we may rely on his truck for transport to the hospital. Our car has not been totaled and is being repaired locally after major engine and body damage. Getting my big belly up into a truck is quite a trick, but it’s possible. It is quite a blessing to live with family.

Our house has become truly functional, kitchen and bathroom included! Matt had a short term impetus to finish the plumbing and bathroom this week and succeeded. In addition to his first day of substitute teaching, he sanded the bathroom walls and painted them. He spray painted the last two glass panels and installed all four to finish off the bathroom walls. He built the sink base and installed the sink which now has running water. He dug the drains for the kitchen and bathroom sinks. He finally ordered the composting toilet and it showed up the next day! Friday he installed the strange new toilet which rather than connecting plumbing required cutting a hole in the roof for air circulation in the compost chamber. It is huge compared to your average toilet, but an amazing piece of work. It is odd to have no option of flushing, and astounding that the compost starter (humus, sawdust, etc), with the help of the built-in fan prevent any odor from building up. Being a pregnant woman, it is quite a luxury to have a toilet ten steps from my bedroom now. We can now cook, do dishes and pee in our own space! What a beautiful relief, thank you Matt.

To celebrate the new kitchen, Jacinta and I have been preparing a lot of food to freeze and enjoy when the new baby arrives. We made pizza crusts, dried fruit, cracked nuts, hummous, tortilla dough and perhaps that’s all. It felt like a lot more as we were doing it. I suppose my energy level is not so high, not surprising. We took a few jaunts to the garden, some to frighten out cows, others to collect a few herbs and green onions, but surely not for weeding or planting. I honestly have to make an effort to get outside these days with the hot sun and nasty mosquitoes as deterrents, it’s so unlike me. Swimming in the spa doesn’t really count as it’s in the courtyard while we swim in chlorinated blue water. I’ll often encourage Jacinta to join me to play under the shady trees and collect treasures while I hang the laundry. We’ll go on short walks sometimes. Matt takes her on longer walks and bike rides to the park, but since we have our own space I really enjoy using it! We reached the evening on Wednesday and realized that we hadn’t really been outside so we then played in the sandbox before bedtime. We’ll get back outside soon enough, summer is almost over.

Jacinta’s major pastimes this week were artwork (play dough and drawing), talking, reading stories and showing us “tricks.” At the end of the session, a kind mother from playgroup was about to throw out her homemade play dough and Jacinta politely asked, “Can I take this home?” Of course she was given a nice green blob of dough to bring home. This became a great contemplative activity that kept Jacinta at the table for as long as she was allowed. Typically she really needs adult participation and praise to continue an activity for more than ten minutes, but not play dough. With her rolling pin and knife in hand she can create pizzas, cookies, animal families, and even water for them to drink. She enjoys making cards for friends and cousins, and just drawing in general. She came along with me to choir this week with her crayons and shocked me with her new drawing skills. It’s so wonderful to watch the evolution of her pictures move from insisting that we draw most everything for her to drawing her own circles with sun rays surrounding them and calling them the sun. She’ll now draw her own “mama goat and baby goat” as circles with heads, tail and legs all drawn in the same direction, towards the ground. She’ll use her fat crayons and shade in pictures rather than scribbling lines. She’ll draw trees as long sticks with circles at the top. This is something that all parents probably learn, but as first timers, Matt and I just love watching her seep up new concepts on her own, mostly through imitation, but almost never through direct teaching.

Language is surely one thing she learns through imitation, and she imitates everyone around her. She knows that we all use different words for things, regularly commenting that, “Pop says that,” or “Grandma says that.” Although we have thus far tried to avoid this derivative of her name, she now refers to herself as “Jessie” because her two friends Lily and Aidan call her Jessie. She still asks what different things are called in America, and in “Farance,” thereby learning the pronunciation of a few French words here and there. She talks constantly, this is imitating both Keith and myself, surely not Matt. She entertains herself by rhyming and cracks herself up laughing when she comes up with a funny sounding word. Of course she enjoys our participation, but will happily rhyme alone for a while. As we have been spending more time relaxing inside, we have been reading more stories. Matt was reading Moo Baa La La La, one evening, a very short simple book about animals sounds. Typically when we read stories that rhyme, we allow Jess to finish each page and say the last few words. She enjoys participating and usually says the appropriate word, but this evening she made a joke. “The duck says…..” She laughed and said, “Neigh!” “The horse says……” “Quack!” she giggled, knowing that she had directly swapped the sounds. Matt marveled at this evolution of understanding, not thinking she was extraordinarily clever but just pondering the gradual change in her intelligence, and how sometimes it doesn’t seem so gradual, it leaps.

