New Favorite Artist!

An Etsy retailer named CrustyChristy made these shirts for my kiddies. She has some fantastic designs so if you're looking for fun kid duds go visit her!

Asa finds his hand and other photos...

Esther helping me in the kitchen. I think the health department would disapprove.
Esther loves it when Asa lays on her. Course it's really hard to keep her from squeezing the life out of him.
The amount of slobbering, chomping noises he makes while gnawing on his hand is hilarious.

joining the masses... and oh what masses they are...

I've stopped fighting it and finally set up a face book account. And since then i've wasted countless free moments figuring out how to use it, what exactly it's for (other than a time-suck), and who to look up since we've lost touch...

anyhow feel free to come find me in all my new face book glory.

Wish List

For the last three years or so i've been keeping a wish list on my computer and any time i realize that i want something (typically this means like "i want to learn how to raise bees" rather than "a new pair of shoes" although shoes do make it on there occasionally, only when they're really really NICE shoes). And i've learned a couple things after examining this list:

1) the list grows much faster than it shrinks
2) everything on the list is completely possible if i could just get over my sloth problem
3) the types of things that i wish for post-baby-having are VERY different than the things i wished for pre-baby-having (e.g. right now adequate sleep is right up there at the top of the list)
5) a lot of my wishes have to do with eventually feeling financially and emotionally stable and professionally successful (do we ever really attain these things??)
6) very few wishes have to do with the well-being of the world (stopping or slowing global climate change is not on there... it probably should be...)
7) many of these goals will take me many many years to complete (like paying off student loans, and learning to garden properly - i was born with a black thumb it's now a slightly off shade of gray and a long way from green).
8) i had to start a second list for material possessions only so that when, if ever again, we have extra money we can remember what it was we wanted to buy rather than spending it all on dvds and books (i really want a popcorn maker).
9) not one single thing on either list takes batteries
10) there isn't really a tenth thing but i couldn't resist making this a list of ten... so i'm stretching here - the list is not numbered...

Snow Day

Woke up to blizzarding. No work for Ben. Snuggling warm and movie watching. Laundry. Overflowing bathtubs and clean floors.Bundling and visiting at the big house. Winter wonderland walks with the boy i married and the girl that keeps getting swallowed up by the cranky mommy persona. races. falling down. sneak attacks. GIANT snowman. Popcorn. Pizza. Hot chocolate. Wrapped up sleeping babies. Porkie pot pie. The night drift back home.

My New Job

I have a new job. Well, it's not official and I won't start for a little bit yet but it's my ideal job.
I am the new Grant Writer for Affiliated Sante Group, a non-profit organization that specializes in mental health treatment for folks who can't afford it.
It's only 20 hrs a week and i have the option of working some of those hours from home. The money is good. The people are great. And it looks like i'll have my own office.

I'll be happy to be getting out of the house for a little bit each week and doing something to stretch my brain.

In other news: my children have decided that 2am is the perfect time to stage a coup. They have both stopped sleeping between the hours of 2am-5am in protest of what exactly, i'm not sure. Nonetheless, i am increasingly cranky and looking for a miracle cure, either for their sleeplessness or my ever shrinking temper.

Also, Esther has made the official switch from diapers to pull-ups as of today. We'll see how it goes...

Sick Sense of Humor

I had the stomach flu yesterday. At least that's what i think it was, i suppose it very well could have been e coli or botulism or something of the kind as well... regardless all the fluid in my body staged a mass exodus. Yay for me! Ben stayed home to take care of the kids while i spent the day on the bathroom floor vacillating between thoughts of how the bathroom rug should be changed and curiosity about the internal workings of a modern toilet.

Poor Asa didn't get to nurse enough yesterday i think. He's making up for it today by nursing every 5 minutes. And although i'm doing much, much better than yesterday, i'm still feeling a bit "fragile" toast is about the only thing i'm daring to risk at this point... and a little tea with honey.

Anyhow, here's hoping Ben and the kids don't get sick as well!!!

Esther Sings "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"

Esther's "piggie tails"
The proud big sister and the uncertain little brother.
Asa meets his Great Grand-Oa for the first time.
Tofu Power! This cute onesie was a gift from my friend (and favorite teacher) Melanie. Thanks Mel!!


Aside from the daunting task of trying to keep a baby asleep in the same house where a toddler lives, we're doing well. Asa now smiles and makes baby cooing noises. He sort of rolls over already. But it's if you leave him on his tummy and he gets really pissed.

