MommyCoddle

the waiting game

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First of all and most importantly, THE CAT CAME BACK. Looking full-bellied, content and not at all sure why we were making such a big fuss over his return. Phew. All are sleeping easier now.
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I knew setting up internet service and phone service in our new house would be a bit of a bear when, the day before we moved in Dan said to me, "I'm not even sure if any of the phone jacks in the house work. I tore out all the ones upstairs because the wires were all over the trim. Does a house really need more than one phone jack, anyway? One in the kitchen is plenty."

So of course, it takes a week just to get the phone turned on at your new house, between the hours of 8am and 5pm. And then, when a few hours after being on, the dialtone becomes a deafening buzz, it takes another week to get someone to return to your house, between the hours of 8am and 5pm, to fix it. And then, when the nice man fixes it and you hook up your DSL equipment, it takes four calls to techincal support where you get disconnected three times before you finally get on the phone with someone you can barely understand, who then decides that they need to send someone to your house....in a week....between the hours of 8am and 10pm.

I feel like I've been on house arrest--waiting for the phone man, the gas man, the technical support man, the electric man. In one sense, you know, it's okay. Because really, there's plenty of work for me to do at home. And a little house arrest isn't always such a bad thing. But you know, I really need a garbage can for my trash because when you live in the country you can't just put it out by the shed. And I really need a gallon or two of milk and something to put on the grill tonight besides zucchini (thank you, dear farmers that bring bags of zucchini to my husband at work, for keeping us fed). And the girls are itching for more library books.

But Monday is the magic day. The technical support man will arrive and I'll find out if DSL is even possible in my little 'new' old house. I want to come back to the land of blogging. I miss you all. I have things I want to tell you and things I want to write down in this little space so that I don't forget them.

And I want to be able to check the weather radar to look for storms. Because the girlies and I love to watch for summer storms so that they can get good and scared before they arrive.

And look up a recipe I can't find.

And google "safe tick removal".

In the meantime, I'm trying to bring a few quiet, normal moments back in to our day. Painting a wooden bird house--that gets checked hourly for residents. Putting out a big jar of sun tea. Killing time in the backyard under a shade tree and removing all bits of nastiness from a curious one year old's mouth...rocks, sticks, grass, rocks, rocks, and...should I even tell you this? Dried up, flattened, crusty worm carcasses. (more than one.) Tell me she'll have a great immune system when she gets older, from all these germs she's tasting??? Now, at least, when I walk over to her, she takes them out of her mouth and hands them to me. "mum-mum? mum-mum?" Thanks, babe.

Alright. Once again, it's friday night and I feel like I'm the last one in the office. But that's how it goes when you're stealing an internet signal wherever you can get it....

Happy Weekend, friends.

signs of summer

I know I was supposed to write another installment in my green laundry "series" this week, but time got the best of me, and other posts got in the way. But I promise I'll share more early next week. I have some more good things to pass along and a giveaway! :) So be watching.

Summer has suddenly arrived around here and with that the much anticipated filling of the pool. The pool here on my grandparents' farm has been around since the 30s or 40s. Most of it was dug out with work horses and then some excavating tools at the end. It is spring-fed and sucks the breath straight out of your chest when you dive in. But oh, how good it feels on a sticky, hot summer day. The other thing I love about it, is that it hasn't changed a bit since I was a little toddling bare-bummed swimmer many years ago--except for the fact that there's no longer a giant red crab painted on the bottom, and I've sewed new curtains for the girls' side of the pool house. While we wait the few days for the pool to fill, it is like a concrete beach for the girls to play in, the perfect warm-up to refresh their swimming muscles and techniques.

Last summer was the year I sat poolside with a hot, sticky newborn attached to my chest making me sweat in places where I didn't know possible. This year, I've graduated to baby pool life guard and hose-holder. Things are looking up.

