Sippy cups? We don't need no stinking sippy cups!

Sippy cups are the bane of my existence... I hate them. They smell, they get lost easily, and they are a pain in the butt to clean! I have to use a pipe cleaner on the lid and plastic nub thingy, and a cup cleaner on the rest of it... plus I have to worry about stupid things like did I put that nub in the right way? And is Aeddon's need to chew on his sippy cup ruining his teeth?

But no more! I am officially a sippy cup free house! (ok they are still in the cupboard just in case.)

I have been weaning Aeddon off his sippy cups for quite some time now. I wean the kids off their cups as they are potty training so that they are less likely to have accidents. It is harder to tell when you have to pee if there is always a little pee ready to go cause you sip on stuff all day....

Well I finally got him off his cup and then about two weeks ago Mikaela realized that she was the only one using a sippy cup. She was not amused. So she just stopped. I would fill her cup in the morning and have to pour out warm milk or juice by lunchtime. It was always still a full cup. So I pulled out the cup with the straw built in that we bought her in the summer for ice water. Ya know what? She is doing great with it! Sure I can only put in about a 1/4 of an inch of fluids at a time or she makes a huge mess.... but it is progress! She loves her big girl cup! Wanna see?



And just cause I think kids drinking out of straws is cute.... here are the boys too, just for good measure!





On a completely different subject.... see that blanket that Aeddon is holding? I think we are gonna have to change that kids name to Linus! He insists on taking that thing everywhere! I made it for him before he was born... and he loves it. Luckily if he ruins it I can run to Walmart and buy more of the fabric and make him a new one... and then hide the old one... Should I worry that he substituted his Ra-ra (pacifier) with a blanket?

I am hurt and confused.

I am hurt and confused. The title says it all. As you may have noticed I posted that I am expecting Bailey Baby #4.... I posted the same blog on my myspace page that I did here. On this blog I received several nice comments of congrats.... That is what you would expect when sharing news that is happy right? Well apparently that is not always the case. I received comments that included things like "dont you think that is overkill" and "Have you ever considered stopping?" I am sorry but I think those things are hurtful... so I responded. Below is the entire blog I posted on myspace in response to my "friends" who think I am making a mistake.

I have to tell you.... I am surprised by the response that my previous post has received. One person asked if I had considered stopping having kids... to which my response is: "1. Yes this will be our last baby and 2. Why is it really any of your business how many I have since they arent your responsibility and I am paying for their care out of my own money? Thank you for your concern.... but I am fine. My babies are not accidents. They are planned family additions and Owen and I have calculated the pros and cons of having babies when we have. Mikaela was the only baby that we had sooner than we planned... and that turned out fine! I was just trying to share my joy with people who would be happy for me, and if you are not one of those people.... move along and dont add in your two cents."

Then the most hurtful to me. Someone asked me if I didnt think that it was overkill, if I couldnt have waited a couple of years at least. The worst part of that for me is that of all the people I thought might have an opinion... I expected that person, who is my oldest friend, to say "I think you are crazy, but if you are happy then I am happy for you." Since that is not the response I received.... here is my response to her question.

No as a matter of fact I dont think it is overkill. We always knew we were going to have 4 and if you really think about it it makes sense to have them spaced every 2 years or so. By the time baby number 4 is born Mikaela will be two.

Aeddon is already potty training and with any luck he will be out of diapers by the time the baby comes. So I will only have two in diapers and since I cloth diaper.... it is not like it is costing me a fortune every month.

Also next fall Alexander will be in school... so I will only have 3 home with me. Another two years after that and Aeddon will be in school. Another year or two and Mikaela will go to school and 2 years after Mikaela starts BB4 will start school... so in just a little under 6 years from now all the kids will be in school.

Owen is already in the process of trying to get accepted into the Officer program. Within a year or so he will be an officer (two years at the latest...) When that happens our income will grow exponentially. Owen's job is secure. The army isnt going to fire him cause of a weak economy. They pay for our housing, so that doesnt come out of our income. We have free, full coverage health insurance. I dont pay a penny and everything is covered. Even perscriptions.

