Feeling Like a Grownup

I met some friends at Muddy Waters last night. I felt like a real grownup out with friends and listening to live music. Only there was this small creature attached to me all night.
Hehe, I don't mind. I wouldn't have it any other way! She even clapped at all the right times. It was cute because my friend had her close in age baby there as well.
Baby playdate at Muddy Waters! I almost felt bad at how much they were stealing the show. There were a few people there that just couldn't take their eyes off them and kept cracking up at all their antics. There was this one beautiful young woman who was so taken with her she asked if she could hug her as she was leaving. I said of course! There was something special about her I felt, and it reminded me of Katie's mom saying Akasha was a healer. It felt like it was a meeting of two kindred souls somehow....

Then the next day it was back to the usual....
Oh wait, this was a momentous occasion! Akasha's first artichoke. Now you have to understand, my older daughter has a love of the artichoke that borders on adoration. This moment had to be captured for all time:



Phew, this eating stuff is hard business.
Stuff gets on your nose and your neckfolds and jeez, who knows where else!

And lest we forget who the real photographer in the house is, here are a few selections from Orion's collection:

His false idol
Old Pig!
Nice rule of thirds son.
Aftermath.

Elimination Ramblings

All kinds of big news in our house! I feel like I have officially gotten on the EC bandwagon! I was very here and there, mostly after naps, and always felt a little guilty because she seemed like so much I had read seemed to be true. Right from birth I noticed she made a funny little sound right before peeing, and she is almost always dry when she wakes up from a nap. Then recently I had a few really good days of almost no wet diapers, and Akasha seemed to start fussing more (or was I just noticing better?) when she had to go.

Then the ironic miracle happened. My husband became a convert! About a week ago I had an appointment I needed to leave her at home for. This does not happen very often, and I have worried in the past because she cried when I was gone. I casually mentioned she seemed to be "asking" for the potty more these days, never expecting him to do it. Well, get this! When I got home he told me she had only fussed mildly three times. Each time he put her on the potty, she went right away, and was completely fine afterward! Wow!!! I was blown away and have been really inspired to pay more attention now. It is amazing how often her sudden fusses are potty related.

Oddly enough, Orion has his own news that just happens to be related. He has been dry at night for awhile! We were using pullups with him just at night and had noticed they were dry in the morning for several days in a row, so we decided to take the plunge and get rid of them. He has been fine for a couple weeks now! We only had one small accident on the night he resisted doing a "potty check" before going to sleep. I had the feeling he wouldn't get to this stage until older, so this is great!

100 Books

I saw this on a friend's blog and thought it was neat, and then it started going around Facebook a bit too. I like the way it is here because there were more options. I changed the way it was done a bit because the original had an underline option. Blogger doesn't seem to have that in their tool bar, and I am too lazy to add the html LOL, so here is my version! Some of these I am not familiar with. If I didn't italicize it, and it is a book you love, let me know!

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Put 3 stars next to the ones you love***


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen***
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien***
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee***
6 The Bible – lots but can’t claim all
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte***
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman********* OK, a few more than 3 stars haha
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Works of Shakespeare – well, most of them…
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien***
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger***
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell – I even own a first edition!
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald – not sure how I missed this one in school!
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky***
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia
34 Emma - Jane Austen***
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne ***
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez*** – one of the greatest books ever written imho
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving - love his stuff but haven't got to this one yet
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins-
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood ***!
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - loved the movie so really want to read it!
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville – just one of those books I never wanted to read – I know I should one day!
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett***
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce - parts... I just can't deal with Joyce LOL
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker*** - one of my all time favorites, along with everything she writes!
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White***
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad***
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery ***!
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams ***
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare***
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl ***– think I have read all his books!
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Funny Boy

Orion just informed me he is big enough to ride his scooter by himself on the street and go places... like to Trader Joe's and buy stuff.

Fun With Squash and "Bonk!"

I have been trying to take a Child Led Weaning approach with Akasha, which basically means letting her self feed whatever she is interested in. To be honest, the couple times I have offered her anything pureed, she wanted nothing to do with it anyway! But she has eaten just about every whole food I have put in front of her. The only thing I feed her with a spoon is avocado, which she loves, because I think it would be too slippery to pick up.

One of her favorites is plain butternut squash. I put little chunks out, and she likes to squeeze them through her fingers. Sometimes she even puts some in her mouth LOL. It makes quite a mess, but she has a blast.

And for the record, I was not expecting her to figure out the spoon at 8 months haha. I had it out to give her some avocado as well, but she really wanted to hold it herself.