Yesterday, the girls swam with two frogs who somehow made it up the drain to hang out in the cool water of the pool. Their panicked squeals turned to curiosity after I gave the frogs names--my trick for making all scary things seem like pals--Besty the bumble bee who flies all over our porch and sometimes in your face, Paul the spider who lives in the corner of our shower, and Charlie the fly who is...basically everywhere and even followed us all the way from Wisconsin to Maryland. The naming thing works like a charm.

This morning I started my last batch of strawberry jam for the season. My chubby-fisted friend will be sorry to see them go. Ive always know she had all the skills and muscles she needed to walk, she just needed the right incentive. This morning, she took four confident steps across the kitchen floor for the big bowl of berries I was holding out to her. My girl's got a thing for the berries.

I just don't recommend giving them to her outside and then letting her crawl around in the dirt...not a good combo, but good for a laugh and a bath in the kitchen sink.

**messy strawberry pix courtesy of my cousin...thanks, Mags!**

Happy Weekend!

m.

chaos reigns in mollycoddle land

I have full grocery bags sitting on the kitchen floor, an unmade bed staring me in the face, and three kittens scampering around my living room. Yet here I sit. Blogging. I love it.

You know, when I told Emma she could bring a kitten in to the house, I was anticiapting that we'd be moving in to the new house THAT weekend. Now I find myself changing "glitter" boxes, picking bits of dry catfood off the bottoms of my feet when I step out of the shower and peeling the little claws of dangling kittens off my window screens. The kittens have taken over our bathroom and are slowly taking over the house. Their "house" is in the bathroom--the bathroom that is already a step-sideways-if-more-than-one-person-is-in-there kind of bathroom. The bathroom where the sink sits tenderly on brackets on the wall...brackets that are expecting a set of metal legs to help hold up some of the weight. Metal legs that are no longer there. And when you bump a little too hard into the sink you find you're holding it in your hands and scrambling to turn off the water before it leaks all over your bathroom floor. So adding three kittens, a litter box, a water and food bowl in that bathroom? It makes things a little tight and a little tricky.

Sometimes the chaos I endure for my children is mind-boggling.

And when did our one kitten become three? Well, when Mary had a fit of jealousy over Emma having Rosie and her having nothing. Which dredged up all kinds of memories of her "Springy", last year's kitten that got hit by a car and now lives with Jesus. The one that makes her announce out of the blue, "I want to get flattened like Springy so I can go to heaven and be with him and Jesus." oy.

So, the orange kitten, "Orange Juicy", then "Juicy", now "Juice", came to live in our bathroom. And then that left Juice's brother all by himself in the big scary outdoors and "wouldn't he miss his brother and be lonely?" Tears. Tears. More tears. A weak mother. And now there are three...Rosie. Juice. And, Prancer.

As I said before...the chaos I endure....

And what do these pictures have to do with kittens taking over the house? Nothing, really. Except that maybe you could say they are symbolic of some of the chaos that has been reigning in these parts lately. Bed-jumping is generally frowned upon in this house. As my mother said to me, and I now say to my own children, "this always ends in tears." But yesterday, Emma cleaned her room, made both beds and pushed them together, all of her own doing. I figured a good bed-jumping episode could be overlooked (and photographed).

Some days we could all use a good jump on the bed.

hello again

I disappeared for awhile last week, didn't I? Just feeling bogged down with the usual--getting close to the big move, Dan working long and late, homeschool review, "working" the farmers' market, and other things that would make a real downer of a blog post.

We did not move in this weekend. It was a break your back trying to move in this weekend, or have a smoother move in a little later. We opted for later. I'm so ready for this to be over. It is really wearing on me lately. It's been a rough few days, for some reason. Without getting into the details I've had two people say different things to me in the last few days that really hurt my feelings and offended me. One about my parenting, the other about my struggle with missing Dan while he's working at night. So this morning while my kids play outside and Elizabeth naps, I'm escaping to the comfort of my blogging friends, and then I'll probably call my sister and wah-wah to her about my woes. And then, I"ll shake it off and move on.
 


