What a difference a husband makes!  Len took the day off today.  Did you read that?  Len took the day off today.  That in itself is worthy of a post!  The result was that we had a great day, I'm not exhausted even though it is 4PM, and the kids had a blast :-)  He even got the new cabinets painted.


While the other girl took a turn painting cabinets with Len, Maya and Sadie each had a turn making a sock doll baby with mismatched socks.


Our 3rd annual 4th of July cake.  This year's is a half whole wheat, chocolate chip, parsnip cake with marshmallow fluff and butter frosting (ran out of ingredients!!) topped by my professional cake decorators with fresh berries.  Maya would have preferred a flag pattern, but the abstract-random crew was on duty today!

The evening should be great too as we're headed to my parents' for an indoor cook out.  Yup, rain again!  And, drum roll, the girls are sleeping over there!  That's what I call independence, and it's definately worth a fireworks display!

 Gluing beans onto a painted butterfly.
 Washing her "foots".
 Cooking strawberry jam.  Abby did pick quite a few berries with me, but somehow at the end her bucket was empty... and she was too full to eat lunch!

http://www.simpleshoes.com/ClearanceList.aspx?g=k&categoryID=535&AID=10683819&PID=2222218

I've never dealt with this company myself, but I found this clearance sale for upcycled shoes from another blog (The Good Human) and had to share it.  Happy browsing.

The girls had a busy day playing music - at church and then at the retirement home (have to be careful with phrases like "nursing home" with a freshly weaned toddler around!).  It was a great chance for them to hear other kids play and to play together with them.  From hymns in 3 part harmony to Yankee Doodle, it all went very well.  Hopefully the video (or segments) will make it to youtube in the near future... gotta figure all that out with Len.  Sadie concentrated very well and played in time with the other musicians (holding those half notes is a killer when you're 5!), and Maya held her own even being several inches too short for the piano she was at!  They're getting better about having their music in order and following along on the program too (19 songs in all with 9 musicians!).  It was quite the event and a great way to finish out the year before people take vacations from lessons and do other summery things.  Later I asked Abby what she wanted to play (as in what instrument, of course) when she gets bigger and she said "Polly Wolly Doodle!"  It is a fun song :-)

This post cracks me up!  Mostly my bedroom is a mess of laundry and jumped-on, snuggled-in covers, but once in a while I get the urge for something nice, something mine, something the kids might not even like.  After deciding that the winter covers were getting too warm anyway and that I really wanted a change after 3 years of a not very well done room, I attacked my bedroom this week.

The first step was to shop for a new cover and matching shams.  (OK, the real first step was giving in to the reality that the wallpaper won't be redone any time in the next decade or longer, so I'd better work with it!)  Back to the covers: I looked at everything from handmade-looking department store quilts to real handmade quilts from Guatemala to vintage covers on Etsy.  I finally picked a fair trade Indian block printed duvet cover from Overstock.com (Is is still fair trade if O had it??). 

The next step was deciding to buy really nice cotton sheets to match the duvet cover (instead of just hoping the light green flannel ones we usually use wouldn't peek out from underneath).  Since the duvet cover was from Overstock, the matching sheets were too.

So I put the sheets and the duvet cover on the bed.  Looked great - but the rest of the room didn't quite jive anymore.  So, the next thing to go was the headboard.  It was a "lovely" brass headboard with painted ceramic ovals on it and big mirror-type balls as finials.  Abby loved looking at herself in them!  My Dad picked it up for me on the side of the road during a town spring clean up event about 5 years ago.  For the price, it served it's purpose well!  But, with the new Indian print? - No.  So the girls, with all their combined skills, and I unscrewed it from the bed frame (which kind of broke my heart because Len just attached it about 6 months ago!).  I took it to the barn - which has 2nd story access I should add, I'm no pregnant Hercules.  I'll tell what took it's place in a minute...

Then the curtains, also remnants of my first apartment when I moved to Maine 5 years ago, looked out of place.  I searched stores online for ideas and then decided to go to Bed Bath and Beyond.  I went shopping with my new pillow sham (and Abigail) in hand to match colors, and found a nice panel curtain that matched perfectly.  The only trouble?  I have 3 windows in my bedroom and they only had one panel left!  They assured me they would get more, so I bought the one to try it out.  Perfect!  (We also bought a bed skirt, although I haven't put it on yet.)

