Samantha can write her name now…kind of. She writes “Samo”. Don’t ask me where the “o” came from. But lately she’s added an extra circle to the end as a period. So now she signs her name “Samoo”.
But she has requested not to be called that.
Nor, sadly, Samwise Gamgee.
I was noticing as I got out the winter clothes a couple of weeks ago, that Clare now fits (although barely!) in the dress I bought for Samantha for Dad’s funeral. It’s funny the way time works, and the things that remind us.
Regarding a diaperless Clare…
Lucy: “That is a pretty big bottom. I’d like to keep looking at it. ’Cause it’s pretty big.”
To Clare playing in the living room…
Samantha, in her sweetest cajoling mommy voice: “I appreciate you doing good. Thank you.”
I was innocently, or at least unsuspectingly washing dishes. The girls were playing outside. Lucy came in to finish preparing the “tea” for her tea party in the back yard, and she calmly announced that Samantha was on the truck.
“On top of the truck?” I asked, sure she must mean something like “tricycle”. ”The one we drive around in?”
“Yes.”
I blinked in disbelief, and headed for the door. Sure enough, as I walked out, Samantha was sliding down the windshield. She didn’t make a fuss, just slid down off the truck like she had done it every day of her life.
Me: Would you like some broccoli?
Samantha: I don’t like broccoli.
Me: What do you like? Besides cookies and candy.
Samantha: I like ice cream and cake. And icing on cake.
My mom claims she gets it from her, and that she got it from her mother. I think it’s time to start making some “nutritional” cookies. ;) (= sneaky mommy face)
Lucy has a theory. She thinks that all we need to do to make the world a better place starts with a little Holy Water. You take some of this “magical” stuff in a cup, and go find a bad person. You have two weeks to do this, as she assured us this evening that the water stays good for two weeks. When you find the bad person, you have them drink the Holy Water. Then they won’t want to be bad any more.
I want to live in her world.
That was Samantha’s explanation. Now for the story.
I was next door at Bob and Mary Lou’s house, with Clare. I thought that Ben and Helen (Craig’s parents) were at the store, and Lucy and Samantha were swimming with Uncle Sean. When I came back, I found that Ben and Helen were back and Samantha was in trouble. Apparently after they had finished swimming, she had put on a pair of Nana’s shoes, which meant she was Nana, with all the rights and privileges accompanying that. So she unlocked the back door, went out and got herself a beer out of the mini-fridge by the pool, because, as she said, “I thirsty.”
For those of you we haven’t talked to in a while, this is our plan for the next several years. Why would we want to do this, you might wonder? Let’s just say we’re tired of spending $400 to fix our AC, and $300 for plumbing, and lining banker’s pockets with our mortgage interest, and wasting energy, water, building materials…it’s a long list. But go check it out:
http://www.earthbagbuilding.com/
The hope is, once we sell this house, to get some land probably in Livingston Parish (between N.O. and Baton Rouse) and get to building. If you know anyone looking to move to Marrero, let us know!
There isn’t all that much to say about Clare’s actual birth. It’s really the months leading up to it and the days following that make any kind of story at all. That said, be warned that this is really, really long.
When we found out we were pregnant again, we started looking for the next best thing to a home birth, because we didn’t think that there was a midwife nearby who would take us. So we looked into the new birthing center at Oschner in Baton Rouge, (actually, we looked at it before we found out we were pregnant…but who’s counting?) and it all looked pretty good. So we had a couple of appointments there, figuring that it was very close to Craig’s parents’ house, and only a tiny bit further from our house than we had to drive for Samantha’s birth.
I only have a couple of pictures, but here are some of the Christmas festivities. A couple of weeks ahead of time, Craig made a gingerbread house. It never did get decorated!
Christmas was two days after I got out of the hospital from the original bleeding episode, so no pics of me! But here are the girls, dressed and ready for mass.
Loyola Kids Book of Heroes: Stories of Catholic Heroes and Saints Throughout History by Amy Welborn
The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks (Penguin Classics) by Unknown
The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day by Robert Ellsberg
The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the by Sam Kean