But, BUT on a happy positive note...we've officially adopted our first new member of the Thomas Run four-legged community. "Rosie" was one of the first batch of kittens we found born here on the farm this spring. Emma and I loved her from the start. But then, her mother moved her kittens away and we didn't  know where she was. Several weeks later, we discovered that she had moved them to some brush across the road. We watched and waited and hoped there would be some way to catch this wild little kitten and give her a good home.

A few days ago, Emma came running inside to tell me that the mother cat had moved the kittens back into the milking barn but they were still wild and impossible to catch. But the night I walked up to the barn to look at them, Rosie just happened to scurry into a tube that was blocked on the other end and we scooped her up. She came home hissing and spitting and growling--scared and fending for her life. But after some good food, the comfort of our tiny little bathroom and Emma spending a whole day sitting on the bathroom floor cooing and calming her, she has gone from feral to friend.
 


Emma has this knack with the kittens and cats around here. It is almost magical to watch. She is patient and quiet and calm...For five! hours on Friday, she sat on the bathroom floor making potholders, thinking of names for her kitten and making a fast friend.

Yesterday Rosie fell asleep on my neck while I read and napped. I woke up to her licking my cheek, chewing on my earrings, and purring at deafening levels. Welcome to the family little Rosie.

This afternoon we're headed over to the house to put down some rugs and move around some furniture. And then we'll have our own little party on the back porch, I think.

Hope you all had a lovely weekend. Happy Monday, friends. Thanks for listening.

 

cutting room floor :: may 16

the final freezer bag of last year's tomatoes going into spaghetti sauce for supper

the lazy-man's way to net butterflies

taking a break from the overwhelming task of weeding at the new house

how each morning begins for elizabeth...a girl-party in her crib. usually there's one more little pair of feet in there, too.

mastering the climb into the rocking chair and feeling pretty proud of herself

mastering the reach (and dump) of the can of markers. they were on the floor about twelve seconds after this was taken.

and lastly...you don't have to watch these videos. Really, you don't. It's like sitting through someone's home movies or slideshow from their trip to the Grand Canyon. But they crack me up, because it's my children. And I get weak in the knees at every coo and squeal. And I melt at every chubby hand and wrinkled foot. And someday (like in six months), I'm going to look back at this and long for the days when she crawled across the floor and laid herself spread-eagle at the front door of the old apartment to tease the cats sitting on the porch hankering for a taste of our kitty food just inside....
**and for the record, I don't know what's more embarrassing: the scratched up, peeling paint dirty front door, the little green dresser missing its knobs, or the overflowing baskets of shirts and hats and riding boots...welcome to my world.**

Untitled from molly balint on Vimeo.

the weekend report

Emma and I watched some college gymnastics on Saturday which inspired a whole weekend of  flips and routines. Emma doesn't miss a detail when she watches these things, hence the paper number on her back, the hair pulled back in a bun, the focused, dramatic pause before each routine, the arms-raised bow after each dismount. She even got out baby powder and chalked up her hands. Dan threw together a make-shift "bouncing beam" at the house to complete the shows I've been watching all weekend.

I finally remembered to take my camera over to the house to show some floor progress. It was pretty crappy weather all weekend, so they're not the best shots. But the fact that there is now a floor where there was only logs before? That's progress. We put a few pieces of furniture around in the living room for fun. And all of a sudden our things are looking very colonial. But I like it.

So my mother's day was another work day for us. (or for poor Dan. I was on kid-duty.) It was a bit of a disappointing day, but I think that maybe I was just having a pity-party for myself. As I was sitting in the chair putting Elizabeth down for a nap yesterday I was reminded what a gift it is to be a mother. To feel so full and satisfied. To love it so much. To wake up to something new every single day. It is really a privilege. And that is what is most important to me. My three girls are really the best gift, as cheesy as that might sound.

And before I forget...books! My good friend the random number generator picked out Sam and Ali for the two Shackleton books. Sam, I'm sending you Trapped by the Ice, and Ali, I'll send you Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World. So send me an email with your address and I'll wrap them up and put them in the mail. 

