a few weeks ago, we discovered that one of the bushes in our yard was a blueberry bush. today, it is full of dark blue berries of goodness. the boys just picked a small container and ate a handful of them on the way into the house.
they might need another day or so on the bush, as they're a bit tart.

but they're gorgeous. see for yourself:

i've been meaning to get this post out since i started it on monday. but...life had other plans. :) since we are a family with small children, our weekends tend to either be slow and easy, or jam-packed full of activities. what are your weekends like?

I honestly can't remember Friday night for the life of me. So is the norm for a family with small children. Your evenings kind of melt into each other.

Saturday morning: Adam decided he wants to eat at 4:25 a.m. He's still an excellent sleeper - falling alseep around 10:00 or 10:30 and sleeping until at least 4:00 a.m. But this morning he decides he wants to hang out wide awake with me for an hour. He finally falls back to sleep around 5:40 a.m. (since i've written this part, he's now waking at 2:30 or 3:00 for a feeding).

The older boys wake up around 7:05, which is early for them as they've been waking around 7:30 lately. We think Sawyer is cutting his last teeth, so he's been waking up crying and waking Rowan up in the process (they share a room, and wouldn't have it any other way). Kenny crawls out of bed while I stay snuggled in the sheets because Adam is still sleeping. The boys go downstairs with Kenny for their daily morning routine. It doesn't matter that it's Saturday, the typical day to sleep-in. Sleeping-in means nothing to a 3-year-old. Kenny whips up a batch of his famous homemade pancake batter and starts the coffee, then heads to the back porch with the boys for some playtime before I come down. About half an hour later, Adam wakes up wanting to eat, so we join the crew downstairs while Kenny starts breakfast. I feed Adam while the boys wait patiently in their booster seats at the kitchen table. The cup of coffee I'm drinking tastes divine.

I can't remember if it's this morning, or if it was Friday morning that it rained buckets. If it was this morning, then it was over by 11:30 which was when we decided to hop in the car and go look for a dining room table.

We moved from a house with the 10x10 (or 8x8 - something close to that) dining room to a house with an 18x16 dining room (or something close to that). Our old dining room table was just that: old. So we gave it away and decided to use our tax refund on a new dining room table. I have a very specific kind in mind. Kenny has a very different specific kind in mind. After driving to a few places, we found an almost perfect dining room set that we both really liked. For $6000.00. Yeah right. Our refund wasn't near that amount. So the search continues. But on our ride back, we saw a sign to a local winery and decided to stop in and check it out. We tasted a few of their wines and bought two bottles: a Pinot Noir that Kenny liked and a Chardonnay that I liked. Sometimes local wineries don't have the best wine. I wasn't incredibly impressed with the dryness of the Pinot, but we bought it any way and will give it a try. It's probably better to drink it with dinner than making a choice based on a small sip out of a plastic cup.

When we got home, we decided on pizza for dinner, so we ordered and Sawyer and I took a drive into Chicora to pick up the pizza. This is when I realized that one-on-one time with the kids is going to be life-changing. Sawyer is extremely energetic and very strong-willed. This may describe any 22-month-old boy, but Sawyer just has a little more strength than normal. He's probably going to be a super-hero when he grows up, because when he throws a tantrum, his strength surpasses mine. But driving to the pizza shop (and to the grocery to pick up some yogurt since we had run out the previous day and the boys live on yogurt-lunches) alone in the car with Sawyer was hilarious and fun. He laughed at the "belly-whopper" and pointed out the tractors and cows on the side of the road. He sat in the grocery cart (something he defies when Rowan is with us) and pointed at anything and said, "Wow! Oooohhh...wow!" and when he recognized something he told me what it was "Ball, mama, ball!" He stepped up on the curb outside the pizza shop, balancing his way across without my hand. He was so proud of himself and ran into my legs laughing at his accomplishment. We drove home and walked into the house with the pizza and bag of groceries chatting, "Was that fun, Sawyer?" "YES!" "Do you like sitting in the big boy booster in the car?" "YES!" "Did you have fun with mama?" "YES!" What a little charmer he was! Very unlike the I-want-to-push-mama's-buttons that he can be when I take the boys to the store. So Kenny and I have decided to set up one-on-one times with the boys. I think they'll enjoy the mama- and daddy-time as much as we will.

