Volcano Story

Hattie Rose dictated a story for Sarah today--her first ever original creation she wanted written down. It's sign she's following in her father's footsteps. It's also a sign of ... well ... here it is:

"A large volcano. Spread out and burned! This rocks! And the people was dead. And the bones. And the blood. And it's arms, and it's head. And it blowed down."

Ed. note: "This rocks!" refers to the actual rocks flying out of the volcano, as in "These are rocks!" or, in the children's colloquial, "This is rocks!"

So Do We Get That Week Off?

Hattie was just flipping through Sarah's recently purchased yearly planner and came across a slip of paper with some bad news.

"ERRATA:

"Due to a printing error, the dates 24-30 are missing from the January 2010 monthly calendar in this edition of the Barnes & Noble 2010 Desk Diary.

"We apologize for any inconvenience this has caused the reader."

Obviously, they're not sorry enough to let the reader know this fact upfront, before the reader buys the defective thing and starts writing in appointments.

We Are Still Here

So, having a toddler and an infant apparently make it harder to blog consistently. That's what I'm telling myself, anyway. And then I remembered that a post doesn't have to be long or involved or eloquent or interesting, though that last one helps, I suppose.

It doesn't have to be timely, either, which is why I'm posting some pics from mid October, from our annual trip to the Avila Valley Barn pumpkin patch with the Rookses. We've been getting pumpkins there every year since there were just four of us. Now there are eight, and it's so fun to see the girls rummaging through the leaves, searching for pumpkins to take home. (You can see more colorful results at Hattie's blog.)

Is more blogging more frequently on the horizon? Yeah, sure. Believe what you want.

August and Everything Before

As you may recall, this summer started with a baby. Matilda Jane joined the Miller family in May, wriggling and crying and kicking off a season of activity.

We celebrated Hattie's second birthday on June 14 with a sushi party in the park. There was real sushi to eat as a main course, and candy sushi to eat for dessert. The centerpiece was a California roll-shaped cake that Sarah designed, with shredded coconut for rice, fruit jellies for the various fillings, and orange jellybeans for roe on top. If only this were a color-friendly blog ... .

All four of us went camping with my parents and four other families in mid-June. Technically, only Hattie and I went camping, but Sarah and Tilly did come up to the mountains for a day so a lot of our friends and their families could meet the newest girl in the group. Hattie and I stayed two nights in my parents' trailer while Sarah and Tilly traveled back to Sacramento to visit with Sarah's family. We ate s'mores, rested in hammocks, played games. You know, camping stuff.

Hattie has been talking about the trip ever since, mostly because she saw a black bear within seconds of our arrival. We pulled up in our van and looked through the windshield: Bear. Right there. The last night we were there, it raided the camp for hot chocolate. It devoured all the Nestle but left the Swiss Miss. Take from that what you will. Hattie spent several days over the last week telling us that's she's going to go camping with Grandma and see a bear again.

Besides the close-ish encounter with wildlife, Hattie's favorite part of the trip was visiting the lake, splashing around, and climbing on rocks. She's like a mermaid, freakishly born with legs instead of a tail. Also, she breathes air.

In July, we went to the Central Coast Renaissance Faire, as is the Miller custom. We opted not to go in our traditional costumes, since wearing shorts and a T-shirt is so much more comfortable and allows plenty of freedom of movement for eating shepherd's pie and drinking pomegranate mead. We also ate Hawaiian shave ice, funnel cake, and an enormous breakfast burrito with salsa, none of which--correct me if I'm wrong, history majors--is exactly historically accurate. (I later learned that pina colada-flavored syrup wasn't invented until the 1700s.)

Hattie's favorite part of the day was the jousting, which also--I believe--was a bit of an anachronism. The knights autographed pieces of broken lance after the event. For a fee. That went toward care of the horses, which they had "rescued from a life of boredom."

This summer has also included a trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, a 1-year-old's back-hills redneck party with roast pig, a brave trip to the drive-in to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Hattie couldn't believe we ate nachos and hotdogs in the car and got to watch a Goofy cartoon before the movie started), live music and dancing at a bar, plenty of dress-up, and the birth of a couple new friends! Some of those activities may find their way here in the coming days and weeks, though two girls underfoot makes for sporadic blogging.

Tilly's Birth Story

First and foremost, I'd like to note that I caught her. Literally. She was dropping toward the floor and I stuck my hand out and caught her like she was a softball.

But a lot happened before that.

