Bursting at the Seams

These days have been chock-full. Harvesting, blanching, freezing, canning, cleaning, cooking, trying not to drown in laundry, and spending treasure troves of hours--wearying, delightful, and everything-in-between hours--with the three children I've loved more than any in my life (and I've loved a lot of children in my time). 

For a good four or five months I've been doing some informal pre-reading stuff with the kids, a hodge-podge of things I make up and find. Just three weeks ago, though, we started "preschool" that's intentional enough to actually get a name. Tadhg's been reading simple words for a little while now, so the formal part of it is mostly giving a rhythm to our days and adding in set time for Mama to not can, not cook, not clean. To just sit and be with the kids and let the other balls drop. It's been great fun for all of us. It's not been a sit-and-work sort of thing at all. It's the game-learning we'd already been doing plus even more books than usual and the quiet euphoria of cutting and gluing and baking and lots of art and sock puppets and tea parties (fancy dress and shoes required by Tadhg) and field guides and playing store through the screen door and pretending we're bears who do more foraging and hibernating in quick succession than any bear in his right mind would ever do and sewing on buttons and learning how to tie a tourniquet and making scarves for our stuffed animals and going on adventures out of the house every Friday.

Life is a funny thing. Motherhood is everything I thought it would be, both the good and the hard, but in a much higher concentration than I could've imagined. 

And so we learn every day. The lot of us.

And on a day like today, when we're exhausted from work and play and Mama doesn't have energy to make the supper she had planned, we roast hotdogs and marshmallows over a campfire that takes the edge off this first taste of cold autumn air and we go to bed glad in the God who gives such simple wealth to our days.

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Commence photo dump. Have a small taste of September. 

From tears to dimples in .2 seconds after being picked up.

I walked in to find that the boys had made her a book castle.

(Tadhg passed up all manner of vehicles and a tool set and little guns because he was captured by this little notebook that looks just like Daddy's Moleskine.)

Realtime

My favorite part-- 0.2 seconds after I stopped filming, he turned around and asked us, "Do you think God liked that song?"

Nine Months with Our Marnie

This poor blog. I'm so backlogged on two years' worth of photos that I've nearly been pushed to the opposite coast. Blogging is so far down the to-do list I can scarcely see it anymore. 

But Marnie! I'm bound and determined that her little face at least will show up every month even if nothing else does. 

Our wee little gnomeling has gotten funny this month. She jokes and teases incessantly and has the squeakiest, gruntiest, growliest, most self-satisfied little laugh that gets caught in the back of her throat whenever she's being impish. She's a professional snuggler and gives long, cooing hugs. She nearly always joins in when I'm singing at home or we're singing at church. She's much more awake to the world and desperately longs to join in the fun with her brothers, and consequently gets very frustrated that she still isn't able to move. She eats like a horse (but is still just the wispiest little wisp). She loves to swing. She's just discovering peekaboo and waving. She has nary a tooth in her head yet and--in every way--is growing at her very own pace in her very own Marnie fashion.

There's a lot potentially on the horizon for our girl. She's a constant presence on my mind as I watch her eat and gain scarcely any weight; watch her tire so easily trying to figure out how to move her body. Socially she's a lark. That little body of hers, though, is a weight I carry with me in the common tasks of common days. We've been welcomed to the world of specialists and are still--big surprise--in the waiting room. We're still waiting to get appointments scheduled with both a pediatric cardiologist and a geneticist. We know from her echocardiogram that she has pulmonary stenosis, and aside from that Noonan syndrome is currently suspect number one.

In the meantime, our precious girl is growing--fraction of an inch by fraction of an inch. 

And she is the veriest sunbeam cheering us all, mosquito bites and all.

To celebrate her nine monthiversary we had a pediatrician appointment. What a thrill.

(Actually, it was--have you ever played with that crinkly paper?!!)

And to round things off, a couple of recent photos and a video or two.

Freeze-Frame: What A Boy

 From yesterday's highlight reel.

Tadhg shouted excitedly to me from the doorway into kitchen, "Mom! We got a cornweb that we whacked with a pillow!!"

"A what?" I asked, befuddled.

"A cornweb!"

It dawns on me.

"You mean a cobweb?"

"Yeah, a cobweb!"

(This ranks right up there when he asked me to put basil on him instead of witch hazel.)

Freeze-Frame: Serendipitous Science (For Daddy)

 (But you can watch it, too.)

Eight Months with Our Marnie

Marnie is our sweetheart.

She has a high tolerance for brotherly affection (a very good thing since Tadhg and Pippin love her dearly). She has a good little sense of humor. She's a snugglebug and loves kisses, getting and giving alike. She's social and smiley with just about anyone as long as Mama's holding her. She blows raspberries like a pro and  coos up a quiet storm. She's getting more and more interested in the world and likes to sit on the floor with a basket of toys and play near her brothers. She still isn't really mobile, but she's meeting her own milestones in her own time. This month: pivoting on her belly and scooching backwards a few inches at a go. 

Trademark Marnie? 

Happy feet. 

They're her language of choice. When she's excited they bounce and dance and won't stay still. Prime causes of happy feet include cats, chickens, drinking out of a grownup's cup, eating real food, and reading books.

We love you, our Marnie Moo.