ElementalMom

I mentioned the other day that Aurora is starting to talk up a storm, and someone asked me what her first word actually was.

It does my heart good, after two prior attempts at gender-neutrality that failed utterly, to let everyone know that Aurora’s first official word was:

Yup. Her word was “truck.” Just the first, my friends, of many, many things that will be as they are because she’s the little sister of two very enthusiastic and generous older brothers.

Yesterday was the Marina holiday party. It’s like that, when you have lots of chaos in your life; you have to wait for some sort of external motivation to do the decoration thing. Otherwise, your brain is saying “oh goodness, that looks and sounds like more work…”

So. Considering that we live on a boat, and a boat does not provide much room either for storing or for putting up decorations, you have to be compact. We have precisely one box of decorations. And this is how we arrayed them:

The “tree” in the lazyjacks:

The stockings on the sailcover (Kaia has her own!):

The finished product. The kids stuffed fabric gift bags with rags, and we threw a tree skirt over the boom, for the illusion of gifts under the tree:

One of the really cool things about living in a marina is that there’s always something fascinating happening. While we were decorating, our neighbor Jay was fishing, (while Chris socialized) and the boys kept running over to see what he’d caught.

At the party later that night, the inestimable DJ played Santa. Rowan and Kestrel had seen Santa once before, but it was all terribly new for Aurora. I’m not sure if she was more intimidated by the Santa she didn’t know, or by the monkey, which is bigger than her.

So there’s the beginning of our holiday. I think our next big adventure will be the attempting of gluten-free cinnamon rolls…

Taken by my pal Steven, on a more-or-less recent visit.

We eat a lot of sprouts, on this boat. Not only are they little nutritional powerhouses, but they’re yummy finger food, they lend themselves to recipes well, they’re easy to store in the tiny storage space available on a boat, and, well, they’re fun. Just recently, the Sproutpeople, my favorite supplier, ran a sale on sprouters for children, so with my last order, I bought a few. The results were marvellous.
First, assembly.

Then, selection of seeds to sprout. You’re supposed to soak them first, but the boys played with them like sand for a while.

At that point, Aurora lobbied heavily for her favorite kind.

Seriously, wouldn’t that make you want to eat sprouts?

Unemployment #1 and Unemployment #2 are over at my other blog, Excellent Adventure.

This morning, I am grateful that I am unemployed.

Aurora is cutting teeth. By this, I do not mean she’s teething. No. She’s doing exactly what Rowan did; running a fever so hot it’s scary, being listless and uncomfortable and unhappy, and simply waiting for the teeth to push through. Her gums are red and puffy, and she’s doing the diarrhea thing (thank goodness for EC!).

Last night, I think I got maybe three or four hours of sleep. In fifteen-minute bursts. And through it all, I was able to stay relaxed and groovy, understanding and empathetic. Why?

Because I am unemployed. Because I knew that I could take it as easy as I needed to today, catch up on naps as necessary, and just focus on alleviating her suffering. Had this happened just a few weeks ago, I’d be juggling childcare and meetings and hostile emails and not giving her what she needed to come through this. But as it is, we’re still in our jammies, hanging out. working on ways to make her more comfortable, catching up on sleep as we can. And it’s all good.

The world is a far more peaceful place this morning, simply because I am able to be present with my child. And that is worth more than a paycheck.

This is a shout out to all the dragon lovers we know…

As I’ve mentioned a time or two before, Aurora is growing fast. Way faster than her brothers did, mostly because she has them to look up to, and an intense motivation to catch up to them. I didn’t post the other day when she started crawling, but she is. It’s still not super-organized; more like, she moves with purpose in several disorganized ways. But move with purpose, she does.

This morning, the kids were cuddled up in the salon. It’s cold here, and the salon, being the highest part of the boat, stays warmest, so the boys have been sleeping up there, in the “spare bunk”. It’s a neat space for kids, and they’re really loving being up there, not only for the heat, but for the novelty. So as soon as Aurora wakes up, I take her up there to hang with her brothers.

You can see from the first photo to this one, she’s definitely making progress towards Rowan and his Bionicles. Yet another advantage of being a little girl with two older brothers is that she’s never going to have to have the discussion with people that yes, despite being a girl, she’d like LEGOs, thank you. Her brothers have huge collections already, (you can see the bags behind the couch there) and are really interested in sharing with her. Both of them have gotten clear on the idea that the small ones can be swallowed, but that the big ones can be played with, so they’re both making big block creations for her to play with and gnaw upon.

And there’s the reach. Aurora has targeted the Bionicle… and you know what’s awesome? Rowan’s letting her. He’s specifically put one of the “big piece” Bionicles within her reach. Is that awesome big brotherness? Oh yeah…

Quite a few folks told me that having three kids was just spectacular, back when I was waffling about whether or not to increase our family size. Two was great, Rowan and Kestrel were awesome, and the boat is not huge, blah blah blah. And I’ll never know whether it’s the addition of the third, or whether it’s Aurora herself that makes it, but there’s something about the dynamic of the three that brings them together into a cohesive unit. I can’t wait to see how things go as they grow up. It’s entirely possible that this could change. But right now, I’m doing this post so that some day Rowan and Kestrel can look back at when Aurora wanted to be just like them.

I swear, this is not a posed photo.

Aurora was laying on the sofa, and decided to roll off, legs first. She landed, and stayed standing for enough time for Jason to get the camera and take a series of shots. I’m pretty sure she’s thinking "tah-dah!"

She is growing and moving so fast. It’d be intimidating if it wasn’t so fabulous.

Finally! I know! Nearly five months later, I have gotten it written up!

http://www.theexcellentadventure.com/birth/Aurora/BirthofAMH2.html

Enjoy!

Guess who’s sitting up on her own?

Aurora is growing rapidly now; she’s teething, she’s rolling over, and she’s doing pushups, which everyone knows is a prelude to ::gulp:: crawling. We’re in trouble, clearly.

Kestrel wanted me to take a picture of him and Aurora. He had been holding her for a while, and thought they looked cute. So I picked up the camera.

Clearly, Kestrel was far more interested in being photogenic than Aurora was.

Jason stepped in to try to get her to focus in the same spot, and maybe even get a smile out of her.

Kestrel even tried to help, to little photographic avail.

Finally everyone gave up.

The irrepressible Kestrel decided to entertain himself…

And got Aurora in on the act… providing a better photo op than all the others together.

This is the song that plays in my head when Aurora smiles. So I thought I’d share the moment with you.

Jackie Wilson said
It was "reet-petite"
Kinda love you got
Knock me off my feet
Let it all hang out
Oh, let it all hang out.
And you know
I’m so wired-up
Don’t need no coffee in my cup
Let it all hang out
Let it all hang out.
Watch this:
Ding-a-ling-a-ling
Ding-a-ling-a-ling-ding
Ding-a-ling-a-ling
Ding-a-ling-a-ling-ding
Do-da-do-da
I’m in heaven, i’m in heaven
I’m in heaven, when you smile
When you smile, when you smile
When you smile.

Aurora's Dolphin Dreaming

Miss Aurora down for the afternoon nap. Who knows what babies dream of? We can only guess.

I‘m working on the birthstory, the announcement, and all that good stuff. But for right this instant… I had to post this photo.

I love the “getting to know you” phase. It’s everything babymooning is about.

More later, I promise!