Sylvia Mommy!

Sylvia has been really into labeling things lately, in a possessive manner. We live in 'Sylvia house', her sister is 'Sylvia Lala', and I am 'Sylvia mama'. She wasn't sure whether I got the message correctly, so the last few days she has been talking about me as 'Sylvia mama! Not Karen!' Symbolic how it sometimes is easy to lose your identity as a person, and be only what others define you as. Of course, she doesn't see those implications, but it made me muse philosophically about it.

The neighbor kids like coming over to my house and eating my homemade bread. They call it 'Karen bread'. Of course, Sylvia now has to set them straight. 'Not Karen bread! Mama bread!'

She has been talking so much lately, I love hearing more and more language emerge. She makes long and full sentences now, and talks about things which has happened in the past or are going to happen in the future.

Warning: Shows Boobs

By now, everyone must have seen this article about the outrage of american parents of seeing a boob attached to a baby! They are extremely worried about their husbands and sons, boobs should only be shown in Victoria's Secrets catalogs. They consider it sick to actually have them shown as a source of nutrition for a baby human.

Wet feet has put up a great list of links to people who are putting up boobie pics in protest of this all. Quoting her "Want to make a statement? Leave this indecency where your children might see it. Want to be a real rebel? Post your own indiscreet nursing picture."

After nursing seven kids, I have quite a lot of nursing pictures. I decided that this one was very appropriate.



How's that? Not one, but TWO boobs being used the way nature designed us. These are Tara and Jane nursing. So many good memories. Now they go shopping and do each other's hair all the time, not to talk about nail polish. Time flies.

On the Bottom of the Lake

Yesterday, our go club decided to do some go outdoors, and we hiked up to a local lake. To our surprise, half of the lake was gone, they are working on the dam and had drained most of it. So half of the lake was just open ground now, instead of water. This was our chance to check out what the bottom of the lake looked like, very fun.



Usually the water comes up to the tree line over there. Notice how this was a home made lake / reservoir, the tree stumps do not particularly look like they have been felled by beavers.



Kate is standing on the bottom of the lake here, you can see the reeds in the background, to give some idea of the normal water level.



The weather was perfect too, not as hot as it had been before.



Today is cleanup day, but we are missing three of the older kids, not much is happening. The girls went to a water park with their friends, so they are not available. I spent some time cleaning up the 5 boxes full of clothes and blankets which had emerged from the van. But now I think I will do something outdoors or study go, I am not in a cleanup mood. Well, of course I'll do some basement work, that is kind of a given on any day right now. But we won't have a full blown clean up day.

Yet Another Dump Run

Up to 86 bags, AND we got a couch down in the basement. Taking up all the space we just cleared. Our neighbors are moving and gave us this couch. The kids are elated. It's a couch which pulls out to a bed, and they played on the bed for at least an hour when we just got it.



Showing one of our many dump runs, I wish I had kept track of how many times I made them already. The people at the dump are starting to hide when my van appears, I wonder why. Last time he asked me (paraphrased) 'Where the heck are you getting all this crap?' I smiled and said 'Seven kids and eight years of basement neglect.'

Adventures with Milk

Today, I made yet another dump run before going grocery shopping. I didn't have a lot, but still enough to cover most of the floor of the trunk. I had forgotten that my van was cleaned out though, so there were some bolt sticking out in the floor. Totally oblivious of that, I put the bag with the milk on top of it. Totally oblivious, I open the door of the van. To be greeted by a shower of milk. It was dripping and streaming and everywhere.



What a mess! Erik was in heaven, he spent the rest of the afternoon pouring milk over himself, the driveway and everywhere. Kate was not as impressed, watch how she runs away from the mess.

So Much to Clean...

So much to clean, so little time. That's what I feel like these days, even while we are making a lot of progress. It just is overwhelming me just a tiny bit. Of course, every dump run gives me a lighter feeling: more crap we will NEVER have to see again! It just still amazes me how MUCH stuff there was down there. I guess that's what happens when you finally attempt to empty a black hole. Space debris of years has accumulated. Entropy has been ruling and been having a ball.

Van is loaded for yet another dump run, running total of trash bags is at 85 now. Wow! Something wonderful happened to my van. Last night, a friend called me to ask me to borrow it to move some stuff from her old house to her new house. No problem, I gave her the keys and she used it. Today, I got it back and turned out she had CLEANED it!!! As in taken out all the crap, washed the gazillion clothes which had found their way in there. Put all the good stuff into boxes. Got rid of two large trash bags full of empty MacDonald wrappers and whatever more was on the floor. Wow! She can borrow my van at ANY time ^^

We had an attachment parenting meeting today. One of my friends is pregnant and attended the meeting, so I gave her all the boxes of cloth diapers which had been living in my basement. She will be all set for her new baby.

Another friend spent a few hours digging out more basement stuff, this was a corner we hadn't really touched yet. The shelves in there now will actually be usable. The kids found a kitchen chemistry set and had fun playing with it for a while. Erik found sandbox toys, I guess I will have to actually get more sand in the sandbox, since there is not much left in there.