So yes right now money is a little tight, but I have carefully saved everything from the previous children. I have clothes up to 5t for a boy and clothes so far for a girl up to 12 months. So I will have no problems clothing a new baby. As I already said, I cloth diaper, so I can use the same supplies I am already using for Mikaela. As a matter of fact with another one time purchase of $30 dollars worth of prefold diapers I will never have to spend another penny on diapers for as long as Mikaela and the baby are in diapers. I breast feed so formula isnt an issue. I still have Mikaela's infant car seat. By the time the baby is to big for it Alexander will not need a car seat anymore and Aeddon can move into his booster seat. The baby will be able to use Aeddon's 5 point harness carseat. And so the cycle can continue. When all is said and done the only money I will have to spend on this baby is the $30 on diapers and a new toddler bed for Mikaela (Which I was planning to buy around January anyways).

If I had waited another few years several things would have happend. 1. I would have lost a piece to the crib and had to buy a new crib. Those things are expensive. Cheap ones are like $200 dollars. 2. If Mikaela was already potty trained I would probably have started using Mikaela's diapers as rags..... So I would have had to start over with cloth diapering... and starting from scratch costs between $150 and $200 dollars. That doesnt even take into account that the longer the baby clothes sit in boxes being stored, the more likely it is that something will happen that will ruin them. I have thousands of dollars in baby clothes that I have accumulated from people giving me clothes that they didnt need anymore, babyshowers and holidays/birthdays. I dont even want to THINK about how much it would cost me to start over with all new clothes! So when you look at it from that financial perspective... it is more fiscally responsible for us to not wait. By the time this baby will actually cost more money for us, Owen will be an officer and we will have close to twice our current income... which we are able to get by on and still live relatively comfortably.

And you know what? That doesnt even take into account other things, like my health needs. The longer I wait to have baby number 4 the longer I have to wait to have the two surgeries that I need. I need a breast reduction so that my back problems will be much easier to deal with.... (there is only so much you can do to improve your back when you are carrying around two seedless watermelons worth of boob everwhere!) and I need to have the flap of skin removed that I seem to have accumulated with each kid. I know that it is TMI.... but that flap is ugly and makes it very difficult to do things like buy pants and skirts and wear a bathing suit. If I had that extra flap of skin removed I would go down 2 or 3 pants sizes! Also after those two surgeries I will be better able to start and stick to a good healthcare routine. One that includes exersize. I will be able to get myself in shape for the first time since I started having kids.

Also I have fibromyalgia... and since it often gets worse.... the longer I wait to have baby number 4... the less likely I am going to be able to enjoy a problem free pregnancy. Plus... Owen and I arent getting any younger. I am going to be 27 when this baby is born. Owen will be 31. If I waited a "few years" I would be over 30. It is a well known fact that the older you are when you have babies, the more likely you are to have complications for yourself or your baby. Gestational diabetes is more common in women over 30 than in women in their 20's.

Besides, the boys are 2 years apart, and they love to play together. Mikaela and Aeddon are 17 months apart and they play great together most of the time. Why on earth would I want to wait a few years and screw up that dynamic?

Honestly, here I am sharing news that I feel is happy news. I shared it to let my friends and loved ones know how happy I am and I gotta tell ya.... some of these responses make me wonder why I am friends with some of you at all. Fine you think I am crazy for not stopping at one or two. Fine you think I am crazy for having them all at once. Did you ever stop to think that your little comments about "what were you thinking?" might be mean and hurtful? Did you ever stop to think that maybe I think "what were you thinking" about choices you make but that because I am your friend I take the "if it is what makes them happy then it doesnt matter what I think cause it is not my life" approach? I dont sit here and judge the things you do and I didnt ask you to judge me.

Are you the one paying my bills? Are you the one caring for my kids? Do I call you and ask you for help?

No I don't. As you can see there are lots of reasons not to wait... and lots of reasons why the few cons of not waiting arent cons I really have to worry about.

Besides, whatever happened to "if you cant say something nice, dont say anthing at all"?



So what do you think? Was I out of line with my response? Is it to much to ask to want people to be nice? I could understand if I had posted something controversial such as " I think all abortions should be illegal, no matter what the circumstances." ( I am not going to talk right now about my stance on abortion... I am just using it as an example of controversy.) I didnt post something controversial. I posted that I was having a baby and that I was happy. Why is that something that should get such hurtful responses?

Please help me understand if you can....

And Baby Makes.......

Here comes Bailey Baby #4. Thank God we already drive a minivan!

51-75

Time for another set of interesting tidbits. I think that this set will span from after graduation to Owen. Yeah... that seems like a good timeline.

51. Right after graduation Lacy recommended me for a job at Togo's Eatery. I got the job and started working two days later.