Sarah and I had been planning a home birth. Hattie, after all, was born at home (yes, by choice), and by all accounts, she's turned out fine. At 2-years-old and counting, she's talking and walking and pretending to be a giant spider--all the normal things.

Some mounting complications prompted us to reconsider our original plan. As this long-stagnant blog has indicated, Sarah spent a while in the hospital for a stomach bug. Shortly after her recovery, we were forced to move into a new house. We believe her sickness and the stress of the move conspired to start contractions, far too early. She went on bed rest.

Once she got her contractions under control, Sarah's blood pressure began rising, to borderline dangerous levels. We worked at keeping her healthy, and rest coupled with a high-protein diet seemed to be effective, taking us into a window in which the baby was considered full term.

Two weeks before her due date, Sarah began to have trouble feeling the baby move. After a particularly long stretch of apparent fetal inactivity (about 18 hours), we went to the hospital to get checked out. Turns out the baby was fine with a strong heartbeat, but Sarah's amniotic fluid was almost dangerously low.

Together, we considered the string of complications and consulted with our midwife and an OB who helped us when Sarah had been sick. We all ultimately agreed that induction would be the safest route, especially since the baby was doing so well (even if she wasn't really moving around). We could wait and try to get Sarah's amniotic fluids back up to safe levels, but if she worsened, we'd be going into labor with a less-healthy baby and more stressed Sarah.

The biggest relief to Sarah came in learning that she wouldn't have to be given any Pitocin--her biggest fear. In fact, all she needed was Cervidil, a minimally invasive drug that would kickstart contractions. It didn't even go in her bloodstream.

After making the decision to induce, we were checked into a birthing suite at French Hospital. We decided to pretend like we were at a hotel with room service--people brought us food, there was a TV and an adjustable bed, and staffers changed the sheets if necessary.

We hastily wrote a birth plan, noting that Sarah didn't want any pain medications, that I wanted to catch the baby if possible and cut the cord, and we generally wanted as natural a birth as safe and possible. All of the nurses and our OB agreed with the plan. We were impressed with how receptive everyone was to our wishes. The first nurse who attended Sarah noted that she had had a home birth 30 years earlier and believed in the birthing process. She assured us she would make sure that her replacement at the next shift felt the same way.

Sarah got her first dose (and an IV with hydrating fluids and some antibiotics, too) at about 6 p.m. on Sunday. Sporadic contractions began after a few hours and ran throughout the night. At the next morning, they gave her a second dose, and regular contractions soon began in earnest. She eventually hit her stride and labored mostly with just the two of us (and occasional visits from the nurses). Sarah didn't want anyone else around--probably in reaction to Hattie's birth, attended by myself, our midwife, her three assistants, both our moms, Sarah's sister, our friend Andrea, and her newborn Natalie. This time around, Sarah wanted me and only me. I was husband, father, and doula all rolled into one.

Our nurse, Suzanne, complimented Sarah on how well she relaxed and responded to my voice and touch. She said she could tell that we worked well together as a couple.

Throughout the labor, Sarah threw up several times, but that was still a marked improvement upon her first labor experience. She thinks the IV keeping her hydrated was a big part of how good she felt.

At about 1 p.m., Sarah was checked: 7 centimeters. Sarah got up to take a long, hot shower, and then her mom and sister brought Hattie so they'd be ready when the pushing started.

At about 3 p.m., the doctor checked Sarah again. She was at 8 centimeters, and the OB felt Sarah would labor for a while longer. Sarah's sister, Mary Rose, stuck around for support, and I continued encouraging Sarah to relax, change positions often, and go to the bathroom.

On one trip to the bathroom, she began pushing. I know, because I asked her: "Are you pushing?" She said she couldn't stop, so I called the nurse in. Sarah's bag of waters broke. I looked, and could see the baby crowning. The nurse told Sarah to walk back to the bed between contractions, but Sarah asked if she could have the baby on the toilet. When the nurse told her that wasn't an option, Sarah decided to get on all fours on the bathroom floor, which was fine by everyone.

She pushed once, maybe twice more. Our nurse, Suzanne, was calm and happy. Staffers stuffed blankets and liners as best they could under Sarah's hands and legs. The doctor arrived and asked for oil. I looked and saw a bulge where the baby would be coming out and stuck my hand there. A moment later, Sarah gave a push, and at 3:30 p.m., Matilda Jane Miller's head dropped into my waiting palm. Her body flopped along my arm.

Sarah's mom and Hattie had been in the hallway, but came back when they heard what was clearly Tilly being born. Upon realizing that Grandma couldn't get into the room, Hattie assessed the situation and reached out for a passing nurse so she could get in on the action.

