December

The truest thing I know is that everything changes.

Greely is almost 19 months which seems bizarre. He’s the cutest ever; I cannot get over him. He says ‘mama’, ‘baba=papa’ ‘kitty’ ‘bread’ ‘ear’ ‘hair’ ‘ehhhhh??!’

Greely’s Likes: love, cuddling with mom and pops, grandparents, books, nature, running, climbing, specifically climbing the stairs, pictures of trucks and equipment, pictures of animals, pointing out body parts and identifying them, eating plain foods like pasta and rice, grapefruit, mandarin oranges, graham crackers, cows milk, throwing balls and discs and a boomerang, playing with Legos and trucks and cars, doing yoga with mamá, watching Sesame Street, pointing out cows and growling at them -previously mooed at them-, listening to phenomenal music, my sonchild’s taste is amazing, passionately loving/terrorizing Juney, going on nature walks with mom and pop and the dogs, getting on the floor and peeking under the door to watch Matt bring up wood from the basement, running through mama’s office when no one is there, banging pots and pans, various musical instruments and dancing!!

He’s officially weaned of breastfeeding; always a bittersweet ending I would imagine.

This big mountain boy will be starting Montessori in January!! It’s a beautiful school and the teachers seem really in tune with the kiddos. I’m excited for him to socialize and hopefully develop the skills necessary to be way better at it than me 😉 and I’ll get to pick him up at noon which will be amazing to get to spend the day with my love and work my job around it.

I’m excited and procrastinating about Christmas. I want the lights.

My sweet mama and sweet aunt weathered the curvy drive to come spend time with me during Thanksgiving and I’m so grateful. It was so nice having them here to love and support me and offer to help me and get me out of my office to eat lunch!!:) I loved it, I had such a good visit. I got to spend time with my aunt, which I hadn’t in a good while, and I loved to learn more about her and how brave, happy, intelligent, active, creative and generous she is.

My job feels less busy, more fun lately and I’m about to get to focus my energy on ceramics. More art is always what I need.

Year One

Greely Paris. He’s about to be 15 months old…I can’t believe how quickly it passes; it’s out of control.

I love everything about him. I know Matt feels the same way.

He’s so perceptive and dead on when he’s mimicking you. One thing he was doing recently that cracked us up was sticking his finger in his nose and making a puckered up kiss face and blowing out of his nose…mysteries

He’s so smart; he likes to copy everything we do and try out different sounds and words. He likes to say “hot!” about a lot of things and when I tell him no (as in, no you cannot open the cabinet door enough to pull the child safety lock down and open the cabinet) he’ll touch everything around him and look at me and say “nah” haha

He can definitely be defiant and the reaction to “no” isn’t a zen one but mostly he’s a sweetheart and a great listener. He LOVES to share, he’s always walking around picking things up and bringing them to us and he always tries to feed us. He also really really loves the cats! He likes to climb up on a chair in the kitchen where he can see out of the window in the direction of the smokehouse where the kittens live and says, “eety eety” (kitty kitty kitty) and gets pretty excited. It’s freaking cute. He loves nature, books, has great taste in music, and thinks cold oatmeal is great.

One of my favorite things he does is in his little voice he’ll say, “ehh??” with this great inflection and it’s a very versatile phrase; it means “Are we going outside?” “Are you going outside?” “Can we go outside?” “Will you open this?” “Can I have this?” “Will you pick me up?” “Why can’t we go outisde???” “Will you read this to me?”

Ehh??

He loves to wave hi and bye to everyone and it’s so cute and pisses me off when strangers don’t wave back haha I want to be like yo can’t you see my adorable son child is waving at you??!? But I stifle it you know.

He’s very affectionate and appears to-at least usually- mean well 😉 he’s so mischievous! I love it! He gets into everything- He’s reminding me so much of my brother who I adored. The 5th of June would have been his 33rd birthday-10 years which seems really strange. The looks Greely gives me that I’ve seen a thousand times on Adam’s face are pretty cosmic.

We’ve passed up the sweet, helpless infant stage and we’re on to the fun, wildling child stage!

Love is grand.

 

 

 

The spring is upon us

Greely turned one May 11th, Mother’s Day this year. I had an amazing day celebrating the first year I’ve gotten to spend with this extraordinary flesh of my flesh. It blows my mind on a continual basis that we are so lucky. I can’t believe our not-quite 7lb scrawny legged, beautiful baby is now 23lbs and 31 inches, crawling around, up and down stairs, and yesterday he took two tiny steps toward Matt!

He’s so cool and funny, he cracks up when we crack up and he thinks workaholics is pretty funny. My parents sent him an awesome swing that we put in my favorite tree in our front “yard” that he looooves. It’s hypnotic for him. We opened up the house and made an exploring area in our room, the living room is our reading room and the kitchen/dining room has all of his toys like the badass Legos Matt found for him that are for petits so they’re big enough to not be choking hazards (which my paranoid mama mind thinks about all the time).

