Okay, I know, I know, I haven’t written in like a month. I blame it largely on Dylan’s great disdain of my blog and how hard of a time he gives me about writing on it. BUT, I just have to say right now that Adrian found a spider on the wall this morning, and after talking to it for a while picked it up and took it outside! I was impressed 🙂 How lucky am I now…
In a few days we’ll be in Arizona!! I’m excited, as are Adrian and Dylan. Adrian is convinced we’re going to walk all the way there though, for some reason he thinks we’re not flying. Not sure what’s up with that…haha 🙂 Dylan will leave early Monday am, and Adrian and I go after work on Tuesday. At least Adrian will have his own seat this time, so I’m sure the flight will be fine. We’re both pretty experienced fliers by now 😉
Yesterday I took Adrian and Julian to Grant Park via bike. It was somewhat of a hilly ride pulling 60 lbs behind me, but we had fun. We had a picnic lunch and the boys played in the fountain there with some friends of ours in undies 🙂 As we were getting ready to leave I took off Adrian’s wet underwear so he could dry of in the sun. A young girl, maybe 8 years old or so came up and said, “she has one of those things?!”, pointing at Adrian’s penis. I said, “yes, he has a penis”, and she kept going on about how this girl had “one of those things”. It was kind of funny, but she really just didn’t get it that he was a boy (she mentioned something about how his long hair must mean he’s a girl). There wasn’t any parent around that intervened in the conversation, so I really didn’t know what to say. When it’s a child I know I feel able to have a conversation about sexuality, etc., but it’s not really my place when it’s a child I’ve never met before. It can be a kind of touchy subject, you know ;). Anyway, it was kind of funny. And Adrian loved playing with 6-year-old Raina. I love how much he adores older kids…
Tomorrow we have a busy day ahead of us. We’re going blackberry and apple picking in the morning, making applesauce all afternoon, and watching Lilah, Linus, and Linus’s half-brother Nicholas in the evening. Wish me luck!
Adrian is always coming up with funny new words and phrases for things. Recently he started saying “don’t talk to me about it” to almost everything! It started out one day when I asked him if he wanted to go potty, and that was the response I got. Now he says it all the time! I guess he learned quickly that I will indeed stop talking about something when he asks, so he’s taking it full force! Kind of cute, kind of annoying too. But I am glad he his learning more about using his words to get across his needs, instead of resorting to violence (which he doesn’t really do that much) or tantruming (which goes on and off in it’s frequency). He does get angry easily, which I’m sure he acquired from his father. That’s proof to me that anger is genetic!
We’re leaving for Arizona in a week 🙂 Well, Dylan leaves on Monday early morning, and Adrian and I come down Tuesday evening so we can squeeze in two days of work before we head off. I’m looking forward to the trip. Dylan will be meeting with NAU to see if he really does want to go into the forestry program there. We might go check out the deer farm: www.deerfarm.com. It looks really cool, and I’m sure Adrian will LOVE it!
So I’ve been reading the book “In Defense of Food” by Michael Pollan lately and really like it. I love the science behind things too, so even that scientific history behind the food we eat was interesting. It is getting very depressing, though, that eating real food is so hard to do in our society. The fact that I was raised partly on Hamburger Helper and Rice-a-Roni doesn’t help much either… Now I see why my mom resorted to these cheap food products though, they are a: cheap and 2: fast/easy to prepare. Not that that makes for a healthy meal, but it does reduce so much of the stress revolving around meal preparation. One thing I am always glad for though growing up is that we always, always, sat down at the table together for a family dinner together. How many people can say that anymore? Dylan, Adrian and I still honor that tradition, usually for breakfast together as well. Eating dinner together with my family is one of the happiest times of my day, every day 🙂
But back to my rant about eating real food. It is so hard to eat high quality food when you don’t have any money to buy it! We hardly have even enough to buy anything to eat, let alone local, organic, fresh fruits and vegetables. Since I have been living on my own I have definitely never been as broke as we are now, and yet I know there are so many people around living on so much less. Summer is the time to buy fresh foods in bulk and store them for later when they would be more expensive and not as fresh, but we just don’t have the money to do it right now. It’s making me pretty upset, actually, that I can’t feed my family the way I want to. Don’t get me wrong now, we are still surviving and there is still food in our cupboards and fridge, just not much. I thank god for our CSA every week when we pick up our fresh produce and the best eggs I have ever had! We are starting to enjoy our raw milk too. Another thing that got to me was reading an article about irradiation of foods, and how products aren’t even required to label that they are irradiated! So not only are we eating foods blasted with radiation, but there’s not even a safe way to affordably get around it 
We went camping out at Timothy Lake again yesterday and today with my mom and Ed. It was fun, and Adrian had a great time playing in the woods and throwing Lexi’s stick for her. Today Adrian and I were walking through the forest and we saw a nurse log. You know, one of those fallen trees that little plants and new trees grow on. I explained to Adrian that it was called a ‘nurse log’ and how cool it is. When we went back to camp, Adrian ran up to Dylan and Nana saying, “we found a nurser log!”. It was pretty cute 🙂 Adrian also had a great time sweeping up dirt into a dustpan and dumping it into a bowl, then sitting down to lick the dustpan clean. Yep, he licked the dirt right off! It was funny and he was a filthy mess afterward 😉
So the next few weeks are going to be pretty busy for us. Well, for Dylan really. Next weekend Dylan will be in camping in WA with Scott, the next week we’ll be in Arizona, then the weekend after that Dylan will be in New Mexico for his cousin’s wedding. Then we’ll finally have a weekend home together again. That was a large part of the reason we only went camping for one night, instead of two this weekend. We did stay the whole day today though and left after dinner, which was nice. We went on a hike this morning to Little Crater Lake. It is an amazing little pool sprung by an artisan spring. It is 45 feet deep and 34 degrees cold. Freezing! Absolutely beautiful though. I got these pictures off Google Images:
It was insanely blue and you could see all the way to the bottom, just like in the pictures. When we were there today the color looked just like the one in the bottom picture. So cool! Needless to say, it was cold enough that we did not go swimming in it.
