HOTU

Home of the Unwell.

It's been a sh*tty few days. Esther got a stomach virus from God knows where. Benand I spent 4 days cleaning up any and all forms of bodily fluid. Then he got sick too. and yesterday it was apparently my turn. It's been a really hard and extremely messy week. If any one feels brave they're welcome to come over and hold a baby or two so Ben and can catch some much needed shut-eye....

Esther's Super power

If Esther were a super heroher name would be Vomit-girl. And we're running out of dry towels and clean dishes.

Oh Esther My Esther!!

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