Suki had been showing signs of labor all weekend.  She’d been pawing, contorting, heavy breathing, groaning, dripping mucous, contracting.  I spent so much time in the goat shed.  Some of it was very tranquil.  It’s quite nice to take a nap with a goat.  Other times, like at night during torrential downpour, being eaten alive by mosquitos dressed in a sopping hoody while staring at the goats ass…. not so idyllic.  My (marvelous and infinitely helpful) WOOFer Katie took shifts.  Auntie Alexis took shifts and even had the pleasure of helping hold Suks while I performed my first cervical exam as the vet was up North for a family gathering.  (We were worried she her amniotic sac had burst and there may be issues with potential kids.)  Through all of this Suk’s was the suckiest she had ever been, literally becoming a lap goat.  Laying across my legs, nuzzling my neck, putting herself under my hands.  She really wanted love.  So we gave it.

This afternoon her udder looked like it was going to burst.  Each teat looked like a jumbo cartoon breast from Playboy.  Her hind end had gone from very puffy to sunken and she began bellowing through her contractions.  Scott eventually heard this and came dashing out to the goat shed just in time to see a little nose emerging from within the fluid filled sac.  With a little manoevering and a few good pushes on her part we were soon helping clean off her beautiful little doeling.

Suki took instantly to mothering; licking furiously and keeping a hawk eye on her precious one. Little Cindy Ray took quickly and easily to nursing.  It was such a wonderful experience to get to share alongside my wonderful husband.  He caught Bob when he was born and played a huge role in supporting me during my labour with Meeps.  It was so fantastic to be able to help support our wonderful little goat through her labour, together.  Definitely softens the sadness of knowing we will not be having anymore kids ourselves.

And now I will shut up and show off some pictures.

On the topic of daughters, here is a recent picture of four generations of lovely ladies.

It is my precious little daughter’s birthday tomorrow.  But the Great Grandparents started their journey back to Hawaii today, so we shared presents for her yesterday.  We had a Blessingway planned, but given the unrelenting rain, the 7 or 8 desserts that failed miserably and the fact that I smelled like a goat… we decided to postpone.

There are plenty of people who think we are nuts over one component of our parenting ethos or another and one of those things involves toys.  We eschew plastic toys, specifically those containing BPA and pthalates.  We do this for two reasons: (1) I’d rather not expose my kids to said chemicals and (2) them toys is ugly.  I’ve gotten my share of “but you’re depriving them of play!”  Most certainly, I am not.  Mags presents included such wonders as a wooden coffee maker; a stash of handsewn finger puppets; a wool stuffed fairy and a fantastic set of felted peas in a pod, which I didn’t manage to take a picture of in daylight today, but I assure you are achingly adorable.  BEHOLD!

Maggie wore the dress I sewed for her from Anna Maria Horner fabrics (so wonderful) and Bob wore the Amish pattern based shorts I sewed for him over the winter.  He performed what he called Amish Dances all over the living room that day. They involved a lot of twisting and writhing, much akin to Suki’s recent behaviour.

And now it’s time for me to sleep, not in the manger, but in my own bed.

Good night all.  Thanks for checking in.

The kids for Christmas got a lovely little set of crocheted bags, stuffed full of bright felted shapes.  It’s one of their favourite toys.  They put the creatures in and out of the sacks, play with the creatures, pretend to “sew” the creatures.  A very simple, well made and well loved gift.

The mailman this morning brought the kids an early Easter present of felted eggs and a hilarious ball.  I could hardly fend the kids off the toys to take a picture of them!  They’re so excited, bouncing these little things all about the living room.  Another terrific purchase from Soos & Boots!! They also do custom orders, which is what these little duders were.

Also in the fibre arts news, here’s a picture of Mags in a newly aquired sweater that was pulled off of a moth eaten stuffed rabbit.  Yup, my daughter is so petite she fits into clothes intended for rabbits.  (Though she is nearly two, her 6-12 month pants still fit her perfectly about the waist… it’s just that they only come to her knees!) Her kitty hat was lovingly crocheted by a friend also.  The second picture is the face she makes when you ask her to say “CHEESE”!

I’ve got to get to work tidying the house of in honor of my company this weekend.  Company!  Here to see ME!  I am stoked.  If I can get the house together in good time, I’m going to hopefully finish some curtains for the kids room, and start laying out fabric and wool for some pillows for the kids.  Time to brew another coffee and get my clean on!