I am now officially 25 years old. It was my birthday yesterday, which I literally almost forgot about! But ended up we had a great time. I actually went out last night and Dylan stayed home and put Adrian to bed! Not only that, but I didn’t get home until sometime around 3 am…a little crazy for me 🙂 I don’t think, in fact, I am sure I have not been out that late for at least 3 years, since before I got pregnant with Adrian. Kind of crazy, but a lot of fun. Dylan even put Adrian to bed again after he woke up in the middle of the night…what a superstar.
Today Adrian spent the day at my mom’s house while Dylan, Shanna, Dan, Will and I went floating the Clackamas River. I have not been rafting in years, so it was a lot of fun 🙂 The weather was sunny and warm, the water was nice, we saw lots of trout swimming up, jumped off the rope swing, overall had a great time. And Adrian had a wonderful time with Nana and Grandpa Ed too. He slept in the hammock for over 3 1/2 hours! He is definitely going through a growth spurt right now, I can tell he’s grown quite a bit taller in the past two months.
While we were nursing before bed tonight, Adrian says to me, (after almost half an hour of nursing), “mama, bring your milk in”. It was very sweet. Apparently the milk was starting to get low or slow or something and he wanted more. How cute 🙂 We also got the first of our raw milk today. We’ll start getting a half gallon a week now of fresh, unprocessed milk. Milked that morning or the night before. Cream rising to the top. Wonderful. This was actually the first time I have had cow’s milk in almost 10 years (not counting other dairy products or central America). We’ll see how it goes on my body, but I’m assuming that since it is so fresh and not homogenized or pasteurized it should be fine. After all, people have been drinking cow’s milk a whole lot longer than soy milk, almond milk, rice milk, and especially hemp milk. Just one more step we are taking to get back to the basic roots of eating real food.
I found out tonight that Adrian loves lima beans. He ate all of his at dinner tonight and all of mine too, then asked for more! What a keeper of a kid!
I’ve been thinking the past few weeks that Adrian and I have the perfect attachment relationship, to use the words of Gordon Neufeld. He is very attached to me in an incredibly healthy way, and I to him. He randomly gives me hugs and kisses now and frequently tells me “hold on to me, mama”. I love it when he says that, just makes my heart melt 🙂 When he wakes up from naps, which has always been a difficult transition for him, he calls out “don’t! don’t mama!”, and when I ask him “don’t what?”, he says “don’t leave me”. Very sad, yet very sweet at the same time. When he is not needing to be held or played with, he is a very independent little child. He makes his own games, is developing a wild imagination, plays on his own for very long periods of time and doesn’t need me around at all. Of course I am though 🙂 I absolutely love the fact that we are almost never separated and am fortunate enough to have family around to play with him when I do need a break. We are close enough that I frequently know what he needs without him telling me, down to the point of I can sense when he needs to pee or poop before he even shows any signals.
We went camping this weekend with the Green Parenting Group at the coast. Just Adrian and I, as Dylan had Poekoelan camp. It was a great time, Adrian and I both had a blast. Not difficult at all, either, without Dylan, I’m sure because I had the support of all the other wonderful parents there. What a relief it was to be with a group of parents for the weekend who believe in the same parenting techniques that I do. I didn’t have to worry about people yelling at their kids or ordering them around, being disrespectful, talking about things I completely disagree with, etc. Overall a good time 🙂
This last picture courtesy of Ellen 🙂
Adrian has a few new favorite phrases now. One of them is “oh boder!”, from Winnie the Pooh, or Pooh bear as Adrian calls him. Another favorite is “not today!” when asked if he wants to do something. He certainly is getting a mind of his own, coming up with his own ideas and thoughts much more than ever before. It is so much fun to watch and be a part of 🙂
Today we are leaving to go camping at the beach with the Portland Green Parenting group. It will just be Adrian and I, as Dylan has Poekoelan camp this weekend. We’re both pretty excited, it will be a lot of fun I’m sure. I’m also looking forward to finally getting to know some of the other ‘green parents’ in person instead of just online. I’ll be driving out there after Linna’s today. This will be my second long driving trip in the truck by myself, with the first being two weeks ago when I drove up to Timothy Lake. I’m really starting to get used to the size of the truck now and actually enjoy driving stick-shift!
