Garden Reflections

My garden is something of an obsession. I love it. I spend a ton of time out there and love to watch things grow. This year has been something of a disappointment though in some aspects of the garden (not due at all to the fact that I was busy earlier this summer!) Our nasty month of June saw the demise of many plants. All that rain allowed the slugs a buffet of my recently sprouted seedlings. The flea beetles knocked out so many early greens and broccoli plants that it really irritated me a LOT. And then there was the whole case of tomato blight which knocked out all but two of the 50 plants we originally put in! And we bought some bigger blueberry bushes this year since the tiny one we planted last year are really about the same size and didn't even flower this year. We waited patiently for those berries to ripen, only to realize that they'd been swiped by some form of wildlife by the time they were ripe. Damn it.

But like all situations, there have been some highlights as well. We have 50 beautiful bulbs of garlic in the shed. And garlic happens to be my new favorite crop. The snow melted in the spring and the garlic was already out of the ground! We planted some onion seedlings (not sets) and leek seedlings that I got super cheap-o at the farmers' market and they have done FANTASTIC! Our tomatillos (never grown before) are incredibly cute - like paper lanterns for the spiders. We harvested a pretty good amount of potatoes that have been DELICIOUS. Our brussel sprouts look incredible. Our eggplants have been prolific and we've been enjoying quickly devoured trays of roasted eggplant out of the oven.

We planted strawberry plants this year and against all our instincts plucked the flowers to keep them from fruiting this summer, so that next summer we'll get more strawberries. But the crazy plants are still at it and we finally gave up and let them fruit. We've only eaten a few, but boy they were good! Hopefully next year we'll get a whole lot of love from them. Last year I put in some raspberry canes. We got a good handful this summer, but the most exciting thing is that the plants are FULL of fall raspberries. I can not wait for them to ripen! Our pear tree is full of pears that Makili couldn't reach.


And we've planted a whole bunch of new stuff in our greenhouse, hoping for a fall harvest!

Happy Birthday Daddy-O

We had a great time singing "Happy Birthday" to Raph yesterday. Makili is really into singing that at the moment. It was Raph's golden birthday. September 9, 2009 or 9/9/09! I even made him a cake! I really like this guy. It works out that we're stuck together in a super-human maga life bond (this was what he wrote on our wedding invitation) because he is great. I appreciate that he goes to work every day so that I can stay home and is still present enough after working with teenagers all day long to come home and have quality time us, playing basketball with Makili (another current fav), getting Remick to laugh (a new thing that is SO cute), or helping me with my projects (too many to count). I love that he wants to go to the beach on every opportunity, or be outside, and eat good food (though he certainly doesn't complain about a bag of Doritos), that he can fix my car most of the time. I love that we share values and visions about our future, that they are things we don't disagree about. I appreciate that he makes time for me to exercise (running over 3.5 miles at the moment!), holding a screaming baby if necessary. My life would be empty without him. So Happy Birthday Raph.

Beach fun with the Mastersons

We had a really nice afternoon at the beach with our new bffs, the Mastersons. George is the guy that got Raph his new job (though he denies this it's true.) They have three boys, who remind Raph of the Cesere brothers, who we lived with in Hawaii. They also recently bought my dreamhouse. They're pretty cool.

These Two

I'm pretty glad Makili is a good sleeper and has yet to wake up because of Remick's screaming. I'm pretty glad Remick came into this world not minding Makili's aggressive love, because Makili wants to kiss him and hug him and smother him with hugs all the time, especially when I'm holding him. When Remick was born, I had a terribly difficult time watching Makili adjust to Remick's new presence. It absolutely broke my heart to think about hurting him and in fact, the day of my sudden C-section, I HAD to drive home (and ended up being late) to hug Makili before it happened. I cried the whole way home about how I hadn't read to him the night before. And afterward, Makili did pretty well, but he did lose some of his normal joy for a while and it absolutely crushed me to watch and endure and not be able to fix. Thinking about it now makes me cry.
But we've come around the other side of that corner and I am so excited to watch these two grow up together, as brothers. My aunt Suzanne once told me that she was excited to raise sisters, and I now know how she felt. There does seem to be some magical bond between brothers (or sisters) that is exciting to watch unfold. It will be a joy of my life to watch how these two souls who are quite different already share this early part of their lives. And then I can hope it lasts.
They are different. Makili was an INTENSE baby, crying pretty much all the time until he was few months old, and then being fairly predictable and dare I say "easy?" He slept well from the moment he came home, never napped well, always ate well. He didn't seem very affected by noise or sound ever. As an infant he never seemed to care for me of anyone else in particular, except that I had the milk bags. Remick, on the other hand, came out mellow but has turned out to be a baby of extremes. He is either smiling and cooing endlessly or screaming his bloody head off! He is an unpredictable sleeper, though he has gotten a little better with the swing (last night sucked A LOT though). He loves me over anyone else and Raph frequently complains that he will do the exact same thing as me and get screams and I get smiles. He is far more sensitive to sound, looking for me as soon as he hears my voice, and loving music. Both these guys loved to be one the move, and swaddled. There were both so aware and alert very early. But I daresay from the getgo I feel their personalities are so different. I can't wait to see if my hunches are right...

