Back From Camping, On With Life

Yay!!! We had a blast camping up at Standish Hickey State Park. K Bean was soo good, she had a great time swimming in the river and even hiking! We all got really dirty and sunburned and eaten up by those damn pesky mosquitoes! The weather was perfect so we did have to battle all the hordes of jerks coming up from the cities, but the nights never got cold and the days stayed bright and sunny!

Now it is back to real life. Our baby son is due in 3 weeks and we really want a home birth. The only catch is that we still live in the teeny tiny place with no yard. We plan on doing it here but that will require moving all our furniture and re-arranging everything! All the toys have to be sorted through, some into storage, some to Paul Bunyan (our Goodwill), some we will keep in the house for K Bean to play with while we wait. There is so much work to be done and I really want it to be done by Friday morning. That's when the midwives come for a house visit and to drop off the birth tub. I'm beginning to feel the excitement of the new arrival. The nesting thing is really starting to kick in and all I want to do is organize and fold and re-fold all the little boy clothes my family and friends gave me at our baby shower. More on the preparations later, right now I'm going to play with K Bean!

Vegan Muffins!

Yay! Last night I successfully completed the Garden of Vegan's Apple Streusel Muffins for my hubby. They turned out a little too moist for my tastes but then i did make them at midnight. J Dub had to stay up hella late to finish editing his new video for ATL.A.

Now we all have to get packed for camping with a prego and a 2 year old.

But first onto 35 weeks prego ballet class!

My Hubby on Stage with dead prez in Paris

Yay! So my man is doing a ton of video work for the hip hop group dead prez. They were in France for just a day and performed at a huge festival in front of this really cool church. They got to use the inside as the backstage. So cool. When the kids are bigger we'll get to go along too and then these posts will be about traveling with vegan kids thru out the world!

good times

Well J Dub is home. But only for... 10 days. 4 of which we will be camping. That leaves us 6 to get our shit together and find a new home. Or get this one all the way ready for a new baby. But a husband who is 6 foot 6, a very hyper dog, an amazingly "helpful" 2 year old, a new born baby and me might be too many people in not enough space. We currently have one bedroom, one bathroom with no tub, one mid-sized kitchen, one living room and one closet. Thats it, no yard, no office for my work from home hubby, no real storage. To say the least, we're cramped.

As of today, I've decided that I don't really care that no one reads this blog. Writing it at the end of the day makes me feel better.

I think tomorrow I might make some vegan apple muffins. If I can get my kitchen cleaned and K Bean to day care on time. I'm planning another walk with my mom and Isis, my beloved mini lab. The haul road is long and flat and right be the ocean, the perfect place to stroll. Hopefully I don't have any Braxton Hicks again. Those are pretty awful!

By the way it is Nurse In Public week. Or something like that. While K Bean and I no longer nurse, she weaned herself (sad) at 14 months, I fully support all NIP mothers. It makes me happy to see the moms out there who have no problem with it or with what others think. In my community NIP is normal. Most moms I know nurse all over the place, I grew up not even thinking about it. When J Dub and I moved to Georgia and had our first baby and I wanted to nurse I realized that what we do in small town California might not be 'normal.' Huh? I didn't let that stop me or discourage me. I have an amazing partner who supported me through the whole process, even when I declared I wanted to nurse till she was at least 2. His mother thought I was wrong and we were the only family at our ped office who were exclusively breast feeding. But he stood by me. When his clients came to our house for meetings he supported me feeding our daughter in the living room where they could see and if they didn't like it they could go in the office and close the door. I've nursed in the recording studio where outkast recorded some of their first hits. I've nursed in front of gang bangers and the Children of Black Panthers... I am by the way, a white girl. When my next baby is born next month I will proudly nurse him whenever and wherever he needs it. Yay Boobies!!!!

Best Birthday Ever!

Best 'insert holiday here' Ever! is an old family tradition. Every year at every holiday somebody will declare that this is the best one ever. My dad usually does Christmas but the rest of us will faithfully chime in, laughing and agreeing and enjoying being with family. But this year, I had a truly amazing birthday. Generally, I don't really enjoy this annual celebration of my entrance into this would. Of coarse I love getting gifts, but the whole party thing and the cakes and the reminder that you are getting old(er) sort of just depress me. They always have, even as a young girl. It can't help that having a birthday the day before the 4th of July means most of your friends will be out of town either. 

I think there have been a few that were wonderful and this year slips into that list, not as awesome as my 20th in France with my ballet company, or my 18th in England with total strangers who went out of their way to make me feel loved and celebrated but up there none-the-less. My 2 year old daughter is a priceless miracle who told me she loved me allll day long. I'm 35 weeks pregnant with my son and everything is going swimmingly. My husband and I are speaking to each other again and he's going to come home for 10 days tomorrow, and he sent me flowers! My mom and dad got me a gift certificate for an hour long massage at an amazing local spa. AND I got to take a 4 hour birthday nap! I don't really know what makes a birthday great, maybe this years was good because it was so mellow. There was no expectation of an embarrassing party. No little girl sad because her friends didn't call (facebook is amazing, everybody emailed or left a comment). Maybe it was the nap. I don't know what it was but today, the day after, when I usually don't want to be alive felt great. And I had my little love at my side all day.

Fight.

Today I am fighting with my man, long distance. We are about to have our second child together and I have only seen him a total of maybe 2 months thru out this whole pregnancy! A TOTAL of 2 months. I think the longest stretch of time he's been home has bee 3 weeks, every other time we see him it is for a few days, a week at most. I realize he can't make any money or continue his career in the Bragg, I knew this when we chose to move here. But he doesn't seem to be making any progress. Now I'm pissed because instead of trying to complete the credit info for a rental application he went out and did a video for free for one of his homies in LA. WTF mate?!?! Doing this stuff for free for no name artists will get you and your career nowhere and meanwhile your family is up here eating thru the savings and still living in this teeny tiny little duplex! Get your self together and either come home or do what you said you were gonna do! grr.......

here is a video that he made that I really like

success!!!!

Today was a good day. I got a ton of stuff done! K Bean got off to daycare with no problems, she even helped pick up her toys while I packed her lunch. Although as I type this, I realize we forgot to brush her teeth this morning. She did brush them before bed though. While she was at "skew" I walked the dog with my mom on the haul road, went to 2 different places to pay bills, went to the bank, got my baby shower invites and thank yous, and took a nap! All before a healthy lunch at 1:30. Oh and I remembered to take my iron AND prenatal vitamins! (So proud of myself)
Even though I still have 5 weeks left until my EDD, I totally thought I was going into labour this morning when I was walking. I was starting to feel heavy contractions low in my belly and all the way around to my back. I almost panicked because we were pretty far out from where we left our cars and I really thought these were real contractions. When we made it back to the parking lot, I called one of my midwives and asked how to tell the difference between "oh my god, I'm about to have my baby on the beach" and Braxton Hicks contractions. She said it is all in the timing. If you have more than 4 in an hour that indicates that you are indeed going into labour but if it is only 1 or 2, no matter how strong they feel, then it is bx and to just breath "you will be fine." She was right, of coarse, and after sitting in the car for a minute with my dog looking at me funny and my mom already gone off to her first day at work, I was able to get on with my busy day.
I also managed to get a bunch of the junk out of my car and get most of the kitchen cleaned before getting K Bean from daycare. And I did a ton of laundry! yay for me.
She is now asleep beside me, because her crib is full of clean, un-folded laundry and I like the way she smells... and snores.