Things sure do work differently out in this part of the country. I’ve mentioned this many times here on the blog. The close mindedness ranges from legalizing midwives and domestic partnerships to gay rights and now even sexual orientation ordinances. This cartoon illustrates it perfectly:

Source: www.macleodcartoons.blogspot.com

It may be butt ugly and hot as an oven back in Arizona but at least it isn’t filled will so many ignorant, self-serving, close-minded people who will do anything they can to oppose change.

You want to make Evansville more attractive to businesses & young professionals? Get with the times people. Old School Evansville’s bible thumping, 24-7 McDonald’s consuming and the driving need to keep things the same is what is the issue here. Get over yourselves and see things from the outsider’s perspective if you truly want to attract them. Maybe the vast majority of people (outside your big boys club) don’t like your antiquated ways of doing things anymore. Times have changed but Old School Evansville has not.

Of course sexual orientation keeps people and businesses away! Normal, non-church-going people can’t even be left in peace here… I can’t imagine how a transgendered person or a same-sex couple would do.

… and don’t even get me started on abortion or Planned Parenthood. Oy!

Being a transplant to the Midwest has sure made for some new experiences. After three years there are still things we’ll encounter that just throw us for a loop now and then. You know, like sweet tea being given automatically in restaurants or the automatic “So which church do you attend?” conversation starter.

During the holiday season especially, when people are out in throngs, we really get annoyed. Mainly because the Midwest has this sicky-sweet passive aggressive woman syndrome going on.

Our first observation of this type of person was our first winter in Evansville, when we attended the Ballet. We were early so nobody was being seated just yet, we were all out in the lobby waiting. Boisterous women would call out to each other across the room, walk up to one another, exchange fake niceties then turn to walk away while quite loudly talking trash about the person they were just being all sicky-sweet to.

“Did you see that disgusting jacket she was wearing?” or “Oh my that dress is so tacky!”

Um… Hello! The person you are saying bad things about is right behind you and can still hear you!

We were kind of in awe of this overtly fake, backstabby behavior. Especially since so many out here pride themselves for being Christian. It doesn’t exactly seem Christian to be so mean and nasty to your friends or even your enemies for that matter. But what er we know? We don’t attend your church.

Just because you didn’t say it to their face doesn’t mean it isn’t rude. Actually, it is more rude in my opinion and also cowardly.

Today was especially amusing because we were getting all sorts of nasty looks from strangers (and even a few openly talking trash to others about us). It was all because they didn’t like how we were handling our kids in the pouring rain it seems. These were all older women I should add, like women that could be great-grandmothers to the girls.

I typically don’t pay much attention to these sort of things but when Nathan picked up on it and said something I became all too aware of it. Apparently, Adalyn wasn’t bundled up enough for their liking. Two years ago, the winter of Everly’s first year we had the same issues with people. It is like parenting a newborn automatically gives people the right to judge and criticize. As if newborn parenting isn’t hard enough already

This woman at Kohls just stopped in her tracks to scowl and discuss us, just feet away at the front door as we were entering the store. Not approaching us or offering advice just giving dirty looks and trash talking from a few feet away. She is lucky I missed my moment to pounce and was too busy with my kids to notice.

Back on the west coast this sort of thing isn’t nearly as common. People either keep their thoughts and opinions to themselves or they have the balls to come up to you and share their 2 cents. I like to just air the opinions or thoughts directly if they are worth the time to dwell on…

I’ve never seen a more cowardly, rude, passive aggressive bunch of bitches until I moved to Evansville, Indiana. It must be something in the sweet tea here. Of course not all Evansville women are like this but there is surely a more concentrated bunch of them here, more that I’ve ever noticed in other places, Scottsdale included. It still blows my mind.

An open letter to the cowardly, rude, passive aggressive bitches,

I realize it has been many years since you raised your babies but nowadays they tell you to NOT put your kids in heavy jackets, pram suits and such while they are in their car seats. Did you know that?