I’m working on another Amish pattern based dress for Meeps.  I have added a zipper, intend to sew on an exterior pocket and have used wonderfully bright fabrics, all very UN-Amish things.  Hoping to have this done by spring.  There’s no pattern for the dress, you just estimate a box shape for the top, double the width for the skirt portion, and unlike most dress/shirts I’ve sewn, instead of attaching the arms to the body at the shoulders and then sewing it together at the sides, you insert the arms (already sewn into tubes) into holes you have cut into the body.  You could easily do it in an afternoon, if you were child free.  If not child free, estimate one week of evenings.

It’s not done, and I am not by ANY means an accomplished seamstress, so please excuse my wiggly stitches and yet-to-be trimmed threads.

Because I needed something else to do, I have decided to start to try to learn needlepointing.  I am attempting to sew a cut out flower from the body fabric onto a pocket.  I am guessing this would be easier if (1) I had one of those needlepoint hoops and (2) I had any basic idea at all about what I was doing.

Anyone do needlepoint?

How do I stop the threads from twisting and not laying flat?
Should I have folded the fabric, as the thread seems to pull through?
Where should I look up stitches and things, anything good (free) online?
I doubled my thread, was this wrong?

We started night weaning Meeps over Christmas, when Scott had some time off work.  The deal is I tell her The Booby sleeps at night and will be awake in the morning.  (5am).  The first few nights were horrific, what seemed like endless screaming.  We don’t leave our kids to cry alone (I wouldn’t leave Scott if he was upset) so there were several nights of feeling like my brain was going to actually explode, leaving the dog something else disgusting to lick up.  Then she gave us a handful of remarkable sleeps; she would stir around midnight, Scott would pat her down, then sleep until 5am.  Now Meeps is wise to the fact that it’s Scott patting and not me, so she whips around to see it’s him and starts howling.  I don’t give her The Booby until it’s morning, no matter what, so every night there are several periods of dreadful shrieking to endure.

So that’s where we’re at.  I have night weaned, except I am getting no more sleep than before, and now my night is now punctuated with high pitched skull piercing bawling instead of nursing.

Reminding myself of the Founding Principle of Parenting… and that principle is:  Suck It Up.  We stay with our children while they are upset, so I just need to enjoy all of these recent mini vacations to my Happy Place and know that THIS TOO SHALL PASS.  She won’t do this forever.  It will get better.  I am not going to compromise my parenting ethics, I am doing everything I can do to make the situation positive, I tell her what a good sleeper she is, I fill her full of positive reinforcement.   Therefore there is nothing for me to do but Suck It Up.

I am presently in the middle of finishing up a pair of Amish pants for Bob.  They are really cute, can’t wait to post a picture of him in them.  If you’ve never seen an Amish pattern before, below is what I took home from Ida’s place the other day: two pieces of butcher paper and a little diagram that I made to attempt to remind myself of the basic construction of the lining, the suspenders, the pockets, the button placement, the waistband… all of the things NOT included in the cut out pattern.  (By a wing and a prayer is how I sew!)

If anyone out there has any old silkscreens laying around, I’m interested.  I would love to slap a couple of skulls to the side of Bob’s pants.

Bob is really into letters right now, phonics.  Most of my days are spent answering “What does TRUCK start with?  What comes next?”   He’s really into learning to tie knots, baking cookies, helping wash dishes and the table, and tattooing us.

Both kids love the new super long sled we got to help me out with goat chores.  Now instead of slowly alternating between moving Meeps and the 5 gallon water jug in spurts in the direction of the goat shed, I can load both kids, the jug and the food onto the sled and pull them to the shed.  Last night we took the kids for a walk around the corner (we were gone over an hour, made it only a fraction of the way around our “block”) and it was so nice.  We didn’t see a single other person, but we did see some cougar tracks coming out of the bush by the river that runs through the back of our place.  Meeps fell asleep on the way home, totally folded in half into her own lap like a ragdoll.  That sled sure rocks the monkey.

Some of my seed catalogues have arrived already, so my nights are filled with colourful plans.  I’ve convinced Scott to let me order bulbs for Mother’s Day and I can’t wait to get my orders in.  I can’t wait for baby chicks, for dandelions, for the goats to be on grass again.

