One of those days…

We started night weaning Avery again last night and it was a LONG night. Not too much crying, but she just couldn’t get herself back to sleep without nursing. It was a cranky start to the day at 3am.

I put Avery down for an early nap, but she couldn’t stay sleeping without me by her side. So she napped for an hour (her usual is 2.5 hours). She woke cranky. She also needed help getting her digestive system to clear out, so I gave her a little grab’n’go packet of pureed prunes and I turned my back to get her the rest of her lunch. When I turned back toward her, I saw brown sludge EVERYWHERE. She had squeezed the packet over her head. It covered her clothes, her hair, the chair, and the floor.

While I was cleaning that up I noticed a puddle under fridge. I traced it to a litre of maple sap that froze solid, broke the mason jar it was in, and then thawed in our stupid fridge (it was likely not the fridge’s fault – Avery likes to push the temperature change buttons that are stupidly placed at toddler height on the outside of the fridge.).

So I started sopping up a litre of sugar water from the fridge and floor while Avery screamed and screamed as I pulled her back from climbing in the sticky, wet mess.

In my haste to rinse out towels and cloths and get back to the growing puddle, I knocked an extra big beer bottle off the counter that I had removed from the fridge to wash off. The bottle hit my ankle bone on its way to the ground. The lid popped off and foamy beer went everywhere. My ankle was throbbing and quickly swelling up.

Avery was still screaming, probably because I was swearing and showing a level of frustration that she has never seen in me before. I continued to try to mop up sap AND beer from all over the kitchen while she screamed and tried to climb up my legs.

I then attempted to place the broken mason jar in the garbage and it broke more, slicing my finger. Now I’m bleeding, my ankle is throbbing, and I’m still trying to rinse cloths and wash the sticky off the floor as Avery tries to walk through it, still screaming.

Finally, I quit trying. I took both of our sticky wet socks off, poured myself the remaining beer from the burst open bottle, put Moana on, and sat on the couch with Avery until she calmed down enough for me to start dealing with the rest of the mess.

At some point I’ll get out the mop and properly clean the floors of the prunes, sap, and beer. Maybe. Maybe we’ll live with sticky floors forever.

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The Prophetic Name

As I’ve talked about before, my wife wants a second child and I’m prepared to make it happen for her even though I feel content with one, because she hesitantly obliged me when I wanted the first one.

I had been on the fence about #2. Even though we aren’t planning to try for #2 for a few years, I was already feeling seriously nervous about surviving another round of baby years. The sleep deprivation really scarred me.

But then a name came to me. A perfect name that I loved the instant it popped into my head. I knew it had to be the name of our second child. Because I couldn’t get it out of my head, I told my wife the name and she instantly loved it. It’s the name.

Aspen Bay.

Slightly hipster? Maybe. But it goes so well with Avery May. And I’m a tree person. And yes, it’s a somewhat gendered name, but I somehow know that our second child will be another girl. Go ahead and laugh, but our donor seems to only produce girls. And never doubt the intuition of a mother.

So anyway, we’ll be holding onto this name for a few years, and only time will tell if we will end up using it. But having this name now makes me feel like we’re missing a family member who is yet to come… When I look at Avery I see her with a younger sister. I can picture her hollering “Aspen!” down the hall. It feels like a prophetic name.

Getting Our Flock: Backyard Chickens

I have been wanting backyard chickens since I moved to this house with its big yard 6 years ago. This year, we took the plunge. The timing seemed right because the bylaws just changed this spring making it easier for people to have backyard flocks, and because we have a child now who will learn about living a self sufficient lifestyle through collecting eggs every day. 

My wife set to work building the coop. It’s still not done, but the framing is done, insulation is done, walls are up… We still have to put siding and shingles on, and then build the outdoor run. But I knew I had to get started looking for hens if we wanted to have them at all this summer. 

I searched for a while for ready to lay hens (they don’t start laying eggs till they are at least 6 months old). But I wanted specific breeds so we could get that Instagramable colourful assortment of eggs… Those proved very difficult to find in a 6 month old bird. 

Finally, I found a farmer not too far away who has chicks in all the varieties I was looking for, and he will keep them on hold (for a mere $0.50/week) until they no longer need to live under a heat lamp and can come live in our coop. So I placed my order, and we are expecting them some time around mid June. Plenty of time to get the coop done, and done right. We won’t have eggs until fall or possibly next spring, but we will get to bond with really young chickens, so that’s a bonus. 

I ordered: 

• Ameraucana chick who will lay blue eggs
• Marans chick who will lay dark chocolate brown eggs
• Olive Egger who will lay olive green eggs
• Buff Brahma (with feathered toes) who will lay common light brown eggs

I am SO excited. There will be pictures a plenty when we finally get them home. 

On Photographing your Birth

I’ve written about this before in a post on regrets. I wanted a birth photographer, but in the end it was going to be too expensive to hire a professional and we didn’t know anyone I was comfortable enough letting into the delivery room (I’m weird that way… the closer someone is to me, the less comfortable I am showing them my vulnerability). We brought our nice camera to the hospital with us, but of course everyone in the room was too busy, you know, delivering a baby, to remember to snap pictures. There are 4 or 5 photos of all of us in the delivery room, and most of those have nip slips in them so I don’t even want to show them off.

I’m also a person who takes A. LOT. OF. PHOTOS. My wife teases me about it and asks why I can’t just settle for making a memory in my brain, rather than trying to capture everything in photos and live the actual experience from the other side of a lens. I take so many photos that both my laptop and my phone ran out of space after 6 months of having a baby. I was able to store some pictures in the cloud for a while, but then that too ran out of space. We finally bought a huge external hard drive and I’m now moving everything over to it (and forcing myself to pare down the photos I kept, from ~300 a month, to under 100 per month). 

In my photo sorting, I came across a folder from my nephew’s birth. My wife brought her fancy camera to that too, but this time was free to get creative and play the role of professional photographer. There are more photos of my nephew’s birth (actually the afternoon after he was born – we weren’t in the room for the gory stuff) than there are of Avery’s first 4 months combined (after paring down). There are beautiful shots of the clock on the wall, the contraction monitor, the little “it’s a boy” card, the baby with each and every one of his new extended family members, and about 50 of the new mom with baby, so she could pick the few that she looked best in.

I’m jealous. I’m disappointed for Avery’s sake that we didn’t plan to capture more of her special day. It only happens once in a person’s life, and the changes from that day forward are monumental, taking you away from the wrinkled, vernix-covered innocence to the round, chubby baby days in the blink of an eye. And birth itself is such an intense experience for the person birthing that photos would really help jog the memory when the dust settles and you find yourself wanting to reflect.

So if you are reading this and you are pregnant, I highly, highly, highly recommend having a birth photographer. Don’t lose out on the chance to capture those fleeting memories in all the raw, beautiful detail.