As Jacinta develops mentally, we also watch her body grow and become more capable. She is quite aware that she is “learning” and “growing” and explains the change by saying that, “Big girls do it like this.” When she comes up with a new way to get around something, to climb something, or to do anything she calls it a new trick. “Watch my new trick!” In working with children, this is nothing new. Children always seek attention and love to show off, and she is normal. When baby Jonathan arrived on Friday, in addition to smothering him with cuddles and wanting to help him do everything, she immediately began her show of tricks to grab Jenny and Ted’s attention. I suppose I didn’t expect the insistence to “watch me!!!!” to start so early, but in preparation for the new baby, Jess is now ready to grab our attention by force.

In preparation for the baby, a familiar phrase….yes, thankfully there is not much left to do. Jacinta and I set up the baby changing table and packed a few more things for the hospital, but that is all. My sister sent us a package with a few of Jess’s newborn outfits and piles more of cousin Kai’s newborn clothes to continue the circle of sharing. I love dressing my babies in clothes that have been loved and worn by people we love, so these were all very exciting to add to the drawer. Jess loves looking at things she wore and hearing stories about when she was a “little tiny baby.” Matt continues to show her pictures of the birth and when she was tiny, as I tell her about the birth and what she will see. She is excited to see the umbilical cord where the baby gets its food, but mostly to see where her belly button came from.

We are all ready and excited, but the baby’s in charge. I guess the baby doesn’t care that we now have plumbing, but we sure are happy! Until next week, I wish you a peaceful end to February. Every time you look down at your belly button, think of your mom and smile.

Peace,

Shana

I'm going to live underwater

Good evening (: Another peaceful week gone by, another week closer to the birth. I am so excited now. Somehow as I get bigger and less comfortable, I am happier and complaining less. Perhaps Matt may have a different take on this statement given my groaning and grunting as I try to get comfortable at night. Honestly, I feel calm, happy, healthy, at peace with my surroundings, and ready to embrace this little being with all of my being. It hasn’t been terribly hot and has rained quite a bit this week, which helps our state of mind. There are many possibilities to explain this late pregnancy comfort.

First of all, I LOVE our new house! As you can imagine, it is an amazing feeling to inhabit a space that you dreamt up and helped labor to create. Matt has a different take on it at the moment, more like, “oh, look at that mistake I made,” and “I can’t build a book shelf for Jess’s books until I finish the bathroom. Then I’ll do this, then that,” and on and on. Secondly, as has been the case for almost two years now, I have no job outside of the house, nowhere I have to go, no obligation to earn any money. Each day I have small goals to accomplish, like cleaning the stroller, washing jars to fill with grains, packing a bag for the hospital, weeding around the house to deter bull ants, making cards for Jacinta’s friends, cooking meals for anyone inclined to eat them, harvesting a few vegetables from the garden, or putting laundry out on the line. If I don’t set out to do too much, I can actually feel accomplished, even though it may look to someone else as if I’ve not done much of anything. Perhaps these tasks seem menial to some who have jobs and occupations out of the house, but I truly enjoy this slow life.

It’s so funny thinking back to my teenage years and learning that this kind of life was demeaning to women. If you demean the importance of childhood also, then sure, this life isn’t worth my education. Although I (the government, alumni and Hope College) spent a pretty penny on college, I love this life, and would not have learned the value in it without my $80,000 college experience. Well, perhaps traveling for four years would not have cost so much, perhaps a better investment, but I wouldn’t have met Matt. I suppose most sane people wouldn’t see the value in that investment, those that gave me scholarships nor the U.S. government. All I can do is say, “Thank you!” The Australian government actually gives parents a special bonus called “Parent Payment,” if there is one parent at home with the children. It’s not just a tax cut, it’s a bi-weekly check supporting those who make the sacrifice of one income for their children. It’s quite a shock coming from the U.S. where there are so many single parents working low paying jobs who must pay for and put their children in child care from dusk until dawn to scrape out enough to pay rent and eat. It’s hard to listen to some politicians rave on about “family values” given the current policies in America. But I suppose the vast size of the US in comparison to these smaller socialist countries is always an excuse, but then…what about the military budget?