Sunday: The kids slept in until 7:30! Kenny and I are almost bored by 7:00 waiting for the kids to wake up. Some days we relish the quiet, or even get up before they do and enjoy a quiet cup of coffee alone together. But not lately. Lately we like to sleep until the kids get up (I get to sleep a little later most mornings if Adam's eaten already). We quickly breakfasted and rushed out of the door to church. Rushing is certainly the best description for Sunday mornings. Nothing lazy about our Sunday mornings. Our new church starts their services at 9:30 a.m. in the summertime. We have to leave by 9:00. If we wake by 7:30, breakfast is usually finished around 8:15 and try getting two adults, a baby, and a 2- and 3-year-old ready and out of the door by 9:00 and you are definitely rushing. But...we made it to church only 3 minutes late.

One day, I'll blog about our new church and our old church. It's hard calling Ascension our "old" church as it's still "our church" in my mind and heart.

After church, and a quick lunch at home, we put the boys down for their nap. I nursed Adam and he fell asleep. All three boys alseep at the same time! Kenny decided it was time for me to give the tractor a try. Some men won't let their wives touch their tractrs. Or their grills. Kenny is more than eager to share these toys with me. The tractor was actually fun - I got the majority of the yard cut in 45 mintues before Adam woke up and needed to nurse again. Then I spent another 40 minutes on it. The lawn was only 1/3 cut after the dent I put into it. (Kenny finally finished it up in about 1 1/2 hours the other night).

Now that I'm finishing this post, and it's Thursday, I find myself completely forgetting what we did Sunday evening.

...that cityfolk like us move on up to the country and contract Lymes disease?

apparently pretty good, as kenny was just diagnosed with the illness. it feels weird calling it a "disease" as he is virtually symptom-free. except for the five bullseye rashes on his body, the most obvious one covering his entire right butt cheek (yes, he has given me permission to blog about this). we even took a picture of it in case it had disappeared before he got to the doctor (it was a saturday and he couldn't get an appointment until the following wednesday).

but he didn't give me permission to post that. :)

several weeks ago, kenny ran a high fever (around 103.7) for a few days straight, with no other symptoms. just a random high fever...scared me to death. he made an appointment with a doctor who said it was probably a virus and sent him home. the good thing was that he decided to run blood work to rule things out...like Lyme. the first test came back showing a "low positive" for Lyme, so he had more bloodwork done and it finally came back this week showing a definite positive. but we had already figured out that it was going to come back positive because of the bullseyes that showed up over the weekend. the nasty fever he had was all from that tiny insect bite. nasty little critters.

so we've found that he'll always test positive for Lyme. for his entire life. but hopefully the antibitotics that he'll be on for the next three weeks will keep the ugly symptoms away for good.

who would have thought?

if you know my husband, you know how well he can start up a hobby or passion and pretty instantly become really good at it. for instance, just after we were married, we decided to take a pottery class together. it was my second pottery class and his first. by the second week of class, kenny was throwing pots like he'd been at it for years. even the instructor, who was a lifelong potter, was convinced he'd taken pottery classes before. since moving out to where wildlife is more than grackles and neighborhood cats, we've become pretty amazed at the different birds we get to see up here. and kenny has taken to learning more about them.

because of his new hobby, hummingbirds have taken over our back yard. that is, until i cooked for them.