What would you have me do? Break the car seat recommendations and risk her life so she can wear a big jacket?

Or maybe I should unbuckle my kid in the pouring rain/ snow, then proceed to dress her in the snow suit/ bulky jacket just so I can take her 10 feet in the weather to reach the doors to the store I’m shopping at…

How much longer do you think she’ll be in the outdoor elements while I fuss with putting her outdoor gear on as opposed to just covering her with a blanket and running her across the parking lot?

Plus, she is in warm clothes to begin with- including the impossible to keep on newborn socks… and she is under my umbrella in addition to being head-to-toe under a blanket. She is just fine.

If you had the balls to ask me to my face about my parenting choices I’d be happy to calmly explain why you are an idiot.

Oh, that is right… You didn’t like people criticizing your parenting choices so why on earth would you want to approach and then criticize another parent about their’s?

Oops, your glaringly passive aggressive trash talking is something we DO notice so I guess you are really no better than those criticizing bitches you despised when your babies were young. High five for you! Loser.

Oh and F-you, my kid is just fine.

Sincerely,

Talina

P.S. If all the lazy, perfectly able people in this town weren’t blocking the store’s front doors with their cars so they could shelter themselves from the elements, perhaps those of us with infants and small kids could quickly hop out of the car and be in the weather less.

I am following the trend of other bloggers and starting up a Friday Phone Dump here on the blog. It gives an interesting look at how the week shaped up, without so many words (cause face it who has time for those?).

Really though, it is fun for me to see how the week has been. I can’t even remember the things from 30min ago while in this new baby haze of no sleep and no me time… So lets take a look at the week in phone photos. Here is what has been shakin’ this week:

To recap: Shower time madness, frost harvest, smiley baby, crochet frustration, latch issues and fussy (possible) lip-tie issues.

It’s taken five weeks thanks to the crappy video editing program and the general demands of parenting a newborn but I am relived to say…

The Live Streamed Birth Video Archive is Live

You can view it here, in three parts… Initially I had just hoped to have the archived live stream footage saved immediately after the broadcast ended (in two parts) but the actual birth portion of the video wasn’t saved properly.

Luckily we also were recording via camcorder for our own records. I’ve spliced the two videos together and finally managed to get them saved and uploaded for online viewing like I promised. Yay!

Adalyn is now five weeks old and she’s finally getting those chunky baby thighs and fitting in to our cloth diapers. She’s just sleeping and eating, you know newborn stuff. We are working through some gas and poop issues that make her unpleasant but she’s gaining good weight so she’s doing okay.

Everly is bored but being the best big sister, even with the attention shift of having a new baby in the home. On more than one occasion I’ve been told to lay baby sister down so we can play. Juggling Everly’s needs with Adalyn’s has been hard to do.

Everly has not lost a wink of sleep despite the very noisy, sometimes constant crying of Adalyn. She even tries to comfort her sister with a pacifier (that she now rejects) or a blanket. Just this morning she told me her sister needed more “nay-nays” (aka boobie) when she started crying.

I am all healed up and trying to get a handle on all my responsibilities around the house and with the girls. We are flying by the seat of our pants and hope to settle in to a routine soon, though we know that it isn’t likely for another month or two.

The photo pretty much sums things up doesn’t it?

Seriously, though. We are doing well, tired but that is nothing earth-shattering right? Adalyn is 3 weeks old and throwing us for a loop poop wise. I shall not bore you with poop details. Ask if you want to know and I’ll bore away though.

Everly is still being a great big sister to Adalyn and life with newborn & toddler is more and more successful for me each day.

Going to the bathroom with newborn in arms still seems to be a challenge for me though. LOL!

Nights are semi-sleepless but with longer stretches of sleep time than we expected, yay! I am almost totally healed and back to my pre-pregnancy self (ass aside since the jeans still likely don’t fit).

