Springing forth

Happiness :: A fat baby brother to squeeze and love.

Found :: worms in the mud.

Perched :: The cherry trees are blooming just now.

Climbing :: trying to follow her big brothers (standing up high, on the roots of the cherry tree!)

Ready :: sitting up well for the first time. Happy mama caught it on camera!

Mama's milk :: it does a chunky boy good! 6 months old now. 

Discovery :: toes!

Curious :: fresh spring grass

Damp little face :: always :-)

Happy Spring! 

P.S. on a totally different note, I got a few emails saying that for some reason you couldn't leave a comment on my last post. I never did figure out what was wrong with the comment form... If anyone has that problem again (or had that problem on their own blog) could you shoot me another email and let me know? Thanks :-)

It's Painty

Claire painting for the first time. I love the look of total concentration she had on her little face. Suddenly in the middle of painting she looked up at me and broke into a huge grin. " Paint makes me happy! It's painty Mommy!" Yes, my wee girl paint makes my happy too. But most of all, you make me happy! 

Throwing Clay

My mom got Ethan a pottery wheel for Christmas. The boys have been asking to get it out and try it since then. But, somehow, it always seemed to me like there was too much going on around here to take the time to get everything out, set up, and let each of them take their time learning how to use the wheel and making their pots/vases/what-evers. 

Finally it dawned on me last week that there was never going to be a perfect time to do it, so we should just make time. Sometimes I can be a bit slow to figure these things out. But I still did wait until Claire was napping, since all of that clay and a very "handsy" two year old didn't seem like such a great combination! (I swear some days I think that little girl has at least 10 arms! It positively amazes me the sheer number of items she can grab and run away with before I have a chance to remove them from her possession!) 

Logan read through all of the instructions that came with the wheel, so he took it on himself to show the other two boys how everything worked. I left them to it with no interference from me. I really liked watching Logan jump in and try out something new without any prompting from me. He enjoyed the process of creating more than worrying about the outcome. He told me while he was shaping his clay into a pot and I was taking pictures "This is really fun, Mom!" Which coming from a nearly 15 year old boy is high praise for any type of

crafting indeed! He tried all sorts of methods to shape his clay. Eventually the pot's sides were drawn up too high and thin and the whole thing flopped over into a very inelegant mess. So he lumped it all back into a ball and gave it to Ethan so he could have a turn at the wheel. 

Ethan, being a happy, messy little boy, created a happy, messy little pot in 5 minutes flat and left to play legos... :) He just isn't that into fine details at this point. It looked vaguely pot shaped if a bit lumpy and he was thrilled with it! He says he can't wait to make more soon! 

Matthew on the other hand, is very detail oriented. He is my little resident artist. So he spent the most time experimenting with various methods of working the clay. Eventually he decided he wanted to make a curvy little vase, so that's just what he did. He was thrilled with how it turned out and was making big plans for painting or decorating the vase once it had cured. Sadly on day two of drying, someone knocked his little vase over and it broke into pieces. :(

They are already planning their next masterpieces. I need to get to the craft store and get them some more clay.

Oh, Hello There!

I've started this blog post in my head a hundred times or more. I have so much I want to say, but I don't have any idea of where to start! It's been a while...
Ideas for possible topics of this post I tossed around in my head:

• I miss blogging. I miss composing my thoughts and sharing a little tiny slice of my family's life with the world at large. I miss posting pictures, so that a year or 12 from now we can come back and see them and remember just what was happening on a certain date in our lives. That was the plan for this blog in the first place.

{Claire helping Grandma plant things}

• I miss your comments. I really like hearing from you all. 

• Depression stinks! (possibly due to any or all of the following: post-baby hormones, winter, or maybe my brain just doesn't work correctly all of the time, to produce the right amount of happy hormones... stupid brain.Working on improving my diet, letting things go, and lots of sunshine are helping.)

{Out for exercise in the sunshine with Emmett}

• Grief stinks, too!

• Grief really stinks when it's not just you, but your 2 year old baby suffering over the loss of her (foster) sister!! (Little Miss H, our foster daughter, was moved from our home to go live with relatives out of state a little over a month ago. We all miss her and it has been very hard to deal with. But it has been especially hard for Claire. H came to live with us when both girls were about 18 months old. Claire doesn't remember a time before H was here. They did every. single. thing. together. They thought they were really sisters and we treated both of them as such. Then one day strangers came in to our home, sat in our living room and talked for a few hours and then took her sister away, never to be seen again. How do you explain that to a 2 year old? Claire spent most of February crying over any and everything. She stopped sleeping through the night, and never wanted to leave my side. Some days would be better than others, unless she caught sight of something that belonged to H still laying around somewhere then she would crumble into a tearful mess and cry and act out and be generally miserable the rest of the day. I still have no idea how to best help her. I know she is grieving, I know she doesn't understand. And I don't know what to do about it. I am trying to just follow her lead and deal with it day by day. She still talks about H constantly and asks about her. I try to explain as best as I can, and she tries to understand as best she can and somehow we'll get through this. But it's hard. 

• Our foster care system is good/horrible/necessary/evil/uncaring/difficult/works really well/doesn't help at all! All of those things, depending on what day you ask me.

• We are selling our house, well, we are trying to sell our house. Anyone out there want a well cared for, sweet little house in a nice country neighbourhood? 

• I've noticed that I always spell neighbour and neighbourhood like the rest of the world does and not like they do here in the USA. Google spell checker doesn't like it. I don't care! It is a nice quiet neighbourhood with friendly caring neighbours! Take that Google spell checker!

• I like it when Australians say chooks, instead of chickens. I still say chickens though. Actually I don't say much of either one right now, since we got rid of all of our chickens in January... trying to sell our house you know. I didn't think prospective buyers would appreciate the chickens in the yard. If they want them they are welcome bring their own!

• The idea of selling our home is really kind of stressful! First we have 3/4 of our stuff packed away to make this small house look open and roomy. (It's 1400 square feet and there are 7 of us living in it!) Plus I have to keep it much cleaner than I am used to, so that it can be ready on a moments notice to show to buyers... not easy with this many people home all day long!  The pictures I took for the real estate listing make it look pretty nice I think, looking at them I thought that I would want to buy this house. Only we want a place with more land and hopefully a larger house! But also it is really hard to contemplate leaving here. This is the first home we've ever owned, and it has been "home" for the past 6 years. Claire and Emmett where born here. We've made a lot of really good memories here. But we all feel like the time has come for a change. 

• Our trampoline decided to go wandering due to a huge wind/thunder storm that came through the area a couple of weeks ago. It wanted to see how it would look perched in a neighbour's tree 2 houses (and over 2 fences) away from our house. It didn't look so great up there, so we got it down and brought it back over both of those fences back to our backyard where it belongs. Oh and we staked it down so it wouldn't go wandering without permission anymore. The neighbour agreed with us that his tree was a strange place to keep our trampoline after all. 

• I've been a bit of a creative slump.

• I'm coming out of my creative slump! Lots of WIP's and ideas percolating. Even a few finished things to share here soon!

• There has been some of this going on... Still not very reliably though, just when the mood strikes her ;-)

• And lots of this... 

{Emmett is almost 6 months old already!}

{Check out those beautiful chubby arms, and face! He is so very squeezable and cuddly!} 

So that is a brief summary of what has been happening around here for the past few months... Well, maybe not so brief in retrospect, but when you consider that I haven't posted here in about 2 months... A lot can happen in that time! I can't wait to start posting again now. I have tons of things to share!