a few weeks ago, kenny decided to hang a few hummingbird feeders outside our enclosed back porch window. he started out with just two, and worked his way up to five feeders. now there are only four as one was overtaken by mold and insects. the hummingbirds came in droves for kenny's homecooking (sugar water: one part sugar to four parts water). we had to fill each of the feeders at least once a day and probably could have filled them twice a day.

last week, i thought i'd fix up a batch for the birds. we were using a box of instant nectar that my mom had given us (she gave up on feeding the hummingbirds in her back yard). i followed the directions on the back of the box, not realizing that there were other directions on the side of the box that were different (using less water).

when kenny filled the feeders with my nectar, we noticed the hummingbirds didn't come back as quickly. then we realized they hadn't been there all day. the nectar stood in the feeders for over a day.

they didn't like my cooking.

yesterday, kenny refilled the feeders with his homemade concoction. we've seen a few hummers back at the feeders, but not the dozens we'd get at a time. perhaps they'll return slowly, just like they came at first.

kenny took a few dozen pictures of hummers at our feeders just to get one in flight. he got this pretty cool shot after 15 minutes of clicking away:

If I have to be honest about where I am in my head/heart with our move out to the country, I must admit that I am homesick. But my homesick feelings also coincide with the baby blues - something I have experienced with each baby, and I'm sure I'm going through now.

Our first two months here, I was optimistic about how our life would change in this new "atmosphere." But optimism has taken a back seat. For instance, it's now weird to me that I can't really call where we live a "neighborhood" as it just doesn't feel like a neighborhood...it feels more like a spot on a map. It isn't a cluster of homes nestled around a city, or a smattering of homes and larger yards in the 'burbs. It's an area where there are a few homes between larger lots of land. I know for a fact that this area has been "built up" in the past 40 years - we hear this a lot from the people we bought the house from. This house was the only house for miles...and now there are several homes on this street...one other home that we can see from our front yard! They find this a bit disturbing (as folk out here seem to like their space). I am finding this a bit isolating and lonesome.

You can feel the silence outside in the evenings in your stomach. It's a sound that you cannot "experience" in the city, or even in the suburbs. I now find it empty and cold. There is no soft "hustle and bustle" of the lives of people in houses just feet from your own.

I am optimistic that this will change and my new home will once again feel like home to me. I'll find it again as I watch the boys run around our acres barefoot and fearless of bugs and small animals. The baby blues go away within weeks of the baby's birth, so I'm looking forward to finding solace in the country-quiet once again.

today is the first day that i, mama, am home all day with 3 boys under the age of 3. you may not think of this as a big deal, but you see...it is.

since adam's been born, it's been kenny and me and the boys along with my mother, kenny's mother, or some friends from pittsburgh hanging out with us and helping HUGELY for a day or several days. always four arms for the three boys at least. now, just my two arms will have to do for two very busy boys who really want to go outside and play and one infant who really wants to eat or sleep.

kenny left at 8:30. at 8:45, i was nursing adam while the boys played happily on the back porch. i loved watching them play with their toys, finding ways to incorporate their toys with each other, then play separately. "this is going to be fun, watching and learning from my sons," i thought. at 8:47, the first screaming fight began and i calmly told them to separate. they did. whew. 8:38...another fight and i not-so-calmly told them to separate or share the toys. they shared! whew! 8:40...more yelling/fighting, and i'm trying to feed a squirmy baby. i let rowan and sawyer work out their argument and it escalates. i try to hard to ignore it and it gets louder and louder to the point where adam doesn't want to eat, but chooses instead to join the noise with his infant lungs. i sit there and look at my three sons all having mini hissy fits and try to remember the peace i felt just 5 minutes ago! i know it'll return eventually.

and it did. the rest of the morning was fine. the boys really do play well together and by themselves. the baby nursed and slept (they're all sleeping now!) and we all ate lunch together.

do other moms have slight anxiety at being home alone with their young ones? the anxiety is at least being massaged away slowly by cooperating boys who do a good job at obeying their mama. most of the time. :)