Jolly Young Giant

 Thane continues to grow and grow and grow and grow and grow...  I haven't measured him lately to be completely accurate, but I'm pretty sure that he is already 2 1/2 feet tall at almost 8 months of age.  The Jolly Young Giant is a good name for him, as he continues to be a happy little guy.

Despite the fact that he was almost a month early and subsequently suffered from some health issues, Thane is catching up quite rapidly.  He is sitting up very well and is trying his very hardest to crawl.

Like his sister, Thane is developing a love for the great outdoors.  We like to go for walks as a family, and Thane really enjoys seeing and hearing the world around us.

He's also discovered that not only is sand fun to play in, it's delicious to eat as well.  We can thank Annabel for passing along this particular rite of passage.

Most of all, he loves hanging out with Daddy, his most favorite person of all.

Our Energizer Bunny

The weather is warming up and I, for one, am ecstatic that we can finally play out doors.  There is just not enough room in the house to contain the endless supply of Annabel's energy.  Thankfully, friends of ours gave us a little jungle gym with a slide, which manages to keep Annabel entertained for minutes at a stretch.  (Yes, I said minutes.  I'm told hours will come over the years, but I'm not going to hold my breath!)

One of Annabel's other springtime delights has been picking flowers.  She started out picking weeds, and has progressed to "so pretty" weeds, er, flowers.  We have all been the thrilled recipient of endless bunches of flowers, grass and hay - and we have the itchy noses and runny eyes to prove it!

She also spends her time looking after our animals.  She loves inspecting each of our brood, and she even discovered a turtle down by the chicken coop.

After much deliberation (no - we can NOT keep it), we decided to be humane and return the turtle to its home in the pond across the field.  Despite the lateness of the hour, we all piled into the car and drove to the lake to throw the turtle back.  Annabel, being the astute toddler that she is, took us quite literally and flung the turtle into the water. 

(Disclaimer:  no turtles were harmed during the making of this story).

We thought that our covered friend had somehow lost its way to end up at our place, but we later found out that the turtle had most likely made an annual trek to lay her eggs.  Poor thing - we hope she got a good night's rest before she started back again!

Lastly, I have also learned a valuable lesson about mothering a toddler.  No matter how it badly it may reflect on me, it is often easiest to let the toddler pick out her own clothing (barring inappropriate choices related to the weather, of course).  In the end, Annabel will often pull together an ensemble that will attract attention, that is for sure.  Case in point:

Note the pretty pink sweater paired with gray sweatpants, all nicely covered with a brown wool poncho.  Oh, and the flip flops, purple sunglasses and shopping bag complete the look.  Who knows?  Maybe this will become the next big fad, and she'll have the last laugh.  Somehow I doubt it...

SPRING!!!!!!

I don't know about you, but we sure are glad that spring has arrived!  Although we've had a very mild winter, it is simply divine to be able to open the windows during the day.  We can see the green grass, smell the earth thawing out and hear the birds chirping away as they build their nests.  The sky is bright blue, the clouds are puffy and there is just a little bit of snow on the cap of Mt. Dominion (i.e. the mountain just northeast of us).  Old timers around here say that it's safe to plant your garden when all of the snow is off Dominion and the swallows fly home.  Check and check.  Yippee!  Of course, we're only planting cold crops now (potatoes, onions, carrots, beets, etc.), but my mouth can already taste the fresh veggies we'll be enjoying in the coming months.  I found a great recipe book a few years ago called The Garden-Fresh Vegetable Cookbook by Andrea Chesman.  If you ever see it, I would highly recommend that you grab it (and by grab I mean pay for it).  She breaks the book into sections according to harvest time (i.e. spring, early summer, mid-summer, etc.), and then has a chapter on many common vegetables harvested at that time.  Each chapter gives a history of the vegetable, planting & harvesting tips, cooking times and the math of each veggie (i.e. 1 lb. of fresh cucumbers equals about 4 cups of sliced or cubed cukes).  Of course, the author provides recipes for each vegetable as well.  I'm sure that there are other wonderful vegetable cookbooks out there - if you know of any, please share them with us.

