She Was Twisted

I let my 4-year old dye his very own roving the other day. I mixed up Neon food coloring dyes, put them in squeeze bottles, and told him to have at it. The only thing I helped with was squishing the dye into the wool as he squeezed. Didn’t it come out fantastic! (and in case you are wondering, food coloring dyes ARE washfast and colorfast dyes as long as you set it with vinegar and heat. Perfect for kids!)

And here is the resulting yarn.

Love it!

Yes, we went outside today in the gorgeous weather, took the lid off the sandbox to find a nice muddy mess. The boys, of course, thought this was the greatest in the world. Well until….

1. Push hands through mud.

2. Shake hands vigorously, spewing mud everywhere.

BONUS: Make older brother mad.
Repeat.
Repeat.
Repeat…

Good times!

O.K. so I’m a complete dork and I fell off the earth for 7 or  8 months. Yes, I am a bad, bad blogger. But I had some good reasons:

Say hello to the new addition to the family – our little Maxton. He’s a keeper. He’s 7 months old now, born on March 18, 2008. Big brother Evan is finally adjusting to the family status change.

So in the spirit of those of you with babies out there, I thought I would share my birth story. If you are here for knitting and spinning content only, you might want to stop. I’m getting a bit side tracked here.

So here is my story: it is quite the interesting one.

To begin, let me quickly give you the events of Evan’s birth. I go to sleep and wake up at 5 am to feel my water break. Induced by 8 am, epidural by 11 am, baby born by 3pm. Fast and easy. Minimal pain. So I was calm and cool about this pregnancy all the way through. Evan’s birth was a good one, and I was just hoping for Maxton to go the same. But that would make for a boring world, wouldn’t it?

March 17th, St. Patty’s Day: I go to sleep at about 11:00 pm. I have had NO signs of going into labor before this. None.

I wake up around midnight with tummy cramps. I’m thinking, oh wow, my stomach is upset. So I get up to, umm, relieve myself if you know what I mean, and I go back to bed. 20 minutes later – the same thing. Back to the toilet. Then again, and again. But this time I am in agony. Hurts like hell. I’m starting to freak — are these contractions? Or are my intestines spazzing out? I seriously couldn’t tell the difference. Crap, what do we do? I let it happen a few more times until my system is cleaned out before I go tell Brian to get ready to go to the hospital. We are in the car by 2:00. The contractions REALLY start up. Like every 5-10 minutes. Poor Evan is in the back seat not knowing what was going on. The car ride is agonizing not only because of the contractions, but also because I start to feel the pressure. You know, THE PRESSURE. Oh crap, I’m going to have this baby in the car!!!! I keep this to myself, however, because I don’t want Brian to be under any more stress than he already is. I’m just praying that we can make it.

Well we do. We get to the hospital, and my contractions are so bad and close together that we have to stop several times in the halls, lobby and elevator for me to lay on my side on the floor to get through a contraction. I know the maids thought I was out of my mind. We get up to the maternity ward, and the nurses want me to sit down to check in. HAA!  I tell them to get me in NOW and let Brian check me in. They get all annoyed and take me back to the little room to check me. I’m in so much pain that I can’t figure out how to get the damn gown thing on. Not to mention that I can only function for a few minutes before another contraction hits. I continue to fumble around in this room, ALONE for what seemed like an eternity. I can hear all the nurses laughing and talking just outside the room. I go out there and yell at them, “is someone coming to check me?!” Again, all huffy, puffy and annoyed they tell me “Yes” go back into the room (you crazy impatient lady.)

When the nurse finally gets there, she checks me:  9 cm dialated, 100% effaced. Oh shit, she’s going to have the baby. Now the nurses are not laughing. They toss me on a strecher and wheel me down to the labor room. No time to call my doctor. The doctor already in the hospital will have to do the job. They can barely get the IV in me because I’m thrashing around so much, and it suddenly dawns on me — I’m not going to get my epidural, am I?  Nope. No ma’am and no how. The baby is coming now.

