the unbroken world

Taking a Chance on Baby-Led Solids

2012-05-26T20:08:00.000-07:00

These photos are horrible-- I'll apologize for that in advance. I don't know what happened but everything is whited out or super grainy. Oh well... anyways. We're about two weeks into trying out solids now and, after hemming and hawing about it nervously for a while, I finally mustered up the courage to try some baby-led solids as well. We're still doing purees, but we end meals with some big

Blowin' Up My Reader Today

2012-05-25T17:45:00.002-07:00

I am always one step behind the conversation. I get laughed at by my brothers a lot for overhearing the last piece of a conversation and asking, "Wait, what happened?" Am I just never paying attention? I don't know. I just know that this happened and I read a little bit about it yesterday and really sat down to read a few things today. And now that everyone else has already chimed in about it

Chunky

2012-05-23T12:38:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I think about how we brought the girls home from the hospital, swimming in their newborn pajamas both under five pounds. How we worried about Chicken, left behind for two days in the hospital where she was born and then in the ER the day after we brought her home because she was so tiny she couldn't stay warm. I remember those tiny newborn diapers that went down to four pounds

End of an Era (A Tribute to My Amazing Husband)

2012-05-20T18:57:00.000-07:00

In mid-January of 2005, I was a college senior and ten minutes late to my first Magic, Science & Religion class. My classroom lay just around the bend of the corner, but a few paces from the door I heard a voice-- "Hey! Julie!"-- and saw a tall man with long, dark, wavy hair grinning and striding towards me. He was someone I had known casually for years, a story that takes long enough to tell

Trickery Afoot

2012-05-18T22:23:00.000-07:00

See this baby? She's a cute one, to be sure... but she is a little devil! Ham learned a new trick-- shrieking. She does it when she's angry. She does it when she's happy. She does it when she's bored and frustrated. This means we listen to her shrieking all day long. Look at those eyes. She's up to something. On top of that, the girls are now officially in their

I Will Take An Egg Out Of The Robin's Nest

2012-05-17T20:54:00.002-07:00

I will take an egg out of the robin's nest in the orchard, I will take a branch of gooseberries from the old bush in the garden, and go and preach to the world; You shall see I will not meet a single heretic or scorner, You shall see how I stump clergymen, and confound them, You shall see me showing a scarlet tomato, and a white pebble from the beach. -- Walt Whitman

Nom Nom Nom.

2012-05-13T20:58:00.000-07:00

The girls turned six months old on Friday. Six months! Sheeeeesh. I'm still processing that. My tiny babies are not so tiny anymore. (I know six months is a flash in the pan. They'll be seventeen before we know it. But let me get used to this slowly!) Here's their six month photo: One of these days I should line up all their month-by-month photos to see how big they've gotten. Too bad

Too Soon

2012-05-11T17:27:00.000-07:00

I want to take a quick moment here to tell you about Alice. Alice is the sister-in-law of Heidi from HoneyBearLane, one of my favorite crafty/family blogs. She just had a baby-- a little girl to follow her two boys. But after having her baby, she started not feeling well... and then she suddenly got really, really sick. She was in the ICU for a few days, quickly declined, was declared brain

Exciting New Changes

2012-05-09T19:16:00.003-07:00

I'm just making a quick fly-by post here to let you all know that PAIL (our Parenting after Adoption, Infertility and Loss blogroll) is moving and changing! Elphaba has decided to move on from maintaining it and has passed it on to myself and three other ALI bloggers. We're hard at work behind the scenes to move PAIL to its new home, and hopefully add some shiny new features for you all to enjoy!

Snapshots

2012-05-08T20:00:00.002-07:00

It's been a bit of a nasty week. Husband's mother passed away, and we've been making plans for her memorial service. After a memorial service, of course, everyone will be here. But "here" is a place with little people who look like this and their accoutrement. So while it gets cleaned and tidied with relative frequency, things happen. Things like a giant pile of paperwork

Toys

2012-05-02T16:33:00.001-07:00

Let's do a post about toys, shall we? I've had some big opinions about toys since long before I got pregnant. I knew what I definitely didn't want-- battery-powered neon-colored plastic stuff. I still don't. I prefer toys that enhance children's natural aptitude for problem-solving, open-ended toys that can be used for many purposes and that are more aesthetically pleasing. All of what

Once Again.