The days are getting longer again, I can feel spring on the horizon.

1.  A miniature wooden sewing machine, made by hand, purchased on Etsy.  (The needle goes up and down when you turn the wheel!)
2. Two crocheted flower shaped sacks, filled with felted shapes.  All made by hand by my sister in law (I can get you in touch with her if you like).

They play with them as individual gifts: sewing sweaters, fixing socks; stuffing the felt shapes in and out of the sacks, playing zoo and other games with the pieces.  But their favourite thing to do is to sew the little felted doodads on their fancy new machine.

Other great things about the items above?  All handmade.  All affordable.  All natural.  All made in North America.  Yeah.  They rock the monkey.

The best present we gave this year was a book we made on BLURB. A giant family photo album, from our pregnancy with Bob to this summer. It’s massive, the maximum number of pages (over 400), some pages have half a dozen pictures on one page, and it’s 12″x12″. I wish I had never printed a single 4×6. What a waste of money. The print quality is tremendous (I had NOTHING but frustration printing 4x6s locally) and man. What a reaction from the grandparents! Super platform too: you download the program and it can be as stock or as custom as you want. You only need to be connected to the internet to upload it (a dream for us low speed internet folks). I highly recommend this program, for photo albums, cook books, whatever!

Here’s a little peek at our book (click the preview):

THE DUNCAN FAMILY

Summer 2006 – Summe…

By VOLUME ONE

Book Preview

Did you get or give any super awesome stuff?

Mags was napping by the time we got back, so Bob and I picked all of our calendula flowers.  They are steeping in a pot of olive & jojoba oil on my stove, and will continue to do so overnight.  I plan on leaving some as oil and making the rest into lotion.

We’ve been talking about cleaning out the kids ‘bedroom’ for a while now.  It had just become a storage space.  Today Bob asked me if I would clean it out for him.  Even though I had planned on tackling my mountain of laundry today, how could I possibly say no.  We even moved his mattress out of our room and into it!  On his urging!  I plan on trying to get them both asleep in there tonight, and bringing Meeps back into the master when she wants to start nursing.  She goes to sleep without nursing now, I just pat the pillow and she lays down — but she does nurse 2-3 times in the night, feeds she is not ready nutritionally or otherwise to have limited.  She does a good 4-5 hour stretch before wanting a midnight snack though.

I highly doubt this is the end of our beloved family bed, but it will be an interesting new adventure for sure.

Gearing up for a feta making extravaganza with one girlfriend and lots of soaps with another.  Planning on tilling under spent portions of the garden and heavily mulching with straw tomorrow.  Hoping Scott’s new portfolio (which I put together with Blurb) arrives soon too!

Can’t wait for Scott to get back from Calgary.  One more sleep.

Maggie doesn’t like much solid food, but girls got taste.  She very much enjoys the ewe’s milk chevre I make.  I am presently noshing on some.  I figure the 1 mile diet goodness of it all outweighs the fact that I am scooping it out of the bowl with piece after piece from a box of Cadbury’s HEROS that my mother in law brought back from Scotland.

Ahem.

It’s been a long day.  I did a lot of things today.  And Maggie remains attached to me for almost the entire duration.  Her inability to be put down by me phase, which started at roughly 6 months, while getting better, is still essentially in full effect.  The only thing I haven’t done with Mags on me is use the WeedWhacker, and that’s only because I can’t get her to keep on ear protection.  Every other task around here from personal hygiene, to folding laundry, to carrying 5 gallon jugs of water out to the goats in ALL forms of weather, to tending the garden has been successfully carried out with her on my back, front or arm.  You gotta do what you gotta do and I want her to trust me as her parent.  She’s too little to get that when she cries for Mommy and I don’t answer, it’s not  because I have abandoned her like she thinks, it’s because I am REALLY TRULY VERY BUSY.

Today I packaged cheese for the market tomorrow with her on me.  She just wanted to follow the project through, as I MADE the cheese with her on me.  For those curious, we have gone with chunk and not tube, for ease of re-wrapping.  We tested it out.  The wrapping went beautifully.  Tomorrow we will be selling plain ewe’s milk chevre; herbed with tarragon and oregano; sprinkled with salt and chilis; mixed with vanilla and sugar; and slathered with chocolate shavings.  If you live in the Kincardine area, come to Conaught Park tomorrow before noon and buy our cheese, please!

