New Chooks and New Baby Gear

good morning world! For the second morning in a row I have woken up bright eyed and bushy tailed at like 6:30 craving pancakes. Both mornings I waited till the generous hour of 7:30 to wake up my husband with a three year olds serenade/rallying call of "pancakes, pancakes, PANCAKES!" at least this morning I made him coffee first in exchange.
this is me exited about PANCAKES!

I don't know what's wrong with me. I am just exited about...everything! The baby is coming in a month and a week or two, Ryan now has both sprinkler systems working, I sold some stuff in my shops on Etsy ( Shortcake Vintage and The Ruby Aviary Art), and I dunno, I guess I am just happy.

Yesterday was a particularly awesome day, and not just because it started with pancakes. After pancakes we dinked around and then headed to my friend Andrea's BEAUTIFUL north valley ranch home, (which I wish in retrospect I had thought to take pictures of) and talked to her about becoming real estate moguls (an idea Ryan's been bumping around), childbirth ("painful", from her report, with a laugh), and teaching English abroad (an idea Ryan and I both have been bumping around for awhile). Then she took us out on a tour of her beautiful property, backed up to the asequia, dotted with sunflowers, and out to the chicken coup where she showed us the new Ameracauna chooks (baby chickens, not quite chicks or full on hens or roosters) and told us we could HAVE SOME!
(this isn't the best picture, the camera was on a weird setting and the little darlins would't keep still!)


Of course I was DELIGHTED, and Ryan actually said YES! So before he could change his mind I quickly caught two! I am actually pretty good as catching and taming chickens,but after repeated attempts at catching a second hen, and catching two roosters instead, I think I wound up with a rooster anyway. Which is fine for now, because they are only about three months old or so I would guess now, and the little guy won't start crowing if he is in fact a rooster for another coupla months,and by that point we will already being woken up at the crack of dawn by a squalling young beastie.

I also took a coupla other pictures of the yard, the hollyhocks and rose that just bloomed,
my newly self watering sun garden (which still looks a little sparse, I know, give it a little time to catch up)

the chicken coop
and the new lawn flamingo Ryan adorably placed in front of the tiki lounge cuddling with the OTHER lawn flamingo

speaking of Ryan, as I was walking into the shop to take a picture of the new plants we chose to go into the new raised bed garden (in contruction, pics of raised beds soon) I noticed he's been doing his own version of nesting in his shop
(newly organized tools)

oh yes, we also got some other goodies from Andrea, including some awesome kid stuff from her 6 year old son Leo


ok so now I think this post is getting a little rambly, so I will end it abruptly with this hillarious picture of my chicken Blanche, who I am sure would upload this as her profile picture if she was on Facebook.


the the-the thaaat's all folks!
have a great weekend!
(we are going camping! hooray)
xx jess

A Little Effort Goes a Long Way

well...maybe it's more than a little effort...but you know that project that's been needin' doin and been on your list forever and it never seems to get done. Well some weekend I highly recomend you just say DARN IT I'M DOIN IT! and clear your agenda of everything else besides eating and drinking a congratulatory glass of wine when it's done.

For instance our front yard had been on my list forever, as it was an eyesore, and is the first thing people see when they come in our heavily walled front yard, it was always a let down and sometimes a source of embarrassment.
Now add the fact that it was all dust, that the entirety of Spring here seems one big long dust storm, and all year long we have two dogs and a hairy cat coming in and out through a 12 x 24" pet door, oh yes and that let's just say I am not world's most thorough or frequent housecleaner, the house as well as the yard it seemed was full wall to wall with DIRT.


I had tried to plant grass to reduce this problem twice before, with no lasting results. It was not until my husband single handedly took on our defunct sprinkler and drip system that it actually was in range to grow anything resembling a lawn.
Now before I go on, let me say, I realize it may seem to those of you environmentalists out there a little irresponsible to grow a lawn in the middle of the desert that is Albuquerque. To this I say, well, you're right, but in our defense, as we do have the tall wall and tree of heaven providing some shade, and we did plant drought tolerant fescue grass, as opposed to say, Kentucky bluegrass, we are supposedly using 30% less water...
anyway what can I say, I'm from Seattle for crying out loud and I can't tell you what BALM it is to my soul to see this patch of green out there...