Let me tell you, laboring naturally is the most painful thing I think any human being can ever endure. Looking back, of course, it seems like no big deal. But at the time, OH MY GOD. Luckily, it only took 4 or 5 pushes and he was out. Maxton was welcomed into the world at 3:18 am.

So let’s do a quick recount:  Labor pains begin at 12:00 midnight. Check in to hospital at 2:30 am. Baby born at 3:18 am.  You do the math.

Not only did I survive, but also I am extremely proud that I did it 100% drug free. That is a major accomplishment in my book.

And look at the end result! Could he be any cuter?? Let’s have another look, just to be sure:

Yep. I believe Maxton is officially cute. Worth every minute.

Next up: I promise to actually write about something crafty. I have much to catch up on, so bear with me.

Thought I would capture the moment in pictures. giggle, giggle. Every time I look at this picture, it cracks me up.  ..not that my pregnant belly should be funny or anything.

Chickens. Yes, chickens. I haven’t really written yet about our move to Arkansas from Atlanta, so let me enlighten you!

In May, the hubby and I decided that we wanted to move to NW Arkansas to get away from the noise, pollution and overcrowding of city life in Atlanta. Why Arkansas? Well we have family and friends here that we just adore, and upon our visits we fell quite smitten with the place. It is small, slow paced, tons of open country land and the people are incredibly friendly. Brian has always dreamed of living on a small hobby farm, so we thought this might be the future.

We began looking for land online to eventually build a house and move the family within the next couple of years. We found a few lots we liked and contacted a realtor to find out more information. He sent us a ton of other property listings, along with one that he knew wasn’t what we were looking for since it was already developed, but the price had just been dropped $30,000 and it was a terrific deal. OH MY was it a good deal.

A 4 bedroom, 2300 sq. ft. house that was only 4 years old, 10 acres of property that was half pasture, half woods, an unfinished guest house/cabin, a brand new metal barn, a stocked pond, and all the quiet, peaceful country life you could ever want only 15 miles from town. Plus the big kicker, it was totally in our price range since houses are so much cheaper in AR than in GA.

Brian drove to AR that weekend and snagged it. Totally unprepared, for me, site unseen, insanely freaked out. The same day the owner accepted our offer, he received 6 more offers. We were quick to the draw, and it was ours. Oh shit, is all I could say.

Since there were other offers, apparently better than ours, we had to drop our contingency clause that we wrote in that said we had 90 days to sell our house before closing. Now, we had to close in 30 DAYS. Yes, you read that correctly. We had to prepare our house for the market, list it, sell it, get a loan, figure how in the hell we were going to move the family across 4 states, and possibly afford to pay 2 mortgages while our house sat on the competitive Atlanta market. Oh wait, but there is more. I will have to quit my dream job of 8 years that I’ve had in ATL and start looking for something else. Brian will have to find a new teaching job in Arkansas too. How will we afford the moving truck? How will we move 3 large dogs and 2 cats, 2 cars, and ourselves with a baby? Am I stressing you out yet?

Somehow we managed to get our house ready to sell in 2 weeks, and put it on the market. It sold in 5 days. Seriously. We got super, super lucky. There was a family 3 houses down, currently living with the wife’s mother, who were looking for a home of their own not too far away from their family support unit. They saw our For Sale sign go up, came by for a showing and made an offer that night. They wanted to close in 3o days. YIKES.

So we moved. Packed the house in 2 weeks, started moving the next, everyone was here by July 4th. After much trial and error of proving that my job could still be done 100% remotely from another state, my employer was gracious enough to let me keep my job, however only part-time and on a contract basis. (a.k.a. Bye-bye benefits, health insurance, 401K and paid vacation.) The hubby, on the other hand, is still struggling with the stupid Arkansas school board that won’t accept his Georgia teaching license unless he pays to take a whole bunch of classes through the AR state – that he has already taken, mind you. So he is subbing at the moment until we figure things out.

We are poor. We are broke. We have no insurance. But darnit, we have a beautiful home, clean fresh air to breath and tons of peace of mind. We don’t regret it for a single moment. Quality of life has gone up at least 5 times.

