the dumps

these are the kinds of pictures
that i find
on my camera
when i upload
my pictures
to the computer

and even though
these pictures
may disgust the normal person
or the person who may not
really know team gilbert

i find them
absolutely precious

and i love thinking about
the moment
when grace decides
to rummage through
my bag
to find my camera
turns it on herself
and chooses to document
a big poop
that her brother has taken
in the potty

can i just say that my children freakin' rock?




in other news
joey had his tonsils and adenoids out
on friday
and we spent some time
in the hospital
with doctors and anesthesiologists and IV's and crying and comfort
and beeping monitors and drugs and no sleep
he's home now
and i pretty much
think he's the
most bravest little person
in the whole wide world.

thank you everyone for thinking of us
and calling and emailing and taking caramel.

xx.

can i just state for the record?

that this is me, right now, lying in bed...about to fall asleep even though it's only 6:30pm? (thanks for the shirts, erin...as you can see, i'm already making use of them!)

and that pretty much i am happiest when surrounded by the cutest and most loving children in the world?

and that hugs from friends are like balm to the soul?

and that faces like these make even the toughest of days possible?

and that pretty much i think i couldn't make it in this life if it weren't for supporting, open-hearted, and loving friends (who cook me food, make me sit down, and take care of all the details for me)? thank you mama al and my CT friends for filling my well and getting me ready to face the next couple of weeks.

what fills your well, dear one? xx

life is good

"we can never have enough of nature" -henry david thoreau

"we can never have enough of underbites" -grace eileen gilbert


today i spent the day
at the sewing machine
creating things
and then in a blueberry filed
picking blueberries
with my family
and then
at whole foods
sniffing things
and eating a delicious healthy lunch
and now
i'm having
a moment
of alone time
while the kids
take a walk
around the block
with daddy

so pretty much
life is good

how about you?

what a week

it's no surprise that i've had even less computer time this week. today is the last day of our week long visit with auntie emily, my bestest college roommate from clark. boo (also from college) took the week off and joined us for most of our adventures. for three people that traveled across the country together, lived in a car and a tent together for five weeks, we still have the love for each other and pick up perfectly every year when we convene for our week long vacation in gilbertville.

i picked emily up at the airport last friday and the week has been filled with all the best sorts of things that feed my soul. there's been lots of driving across the state(s) for adventuring. lots of time outside. lots of veggies and lots of snacking. lots of eating out and lots of decadent fried seaside food. two days in a row of fried clams. there's the swimming. and the blueberry picking with the dragonflies. and the homemade blueberry streusel muffins in the morning, made with grace's love and taste testing. then the walks in the garden in the woods, looking at the giant wooden nature sculptures. the italian rice balls with prosciutto, and the fancy sandwiches. the piling into the car and the endless iced coffees. the car shows and the peeking into the cabins of trucks and declaring them comfy. the coffee cookies and cream ice cream and the sticky faces and hands. the photobooth goofiness, the splitting of a newspaper, and the raspberry lime rickeys. the birthday party of a baby that i witnessed being born exactly a year ago. dinner and dips in the pool. storytellers at the library and picnics on the green grass at castle ruins. thrift shopping and finding treasures like someone else's cloth napkins. there was a beach day, with playing in the waves and the making of castles. there were fried clams and meltdowns and naps in the late afternoon. there were bowls of rice, and the cheering on of friends at a road race by the sea. there was an afternoon at a place so perfect and picturesque that it looked fake when we took pictures. there were sticks of incense and treats and treasures to be purchased. there were early nights with sandy feet in our beds.

it was a week of friends, and a week of family. it was a week of indulgence, of good food and good conversation. it was an overwhelming rollercoaster ride of a week (in that i'm-so-pregnant-and-still-puking-my-guts-up kinda way), but it was ours and it was perfect.

until next year!