Temperatures are sure cooling down these days and our hens are even laying eggs for us when they are allowed in the hen house during the day. We had to start locking them out of the garden area (where theur hen house is) due to a certain hens ability to fly over fencing and eat garden plants, despite her wing clipping.

The hens haven’t been laying since being locked out but today they actually squawked at me to let them in today and lookie what I got in return.
Time to rethink the locking out and protect the garden another way…

Speaking of the garden… It’s slowly springing fall plants to life now. I think we will dig out the fall decorations and get in the fall spirit here soon. This includes putting our newborn in a hallowed out pumpkin, you know keeping up with tradition and all.

I am curious, how do you and your family start to get in the fall spirit? Do you have a special tradition or something that is uniquely fall in your home?

Thank goodness my toddler is sort of a clean freak!

These newborn days are sure leaving mama tired, not as tired as the first time around but still quite exhausted. You know, feeds every three hours or so with much cuddling and soothing needed before anyone can go back to sleep will leave anyone tired.

Luckily Everly comes up stairs to find me each morning when she wakes so with Adalyn up there sleeping too it is possible to potentially catch some extra sleep after Everly wakes up. I put on a DVR episode of Sesame Street and she cuddles in bed with us watching TV and waking up.

Today she got bored with TV and went down stairs to play on her own… (actually the show ended and I didn’t wake up to put another on. Oops)

When I finally woke she was whining that I come down stairs now and she was saying “mom, what’s going on here?” as I got myself together and ready to come down stairs for the day.

When I found her she was sitting on the potty seat, poopy diaper next to her potty seat… filled with diarrhea and she said “mama, bad poop!”. She wasn’t still pooping but she planted herself on that potty seat because her bottom was caked in poop and she needed someone to wipe her up.

Like I said, thankfully she’s kind of a clean freak, otherwise I would have had little toddler butt prints of poop all over the house this morning before my morning coffee. Can you picture that?

Ah, isn’t parenting a hoot? Luckily Adalyn is still snoozing away upstairs in my bed thanks to the Gripe Water that finally got her back to bed this morning. Better go free the dog outside and check the homestead animals and garden while I have a free moment.

Three years ago next month we went apple picking. We were new to Evansville and were excited to partake in u-pick apple fun. We planned to score several pounds of apples and head home to preserve them cause preserving is something we enjoy.

When we got to the orchard I realized I was feeling off. Kind of dizzy and nauseated… also quite foggy. I had an idea what could be going on based on fertility charting but it was too soon to be sure. Several days later We learned I was indeed pregnant with Everly. This started our tradition of apple picking fun.

Once Everly had arrived we continued the tradition and took her along apple pick apples, now that Adalyn is with us we’ve again continued the tradition. Here is the 2 week old Adalyn edition of Wordless Wednesday:

When you have a new baby you will no doubt be inundated with the well meaning people saying they’d like to offer you a hand. Some really mean it, others are just saying it to be polite. If you are like me you refuse the offer out of the sake of politeness because who really wants to scoop your cat box or fold your undies?

Apparently some people really do want to do these undesirable things and actually give you a hand. I realized this after reading another blogger’s take on all those well meaning offers.

Exciting news: 

It’s also important to be specific about what you’d like help with because what works for one family wont work for another and the last thing you want to be doing is micromanaging a friend that is trying to help you out when you should really be resting and enjoying the kind gesture.

There are sites like http://mealbaby.com/ or http://www.mealtrain.com/ that help you to coordinate with friends and family the planning of meals so you don’t have to cook, which is usually the one thing everyone wishes someone else would do for them.

Families with older children might find it particularly helpful when someone offers to take the older kids out on excursions and entertain them. Some new parents will even appreciate a house cleaner or a buddy who wants to do the laundry or deep clean the house for them.

Each couple/ family’s needs is different and the best thing you can do before hand is think about what you might want to have help with and get past the “not wanting to let people help you” part.

In taking my own advice, here is my own take on what we would love for people to do to help us out after little 2.0 gets here. Build your own ideas and lists from this and remember the more specific the better!