So if you are still reading this, we come to the chickens.

Brian always joked in Atlanta that he wanted a pet chicken. And I mean, he would bring it up ALL the time. So about month after we settled in here, he decides to order some baby chickens. He does it online after I am in bed, WITHOUT asking me, and orders 25 of the darn things!

25!

O.K. remember I am not a country girl. Raising chickens is not in my “things I’d like to do” list. But Brian did know that I grew up with ducks and a pond in the backyard. So he threw in 4 ducks as a “see honey, I got you something too” compromise. Oh, clever devil.

I have to admit, I did love the ducks – while we had them. Since releasing them to the pond as adults, the neighborhood dogs have killed all but one girl, and I am extremely sad. We hope to fence in our property and the pond soon, and try again. Lots to learn.

So I leave you with tons of pictures. These were taken months ago, which will explain the green summer grass.

The baby chicks when they were only 3 days old.

One of my little duckies that was killed by the stupid dogs down the road. He is about 3 weeks old here.

This is our front yard!! Believe it!

A back view of the house. Sorry, Brian didn’t take a pic of the front and I’m too lazy to go there and take one now.

The big, open and airy kitchen.

And here is what is on the other side – the big, open and airy living room and breakfast area.

Part of the pasture.

Waaaay back, is my future studio and guest house. Behind it is the pond, next to it is a weird pavilion that they had a hot tub on. We are going to turn it into a gazebo.

Inside the studio. Look how big! (that is Brian’s Dad in the photo.) We still have much work to do on it. Insulation, walls, window unit, electrical, etc.

And there you have it. Our move in a nutshell. So much more detail, but I’ve already written the 200-page novel. County life is the best!!

Happy Halloween to everyone and their own little dragons.

Having a sick baby in the house has got to be one of the scariest things ever. You feel so helpless. You want to help and make it all better, but you want to be careful and extra safe too. You can’t just run to drugs like you would for yourself or another adult – the self-help easy way out. Instead you worry about if the dosage of Tylonel was o.k., oh god, please don’t let me overdose him, or let him get to hot, or I wish he could tell me what hurts and what I can do for him.

Evan has had a cold for about 5 days now. Nothing horrible – or at least we thought. His appetite has been good, he was running around like usual – just with lots of fun rasping breathing and tons of extra snot. However on Thurs, he starting throwing up. Couldn’t even hold down water. No fever, thank goodness. So we started him on the Pedialite treatment of an ounce every 20 minutes or so, and eventually got him to the point where he was holding down 5oz at a time. He slept through the night fine and woke up Friday morning feeling good.

Friday went pretty much as usual – his appetite was back, he drank tons and tons of fluids, couldn’t get enough of the greater outdoors, had a good nap, etc. But then around 5:00 he suddenly became pretty listless and I discovered his forehead was hot. Took his temp. and got a 100 reading. Called the hubby in to help me decide what our plan of action should be. It took about 15 minutes for Brian to clean up and come inside. He takes Evan’s temp – it was now 102!! We run for the Tylonel, and hope for the best. Well this little boy’s head was on fire. He could barely keep his eyes open. We are in slight panic mode. (Remember since moving to AR we have no health insurance – a.k.a. no pediatrician that we can call.) The decision is made to get this boy into a tub of cool water to see if we can cool him off. Temp is now reading a 103. Evan screams his head off the entire bath and is desperately trying to climb out. No amount of comfort is going to help. It took about 15-20 minutes for his head to start cooling off. Poor baby.

I wrap him up in a towel and we cuddle in the rocking chair for a bit. Temp is now down to 99. Oh thank god! Change him into his PJs, we snuggle back down in the rocking chair with all the lights out, he is asleep in my arms within 5 minutes.

He slept through the night with some wakings and fumbling around to get comfortable, but the fever stayed down all night. Today he is acting like himself – but yesterday he also acted fine until the evening. So we are trying to take is slow and easy. Let’s hope the worst is over.

So I leave you with a photo of our little guy, taken a couple of months ago. Don’t you just want to kiss his little forehead?