Seimi

Seimi was born on Monday, June 14 at 6:01PM.  He weighed 8 lb. 4 oz. and was 21 inches long.  Mommy and son are doing great.

one more month...

cast away

the schizophrenia of spring

the merry month of may has arrived!
for hobbits of the shire's northwest farthing, dramatically unpredictable weather is a perk of late spring. we dress in short sleeves under our waterproof outerwear, and we keep sunglasses in one pocket and mittens in the other.

here are the hobbitlings on a balmy friday afternoon. towering thunderheads growled at the brilliant blue skies overhead, and we whiled away the eighty degree weather at green lake's "basket of robbers" (as boookie called it) where the hobbitlings had their first sample of the 31 flavors.

when selecting "princess ice cream," it is the colour and not the flavor which is of principal importance. thus, ela chose fat-free watermelon sorbet with gummy "chocolate" watermelon seeds. (and her mommy chose not to watch her eat it.)
she may look like the joker from batman, but this little girl takes her sugar consumption very seriously.

boookie selected raspberry sherbet and proceeded to mug more faces than a basket of robbers as he consumed it.
contemplative:
vicious:
pachyderm:
enthusiastic:
envious? or mildly concerned?
either way, this was his reaction to noticing the slimy brown warts in his sister's ice cream. can you blame him?

the following tuesday, it was wet, windy, and bitterly cold. the hobbitlings enjoyed their outside playtime only after they were reissued their winter regs.
three little mittens as sweet as kittens...
...and one possessed by the evil cast monster!

the following saturday featured the only weather "typical" of spring in our corner of the shire: grey. for the uninitiated, grey weather is not too warm or muggy, not too rainy, windy, or chilly. it's benign, and some may think of it as bland. we hobbits love it! and we celebrate it with flip flops outside and fuzzy socks inside, with coffee and soup, and with such outdoor pursuits as should not wait for weather more "perfect."

here is the hoodie brigade...
...planting this year's crop of zucchini, yellow squash, peas, and sweet peas in the narrow bed along the fence.

like all good hobbitlings, they know that serious work...
... can be oh so very much fun! (and don't you just want to munch those sweet, fat little fingers?!)

ice cream, mittens, and seeds - the springtime possibilities are endless! of course, there are a few activities our schizophrenic spring weather cannot affect. a nap is for all seasons!

verdict

a thing of beauty...
...is a joy for as long as it takes a hobbitwife to find her tape measure and PROVE to a nonplussed world that she IS NOT CRAZY!
seriously? eight and a half inches long?! what a load of... small nuggets! ::sigh::

okay. i'm moving on now. for real.

remember this picture from several weeks ago?
once my parsimonious opinions had been countered by the general populous and the nuggets and i had reached a tentative detente, there still remained to me the arduous task of troweling forty feet of boxwood hedge back to respectability. my thirty-four week pregnant self was not looking forward to it.

last weekend, the task was completed. and i did not a whit of it.

behold, my knight in shining work shirt!
while i and my fish-tail weed "popper" harvested dandelions from the front lawn (this is the world's easiest and most therapeutic outdoor chore), the selfless mayor of michael delving spent hours turning sod, pulling up tufts of angry crabgrass, and finally spreading the much-maligned small nuggets so that his hobbitwife did not have to!

here is the finished product. and while i'm certainly still getting used to it...
...the small nugget look is finally starting to grow on me.thank you, hobbitses! you are my hero!

the borders of faerie land

as we enter the thirty-third week of pregnancy with our third hobbitling, a familiar phenomenon telltale of the third trimester envelopes me yet again -

insatiable craving for literary fantasy.

perhaps it's due to the physical weariness of being "great with child." perhaps it has more to do with the immortal theme of springtime drifting in through open windows as i prepare the nest for another little one. (now that i think about it, all my third trimester experiences have taken place in the spring.) whichever the cause, i once again want to spend all my free time waddling about the lands of myth, faerie, middle earth, narnia, or even hogwarts.

this is not without precedence. five springs ago, when i was in my third trimester with boookie, a vintage copy of beowulf was the inspiration for changing his name from the traditional scots-gaelic spelling.

three springs ago, when i was in my third trimester with ela, i actually caught myself talking to the faerie residents of my lenten rose after rereading the story girl.
(to clarify, my embarrassment was due to the fact that i was talking to faeries in the middle of the afternoon when, of course, they were trying to sleep.)

this spring, my third trimester travels in faerie land have been renewed but with this distinction: i no longer travel alone. every morning at michael delving, a guided tour of faerie land begins another twelve-hour installment, courtesy of the hobbitlings and their budding imaginations. it is sweet to my literary soul! grown-up responsibilities usually prevent my taking advantage of the entire tour each day, but even these responsibilities are made much more pleasant if performed while eavesdropping on a world where plastic swords defeat evil foe and where sparrows are lured to bedroom windowsills with high-pitched singing.