I hope you all have a lovely Monday. It's rainy, cold and WINDY here! Yuck. But I think we might make the trek to the hardware store for a mailbox for the new house, despite the weather. My sunflower seeds are coming to the new house, and there's no mailbox to deliver them to. Yay for house progress!

truths I believe to be universal

Children become engrossed in their most creative, independent, cooperative play just as one wants to put them down for naps, or take them to bed.

At the moment, it is well past  their usual nap time but because they are dressed in fancy dresses (Emma in my circa 1991 glittery homecoming number) wearing white washcloths on their heads as caps, drinking tea, and talking about things that are "splendid", they're getting some extra time.

Children are their most irresistible in the middle of the night, when they come to your bedside all doe-eyed, drowsy and whispery-voiced asking to snuggle.

Mary has been showing up at my bedside quite regularly the past few nights asking to sleep in between me and Dan. She kicks like an angry cow, throws arms and elbows around and has a mean pair of what is known in our family as "thermal thighs", but darn, she's too cute to turn down. At least for now.

The best thrift stores are in sleepy little towns where the ladies sit behind the counter watching soaps, and bounce your baby on their knees and feed her bright orange peanut butter crackers while you shop.

It was fill your bag for five dollars. I didn't fill mine all the way so they only charged me four. But I brought home this tattered quilt top. Think there's some pillows in their somewhere? Or maybe a little kitchen window curtain? And the ladies held Elizabeth until her 26 pounds of chubs became too heavy for their frail laps and fragile arms and she slipped down their legs onto the floor to happily dig in the hanger box.

Kittens are cute.

kitten update 5. 6. 08 from molly balint on Vimeo.

Wrestling kittens are even cuter.

Untitled from molly balint on Vimeo.

video mode in the hands of an excited six year old

Well, hello there! The nice thing about a giveaway is that I get to meet so many of  my "quieter" readers. So many of you de-lurk to say hello. I love it. And for that, I'd say it IS better to give than receive. Thanks to the random number generator, the winner of Amanda's book is.....

MANDY of sewspun. Mandy, send me an email with your address and I'll get it in the mail to you, asap.

I have two more books to give away this week--children's books, so I'll try to get to those tomorrow.

This weekend was another week of work at the house. It was one of those, "the house is killing me" weekends. But the floors are getting close to being completed and we're at the point now where I think we'll just move in and work on everything else once we get in there. The house takes Dan away from us so much. It's really wearing on all of us. Saturday night, we gave up watching the Kentucky Derby to take a surprise picnic dinner over to Dan. I could tell he just needed to have his family running around the place while he worked. So we christened our back deck with its first meal and then walked around and explored more of the property after supper. 

Emma discovered the "movie" setting on my digital camera and I gave her full reign while we were hanging out after supper. I was casually observing the footage she was recording and I was really excited to download the things she had filmed. She was getting some great stuff on there of herself, her sisters. I couldn't wait to see. Looks like I'm going to have to give her a little more instruction about how it works. She must have gotten a little crazy with her trigger finger--there were only little ten second segments of video. I guess she was "taking pictures" instead of letting the thing just run and record. There's really nothing that earth-shattering about these videos, I just like to put them up on my blog every now and then. A little change-up...some live footage is always fun, right?

A little background for her clips: our friend showed up in the driveway in his tractor. A  boy that hangs around the farm a lot and plays with the kids. Emma got a tad bit excited but still managed to maintain her commentary to the camera. (hold on to your stomach while you watch...) **I think the videos are coming up as private. Let me work on that...**

Untitled from molly balint on Vimeo.
Untitled from molly balint on Vimeo. Try to ignore the junky yard and big old wood pile dumped in the driveway...work in progress, remember? Happy Monday, everyone.

work week progress

It's been a busy week so far--ferrying lunches and mid-morning snacks over to the "new" house, fitting in a load of laundry and a trip to the grocery store here and there. The girls are champing at the bit, knowing Dan is just around the corner, and yet so busy.

And of course I waited until the last minute to tackle a birthday present for my cousin (yes, when you're father comes from a family of 15, you have cousins the same age as your own children) whose little birthday get-together was tonight.