All the rooms are relatively baby proofed so he’s able to pretty much run wild! Not to mention the great outdoors. The weather has been pretty nice lately and Matt has been enjoying taking GP to the waterfall closest to the house and letting him play in the water:) he’s just an amazing little boy, he has a phenomenal personality already and there’s so much more to come. I think we’re all itching for canoeing weather around here! Matt is the master of the garden, he’s growing all kinds of different veggies and even planted some beautiful dahlias for me. A Turner family friend sent a guy over to till another fenced in portion we’re going to use for more planting. Between the three of us we’re going to get it raked soon and ready for planting

  

Spring into summer

Spring arrived on the farm and everything is beautiful. Nature blooming all over the place, nice enough weather to be outside most of the day, more and more animal sightings…everything is starting to come out. Greely finally gets to run around the yard-preferably naked, of course-and explore. He’s getting better at not putting things directly into his mouth when he sees them; sometimes he’ll just look at grass or leaves and hand it to you.

He’s been a little hesitant toward people lately-just a little-so I’m really excited to get him playing with other kids and exploring the world of sharing and playing and life outside mama, papa and aunt Nath. He’s still not fond of “no” and he’s discovering defiance and physical strength and the ability to object to things.
We’re all mind blown by all the development we see day to day.

Matt’s been doing amazing at being papa/keeper of the farm. The garden is started, we’re hoping/wishing/praying for rain.

We had a lovely visit with grandma Jan recently. Always appreciate her help and love. We love you, Jan!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winter

Greely is all over the place! Has been for a month and a half-he’s crawling up the stairs, he’s wanting in the cabinets, turns around and stands up in his high chair in a five second move. He’s amazing. He makes a lot of different sounds and will hold a conversation with you. His favorite toys are our phones, the remote and anything in a cabinet with a child lock on it. Really does not like being told no, like his mama.

I like my job but I miss my family! It’s kind of a stressful job but it’s interesting and challenges me and I like that. Matt is an amazing dad and I love seeing them playing, eating, bouncing to fleet foxes!

I don’t cook anymore. I just always find the same thing after I try it: it’s stressful and I’d rather open a soup can. We love having Nathalie around! She’s a great help! Matt and Nath are the coolest cats I know. I thank the universe for them. And we’re all ready for spring to get here! Tired of being snowed in and I think Greely feels it the most, he seems cabin fevered often. Poor guy! But Spring will be here soon!!

New Chapters

I feel incredibly lucky/blessed/fortunate to have spent the last eight months at home with Greely. I’ve loved every second. He has a tooth now and another coming through; he does “downward dog” pose and scoots a little but pretty much refuses to crawl. He wants to stand and walk and he does a pretty good job even now so I have a feeling he may skip crawling altogether. He likes to say “ba ba ba ba” and a few other syllables, it’s pretty much the cutest. He’s at an age now where he loves to go places where he gets to see other people: the grocery store and restaurants and at restaurants he loves to get little bites of our food. Even lemons

But all good things must come to an end…and tomorrow I start a job working for Rescare as a Therapeutic Consultant, writing therapy plans for mentally/physically disabled adults. I’m excited about the job because it’s something I care about, not just any job, and something I hope keeps us afloat while Matt prepares the farm for projects in the Spring, not to mention the millions of things he does to keep up this old house and the farm. My best friend just moved here as well and that makes my heart happy. The universe conspired for us and now Greely has the two best people to care for him while mama’s away. It hurts to even think about being away from him all day so I’m just trying not to think about it too much but I’m happy for the job opportunity, which around here isn’t something that comes up too often, and for Matt to get to spend more time with Greely on a daily basis and Nathalie as well.

Change is hard but life is good

 

Gratitude

The adventure of having a family has been the best one so far. Every day I feel like I’ve been given this incredible gift of Matt and Greely and I try to memorize all of the moments because they’re passing too quickly.

Greely plays by himself now for extended periods of time. His grasp is getting stronger and he likes to wave things around and if he can get it to his mouth it’s going in, so the process of needing to watch him more closely is starting.

He’s definitely a nature lover, the minute we take him outside all is well. He’s discovered the dogs and they think he’s pretty interesting too but I don’t think June appreciates coming in second. Or third.

He’s so close to crawling but for now he scoots backward and sideways so he gets a little frustrated. Same with his walker, he seems to love the game changing independence of moving himself around…except he pushes himself backward 😉

Life is just better with Greely and Matt. Thanks, Universe.

Cloth Diaper Adventure

We just got our final shipment of cloth diapers and inserts in today! Yay for saving money and being less wasteful!

A huge thanks to grandma Janice!!<3

Starting early… Books<3

My boo loves to be read to, particularly books with nice bright pictures. He reaches for them and then grabs the book from my hand because he can obviously do it himself;)

We bought him a noisy “educational”? ladybug toy that’s really loud…I think we all like playing outside best! But fun, loud noises are great in moderation and this family believes in moderation.

Ms. Mekel’s awesome sling bag is now our book bag we take outside when we hang out in the yard!

Breakfast!

Greely is loving trying new foods. Bananas and avocados! He tries to just eat the bowl for now but he’s sharp, he’ll get it;) He likes strawberries and kiwi’s tastes and even Nutella (shame on me? Oh well it was just a little. I’m sure it’s crack-esque though)

Later today, I’m going to mash up sweet potatoes (mama’s favorite) and apples (from our apple tree woot) with cinnamon.

It’s so exciting that he’s trying new foods, I love watching his reaction to the new flavors and then how he tries to figure out how to get more of that awesome shit in his belly. ❤