2!

Happy 2nd birthday little Leland!  You are getting so big so fast and learning so much.  Mommy and Daddy love you very much!

And so it begins...

After some horrifying experiences with Elliots school, we finally decided to pull the trigger and do home schooling.  Registered with Columbia Virtual Academy tonight.  Now have to gather some paperwork and wait for one of their enrollment people to get back to us.   One big adventure after another around here! Stay tuned!

Sickness

Sickness has hit the house...hard.

Elliot stayed home sick from school Monday cause he had vomited Sunday afternoon.  Poor guy has had it coming out the backside now for the last 3 days :(

Clella is now running a temperature of just over 100.  Leland is too.  Leland had some bouts of vomiting this morning that seem to have subsided now, but ugh, how awful.  I hate the look on his face that he can't understand why he is doing what he is doing.  No fun.  Clella is just like her mother, when she doesnt feel good, she wants to sleep.  Sleep she has!  She went in to bed at 11:30, up at 1:30 for about 15 minutes and then said she wanted to go back to bed.  So she did for another hour and a half.   

So, we have all just played it low key around here today.  Nothing productive getting done.  Lots of movie watching and game playing.  

It could be worse, I could be at work.  

Its Monday!

Lame!  I sure didnt miss my 24 hour shift last week.  Im sure as hell not looking forward to it tomorrow either!   Crystal just asked me,  "how do you stay awake the entire 24 hours".  Years of Ninja training, duh. 

Thankfully I'm working only 2 days a week for the next 11 weeks,  thats going to be great for the family.  Clella is going to be less than thrilled that im not home,  but such is life til i can hit that lottery!  Id be happy with a regular 9 to 5 job too,  but that isn't going to happen any time soon.   Maybe honey bees can turn into a full time gig?  That would bee awesome! 

Off to bed. 

Corbin Todd Domke Grimm

Middle name finally decided.   Looks like the mobile blogger isnt playing nice for photos.  So ill have to sit down at the desktop computer and get some pictures up.  How 2010! 

Corbin

Hoping it allows a picture this time.

Corbin!

Yesterday I became a poppa again! What we plan on being our last baby. Little Corbin came into the world at 6:59am, Momma started labor at 02:00 am...sheesh. It went super fast!

Crystal sent me a message at 4:04am telling me to come home, that it was time. I took this as an excuse to do one of the things that got me kicked out of my PPB background....drive fast!!!! My normal 50 minute drive was trimmed down to 37, not to shabby!

Once again, Crystal made it look easy...I can say that cause I'll never have to do it. Everytime I've watched her give birth, has been nothing short of a miracle. She is just amazing. I couldn't have custom built a better momma for my kiddos.

Little Corbin weighed in at 6lbs 10oz, and 19 1/2" long. Blogger is being dumb and wont upload a picture, so I'll get some up soon.

Waiting...

No new baby news!  We are patiently awaiting the arrival of our new little one.  Boy or Girl,  I don't care,  so long as it's healthy.   Sure am getting excited about it though!  

It has to get better... Right?

Elliot is having a hard time finding his groove in kindergarten.  We get phone calls from either his teacher or the vice principal about every other day.  He's already been in the principal office 3 times now.   For the record, the vice principal is an idiot. I gave her the what for on the phone the other day. She kept interrupting me while I was talking so I said "do you interrupt everyone you talk to or are you just doing that special for me? ".  After a brief silence and shitty apologies,  we finished our chat on the phone. 

Crystal and I had to then go in for a meeting with Elliots teacher,  school psychologist, the principal and his vice troll.  An hour later no real solution or plan was really in place other than "let's see how it goes".  Home schooling never left the table,  but it's looking more and more like that's going to be the route we go. 

We got a call today that overall he did much better.  But,  time will tell. 

Bee's....lets get it on!

This summer on an outing to the county fair, we went into the "bee room". It was a small, out of the way building tucked back into the far corner of the fair gardens. To bee (teehee) honest, I'm not sure how we even got back there. We've been going to the fair for years as a family, but never saw it before.

While inside, I chatted with a guy for a few minutes about my desire to get a bee hive. We have 5 acres of land at our disposal, and for the most part, its just sitting there. We will be getting some cows this spring to go in the pasture and eventually butcher to fill our freezer with, but I want to do more. I feel like I have a responsibility to do more. Both to my own family, and our bigger extended family, Mankind.

Someday, I want solar panels on the roof. Geothermal heating/cooling system installed. Rain barrels. I don't know why I feel this way, it just all seems like the right thing to do. We have the room for things, why not utilize that space and "get off the grid" somewhat?

Anyway, beekeeping has been on the back burner for me for months now, slowly building momentum. So tonight at work (I know, I should be working, and I was but...) I found a movie on Netflix called "The vanishing bees". It's a documentary about an epidemic that swept the bee population here in the States back in 2008, and continues to this day. Bee's are dying. Our government is doing jack shit about it, even though they've been told why. Systemic pesticides. The shit that is supposed to be keeping us all healthy by keeping bugs out of our fruits and veggies. It's killing the bees. And not just one or 2 here and there. Millions are dying in the course of 3 weeks in some cases. I'm not going to quote the movie, but if you have the chance to see it, do it. It's an hour and a half long and might teach you a thing or two. If nothing else maybe it will get you charged up and eating organic produce.

I'm signed up for a beekeeping class in January and I'm pretty excited for it. I even put a book on hold at the library to start educating myself. I figure if I go into the class with some read knowledge, I'll be better equipped to ask some good questions.

You can read more about the movie here.

Just to prove a point....

I said I'd be boggling more, and dammit if I won't keep my word!

Today was the last day of the weekend. Ugh, and where do they go? I working yesterday doing a big furniture gig didn't help me relax, but the extra paycheck will be nice. Tomorrow is my Monday, so that means another 20+ hour day... I can already feel the ice cold energy drink streaking through my blood!

Time to put the monsters to bed.

Mike

Resurecting the dead....

I'm sick of Facebook and their shitty updates that limit the usability of that site.  So, I'm bring back the BLOG!!!!

I'm also considering another blog, a public blog that would be available to the masses.  I'm still trying to come up with a name for it, but its coming for sure.  Ill keep this blog updated with family stuff, and the new one will be R rated most days for sure.

I enjoy writing so I might as well be in a forum that allows the creative juices to flow through these fingers. 

So, start coming back regularly, I promise the updates will be coming more often.

Mike

Hello, anyone still here?

Good grief. Y'all let me go 8 months since a post and no one rode my ass about updating this thing? Or did you just not want to hear me tell you to bite me?

Our poor neglected blog is still here. We're still here, happily enjoying being a family of 5.

Let me see if I can briefly catch you up since I was posting regularly. Um, we moved (again! of course on Labor Day 09), I had a baby, on our living room floor (on purpose!), Mae turned 2, Peanut turned 4, we bought a house. A Little House on the Prairie. So we moved for our last time, Peanut finished his first year of school, we settled into country life (PTL we're outta the city) and enjoyed summertime. We've had a couple short vacations to the beach, we fought the school district to keep Peanut at his school from last year and won, Mike moved to an earlier shift so he's on a somewhat normal work day now, and Peanut is enjoying the third week of school.

Lelou is almost 1 and I'm crying inside because it's only a short 25 days away. He's teething now, working on his 7th tooth, 5th one in the last 2 weeks. He's a master crawler and walker along furniture. He so badly wants to run and play with Sissy and Peanut. He waves hi, bye, says Dada and adores his Mama as every little boy should.

Mae is a talking hurricane. She very proudly announces "Mama, I don't have a penis. And you don't have a penis." Which makes the 12 year old inside me giggle hysterically. She's very big into naming body parts on everyone so of course she knows the difference between boys and girls. She's been outta diapers for a few months which is heaven when it's diaper laundry time.

Peanut is talking more than I ever could imagine. It still makes my heart hurt to remember only 14 months ago, he was saying so little and only to his favorite people and then nothing at all to anyone else. He loves school, adores his teachers, and talks about his friends from his class. He's very playful, devoted to his sissy and brother and thinks Daddy is here purely to be his jungle gym.

Mike's still with the city and doing the guild work. It sucks at time with how much he's gone but he's gotten really good at scheduling things were he has at least 2 full days off with us and tries really hard to have it be all 3 days off.

I'm still doing the Mama thing - nursing, changing, chasing, laughing, playing and a little bit of sewing thrown in there when the kiddos let me. I'm still sewing diapers but working on making it more of a constant earning thing instead of an occasional thing. More on that in a later post.

This is about all for now. I'm going to upload a ton of pictures to photobucket over the next few days and get everything all caught up. But until then, here's a few pictures so no one bitches I made a blog post but didn't put up pictures.

Peanut, 4.5 years, 9/10

Mae, 2.5 years old, 8/10

Lelou, 9ish months old I think. I have to go back and look.

This tired Mama is off to bed.
TTFN ~Crys

Happy Birthday Peanut

Four years ago, this was our Peanut.
5 pounds, 3 ounces; 17.5 inches tall.