52. After graduation Lacy and I lived in one bedroom that she rented in a house. I was not really supposed to live there... but Lacy didn't like staying there alone and her boyfriend still had another year of high school left. We eventually got evicted because we kept eating the food of the other room renters. We didn't think they would notice a cookie here... a packet of top ramen there. They noticed.

53. For two weeks after our eviction date I continued to break into the house through the window of the bedroom we had been renting and slept on the floor. I had nowhere else to go.

54. After two weeks my boss asked me where I was living. I sheepishly admitted that I was breaking into the house and sleeping on the floor. She was horrified that I might get caught. That night she asked me to get in her car cause she had a place for me to stay for a few nights. It was with her brother in law and his wife. They had 2 little girls. I loved staying with them. They asked me to leave when the two of them went on a vacation and they were going to be leaving their girls with a family friend who was going to be staying at the house with them... Halfway through their vacation the manager of the Togo's and I went to go check on the girls. We found them unsupervised in the house while the babysitter was having a drunken party with all her friends. When the couple got home they told me that they wished that I had stayed and watched the girls instead... yet they never asked me to come stay with them again.

55. I started at Fullerton Community College in the fall of 2000. I signed up for English, History, Dance, Math, and Drawing. I never finished any of my classes.

56. Halfway through my first semester of CC I started working at Book Star.... which was Barnes and Nobles under a different name. I was still working 1 hour less than full time at Togo's.... I rode the bus everywhere.... I worked for 3-5 hours in the morning at Togos, then went to school for 3-5, then worked 4-6 hours in the evening at Book Star. It took me an hour on the bus in each direction.... plus an hour to walk from where I was staying to work and an hour back.... so I spent 13- 20 hours a day just working and going to school... which left very little time to actually study. I dropped out of my classes so I wouldn't fail.

57. In October of that year I started living at a place that I called the drug house. A friend from Togos had a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom house to herself. Her dad had gone back to jail for violating his parole, and she couldn't afford to pay for the house herself. So Lacy and I moved in to help pay the rent.... plus we both needed a place to stay... Lacy left when she got tired of the lifestyle in the house and picked a fight with our friend about it. From then on I had my own room until her dad got back out of Jail.

58. I called the house the drug house because each room was divided into a different drug of choice. One room was for people smoking pot, one room was for people dropping acid, the living room was for people getting drunk, the kitchen was for people who had been smoking pot but were now drinking, and the garage was for people doing speed. I spent most of my time sitting on the stairs, drinking, waiting for the cops. I was the best person to deal with the cops cause I knew most of them. So I sat there just in case. We never got busted by the cops.

59. Sometime during that year my mom convinced me to go to Chrysalis. It is a retreat weekend designed to strengthen the faith of young Christians. Even though the rules said no drinking... I was drunk when my mom picked me up. By the end of the weekend I felt different. I gave a faith statement that had the most burly of the men in the crowd crying. I went home and stopped drinking. When my friends dad came home she kicked me out cause I wasn't fun anymore.

60. When she kicked me out Lacy and I were on a waiting list for an apartment in her boyfriend's (and still my friend) Mike's apartment complex. We stayed in my parents living room for the 3 weeks we had to wait.

61. We got a three bedroom apartment and the six of us renting the apartment moved in. In one room was Jill and Nancy. In another room was Sarah and Jordan (we called them Will and Grace alot...) and in the Master Bedroom (cause we had her mom cosign) was Me and Lacy.

62. Things started going badly almost immediately. Lacy went out and started acquiring pets.... So then everyone else went out and started getting pets. Within a month we had 4 kittens, 2 guinea pigs, a 35 gallon fish tank, 4 1 gallon Betta tanks, 3 Russian dwarf hamsters, and 2 lovebirds. All but one of the kittens and the two guinea pigs were Lacy's.

63. Everyone except for Lacy was in college.... so we would bring over a couple of our college buddies and have a mellow hang-out with a few beers and a carton of cigarettes.... (I think everybody but Jill and Jordan smoked) Lacy would get pissed when she came home and we were all having a good time when she was tired and just wanted to take a bath and relax.