The finishing touch, and what truly sparked the whole makeover, was a piece of art I bought about a month ago but couldn't pick up until now.  LA Arts hosts an "Art and Ale" exhibit downtown at the local brewery.  I drive by it almost daily and finally couldn't resist.  For some reason, the huge painting of a big white flower just called my name every time I drove by.  So, I answered it's call and took it home today.  It takes up the wall above the bed where the headboard used to be, and hopefully, very hopefully, Len will like it.

                         

That's the surprise part...  he doesn't know about any of the changes except the covers yet.  He's even been in the room and was in such a hurry he didn't notice!!  He's been home (working) the whole time and didn't know what we were up to.  The girls were dying to tell him tonight, but I said to wait and see how long it takes him to notice!  There is a good chance I'll get to bed before him tonight and the lights will be out when he comes up, so it might be morning before he can see it.  Too funny :-)  Thanks for the freedom, dear. 

Not to change the subject, but I have to mention that yesterday was our 3 year anniversary.  (We had a great evening out thanks to Nana who babysat.)  So, in honor of our 3 super-eventful, chaotic years together, here's to LEN: Loyal, Endearing, and Non-stop!  At least now when he does come to bed to rest his non-stop head, it will be to an inviting one!

It's hard to sort over a months worth of pictures at once, but here's a smattering of what we're up to lately.  These are in order from oldest to cello rehearsal today.

 Family portrait?  Just playing dress-up.

 
 Dance recital time!  A sheep and a ballerina.
 
 Post-recital hair-dos and applesauce making.  Who knew the peels could be so fun!

 Maya, aka Amelia, crossing the ocean in her plane...

 Abby, at her favorite perch in the kitchen.

 Sirena and Louis the swan, in love at Grammy's new house.  Koh-hoh! (EB White)

 Summer boredom?  Never!  Getting ready for a recital at the retirement community. 4 cellos, 3 violins, 2 piano players, 1 viola di gamba.

Abby, age 27 months, at supper, refusing to eat more than 1 bite:  "My fish really isn't very good, mom."

grrrrrrrrrrr!  she went to bed without eating any more...

I should explain why there are no pictures and minimal posts lately... my old computer died and I've yet to find the things I need to upload pictures to this temporary machine I have.  This lovely interim (please,may it be short-lived) computer also has a space bar problem, so I really have to mash the key for it to work - not so comfortable.  But, I hate to spend money on a new computer when it is such a luxury anyway.  So,pardon the lack of spaceing at times and the lack of pictures for now.  They are building up in the camera and will make it to the light of day sometime!

on to the post...

All of the sudden Maya grew up this week.  She abandoned Sadie's childhood games of house and even gave up her most favorite old clothes to Sadie that she's been hoarding for way too long.  The cardinal dress she cried and cried about and said she wanted to frame it and never give it away?  "Oh, I gave it to Sadie!"   What?  Just like that?  Wow! 

She's also signed up for a weekof overnight girl scout camp in July - yikes!  She started asking me to look at camps last year, and this year she was just plain insistant.  Having loved camp myself, I agreed to look.  Girl Scout camp seemedjust the thing and the price is right, so off she'll go into the woods for a week to sing,make crafts, learn archery,swim.....  Thank God her food allergy issues are over.

Maya moved out of the shared bedroom this week too.  She left Sadie and Abby to fend for themselves at night so she could get some peace and quiet (well deserved I might add).  She will eventually share her room with the baby, but not for a long while.  She wanted her new room decorated with "old fashioned stuff" which turned out to mean Victorian, more or less.  (I had to laugh though when we were buying something else and she saw a lava lamp she really wanted...)  She ended up with my old flowery quilt decorated with ribbons, my collection of old ceramic boots on her dresser, some vintage embroidered pillowcases on the wall hung from wooden hangers, and a wool Mexican weaving on another wall.  Kind of a mish mash, but it looks ok,and she loves it!!  She also has an antique school desk for doing her homework in the fall (public school is a whole other post that I'm not ready to write yet).  In one corner is a pack n' play set up to convince Sadie that she didn't really get her own room, she is actually sharing it with the baby - he's just not here yet!!