So BUSY

I can barely find the time to update this blog any more. Though I am on the computer frequently, I'm usually nursing, and it is hard to type a post one handed. I have a lot to say too. My babies are growing and changing so fast, Raph started a new job, a new season is upon us and we've been on the move a lot. So much going on. Above are a few shots from summer with some of the people that we've been blessed to spend time with. Summer is winding down. I'm wearing fleece and sock and Raph is lighting the wood stove for the first time. Remick is wrapped in fleece too and sleeping sweetly while Makili runs his little wooden dump truck over his body. We sat on the beach this afternoon with friends, eating pizza as the sun went down. Good times.

My big little guy.

This kid is growing so fast.
He's already
working
so hard trying to get his little hands
onto objects that he sees. It is fun
to watch
his knitted brow
concentrate
on an object as his little fingers
spastically grab.

He learned to get those little fists into his mouth.
He love
things in his mouth.
My arm. My hand.
His hand.
And to rub his eyes when he's tired.

He smiles so BIG and fully.
I am the center of his universe. Scary, huh.
For so long. He smiles at me for so long.
Big and full and sweeping
that smile.

He likes to be swaddled for sleep.
In the swing.
He grunts
and fidgets, but most nights sleeps pretty well.

He's getting hair!
A soft fur.

He likes it when you tickle his cheek.
Sing songs.
Walk around.
Rock.
This kid likes to move.
We should have know when we chose a name with the initials
RPM.

I'm smitten.

Life With a Two-Year-Old

Makili has been quite a little pistol lately. While language abilities continue to skyrocket, apparently so has his level of mischief. For example, I walked outside the other day and he says to me with a smile, "Mom, I pick all pears!" I look at our little pear tree and sure enough he had picked every pear he could reach, which was most of them.

Raph left him alone in the bath for like two minutes and he squeezed out the entire bulk quantity of baby soap into the tub.

While he goes outside by himself all the time and knows clearly where he's allowed to go (like not in the road), he's been testing those boundaries too. We obviously don't leave him outside alone for too long, but if we're gathering things together to put into the car or whatever, he frequently goes outside for a little while as he waits. Anyway, twice in the last week, a woman (separate women, sadly) has stopped her car and come to the door to tell us that Makili was near the road. "Parent of the year!" So now we have a Makili-can't go-outside0-without-an-adult rule.

He has also taken EVERY book off the book shelf a few times lately.

He's also gotten tall enough to climb up and get those Annie's bunnies off the shelf and come close to eating a whole box when I'm not looking.

So I can't wait to see what boundary he pushes this week.

Chuck the chunk

So I have been determined! Determined I tell you to get to a healthier body weight following Remick's birth. I had just started running a good distance when the morning sickness hit and I didn't want to get out of bed, and I was actually disappointed to put off my "training" at that time. But Remick is here and plenty healthy and fat (in the 90th percentile for weight! and 77th for length!) so I've started exercising in earnest. I started playing soccer again a month after he was born and when I got the go ahead from the doctor (soccer doesn't count right?) at six weeks, I started running. I now aspire to some day (many days away from now) run a half marathon!

I know some of you who know me well are at this point saying, "Blayne? Run more than a block? Ha! She hates to run! Like a LOT!" And you people are very right, but at some point last year I decided that I didn't have a lot of options in terms of what I could do for exercise on a regular basis with small children. I love soccer, but once a week isn't enough exercise. I love to swim, but don't want to pay for a Y membership and don't really want to be covered in chlorine daily or freezing cold in a 7mm wetsuit swimming in the ocean. (We do have a local guy who swims in Chauncey Creek nearby EVERY day of the year. May I remind you all that I live in Maine! I'm not that committed!) So I turned to running.

When I broke through the psychological barrier of running more than say a half mile, I found I could run a good distance. No half marathon yet, but I can run for at least 40 minutes at a time so far (I haven't actually tried more). I don't run fast or with good form, but I can do it. And it is helping considerably with the Chuck the Chunk campaign (thanks Laurie Good for introducing me to the title of the campaign). My goal is to hit my pre-Makili weight. I won't scare anyone with actual numbers, but I am already only 8 pounds away. (I was more like 17 pounds away a month ago!) And though I'm losing weight I have already had to come to term with the fact that there has been some major redistribution and even when I hit my goal, I won't look like I did pre-Makili. Which is okay. I'm at the moment just excited about running, which is fun.

Big So Fast

Reunion

We recently attended a "family reunion" for the Tobey side of Raph's family which would be his paternal grandmother's side of the family. They are the family members who have inhabited Kittery Maine (our town) since 1640's, but because Raph's grandmother died fairly young and was one of 10 children we don't actually know many of the local relatives, which turns out to be half the town. In fact we showed up to the reunion and the first people we saw were people I knew from Music Together! So pretty much the rule is that Makili and Remick aren't allowed to date anyone until they move away from Maine!

Meeting the people was really cool, but even cooler to me was the location. The reunion was held at an old barn a few miles from our house. It is owned by a woman who was a friend and then a caretaker for Raymond Pritchard, the last of a family of farmers who owned the land. Makili's great great great grandfather, Skylar Tobey, worked on the farm and eventually became a caretaker himself. He lived in a small shack on the land, which the owner cleaned out. She left it almost exactly as she thinks it was left when he died, complete with the petrified milk and jam (still good) on the table. His old books are in there and tools and various other things. It was super cool. And then she has also cleaned out the huge barn which belonged to the Pritchard family. There are before pictures which show what a complete dump the place used to be, but you'd never guess that now. It was so cool. Full of interesting antiques that she had found inside and with a great sense of history just swallowing you up. I loved it. Here are a few pictures of a few of the people, and a few of the things inside...