64. Shortly after we moved into the house my Papa died. Two months later Gramps died. I started failing all my classes again. Lacy got mad. The original deal with us sharing a room was that I was supposed to go live at Cal Poly Pomona in the fall... over the summer Mike would be turning 18 and he was graduating high school in June. The idea was that I would move out and Mike would move in. As my grades slipped... it looked like I wasn't going to be able to move. Everyone else figured that Mike could just wait to move in. (even Mike was willing to wait.) Lacy didn't agree. After Lacy realised that I wasn't moving, she stopped talking to anybody. She would leave post-its all over the house with little commands on them for things that she wanted us to change. We all got really pissed off and one day we left post its for her all over things reminding her of every single house rule she was breaking. She got pissed and evicted me. I was the only person she could evict and easily replace. I moved in with my boyfriend, Eric. I left my stuff behind and promised to come get it before my "eviction" date.

65. I went a week before my eviction date to pick up my stuff. She wouldn't let me in. Instead she handed me a box with my high school diploma, 3 of my 4 high school year books, my houseplants (uprooted and with no dirt shoved in a Ziploc bag) and a pair of shoes. She said that she had gotten tired of looking at my stuff and had put it out to go in the trash the day before. Problem was that that morning was trash pickup. My stuff was gone. Several thousand dollars in books, a very expensive pearl necklace that my papa had given me right before he died, several thousand dollars worth of clothes and shoes (my Nana had given me an open-ended personal shopper account at nordstroms at one point... I took advantage of it!) My sesame street dolls ( I even had a honker with a working nose!) and my entire collection of original Rainbow Brite dolls. All the sprites, everything. My dresser and nightstand, the fountain that my mom gave me for Christmas.... all of it. gone. Shortly after that all the rest of the housemates moved out and lacy struggled to keep the apartment. Around that time she and Mike broke up and he kicked her out and moved in some of his friends.... that was around the time that I lost track of the goings on in that house.

67. Around that time of chaos, I had started going to Shinai. Shinai is sword fighter practice. We were "training" for SCA events. Shinai is where I met Eric. We started dating and when all heck broke loose he let me move in with him. I continued to live with him for a while after we broke up. I really had no where else to go... and in all the chaos Lacy had managed to get me fired from both of my jobs by making a scene, so I had no job. During our relationship I met Eric's friends, Cassie and Jeffery. When Eric got evicted from the house he was renting a room in, I moved in with them.

68. While living with Cassie and Jeffery I met their friend, Paul. He picked me up from my new job at Walmart one day cause Cassie was at the hospital with Jeffery. Jeffery had fallen off a ladder at work and broken his leg. Since I didn't have a key to the 600 square foot studio apartment we all lived in, I went home with Paul. I never really went back to Cassie and Jeffery's house to stay for more than a day or two at a time when Paul would have to go somewhere for a few days. And even then that was only at the beginning of our relationship.

69. Paul was the biggest Mistake (notice the capitalization of the M?) I ever made. He turned crazy very early on in our relationship.... I didn't really notice until it was to late. It started with him not wanting me to go to shinai ( I could understand that. Eric still went to shinai and there was a rumor going around that he wanted me back....). So I stopped going to shinai. Then what new clothes I had gotten while I was dating Eric and living with Cassie and Jeffery started to disappear. They were replaced with clothes that Paul wanted me to wear. They were sexier and nicer... so I thought nothing of it. Who could blame a guy for wanting to show off his lady? Then he quit working when I got injured and had to take medical leave. He was always home with me. If I made a phone call he was right there listening to me. That was when I started to worry. I told Paul that I didn't want to be his girlfriend anymore. He reminded me that I had nowhere else to go. He offered me the guest bedroom in the condo. I stopped letting him touch me. I tried to go back to work so that I could save up some money.....

70. A few days before Christmas of that year Eric showed up at my job (still walmart) to bring me my Christmas present. He picked me up for my lunch break and took me to his place (he was living with his mom for a few months) to give me his present. I had a gift for him too. I gave him a spiderman poster (he is a really big fan) and he gave me a special edition copy of Shel Silverstein's The Giving Tree. The Giving Tree is my favorite book. He also gave me a giant Tare Panda, which is a Japanese Kawaii character that I really love. I leaned over to give him a hug and tell him thank you. The next thing I knew we were up in his room and I was very late to return from my lunch break. I didn't feel guilty about Paul at all. As far as I was concerned I had told him more than a week before that I didn't want to date him anymore and that I was only staying with him till I could save up enough to get my own place.