Ho hum, how do you transition from the military budget to preparing for a sweet baby to come and bless us? I suppose it’s impossible so I’ll just jump. I saw my naturopath one last time this week and stocked up on all of the herbal and homeopathic concoctions she has prescribed to make me strong and this birth as calm and easy as possible. I saw my local doctor and heard the heartbeat, strong as it could be once again. The head is still down and all is well. I finished knitting the baby’s blanket at choir on Tuesday and sang some lovely melodies into its stitches. I love knitting things in places that I enjoy being surrounded by people I admire, knitting different energies into its fibers. The next day, Jess and I gave the blanket a bath and also washed the stroller Jess used as a baby. Matt and I both each started and finished a glass mural this week. Matt painted a Leunig poem called, “The Smile” and I painted a scene inspired by one of Jacinta’s books called The Day You Were Born. It is a picture of a woman holding a newborn baby in the middle of a circle of people dancing and animals watching in the middle of the globe. I drew a little Jacinta holding onto the baby, added a few kangaroos to make it more geographically appropriate, a few squirrels to recognize my roots, and drew plants I know and love as part of the earth. It was a fun project and will be the wall behind the toilet in our bathroom. Could you ask for a more sacred location?

The loveliest part of our baby preparation this week was what I described to Jacinta as a “girly party to welcome the baby,” officially called a Blessingway. It was more of a “spoil the mama” party which then opens the doors for the baby, given a happy and calm mother. Four of my most treasured friends here came and brought me food, love and comfort. Jess knows and loves all of them and food, so she played a major part in the celebration with her exuberance and curiosity. Trish and Sally arrived first with huge coolers in hand, big smiles, and a beautiful chain of white frangipani flowers for me to wear around my neck. We sat and drank tea while waiting for the others. The clouds swelled, the wind picked up and the rains came down hard, just in time for Michelle and Osha to arrive in the downpour. After tea and chatting, Jacinta was anxious to begin so she called us to the circle where I lit a candle in the middle of the newly knitted baby blanket. This was our little altar, which I will recreate in the hospital to make it more like home. Each of my friends brought something special to them in the hopes that it would give me strength and energy during the birth: poems, shells, stones, bracelets, special coins, seeds, a digging stick, and kind words. Jacinta excitedly passed each object around for all to see and persistently asked “What is this for? What kind of seed pod? What do you dig with this?” as each gift’s significance was explained. After the altar was covered and we chatted about children, birthing and then food, we all squeezed hands for strength and moved on to lunch. It was yet another awesome meal prepared by my friends who love food: seaweed salad, spiced rice, eggplant and tofu curry, hummus, pita, baby quiches, pesto and cucumbers, and a plum and honey pastry. Osha who makes and sells all natural herbal creams and beauty products then gave me a foot bath and massage to top it all off. Jess watched and helped for a while, then finally started playing in the water hiding things under the bubbles until we finished and I was almost blissfully asleep. It was a lovely day and truly strengthened me in preparation for the birth, feeling the affection of my friends in a new land. I also received blessings from treasured friends in the States via email which brought it all together.

It feels as if things are coming together all over for us: the house, support from friends and family, the rain’s delay until after the dam had been dug out, Matt finding connections to continue working with Creation Spirituality, and now, almost firming up employment in Michigan for us this summer. Nothing is certain other than our desire to come out to the US for a few months this summer. Possibilities include working at the summer camp where we met in Almont, Michigan, lots of visits to our beloved Ferndale, Matt going out West for a few conferences on Creation Spirituality Communities, my step-brother’s wedding in Indiana, and most importantly, sharing our new baby and soon to be three year old Jacinta with our family and friends. We hope to come out and stay for at least June and July. After we will have finished our lovely abode, we hope to leave it, missing the only winter we get living in this hot country! We shall see, fingers crossed!