Back on the kid tip.   One mommy blogger I read recently wrote “I do know that I don’t want a kid who will only want to be with me”, as her three month old is attached to her body.   And another more seasoned mommy blogger I read recently wrote “if your child only wants you—let me tell you something, don’t offer your story to someone who’s living the opposite scenario. I say this with kindness and the knowledge that you’re just trying to help, but no, you DON’T know how the other shoe feels. I’m sure it also sucks to have a child suction-cupped to your body all day long, a child who refuses Daddy’s loving embrace in favor of following you around sobbing to be picked up, but oh man, it’s just not the same.”

I know of that pain.  And let me say, it keeps my feelings about the Meeps Scarf that I wear in check.  Bob went through this phase where he wanted very little to do with me once Daddy came home.  And by “very little” I mean that he screamed bloody murder whenever I tried to do up his shoes, or read him a book or put him in his car seat.  Or anything involving him pretty much at all.  “DADDY DOOOO IT!” He would yell in my face.  Over and over and over again.   All the colicky months of nursing him while standing and rocking (and weeping from exhaustion) meant nothing.  In those, the LONGEST of moments, it felt like he hated my guts.  And I felt like I had wilted.

The day will come ALL TOO SOON when your child wants NOTHING to do with you.

So….The baby scarf phase.  It passes.  And gives way to other phases.  Like the DADDY DO IT phase, and the BOB DO IT phase.  Like the phase we’re presently in with Bob, when he acts all BOMBALOO and I have to excuse myself from public places while he thrashes every limb at once, spasms every muscle and emits fog horn type noises interspersed with shrieks.  That’s AFTER he’s shredded and smashed everything he could get his hands on in the 3.8 seconds it takes him to go from being a perfectly pleasant child to a…. less pleasant child.  And all this while trying simultaneously to protect the OTHER child in my arms from being bludgeoned.  Yup.

You take it all in stride because you know this one thing.  THEY HAVE TO SLEEP EVENTUALLY.  And then, despite how truly shattered you are, you get up to eat several thousand calories in chevre and chocolate and blog.

My mom called the other morning to say there was a dead doe in her front yard, and we came and got rid of it for her.  My folks live above a pretty busy road – there are stairs up their back hill to their house.  This poor creature must have been struck down there and come up looking for a quiet place to lay down and die.  She had a pretty gnarly healed leg from a previous injury – I can’t imagine what it was like to walk around on that.

The mini-vanasaurus is a loaner from the car accident the 4runner was in.  Hafta say, not a fan of the van.  It uses less gas than I thought it would, but it’s still a pig.  I can see them being highy useful if you had more than two children to haul around on a daily basis, but driving two kids around in that beast feels like HAULING and not driving.  I like zipping around in my little Focus hatchback and it holds plenty.  Our other vehicles each seat four kids, so unless we’re escorting around a team of children, I think we’re pretty well taken care of.

Something I love: Goat eyelashes.

I put Bucky in with the girls yesterday as his testicles had shrivelled up.  Things went better than I thought they would (on Sooki’s first night, the other three chased her relentlessly).  But I think it’s because they’ve seen and heard him for the last few weeks from his quarantine pen.  I took him out last night (I know they won’t let him in the shelter) and will put him in with them today for good.  The little ninnys have been playing “goat on a hot tin roof lately” and it’s a miracle there’s not been any broken limbs on account of their raging obesity. (Little Buffy on the ground there is actually pregnant and not just fat).

Maggie is sick, I’m a bit sick, Scott is sick.  At least one of us looks cute despite it:

Our little ratball has been getting showered with tummy rubs since his return:

In other news, we lost a baby chick this morning due to over crowding.  Squashed under the waterer.  They really need to get outside, so I think instead of tattooing me Scott will be building a chicken tractor tonight.  Foiled again!

Pussy.  CAT.

I had our rescued Himalyan cat sheared for the summer.  Even with brushing, I still have plenty of mats to remove (I use a seam ripper, since I am always afraid I will cut his skin when I use scissors).  I figured between the hot weather and my increased lack of spare time in the summer, the Lion Cut was the way to go for ol’ NoNo Goo-Eyes Duncan.