In the bathroom, I quickly lifted Tilly to my chest, and in so doing accidentally tore the umbilical cord. Our doctor pinched off the cord and clamped it almost immediately for minimal blood loss to the baby. And she didn't even flinch. Seriously, the OB was a machine. We highly recommend her.

Someone asked Sarah how she felt, and she said, "I feel great!" My wife is awesome! Tilly was bundled and given to Sarah, who returned to bed to snuggle our new daughter and encourage her to nurse. Sarah suffered a second-degree tear (not as bad as with Hattie), but was otherwise fine.

Hattie almost immediately tried to feed Tilly some pretzels and apple juice. After a traditional post-partum dinner from Firestone (courtesy of the Rookses) and some light visiting, Sarah, Tilly, and I settled in for a good night's sleep before going home the next morning. Before we checked out, all of the staffers who had contibuted to our care checked in again. The nurse Suzanne told us she had been honored and blessed to be a part of Tilly's birth, which meant a lot to us.

We were honored and blessed by the help and encouragement we received from family, friends, and others throughout this pregnancy and birth. We're excited for you to meet Tilly, and if you've met her already, we're excited for you to see her again.

The Long February

It's the shortest month of the year, and yet ...

Every year since we've been married, Sarah and I have dealt with some disaster on or around Valentine's Day. Usually, it's a sickness. Our first Valentine's Day as husband and wife, I got gastroenteritis, a nasty stomach bug that violently hurries all food and liquid out of your system from the nearest available orifice. Repeatedly.

Subsequent Valentine's Days have been less ... explosive? expulsive? ... but still no fun.
Then came 2009. Neither of us was sick. Sarah's parents were visiting, and they watched Hattie while we had a leisurely breakfast and strolled around downtown SLO. It was wonderful. We reveled in it.

And we paid for it. Ah, hubris.

Toward the end of the month, Sarah developed a sore throat that looked, sounded, and felt like strep. But it wasn't. Two tests confirmed that. Fortunately, the mysterious symptoms went away after a couple of days. But they were replaced by ... can you guess? ... gastroenteritis.

As you may have gathered from my earlier description, this particular malady is horrible under the best of circumstances. But since Sarah was also 27 weeks pregnant, horrible took a turn for the worse. And scary.

After it became apparent that Sarah wasn't going to be able to keep anything--anything at all--in her system, we hurried to the ER at a nearby hospital. That was 10:30 on a Wednesday night.

Long story short, Sarah came home from the hospital on Thursday. The next Thursday, that is. She spent more than a week with an IV sticking out of one of four places on her arms, moving from the ER to Step-Down to Med-Surg to OB. She was poked and prodded while she puked. And every doctor (about half a dozen came through to tell her she was rather far along in her pregnancy to still be having morning sickness) had a different theory and line of treatment. One doctor, who actually made some helpful comments mid-way through Sarah's illness, later came in to tell her that her chakras were back in alignment. Nice.

I kept a notebook with me (I took a few days off work and slept at the hospital for four of the nights), and I'm glad I did. In more than one instance, I told a confused doctor or nurse Sarah's most recent blood pressure, the last time she kept food down, or some other detail about her care. Twice I suggested a different pharmaceutical than the doctor was suggesting. In both cases, my suggestion was safer for an unborn child and proved effective at helping Sarah's healing process.

To be fair, we encountered some amazing nurses and doctors, too. Once we landed in OB, where the staff could keep Sarah on the road to recovery and monitor the baby's health, we felt secure and listened to. People answered every question we could throw at them, and if they didn't know the answer, they helped us find it. We're very grateful to them.

Sarah is now home. She's tired and feeling weak, but the baby seems to be doing well (moving and kicking and dancing around, just like Hattie did) and Sarah's been eating meals and downing fluids.

February, however, had more in store. While Sarah's digestive issues were finally settling down, our property management company called to tell us the owners of our rental decided to see if the house will sell in this market. Realtors have been calling my recuperating wife to try to set up times to show the house to prospective buyers. I'm not thrilled with this.

Next year, we'd like to go back to the crummy Valentine's Day if it means a less-crazy rest of the month.

(Hattie, by the way, spent the week with grandparents. As she was preparing to leave for an as-yet-undetermined number of days, I loaded her into her carseat and tried to explain that I didn't know when I'd see her again. I kissed her goodbye and asked her if she wanted to sing a song with me. Her response: "No. Close the door.")

