We’ve got a Wool & Honey giveaway winner, lovelies! Congratulations to Kelsey Dilts! Kelsey won a $50 shopping spree to Wool & Honey’s new online store. What a special treat! I am thrilled to share the love for this beautiful shop. Supporting independently-owned shops that sell handmade things is such an important thing for all of us to remember, especially during the holiday season when we are choosing how to spend our holiday gift money…
This past weekend my Mom was here for a visit and she brought a gingerbread house kit to do with Wren. At first I thought it was a bit too early to start with the Christmas rush, rush, rush, but did you know that Thanksgiving is next week already?! Yes, of course you did, but I’m still trying to get the Halloween costumes put away. The gingerbread house was a huge hit, and continues to be although many of the candies have been removed and consumed by a certain toddler…
I’m looking forward to some very low-key holiday celebrations this year. A new baby is a great excuse to keep things extra simple, isn’t it? This will force us into celebrating the basics of gratitude, love, family and friends. There will not be mountains of stuff or decorations to cloud the meaning of this time of year and for this I’m thankful. Although I do really need some new socks so I’m hoping that Santa brings some stuff, ha!
How do you keep things simple in your nest, lovelies? Any tips?
Our sweet Phoebe Jane is now two weeks old. She’s doing really well and we’re all (slowly) adjusting to our new life of FOUR. Four piles of clean–but wrinkled–clothes. Four mouths to feed. Four people to keep happy, healthy, rested and entertained. But other parts of life are more exponential: there are a lot more than four “beautiful” messes around the house, sets of dirty dishes, leaves left to rake and rotting pumpkins to do something with, phone calls and e-mails to return and thank-you notes to write (sorry!). Like a friend and I were discussing today, it’s not that things really get that much easier as you adjust to life with a new baby, but you eventually adjust to a new version of “normal.” Eventually…
In this transition time, we’ve been blessed with lots of wonderful meals. Really, this is a huge help because the witching hour of 6 rolls around and just when you think you’ve got everything under control, the baby spits up all over you and her, your two year old is melting down because her blood sugar is low and you won’t let her watch another minute of Dora (is it just me, or is Dora incredibly annoying?) and she wants to nurse TOO and just then, your tired and hungry husband walks in from a long day of work to this scene. Oof. Thank goodness there is a meal in the oven that a thoughtful friend made or else the wheels really would fly off! All FOUR.
But looking at that sweet baby puts it all into perspective, one mountain of clothes at a time. And lots of deep breathing and strong coffee…
{this moment} – a Friday ritual inspired by Soule Mama: “A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.”
Exciting news, lovelies! I have a wonderful giveaway for all you knitters (or wannabe knitters like me!) out there. I’ve teamed up with Wool & Honey, northern Michigan’s premier knit shop, to offer one lucky winner a $50 shopping spree to their new online store!
Here are all the different ways you can enter the giveaway. Pick one or pick them all – the more the merrier in Cyberspace! Please just leave a comment on this post for each one with accompanying links (if applicable) before midnight on November 16. Winner will be posted here on November 17!
1. Visit Wool & Honey and share something you’d like to spend the $50 on.
2. Become a follower of @BeSquirrely on Twitter.
3. Sign up to receive e-mail updates to my blog on the right side of this page.
4. Tweet about the giveaway with a link to this post, mentioning both @WoolandHoney and @BeSquirrely.
5. Post on your blog about this giveaway.
6. Share this post about the giveaway on your Facebook page.
Please remember to revisit this giveaway post to share how you’ve entered the giveaway via your links, etc.
Good luck!