gah! what a difference!

and when you add those little pots I planted, (which Ryan's drip system conveniently waters)and the palm tree I got for THREE DOLLARS AND FIFTY CENTS on clearance at Lowe's the other day...it actually starting to look more like the funky oasis I envisioned...


now if I planted some herbs along the wall and made some more garden art like this...
or put in a mad array more pots
I think it will really be something more like this and the rest of the pictures on my pinterest board "The Unsecret Garden"

any way, the point is, DREAM BIG, START SMALL...a little effort goes a long way to making those dreams reality.
I'm still working it...and the process is part of the pleasure.
all right folks. that's enough motivational crap from me.
stay tuned for this summer's backyard makeover in process now...
xx
jess

The Search for the Perfect Birthing Spot

So I am super tired and not particularly feeling articulate just now, but I wanted to at least begin a quick post about the process of buying the perfect birthing pool, a process which Ryan and I have hopefully completed tonight.
What defines the perfect birthing pool you might ask? Well I guess that depends on who you might ask. According to our midwife it's a pool about 25" inches high and 75"inches wide, so it is big enough for the momma and her partner to move around in, tall enough to really soak in, but not so tall that it is hard to get into or out of. It would ideally have handles, perhaps a seat, a liner, extra draining and filling points...
A typical one may look like this

They range in price from a few hundred it seems to a few thousand.
And then, there is the discount version. Which yes, my friends, is a kiddie pool. A simple, delightfully unsophisticated kiddie pool.

Guess which one we opted for?

The funny thing is, in the search for the perfect kiddie pool, we happened to find the EXACT SAME POOL actually ADVERTISED as a birthing pool on some New Zealand birthing website...am I wrong or is this the same pool minus the bikini blond and the kids?


yeah, that's totally the same pink octopus.

and then there is the issue of the birthing kit, which we also attempted to finalize tonight. The kit is the assigned box of supplies the midwife has asked us to have at the birth. This includes items you'd expect like a nasal aspirator, onesie and hat combo, maxi pads, plastic sheets (ew) and stranger items like Manuka Honey, which retails at 30 bucks a pop and apparently has healing and anti microbial properties.


So next week is the 36 week (!)home visit, and I hope to serve the midwifes Moroccan mint tea in the tiki lounge out of glasses that look like this
from Casablanca Market
(yet to be acquired)and talk turkey about the birth.
Speaking of the tiki lounge, there was at one point serious talk about, in event of a night birth, having it out there amidst the old fashioned Christmas lights and tiki torches, under the opening in the tin roof, the child to be born under the stars? it all sounds lovely, if a little away in the manger...and what about the neighbors? I am sure they would have to be warned about the primordial screams that could be potentially emitted from the back yard...
on the other hand look at this lighting and ambience!
Wouldn't this be a sacred space to give birth in?

(not necessarily with this audience)
then again there is my funky turquoise living room...

stay tuned for the final report...
xx
jess

Mommy Dearest

Today is my first mother's day. And in honor of my first mothers day I would like to write some words about my own mother, Renate Suzanne Coulson.

Renate was born in Muster, Germany in 1949, a beautiful city with a cobblestone market and a lake bedecked with a swans.


At some point in the late 60's she met a plucky red headed american soldier at a disco, and after 9 months of courtship and another 9 months or so of nearly daily letters on orange stationary, she agreed to his proposition of marriage and arrived in Seattle, Washington to start her new life.


She loved the Beatles and Miniskirts, and it probably was lovely to live an exiting new life across the sea, even if it was probably often lonely. She went to school for Psychology, and in 1979 she had her first and only child. Me.

I don't remember playing with my mother much as a child, (which is not to say that she didnt' as the picture below clearly indicates)
my father being very in touch with his inner child did most of that. But I do remember that when I was a teenager, the understanding I had always had with my father began to wain and suddenly my mother and I saw eye to eye.

My mother is good with a pairing knife. She is quick witted and funny and speaks and spells in English, albeit speaking with a slight accent, better than either my father or me I. (she also has better grammar)


She taught me a love of some of the finer things in life, of a good dark cup of coffee with half and half, of reading anything and everything, of gardening, of living with the seasons, of low romantic lighting, of candles on all holidays and even on any evening you want to be special and the value of making your food beautiful on the plate, because "the eye eats first".