Big news!

Hattie has some big news to share over at her blog. Without giving too much away, it involves her being a big sister. Oh, wait, maybe that's too obvious ...

This is not an Ostrich

We've taken several trips to Avila Valley Barn with Hattie recently. She loves looking at all of the animals, as do about a thousand other people, most of whom prove that we've come an irreparably long way from our agrarian past here in America.

I can understand, maybe, how people watching the emus call them ostriches. Maybe. But I have to shake my head at the people who call chickens ducks. Maybe these people just can't see or hear very well?

On our most recent trip to the barnyard, I witnessed two boys--maybe 8 or 9 years old--visiting the goat pen.
Boy 1: Look! Baby horses!
Boy 2: No, they're baby donkeys ... (this delivered in a voice thick with an undercurrent of "duh!")
(My wife added that another boy I didn't hear came up and identified the goats as little camels.)

While visiting the emus, I also overheard a mom explaining to her 3-year-old how dinosaurs turned into large, flightless birds and another telling her kid to keep his hands away from the chicken wire: "They'll peck your fingers off." These aren't necessarily comments made in ignorance; they just made me laugh.

I'm generally torn when I visit a place like Avila Valley Barn. I am aware that I am a parent of a young child and a member of the visiting crowd, yet I still find myself frustrated with the parents and the crowds, wishing they weren't out and about like I am--or at least that they would act civilized. Bill Buford writes in Among the Thugs, "The crowd is not us. It never is." I shake my head at the pushing and shoving and inane, shouted comments, but later wonder whether people were shaking their heads at me when I, for example, technically cut in line to buy ice cream with the Rookses. And I hate it when people cut in lines.

Maybe I'm a hypocrite. Maybe I'm an elitist, even though I despise entitlement. Whatever I am, here's a picture of Hattie with a baby horse:

When We Were Very Young

This photo of Hattie reminded me of an illustration from A.A. Milne's poem "Corner-of-the-Street," but it reminded me of the text to "Lines and Squares":



Whenever I walk in a London street,
I'm ever so careful to watch my feet,
And I keep in the squares,
And the masses of bears,
Who wait at the corners all ready to eat
The sillies who treat on the lines of the street,
Go back to their lairs,
And I say to them, "Bears,
Just look how I'm walking in all of the squares!"

No more Sunny Baudelaire

For quite some time--months now--Hattie Rose has resembled the youngest Baudelaire orphan from the popular children's book series. She has had four teeth that, though not particularly sharp, she's used for biting. Her favorite thing to crunch is ice, which she asks for by name along with a vigorous head nod and chest rub to indicate "yes please, and how."

In the span of the last week and a half or so, Hattie seems to have been getting in at least six new teeth. Finally! Maybe, once her teeth are in, she'll stop shrieking for an hour and a half when Sarah tries to get her to go to sleep. Her gums don't seem to bother her when she's awake and playing, but as soon as the lights go dim and she's confined to a bed, she starts. In fact, I hear her right now.

Maybe she's just stubborn? I mean, both of her parents can kind of sort of be a little willful sometimes ...

Man vs. Nature

It's one of the basic conflicts in narrative literature, right up there with Man vs. Self and Man vs. Society.

This morning, when Sarah settled onto our futon to check her e-mail, she noticed an ant in the carpet. Then another one. Then another. And another. Soon, we had traced a trail--right across a pile of clean, folded laundry--to cracks in our fireplace and bookshelves. We're not sure to what they were making a trail: that damp rag? that It's-It wrapper we accidentally missed while cleaning up from dinner last night? that empty container of Gerber Graduates Finger Foods Peach Puffs that Hattie uses as a drum? There were ants here and there on all of those things, but they mostly looked like they were still deciding where they were going to concentrate their efforts. Nothing had been settled on.

We immediately began shaking out the clothes outside, when I noticed that our lawn was overrun with weeds: dandelions, black murdoch, and more I can't identify. Obviously, weeds like that don't spring up overnight--or maybe they do. While Sarah treated all of the ant entryways with clove oil and vacuumed the carpet, I hunkered down on the grass and tried to rip out as many unwanted plants as I could by the roots. Hattie chose to help me with chores by tearing off leaves from the tallest offenders.

After we'd been at our gardening endeavors for a while, a shadow fell across us. Then again. And again. I looked up to see a turkey vulture circling us. It was quite low in the sky--unlike the ants, it seemed to have made a decision about what it wanted to eat. I scooped up Hattie and went inside.