Puppercini thinks NoNo’s new hair cut is dead sexy and has not left the cat alone since he came back from his Wild Adventure.  The cat, who outweighs him by at least ten pounds, hands Puppers his ass on a platter quite regularly in response.  The D Day for Pupper’s balls has been set with our vet.  He’s got no idea what’s comin’.

If gardening with your goat is normal, than you could say everything is back to normal around here.  My three kids and I had a nice day in the sun yesterday planting beans and eating clover.  Bucky is still in his quarantine pen on account of his lice (which are almost gone) and his having testicles… and while he is within yelling distance of my girls, he gets lonely.  We have stopped having to drain his giant abscess and his testicles have descened from within the mass, so hopefully he’ll be getting his balls removed shortly too.  Hopefully things will go better for the dog and the goat than they did for my husband.

So far in my 100′ garden of glory (and groans) I’ve planted (from North to South): two cherry trees, 18 raspberry canes, sunflowers, corn, garlic, strawberries, spinach, peas, assorted flowers for cutting, tomatoes, peppers, brusells sprouts, red & green cabbage and beans.  And I’ve planted a bunch more bulbs including a whack of ranunculus in a pot (which I cannot wait to see bloom).  I have two huge black currant bushes waiting to go in, broccoli transplants, cantaloupe, gourds, pumpkins, cucumbers, zuchinni, basil, carrots, onions and potatoes left.  The rest are waiting on 4 more trailer loads of manure to arrive from a neighbouring farm, a few bales of peat (I feel bad for the bogs and the miles traveled, but only until I try to stick my shovel into my cement pad of a garden plot).

And now the pictures.

On the cheese front: my feta cheese tastes delicious, but I didn’t drain it enough so it’s a bit soft.  I’ve got a gallon of sheeps milk defrosted to make another batch this morning.  I tried my first cheddar finally (as it takes 3-6 months to age).  In our house we say “Oh I’m just going to taste this to make sure it’s not poison” when something is scrummy and we want to dip in.  Well.  Sure brought a whole new meaning to that with the cheddar, as the unpasteurized milk cheese which had sat in my laundry room for months very well might have BEEN poison!  But it was not.  It was delicious.  Very sharp, highly satisfying.  I’ve got two more massive bricks of it aging in wax right now but I don’t think I’ll make any more until I can make myself a cheese cave.  (My laundry room is unheated, so it’s fine for aging cheeses in the cool months, but it’ll be useless in the summer).

And I made soap!  And I think it worked!  It was touch and go for a while, as it took hours to get it to start to trace.  Endless stirring.  The soap contains: olive oil, sweet almond oil, apricot kernel oil, jojoba oil, kukui nut oil, palm oil, coconut oil, hemp oil, calendula oil, grapefruit seed extract and shea butter.  I scented it with orange essential oil, patchouli, sandalwood, and amber essence. I just cut it into bars this morning and so we’ll see how it works after it cures for 1-3 months. It smells SO GOOD.

The pictures below are as follows:  some of my oils, my stove set up, melting the solids with the oils, my wax paper lined wooden soap mold and lye action, the soap wrapped in towels setting and the cut bars.

So soap making was a good experience.  Easier than I thought it would be.  I’m really glad I had a girlfriend over to hold Meeps while I mixed the lye and water.  (Which IS really smelly and I am glad I did it in my laundry room with the window way open).  I had dragged my heels about making soap, as I was a bit intimidated, but I’m glad I jumped in!

Had a really nice time at a friends baby shower this past weekend and a great time getting to know one of my internet mommy friends Gillian and her family.  Saw lots of old friends and marveled at the size of their children.  Speaking of big kids, look at this picture of Bob – he looks HUGE!  Where did my baby go?

When he’s not pounding his sister he is really, really sweet with her.

Planted almost 100 strawberries.  2 cherry trees.  18 raspberry canes.  Hoping that we get over to the neighbours to pick up a load of composted manure so I can get in some peas and spinach shortly.  There’s an open house at a local organic farm this weekend and they sell transplants so I’ll be paying top dollar to rectify the fact that I fried almost all of our transplants in the oven…

We got a new bunch of laying hens as ours went into the freezer last fall.  They are very happy little hennies and Bob is really enjoying gathering eggs again. Maggie doesn’t know what to think and I am realizing just how much I missed their little chicken noises.