6 word memoir

tagged by the beautiful, smart, and satchelicious mama wendy to write my 6 word memoir...i'm left with nothing but silliness on this morning that started so early. so here i go...

we laugh at the word anus.


and for the more serious amongst you, there's this:

i am the compass for them.


and because i have to, i tag the following dear peeps to write their 6 word memoir: jenica, mindertins, and kirsten. xx

today
even though
it was 90 plus degrees
and i was puking my brains out
i had four of the smallest, most precious hands
rubbing my back and asking me if i was ok while i hovered over the toilet bowl

and that just made it better.

thank you little ones for making life magic.

the emails we send

to get through the day
sometimes we send
flirty and unserious emails
that are sometimes
completely ridiculous

it makes
the long days
seem less long
and
it just makes me feel better.

exhibit A:

hey bub,
pretty much
nobody.

pretty much
nobody loves me
nobody cares
nobody treats me like a pregnant goddess
nobody puts my special cream on

nobody.

nobody!

how come nobody loves me?

could you please love me a little bit more, please?

xx

there have been

there have been
butterfly museums
with butterflies landing on every possible surface around us
simultaneously so bright and fabulous
but really quite freaky, too

there have been
days and days
of sitting in the pool
the cooler beside us
filled with homemade treats
and some cheeze-its for good measure

there have been
dirty feet
filled with slivers
that will never be taken out
to spare us
from the screams of agony

there have been
doctors appointments
for jogeybear
and his giant steak-tip-like tonsils
which will be coming out
during the beginning of august
those appointments
involve
bribery
and restraints
and they are not fun

but there are other things
that are way fun
and make up for
all that drama
and the morning sickness
that lasts throughout the day

there have been
nights where we eat ice cream for dinner
and nights that we slice up cucumbers
from my dad's garden
and dip them
into various things
and call that dinner
because it's too hot
to do anything else

there have been
farmers markets
and homemade tabouli
and homemade salsa
and homemade pesto
you should see my kitchen now
because it's quite the trainwreck
but that's ok
because we're well fed

there have been
nights and more nights
of me going to bed at 6pm
cranking the AC
laying in bed naked and pregnant
reading book after young adult book
like a good tween should be doing during the summer nights

there have been
moments of brightness
so illuminating
i think to myself
ok, this is it, my life is completely full
everything is perfect
and then there are those moments
so overwhelming
and bottomless
that i'm not quite sure
how i can get through the day

there
have
been
days
and
then
more days
of
summer.

knee-deep

i've been knee-deep in life, with barely a second to come up for debriefing.

kind of exactly how the summer should be, don't you think? xx

interview

one of my favorite things that gray and i do together is play a game called "interview". we have this little journal and we take turns interviewing each other. the questions are simple, like "what is your favorite snack? what is your favorite color?" and then we switch off. i'm tricky, because she doesn't even realizing that it's helping her reading and her writing while we're just having fun.

i love asking her the same questions week after week, to see how her answers change and evolve. one week her color is pink, and the next it's "every color in the rainbow". some of her answers just kill me, like

what's your favorite cereal?
-regular cheerios with sugar

what's your favorite flower?
-lily pad and a crocus

favorite snack?
-pistachios

favorite thing to do when you're bored?
-watch tv but my mom doesn't let me

favorite snack?
-corn

favorite sound?
-joey crying

favorite dream?
-"the dream i dreamed about ponies and princesses. i wish i had braces. would i look good in braces?"

favorite smell?
-joey's dumps

and the best one yet:

favorite food?
-"hamburgers! they kill the cows and make them into patios."

morbid, bizarre, true, and terrible, but one of the cutest things she's ever said.

complete

the last days
of laying on my stomach
are here
the days are long
and hot
and filled with
freeze pops
and dips in the pool
slices of pizza in the shade
and freshly made pesto for dinner

we all roll into bed early
exhausted
and complete

wants and needs

there are things that i want to do
that i need to do
but i've been too busy
finding out about my little fetus
hanging out in the city with friends
eating italian food
going to comedy shows
going to parties on the beach
going to fancy tea parties in real life castles

needless to say
when i have a minute
i'm either
in the bathroom
or sleeping

so hello
dear friends
i miss you.

when i disappear, this is where i go

searching for gold coins in the forest

frog hunting
volunteering and teaching the kids about charity

throwing back shots of ketchup

rock skipping in pools in the forest

running through green field at the top of hills in the middle of nowhere with my favorite little people



and you can't forget about the shows- there are many shows which include clapping, running in circles, and costumes.


off to eat hot-from-the-oven strawberry muffins made with fresh picked strawberries! gotta fill this growing madness, you know? :)

(love the dribbly water stains? sexy!)

we're stuck at home today without a car- want to come over?

my hope for you

my hope for you
today
is that you get a chance
to dance around
in your undies
to the fantastic sounds
of this man

just because it's friday.

funky

here's hoping that you get a little funky with yourself in the mirror today.

xx

what's happening?

