one hot week in pdx

breaking records this week in portland with temps in the 90's. what happened to having a spring? last week i was protecting my garden from hail and freezing temps, this week we were scrambling for shorts and sunblock. here is this week in pictures:

best of all, Naomi was here visiting from LA...the last day she was here we visited the Japanese Gardens in Washington Park:



later, we introduce George to Nomad:


(one of the girls took this, i am not sure which one....)

after all the sweatin', poor George-Ephraim had a heat rash so i figured out a way to bathe him comfortably without him crying....he seemed comfy on his towel in a huge metal bowl, and sister Isadore helped, too. he sure is chunking up fast:


Saturday was the children's fair at Leach Botanical Gardens down the street, always a treat, and this time Breana and crew got to join us:


it was seriously HOT on Saturday afternoon, so i let the girls run through the sprinklers...is there anything more GREAT for a kid than sprinklers on a hot day??:



today, we went to a birthday party for our friend Kieran....what a cute bunch of kids!:

Mama and Papa and George from Isa-view:


fianlly some random faces of George-Ephraim. first, a silly sleepy grin:

then, bored:
mr. sweaty:
and the pucker-face "huh?" look that i love so dearly:


it is supposed to cool off again this week so we'll have a break. i have a check-up with the midwives on tuesday--i am sure baby G is 10 pounds already! love to all....

could it be today?

i woke up around 9am to some strange new contractions that felt at first crampy, then like they were grabbing at my cervix. i laid there and waited....sure enough another rolled around....could it be? i was happy that my reaction was not that of "oh, craaaaaap" but more of excitement...nervousness, really, but i wrangled it into excitement as soon as it occurred to me that i might "scare off" the contractions that i have have really been hoping for. not that i am excited to be in labor...but i don't want to go too long and start having more worries that maybe something is wrong with me, blah blah blah, and i am anxious to meet our new baby.

so i stayed side-lying for a good 45 minutes, and i had one about every 7 minutes. some were intense, others petered out before they got big. none lasted for very long, maybe 20-30 seconds. blake brought me breakfast in bed (not unusual) but i didn't say a peep, again didn't want to syke myself out. i ate my scrambled eggs and ham with toast...they still kept coming. so i finally got up and peed and had another good sign that these contractions were doing something significant: lots of mucus. i headed downstairs with a silly, nervous grin on my face, and met the family out back where the sun was shining (finally)--blake was in great spirits and exclaimed "isn't this the perfect day?!" they had already started weeding the lavendar bed. i just grinned and said "yes...it is a perfect day....maybe to have a baby?" i told him what i was feleing but we both played it super cool. we're professionals, we know when to get excited and when to ride it out. we headed to breanas to borrow her lawn trimmer, and i let her in on the haps, still playing it cool but of course she was all excited. we told her that blake was still headed to work-as-usual and she said she'd run her errands quickly then come back just to be at my disposal.

i went on as usual as well--sitting at the computer slowed things down, going outside and weeding felt good, but also my hands were really tight and puffy and it made that task difficult. i sat on the pot for a while and there was lots of bloody mucus--i knew my cervix was doing something good! i decided to call the wives just to let them know where i was at. wondered if they wanted to come and take my blood pressure since my hands were so puffy and i'd had slightly elevated bp last visit. but the oh-so-calm beth assured me that it had just been a little high for me, and i'd had no protein in my urine or any other signs of concern this whole time--the puffiness for me is not worrisome. keep about my normal routine and call if there were changes. can do! i took a nice shower and had a snack of cottage cheese and canned pears, my new favorite snack. so white trash, i know...


breana came home and the girls went to hang there for the afternoon while i rested--by rested i mean i ate cookies and drank milk and watched a few episodes of "what not to wear." by 4, i realized i had not had a real lunch and brought a chicken, bacon, avocado and lettece sandwich across the street while the kids rode bikes. breana began photo-documenting what i know she believes to be a "birthday"--what a dork! (heeeeheeehhee, i love you, dork!)

its 6 now and i am back home, waiting for blake to get home. i really want our family put back together! tomorrow is the start of our weekend and i am curious to see if things pick up when he gets home. oh, here comes another one....forgot to time it since the last...maybe another 7 minutes....open mouth, deep breath...wowser......okay it passed.

two shots

The New Neighbors

So far, in one week orange juice, canola oil, a hand-held blender, babysitting, herbal tea, some cal/mag, extra chairs, and a muffin pan have all been passed from one house to the other--sometimes escorted by our 5 and 6 year old daughters. I look out my window and see her in the kitchen and feel like the luckiest girl around.



