Emmylou photoshoot ~Organic

Adelaide showing Emmylou her braid

This video is much too short, I wish I had the camera sooner. Adelaide was talking to Emmylou and telling her about her braid. Adelaide finally agreed to let me braid her hair, and it looks so pretty. I'm sure Emmylou agrees!

Play Date with Fallon and Jacory

Don't you wish you could join them for cereal?

Jacory

This little guy is very special to us, especially to Adelaide. I'd have to say he is her current best friend. I don't need to say anything though... just look at her face!

Beltane ~ also known as May Day

Thanks to the inspiration of our amazing friend Jenny, we were able to prepare and celebrate Beltane. Because of Jenny's amazing blog and recommendations, I bought the book called Celebrating the Great Mother by Cait Johnson and Maura D. Shaw. It's such an amazing book, so full of fun activities to help children be more connected to our Mother Earth...I really love it. Our personal celebration was very impromptu, but we pulled it together and it was a fun day for us girls at home. I don't think Adelaide even understands what the Earth is...but I tried to at least introduce her to the idea. We kind of made the day our own, and decided that this year we really wanted to focus on making an Alter, and our own goddesses to have in our gardens at home and our community garden, to bring their magical energy for healthy crops.

Adelaide started the morning by drawing goddesses on paper with her oil pastels. I was really amazed because one of them was done with lots of bright Red, a beautiful face, and then a big black scribble of a baby in her belly. It as perfect! Too perfect to hang outside actually, so we had to come up with more. We started outside with her basket to gather rocks, sticks and anything else that reminded us of a goddess or looked like a goddess to us.

We also gathered some of my FAVORITE lilac flowers, as well as some of our blooming wisteria, and some fresh herbs. Once our basket was full we made our way back inside. It was COLD and rainy. Emmylou came along, snug in the Maya wrap.

One we had our supplies we got out ribbon, paint, clay and some sequins to adorn them. They were beautiful!!

Once our goddesses were all ready, we got our alter together and added them to it. We hung the goddesses painted in the morning, we added our flowers, all of the little goddesses that we had hiding around the house, and all of our red and orange candles to represent fire. We even made the alter on top of our wood stove, also to represent fire. Once everything was ready, Adelaide rang the singing bowl bell, and we lit our candles.

We then held hands and danced in circles singing our own songs about goddesses and our Mother Earth. We talked about what was "blooming" in our family, and then Adelaide rang the bell once more, and blew out the candles.

 We then marched our goddess out to their gardens to bring us fertility in the coming harvest season.

Two of my most beloved goddesses, both given to me by goddesses themselves. Thank you! xox



And our goddess in the making....

Emmylou ~ 4 months



Lua was born with black hair, quite a bit of it actually. Well all of that sweet baby hair has been falling out, and it looks like it's growing in blond! Right now she has the cutest little fuzzy head, so round and perfect! She has been teething and drooling much more than I ever remember Adelaide drooling. She actually should probably use a bib. She is such a happy girl though, always smiling and content, she never really makes a fuss unless her teeth are hurting her. She can now reach for things and she loves to rattle her rattle and chew on all of her toys. She has rolled from her belly to her back, as well as back to belly a few times now, though seems so content in whatever way I lay her down that she doesn't really roll much yet. I'm in no hurry, trying to savor these last few weeks of her being in one place for a while. She really loves to watch Adelaide dance around and sing to her, rewarding her with big smiles. Adelaide really likes to get right in her face and talk really loud, and even though it makes me crazy, Emmylou doesn't really even seem to care. She loves her big sister so much, you can already see it. She is already starting to grow out of her 6-9 month size is some brands, she is SO TALL! She sleeps so well at night, we just snuggle close and I nurse her maybe once or twice on a normal night, I don't really even know because I'm not really awake myself. Bedtime is a little tricky, she doesn't really like to sleep alone, so it's hard to get her down to sleep if I'm not going to bed as well. I try to get to bed early for her sake, and try and get her to lay down alone,  but I'm not really worried about it and not spending much time working on it. It's so funny the second time around, I realize that I made some things a lot harder than they needed to be the first time. She will sleep when she is tired, and I just have to give her the opportunity. She does fine in the car, she loves when I bring her in the bath with me to swim around, and likes to go outside and watch the leaves blow in the wind. She is so sweet and adorable, I can't believe I got so lucky twice!

Waddaya lookin at?

Blessing our Home

Adelaide and I did a blessing on our home, inspired by Tami Kent and the book Wild Feminine. I had an appointment with Tami last month, and she reccomended that I do this blessing for myself, my family and our home anytime there was too much negitive energy or if things weren't feeling right. I decided to try it, and I have to say, just the act of the blessing itself really raised my spirits. We are so lucky to have so many beautiful smelling and healing plants growing in our own yard, and Adelaide could not have had more fun. We started by walking around the yard and choosing the plants we wanted to use. We would walk up to the plant and ask it's permission to use it to bless ourselves and our home, and then thanking the plant once we picked it's leaves. I read in the book Sastun that the Mayans believed that in order to have the plant spirit come along to help you, you must first get it's permission or say a prayer to the plant. It only took Adelaide a second to catch on, and soon she was running all over the yard with her cute little voice saying "is it okay, plant, if I use you to bless myself and bless my home?.....Thank you!" I should have recorded it. We even got her her own little bowl to collect the leaves in.