By early afternoon, as I type this, the ants have been evicted, the lawn is mostly grass again, and the turkey vulture is gone. Still, I feel that nature got the upper hand today. I hope that nothing goes wrong when we go to the Charles Paddock Zoo in Atascadero this evening.

Hattie learns to type

A couple of nights ago, Hattie managed to cruise across the hearth and discover Ryan's vintage Underwood typewriter. She spent about 20 minutes carefully pushing a key, then reaching to touch the letter that popped up in response to her actions. She approached the typewriter with awe, curiosity, and respect, never banging on the keys or playing with it they way she does with other toys. She is truly Daddy's little girl.

Hattie's 6-Month Birthday

To celebrate Hattie's 6-month birthday we had our friends the Rookses and the Lundeens over to enjoy some food, wine, and my favorite Christmas movie, White Christmas. Natalie, Soren, and Hattie enjoyed crawling around and playing together (or at least near each other). In honor of the movie, I created an all-white menu. Sorry, no pictures this time. We enjoyed gorgonzola and carmelized onion tartlets, Italian white bean and sausage soup, bread, salad (technically that was green), white wine, and hard apple cider. For dessert: rum balls (which I rolled in powdered sugar), hot cider, and mulled wine. The food was not as striking as our all-black Halloween menu, but it was just as tasty!


Andrea made Hattie an adorable hat for her birthday. I had mentioned the other day that Ryan wanted Hattie to have a hat with ear flaps. My talented friend went home and invented a pattern for one, complete with ties that have become Hattie's new favorite chew toy. Thank you Andrea!

Hattie's Own Blog

There are too many adorable pictures of Hattie that don't fit within the no-color policy for this blog, so I started a blog just for Hattie. It is called The Adventures of Hattie Rose. Here I will chronicle her milestones and try to keep photos updated. I'm starting at the beginning with her birth. It might take me awhile to catch up with where she is now, but I'll get there.

Baby junk food

I have been very proud of the fact that through my entire pregnancy--and the first few months of Hattie's life--we have avoided getting on any mailing lists for baby junk mail. However, a couple of weeks after applying for her birth certificate, when she was 3 1/2 months old, the mail began to arrive (it kind of makes you wonder what the government is doing with your personal information). Yesterday I arrived home to find a large, brightly colored box on my front porch. It was clearly from a formula company. The outside of the box contained the following messages, aimed at families with children 9 to 24 months:

"The fact is: Many toddlers aren't getting adequate nutrition." "He's growing--and so are his nutritional needs. Will milk keep up?" "The fact is, milk lacks some key nutrients toddlers need. Next Step LIPIL gives you a better alternative."

The clear implication to both Ryan and me after reading the outside of the box is that you are depriving your older infant of valuable nutrients by breastfeeding, and only this formula can provide proper nutrition for them.

In my anger and frustration, I opened the box to do some further investigation. Upon reading the fine print of the package insert (and what average person reads the fine print?), I found that the company is actually comparing their formula to cows' milk, not human milk--but at first and second glance you would never know that. The nutrients that this "toddler formula" claims to provide are Vitamin C, iron, Vitamin E, and DHA and ARA--all nutrients that are abundant in breast milk and healthy whole foods. Also, a closer look at the packaging reveals that those nutrients make up less than one percent of the total ingredients.

The ingredient list itself is printed in the tiniest font on the can of formula. It reads as follows (with my comments in parenthesis): nonfat milk (babies need fat for brain development), vegetable oil (probably to add fat), CORN SYRUP (gross!), and 29 other ingredients (yes I counted them) I cannot pronounce. They want people to put this garbage into the body of a baby!

On the package insert, they compare the nutritional content of the formula to several "commonly consumed" toddler foods. These foods were macaroni and cheese and chicken sticks, with nutritional figures that reflect the highly processed and pre-packaged variety. Again I say gross! I'm sure that comparing this formula to anything actually considered real food would leave the formula looking very poor indeed.

The whole thing just made me sad and angry at the state of our world--that something that can hardly be called nutrition is being sent directly to people's front doors and freely marketed as superior to good food choices. There is absolutely nothing that is nutritionally superior to breast milk and healthy solid foods for older infants and toddlers.

The real fact is that breast milk constantly adapts and changes to provide for every nutritional need of a baby from birth through toddlerhood and beyond, as well as provides support for their immune system.

What is worse, this formula costs $23 per can. Breast milk is free.

I suppose the only good thing that resulted from this mysterious package arriving at our door is that Hattie loved playing with the colorful cardboard box (which I can recycle after it has been appropriately chewed and mauled).