Will you believe that after all this, the basement STILL isn't finished? I am sure the dump attendants are groaning when they see me pull up with yet another trunk full of trash.

I did enough basement for today though, time to sit down with some tea and off to dump and go club.

Excitement

Today, we went to the swimming pool, just to prevent ourselves from melting into puddles of sweat. I wasn't sure whether we even could go because of thunder storm warnings, but we lucked out nicely with the timing.

When we came home, I was getting some stuff out of the car, and I hear this loud 'MAMA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!' from Kate. The one we get at least 42 times a day, complaining about yet another horrible thing her siblings are doing to her. I wasn't getting very excited about the call for help, and calmly continued doing my things.

Suddenly Sander came out of the house with Kate, and her head was half covered in blood, as were her shoulders and her upper body. There was a LOT of blood. I went into 'first aid' mode and took it as a good sign that she was still so loud and alert, before I tried to figure out what exactly had happened.

Her story: 'I bonked my head!'
Me 'Hmmm, was it on something sharp?'
Kate 'Yes, the WALL!!!'
Me 'I see...'
Kate 'On the corner'

Ah, that explains it. We had a similar incident when Tara was a toddler, and yes, there was a lot of blood then too. This time Kate and Erik both were running and bumped into each other and Kate somehow bonked into the wall.

We convinced her to take a quick shower to get rid of all the blood and to be able to assess how big the wound was. Next we had to convince her to take off the cloth diaper we had given her to put pressure on the wound. It wasn't easy, but she eventually gave in and showed it to us. It was not very big, maybe an inch, but rather deep and wide. It didn't actively bleed anymore, and the idea of stitches totally freaked her out. We decided that home treatment would do, and I made a quick run to the supermarket to get butterfly bandaids. Apart that they didn't have them.

Found some bandaids which kind of worked, not easy because the wound is in her hair. I also found Hello Kitty bandaids to go over the real bandaids, which helped her mood a lot.

The girls made her special pink lemonade and some candy, and a sandwich. We got her comics to read and by now she is sitting on the bed, surrounded by candy, lemonade, and sandwich, feeling a lot better. Her head is still hurting though, which is not surprising. Will keep an eye on her during the night.

More excitement than I really wanted.

Cees

Cees seems to be having a good time in the Netherlands. They ended up not going to the Batavia, because of the rain. He is back at my brother's house now and has discovered their playstation. I am wondering whether he still will want to come home ^^



We are up to 80 trash bags, I think I'll take a break from the basement today. Tomorrow I will have an attachment parenting meeting at my house. And let's just say that my house needs some work, since we have been focusing on the basement. It's too hot to drive to the dump anyway, it will be a go and clean-up day.

Fun moment: Sylvia, sitting on a chair, drops her book.
'Mama get it!'
'You can get it yourself, you are a big girl.'
'Mama big girl!'
'OK, ok, but only because you are so cute'

Repeat a few times. Until I am tired of the game and tell her that next time she can get it herself. She 'drops' it again and says 'Sylvia getting it herself'. Of course, now she needs help to get down from the chair, so she still gets her mommy interaction.

Heat Index 103 °F / 40 °C

I have been trying not to complain too much about the heat. I mean, it sure beats shoveling show and -30 C in my humble opinion. But today, it felt yet again like walking through a sauna, and there is no cooling breeze at all. I decided to check the weather forecast to see whether we would get some relief by having thunder storms. And realized that the heat index was 40 C. No wonder it's so brutal today.

We have an active heat advisory and another advisory warning about severe thunder storms. Oh joy. We are not supposed to do any strenuous outdoor activity, but I went to the dump anyway. Up to 80 bags! It was so nice to work in the basement today, I am very happy we are finally cleaning it out.

OK, my bread dough is escaping, time to shape it. It rises really fast with the current heat and humidity.

Seventy Five

We are up to seventy five trash bags taken from the basement. Seventy five bags full of crap we will never ever have to see again. Seventy five bags of incomplete toys which will never be completed, packing peanuts, old shoes, Macdonald toys, and useless things. I am feeling so much lighter already, even if there still is a lot to be purged and organized. I have to admit that it's nice to work in the basement when it is hot like today. I also have to admit that it would go ten times as fast if the kids didn't jump on every toy we find to play with and spread all over the basement floor.

Hubby saw some parts of old furniture and said he hoped I wasn't going to throw that out. He explained to me that we still might want it when we would build an addition to the house. I kept things non-committal , but my feelings is that we need less stuff , not more space. And heck, if we didn't use that furniture in the last eight years, what are the chance realistically that we will want to use it in the next eight years?

Today was aikido day, I had to skip quite a few classes when hubby was gone. Very happy to be back at it. I still totally suck at it, but love every minute. Nothing like being thrown around the dojo to make one forget about anything else going on in one's life.

I wanted to post a picture from Cees in the Netherlands, but blogger is not cooperating. Anyway, he seems to be having a good time. Today he visited Muiderslot (castle) and he will visit replica of 17th century ship tomorrow. Still weird to have him so far away , all by himself.