At Four Months

If all babies were exactly like this little miss, I would want a bazillion. I would take Michelle Duggar to the next level.

Not only is she squishy, dimpled, and winsome, but her disposition is pleasant. So very pleasant. She is a bright ray of sunshine in our home. She flashes her smile (often and with abandon) and we, her adoring devotees, swoon. We are all wholly enamored by her.

Today after school, Nolan was chomping down a snack of multi-colored goldfish while I sat next to him with Auburn on my lap. It only took a portion of a millisecond for him to start his adoring "Awww"s.

"My sister is so cute," he announced. "I will never get mad at her, because she is so cute."

Time will tell, I retorted in my head.

"Your brother's cute and you get mad at him," I objected aloud.

He stole a peek of his brother who was on the other side of the room embellishing his jeans with leftover valentine stickers. "Well, she's cuter than him."

I concur.

Another Bathroom Operation

In my late night stupor, I completely forgot one uneventful event in our attempt to boil sap. I remembered it when I hopped out of the shower this morning. The sound of the fan working away at my steam reminded me.

You see, when our first campfire foundered, we thought the solution was to be found in a heat source other than wood burning. Unfortunately, we do not have a vent over our kitchen stove and the vast amount of steam produced requires at least that, if not open air. Even with a vent, you risk having your walls shed their wall paper and/or your framed art shriveling in revulsion to the humidity. With no vent over our stove, we turned to the only room in our house with a vent... the bathroom. We set a single electric burner on a chair in the middle of the room, turned on the fan and waited for the sap to bubble. And waited some more. Eventually, a slow churning and slight rumble emerged. Encouraged, we waited longer for the violent convulsions and billowing steam which are so needed for production. It never happened. Failure.

Skip to campfire #2.

Syrup to Sap: It Starts With a Tap

We're becoming self-sufficient.  We have chickens! We (attempt to) garden! And now for our next stunt in home-production: make your own maple syrup! I bought spiles and got my husband on board, thinking it would be a fun little project.

A tree needs to be 12 inches in diameter before it's mature enough to be tapped. Big trees can be tapped more than once: twice if it has at least a 20" diameter, thrice after 27". You can tap any kind of Maple for sap.  I learned that it's also effective and tasty to use birch and walnut trees, but one should not be fooled by poles that appear to be trunks. In Canada they call pretend syrup like Mrs. Butterworth's or Aunt Jemima's "Pole Syrup", because they say that's what you end up with when you try tapping a telephone pole.

We started with three spiles and three big old Maples in our front yard.

How to tap:

1. Drill a hole about three feet from the ground on the south side of your tree. The spot you choose to tap should be above a large root or below a branch. Choose a bit the proper size for your spiles (generally 7/16" or 5/16").

2. Clear wood shavings and insert spile. Gently push it all the way in or tap with a hammer. If the spot is tap-propriate, the sap should start to drip immediately.

3. Hang a container of some sort from the hook on the spile. Sap will flow into the container and will need to be emptied (and stored) daily.

Harvesting sap-- now, that's the easy part. If syrup production were a matter of simply drilling a hole into the deciduon of your choice and hanging a bucket, they wouldn't be selling pure syrup for fifteen bucks a pint.  But it turns out sap is mostly water and it's an involved process to uncover the clandestine treasure.

The boiling down of sap is a job for the open air. There is a lot of steam involved. Imagine this: the ratio of sap to syrup is 40 to 1. That's 10 gallons of sap to one quart of syrup. That's a lot of steam.  That's a lot of slaving for a measly helping of syrup.

Our first attempt at making syrup from our sap was comical. We had heard that its no walk in the park to boil down sap, but they say, "one man's difficulty is another man's pleasurable hobby" (Upstate colloquialism)(okay, I made that up).  We wondered how difficult it could be to start a fire and keep it going for long enough to turn our clear watery sap to gloriously viscous amber.  We are fire people.  Last summer, Friday was aptly named "Fire Night".  In addition to enjoying a hot, fierce glow, my boy and I, we like a challenge.  Therefore, we relished the opportunity to slave over a campfire for hours on end. And that's exactly what we did --slaved over a campfire.  By the time we were through, we knew we needed a more efficient method, a generous upgrade in pot size, and some advice.  We no longer relished the idea of standing in smoke for a ridiculous amount of time for a ridiculously small jar of syrup (which we didn't even successfully make a heavy consistency).

Take two.  Later that week, after a bit more research, the help of my mom (she paid a visit to a friend of her's who is a seasoned syruper to procure us some advice), the purchase of a large stock pot, and the gathering of enough dead wood to fill our back room, we re-entered the arena, positioned to fight and win.  PTB dug out the fire pit  and enclosed it with cinder blocks, balanced the grate ontop and used more cinderblocks to enclose the stockpot.  In this way, we hoped to lose less heat to the open air and concentrate the majority of it on our precious sap.  The result was encouraging.  It took about half the time and the syrup was perfect.  Deliciously, proudly, satisfyingly perfect.  Thankfully, we honed our skill, because the trees keep gushing and we've heard they won't stop for a month.