It was her turn for a pillow, just like I had done for her older brother a year or two ago. I think she knew it was coming, especially when she saw a soft, square gift, wrapped in paper. And she was happy. This project made me realize two things:

1. My fabric supply needs some replenishing--starting with the fact that I need some more solid colors and simple prints.

2. I love hand sewing. The minute I sat down in my rocking chair, flicked on the lamp beside me and began to stitch up the last little opening on the pillow, I felt so much busy-ness and stress and worry leave my mind and body. I need to make more time for this kind of simple sewing, or even knitting. It brings such peace. Isn't it a gift that we have these simple ways to unwind?

Dan and his brother have been doing some crafting of their own at the house this week--tearing out and replacing rotten logs, and laying down new floor. It has been so fascinating to see the old bones of the house. The progress is slow and there's always something that doesn't go as planned. But having the extra help here and the solid week of work is making things move along.

I intended to share some good mail in this post, too...but I think I'll call it quits for tonight. My book, journal and clean sheets are calling to me. And I need to coax my achy, sore, tired husband from the couch to the bed. The girls tucked him in before I took them to bed for the night--he has a pillow over his face and a blanket draped over his knees and ankles. I'm going to guess he'll be more comfortable in our bed.

More soon......good night, friends.

the boys are back in town

Dan and his brother arrived safely home after a 21 hour drive, two fill-ups of a 50 gallon diesel truck, and a stay in a hotel that, as my brother in law put it, "I felt dirtier after my morning shower than when I began." But they are here.

My sous-chefs and I went over to the house this morning with egg sandwiches and warm muffins and they were already up to their eyebrows in work. I walked in to a bare dining room floor consisting only of the log beams running across the floor and an eerie view into the basement. They're jacking things up and preparing to lay down the barn flooring later in the day. I try not to ask details, just the basics, like, "Now when we put our dining room table on this floor, will we fall through to the basement?"

And right now, I shouldn't be sitting here, but dealing with the unmade bed on my right, the hairy, dusty floors below me, the piles of laundry I'm tripping over in front of the washing machine, and the thousand legger corpses in my kitchen sink. They come out in droves when our house sits empty for any length of time. And they seriously creep me out.

But I'm drinking my reheated coffee from this morning--three hours later. And taking the moment to pop in and say hello and thank you--for all your overwhelmingly encouraging and "I'm so happy for you" comments from my last post. You're great people. What would I do without you all? Thank you for reading the long version and for taking your precious time to leave me a comment and tell me about your experience, your excitement, your understanding. It really means the world.

More reno pictures coming, I'm sure. But first I must regain control of the apartment homestead.

(The muffins were from the current issue of EDF. The basic recipe and I added a topping made of brown sugar, melted butter, cinnamon, flour and some oats to sprinkle on top. yum.)

Happy Monday. (Oh and go here to get yourself some free pastels from Pentel. One per household and use the promotional code SA2008. )

home improvements:: the short version

Living Room: Pretty much done except for sanding/painting floors.
Formerly stinky blue carpeting, peeling, dirty walls that wouldn't take paint.
I sat down at the computer about an hour ago and started writing what I intended to be a quick catch up post, filling you all in on "the new house" that we'll be moving in to shortly. I wanted it to be nuts and bolts with a bunch of pictures. But as writing late at night will do to a person, it turned into a very long version. An unloading session of sorts. An "I should have been telling you guys about this all along and now there's way too much to say" kind of post. So instead of deleting it and losing all those thoughts and feelings and impressions, I gave it its own page and gave you a choice. Want the nuts and bolts? This post is all you need. Want the long, sitting in my living room catching up with a good friend version, it's on its own page found here. Or listed on my right-hand sidebar.

The first thing Dan did? Rip up pink carpeting from the stairs.

In the meantime, for you nuts and bolts readers:

We've been living in a two bedroom apartment on my grandparents' farm for the last two years. It's been a wonderful blessing to be here, be close to my grandmother, my father, my family and live in such a beautiful place. But at the same time there have been hard things, like the fact that my bedroom is technically in the living room, the living room is technically in the kitchen and my desk is technically at the front door. Oh, and I have three small children, and my wonderful husband up here in the garage apartment, too.