We have another new "game" around here. Ron discovered if he said "bonk" to Akasha and leaned his head forward, she would lean in as well and tap her forehead to his. This has become one of her favorite things to do. She will often lean her head forward to try and get our attention and now recognizes the word too. She also makes lip smacking noises now if we say "kiss" to her and will lean in for little smooches. So cute!

Future Ninja

See, she meant that to be her first word!
I recently realized in every picture where Orion is kissing Akasha, her eye on that side is squinty.
General cuteness

Eight Month Comp

Here it is folks! The latest in the series. The same things jump out right away - eye color and skin tone topmost. But the headshape thing just trips me out. I cannot believe how much longer Orion's face is. And the top part of his head looks so much bigger! He got my fivehead for sure LOL.

Oscar's Jewelry

hI recently had alot of fun taking pictures of jewelry for a local unschooler. He has an amazing design sense, and his products were so popular he decided to start a website! Check it out!

Here were some of my favorite pictures from an "art" perspective.

I love that this looks like ponytails!


And here it looks like the bottle is wearing the earrings.

A Day with Friends

I took the kids up to Trout Lake for the day to visit with some friends. It was gorgeous up there! I wasn't thinking about how much snow there would be, though, and we for sure weren't prepared for that. Orion spent alot of time outside anyway and had a great time!

My favorite way to be greeted by a house. :)
Not too shabby for a backyard view....
Wood toy heaven! We love our Waldorfy friends.
So many forks to choose from, but the hands won out!
The beginnings of the bonfire.
Yay for rent-a-dads LOL. Orion had fallen in the snow and was crying. This dad of 3 boys knew just what to do. Everything was fine by the time I slipped over in my crocs.
Snow fort!
Four dads. Four beers. Can you say King of the Hill?
We discovered a new yummy thing - juice and oats! Why didn't I ever think of that? Then again, what do you expect from a kid with his own cooking show?



My favorite part of the whole day was playing a cooperative game called Beautiful Place with a few of the kids. There were some cards that represented "good deeds" for the environment. One of the cards showed somebody throwing some paper trash away, and one of the other kids said, "Wait, isn't that a bad deed?" LOL, these kids are such advanced thinkers he knew it would be better to recycle it!

Now sososo tired.

Valentine Lunaversary

My little punkin is eight months today. Even being so connected to her and savoring every day, it is amazing how fast the time goes! She was my little laundry helper today.

Get this door out of my way!

Buried in freshly washed cloth diapers and wipes!
Kona doing a milk check

Some Pictures from Sick Week

These are a few pictures I didn't get to last week. You can totally see how poor Akasha looks a little out of sorts. :( Orion is being such a nuthead, though, he makes up for the cuteness factor. Is it just me, or do these all look like they are performing in some musical?


And a little oatmeal cookie action.
As usual, the dough was more popular than the finished product!

How Absolutely Adorable is This?!

If you are a regular reader of my blog, you have seen Akasha's cute sprout hat. (Or if you are really lucky, you have seen it in person hehe). Well, we were lucky enough to spend part of the day with my friend Dawn and her awesome kids. Her daughter Rose was offering to draw portraits of people. Look at the amazing job she did with Akasha:
She just nailed that cute hat!

And because Orion likes to get in all my photos....

Salma Hayek Breastfeeding in Africa

Don't care for the banter at the end, but this was the only version Youtube had.

Orionisms

Couple days ago: "The best part of waking up is that you get to play again."

Today while making cookies: I say, "Would you like to scoop the dough or put it on the pan or both?" Orion says, "I'll do the tasting."

Akasha is Clapping! With Extra Amma Action

And last but not least in my marathon of posts, we paid a visit to Tessi and Amma the other day and picked up a freecycle item for them. Amma recently picked up this rockin dress at the Goodwill and has been wearing it all the time. She is so fun to photograph!

Little poser, this one!


And we also got a video of Akasha clapping, which she just started doing a few days ago.

Papa's and the Aftermath...

Took Orion to get some energy out at Papa's Pizza the other night. He took Akasha down the slide for her first time ever!



And then, later at home...

Orion decided to get something out of the makeup machine on the way out with his quarter. He got a lipstick! Kindof a new thing for him as it isn't something he sees me using on any regular basis. :) So he needed some tips


Here he is kissing the mirror.

And the final result....
I guess it was much more interesting on the rest of his face!

Poppin and Jumpin

We got some bubble wrap in a package the other day, also known as jumpin fun! Luckily, Akasha is a baby who like loud, sudden noises. The deities sent Orion the right sister. :)

A boy and his bubbles.
Our very loud kitchen:



Then Orion got in a picture taking mode. Through the eyes of a small boy....
Minimalism:
I really like this one.


Self portrait
And the ubiquitous TV shot.