josh! my youngest brother is so big!!, building ducks; seeing Amys cool chicks in seattle, one of my close friends, whom i learned so many things about parenting in a new much better way.
Jason, and Bethany...both have grown so tall since we were with them last august. i love and miss my siblings so much!
heather and jins rehearsal dinner, cara, bethany, jerry(my father) right to left
the wedding day! dressed up and meeting old friends and family....
Bethany finishing the decorations on the cake, Dr. Jen and daughter Sophia, the princess at the ball, and Jin, Heathers man
Josh before...trying so hard to not get dirty and still have fun, on the rope swing
Abigail so beautiful and friends Ray and Doretta
the lovers, and the linnenkohl family kids -we are all saying something different-
Heather and her mother in law , Jerry and Heather walking down the aisle(or sorts)
Jin waiting and the groom party, my grown (ing) up sibblings Abby and Jason
checking out all the new things at the reception dinner; potty time as we took a walk away from the drama around the wedding....
Cutting the cake together and dancing their first? im sure its not the first...
dancing afterwards, Cara and cousin Kyla, (looking so gorgeous); ralf!
mushrooms at seattle green fest; ballard locks samon
waiting for mom to pack boxes at FCC, heather and jins post wedding family dinner at canlis
beautiful jennifer...another friend i met through fremont community school who introduced me to our babies our selves, an incredible anthropological review of relationship to babies around the world, read much before i thought about having a baby myself...we dont have any pics with tara!!!; waiting for the ferry
ferry ride wind; balancing the teeter totter together at clays
hiking orcas island together
lovers!! wonderful friends i miss so much; beekeeper back in germany wo protection..lovin the bees.
dancing with papa back in germany, ralf wearing wool pants...where they belong??
opa rolfs tractor was really squeaky so before he put oil on the seat i was having some fun...annoying him and bfing-the real farmin frau
taking a walk at sunset
first foods, some egg yolk...this was 2 weeks? after we got home? but she doesnt have much interest in eating these days, i give her little tastes of chewed up something we are eating but not much. she mostly likes to hold it in her hand and squish it and throw it on the floor. the sound effect is so great!! for viv!
llamas at another community near by; taking a walk ACTION!
moving into our new apartment, so exciting!!
herb gardens in the area; so many kisses!
sitting together
wood toys made in or sanded in ralfs wood workshop, Herr D. writing a letter in old letters to the retiring wood workshop leader.
happy birthday mama! with felted wool flower from the wool work group
sitting up on her own, drumming with ralf (sort of) she likes to bite, chew, suck, lick...
touching and eating toes, sitting up she can bend over so far to chomp her feet, its incredible how flexible she is!
grabbing everything, or at least trying to touch it...on the table every meal, i am finding its better to let her play with some food, otherwise it feels so difficult for her to be interested in anything else.
just a few days ago picking black currants...viv tried eating alot of leaves and berries yipee for fall harvesting! now we want to get a solar or regular dehydrator so we dont need to rely solely on freezing stuff.
so thats that hope you enjoyed!
things are going really well for us here, new everything. the first few weeks were really difficult especially for ralf as he had alot of new things to lean, especially working with a new group of disabled people, figuring out what each needs is always ongoing, and yet he likes it, other than that he isnt working outside and we arent together nearly as much as what we want for our dream together, but for now its working.
i will finally get my german drivers license (that lasts for life) tomorrow which gives me the ability to drive and meet other parents and kids and farms in the region. i have been rather disappointed with the wwoofing farms around here as none of them want a mom with a young baby, for fear that vivi gets a disease or that i cant really work because i have to pay attention to her. but balancing that is what i thought being a parent is about??!! i find it really unfortunate that western culture isolates mothers in separate homes and away from doing activities they find joy in, aka not becoming bored themselves. i want to talk and be around other people too...while doing work that vivi can participate in, watching and learning by being. more on this if your interested can be found in the book the continuum concept, mentioned in another post i wrote a while back. more support for parents to be out there interested, and all those not parents too, PLEASE support the breastfeedn moms. heres a link i really like. i love this womans blog!!!
so i have been putting my energy into what a farm organism can look like here, especially in the place we will move into in half a year, that has a barn for animals already attached and a big garden. for my birthday i bought a book about permaculture called gaias garden and loooved it! something specifically i found so useful to understand is that the plants around you (and your house) should have more than one function, be edible, be useful to wildlife, provide nitrogen for the soil(which so many shrubs can do, some trees too) provide fiber, stakes, wood, dye ect. not JUST look pretty together. also, the fact that in nature having a grass lawn would never be normal, that a forest has layers from the ground to the high canopy, and the best thing we can do is replicate, or produce something very like it. reading it was very easy, and very informative to a different way of farming than having so much bear ground, or grass. planting things that give back to the soil and pull nutrients up rather than just taking them and using so much water to irrigate it would be so much cheaper and more efficient. i highly encourage reading this book! biodynamics can fit into permaculture and i find everything i have read so fascinating and the potential for ecological gardening is great, necessary for our culture to take up. other books include the encyclopedia of country living and back to basics. we also bought some old race animal books and home butchering in german for ralfs birthday presents. fun reading when i decide i lay down instead of moving around with sleeping vivienne. sleeping together is so easy, so beautiful and i cherish it so much to watch her sleeping, her curled up in the space between my breast and arm, me warm and calm, in love with our baby. our place of sleeping (usually a bed) is such a peaceful and welcoming space, where ever we are. vivi is making lots of funny sounds thhhhhhh and bbbbbbbb and weeeeeeee.... yesterday ralf pretended to be a puppy and went roof- vivi laughed and giggled and gurgled they did this for maybe a half an hour. she grabs and loves tweaking my nipple then smashing her face into it, drinking for a minute or two, pulling off and doing it again and again. we have endless time of enjoying the fun funn she makes, discovering small and large. i am making it a point that as we walk in the woods that she touches trees and flowers, yes sometimes they go in her mouth, and no i dont stop her. she is learning, why would i not want that. i want her to know nature like we do, to embrace and and love it too.
on elimination communication, she is holding her muscles so well...if we dont realize it the first signals she gives, she is able to hold it alittle longer, until we are able to get to the sink or the toilet or the potty. she signals so well, and so much better if she has a diaper under her, without one she still lets go a good bit, but we can see already that having time without diapers gives her so much more time to explore her own body and scoot backwards if she is on the ground.
After a month of work, we have about 2 weeks of vacation, as pretty much the entire village here is on vacation for august. tomorrow we take off for france, visiting some of ralfs friends in the black forest, visiting the Goetheanum in swiz., and traveling about an our W of Lyon to the Folks Dance Fest of Europe, which i mentioned a while back that we might go to. we are!!! i am so excited to dance for a whole week!! and learn many old types of dance kept alive by group get togethers like this! all the apples are rippening well, and my thoughts are turning towards where and what type of animals we will be buying soon, some chicks and a or a few goats, maybe a pig, maybe a cow, some geese and ducks...bees... as much as possible working with old and rare races oh boy!
got to get packing!!
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