The kitchen--will have to wait. Can't afford to do everything. I'm cursed with another white floor.

So we're moving just around the corner, almost within sight distance, to a small farmhouse on a few acres. A generous opportunity given to us by family. A fixer-upper on the inside, and a lot of mowing and gardening on the outside.

The dining room: Rotten floor, as in fall through to the basement. Still very much in progress. The new floor is shown in the living room shot. It's acclimating and waiting for "work week".

Dan has done all the work on the house by himself. It has been long. It has been hard. He's been away from us to work on it a lot. But what would I do without him?

The "six and under suite". Pegs were a little surprise to me, from Dan. I want them everywhere. Really.

This weekend he's going to Wisconsin, getting a big old moving truck and bringing all our stuff out here. We'll move in shortly after. His brother, also a carpenter, is coming with him and staying for a week to work on the place, too.

The upstairs bathroom. Scares me.

I can't wait to be reunited with all my things that have been in Wisconsin storage. I might shed tears.

I'm excited. I'm anxious. I'm ready. Though it's all a little bittersweet, closing this season of living on the farm.  But a new season is just around the corner.

my favorite cracker

Emma and I made these crackers together Friday afternoon. The recipe is from a back issue of Everyday Food. They were crazy-good and so simple, Emma was pretty much running the show after the first batch. Although the girl's a little heavy-handed with the salt. They were so good that I actually called up my sister and crunched on them over the phone to her, "Hear how crunchy and good they are?!!?" Actually, she may have called me first, but that last part is true. I did eat them into the phone.

The recipe is simple: Take a package of egg roll wrappers, (not what the recipe called for exactly, but what we had on hand), lightly brush both sides with olive oil and place on a parchment-lined cookie sheet. Sprinkle with coarse salt and sesame seeds (or whatever floats your boat--fennel, rosemary??). Using another piece of parchment paper, cover the wrappers and press the seeds into them. (otherwise, they'll all slide off after they are done baking--lesson learned the hard way.) Cut them into whatever size you like. We used a pizza cutter and cut each square into four smaller squares. Bake them at 350 for about 6-8 minutes until they are golden brown.

Delicious. My next variation is to try them with cinnamon sugar. I think that would even be good with ice cream if you served the crackers warm. Oh stop. I can hardly look at these pictures. We've eaten the whole batch, and I'm already craving more.

In other news....

This is one of the perks of homeschooling and where we live--an impromptu trail ride early this morning for Emma. She had her half chaps, riding boots and helmet on in a flash and was waiting at the door.  School work shoved aside for some fresh air and exercise on horseback.

Another perk? fresh eggs. So fresh, the little feather was still sitting there inside the box.

pretty...funny

More of my obsession with the Magnolia tree...I remember last year, noticing the full buds, and then next thing I knew it was brown and wilting. I missed everything in between those two phases. (maybe it had something to do with a newborn baby?) Anyway, I am determined to watch the changes more closely this year and pay more attention to Spring before she slips away...

The first batch of the farm's spring kittens were born on Tuesday. I hope my children don't see this picture because they've been given strict orders NOT to pick up the kittens until their eyes are open.

In other randomness:

This afternoon the girls and I went over to the "new (old) house" and I finally remembered to bring my camera. So hopefully next week, you can see some in-progress pictures. We're hopefully just a few weeks away from our move-in date. hopefully.

I'm planning on printing out the questions and getting to work on my "About" page this weekend. Should be a fun way to pass a rainy weekend.

And Emma and I just made the BEST little recipe this afternoon. I'll share that next week, too.

Finally, a conversation I'd like to remember:

Me: What is chicken made from?
Mary: CHICKENS!!!!!

Me: What is orange juice made from?
Mary: ORANGES!!!!

Me: What are pork chops made from?
Mary: PORCUPINES!!!!

nice.

happy weekend, everyone. see you Monday.