Anyway, back to life at Stonehouse Farm.  The snow is almost off Dominion, and Annabel is learning that it can be loads of fun to tend a vegetable garden.  What's not to love?  Digging in dirt, throwing tiny seeds in the ground ("No, Annabel, you can't eat them yet.  Yes, you can eat them later - much later!!"), and playing with water.

 

The other sure indication that spring is here is the arrival of our lambs!!  We have had 11 lambs so far (6 rams, 5 ewes), and each and every one is mainly black with varying degrees of white accents.  We each have our favorites - mine is Peter Pan (a lively and adventurous ram) and Jordan's is Tink (short for Tinkerbell, one of our little ewes).  In case you hadn't guessed, we're naming this year's crop of lambs after character's in J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan.  There is one remaining ewe that is pregnant, and we are eagerly awaiting this last lamb(s).

All of the lambs are allowed out in the pasture now, and below is a photo of many of them with their moms.  It is incredibly entertaining to watch the lambs frolic and leap around the meadow.  We all find ourselves simply staring out the window for minutes at a time enjoying their play.

Lastly, as you may have noticed in the photo above, the sheep got sheared over the weekend.  With our warm days (and even warmer ones coming), it was definitely time to relieve the sheep of their rather heavy, stifling outer coats.  Below are some photos of our biggest sheep, Bobbi, before and after she was sheared.  For those of you who are unversed in the sheep world, Bobbi's look in the after photo is a cross between relief and indignation!

May you all enjoy a happy and healthy spring!

Our Little Helper

Annabel continues to provide us with lots of big emotions -happiness, hilarity, pride - and even frustration at times. Like any toddler, she experiences life with the utmost relish. Oh, wouldn't it be great to have that zest for life, not to mention the energy that goes with it!

Annabel loved the snow this year, and was disappointed when it melted away so quickly. (Our investment in lots of heavy clothes, boots and a snow plow pretty much doomed our chances of having a lot of snow this winter).

On the flip side, she has really enjoyed being able to spend a lot of time outdoors enjoying the mild winter weather. Annabel loves to exercise ("Look Mommy, I'm wunnin'!"),

and she still loves to play in the dirt and collect rocks. In fact, we plan to pay her money for every wheelbarrow full of rocks that she finds. Believe me, in our mountainous soil, there are more than enough to keep her busy for a long time. We had initially thought that we'd give her a penny per rock, but she's become really good and fast at rock-picking, and I'm not sure that we could afford her services for very long!

Lastly, Annabel still loves to be a little helper. She "helps" us clean, set the table, sweep and cook. She really likes to help her Daddy work on the house. As you can see from the photo below, Annabel often prefers to act as supervisor and is very good at inspecting Daddy's work. (The only thing missing is the butt crack!)

She has also taken a liking to helping with Thane. She lets me know when he's had a dirty diaper, loves to help out at bath time and even offers to feed him from time to time. Although she has the best intentions, Annabel's lack of focus on the task at hand often leaves Thane a bit messy and very hungry! As you can see, he's become a bit wary of her bottle-feeding abilities!

Gentle Giant

Thane continues to be such a wonderful little guy. We have been truly blessed to have such a mellow baby. He smiles all of the time and is very social. In fact, he is most content when he is in the same room with the rest of us. When he is around, he prefers to sit up and he often gleefully and very intently adds to the conversation. Below is a photo I took of Thane "talking" a few weeks ago. When he wants to get his point across, he'll often make this look (note the cocked eyebrow) and squeal away at the top of his lungs!