We had our 6 week postpartum check up. He's growing well, nursing well, has a well healed belly button. I am mostly healed. Last stitch ought to fall out any day now. I'm now 110lbs which is 10lbs over my pre-Esther weight, 15lbs over my pre-Asa weight. My stomach muscles are knitting together again. They're about the width of one of my fingers apart still but I manage to get a couple sets of crunches in during the day so here's hoping the mummy tummy's days are numbered. The pump and I have resumed relations as of two nights ago. And I have a meeting next week about a part time job to start in the spring...

My Marsupial Babies...

We're doing well. Settling into a routine of sorts. Esther is adjusting well for a two year old who was just usurped from place of most needy person in the house. Asa spends quite a bit of time in the baby bjorn. Although he is somewhat fussy he's not nearly as bad as his sister was. Esther lived in the bjorn for the first 6 months of her life and i walked probably close to 20 miles a day just to keep her from fussing. If i sat down or stopped moving she would wake up and wail. Having Asa in the bjorn just leaves me with two free hands to do all the necessary things without having to feel guilty about leaving him to cry in his crib or baby chair thingie. And go figure he hates the baby swing... (so did Esther come to think of it).

But come 9pm and both babies are asleep and Ben and I finally get to breathe easy it takes us all of 30 seconds before we too are passed out. It's a hectic life. I really haven't any idea how people have more than two or for that matter 11 (my mom is the second oldest of 11... yeesh and yikes!!)




Oh, and a shout out to my cousin Jeni who made the awesome burnt orange hat that Asa is always wearting. Jeni, the hat is awesome. The booties don't fit quite yet but that hat is so great. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

Sri Lanka Photos

So the Sri Lanka Photos are on snapfish. If you have a snapfish account i'll gladly share them with you just lemme know. Other than that, I'll try to get a couple of them up on the blog eventually...

two is as bad as one... or worse...

We're transitioning... it's not easy. You would think that being relatively well seasoned parents we'd be prepared for the addition of an infant. Not precisely the case. One child: perfectly manageable by one adult. Two children: takes a well organized, not easily flustered, energetic, patient, and good humored adult. While i'm relatively well organized (or so i'd like to believe) I do not consider myself as having any of the other assets, as much as i wish i did... So here's to hoping i can cultivate all those other things and in quick succession.

All that said, we're doing relatively well. Sometimes it seems very do-able and other times it's a truely daunting task - raising these two completely dependent small people to be nice, caring, funny, happy individuals who are capable of taking care of themselves and hopefully others as well... They (whoever the ambiguous "they" may be) say that the goal of parenting is to raise your children to be people you like. I gotta say at times i don't particularly like my children right now... Don't get me wrong I do love them fiercely... but sometimes when they're both screaming, poopy, hungry, angry, defiant, challenging, and sleepless i'm pretty sure that success is simply not dropping everything handing Asa to Esther and heading west as fast as my feet can possibly carry me. Which is a nice little segue into sharing that i've been (probably as part of some deep seeded self-destructive notion) nostalgic for Arizona lately. It could be the Barbara Kingsolver Essays i'm reading (High Tide in Tucson - I highly recommend it! - and Thanks Terri!!!!), it could be the recent reiteration of the shackles and bonds of parenthood that leave me realizing how long it will be before things like backpacking, rock climbing, going to the bathroom alone, not wearing bras with with extra hooks and latches (which incidentally resemble, ironically, s&m wear), and having to pack as though we were attempting to survive some outlandish natural disaster just to get to and from the grocery store...

Well, when a hungry wee'un calls. The boobs must answer. I'm off...

Our wee 'un

Asa Kiernan Jones Matthews

Born at 2:30am on January 10th 2009. Total length of labor was 13 hours. Only 9 of which were in earnest and only 5 of which were pretty hard.

Arrived at the birth center at 12:30am and he was born 2 hours later after about 6 pushes.
6lbs 7 oz, 19inches long, 13cm head, nursed right away, and is so mellow compared to his big sister.

Everyone is doing really well. Libby and Asa are resting and recovering. Esther is soooo proud and a little overwhelmed. We're a little worried about Ben, he hasn't had much sleep and keeps getting fits of the giggles.

Love to you all.
And we're still not really answering the phone but we are thinking of all of you and can't wait for you to meet him.

Early Labor

We're in early labor. Yippie!! hopefully we'll be meeting our newest youngun' before the weekend is out.

We're not answering our phone though, sorry... not feeling much like chatting... just burrowing in and hunkering down...

Brushing up...