here is ela, not lolling in the grass as it may seem, but taking an out-of-doors "princess nap" in the style of every illustrated faerie tale known to man. the shimmery princess crown is one of her two favorite head ornaments; the second is a pink baby blanket which instantly transforms her into disney's vixen maid marian. currently, ela's favorite song is "the islander" which chronicles the tale of earendel the mariner and his princess elwing. ela calls it "the song of sad elves."
when her alfresco couture has just the right amount of twirliness, ela spends hours outside answering only to the names "cinder-ela" and "little queen lucy." one of her very favorite things to do is to stroll around and around our lamp-post sweetly calling, "aslan! aslan!" this makes our neighbors cluck their tongues and giggle; it makes me remember the Lion's paraphrase of john 10:27...
"you would not have called to Me unless I had been calling to you."

as far as boookie is concerned, why stroll when you can slaughter? his imagination has been utterly captured by broadswords, hooded cloaks, faithful companions following him into battle, and dragons gloriously slain. here is our fearless warrior, in full armor, jousting with a dark and faceless enemy. (note the lopsided lamp-post crossbar. that was the work of a single thrust bulls-eye, thank you very much.) also note the red windbreaker worn under the breastplate. this is a deliberate part of the uniform. boookie thinks it makes him look like prince philip from disney's "sleeping beauty." when he's not verbally compiling a code of conduct for all "good soldiers" (they always let ladies go first, for example, and they never, never wet their pants), he spends much of his time devising the perfect stratagem for undermining and capturing maleficent the witch.

the good soldier/ prince philip/ sir peter wolf's-bane/ high king peter/ king aragorn. when he's wielding a claymore, please address him as one of the above. or pick two! he's feeling generous!
"the Lord is with me; He is my helper! i will look in triumph on my enemies!" psalm 118:7

spring's beckoning to me from the borders of faerie land has never before been such a source of joy, nor has the road to faerie land been peopled with finer fellow pilgrims! each day i learn a little more from my hobbitlings' creativity; each day my genuine enjoyment of their company deepens. i marvel at their imaginative capacity (and feel a surge of pride over their emerging literary taste!) this spring and this third trimester, i have traded solitary waddlings in faerie land for the privilege of watching my hobbitlings wander its forests and fields for the first time.

and all the delight of faerie land is mine!

my dear reader,

i humbly apply for your opinion on a matter of some delicacy:

this is my boxwood hedge.

currently, it is undergoing rather significant dewinterization. (i think i made that word up, but i'm sticking with it.) weeds and renegade grass have so overgrown my poor little boxwood plants, the mayor had to stake a plumb line before i could clearly see demarcation between the lawn and hedge bed.
it's not pretty. my troweling and weeding muscles are getting a good work-out.

to preserve my efforts - and to help insure that my boxwood hedge will never again be so disgraced by winter's neglect - we hobbits purchased bags of landscaping bark from our local hardware store about a month ago. they were spectacularly on sale! consequently, the word "nuggets" on the label didn't really catch my attention.
(you did see the word "small" on the label, too, didn't you? small. as in, of unobtrusive size.)

well... behold the small nuggets in action! i have peeled russet potatoes smaller than some of these so-called small nuggets.

just so we're clear, this is not a close-up, bug's-eye-view of my hedge bed. this photograph represents accurately the visual perspective of an irritated albeit somewhat vertically challenged hobbitwife.
small nuggets, i believe i disdain thee!

for three weeks, i have lived with and stared at this portion of weeded hedge bed thinking that the small nugget look would eventually logjam its way into my heart. well, it hasn't. my hobbit sensibilities continue to snarl. the small nugget look recalls to mind those hideous, rust-coloured, synthetic lava stone bits venerated by californian landscaping twenty years ago.

nope. i like it no better from this side of the fence.
perhaps it's just me, but shouldn't respectable hobbit landscaping boast of something a wee bit more subtle, a wee bit more earthy than these small nuggets?!


all right.
now that we've established my dislike of the small nuggets in my boxwood hedge bed, here are a few other details you, dear reader, should know:

1.) the small nuggets do not bother the more level-headed and equally aesthetically-minded mayor of michael delving one bit. (this astounds me. but i think it is critical to small nugget defense.)

2.) we have nuggets aplenty for the entire hedge bed. they were, as i've said, spectacularly on sale, and i'm not sure we may return sale items at this juncture.

3.) using a different landscaping material - beauty bark, for example - would require additional purchase of said material (money) as well as the removal and immediate torching of all small nuggets currently lodged in my hedge bed (time and effort).

4.) irked as i am, i must fairly admit that the size and weight of the small nuggets will likely preserve my weeding efforts much more efficiently than any landscaping material of finer grain - beauty bark, for example.


so now, my dear reader, i am anxious for you to voice your opinion. is my disdain for the small nuggets warranted or not? should we honour the boxwood hedge with a more hobbitlike ground cover? or should we give these unduly maligned small nuggets a chance to earn their keep and, in so doing, accept them as fitting residents of michael delving?