The end of the world as we know it

We arrived home Saturday night from visiting our wonderful families for Thanksgiving. After Hattie expressed much delight at being in our own home again, we placed her on the floor to play while Ryan and I unpacked an organized the house. Ryan called me from the other room and we both witnessed Hattie CRAWLING for the first time. She was chasing her red ball around the living room. She can now get anywhere she wants to go using her low to the ground combat-style crawl (technically, in the child development world, hands and knees crawling is called creeping). She can move surprisingly quickly when she is motivated. So, we spent Sunday cleaning and beginning to baby proof our house. This is the first time we have lived in a house large enough for a full sized Christmas tree and, now, gone are my hopes of having at least one Christmas without a mobile baby interested in touching, exploring, and pulling on everything.

To me, the transition to a mobile baby is scarier than transitioning from no baby to having a baby. Yes, Hattie changed our lives tremendously the moment she was born, but now she is changing our house. Ryan's beloved books will need to be moved out of arms' reach (and that reach will only get higher in the coming months), furniture that can easily topple must be removed completely, outlets must be covered and cords hidden, floors vacuumed and mopped much more regularly. I can no longer leave Hattie to play on the floor while I do the laundry, cook dinner, or run to the bathroom. She has already developed that bizarre baby ability to bypass the toys meant for her in order to find and insert into her mouth the one potentially harmful thing that I forgot to move off the floor (yesterday it was the phone book).

So, yes, this is the end of the world as we know it, but I'm sure the unknown and the joy of watching Hattie learn and grow will be far more rewarding that the comfort of everything being the same.

Avila Valley Barn

We went to Avila Valley barn this weekend with friends visiting from out of town. It was nice to be there without all of the crowds before Halloween. The kids loved the animals, even Hattie was smiling and kicking when she looked at the goats, emus, and ponies. Here are some photos of our adventures. Just chillin on some gourds.

It's a bird, it's a plane....

Hattie thinks her friend Nate is SO funny!

Delicious corn.

Ella the wild child!

The baby sits up

Last night Ryan called me from across the room to look at Hattie. He had been supporting her in a sitting position on the floor and let go for a moment to see what she would do. She sat there for about one minute, just looking back and forth between us like she wanted to say, "What are you getting all excited about? This is no big deal." Then she toppled to the side and began reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. She refused to sit up again so we could take pictures, so here she is reading.

"On Tuesday he ate through two pears, but he was still hungry."

Maybe I want to eat this book ...

"He was a beautiful butterfly!"

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

(Hattie as Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven" chewing on her favorite natural wood teether.)

Though we have barely blown out the candles in our jack-o-lanterns, we are beginning to get the inevitable "What do you want for Christmas?" questions from friends and family. For everyone's convenience, and because Sarah constantly misplaces the long list of books that Ryan wants, we have each created an Amazon wish list. Feel free to browse it for ideas, or even just ignore it.

Hattie's list is the default, but links to Ryan's and Sarah's lists are on the sidebar on the left-hand side of the web page. Just click here to get to our wish lists.

When Hattie was 1 week old, Lisa Maksoudian took some beautiful pictures of her. We were unable to purchase all of the pictures we wanted, but Lisa has a list of the photos we would love to have if someone wants to get them for us. She can be contacted at lisa@lisamaksoudian.com for more information.

Hattie really loves the toys and other products from Nova Natural Toys (where we purchased the teether pictured above), especially since we're trying to become a plastic-free home! She also has a wish list at A Toy Garden. We just discovered that they have the cheapest naturally dyed play silks which are another one of Hattie's favorite toys. She carries her piece of silk around with her everywhere!

We hope this helps answer some questions, but of course we don't need any of it. The thing that is most important to us is to spend time with family and friends this holiday season, to make joyful memories and create our own family traditions.

What do YOU want for Christmas?

Adventures in Pumpkin Carving

Last night around 9:30 we realized we had yet to carve our pumpkins for Halloween. We decided to start carving even though we would be up late. Ryan covered our kitchen table in an old newspaper, made me a cup of tea, and started designing his pumpkin. My favorite task is picking the seeds out of the pumpkin guts and roasting them, I was able to do that for about 3 minutes before Hattie needed to nurse, but after awhile she decide to help. Here are some pictures of our first jack-o-lantern carving as a family of three...

Hattie playing with pumpkin guts- she is her mother's daughter!

Hattie is the Great Pumpkin!

Ryan's Masterpiece

Sarah's Masterpiece