We then put some water into our bowl and squished the leaves up with our hands, making a delicious smelling tea water. I could feel the beautiful and blessed energy all around us, we were so happy and it smelled so good! Once we had the plants broken up and the water was brewing in the sun we let it sit for about an hour outside.

As our bowl sat in the sun I watched as our beautiful Cherry Tree was raining down her blossoms. Several times I saw a delicate cherry blossom leaf fall into our bowl as well, as if the cherry tree wanted us to be sure to recieve her blessings too. I felt Mother Nature talking to me.

We then took the leaves out of the water and splashed it all over ourselves and Emmylou, saying little blessings. Adelaide blessed me, I blessed her and Lua, and then we came into the house and blessed every corner, every doorway, Adelaide got excited and wanted to bless every toy, her bed, the toilet, anything she laid eyes on. She loved splashing the water around and blessing everything. And we saved some of the water and even blessed Daddy when he got home from work. If nothing else, we had fun, got to talk to our plants, and our home was filled with the wonderful smell of lavender, Sage, rosemary, dandilions and cherryblossoms. Try it sometime! Let me know if you feel blessed!

Frog Milk

Even Mr. Frog likes to have a little milk for breakfast!

Drawings of Adelaide ~

One was drawn by Myles, one by Adelaide....can you guess which is which?

Our little Plot at the Garden

I have a thing about firewood. I tell Myles about this all of the time. When we have firewood I am happy, when it gets low I get stressed. If I can't make a fire in our wood stove when I want to, my world is not right. I think it's some ancient instinct that runs in my blood from many many years ago. I love the smell of our firewood, I love how it stacks together just the right way, I love knowing how to make a good fire, having soft wood for kindling, harder wood for heat when I really want the fire to burn hot and long.... Is it because I'm a Sagittarius? A fire sign? I will never really know....but I love firewood.

I feel the same way about the Earth, the soil, the dirt. We have a garden at home. We don't NEED another place to grow things, but why not? When they decided to make an empty lot near our house into a community garden I was one of the first to sign up. I love community. I want to garden with my neighbor, and most of all, I want a place to really dig. A place to relax and breath fresh air. And a place to gently place seeds into the Earth, cover them lightly with soil, and watch them grow. AND if I'm lucky, everything will be ready just in time for Emmylou to start tasting solid food =) Perfect!!

Right now our plot doesn't look like much of anything, but a mess. There are all levels of gardeners at our garden, and I often walk around and look at the other plots. Some are so creative and organized. Some people even use string to map out little paths etc. Other are just 3 rows. Straight, useful and organized rows. I couldn't be so simple.

So far our plot has a little somethin here, a little somethin there. It doesn't help that our plot is also the ONLY shady plot in the whole place (totally my fault because I asked to be moved from the first plot they gave us because I thought it was too shady). I am however embracing the shade. How else could my children enjoy hours at this place if it was ALWAYS in the hot sun? And the shade comes from a really beautiful tree right on the other side of the fence. I am hoping its an apple tree, and then we will have apples to add to harvest. I could only be so lucky.....I think it's probably the tiny little cherry's that you can't even eat, but we shall see.

One thing I'm excited for is our bean tee pee. I've been wanting to grow one for several years now, and I finally get to try it. We are going to grow Scarlet Runner Beans on it, another first. I hope they do well.

So back to the shade conversation, I know I want to grow lots of tomatoes, squash, peppers....all needing lots of sun, so I have to save space for those veggies (it's still too early here to put them in the ground) so in the mean time I'm busy planting random stuff all over the other parts of the plot.

By the way....gardening with two children is pretty much impossible. I can never seem to have them BOTH occupied at once. I have to be very careful of Adelaide because she always wants to dig for worms RIGHT WHERE my big ol shovel is chopping at the soil. We find all kinds of interesting "creatures" in our garden. The other day we found a "rolly poley" bug, which Adelaide had never seen. I was showing her how it rolls up into a little ball. She simply replied "it kind of reminds me of an armadillo". I think she might be a genius. How does she even know what an armadillo is? hmmmm

Rule #1 - make sure you always bring the potty with you.
Murphy's law says 'if you are trying to garden, Adelaide will need to poop'

This is what I am doing for the majority of the times spent at Plot #4

As of today we have planted:

Spinach given to me by a fellow gardener who didn't have room for it in her plot...(I didn't even know you could plant spinach starts?! I always grow it from seed)

Kale (starts we grew at home)
Broccoli (starts from home)

Runner Bean seeds
Thyme seeds
Spinach seeds
Beet seeds
Green Bean (bush) seeds
probably other things that I just can't remember right now. We also have lots of little tomato starts, jalapenos, flowers and basil that isn't ready to go outside quite yet. Our garden at home is where we planted our peas, chard, more spinach, kale, lettuce, onions, chives beets, radishes and probably other things that I also can't remember right now!

I'm sure once the starts are all our at our local store I will go crazy and wish that I had planned my space out better, but this is our first year doing this, and if it's too stressful than it won't be fun, so I am just going to let it be organic.

Helping mama fold diapers

Healing Feminine

My sweet friend Jenny has a new and very inspiring blog called The Healing Feminine. If you haven't clicked on the link that I added to my page to check it out, please do....she is AMAZING!

From my dad's phone on Easter

My serious little baby

How adorable is her hat that I made her?

Emmylou meets Inez

Photoshoot with my girls

I'm a little teapot