Well I’m off now to finish loading the truck and clean up a little before we go. 🙂
So kind of a lot has happened since the last time I wrote. It’s been a while because I cut my finger last weekend and typing has been difficult I was just slicing up a tomato for our salad and my ring finger got in the way, right underneath the knife. Darn that finger! I thought it was really bad at first, but now that it’s been a week I realize it wasn’t so bad. I cut off only half of the tip of my finger. It bled a lot, but never really hurt as bad as I thought it would. It still hurts a ton when I bump it though… Overall it’s healing really fast and I think will be bandaid-free in another week.
Camping last weekend was a most wonderful time 🙂 Adrian was able to run around all day naked playing in the dirt, so he really liked that of course. We ended up cleaning his penis a lot, but other than that he was just a dirty little boy all weekend 🙂 On the way home we stopped by Frog Lake to hopefully see some frogs or tadpoles, but no such luck. It was kind of a drizzly day, and the only animals we saw were a dead salamander and 5 or 6 dead tadpoles. Pretty disappointing!
On Friday we started the 100 Day Challenge at RawFu to eat raw foods for the next 100 days. We are trying for one raw meal a day. On Friday we made smoothies in the morning that were not very good, but did make a sustaining breakfast. Saturday night I made a salad and some spinach pesto pasta with zucchini as noodles which was pretty tasty. Both Dylan and Scott really liked it, I thought it was a little plain. Today we only had some snacks that were raw as we really really need to buy some more fresh produce. It is definitely hard to eat raw food when you don’t have any fruit! Really though I am pretty excited for the challenge and looking forward to learning about all the different ways to make raw meals.
And one last thing before I go. Dylan’s friend Scott was staying with us this weekend today from Seattle, and Adrian for some reason was obsessed with him! Everything Adrian did he wanted Uncle Scott to help him with and do with him. They danced together, ate together, played potato head and play-doh together, rode bikes together…it was very cute. Everything Dylan and I normally do with Adrian he now demanded to be done with Uncle Scott instead. It was kind of nice for me too, a little break!
We’re going camping today!!! Yay!! Adrian and I are both so excited 🙂 Dylan’s already there, he went up yesterday with my mom, brother, and Lexi the dog. Adrian and I are coming up with Ellen and her bf after Linna’s today. How exciting!
Yesterday, Adrian and I had an interesting experience at Fred Meyer’s. For one thing, I didn’t have any water for him with me, since he usually just throws it on the ground and then cries for it and it becomes a huge deal for the whole trip. Well yesterday he just wanted water the whole time. So we had to go trek through the store, looking for the only water fountain up on the second floor behind a bunch of construction stuff. But we got him a drink. Then we come back down and start to get some produce. As we’re looking at the pears, Adrian starts begging for one. It’s dinner time and we hadn’t eaten yet so he was hungry. I gave him a pear to hold on to and start eating. We have never ever had a problem before with him taking a few bites out of a piece of fruit while we’re shopping. So as Adrian’s crying “I need a pear…!”, I confirm, saying, “you would like a pear to eat?” and hand him a pear. Then this lady standing next to me says, “You know you have to pay for that first, right?” And I said, “yeah, I do”. Then she started rambling to herself “oh of course you do…” and I very kindly say “The store has never had a problem before with him taking a few bites before we get to the cash register”. Which she accepts and wanders away looking puzzled. It was quite interesting. Then I was thinking this morning, at the local stores, like People’s and New Seasons, they actively encourage Adrian to eat the fruit before we’re done shopping. Too bad they’re just so expensive too!
See you after camping!
On Friday Dylan took Adrian to the lake to spend a day at our big family campout, which we didn’t go to. The boys rode up there with Shanna, Creston, and Tabor for the day, then came back home after dinner and the campfire. I went to work and spent a lovely day with Linna and Ethan. What all this means to Adrian and I, is that for the first time we were apart from each other for an entire day! I left for work at 9:30, and he came home just after 10:00 pm, that’s 12 1/2 hours!!! Probably twice as long as we’ve ever been apart before. We both really enjoyed ourselves that day. Adrian had a blast at the lake and campsite with his daddy, and I had a good time snuggling a lot with Linna then with the evening to myself. Adrian was sleeping when he got home of course, but somehow managed to nurse right away…then over the next two days certainly made up for lost nursing time! He was very cute though 😉
Today Linna came over to Julian’s with us for the day and it has been a lot of fun for all three kids. Adrian started jumping up and down when he saw Linna get here, and squeelled (how do you spell that, anyway?) with joy to get to play with both of his friends together. After we’re done at Julian’s, Adrian and Linna will ride in the bike trailer together over to our place for another two hours, which Adrian is also incredibly excited about. He loves having friends come over to his house, and it’s a pretty special treat for Linna to be at our house instead of us over there. It’s so much fun to see him get excited about things, I just love it!
The fascinating life of Aileah 