Connected

Great news!

After sixteen months of boony living, we finally buckled and rejoined the 21st century. Folks, we have high speed internet running to our home. This is the first time I've posted from a computer in over a year. Can you believe I've been using mobile devices and my fingertips to blog this whole time? Perhaps there's an award for that?
Most Dedicated Web-logger?
MDW?
$1,000,000?

Mostly, I've employed my iphone in a career of frustrating my blogging dreams. Sometimes, I've used PTB's ipad, which was okay, but not so good as this. A real computer! The possibilities are limitless! Hence, no more eyeball; no more flowers. I feel like a new lady and a new weblogger.

Sapsucker

I love adventure and birds. My boy (PTB), he is adventure, which explains why I love adventure. Because of my boy, adventure was woven into the genetic makeup of our sons. They, like their father, are constantly looking to discover and to be outdoors. They, like their mother, are enthralled by the sight and song of birds.

And so it was that we wound up on the trails of Supsucker Woods when we had a moment this week. Sapsucker is land reserved for wildlife, particularly birds; it is owned by Cornell's lab of ornithology. The public is allowed to tread softly on designated trails. We love to tread there (but my sons cannot perform "softly").

I probably mention hiking a lot, but only because it's what we do the most of-- what, with all these adventuring people running around and cantillating birds flying around .

Today's Enterprise

We stumble alongside nature
In and out of seasons
learning to take what has already been given
to appreciate fully the blessings
that would flow freely
if only we were tapping

Captioned

Although the quality is considerably decreased by choosing my phone's camera over my real one, I more often than not choose it anyway. It's always nearby and requires little effort to use. No lense cap removal or manual adjustments, and no loading pictures onto a computer and then uploading them to the Internet. It is as simple as pushing a few buttons to take phone photos and then immediately using those photos in emails, on instagram, on Facebook, and on ye good olde blogger. in fact, it's so easy to use my phone's camera that I have nearly 1100 pictures on it right now. Holy smokes. So, here, for your weekend viewing pleasure, are a handful of some recents:

Auburn with her very first doll, Cozy Rosie (they're good friends)

Conglomerate super heroes:

{SpidermanThorCloneTrooper} and his brother, {IronmanBatmanNinja}

Loving the afghan made by my dear friend, Ronelle

Hanging out in the Mother's Room at church last Sunday

Chew Toy

Handsome Pooka, whining my ears off in style

Rub-a-dub

"hey, there."

Post-Valentinitic Stress Syndrome

He's upset because he fought the law and the law won --the "law" being the one that states: consumption of your brother's candy without his permission is strictly prohibited.  The "candy" being the truckload Nolan secured from his Halloween, I mean Valentine party at school.  The law won because I enforce it though Nolan doesn't care much for candy (a trait he inherited from someone other than me) and he probably wouldn't notice a missing piece, but this is a matter of principle, a principle which Pooka neither understands nor appreciates.  It's going to be a long day.

Baby, But Not Just

In my experience, there always comes a stop-and-wonder moment with a baby. I have arrived. Maybe there are many of them for you, but for me the mom, it happens right about now:
1• Baby has grown some,
but is still petite and very holdable
2• She appears a lot the same as that first day,
but with a few key differences
3• She looks around vivaciously,
takes in her world
4• Shapes her mouth,
smiles, produces distinct noises.
5• Begs your attention not for food,
but to be a socialite.
6• She sits upright
with her head proudly controlled.

It's the much-the-sameness, but slight-difference that catches me off guard. I can still feel what it was to carry her on the inside, just call her baby, not even know that she was a she. The first weeks, leaning into months, are concerned with thriving a life --surviving, if you will. It is about nurturing a little human form, who has undeniably captured a piece of my soul, but is still very much a mysterious creature. A creature who sleeps so much I forget what her eyes look like between wakeful periods.

Now I have thrived a life, a life which no longer sleeps every possible moment. She sits, propped neatly upright, eyes exploring her world and me. Suddenly, I am facing a personality. The little creature exhibits uniqueness; she has a self. And I am awed that I carried her, birthed her, and swaddled her these few months as a sweet baby, but mostly just a sweet baby, when surely she has been individual all along.

This is love

This photo was snapped by Nolan. It's of his dog, our dog, Cocoa. He made her the red cape, tied it round her neck, and pronounced her "Super Dog". She tolerated her new cape and found a spot to nap with it on.

What is more loving than a dog playing along with his boy even when it means wearing a cumbersome paper on her back? I had more to say about this in honor of Valentines Day, but didn't find a moment to write it earlier today; maybe another time.

Brothers on Saturday

50% of all Saturdays,
PTB heads to Ithaca for a sixth day of work.
He leaves me on those Saturdays with my three adorable children,
which is chaotic.