Speaking of the house being finished, I’ll give you the update on what Matt has done this week. Water has been the theme, funny that it also happened to rain after such a long dry spell. He started setting up the rain gutters on our portion of the house so that we don’t lose all of this rain to the grass. With these gutters our extra roof space is finally increasing the flow to the water tank. Plumbing is something new for Matt, as is much of what he has done so far though you couldn’t guess it looking at what he creates. He spent hours digging with Keith through the mess of already existing pipes going from the rain tank to the house, some dormant, some working, but all similar in appearance. They managed to dig in and hook up new pipes to bring water to our kitchen and bathroom. It was a long haul though. Drains still need to be created so the water isn’t in service just yet. I still carry dishes back and forth to the other kitchen, it keeps me fit, hee hee. The bathroom doesn’t yet have a toilet, bath or sink, but the pipes are there now, even connecting us to the hot water heater, nice. Matt began building the base for the old cast iron sink. Although he is anxious to meet Baby Henry #2, he would prefer he or she wait to come until the plumbing is finished. We shall see.

On Monday morning Matt will travel to Sydney to celebrate the life of little Teresa, our good friends’ baby who was born and died within five hours. This week he wrote a beautiful song for Teresa, Anne Marie and Bernie which they will use at the service. He will mourn and celebrate Teresa’s short life with old friends and drive back Tuesday morning, hoping that I will not yet be in labor. Jacinta knows that “Daddy is going to Sydney to say goodbye to baby Teresa because she died.” I wonder if you can really understand what that means at her age, even though she lives on a farm and sees death more often than most Western children. She named a star on my mural for baby Teresa, then chose two larger stars to be Anne Marie and Bernie. She then asked me to draw one more baby star, “for their other baby,” a baby that perhaps they will have one day who will live long enough to walk, talk, skip and jump.

Again, another hard transition from saying goodbye to a little being who never had the chance to do the things Jacinta does to telling stories about the joys of our living little girl’s life. I suppose each of us has our own path. Jacinta’s path this week has been quite smooth. She has been a great playmate, cook’s helper, and co-creator. She loves to help anyone that can give her a fun job. She is learning to calm herself down in her bedroom. It’s quite humorous after sending her to her room while she tantrums about not getting her way. She comes out after a few minutes of forced crying and says, “I’m calm now,” and goes on to do exactly what she refused to do five minutes ago. Another addition to life since we moved is that Jess will sing to us at bedtime each evening. We sing one song and she sings one too, sometimes with Matt playing “pitar” (guitar) accompaniment. This weeks songs were, “1 2 3 4 jump,” and “Mama duck Baby duck.” The lyrics are exactly the same as the title, over and over, with a definite melody sung quietly and with great feeling. You can imagine our hearts melting with each and every note.

Watching her grow from a little puddle jumper to a little girl who wears big black boots to go exploring down in the new dam (with parents) has been amazing. Muckwalking is what we call it: wearing boots up to your knees and trudging through mud so deep you could mistake it for quicksand. We all love it and now that the dam is not so steep or deep at the moment, we decided to make it an evening activity last Thursday. Logs that had been submerged for years are now good balance beams, clay that was dug up unevenly has formed little mountains to climb, it is now quite a playground. There are tiny bits of green popping out of the dirt, and a few lily pads resurfacing after the demolition. It is surely not swimmable but we still have the spa and the river for swimming.

As I have found too many words to share with you all I will end this with a story about another evening beach outing. After our picnic on the riverside, Matt lied down after a hard day of plumbing to rest under the trees while Jess ran and I waddled into the river for a swim. Swimming around the fish, full of energy to dive under and paddle around, Jess was in her element. She was back and forth from the shallow to the deep, in and out of her ring, goggles on and off, going from riding on my back to pushing off of my legs to swim under water and come straight back to me. At one point she said, “I’m going to live under the water.” Later on, she looked out across the water and saw a man dressed in red and white off in the distance and asked, “Is that Santa Claw?” I laughed at her pronunciation and said probably not, but that the man was digging for something in the water. We then spent the next fifteen minutes watching the couple dig for “something” and talking about what they might be doing. On the way home while munching on her apple, after a few minutes of rare silence she asked, “Do you remember seeing Santa Claw?” I told her I did, “at the playgroup Christmas party?” and then she recounted the whole day: exactly who was there, what she ate, and that she had played at the beach. It’s so interesting what children can remember when their brains haven’t yet been overloaded by all of the things that we grownups have in our heads. I suppose Santa is here to stay, there is no turning back.

Have a great week. Thanks for all of the responses on thunder, I learned something myself! I hope you all see Santa in strange places as Jess does, it’s funny to think of him digging for shellfish in the river. We’ll keep you posted on baby’s arrival.