1. Buy us organic milk, white bread (with no high fructose corn syrup) and a bottle of 100% apple juice or a jug of Simply Orange Juice drop it off and leave.

2. Buy us bananas, any fresh berries you can get your hands on, Jonagold or Honeycrisp apples and 6 pairs of black cotton underpants (women’s size small or size 5), drop it off and leave or take Everly to the park.

3. Make us a big salad with tomato, cucumber, mozzarella cheese, organic green crispy things and maybe a nice homemade dressing on the side. Drop it off and leave right away.

4. Come over, color a picture with Everly in the living room, play Little People with her, read stories or take her outside for a bit to play.

5. Fold all the piles of laundry that have been dumped on the couch, beds or in the room corners or tackle the kitchen cleaning and dishes.

6.  Help us tend to our homestead: Go out to the backyard, harvest the ripe vegetables & fruits in the garden (don’t forget to go out beyond the back gate to the other garden space). Feed and water the chickens (check for laid eggs) and the rabbits. If the garden looks droopy please water it with the rain water barrel or the water hose. Bring the harvested goods inside.

7. Make us a yummy meal with our garden harvests if any are left around the kitchen or in the fridge or go out and pick some stuff to make a meal with.

8. Bring us frozen lasagna, garlic bread, a bag of Cesar salad, a big jug of juice, and maybe some chocolate ice cream to have for dessert. Drop it off and leave right away.

9. Come over at 10 a.m., make me over easy eggs, toast, coffee and a 1/2 grapefruit. Load or unload the dishwasher and start a jug of water in the water distiller.

10. Make me a giant pot of vegetable or minestrone soup and clean the kitchen completely afterward. Take a big garbage bag and empty every trash basket in the house and reline with fresh bags.

11. Come over in your work clothes, dust my house, scoop the cat box in my bathroom and then leave quietly. It’s tiring for me to chat and have tea with visitors but it will renew my soul to get some rest knowing I will wake up to clean, organized space.

12. Take Everly for a really fun-filled afternoon to a park, zoo or Science World and feed her healthy food.

13. Fold more laundry, stuff cloth diapers if any are laying around or tackle the mountain of dishes in the kitchen sink.

14. Come over and give Nathan a two hour break so he can get out of the house if he wants. Or take Everly and Nathan out for some fun outing so mommy and baby can have a quiet house for a bit.

15. Come over at about 2 in the afternoon when Nathan is at work, hold the baby while I have a hot bath and play with Everly, put me to bed with the baby and then fold laundry or take Everly for a walk so I can nap.

Just in writing this list I realized how important it will be for my “nest area” to also be equally entertaining for Everly since she will likely not be interested in resting when baby sister does but I’ll surely have to. My big plan is to have the new baby up in our bedroom where we can all lounge and Everly can play, watch TV or whatever and where I can comfortably nap and breastfeed.

Bringing Everly’s favorite toys and activities up to our room has been a gradual thing, fingers are crossed that when we come home with Baby Sister our plan ends up panning out!

If you are looking for birth updates and news about the impending arrival of Baby Sister you can check out the Updates From The Farm Page for more. This was a prewritten and scheduled post to keep you entertained

It is not easy to up and leave in the middle of your season harvest after putting in all the hard work and anxiously awaiting the payoff.

We are fixing to abandon the garden now and turn our focus to the upcoming birth of Baby Sister. It isn’t as bad as it could be considering the garden hasn’t been all that productive. It’s been an off year for us, probably because Nathan isn’t ever home to tend the garden and with me all big and pregnant things weren’t planted to tended to as well as they should have been.

Exciting news: 

The successes are of course tomatoes, our favorite lemon cucumbers, pretty popping corn, lettuce did well, beans (soup and fresh ones), okra, swiss chard, radish, turnips, strawberries, collard greens, carrots, grapes, sunflowers and blackberries have done great.