She also told me my dirty fingernails would make it hard to find a man and asked aloud exasperated and maybe only sortof joking why she couldn't have had a "normal" child.



And for most of my life I steadfastedly refused dressing up,(or at least looking normal while doing it, see below) brushing my hair, cleaning my nails or any semblance of normalcy.

at 33, I still can't dress normal or keep my fingernails clean.
(me in my crazy wedding gown, my mom dressed in period peice fashion at my request, looking proud anyway)

And she loved me anyway. And now I can say, while we fight sometimes like sisters or in the way that only family can, she is one of my best friends.


Thank you mom.
I love you too.


ps. mom, if you're reading this. Despite what I posted on Facebook, I didn't actually get this tattoo. Yet

In The Home Stretch

More or less.
But at any rate just got out of my second prenatal yoga class with Avery at High Desert Yoga and I feel so relaxed and limber I could just drop this baby out of me right now.
Though hopefully I won't. Not yet anyway.
Ya know, it's funny. Everyone thinks of pregnancy as lasting 9 months, when clearly it is longer.
Let's do some math shall we...see I am 32 weeks, so 32 divided by 4 weeks in a month is 8 months. 8 months pregnant, so only one month to go, right? Wrong. According to Wikipedia, and I am sure various other more reliable sources, human gestation is on average 38 weeks, but may go up to 42 weeks...soooo...38 weeks is 9 and a half months, 40 and even 10, and going for the gold, 42 weeks TEN AND A HALF MONTHS PEOPLE. yikes! Am I counting this wrong? At least I am not an elephant, who will carry her child for 22 months, or for those of you hard of math like me, just two months shy of TWO YEARS.
which reminds me, for those of you stout of heart, here is an awesome video of an elephant mamma giving birth to what appears to be a still born babe, and then literally kick starting it to life. Not recommended for human children mamma's, but still pretty remarkable that she knew exactly what to do...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVFTYzNHHRY

at any rate, technically human gestation is a little shorter if you remove the extra two weeks tacked on counting from the first day of your last menstrual period to the actual day you conceived...I suppose medical health professionals count from this day because most women don't know exactly when they conceived, so they figure they can get the umbrella time window of anytime after the start of the last period. But usually we don't drop that egg till two weeks AFTER the first day of our last period.

So, that brings the total back down to a reasonable 36-38 weeks.

Anyway.

I had a lovely preggo day at the "beach" the other day, on the shores of Cochiti Lake (technically as New Mexico is a desert and totally landlocked, the "beaches" are confined to the shores of largely man made lakes like Cochiti, which is just a section of damned up river from the Rio Grande. While at first my Northwestern born and bred eyes it looked barren and unnapealing, not being helped by the fact that a) the only shade structure was man made shelters, and the BATHROOM WAS CLOSED. Unfortunately I had made myself some sugar free lemonade with xylitol, which unfortunately had some rather unpleasant laxative effects, which made some awkward moments of hobbling into rocky areas where it was difficult to find even a bush.
(this must be the side with bushes)

anyway, after I relaxed into the situation, and actually gained enough courage to brave the water, I felt a blissfull weightless feeling, accompanied by the sensation of being as Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat Pray Love said "in the palm of the universe".
Also, Ryan had suggested he do some maternity shots while I was there (as per my desire to do something like this
(more of which like it can be found on Offbeat Families.com, an offshoot of the entirely awesome blog the Offbeat Bride)
and wound up with him taking a coupla pictures of me like this
,
which eventually inspired my friend Beth Elise to take this picture
which I think is pretty great also.

At any rate. I am getting sleepy now and think I am going to go curl up on the couch with Ryan (who has a second job interview today! which might mean that we are back in the black soon and maybe I can afford these shoes I've been fantasizing about
and other more important things like actual baby stuff.

Speaking of baby stuff, I made one more cutesey crafty thing the other day...it's a little sleepy time bear. I made it out of fabric scraps and felt, and stuffed it with some salvaged batting and lavender. I think it turned out pretty cute.

ok. that's all folks.
till next time.
x
jess