Friday, April 25, 2008

Views Of Life

Just a few pics of our world lately. we're moving over the course of the next week, so there may not be much blogging. hope these will sustain you.


Monday, April 21, 2008

We Feel Pretty, Oh So Pretty!



Cause we're wearing these beautiful wraps! Our friend Kristi runs an awesome business out of her home making wraps for mamas, dadas and their kiddos. She just got in four new designs and asked Nate and I to model them for her until she can get some professional shots done. We couldn't say no!!! So here are the pics of Nate and I in the Hadley (the purpley one) and Sarah (black and white with flowers). The other two new wraps (Whitman and Alyssa - named for our amazing mutual friend) are modeled by Jan and baby Susan. Sweet pictures!
We always feel pretty in a wrap or sling, but this just furthered my longing for more wraps. Yes, I'm aware I have a problem. Hello, my name is Leila and I'm addicted to baby carriers.


Check out Kristi's company at http://www.gypsymama.com/ you won't be disappointed! Jan also makes slings (we have two that we love) www.sleepingbaby.net

Monday, April 14, 2008

What's The Word?



Relief, excitement, joy, giddiness, anticipation, optimism, gratitude, surprise, curiosity.....I could list another hundred words and I'm not sure I'd stumble upon the one that best fits my mood right now. It's too wild and complex to sum up.We are moving!!!!! We've been on the hunt for a new place for about a month now and I've been driving all over the seacoast area looking at places with both boys in tow, that have mostly ended up being totally shitholes. There was one great place in Portsmouth right near a close friend's home and in a great neighborhood but it was too small and too expensive. So, I kept looking but was feeling discouraged about finding something. Wednesday I called about a place in Kittery that sounded too good to be true and it was, it was already rented. Back to the drawing board.Saturday night the phone rang - turned out to be the landlord of the place in Kittery asking if we were still intersted because the tennants that were lined up to take it had bailed at the last minute. (2 young girls who were roommates for the first time and one didn't really like the place but waited to say anything until after signing the lease) Anyway....it worked out in our favor. We drove down Sunday morning and took a look. From the outside it's not too impressive, and honestly, when I saw the outside I thought it was going to be totally lame. But, the old saying "looks can be deceiving" proved true here. Inside is really nice. It's older and has some flaws but I think of them as character really. The place is huge...i mean really HUGE. It's about the size of Tim's mom's house (for those who have been to it when we lived there) but it's an apartment. We have a basement, a laundry room - a room for laundry - for my friends who have been to our current place you understand how huge this is...our current stackable super tiny washer/dryer is in the hallway across from our bathroom; I digress, a garage a formal dining room plus the kitchen is big enough to be an eat-in, an enclosed porch, a living room and two bedrooms. I'm beyond excited and thankful to be moving to this place.It will cut Tim's commute down from 45 minutes one way to maybe 15 with traffic. It means the boys and I are a million miles closer to soooo many of our friends and some amazing playgrounds in Portsmouth. We'll be .7 miles from the public library. It's just like something out of a dream - if I could have imagined our next home this would be it.Tim signed the lease and dropped off the security deposit tonight. He also called our current landlord to ask about getting out of our lease and she was totally fine about it - almost happy that we're leaving, though she's always liked us and been friendly towards us. I like to think that she just understands the situation and isn't in the business of being a slum-lord. Not to say that this place we're in now is slummy at all, it's not, i just mean the personality that some sketchy landlords can have.SO, we move the first weekend in May. We'll have keys a few days before that so I'll be making some smaller trips with the boys probably. If anyone wants to help it'd be awesome, but I know most of our friends have kiddos too so it's not too feasible. Although, if anyone would be interested in having Benny hang out with them for an afternoon while Nate & I run down with some stuff that'd be a HUGE help. If anyone would like to come over for a house warming party/playgroup though we'll be planning one soon!

One last related note - This might sound silly or hokey to some but I believe in it. Most of you know my spiritual beliefs and know that I had a very strong connection to my dad when he was alive and believe I still do even though he's not physically here anymore. On the way to look at this place on Sunday I sent a "prayer" (I hate that word because it doesn't fit what I do but I'll use it for descriptive purposes here) to my Dad to ask his guidance about this place, to ask him to help in some small way as we tried to find a new home that would make our lives so much easier in so many ways. It's not just the shorter commute for Tim, but the rent is actually going to be less than living in Lebanon, it's closer to so many friends and activities, it's so much more condusive to the lifestyle we're trying to lead (more eco-conscious and more consensual) it's a combination of many factors. I don't know for certain if my Dad was pulling strings for us or if we just have strangely good fortune right now, but I want to think that he was doing something for us somehow because it just seems too random that this woman called us back about the apartment when all she had was our number on her caller ID and that this place is so perfect for our family in location, size and price. Maybe it is just a fluke, maybe the whole Butterfly Theory is working in our favor right now, maybe I owe whomever invented Caller ID a muffin basket, but for what it's worth, I feel comforted thinking that somehow my Dad was guiding us to find this home. So I end this long, happy blog feeling such relief that we have found a new apartment that we so needed and such hope that it will become an amazing home for us.