9 months and 2 days...
is it just me or do the sink and i have extremely complementary shapes?

gotta love that guy!

i&j were over for our weekly dinner - which for some reason i stopped posting about... i gotta get back on that...

anyhow two things occurred to me/us: 1) i didn't have a link to Ian's flickr page which is simply full of fun things to look at and 2) he's totally capable of helping me jazz up this blog so it's not such a dud. So... here's to ian and his nocturnal nature... maybe he can come up with something not too labor intensive that will help this blog be more fun to look at... yay ian!!!

now go look at his stuff

Due Date Schmu Date

Today is the supposed due date. Nothing's happening that i can tell...

sigh...

Still Preggers...

I'm sure you're all anxiously holding your breath and checking the site every few hours to see if i've gone into labor yet...

not yet...

Getting bigger and fatter every day. Peeing every 20 minutes, sighing every 15.

Just sittin' around trying to enjoy the semi-peace of life before the arrival of a new born... and failing... miserably...

Little Miss Impatient

I'm ready to burn all my maternity clothes... not that i really fit into even them any more. My pants won't stay up, my shirts won't stay down...

I'm anxiously awaiting the time i will be able to fit into clothes other than the same 4 or 5 pieces i've been wearing for the last 80 days...

(of course, i'm also anxiously awaiting the time when i get to hold and cuddle my infant son)

If anyone has any hand-me-down clothes they think i'd like, send them my way. I don't even know what i have in storage any more... I'm afraid i'm going to be bound to sweat pants for the rest of my life... sigh.

Best Present of the Year Award...

...goes to (drum roll)... Miah and Cessie for

And a Happy New Year

Merry Christmas

Is This Normal???

Too Many Due Dates!!

So if you're anything like me, Christmas is creeping up waaaay too fast. The irony of that is that the birth date is creeping up waaaay too slow. Well that's not entirely true. I'm not sure i'm ready for a new born just yet. I keep telling him to just let me get through Christmas and then he can come any time he likes... well preferably early...

Esther update: She pooped in the potty for the first time today!! Yippie. I'm sure she'll hate me some day for announcing this over the internet. But firsts are just so darned exciting... especially if it means i will be changing one less diaper...
Kirstin stopped by on her way north for the holidays. It was wonderful to see her even though we were both a little off kilter...
This guy is the new mascot for VOCC - Veterans of Christmas Chaos.
And this beautiful woman is my Aunt Mary. She was my Yaya (nanny) when i was a wee babe. I was Yaya to her oldest wee babe and said, though no longer wee, babe is now Yaya to my wee babe... ahhh the circle of life. So we had a little party at our house the other day. Mary got to see our new addition and the girls got to play together (her youngest is a year older than Esther). And I got to eat the extremities off of gingerbread men.

So here's hoping you all get your holiday stuff done and don't feel as much of a nutbar as i do.

How Loved I Am!!!

Okay, so regardless of the fact that this happened almost a week ago and i'm a real slacker in terms of keeping up with this blog - Jessie threw me a surprise baby shower!!!

My Jessie sure loves me!

We had set it up ages ago to work on Christmas projects together at her house on Saturday. But when i got there her house was set up for a party, which she denied at first but finally broke down and told me about the baby shower after talking to my mom on the phone about needing more paper plates while i was eaves dropping.

Anyhow, it was glorious fun complete with gruesome birth stories, tons of food, and lots of laughter. Thank you to all those who made it and to all those who couldn't we missed you!!!

I also got a few "wish i could be there" shower gifts in the mail a few days after the shower - Kit, thank you for our sleepy wrap, if this babe is anything like Esther was we will get a lot of miles out of it!! Jodi, thanks for all the hand-me-down baby boy stuff!!! It's all perfect! Esther helped me go through it all and even attempted to put on a few outfits...

Update

So we're all moved in to our addition. We have been sleeping down here (in a separate room from Esther for the first time ever) for the last 5 days or so. The first 4 went pretty well but last night she was up 5 or 6 times at least.

On Wednesday Ben and I dropped Esther off with her Tita j and went on a shopping splurge to Ikea and Target. We spent a small fortune on things to make our house more comfy and organized and then spent the rest of the day putting them all up, in, on, etc... It makes me so unnaturally happy when everything is in it's proper place. Also our house seems huge now by comparison.

We're still doing some little things like finding new places for all our pictures and putting together the kids' room. We're waiting to get rid of our bed frame and next week we hope to get the crib in place for still-without-a-name-fetus. But it's all coming together nicely and it makes me super happy.

I began packing my birth bag today. Getting all the stuff that we'll need together in the event of an early labor (yeah right!). And making lists of things i need to buy, make, etc. (Last week i made a half dozen pee pee teepees.)

