Awoke from a deep sleep I lay still, startled and listening. My heart raced. There it was, soft and quiet in the dark of the night, the noise that woke me coming again.

Opening my eyes I peered into the depths of the darkened bedroom. Even expecting it to be there I jumped nearly out of my skin as my eyes met those of the glowing specter next to my bed. Looking deep into my eyes, glowing white in the dark of the night it repeated it’s whispered entreaty, softly but intent and earnest, wanting me to understand. That pleading intonation that had first dragged me from my slumber.

“Cheese”

With a muffled exclamation my husband threw back the covers and jumped out of bed. Dragging The Goblin Child back to bed he made her put the Parmesan cheese back in the refrigerator.  We divide child duty and one would think he would have the easier job taking care of the older one at night but it seldom seems that way.

Everybody wants their baby to sleep. Seriously nobody really want to spend hours up feeding a baby in the middle of the night knowing their toddler will be up by six. Except maybe for this lady at Nurshable.

She has some really good ideas/training advice. But I want to nurse a two year old who also sleeps in my bed even less than I want to be up at all hours with a new born.

On the complete opposite end of the spectrum I had the misfortune of finding this article. I would have been much happier not knowing that people were trying this with their babies. If you don’t want to click over it is a doctor advocating putting eight week old babies in their beds and leaving them until morning no matter how much they cry. How could any parent do that to their baby? Of course I know people do much worse to their children all the time but this is a doctor who is supposed to be helping them.

Surely there is a middle ground somewhere in this?

I didn’t get around to writing about it then so I need to now. If I don’t we wont know when it was. It’s a very important thing to know. It was very inconveniently postponed due to the whole baby thing, we really should have planned better. And we are going much smaller than usual this year, again the whole baby thing, quite a nuisance. But finally, two weekends ago we (he) got the seeds started for the garden.

My devoted gardener husband tries to get them going around the end of February. Middle of March isn’t doing to bad all things considered. Along with a complete lack of sleep due to two children who are up all night he has been very busy all day with various farming and cattle related chores. On the days he’s not busy at work that is.

Last weekend he replanted the seeds that didn’t come up plus a few others. The Goblin Child has been fascinated by the seedlings wanting to check them constantly. This has been a bit stressful. An energetic enthusiastic toddler and tiny delicate plants are not a great combination. Morning and night she helps him check for new sprouts though and so far everyone has survived.

This weekend he has begun preparing the greenhouse. His devoted follower (hint: not me) helped him get the rototiller ready and pushed to the garden, then watched in concerned fascination as he worked the soil. She offered many tips advice and orders as to what he should be doing. Poor guy as if he didn’t have enough people telling him what to do already.

We dug up the tree that got way too healthy a start in there last summer. We should’ve moved it when it was smaller, who knew it would get SO big. Hopefully enough roots went with it and it will survive. I think it’s a mulberry, other people have doubts. If it lives time will tell. I love the mulberry trees even if they are considered weeds like and a mess making nuisance by some, none of us but some weird people. I have very fond childhood memories of playing and eating on one that grew near the barn where we boarded the horses outside of Omaha. That one has long since been plowed over and buried under endless suburbs.

After lunch and after finishing the greenhouse my hard working husband took his faithful follower and they worked up the end of our new smaller garden plot that he had been unable to reach with the larger equipment. After wrestling the rototiller through the sod for a couple of hours they went to do some work on a tractor, then to get another tractor ready for the field and now, to the best of my knowledge, they are out in said tractor farming. Because he hadn’t done enough gardening already today, he wanted to do some on a much grander scale.