The Animal Man

Our pets flock to Blake everytime he sits down. Morning tea is their daily opportunity to get some serious B lovin' in before he heads to work. Notice the kitten playing with the bigger cat's tail--he didn't put up with that for long!

big love

taking a break from the food diary. i ate great today. i have more important things to say.


the decision to leave Bend was hard for me because i was very comfortable, with my home, my neighborhood, my routine, and most importantly my community. but when i made the big leap and found the right house, i took no time looking to find the right community in portland. i got on Mothering.com discussion boards and found the Portland tribe--a very active thread of PDX moms that was "on the same page"--these ladies knew where to buy organic, who the best naturopaths were, who could lay Marmoleum, and where you could nurse a toddler without getting the stink eye. And they were funny, and humble, and really supportive of each other. Somebody had a bad day and three others would offer to drop off dinner (somebody had a baby, and there would be 20 meals lined up), someone would be in labor and attempting a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesearean) and candles would light up all over pdx, or a mama would have an argument with their partner or have a "bad parenting day" and the empathy would pour out across the internet. it was no wonder i got hooked so fast. but there were so many mamas and so many daily posts it was at first pretty overwhelming.

with Breana is was love at first PM (private message)--she was a mama with 2 kids and one baby almost there, and when i mentioned we may have to move to portland and find a temporary living situation while our house got finished, she suggested we move into the other half of her duplex that she owned--and we could have a little Mothering Commune! it didn't work out that way, but suddenly i noticed her a lot more on the thread--she was sooo sweet and positive, never missed a beat with reply to others, offering up so much genuine empathy, and best of all she ALWAYS laughed at my jokes *throb.* we quickly developed a online repoire and friendship, that was so obvious to us and everyone else. as soon as we moved to Portland, it wasn't three days before i went over to her house to do laundry. we had just as much a connection in person as online...she asks lots of questions, and laughs a lot and like she has said to me before we both spend time listening to each other. we moved here in april and now it's november. people that meet us think we've been friends for years--if they don't think we're sisters! the online mothers call us "the lovahs" and since Blake is my "B" and Breana begins with a B, i have no dubbed them my "He-B" and "She-B." we text, we call, we chat on the thread, we chat privately, we instant message, we blog about each other, and we see each other numerous times a week. when the neighbor across the street said he was selling his house, i called Breana and said "do you want to live across the street??" they are buying the house this spring. i've NEVER known someone that is so easy to know.

one night Blake was out of town with Mayan, and Isadore and I had a suprise birthday party to attend with Breana and her family. it was at a hotel where the men would stay in the room and and watch the kids while the women went out to dinner--Rich, Breana's husband was in charge of watching Isadore since Blake was not with us. one of the dads, Jamie, had never met any of the mdc moms yet and his wife Rebekah had explained "well, they are pretty alternative..." (meaning tattoos and non-mainstream parenting, i suppose.) but what Jaime saw that night was Rich and Breana and me and our gaggle of children and thought we were really alternative--that night he said to Rebekah on the way home "wow, so they are, like, BOTH with Rich..." and Rebekah couldn't waited to spill the hilarious misunderstanding to us. somehow the term "Rich's Bitches" was coined and it has been on ongoing joke...more solidified by the fact that most of the times we go out or get our photo taken it IS the group of us (Blake stays home for many social functions and Rich is usually there to help Breana wrangle her two small children) or Blake is the one with the camera. we really do seem like one polyamorous family! for example:

*photo taken by Blake

there is me as "second wife" handling the older children while they wear the younger ones. we all fans of the show Big Love--so it was so appropriate that tonight my She-B gifted me with a very cool, to-be-treasured forever book of our adventures together so far called "Big Love." She got together every photo of us (with some help from He-B) and made it in the iPhoto program (just like the cookbooks you made, Naomi)--there are pages dedicated to just us, to Blake, to the kids and finally the last page is each of our families beside our houses (our current home and their home-to-be.) every time i look through it (probably five times already since i got it tonight) i get a big, stupid grin on my face. i love it.

my She-B organized a dinner party for me tonight at my favorite sushi restaurant down the road, the Takahashi, to help celebrate my 27th birthday a little early. Let me say, while i don't think that "27" is a particularly special number, the ladies that came tonight MADE it special. Seriously, how did i ever doubt that i would find such coolness in a new place? These Mamas are the coolest! My cheeks hurt from the laughter and they all have such adorable uniqueness, it just makes me feel all warm and incredibly grateful to know them all. Thank you Breana, Amy, Korin, Joi, Danielle, Rebekah, and Savannah--for not just your sweet gifts but really for your stories, your smiles, and your company.

simple celebration

in an effort to simply this year, we had one party between Mayan and Isadore's birthday's......handful of friends, ice cream sundaes, party hats, confetti, balloons, and sack races. it was perfection.

isadore, birthdate aug 28 2004

mayan, birthdate july 21 2002

the uber-talented rick

so when does this party start?

the party crew: kaden, madeline, mayan, olivia, isadore, kylin, rosie (elanore had not yet arrived)

makin' sundaes

well i can tell you that stain won't come out

neck and neck sack race

kylin has her mama's smile!

i *heart* this shot so much (thanks for taking it Cath!)

blake explaining the egg-in-spoon race to an attentive yet eager audience

and the added bonus, most of the gifts people brought were handmade! amanda made the girls a bitchin' puppet theatre with sock puppets that hangs in the doorway, breana made adorable tutus, and danielle made all of us (blake and i included!) fabric bags that are made just like plastic sacks from the grocery store. we sure know some crafty people!