And christmas is looming... i'm hoping to not be a giant raw nerve of stress and bitchy-ness this holiday season. We've made pacts with several friends and family members to not get each other anything and we're skipping out on the massive family get-togethers that tend to leave me with an eye twitch (although still hoping someone will load up with left overs and be kind enough to give us some!! **hint hint nudge nudge**).

Still lots of stuff to do (like make a ton of Christmas presents and put together a baby crib) but feeling a lot less under-the-gun than just a couple weeks ago.

I will post pictures of our addition when i can get some of it looking clean and organized. But if you're that anxious to see it, feel free to come by for a visit. Lordy knows we won't be seeing too much of anyone after the birth so now's the time to get our visits in.

Hope to see you all soon-ish...

MOVING IN!!!!!

Yay! We're moving in to the addition.

Yesterday we did a big loft to loft transplant of our storage stuff. We don't have closets or a garage or an attic or basement but we have three lofts. On is full of baby crap. One is pretty much empty now and one we just filled with our permanent storage stuff... files, old love letters, all my expedition gear, some other junk...

We're already into making big messes in our new room. Makes it... home-ier.
We just moved our futon down to our new bed this morning and have been watching movies, napping, cuddling, etc all day. good day for it too, nice and rainy...







and the Trumpet... have I mentioned that the phone is no longer the best way to reach us due to my recent deafness?

And Esther has decided that if Daddy gets to make that much noise so does she... that's a Kazoo she's playing... I'm hoping for ear plugs for christmas... and maybe some lavender bath salts...

Pictures of the Addition and other things

This is Ben's new torture device.


These are my baskets of Christmas-gift makings... we're making all our gifts this year... well mostly i am...

This is Esther reading magazines.


Yay the addition!! This is a picture of the loft-to-be. Ben's picking up lumber for the loft floor as we speak. To the right and in pictures below you will see my loft ladder and my cute little shanty-closet.

Thar-she-blows!!
This is the far wall. The thing the fan and materials are sitting on is our bed. That's not a good picture of it but you'll no doubt get to see it after we move in and it looks more like a bed.
This is the office corner-to-be.
My big bookshelf (that's slightly relative, it's big for our house but not huge as far as shelves go). And the back door.

We hope to be in moving-in mode by the weekend. Keep your fingers crossed for me!!

The Real Me...

I'm a wreck... I hate waiting. I am the most impatient person in the universe. I keep trying to get better, distract myself... come up with small projects... I've even taken to sweeping all the rugs instead of vacuuming them because it takes more time and is somehow more physically satisfying...

I need to move into the addition NOW!!! I know a week and a half is not long to wait but as Stephen so tactfully pointed out it really could be ANY DAY NOW!!! unlikely... chances are, due to my inability to be patient this kid will take his sweet old time and just like Esther i will be in labor for THREE FREAKIN DAYS!!!! AGAIN!!!!

Esther has a stinkin' cold yet again! She spent the first two years of her life not getting sick at all and then BAM she turns two and instant germ fest. What's with that?? I don't even know where she picks up these germs it's not like she goes to the petri-dish that everyone calls day care.

And it's cold... i usually like the cold... but it's just making me feel more isolated and trapped right now. I have to bundle the dickens out of Esther before we go anywhere and it's just now worth putting up with the whining.

I want an island. A nice little island all to myself so i can go crazy in the warm sun by the ocean. Or else, i want to stay in my pajamas all day, eat nothing but mac n' cheese, and watch bad sitcoms about trite people who get themselves into stupid situations...

Oh yeah and I want out of this FAT SUIT!

Close but no Ciggie

I got an e-mail from Stephen the other day saying "it should be any day now, huh?" or something along those lines which made me think that for those of you that i'm oh-so-rotten about keeping in touch with you're probably wondering the same thing.

We are getting close to the wire but we're not quite down to it yet. We had a birth center appointment yesterday. As of today I am 33 weeks (for those of you who don't know pregnancy is a 40 week long event give or take a few). All is going well. The babe is growing nicely. Constantly wiggling, kicking, punching, and headbutting my bladder. I'm feeling great for the most part. A little achy at the end of the day, a little crankier than usual, a little hungrier than most... but nonetheless probably better than your average 33 week gestating mother.

We're about a week and a half from moving into the addition. It's absolutely beautiful and I will post pictures as soon as i think to do it...

That's pretty much it for us. Just working and waiting and trying not to watch our savings dwindle...

Hope you are all doing well!