71. Around Easter of that year, Paul realised that Eric and I were in a relationship again. He dropped me off at my parents house and left most of my belongings in plastic bags on my parents lawn. My friend Greg let me come stay with him and his family. Around that time Eric had surgery. I was supposed to stay with him and take care of him.... but I was staying with Greg and felt that all I had to offer his family in return for me being there was to watch Greg's stepson. Eventually Greg's wife kicked me out of their house. I moved in with Eric. He never had gotten over that I had chosen to help Greg out instead of taking care of him. I reminded him that at the time Greg was the only one offering me a place to stay. It ended up being the big thing that ended mine and Eric's relationship. He said he couldn't trust me to be faithful to him. I was heart broken and swore I would never love again.

72. When Eric broke up with me I ended up homeless. I was sleeping in a park for several months. Most of my clothes were either still at Eric's house or in my parents garage. I packed just a little bit of my stuff in a backpack and slept on a bench in a park. My parents thought I was staying with friends. They even went on a month long vacation cause they had no idea. I was to embarrassed to tell anyone that I was homeless. Eventually a friend figured it out and found me a homeless shelter. I still slept on the floor there... but at least I didn't have to worry about getting raped or murdered.

73. Eventually a friend from work decided that she wanted me to live with her. Around that time Owen and I started dating Exclusively. (There is more to the beginning of our relationship.... but I will save that for later) We went to the beach one day and fell asleep. We slept for 5 hours. The only reason we realised that we were burnt when we did was because I woke up to go to the bathroom and it hurt to bad to walk. We were like lobsters.

74. Eventually she and I had a falling out (she wanted me to pay all the rent and buy all the food cause she wanted to save her welfare money to buy a new car. I disagreed with that.)and I came home one day to the locks on the doors being changed and all my stuff in plastic bags in front of her apartment. I stayed at her neighbors house for a night and tried to get ahold of Owen.

75. When Owen showed up he asked me if anything was missing. I told him that my favorite shirt and my Betta fish "Celeste" was missing. He banged on her door until she opened up and told her that we wanted my shirt and my fish. She swore my shirt was in one of the bags and gave him my fish. Then she slammed the door in his face.

So there you go. From that point on my life has been Our life.... which I will tell you about in the installment that will finish up my juicy little tidbits. More later.

Guess what I did.

So are you guessing???

Not so much?

Fine. I will just tell you then. I got a tattoo.

I know that that probably doesnt surprise anyone... but it is my first one (believe it or not.) I actually got it on September 2nd.... But I didnt wanna say anything about it till I could show you a good picture of it. First you get to see a yucky picture of it first though!



Looks gross right? It is ok. This is immediatley after I took off the bandages for the first time. I couldnt wait the full 24 hours that they recommend that you wait.... cause well.... the tape was burning a hole in my skin! See how agrivated my skin looks where you can obviously see the tape marks???

So off came the bandages... I did wait till it had been 24 hours to wash it for the first time though! And guess what??? It looks much better now! Not perfect... I am told that that is because I still have two weeks worth of healing to do. So I am not to worried about that. I also get free touch ups ( I think they are free. They are either free or really cheap.) so if it is a little funky on the color then it can be fixed.



Now I know some are wondering what the heck my tattoo is... and for those of you who know what it is and know me well you are probably asking yourself, "WHY?"

Here is the thing. Neal and Devon and Ian were big fans of Star Wars. I am pretty sure that Neal was even buried with his light saber. Anyways. As some of you may or may not know, Neal Devon and Ian were murdered last year. I refuse to go on about the details here, cause I wasnt there to know exactly what happened. All I do know is that they are gone and that Manling (Neal's wife and the mother of both boys) is going to be tried for the murders. That is all I will say about that, but if you want to know everything that the media knows you can read some of the articles that can be found here and here and here. Actually that last link is the link to a blog about the murder. I wouldnt bother with most of the comments... but there are quite alot of them written by Neal's Mom. Those are ones to read if you want info.

Anyways. Regardless of what really happened, they are gone.... and so is a piece of my heart. Devon could always be counted on to make me smile. He was a funny and very intelligent little boy with a heart of gold. I have picture upon picture of him playing with my boys as babies. The last thing that Devon said to me was "I cant wait for you to come home for Christmas! Then I will get to meet your new baby girl and I am sure that she will be the sweetest prettiest girl that I have ever met! You will let me hold her wont you??" To which I replied "Yes Devon. Of course you can hold her silly boy. I love you, now give the phone back to your mom!" Ian was Alexanders best friend. They were only a few months apart. I have so many pictures of the two of them doing things like playing race car in empty boxes from Sam's Club or dancing on the open door of the dishwasher. They were like two peas in a pod. The last thing Ian said to me was "I miss Alexander. Send him home please. Devon!" at which point he handed Devon the phone.

And then there was Neal. What cant be said about Neal. Neal was smart. He loved his family like you wouldnt believe. He wasnt perfect. He had his issues, but he was the kind of friend that you could sit outside with and talk all night about what was going wrong in your life and he would give you his take from more than one perspective. He would do things like call me to tell me that a really funny episode of Star Trek was on... or send Owen his copy of a book that he thought Owen would really enjoy.

So my way of coping with their loss was to get a tattoo of the same symbol that Neal's mom chose to put on their headstone. If she felt it was the perfect symbol to immortalize on their final marker... then who am I to argue. Besides, I agree with her that the rebel alliance symbol from Star Wars is perfect. The date... well... if you read the articles... then you know that that is the date that they died. I will always miss them... and now in my own way I am letting the world know that they will always be with me.

Knitting content

So today I have some knitting content to share. I know, crazy right? You mean I am still doing that silly knitting thing? Yep. And I still even like it!

So knitting mojo was at an all time low during the move. I made a couple of tops for Summerlins.... but never sewed them to the fabrics I bought. I really should do that. Goodness only knows how long she is gonna fit in the sizes that I made!

I made a soaker. Just one. Which sucks... cause in the process of the move... Owen ruined one and I shrank one by accidentally washing it in the washer. So now that one is a size medium instead of a large.



I also made one fingerless glove.... but not the matching one to this one.... a different one that I am making for one of my new neighbors. I dont like this shade of green... but she does... so I am knitting it all up for her.



Then I also started on a scrunchable scarf (Ravelry link)... which I am calling my "Tattoo Scarf" cause I intended to knit on it while I was getting my tattoo....



But I didnt end up knitting cause the position I had to hold was not condusive to knitting. Oh well. I still want the scarf.... so I will knit away at it a little here and there.... but I really do need to make at least two more soakers for Mikaela so that she has a minimum of four.... plus I really should start making her longies so that she can have "pants" in the winter.... but still be in cloth diapers....

Ok... That is all that I have for now.... more later!

MMM Cookies!

I gotta tell you, I love me some cookies! I am gonna share with you the recipe for my favorite cookies. They are totally healthy too.... you know how I know??? They have oatmeal and raisins. How could they not be healthy?! (This is what I tell myself to justify eating them 5 or 6 at a time... and as a meal replacement....)



First your ingredients:
1 cup (2 sticks) Butter, softened.
1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugarj
2 eggs
1 teaspoon Pure Vanilla Extract
1 1/2 Cups all-purpose whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon grated/ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon of salt
3 cups oatmeal
1 cup raisins
1 cup chocolate chips



Now the making:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Beat together butter and sugars until creamy
3. Add eggs and vanilla; beat well
4. combine in a seperate bowl: flour, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg and salt.
5. Mix dry ingredients into gooey stuff...
6. Stir in oats, raisins and chocolate. Mix well.
7. Drop by rounded tablespoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet
8. Bake 10 to 12 minutes or until golden brown
9. Cool 1 minute on cookie sheet, remove to wire rack



This recipe makes about 4 dozen if you make smallish cookies.





Then just sit back and enjoy. Or stand gaurd and beat back your kids and your husband.... Your call!

OK. So life is finally starting to slow down a little...

Things have been crazy around here in Bailey-ville for a long time. Almost 2 months worth of crazy. (almost) Well all that is behind us now! (knocks on wood so hard that her knuckle splits open...) We have been in the "blue house" (the boys named it) for a week and a half and we had our household goods delivered last tuesday. Guess where most of our stuff is.... in the basement.

What? We have a basement????? You want a crappy digital picture tour of the house? Ok. Since you asked so nicely.


This is the entire house from the front. Now you see why the boys named it the blue house. Yes I know my street number is visible in the picture. I live in a relatively big city. There are lots of places with that street number. I know. I asked the mailman. Nice guy.

anyways.


This is the entire back of the house. I took this picture from the access alley. See all our blackberry bushes?


MMMMM! Fresh from the bush blackberries! Did you know that blackberries are like weeds up here? You trim them back to nothing one year... and the next year they are taking over most of your backyard.... rip them out completely... and in a year or two you will find that apparently a blackberry fell off the bush and took root.... Ta-da! More blackberries... Oh! Did you also know that they have wicked sharp thorns? Doesnt stop Mikaela from blackberry addiction!(More about that later. I promise!)


This is the staircase up to the patio.... the patio also has the backdoor to the house! Yay!


When you go into the house from the patio this is what you come in through. The door to the patio and the door to the basement are in the same little nook of the kitchen. This is what the kitchen looks like:


Well that is the basic idea of how the kitchen looks anyhow.

Then there is the dinning room:

It is not huge... but it is just the right size for our table and chairs. I love the built in shelf unit!

The dinning room is atatched to the living room:


In the one corner you dont see is the front door to the house. I am bummed that the fireplace is all boarded up... but apparently it is for the best since the whole thing is in need of alot of work.

The rest of the house is accessed through the hallway that leads off of the livingroom. First there is our room:

It is the smallest bedroom in the house. I am pretty sure that it is about 10x11. Yeah. It is small... but it was the only room that Owen and I were going to have any privacy in... so we went with it.

This is the bathroom:

It is small and old fashioned... but what it lacks in size and amentities.... it makes up for in charm! See that tub? It has feet! How cute is that!

Then there is the playroom. Some day (if we stay in this house for longer than a year or two) this may become Alexander and Aeddons room... but I dont know for sure yet.

It is also not large... but this house was built in 1928-ish! From this room is the only acess to the final liveable room in the house. It is the attic room.
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See that row of x's above? When my kids wake up I will go take a picture of the attic room and post it there. We opted to give this room to the kids for a couple of reasons. The center of the room is the only part that Owen can stand up in. At it's tallest point this room is only six and a half feet tall! He almost gave himself a concussion building the boys bed up there. The other reason is that if we had put the kids down stairs in the smaller room and taken the upstairs for ourselves, Owen would have had to walk through someones bedroom every morning at 4:30 to get ready for work! Not such a good plan.

Ok. Now that we have finished the tour of the "useful" part of the house.... let me show you the basement. First is the stairway:


Then the actual basement:

Laundry facilities


Door into canning room.


The storage side.


The Garage side. There is access to this through the backyard. We dont know if we are gonna use this to put the car in.... I guess we will see how bad winter is here before we decide!

Well, That concludes the tour of our house. Hope you enjoyed it! Until next time!

We are driving...

Really! We are currently driving back to Washington...

Wait you say?

Oh yeah. I forgot. Don and Carole had a small sweet funeral for Nanny Joan... so Owen got emergency leave and we drove like crazy people and made the trip from Tacoma to Hacienda Heights in one big go of things. 20 straight hours of driving stopping only to pee, eat and fill the gas tank. Yep we are insane! Oh yeah... and we had all 3 kids and the dog and the cat with us.... yep. At least this time we didnt have all the stuff with us. Our new landlords were willing to let us put our stuff in their house a week early. Did I mention that they rock?

Here is a picture of our van.... just so you can get an idea of the fun of our trip:


Anywho....

So anyways. We left last saturday in the afternoon and arrived in Hacienda Heights at about 3:30pm.... which really is pretty darn good! Here is a picture that has nothing to do with the trip....



Isn't she just about the cutest thing ever? I mean really! That picture is from the first time we drove through Portland back on July 20th.....

That is all I have for now.... I might write more tonight.... it depends on how long Owen is able to drive before I have to take over for my "shift"

It is never long enough...

"Nanny" Joan Ridgewell
April 14, 1916 to August 3, 2008


This picture is, as far as I know, the last portrait taken of Nanny Joan. This was taken July 18, 2008. I think she looks beautiful in this picture... eventually I will make a print of this picture and I will put it up in our house...

Now let me tell you a little bit about Nanny Joan and the relationship that she and I had.

Nanny Joan was born Joan Smith in the UK. She grew up there... with her sister Doris, who, for the record, I have never met. Her father was an acrobat and was asked to do not one, but two royal command performances. Trust me, that is a big deal. At some point she met and eventually married Ronald Ridgewell. Ron was a dixieland jazz piano player of some note. He is the piano player on several famous Dixieland Jazz albums, and was asked several times to record his own album. He always declined... He was also a memeber of the Royal Air Force during WWII. In fact, Joan was enourmously pregnant with their first and only child, Carole, during the German Blitz on London. She told me a story on several occasions of being chased down the street by a German plane while he shot away behind her. I am inclined to believe her since she was not the sort of person to lie to make her life seem interesting. She didnt care if you thought her life was interesting. She had loved living her life and that was all that mattered.

While Carole was still a child they moved to Cananda. I believe that they moved for Rons non-piano playing job.... but I am not sure. Then when Carole was an adult they moved again to the US. Through a series of events that I am foggy on the details of they moved to California and lived in several places in the LA county area. Then sometime while Owen was a youngish teenager (he is 30 now) Ron died of stomach cancer. He died in his home with his wife at his side. That is just how things work in Owens family. There is no question of who is going to care for a sick or elderly or sick and elderly person. Family does it. Period. Nanny Joan continued to live on her own until her sight started to fade. Then she moved in with Owens family. She was always included in everything. In alot of ways (from my perspective anyhow) she became the driving spirit of the Bailey household. She and Carole were the best of friends, having the kind of mother daughter relationship that many people dream about having. There wasnt a thing they couldnt talk about. There were no disagreements that couldnt be solved with the phrase "perhaps you are right." I spent alot of time in that house in the last 7 years and the biggest fight I ever hear them have was over wether or not Joan said she wanted her milk before or after dinner.

So now we are up to about where I come into the scene. The first time I met Nanny Joan was when I was 19. I had just met Owen at shinai maybe 4 days before... He and I had just spent the entire night up on the roof of the school across the street from his parents house. We sat up there and talked until the sun came up... and as it did I kissed him for the first time. That is right! I made the first move! Well anyways... We came down off the roof cause we didnt want to get in trouble for being up there and I really had to pee. So he took me downstairs to his house to use the restroom. Well when I was done he decided that he had to go too. While I was waiting for him to do his thing I was sitting in his parents living room. My first impression of that living room was "wow! That is alot of books in one room! They could open a library!" Well anyways I am sitting there and all of a sudden a door I hadnt even seen opens and out comes this little tiny woman. I mean little tiny too... when I met Owen Joan was 4'11 and weighed maybe 90lbs. I stood up to introduce myself and she says "sit down love, I was wondering when you were going to show up. I was starting to worry you were never going to get here, or that he had already blown it." As you can imagine I was taken back. Here was this woman I had never met telling me that she had been waiting for me. I have met people who had gifts before.... but I had never had anyone tell me they were waiting for me! Nanny Joan and I talked for a while. I suspect that Owen listened from the stairs... but I cant prove it so whatever. We talked about Owen mostly. It was like she was prepping me for becoming a member of the family. It was cool. Then Owen came down and took a very silly picture of Joan. Joan vogued for the picture! I dont have it in a digital format or I would post it.

Well anyhow... Owen and I saw each other occasionally over the next year. I dated two or three people and he dated two or three people at a time... then we finally started dating. The first time Owen officially brought me home for dinner as his girlfriend Nanny Joan said "Only about a year now." I thought nothing of it. I figured that she must be having another side conversation.... those happen alot at the Bailey house. She wasnt. She was telling everyone that there was only about a year left before I became a member of the family on paper.... about 10 months later we were married and about 5 months after that we had Alexander.... yes I was pregnant when we got married... but we were already engaged before we got pregnant.

Nanny Joan was always there to talk to me when Owen was making my frusterated... She had fantastic advice about being a wife and a mother. She was fantastic at stopping a fight dead in its tracks. One time Owen and I were having a rather large fight in the living room while everyone else was in the kitchen and she came down and very seriously said "if you two dont stop fighting I am going to have to do my tassle dance just to break the tension!" And yes she did mean tassle as in those pasties that have tassles on the end. She had none of that "older generation so I cant talk about sex or sex related things" stuff! One of my favorite stories that she told me is of a picture she has somewhere in boxes of stuff... She and Ron went to visit a nudest colony and Ron took a picture of her standing fully clothed between two very naked men. They thought it was fantastic! She very happiliy informed me that one of the men had had a peircing right throught the tip of his.... well you get the picture. She thought the whole thing was hysterical.

Nanny Joan was also always there to help us financially if we needed it. She lived off of almost nothing because she lived with her daughter and ate very little. So she was always able to help us pay rent if we were a little short... or there to help Carole if she and Don wanted to make a home improvement.

She gave everything she had to her family. Love, wisdom, and a compassionate ear and tongue. She made me smile everytime I was around her.

I was only priveliged to know her for a short time... but in that time she made my life better.