Saturday, April 12, 2008

LLLovely!!!


It's official now ~ as of April 8th I am an accredited La Leche League Leader! I've been working on this since the end of summer and am of course very proud and a little relieved that it's now complete. I got involved with my local LLL 6 weeks after Nate was born. My first two meetings were good, but a little overwhelming. I was postpartum, with a preemie and had just moved to a new place and left the workforce to be a stay at home mom indefinetely. Just a few life changes all at once, huh? La Leche League and specifically the absolutely inspiring moms that I met there helped get me through. Many of the moms of this group are now my close friends and have enriched my life in countless ways. I'm thankful for them, everything about them, every day.

I was really nervous about becoming a stay at home mom. I was worried that I'd fail at being a good mother to two kids after only being a mom to one for three years, I was afraid that I'd want to go back to work to be away from my kids, I was scared that I'd be isolated from other adults, especially other women - through LLL I overcame all of these fears, in fact they were removed completely. Thanks to LLL I learned valuable information that helped Nate and I get off to a great start with our nursing relationship, which is hard with any newborn and mother and especially with challenges like prematurity and jaundice. Thanks to LLL I gained confidence in myeslf, as a nursing mother, as a parent, as a friend, as a partner, as a woman. I'm incredibly proud to sit here now and be able to extend my knowledge to other women who are also nursing, or pregnant or parenting or all of the above. I've worked hard for this and it's one step in a long process to reach a larger career goal, but I know I'll always be proud to be a LLL Leader and honored to share this responsibility with my amazing co-leaders.


That said, you can check out our area LLL at http://seacoastnhlll.org/index.html We're hosting a Breastfeeding Walk on May 31st to raise funds so that our area leaders can attend a educational seminar in Albany, NY this summer. We'd love to have you join us or support us in any way you can!!! Please email me or leave a comment if you can help!!!

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Budgies, Weees and Dohs



Come over to our place and these are the words you might hear right now. Nate is starting to get very, very vocal and what's coming out is just too sweet and funny. He's still using his signs frequently and often uses them as he's speaking the word as well, for added clarification I think. Ben did this too with the signs and I know it's just how they process it, and I think it's the cutest thing in the world.

Nate's most popular words right now are as follows:

Budgies - sounds like "budge - eees" - The name for bunnies. This is mainly in reference to Annie's Bunny Grahams and Max and Ruby, (the cartoon) but is applied to all bunnies.


Weees - Sounds like "Weeeeeeees!" - The word for Slide. Nate's favorite activity at any playground is the slide, no contest. Thankfully we've also got a small slide in the backyard just right for him, so we don't have to drive to a playground to enjoy the Weees. At the playground today I asked him if he wanted to go down the slide, his response was a very clear head shake NO! followed by pointing at the slide and saying "Weees!" I then asked, "Do you want to go on the Wees?" He nodded vigorously.


Dohs - Sounds like "Dohs" as in Playdoh. Nate says this while pointing his finger, or wagging it. He's most often seen wagging his finger at the floor and saying "Doh! Dohs!" in a very stern voice. It sounds silly because you can probably guess what word this is, but it took Tim and I a while to figure it out. We believe this word is Don't. Where the finger wagging came from though I'm really not sure. I don't wag my finger at the boys.....at least I don't think I do.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Simplify - Can We?


Maybe it's because Spring is starting to show signs of arriving or maybe it's Cabin Fever gone wild but for some reason lately I've been really feeling the need to simplify our lives. By that I mean reduce the amount of stuff in our home and reduce the amount of time that we spend doing "nothing", like watching tv and surfing the web aimlessley. I took the first step in this process yesterday and called the cable company and reduced our cable. They haven't come to switch it yet, but are supposed to "sometime this week" so we'll go from having 72 channels to about 20 - essentially just the major networks and PBS. I like to think that I'm really ok with this but that's easy to say when I still have access to the 72 channels. My main motivation for reducing our cable is that it will reduce the number of shows that Ben can watch and hopefully reduce the amount of time he spends watching tv. I know I could limit how much he watches, I get that - I'm the parent yes, thanks for pointing that out. But we've been trying to let him learn his own boundaries more and realize the consequences to his choices so that he understands cause and effect and so that he's not just hearing us say No. My theory is, if we only have PBS for kids shows during the day he'll be more inclined to shut the tv off and find something else to do. As I type this, he's actually shut off the tv (after realzing he didn't want to watch Nick Jr) and is in the playroom enjoying his castle and its figures. So we'll see how this pans out.


I'm also hoping to go through the house and get rid of clothes that we don't wear, magazines we aren't reading anymore etc. There's something very freeing about that idea, about not being tied down to a bunch of stuff. I also love the idea of not having hampers full of clothes that we never wear but need to be washed, or of my cupboards being full of dishes and mugs that we rarely use. I want it gone, I want that space back and not to fill with other stuff but just to be empty space. Plus, I'll bring everything to Goodwill where someone else can use what we donate and enjoy it. That's better for us, for the person who gets it and for the item - at least it'll be appreciated. Now I just have to actually do it! No better time to start than now huh? That said, I will stop blogging now and get to work.