Today, this is our Peanut.
45 pounds; 43ish inches tall.
Happy Birthday Litttle Big Boy. XOXO

Introducing baby #3

I'm a little late posting on our blog but here is baby #3 and he's a boy!

Leland Ernest arrived on Thursday, October 29th at 10:31 am. He weighed 6 pounds 12 ounces and was 19 inches long - the biggest of my kiddos. He was a few weeks early like Peanut and Maemae, but is healthy and perfect. We were able to have our home birth like we planned and it was amazing, intense, and exhilarating. From first contraction to baby in my arms was 5 and a half hours. Thankfully, the day before I had ran errands and finished gathering up the home birthing supplies from the list my midwives had provided.

Not much time to blog or do anything else but hold our little man and play with the older 2 kiddos. Peanut calls Leland Baby Cute and Maemae calls him brother and sometimes Lee. They adore him and we're fortunate that they have no jealousy or hostile feelings towards him. He's been accepted like he was always part of their lives. My kiddos are the bestest!

And a few pictures before I jump into the shower before I get Elliot up for school.

One day old.

A couple days old.

In his first cloth diaper - one made by me. He's about a week old here.
First car ride to my beloved Target at 1 week old.

TTFN ~ C

22 months

Happy 22 months Sissy. xoxo

Busy in the kitchen

I've begun canning for my first time this year. 2 day ago actually. I have 4 pints of pickled pickles and 9 jars of pickled lemon cucumbers done on the counter that I did last Friday.

Today I have a huge list that I've already started on. Crockpot crammed full of tomatoes pureeing down, another large pot on the stove doing the same thing, my biggest sauce pan with puree in it becoming the beginnings of pizza sauce that will be canned. Then on to the 25 pound box of peaches on my counter that have to be taken care of today and finished in the morning if I can't get it all done. My stove top is going to be super busy. I'm wanting to get everything done today because Mike finally has a few days off and I don't want to have to do chores this week when he's home.

And during all this I need to make some zucchini bread and muffins and get those into the freezer. They make snacks and breakfasts so much easier on the mornings when I have absolutely no idea what to feed my kidlets or myself.

That's what I've been up to. Gaining a new appreciation for all the women who can summer after summer, trying to be as sustainable as possible. It's hard, long, time consuming work - but so worth it in the middle of winter.

TTFN ~ C

Oh, and looking at my last picture post, I clearly need to take the time to resize my photos. Oopsie they're ginormous. But doesn't everyone want to see almost life size photos of my adorable kids?

End of July beach trip

Mike had a job in Rockaway Beach OR at the end of July so we went with him and stayed the night at the beach. This was the week it was 100+ in Portland/Vancouver so at the beach it was 70s and had tons of people all over the place. The kiddos loved the sand and Peanut loved playing in the freezing cold ocean with Mike. We ate at a fantastically delicious restaurant in Cannon Beach, played in the sand for awhile, drove to Seaside and played in the sand and ocean some more. Then grabbed Taco Bell for the drive home and got home in the evening on the hottest day of the year. To our house that had window a/c units that I turned off because I didn't think they needed to run while we weren't there. Big huge fat mistake. Our house was 92 on the inside and took about 4 hours for those units to cool it down enough to breath comfortably. At least the kiddos had one in each of their rooms so it only took about an hour to get down to a nice and comfy 71 for bedtime.

Cannon Beach OR. It was so foggy and misty on the beach and this was around 11am.

It was much clearer at Seaside and I had forgotten to put sun block on us all so we came home with red faces and ears. Thankfully both kids seem to be like Mike and after the first day, their burns turn into tans and they didn't peel. I on the other hand, am not so lucky and I didn't even get very burnt.

More pictures soon.
~Crys

We are here.

Just been incredibly busy over the summer and our blog has been neglected. Mike is still working a ton, I'm home with the kids and working on starting a cloth diaper pattern where I make and sell them online. I also have an etsy store for the baby and toddler clothing I make but haven't done much since my initial stocking and opening. My sewing time has greatly dwindled in between the summer days and lots of playing outside and this pregnancy which makes me too tired to sew after 9pm.