I know it has been difficult lately with your inability to do the things you want to do that make you happy. You can’t ride your horses, you only just a couple of days ago were able to start driving again, you can’t get a good night’s sleep, the list goes on…sometimes it seems there are more things that you can’t or aren’t able to do than things you are. But I hope that maybe you can feel happy knowing that you are raising our two beautiful children. I realize that it’s a very, very hectic, busy, exhausting, challenging job to do…one that doesn’t have set hours or holidays. The pay is lousy and the working conditions are less than ideal. However, age is on your side. Someone as young and as strong and as healthy and as spry as you are able to get the job done without too much difficulty. Slowly we will begin to get things back into a scheduled routine like you want. Spring is coming, all three of you can start going outside to play and hang out. Things will get better and become easier. So happy birthday to the best wife/mother in the world, all of us love you and appreciate the things you do for us even if some of us can’t put it into words yet. Not as special as the present you made for me on my birthday, but I hope that we can go to Dairy Queen for a meal sometime today on your special day! I will have one of your favorite breakfasts ready as soon as I am done typing this…

When my parents came out they brought with them something almost as exciting as a new baby, and maybe more fun.

Princess Onna is a pretty little black Morgan mare. She is very nicely bred with Flyhawk up close, like on her papers, many times, plus some Funquest and Triple S breeding . She is supposed to be, not that I doubt it just that I haven’t had a chance to try it myself, very strongly gaited and incredibly speedy. I can’t wait to see what she’s like. It’s almost harder than waiting for a baby.

Unfortunately it is hard to get a good picture of a black horse especially when you are busy taking care of a new baby.

But we made it out to see her in this nice warm weather. No riding of course, I’m impatient but not a complete idiot. We just played with her and gave her some cake. And worked on a few ground manners. She is very sweet and well behaved but with small children underfoot I like them to be extra careful of people on the ground. I also want to teach her, or find out if she already knows (mom?), how to step over for mounting. It is one of the greatest skills ever, I can’t believe more people don’t teach it. Or maybe I am the only one who can’t get on from the ground.

(We got her out again this afternoon and I see that she does know it. The Goblin Child saw me ask for it once and wanted to try too. She got it immediately then kept the whip and worked on sacking Onna out or possibly fishing. Either way she had fun and Princess Onna started getting used to children.)

This is not the post I started writing. That one was too much work and sat started then untouched for days. This one will be simpler. One day I will get to the gory and interesting, to me at least, details. For now the basics.

We are home with our beautiful baby boy. Mostly very sweet and well behaved but with the rather regrettable difficulty getting back to sleep after his night time feeding. I spend half the night with my arm draped over the edge of the bassinet holding his pacifier for him. I think sometimes, like tonight, I am not doing  a good enough job keeping him awake to eat as much as he should. He ate at three, was up till at least four and again at five. Now, five thirty he is sound asleep. As long as I hold him. I am debating whether it is worth going back to bed until six. (It was worth it, my darling husband shut off the alarm and we slept till six thirty. Definitely worth it.)

My parents came out to help us while I was in the hospital. They were a great help, now they have gone home. We miss them dreadfully. The goblin child loved having Grammy and Different Papa to play with. Her other grandpa is also papa and when they first got here my mom was explaining to her how this was a different papa. She said it one time, before they met and our small brilliant goblin recognized him immediately and identified him as Different Papa.

The Goblin Child loved her baby brother from the start. She couldn’t wait for him to “pop” out of mamas belly. I think she got it from The Very Hungry Caterpillar, he pops out of his egg. She wants to hold his hand and give him his pacifier. It made life much harder trying to keep them apart when she came down with a high fever, then pink eye and now a nasty cold all starting as soon as we got home from the hospital. She is fascinated by my stitches, technically staples, and wants to see mamas “wowy” all the time. It was slightly embarrassing showing it to her in the city park, where she was playing with her grandparents, after the staples were removed.

Now the weather is beautiful, the sicknesses nearly gone and I am able to move again. I have strict orders not to ride horses or do anything fun for six whole weeks.  It’s hard to behave myself now that even off the hard pain killers things aren’t hurting as bad. I stopped the pain killers early once it was pointed out to me that the narcotics were passed in the milk and that was the reason he was sleeping SO soundly. The sleeping was nice but the weird drugged quality was freaky. Without drugs he is much more awake and showing lots of personality, as much as any baby can show that is. He eats, sleeps and poops there can only be so much personality in that, but he is adorable doing it.