And where is Sadie in all this?  Trying desperately to do her own hair in a bun like Maya can, reading to Abby at night (who doesn't want to go to bed because "I don't have any sleep"), enjoying her newly decorated frog bedroom, playing her 2 octave scales as fast as she can, and generally making a mess everywhere she walks.  As an epic mess-maker myself it's hard to point fingers, but she's a disaster!  At least when I put something down in the wrong place, I generally remember it's there, but she doesn't have a clue.  Out of her hands, out of her life it seems!  All the more reason I have to keep on her about where things go.  I opened her dresser today and just about fell over.  Just yesterday, she "organized" it during the bedroom switching.  Today there were inside-out pants thrown in the shirt drawer, the PJ/leotard/tights drawer wouldn't close because something was jammed behind it, one drawer was empty but her shirt drawer was overflowing (oh, sweaters go in the empty one?  Yeah, like they have since you were 2!!).  Ugh.  Looking for advice for this one...  I spent so long helping her fix it all that now my bed is still covered with laundry that hasn't been dealt with.   

Oh, and Len?  Does he still even live here?  Poor guy has been holed up in his office (Abby calls it "Daddy's Boston") for 3 weeks straight, working from about 7AM until 2 AM every day, plus a few all-nighters in between.  He's about to go insane I think.  He's clearly a work addict, but even he is getting run down by this current job.  He runs 3 computers at a time, outsources work to India and Boston, and talks on the house phone, cell phone, and skype - sometimes all at once.  What for you ask?  Right now he's animating storm water overflow data in sewer pipes for a trial exhibit.  Mmmm, can't say I'm jealous of that!  He does come out to eat dinner with us, feed the animals, read a bedtime chapter book, and visit Abby in the middle of the night when she wakes up, but that's about it.  Sometimes he crosses the street to get the mail too,otherwise, it's back to work. 

In allergy news, Abby has an epipen now in case of any more random swelling up and turning red episodes (happened again a few weeks ago and we have no idea why), and her skin seems to be happy in her new organic cotton/bamboo training pants.  The elastics are completely enclosed and I only wash them in soap nuts - no baking soda, no washing soda, no vinegar, no peroxide, no soap, no detergent.  I wasn't so happy about the price of the trainers, but the rash-free results are worth it. 

Me?  Feeling a bit overwhelmed this week.  OK - going to deal with the laundry on my bed now so I can sleep....

We spent the morning on Swan Island in the Kennebec River today.  We learned about how they used to ship ice to England packed in sawdust, how the Abenake "Indians" kidnapped and sold the children of the first white settlers there, that the spikey moss you see everywhere is called hairy cat moss...

and that you can use sphagnum moss as a diaper.  Hence today's link of the day:

http://www.dougelliott.com/adventures/moss.html

Do I plan on doing this?  Well, I'm not above trying it, for sure.  And I always wondered how those women strapped babies to their backs all day without getting soaked in, well, you know what!
Happy reading :-)

We bought our annual pass to the Maine State Parks today and the girls took the first plunge of the year into the cold water!  As we drove in, the girls were looking at the sign and talking about what it costs for each kid, based on their age, to get in.  I buy a season pass for myself and then pay the $1 fee for the older girls each time we go.  Maya said "I'm 1, Sadie's 1, and Abby's free."  Abby (with her adorable lisp) quickly replied, "I not free, I'm two."   Ha ha!!

I just made parsnip cake #3.  Doing it I realized I had left out the baking soda when I posted the recipe a few days ago.  If you're anything more of a cook than I am, hopefully you noticed and didn't have any disasters on my account.  Sorry if you cooked a flop (sheepish grin :-))  I just revised the old post. 

Now, I also mentioned in the other post that next time I would alter the recipe further to push the "healthy factor" a bit.  Here's the revision (including the baking soda!).

Healthier Parsnip Cake

1 C white whole wheat flour (if you haven't discovered this flour yet, it's not the same as regular whole wheat)
dash salt
1 T buttermilk powder
1 t baking soda
4 1/2 T flax seed meal
1 1/2 T veg oil
1/4 C water
1/2 C honey
1/2 t vanilla
1 duck egg
1 C grated parsnips
1/2 C chocolate chips 

Note: the original recipe called for 1/4 yogurt instead of buttermilk powder and water.  If you used a sweetened vanilla yogurt, you could probably leave out the honey and vanilla too.  Also, 2 chicken eggs could sub for the duck egg.

Combine all ingredients, more or less in the order given, and mix well.  Line an 8" cake pan with parchment paper (I'm getting smarter...) and cook for 25 minutes at 350.  Cool on a rack. 

I mentioned our CSA farm share in the last post.  This summer, besides the CSA, here's another thing I plan to go see.
http://www.youtube.com/v/c2sgaO44_1c&hl=en&fs=1'

We picked up our first spring farm share from our CSA last week.  In it was a bag of parsnips.  My friend  (who I finally got to see today!) asked me if I'd used mine yet.  The answer at the time was no.  Since then, though, I decided I'd better use them before they got buried by other, more preferred, foods in the fridge drawer.  What to do?  Eat them all myself?  No - so I dug out a recipe from our CSA newsletter from last spring for parsnip cake.  Hmmm.  Couldn't be much stranger than carrot cake, right?  Couldn't be less appetizing than spinach popsicles for sure!

The girls and I whipped up the recipe in no time.  (In fact, it lends itself to a fairly easy gluten free conversion if you need to.)  After it came out of the oven the sun started peeking out for the first time in 3 days so the girls took off outside, knowing the cake was for after dinner and there was no need begging for a piece now.  I was left alone in the kitchen with a warm cake - I couldn't go outside because there were biscuits for dinner baking.  I took a bite, then another, then a whole piece, then another piece :-)  Ahhhh!  By then the girls had noticed the boom in the local slug population and came screaming back into the house.  I was discovered!  So of course they all had a piece, and then another, and by the time Len got his share, that cake was gone before 4PM!  The girls took off again (to the dry living room this time) and inspiration struck.  I still had leftover grated parsnips from the first cake, the oven was still hot from the biscuits, and I still had plenty of time.  Parsnip cake #2 was born!  This one did survive until after dinner, don't worry.  But by 4PM tomorrow I think it will be gone!  

What follows isn't the exact recipe from the farm newsletter, but it is what I used today.  She also included a cream cheese frosting, but we skipped that and ate it plain.  In the future I will sub some flax seed for the oil, try honey or agave instead of sugar, and use different flours.

Parsnip Cake
1/2 C white whole wheat flour
1/2 C all purpose flour
2/3 C sugar
dash salt
1 t baking soda
1 T buttermilk powder
1/4 C water
3 T veg oil
1/2 t vanilla
1 duck egg
1 C grated parsnip
3/4 C chocolate chips

Mix dry.  Mix wet separately.  Add parsnips to wet and mix.  Mix all together.  (OK, for the second cake I just dumped it all into one bowl, and it was fine.)  Grease 8" cake pan and bake at 350 F for 20-25 minutes.  Cool on a rack.  Send the kids outside and indulge :-)

Len and I have been discussing circumcision since I was pregnant with Abigail.  He agreed to leave our baby intact (otherwise I wasn't about to get pregnant again).  My reasons for not circumcising never included unethical uses for the removed foreskin, however!  I was grossed out to read the following - so was Maya!!

http://crunchydomesticgoddess.com/2009/05/28/babies-foreskins-used-to-make-cosmetics-is-this-ethical/

Let's see if this works - I tried to create a poll for the first time.  I cleaned out Len's stash of shirts last night and now I'm curious how many shirts other people have....  Hopefully there's a poll with check boxes below this post. 

Poll #1406433 # of shirts
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

How many shirts do you own? Include work shirts, dress shirts, weekend clothes. Do not include jammies or undershirts.

The girls are happily learning suffixes this week in reading class.  How teachers ever get the rules of how "-ed" sounds across to the kids without teaching college level phonology is beyond me.  Say these words aloud and you'll see what I mean:  speckled, dropped, trusted.  Ugh!  It's a good thing we learn to speak before we read and write or we'd never get very far!  (They haven't made it to double vowels yet, so I'll save that morphophonemic mess for another post.)  Oh, and it seems I was wrong about my MA in Linguistics being good for nothing - turns out it was just the thing to keep me from becoming a professional reading teacher!  Thanks, Grammy, for stepping in!

Now a "summer reading tree" is much more my speed.  Not that I need to motivate them to read more in the summer than any other time of year, but trees are nice and the weather is warmer, and the wall needed a new decoration, so it just seemed right.  We drew a giant tree trunk and plenty of bare branches on 2 green poster boards (taped together in the back).  Then Maya drew an owl in the trunk (ok, that's optional, but cute!).  Using wallpaper sample scraps, we cut leaf shapes and write the names and authors of books we/they read.  These get glued onto the bare branches.  Maya noticed we had already read several books by Roald Dahl and suggested we make a branch for each author - I love that idea!  We also had a piece of wallpaper with clouds and a moon, and another with flowers, so our poster has become thoroughly (try to teach the spelling of that word...) decorated.  And, don't forget the little brown bookworm at the bottom of the poster!  The current bedtime read?  Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White
.

Feeling slow and stuck this week...  

Do you know how long it can take to get 3 kids to come downstairs without their wet diapers and warm bed covers dragging along with them?  Do you know how long it can take to get 3 kids outside with appropriate clothing and shoes on (don't forget bug nets and sun hats)?     Do you know how long it can take to get 3 kids to pee before you go out?  Do you know how long it can take to get 3 kids to spread shavings in a strawberry bed without stepping on every plant?  Do you know how long it can take to get 3 kids to brush all their teeth?  Do you know how long it can take to get 3 kids to realize that sometimes the best gift they could give you would be space and time? 
 

Not as long as it will take with 4 kids...

So much for my last post!  Apparently we didn't learn enough our first year as poultry farmers...  last night we forgot to put the animals away because we were distracted by Abby who wasn't going to sleep well.  We took turns going upstairs to sooth her, and eventually forgot the outdoor girls.  The damage?  One duck disappeared into thin air, leaving behind only 1 feather outside the pen.  So after starting last year with 10 ducks and 6 chickens, we're down to 1 duck and 3 chickens.  Not all those were unplanned, however.   The 5 male ducks made an early exit thanks to the help of a daring neighbor.   The others?  Well, I think Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox (the chapter book this week) got to Belliveau's poultry house #1!! 

I started this blog last spring with the arrival of our baby chickens and ducks, so it wouldn't be fair if I didn't post at least one picture of our new babies!  We learned a lot our first year as poultry farmers.  Ducks in a plastic kiddie pool are less likely to be eaten by a muskrat than ducks on a pond, for example.  Who knew!  I also learned how much fun it is to raise children around poultry.  Abby is in love with our chickens - last years and the new babies.  She is overjoyed to fill her grubby fists with worms to feed them and gathers and dumps buckets of dandilion greens for them.  The other day she insisted on patting the chickens when we dumped their greens, and, after much pursuit, she managed to touch them all!  Now she brags about it to everyone (future blogger??). 

Here's our 10 baby ducklings at about 2 days old, fresh from the post office.



The other growing up going on around here is Abby herself, who has now inserted herself firmly into the reading class routine with my mom.  You try to tell a 2 year old reading is none of her business!  Here she is in all her reading class glory, learning to write in shaving cream.  She already recognizes her sister's and her own name.(Isn't Grammy brave?!)



When it was time for supper tonight Abby was sitting on the recliner, in her underpants, "reading" a chapter book.  I told her to come and eat (and get dressed) and she said, "I just reading my book, I come in a minute."  Well, not the answer I expected, but reasonable enough!  In about a minute she did come to eat (and we didn't bother with the shirt because we had lasagna - that was clothing enough)! 

In case you haven't noticed, I've been pretty sentimental lately about the kids getting bigger, especially Abby.  I suppose that's what happens with another one on the way.  I remember how little the girls used to be, how helpless, and how delicate.  Now I have three kids who can go play by themselves, wash their hair without me, sort their own laundry, feed themselves, and almost wipe their own behinds (ok, I'm not so sentimental about that one).  I passed on some of the infant clothes I've been hoarding for the past 7 years.  All three girls wore them, and now they are in waiting for my -4 month old neice, Eva.  I kept the ones that weren't pink or flowery or had puffy sleeves for my own -4 month old. 

On one hand I'm in baby mode, drooling over the miniature alpaca hand-me-down sweater from my friend, waiting for my own little boy to fill it up.  On the other hand Maya told me this morning she's planning to buy her own car when she is 16 so she can live in her own house somewhere.  She said she would save her money for 10 years and then buy a car herself...  I reminded her she only has 9 years left.  Suddenly that doesn't seem so long.  I was happily surprised tonight when she chose to spend $12 of her birthday money on a plaid sun dress - maybe she's forgotten about the car and moving out for now.  Somehow though, I think she'll remember it again sooner than I hope. 

And where is Sadie in all this?  Generally on another planet with her nose in a book.  She reads in the car, she reads in her bed, she reads when we're trying to get out the door in the morning.  On the way to dance class Monday I had to take her book from her because she was reading while climbing a flight of concrete stairs (and she asks why she has so many bruises on her legs)!  If she's not playing cello, making mud pies in the driveway, or leaving dirty laundry in a heap in the hall, she's probably reading.  Gee, except for the reading part she sounds kinda like her mother!