two things you can do today

believe in yourself

and take time for the little things.


meow,
nb.

quote of the day

joey's quote of the day:: "mumma, can you nuggle me after you're done breastmilking?"

i love this kid.

happy spring

so it's school vacation here in gilbertland, which means i'm sorely outnumbered. and it also means that the wine is chilling in the fridge for mama when it's kiddie bedtime. but we've got some fun things planned this week to keep the week moving along- dates with friends, earth day celebrations, some outdoorsy stuff if the weather gets nice, and meeting the real emily elizabeth from the clifford show (norman birdwell's daughter). there will also be a major amount of sibling rivalry, some time-outs, some mandatory separations, and general referree-ment on my part. luckily, lulu coos and smiles through just about anything, so that's one less thing to worry about.

yesterday we went on some letterboxing hiking adventures which ended in two crying kids and lots and lots of ticks. for all the letterboxes we've found (33) and all the hiking we do (pretty much every weekend day in the spring and fall) we've never had any ticks. which is kind of bizarre but i just considered us lucky. but yesterday was a complete tick festival, resulting in me having to pry one off of johnny's bum this morning. and did i mention that ticks are like my all-time biggest fear? and did i mention that i thought i was taking a black piece of lint out of the corner of joey's eye and it was actually a freakin' TICK? i'm not sure i can go back into the forest. just kidding, but i may need tick therapy or something.

the funniest part of our letterboxing adventure yesterday (besides the fact that it was a grateful dead letterbox called "box of rain" and we had to follow very obscure grateful dead clues that were in song format to find the box) was that we decided to ignore the "steep terrain" warning on top of the clue page and still take our regular stroller (mind you- it's this really cheap stroller that we've had since before gray was born and it's all broken and the wheels are essentaily falling off) on the hike. thanks to the beautiful new england terrain, there was rocks and hills and bridges and water and pretty steep inclines abound, so we had to carry the stroller and it was pretty hysterical. two adults, three kids, one stroller, and a butt-load of ticks. all while singing grateful dead tunes in the forest, smoking pretend joints.

happy spring from gilbertland.

today

today
my goals
are simple

cook some eggplant
burn some incense
plant some seeds in recycled containers
sew up some things from the recycling bin
go to the library
talk to some friends along the way
drink some water
take my vitamins
play school after school
breastfeed here and there
fill up the birdfeeder
listen to some reggae
trim the hair above joey's ears
eat some orange slices

cultivate gratitude for the little, simple things in my life.

where i'm at

(photo courtesy of auntie emily)

so i've been missing here in bloggieland, thanks to facebook and thanks to family. there's been so much living going on, and so much tending to minute-to-minute needs like "mum, can i have some juice?" and "waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah" (meaning, "mum, can i have some milk?" in baby language) and things like that that it seems like every time i sit down to write i get derailed and have to start another time.

like right now. milk calls.


-----------

ok, fully milked

so back to the update. lulu is pretty much the best baby, better than our best dreams and wishes about what #3 held in store for us. people keep asking me how hard it is having three kids, and how it is with a newborn, and i keep dorking out and drooling over my little package of lulu lubbins. this child smiles all day long, coos to us, comes along for all my coffee dates, sits by my side while i quilt and sew and hang out my friends. she takes champion dumps and chills with her brother and sister and lets them kuber her earlobies without a complaint. if she does cry it's because she needs to take a big dump, and then she falls asleep and she's fine again. she's a great sleeper and i'm thinking i get more sleep now that she's born than when she was in utero. the only differnce now is that i can't read vampire books anymore- i now have a voracious appetite for memoirs. it's all memoirs all the time here in gilbertland. and the other thing- girl loves her milk. she nurses and then stops and looks up at me with her ginormous blue eyes and opens her mouth and smiles and smiles. all this cuteness has earned her her nickname "nine pretties". it started by us calling her pretty and then we kept adding them on as her prettiness increased until she got up to nine pretties but it took a long time saying "pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty" every time we needed to address her so uncle booboo just shorted it to "nine pretties".

which brings me to nicknames.

she's got a LOT of them (surprise surprise).

luigi
luigi-board
lubear
luby
luby gills
sippy
sippy galloo
sippy galloobear
lucy
and many more i'm sure but i can't remember now

but the one that has stuck the most is LEWIS. gray and joey don't call her anything else. if strangers ask joey "what's your sister's name?" he looks up at them and without missing a beat he replies "lewis" every time. i'm not sure he even knows what her real name is. which is fine because it saves me from having to explain over and over to people why on earth we would name our child lulu, and what kind of name is that anyway, and do we watch general hospital? when the priest asked us last weekend "what name do you give your child?", i replied "lulu ruby", he replied "what?" but it was a what like "what what?" if you know what i mean.

gray has adjusted beautifully and is the best big sister. she busts into our room in the morning and immediately asks "where's lewis?" she's doing well at school, has been in the newspaper twice, is pretty much reading and is starting to leave notes all over the house that say things like "dear lulu, i love you. why do you suck a binky?" except it will be spelled all weird and i love decoding them. i did get a note from her today that said across the top "this is for mom and dad" and everything was spelled perfectly and i was beaming with pride.

joey has come around nicely and is quite obsessed with lulu. so obsessed that he doesn't want to share "his bee-bee" with his friends. which is super cute but can get tricky at times. he's finally showing interest in learning his letters, and has claimed A as "MY letter". so when we pulled into market basket the other day, he was all enthralled that there was "my letter!" two times in one sign. he's still a very simple guy with very simple needs- organic single serving chocolate milk, "ships and salsa" (chips and salsa), and a mom date every now and then. he's my little red-headed guy and while i sometimes wonder where he came from, i'm certainly glad he's here.

our lives have not changed much- just gotten much cooler. we still have lots of wonderful people in and out, dinners and desserts with endless family and friends, dates and playdates. there's just a little new person that joins us on all our adventures. johnny and i just sit around at night and wonder how the hell we got so lucky to have this life we have.

and that's the long and short of it. cheesy but true.

if you see me around, i'm the one covered in dried spit-up, maybe a mustard baby poop splatter across my jeans that i can't button, but trust me...it's exactly where i want to be.