Peace,

Shana

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

No way, Jose

Good day my dear distant loved ones. February has arrived, I hope it has brought nice weather and good vibes for you all. Its arrival to me is very exciting: Matt’s birthday month, the first safe month in which the baby may arrive, a visit from good friends from Sydney and the start up of choir and playgroup now that the school children have gone back to class. For Matt, it means the beginning of his work as a “casual” teacher now that he has worked through all of the red tape, and crunch time to build a kitchen and a bathroom. His birthday is probably more exciting to me than it is him, I like making cakes. It is hot, yes, but we’re in the final month of summer and pregnancy so I think I’ll make it. Jess has helped by taking back her afternoon naps and I have also been able to nap, daily! It makes the evenings more fun when I can stay up with my night owl husband, at least for a while. February is also watermelon season, not in my garden but on the farms. For Jess and I, this is not just a food, it is a daily activity.

Harvesting, sadly, is no longer a daily activity. The carrots are finished, the corn is gone, no more peppers, no more strawberries, no more tomatoes, well…a few cherry tomatoes, and the Swiss chard has lost its vitality. There are a few beans, though most of them have dried out, one more cucumber, some basil, eggplant that no one wants to eat, and lots of green onions. One lovely surprise we found while weeding was a patch of about eight potatoes ready to eat. Jess always begs to dig up potatoes and voila! Hidden under the weeds, artichoke plants and borage were the lovely little spuds. I’ve actually found quite a few volunteer potato plants scattered around the terrace garden, it makes me think… “I should be planting potatoes now!” I did a lot of watering and weeding this week and since it was overcast, Jess happily played down in the garden. While walking around the garden edge made of logs, proudly balancing herself, Jacinta curiously asked, “What do they call cucumbers in America?” She was surprised to hear that we call them “cucumbers.” I tried explaining that most words we say are the same, but she still gets a kick out of pretending it’s a whole different language, like French.

This week she caught on to the phrase, “No way Jose!” She uses it quite often, and likes to ask where Jose lives. I’ve explained that Jose means Joseph in Spanish, so now she asks about words in Spanish. Matt and I had a good laugh when she changed the phrase, insistently yelling, “Don’t Jose!” It didn’t have quite the same ring. As I’ve said before, she keeps us laughing. This week I saw how girly she is just naturally, by watching her in the mirror. She was practicing her smile: real smile, fake smile, frown, sheepish look, snotty look. She is ready to be a big sister and has the maternal instinct in her already. Playgroup started up again after six weeks of vacation. I thought she’d have missed her friends so much she’d dive right in and play with them. Her hair may be longer, she looks older and taller, but she still plays the same game. She begs for food from mom every ten minutes, searches out the best toys, including the battery operated violin, plays on the slide, and pushes around dolls in strollers by herself. Her pram pushing went to a new level though, she actually took the doll on a long stroll around all of the paths she could see, walked slowly and gently and sang lullabies to the baby. A few of her friends came to the house for visits and they all had a nice time playing together, but playgroup is a different story. It’s all about the toys there.

Water was a big theme this week. Jess steadily becomes more comfortable in the water each week in swimming lessons, willingly diving underwater to fetch toys if the water is shallow enough. She’ll gladly tell you, “I was brave!” She swam in the river, the pool, the spa and today she even went in the dam! We never go in the dam, but today, there was a good reason. Stop worrying though, there’s no chance we let her put her head under that water. Our dam is quite shallow and has no underground source of which we are aware. When there is a real drought, it will dry up. We are not in terrible drought right now, and I don’t think it’s about to dry up tomorrow. The issue is its potential, it could dry up or we could prevent this from ever happening by digging it out to be much deeper in the interest of the cows, the garden, the water life within, and for our viewing pleasure. Our neighbor is forking out the money for excavation to make this a better dam for his cows, we are paying to pump the water out of the dam so that it can be dug out efficiently.