At this age, babies grow so quickly! It's hard to believe that he is over 5 months old. He has grown over 5 inches in that time, and is quickly gaining on Annabel. In the photo below (taken when Thane was 4 1/2 months old and Annabel was 26 months), you can see that he is almost halfway between Annabel's elbow and shoulder. I think that we're going to have a Paul Bunyan on our hands...

Developmentally, Thane is also growing up quickly. He rolls over from his back to front, is starting to teeth (sigh!), can sleep through the night (when he's not teething - BIG SIGH!), and is almost sitting up on his own.

Lastly, Thane seems to like the outdoors as much as Annabel did at his age. That's a good thing, too, because Jordan is already compiling a list of farm chores that Thane will be doing in the not-so-distant future. When asked about violating any child labor laws, Jordan replied that he isn't too worried about getting in trouble as no one would believe that our 5 foot tall "little" boy is only 2!!

The Fam

It's hard to believe that it has been 14 weeks since Thane was born. Time sure does fly when you are running after a 2 year old and an infant! I apologize for the delay in getting the blog updated, but the truth is that we are too exhausted to play on the computer at the end of the day.

Thane is growing and growing and growing! He is in the 90th percentile for his height - he's already grown over 2" in his short life (er, maybe short isn't the right word)! He is such a relaxed, easy-going little guy. He smiles and "talks" all day long, and is very good natured.

Annabel turned 2 years old the week before Christmas. She can count to 15, says her ABC's, identifies colors and can sing along with me on several songs. She talks a lot now, and she does have a knack for picking up on the words we don't really want her to repeat! With a house under construction, she hears those words more than we would wish. I'm just praying that she won't one day get kicked out of preschool for having a trash mouth!! She is a lot of fun and her little sense of humor is beginning to develop.

It's also fun to watch Annabel as she starts relating to the world around her. There is one particular incident that was really sweet. In the hectic weeks leading up to Christmas, we had managed to get a Christmas tree, but I just hadn't had time to decorate it. We had been to several people's houses where Annabel was delighted with the pretty lights and beautiful ornaments on their trees. I finally stayed up late one night to decorate our tree, and I made sure that I was in the living room the next morning to watch her reaction to our newly festive tree. After a minute or two of play, Annabel finally noticed the tree. Her face lit up, she raced over to the tree, clapped her hands and shouted "Yea, Mommy - YEA!" as loud as she could. Here's a photo of Annabel at her birthday party. You can just catch a glimpse of the tree in the background.

Lastly (drum roll please!!!)................. Here's a much requested photo of the four of us. Oh well, at least the kids are cute!

The Farm

We hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas season filled with blessings from the One whose birth we celebrated. Although December was crammed full of Christmas preparations, we purposed to take time to enjoy each day and to try to remember the true meaning of Christmas.

Jordan informed me that it's high time that I updated you on the progress of the farm. We have done some butchering and are now down to 10 sheep (8 ewes, 1 wether and 1 ram). They are all fine animals, but one in particular, Estelle, is especially sweet. Estelle and Annabel are buddies, and Annabel just loves going down to our temporary barn to say Hi.

Our work on the outside of the house is complete until spring. We managed to get two coats of plaster on the exterior, which leaves one coat to apply in the spring. This coat will be tinted with a lime paint, and then we'll build proper doors, shutters and paint the trim. In the meantime, the house looks like this:

The latest addition to the farm is our 4 wheeler. Jordan insists that this was only purchased for snow removal purposes, but I don't believe it for a second! He and Annabel love to take rides whenever the weather is warm enough. I suspect they'll find lots of excuses to get out this spring and summer!

Speaking of snow, we are definitely in the throes of winter. We have gotten lots of snow, although a lot of it has melted over the past few days. Annabel just loves the snow and spends as much time outdoors as we will let her (or until her hands get too cold!) It's been a bleak, gray winter here, but that's life in the north. I take heart in knowing that the days are already starting to get longer, and winter never lasts (just read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe if you don't believe me).

All the very best for 2010. Please keep in touch!