100 degree heat
heat stroke
toes so swollen they threaten to burst open
and a humongous stomach, popping out all ready

it's pregnant summertime!

plus one

hello cybervillage,

now is as good of a time as any to let you know that we just found out that we're expecting baby number three. we are all thrilled and somewhat in shock, even though we were trying. i've never seen grace this excited. although it's very premature to be sharing this (i'm only a couple of weeks), we tend to announce early and hope for the best. historically, we've been very lucky with no pregnancy problems so we're forging ahead, letting people know, and hoping for the best.

pretty soon, where you see that empty space in the lower left hand side of the picture, there will be the final gilbert with their chubby little toes, making the circle complete.

any words of wisdom or advice? and how on earth am i supposed to nap when i've got two others tearing up the house? :) and is it possible to gain six pounds in the first two weeks of pregnancy? my questions for you are endless.

went ahead and did it

so for a while now johnny and i have been the tattoo junkies without any tattoos between us. it's not out of the ordinary to find us thumbing through skin art magazine at the public library, or looking through a stack of tattoo books. it's something we love but have been scared to take the leap in to- the big wide world of body art.

we've also been a bit leery of the sketchball tattoo artists in our area. you know...the ones that smoke at the counter when you go in to talk to them about your spiritual midwifery tattoo ideas. the ones that look at you like you're insane and then quote you $440 for a teeny tiny tattoo with no color.

so yeah. as of sunday morning, we didn't have any tattoos.

but during a recent trip to portland, ME, i fell in love with the work of phuc tran at tsunami tattoo (www.tsunamitattoo.com). granted, if you were in the market for some serious full-back tattoo or something, this would be your guy. his work would blow you away. and even though i was just getting a tiny piece in comparison, i made my appointment months ago, and waited patiently for it to arrive. i even made an exception for him because he wasn't a woman. and did i mention the three hour round trip it took for me to get to ME?

it was worth all the wait, let me tell you.

not only did he take the original design from ina may gaskin's spiritual midwifery (pretty much the best book ever) and then completely redesign it to make it more nina-beanaish and hippielicious, but he was 1. clean, 2. awesome, 3. burns my incense, 4. didn't mind my calloused and nasty piglets, and 5. talked incessantly with us about people who eat their own placentas. i heart my tattoo because it's got a little sunflower action and a little umbilical cord action and a little placenta action going on, and because each of my children are convinced that it is the likeness of them.

needless to say, i can't wait to go back for tattoo number two.

hello sweet world of body art!


(and if i wasn't already completely obsessed with taking pictures of feet before...now i have a new reason to look down and shoot)

what you crashin' for?

it's no secret that i kind of suck ass when it comes to driving.

which is why, when we go on road-trips or weekend drives, johnny is usually the one driving.

it's not that i am intentionally a bad driver...but sometimes i get a little lost or other people start driving poorly around me and i get distracted and coupled with the frenetic banging (and the people driving around me subsequently making fun of me banging), sometimes i just make some driving mistakes.

which leads me to joey's cuteness.

this morning, at a particularly tricky intersection, i awkwardly slammed (or pressed very suddenly and firmly) on my brakes, and joey, from the backseat says:

what you crashin' for mama?

i wish i could say this was the first time that i've heard him say this expression, but i hear it quite often. it's one of my favorite things in life and every time he says it i want to pull over and eat his face off.

where have i been?

these past couple of weeks have been filled with so much goodness that i can barely reflect eloquently on their magnificence. plus, i'm having a serious case of computer paralysis, so bear with me.

there has been no shortage of:

friends, family, eating delicious food on the grill, dirty feet, a garden full on little plantlings, sunburnt shoulders, drippy popsicles, hikes in the woods, reunions with friends, a trip to burlington, VT, a healthy dose of gyros, little diners, fountain sodas, snack packs, croghan bologna, wine, hotel pools, cookies&milk in the lobby at 8:30pm, fudge, fire jugglers, new headbands, new capris, insane evangelists, ben&jerry's ice cream cones, playing in big fields of dandelions, photos with blissed out light, getting a bit lost, lake champlain, mosquitoes, big lumps on foreheads, salads, fresh herbs, greenhouses, funfetti cupcakes, calzones, couch debriefing, homemade gifts, beautiful stepping stones, belly tickles, hot tubs, sleeping late, skipping school, hummingbird feeders, releasing butterflies and ladybugs, juice boxes, poop shoots, family parties, celebrations, birthdays, making up songs, piles of laundry, new bikes, tree hugging, skinned knees.

these are the things that keep me going, that fill me up, and make me grateful to be alive.