Peanut is doing fantastic. Within the last 4-6 weeks, his speech and vocabulary has exploded. Not just a new word each day or 2 but talking on his own and in big sentences. And he's a big repeater....of the cuss words especially. Son of a bitch was a favorite last week thanks to Mike. He starts pre-school on the 21st (sniff!) and while I'm sure I'll cry my eyes out, he'll love it. We went to the meet and greet ice cream social last week at his school and he loves his class room and went to explore it all by himself while Mike and I hung back and talked to his teachers. He'll even ride the bus to and from there which is a big step for me - having someone else drive him is huge. And like every other mom out there, I've put off school clothes shopping for as long as possible because while I know he'll need clothes for fall and winter, I don't want to have to start shopping in the little boys section for my baby's clothes. But I have to because I can no longer squeeze him into toddler sized clothing no matter how much I don't want him to grow anymore.

Peanut also now is in big boy unders all day. Even at nap time. And poop in the potty is becoming a more regular deal. I'm ecstatic because it means less diaper laundry....until #3 gets here. He also is sleeping in his big boy bed all night and for naps. With us needing to tell him to stay in bed less times than expected. We did this change when we moved 3 weeks ago and it's working fantastically. And today, at nap time, while I was rocking Mae to sleep, he got up, used the potty, then went back to bed ON HIS OWN! This is huge. Before he'd make tons of noise so I'd be irritated and demand he gets back into bed then feel guilty when he'd say poopoop or uh oh (uh oh is code for gotta pee).

Maemae is still a pistol. She's demanding, loud, and very certain of what she wants and when she wants it. She's also all tom boy so I put her in dresses occasionally while I still have some control over what she wears. We love her to death and wouldn't have her be any other way. She's very attached to me and Peanut, with Mike being a good substitute most of the time. Her stranger danger senses have kicked in big time. If anyone gets too close to her and/or me, she gets very shrill and loud. And this happens to family and strangers alike. We hope it lasts until college so she doesn't start dating in high school but I doubt we'll be that lucky. She also now sleeps in her own room all night and, within the last 10 days, has been sleeping from 9-9:30ish to 7:30-8ish without needing me to help her back to sleep (usually). This is a huge step for us both and I'm grateful that it happened before baby #3 gets here. Especially since we're not fans of crying it out regardless of the child's age. Although there have been times when I can understand the frustration that may lead parents to that choice. She also is talking quite a bit but still prefers to do it herself or get it for herself.

Baby #3 is doing great. I am 28 weeks along and still have a due date of November 26. We have switched to a different midwife clinic (again) and are much much happier with who we are now going with. Not only are they CNMs, they are naturopathic physicians and see pediatric patients. So now we'll have a new pediatrician who is more in tune with the natural healing methods than our traditional pediatrician. Woo hoo! And the prenatal/delivery/postnatal care portion we have to pay is a significant amount lower. Always a good thing to save money!

Mike and I also have a good idea of the sex of this baby but we're not telling anyone what we think. And we're not sharing our name list so don't ask. :) We do have them narrowed down and are just waiting to see this little one's face before deciding our final selection. But I am a little disappointed I haven't had any strangers ask me the obnoxious and annoyingly rude question "What are you having?" because I so badly want to say a little monkey or a puppy to see their reaction, followed up by my normal snarkiness of none of your fricking business you nosey busy body who I'll never see again. But I must walk around with a don't talk to me look on my face because no one has asked.

And we moved again. Surprised aren't ya?! This makes the 4th move in 3 years during August/September for us. But our plan changed again so we moved out of the little dumpy house we were in for the last year into a much larger, 2 story (ugh stairs) house in Battle Ground. Yep, the one place I swore as a teenager I'd never live in and here we are. And I really like it, minus the fact the good Target is now 25 minutes away instead of 5. The kids get the living room as their play room and I get the formal dining room as my sewing studio. And Mike gets to sleep upstairs away from most of the noise during the day so we're all happy. His drive for work and the Guild is a little longer but overall, we're very happy here.

That about sums it up. I'll post pictures shortly since the kiddos are up from their naps demanding my attention. Mostly I think they want me to cave and put a movie on for them and because I need to sweep without their help, I think will.

TTFN ~ Crys

Boots

My kiddos love their boots. Peanut needed a new pair again and he picked out some super bright blue and green boots from Walmart.


Maemae doesn't have rubber boots but only because they didn't have her size, or a size even remotely small enough to use. She does have some cowgirl boots and she loves them. And she's very fashionable. This was before the put on her red jacket and insisted I zip it up for her - when it was 84 outside already. She threw a huge hisser when I tried to put sandles on her to leave the house so she got to wear her boots all day. I'm sure they'll be on again when she wakes up and we go to dinner later.
Oye, the pictures are huge but I'm too lazy to go back in and resize them. Plus Mom and Dad are on dsl finally so they don't have to wait an hour to see them anymore.

TTFN ~ C