We will benefit from the deepening of the dam through the rich soil which we can use after it is removed from the bottom of the dam, it will be cleaner, it may go deep enough to find a natural spring, and perhaps one day it will be swimmable. The sad part is the loss of the water lilies and that soon we will have no water in the dam and nothing with which to water the gardens. The task now is to use and store all of the water we can on the gardens and in tanks before it is all pumped out into the river. But in the future, after it rains a whole lot, we will be better off. So for two days straight we have been watering the gardens all day long in the hot sun (it does seem silly when so many people have no water at all for their gardens). Yesterday Keith rolled down a 500 gallon tank for us to use and set it all up He also helped me make up a huge oil drum of fertilizer with cow manure and green manure. It felt good to save such a large quantity for dry times. Today Matt and I purchased a heavy duty sprinkler and I weeded under its showers for a few hours. It was lovely, and productive! Jess, all the while, was in her mucky clothes jumping around in the strong stream of muddy water being pumped out of dam over the bank. She and Jedda looked as if they were playing on a slip and slide, but there was no plastic underneath, just tons of water moving very fast. Watching all of this lovely water showering the trees and gardens made me sad that I have so little planted right now. But realistically, I can’t take the extra work. It’s about time I gave up trying to eat only vegetables in the garden and buy some at the shops. Green onions, eight potatoes and basil aren’t going to cut it this week!

Speaking of food, Matt successfully installed our gas oven in the kitchen. I have stalled its christening until today, Jess and I cooked a tortilla on it just for fun. I’ll probably wait until the shelves and cupboards are all in to really begin cooking in our new kitchen. Matt spent a lot of time down in his shed workshop this week, toiling away on kitchen furniture. Instead of purchasing flat sheets of expensive hardwood, he is taking the time to cut thin strips from our stock of floorboards and other boards, glue them together, sand them, stain them, sand them, and stain them over and over. It creates a beautiful work surface, you should see the countertop he is about to install. I am so excited to use them in our own kitchen, it’s surely worth the wait. We bought a large box of recycled cupboard doors and drawers which are coming in very handy. Already in the kitchen is the sink mounted on top of a few cupboards and these recycled doors. It only awaits shelves and plumbing. Matt got a break from building for a few interviews with schools for casual teaching and a trip to Eco House, a great second hand warehouse. Two days after his interview came his first request for substitute teaching, but by chance it fell on his only day of work at the bank. Hopefully he’ll spend more time in schools than in the bank these next few months. One thing is for sure, he’ll still be spending a lot of time in the shed, playing with Jacinta and cuddling our new little one.

Thinking of little ones, we had some very sad news come from friends here in Australia. Our friends Bernie and Anne Marie who Matt has known since high school were due to birth a child in February. They knew the child would be born with a congenital heart disease and that most likely it would not live long enough to even grow teeth. They stuck it out, hoping and praying that he or she would come out and at least stay with them long enough to be cuddled and loved if even for a few minutes, but maybe for years. On Tuesday evening, Teresa Clare Higgins was born and cuddled for five hours, and then she passed away. Besides the tears of sadness and amazement at our friends’ faith and strength, there is not much else to say. Life is full of joys and pains, and particularly painful for some of us. It is rare that we lose babies so soon in wealthy countries so we are not prepared to hear outcomes such as these. Matt will soon travel to Sydney for the funeral to celebrate her short life. It’s hard even to write that word, celebrate, but we are learning from Bernie and Anne Marie.

Our little being, thankfully still safe and happy in my womb, is doing quite well. We are one month away from our due date and this now means weekly doctor’s appointments. Oh well. I am faithfully drinking all of the herbal teas and tonics and taking vitamins that the naturopath and my books recommend. I am also fulfilling all of my duties in blood tests and the like. One awesome thing about the medical system in this country is Medicare. Everyone, rich and poor, gets money back for going to the doctor. It’s so easy, there are no humiliating workers that make you feel bad for asking and request numerous forms of proof and ID. You just walk into the Medicare office, (there is never a line) hand over your Medicare card, your receipt for paying the doctor and they hand you back about 80% in cash, smile and wish you a nice day. I go the doctor so often now that I visit Medicare to get money rather than the ATM. Back to more important matters, the baby moves around a lot, although its head is still down and has been for a month or so. It’s funny to watch my belly contort while baby is stretching, playing, checking out what each limb can do or whatever it may be doing. I am still knitting a blanket for this little one, but it’s hard holding wool in the heat. It makes me wonder, “Why am I knitting such a warm blanket???” The simple reason is that I fell in love with the wool, not very practical, I know.

So after all that, to sum it up, we are enjoying life, each other, the trees, the birds, even the goat and are excited for the newness to come. We received packages almost every day this week from America and got a few phone calls and this made the week even better. I’m now trying to catch up on some real letter writing before baby number two comes to us. Thanks once again for all of your letters, love and support.

Happy February!

Peace,

Shana