2012-05-01T19:29:00.001-07:00

We got terrible news on July 15, 2010, and more again last night. 9:15pm, watching a DVR'd episode of Game of Thrones, enjoying the baby-free portion of our evening by vegging out on the couch. Husband's phone rings... and it's the nursing home, with the call we'd been waiting for. Husband's mother has been under hospice care for probably nine months. Beyond that, she's been in a nursing

Nom, Bounce, Smile

2012-04-30T21:41:00.000-07:00

(Alternate blog entry title: Eat, Pray, Love... for Babies) Six months is just around the corner (May 11th), and since I'm a first-time mom, I'm holding fast to the notion that if I'm waiting until they are six months old to feed them solid foods, I am waiting until they are exactly six months old. Not a minute before! I'm sure by the next kid, or the one after that, I'd be absent-mindedly

Funny Face

2012-04-25T18:51:00.000-07:00

I'm ridiculous, I know... but I just can't get enough of their little faces. I'm loving all these crazy little crappy iPhone photo outtakes. I melt. Seriously. I really feel like I have my own family now. That sounds silly, I'm sure. I have a HUGE family in the sense of "family of origin" and "extended family," and when I married Husband, HE became my family

Awareness

2012-04-23T17:37:00.000-07:00

Guess what day today is? Today, and yesterday, and all this week is National Infertility Awareness Week. Why do we need an infertility awareness week? Because there are millions of us, everywhere. Some of us have babies now, or had babies before, and some of us don't. Some of us have lost babies. Some of us still struggle with feeling broken, or inadequate, or lost. Some of us had

Something You Should Do

2012-04-20T20:42:00.002-07:00

Something you should do... You should hang out with us. Everything we do is fun and awesome, especially bath time in the living room on the floor on top of a plastic tarp. (It was hot out, and I was solo parenting. Sticky, sweaty babies were not a viable option!) We also find non-bath ways to cool off while the air conditioner kicks in. And we practice

A Midnight Lullaby for My Babies

2012-04-15T23:08:00.000-07:00

It's after 1am. I crawl into bed, fresh from the shower, with damp hair hanging down around my shoulders. The fan is on, a window is cracked open and letting in a cool but humid breeze. Tomorrow will be around 90 degrees. I scoop up one of the two sleeping babies in the bassinets beside me. My daughter is wearing just a plain white onesie-- it's too warm for thick pajamas-- and a light pink

300th Post

2012-04-14T19:01:00.002-07:00

How crazy is that? And this May it'll be two years since I started this blog. I've created a million blogs in the past, but never have I actually stuck with them for this long. I really like this one... I have one other blog on a different website, and I basically only use that to read friends' blogs and post links to what I write here, so this is my default home on the internet. So thank you

A Room with a View

2012-04-13T08:41:00.000-07:00

I am addicted to Pinterest, and most of what I use it for (besides recipes) is collecting educational tools, toys and spaces. I love the natural, homey look of Waldorf and Reggio Emilia classrooms-- rainbow silk scarves, wooden toys, baskets of leaves gathered from outside, sweet little dolls, blocks and cross-sections of tree limbs lined up for building, a beanbag and pillows beside a low shelf

Easter Bunnies

2012-04-07T19:45:00.000-07:00

Sorry for being vague in my last post. We have some very stressful BS going on right now of a legal nature, so to speak, and so of course I can't really talk about it on a public blog. It'll hopefully be resolved soon, and it's been worked out well enough for now that at least I'm not toeing the line of a panic attack all day every day like I have for the past week. Something April has taught me

Something, Kinda.

2012-04-04T17:40:00.001-07:00

There is some bad stress right now. Can't get into it, just know that it's bad and it should work out okay, ultimately, but right now I feel like I'm going to collapse into myself and that will probably take some time to abate. So here are some cute pictures. I might have posted some of these already... don't remember. It makes me feel better to look at them, though.

The Sleep Saga Continues.

2012-04-03T19:17:00.000-07:00

You may remember my writing about some of the recent shake-ups in our sleep experience here and here. Summary: the girls appeared to be outgrowing their in-bed bassinets, we felt like we should try to get them out of the bed and into whatever "next stage" of sleep arrangement seemed necessary even though we really wanted them to stay in our bed, putting them to sleep in a pack n' play at the end

Antsy.

2012-03-26T19:47:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to feel a little trapped in this house. Not trapped with my girls, mind. Just look at that sweet, soft little face... I could stare at it all day (you know, except on days like today that are filled with her drooly, incessant screeching). But the reality of wrangling two not-as-yet-mobile babies includes a whole host of logistical nightmares, such as * two babies lying in a crib on

Fly By

2012-03-24T20:22:00.000-07:00

Sometime in the past few days, the girls noticed each other at the same time and made eye contact. I had to sneak a covert terribly-lit photo to capture the moment before they got distracted by my presence. They've looked at each other before, but never at the same time. Now, it's like they can't stop watching each other. I wonder what it's like to have a sister, and what it feels like to

Ladies About Town

2012-03-20T21:09:00.000-07:00

I don't really want to talk about the hour and a half screaming marathon that kept me pacing around my parents' bedroom in the dark desperately trying to get Chicken to sleep (or poor Ham Girl, lying all wrapped up in the pack n' play, looking up at me like "It's okay, Mom, go help my sister, I'm good"). That was a miserable start-to-the-end-of an otherwise tiring but enjoyable day. Instead, I