Here’s to my little star at one week! Time apparently flies when you’re nursing, holding, snuggling, changing, nursing, holding, snuggling and changing. It’s been quite the cozy fantasy week here in our nest because we got to have Chris home and we received lots of yummy, nourishing eats from our family and friends. Chris and Wren have been close buddies this week: going on adventures to the beach, bike rides to the park, playing in the tent in the basement, watching movies, taking naps together and spending this afternoon at the water park. Phoebe and I are happily home-bound as we heal, relax, learn about each other, create a rhythm and stay cozy. This week, a more “normal” week lies in front of us… Chris is back to work so we will see how this all plays out. Wish us luck!
Wren has a sister. Phoebe has a sister. We have two girls. This is really just beginning to sink in with us. Part of the fun of not finding out the baby’s gender is the excitement when the baby is born and all of these thoughts are fresh and sink in slowly over the course of the first few up-most-of-the-night days. Because I don’t have a sister, I don’t know what it’s really like, but I’m so grateful for the possibilities of Wren and Phoebe’s sister relationship. I look forward to discovering ways to nurture it over the years and encouraging them to find a rhythm that’s uniquely their own. Maybe they’ll find their own language together? Inside jokes. Creating a world all their own. Giggling about something in the other room that has nothing to do with me. Screaming and pulling hair… ahh, sisters! Let the wild, lovely ride begin!
We are so grateful and over-the-moon happy to welcome our new little birdie, Phoebe Jane!
After a false alarm and a long week of early laboring, our sweet Phoebe made a very dramatic and thoughtful Halloween entrance into the world. I think Phoebe knew that I really wanted to be home for Halloween because her big sister was really excited about all things Halloween, including dressing up as a strawberry, trick-or-treating and eating more than her fair share of candy. So she let Chris and I take Wren trick-or-treating around our neighborhood. I even got into the spirit of it and turned my belly into a pumpkin. At this point in the evening, I was having some contractions, but they weren’t too close together yet. Plus I had just seen my OB for my regular check-up about 45 minutes earlier. I told him I was “ready to burst” and he chuckled, checked me and said, “well, you’re still a loose 3.” Arrgghh. Just 3 cm?! After a week of contractions off and on? Would this baby ever come out?
So we trick-or-treated for a bit around the neighborhood and the contractions got stronger, longer and closer together. I decided that we ought to round the block for home. Plus, Wren’s candy bucket was already getting heavy because it contained a juice box and a full-size Snickers bar, in addition to the usual favorites. Seriously, someone in our neighborhood gives out full-size candy bars to an estimated 800 trick-or-treaters!?
We arrived home around 6 and I started timing the contractions. They were about 60 seconds long and only a couple minutes apart… I told Chris he better quickly eat some of that chili I made for dinner and get us over to the hospital. Thankfully, we only live a few blocks away and “Dampa and Damma” were already here with us!
Here they are, aren’t they cute?
We got checked in, they monitored me and I got checked into my room around 7 p.m. I told Chris to speed on ahead and fill up the deep tub for me. I labored in a deep tub with Wren and I don’t know how I could’ve achieved my goal of having a low-intervention, natural hospital birth without it. So I climbed on in and within fifteen minutes of laboring with the jets, my water broke. And the pain got so strong and all I could think was, there is no way I can do this, thinking I’d have to labor like that for at least another six hours, or days, there’s no way to know for sure. I let the nurse know what had happened and she said I could continue to stay in, but right away I started to feel Phoebe coming out already so I let the nurse know and she told me I needed to get out. I told her I didn’t think I could because the baby was here and she helped Chris hoist me out of the tub. I walked the short distance to the bed and my OB just arrived and told me to get up into the bed and I said, no I can’t, the baby was here. He checked and sure enough, the baby was here. He had just enough time to get his second glove on and catch our new little birdie like a football and pass her up to me! Just like that. Crazy stuff. Our Phoebe Jane was here!
On October 31, 2011 at 7:19 p.m. Phoebe Jane Walter was born! She’s a tall, thin birdie: 6 lb, 12 oz and 21 inches. And I know I’m biased, lovelies, but she is really an incredibly beautiful little lady and we’re so very glad that she is here with us in our nest.