It is not chaotic with a baby.  My baby is easy. 
She sleeps. She coos.  She eats.  She poos.

My boys though, they are The Brothers Chaos.  They own the word.  

They get together with hours of unstructured Saturday before them and they slip into beast mode.  Growls rise out of the depth of their bellies.  They beat their chests with their clawed paws, gnashing their gangly teeth, communicating their plans for the day through grunts and beastly moans tossed back and forth between them to the rhythm of their thumping hearts.  My living room becomes their dark forest.  My (lovely new) sofa is their ship gliding deeper and deeper into the tangled forest and when the time is right, the moon bright, they jump from their ship to the forest floor.  And Destruction (the proper noun version) ensues.  

It's a long day teeming with noise, a desecrated living room, and the occasional break out of monstrous fights when the brother beasts turn enemy on each other and I have to mediate.

50% of all Saturdays,
I lose a little more of my sanity.

Answering Machine

The daily duties of a mother include responding to an infinite battery of questions and petitions. Starting with the usual why's and how's, questions in my house quickly snowball into the realm of strange, curious, and sometimes unexplainable.
My boys ask me to name characters and objects from the many fantasy worlds they subscribe to-- like spiderman's villain enemy pictured here or Ironman's compadre represented by this plastic figurine or trivial Star Wars characters they've heard mentioned somewhere along the way. These are things I don't know or care anything about, so I try desperately to avoid questions like "What's this guy's name?" or "What does this ship/weapon/robot/machine/mythical-creature do?".
"I don't know" is never acceptable, so my answers are always one of two:
"Ask your dad"
Or
I make something up.
Complete fabrication can go over amazingly well, but it can also catastrophically backfire, resulting in frustrated boys who lose a little faith in their old mum. I wish they would lose any and every trace of faith in me that I am knowledgeable in the span of subjects between scientific phenomena and Batman lore; because I'm not, I don't pretend that I am (aside from the occasional resort to fabrication), and I don't intend ever to be.
"Mama, do you know what gooey, stinky, sand is?" Gerret poses to me this afternoon.
"Poop?" I venture. "Slime?"
He gives me one of his your-the-weirdest-mom-in-the-world looks.
"It's just gooey stinky sand!" He exclaims and leaves me to my bewilderment.

"Is T-Rex the strongest dinosaur?" He stops to ask (early this morning-- first query of the day) as he hurls the Dimetradon at the throat of his beloved T-Rex. I only pseudo-believe in them anyway. (Did I just admit that publicly?) And even if I was a paleontologist, how could I presume one gargantuan reptile stronger than the next?
"Are some dragons good?" This is Gerret again. Nolan poses equally perplexing questions, but he's at school today, asking them to his teachers.
I definitely don't believe in dragons; though admitting this could lead to a somewhat serious discussion with my husband.
"Yes, some dragons are good." This initial response is not satisfactory; he wants me to specify which kinds of dragons are good.
"Blue ones," I say glancing at the blue creature in his hand which used to be a dragon. Now missing tail, wings and arms, it's no longer a dragon in my mind; it's just a menacing face atop a blue body with scaly legs. He studies the creature which I'm sure he still considers a dragon in full form (he's got an imagination). He is considering very seriously my iteration that blue dragons are good.
"Even if he was biting a sheep in his teeth?"
"Yeah, I guess."
I answer requests, too. Like the request to build a castle outside in the sandbox at nine thirty this cheerful, sun-filled February morning. Alas, looks can be deceiving; a couple digs in the sand and he pronounced his fingers frozen, so I answered the request to return to the warmth of our home and open the sand table in the pantry for him. Why didn't he choose the indoor sand box in the beginning? I didn't ask.
I wipe bums when called upon; pour drinks, tie shoes, read stories, make noodles; all upon kind request. I ward of the incessant pleas for treats! and treats! and more treats! please! And that, of course, is not an exhaustive account. The exhaustive account leaves me exhausted at the end of every day.

The Like of a Hike

The northernmost portion of the national forest is nicely situated across the road from our darling house. A stretch of land including field, woods, swampy lowland, rollicking hills, and a stream; its perfect for folks of our sort.

This Winter, or the lack of this Winter, has allowed for a number of wanderings across the road. One boy is an eager adventurer. The other boy has to be coerced. The baby seems to relish fresh air and sunlight. The dog loves to leap through the tall grass and soak up any spot of mud. I enjoy being outdoors, but have become somewhat paranoid about ticks. The lack of winter is not serving to control the population of these pesky blood suckers. They are disgusting and frightening and sneaky and parasitic. I digress. How can I complain about any consequence of the apparent climate change? It has been my salvation in what is usually a very difficult time of year.

We love hiking these hills and fields (all of us except the boy who doesn't, but even he forgets his disgruntledness once out among nature.) Ahh, nature, the universal therapy.