We figured out the mystery of our Etna Bush Beans and were happy that the early ones we picked turned out okay. Apparently, the pods get white with red stripes (much like the beans inside the pod). They are best picked for drying and soup making once the pods show red and have turned white and begun to dry out.

Another Etna Bush Bean note is that once the first round of pods are removed, the plant will re-flower and set new pods… or at least our have begun to. This is a welcome surprise since our 8 plants didn’t yield as many as we had anticipated and many more will need to grow before we are making soup with them.

I was hoping to get a quart mason jar filled with soup beans this year, you know to grow a pound or two of soup beans for winter… Not sure how many rows and rows I’d need to plant for that. I’ll keep you posted though.

Waking with major cramps and a lower backache will send most pregnant women in to a tizzy, especially if they’ve had a baby and back labor before. On Friday of last week, it was basically a mild version of early labor pain when I woke.

Tailbone pressure with the contractions, lower backache and my typical strong period like cramps… I told Nathan to keep an ear on his phone at work, just in case.

Exciting news: 

When I had Everly I seriously had no false labor or end of pregnancy pains, one day I just woke with my water broken and then the contractions started. So all this aching and stretching and practice pain stuff is new to me.

I called my midwife, Pamela, out at The Farm and we talked about what was happening. The obvious solution would have been to head down to stay at The Farm early but Nathan’s work life and our finances just really don’t make that an option.

It is already enough of a financial stress to take 2 weeks off and peace out before my due date so we are out there and ready for labor to start (as opposed to making a 3 hour drive to our midwife while in labor).

Anyway, we agreed to continue waiting here at home as long as all checked out fine when I met with a local midwife. So I got checked out by Gina of Southern Indiana Homebirth and got good news. (If you are looking for a midwife in Evansville/ Southern Indiana contact her and say I sent you! She is great and licensed.)

At the tail end of my 37 weeks I was only 1/80/-2

Translation for that is 1 cm dilated, 80% effaced and -2 station. Basically not gonna have the baby this moment and nothing odd is going on in there. My gut says hanging on for another week wont be an issue and Gina agreed. She did mention she’d be cool with heading over to our place if by chance I did end up in surprise labor and couldn’t make it out to The Farm in time.

This is a relief for us and is also good news for all of you planning to follow the live streaming video of this birth (that will be here). Nathan joked that we could even live stream the birth from our phones if labor happen to be in the car on the way to The Farm. Isn’t that something to try picturing in your head?

Baby Sister is still in the ROA position which is basically opposite of what the “optimal birthing position” LOA is. Been chatting with her about flipping around before it is time to come out. I’ve also been spending lots of time on hands and knees, weeding and such.

She flips over to where she should be and then just goes right back. I am not worrying about this much though, what is meant to be will be and an ROA baby can be birthed so we are just gonna play it by ear when the time comes. Babies can be born vaginally in virtually all the possible positions and with well educated team of midwives like those at The Farm I know I’ll be in good hands if Baby Sister needs any help coming out. I doubt she will though.

If you are curious about baby positioning and how it impacts labor check out spinningbabies.com (i’ve linked to my ROA position for further reference).

This labor might play out slower than my midwife thinks on account of the ROA position which could also be a good thing for keeping my perineum intact this time. Last time I had a spontaneous 4th degree tear that surprised us. The goal is to keep intact and to slow the crowing of the head this time. The plan was to avoid pushing but it also seems more upright laboring and movement will be in the cards if she stays ROA. Maybe some dance party? Hmm, we will see. I was mostly quiet and meditative while laboring with Everly.

If you are at all interested in seeing the labor play out it will be playing on this page, be sure to subscribe or follow the blog somehow so you know when labor begins.

Don’t worry, there will be no up-close vagina camera work. The webcam will be set up in the laboring room and will give a view of everything in real time so that people can get the vibe of how homebirth plays out and how natural childbirth looks (without all the Hollywood hype and panic).

Much like this video of Everly’s birth: