Festival For The Eno/Sudan Blogspot

painting the the tents for sudan project. these tents will go to DC the first week in november to bring awareness and attention to sudan.
picking out her colors.
i am not great at painting. since e likes to paint a lot, i have been painting more this week with her. i realized that my approach to painting is that painting is like drawing and it's just not actually like that. for me, painting seems to require more patience and forethought. that's hard for me. also, i don't usually even know what i want to paint. today, i did a tree. for the tent, i did a preggo belly and wrote the word "moms" b/c well, there are moms in sudan. and, sometimes they are pregnant and that could be hard. here is a blog that our friends recommend about sudan. our friends are both aid workers there...little did we know that about a week after painting these tents, those precious people would be at our house for lasagna and chocolate cake! we were so incredibley excited to see them and spend time talking. i will show you there faces soon.
paperhand puppet intervention.



"do you want a fish, a turtle or a frog?", the nice art lady asked her.
"a chicken.", e said.
"uhm. okay. hmmmnnn." the art lady graciously thought to herself. "let's get you a chicken." and she gave us paper and scissors to create a chicken cut out...which evidenced by their presence in a near-by coop, makes them eno river animals! e's dad drew the chicken and painted with her. i helped the bear paint the fish and then so did e.

huge tinket toys.
there was a bit of a chicken theme going on as that was her face paint request.

When we went to the Festival for the Eno two years ago, e was about 7 months old. Earlier this month, when we went, the bear was 4.5 months. The dress that we got from mari years ago came out of storage for the event!

CPM advocacy at the General Assembly

garden, and that book burning!

Just wanted to tell you all that the little bear had her first food (other than the chocolate cake her sister fed her) tonight at our co-family's house! while sitting in my lap, she grabbed for the plate and then actually lifted the fork to her mouth all on her own! no food was on it. but we all agreed she was "showing signs of readiness" aka sitting up on her own, following our movements with her eyes, reaching and grabbing for foods, and is 5 months old now. so, i found a small wooden spoon in the kid's silverware drawer. then, i dipped it in the guacamole and handed it to her. she gleefully put it into her mouth and proceeded to consume her first bites of food! we were all super surprised by how much stayed in her mouth. when the spoon was empty, she let us know and i gave her two more scoops throughout dinner. she seemed to really enjoy the whole experience and we'll post pictures soon! e's first food was also guacamole at a friend's house!

An Outdoor Screening

Earlier this summer, we went to an outdoor screening of "Prince Caspian". After hosting a homebirth meet up at our house, we couldn't bear to say good bye to friend we rarely see face to face. So, we convinced them to join us for the movie. We ordered asian food, sprawled ourselves out on blankets and camping chairs and tried to corral young children. our babes are both around the same ages so they really enjoy each other's company (and clothes). Each of our oldest girls is a budding photographer as you can see below.

happy birthday, stella bear!

last night, we camped at the lake for our friend's birthday party. she is a dear one, who just turned two years old yesterday. i feel like she and my daughter have literally grown up together. but mainly, i feel like her mom and i have been doing a lot of our growing together, too. now that we have two years olds and four month olds, we're realizing how fast it's flying. this morning, we were talking about how when we were applying to this organization that we are now a part of, we spent may afternoons just processing life together with our other friend and her daughter. she has since added a younger babe but moved away to tx and we miss her lots. we both agreed that we need more time just sitting in my living room talking it all out and we need our friend to come back and do that with us!

"my breastfeeder"

This evening, e asked me to trace her whole body with chalk as she often does. She was wearing a dress and over the dress she had a Hawaiian looking bikini top that was about 10 sizes too big, full of plastic flowers (we picked it up at the dollar store). It was meant for dress up, of course. She wore it the whole afternoon. As she was lying still for me to trace her, I thought, "oh, i totally need to draw in the floral bikini top." Then, she said, "Will you draw my breastfeeder?" Yes!

Is there not a more perfect word for a floral bikini meant to hold one's breasts? Oh, the pure mind of a breastfed two years old.

Pictures of Preggos

These are pictures from Slate of preggos over the years since the 1950s.  Be warned that you are gonna see naked people if you look at them.  

she's sitting up!

just this past weekend, the bear started sitting up on her own for about 2 seconds at a time. she sort of flops forward after a while. she's growing up, we keep saying.

Virginia Tech's Dinning Hall

This weekend, we were up in Blacksburg, Virginia for a conference on breastfeeding and how to support people in doing it. We ate on the campus of Virginia Tech the whole weekend. On Friday, we stopped to see glammy at an Indian Restaurant. There were a few items on the menu that we have not tried like mango mixed veggies (super yummy!) and a chick pea salad. We also had chana masala, naan bread and rice. After dinner, we shared a small scoop of blueberry mango sorbet. They also had mint mojito but e chose the blueberry.

At VT for breakfast on Saturday morning, i asked for soy milk for our cereal and the man said, "it's over in the vegetarian and vegan section" Uhm awesome! We had a banana, split an orange and a bagel. Hubs made us each a bowl of oatmeal with brown sugar and raisins. Very yummy. We brought snacks with us like annie's organic cookies, peanut butter crackers and ginger sesame crackers. For lunch and dinner, we had lots of options so we shared a few things like stir fried veggies and rice, pasta and marinara sauce, beans and rice burrito with lettuce and tomato. Hubs had fried rice, seitan peppers and onions and veggies. Later that night, we played my favorite game, Apples to Apples over a full bar of drinks. Although it's okay to have a drink while breastfeeding, I have not done so yet. I was the designated walker.

I had otameal and a banana on sunday for breakfast while everyone slept in. For lunch, we went to Gillies, which was listed on the web as vegan friendly and more than one person recommended it to us. Hubs and e shared vegan buckwheat pancakces but found them to be really dense and dry. I had a tofu, black bean breakfast burrito with soy cheese, tomatoes and corn. We shared a side of fried potatoes that were super yummy. Hubs drank coffee and i drank hot herbal tea as we watched the rain pour from the sky. With all of the time spent outdoors, we were glad that the rain held off until after the conference was over.

thai tuesdays

tuesdays, you will find us at the library story time even though it's pretty horrible right now! we have a new children librarian who just hasn't gotten the hang of our group yet. the sad part is that the kids are losing interest and fewer people are coming back each week. we're trying to make it work though! hopefully it will improve as we are committed to going on tuesday mornings.

In the morning, before leaving for the library, we ate a flaxseed waffle with earth balance. e ate hers with a "lid" as she calls it. she even offered to make a lid for mine.

we usually go out for thai food for lunch so today i had L11 which is basically sweet and sour tofu and a lettuce salad with both peanut and ginger dressing. the happiest thing about tuesdays is the time we get to spend with our friends. annaB happens to be e's very best friend so they share vegan pad thai with tofu. annaB eats salad but e doesn't. they clamor for the mint bowl at the cash register when we leave.
Later in the afternoon, at their house, the girls snacked on flaxseed crackers, dried cranberries, pirate's booty and fruitBu (aka smooshed fruit).

oh, the sweet cheeks!

For dinner, we made pizzas. We all used the same crust and black bean spread. E added just olives and cream cheese to her pizza. Hubs added grilled peppers from the farmer's market and our garden!!!, black olives and cream cheese plus salsa and nutritonal yeast. I had peppers and cream cheese then added tomatoes with curriander and nitritonal yeast after it baked. e had some nutritional yeast on hers, too. Hubs and i split a natural root beer over ice! She had some noodles with black olives and n. yeast later. Hubs and e baked a chocolate cake tonight that we will share with friends (visiting from the sudan!) tomorrow. It was really hard for E to not eat the cake tonight. since we are layering the two rounds, i sliced off teh top of the bottom round and smothered in with peanut butter for hubs and i to sample. mmmnnhh, mmhhnn, good i tell ya!

this was just a few hours after she fell off a step onto the brick floors and busted her mouth. thak god it healed!!!

we've got tickets, woo hoo.

this was us while waiting outside. little did we know that we would again make these faces after standing in line for 15 minutes waiting to order veggie burgers. they were all out. uhm, post a sign!!!

back to births!

sunday morning, i got a phone call from a dear friend in labor! i took a shower then headed out to meet her. i ate a bowl of oatmeal and a larabar that morning. this is the first birth i have ben to since the birth of my youngest babe a few months ago. it really was an honor to support my friend after the birth of her son. she is so committed to breastfeeding this babe, it was awesome to see her love on her sweet newborn. and, yeah, i will go ahead and admit that i got a little achy for that sweet newborn love that happens immediately postpartum. it's so rich and pure. god save me. i went home to see my girls had aged in the short day i spent away from them. the bear was basically filling out college applications and e was planning her wedding. "be a baby!" i screamed at them each.

later that day, i ate some graham crackers from their pantry and a mini ginger ale.

when i got home late that afternoon, i ate garlic mashed potatoes with kale, fried tofu, yellow squash, kale and onions that hubs and glammy made. in the evening, we met our co-family for dinner at a mexican restaurant. e had part of a burrito and some chips and salsa. i had a potato burrito, bean enchilada with lettuce and tomato and part of e's burrito. we went to locopops with them after dinner but were out of cash. so, daddyrealtorbucks bought pops all around! i had a few licks of e's cherry lime and a bite of bash's apple cinamon.

MONDAY
morning: i had a peach from the farmer's market and something else but i cannot recall what. i ate some sun golds from the garden, too.

in the afternoon, we went for a swim with some friends at their neighborhood pool. before hitting the pool, e ate a bowl of rigattoni noodles with nutritional yeast (8 grams of protien in just 2 TBSP and lots of B vitamins), grapes, a dried apricot or two, and some PB&J. I had half a PB&J, pretzels, another local peach, popcorn and dried apricots. later on at the pool, e had popcorn and we each had 3 graham crackers. Then, when we got home, we ate noodles and sauce that hubs had made for his lunch. so yummy.

that night, we went to the local "kids eat free" place for dinner. i love the ritual of meeting our freinds there but am so sick of their food. e doesn't even eat it anymore. she takes like 3 bites of her lil burrito and the rest is wasted unless one of us eats it. she used to like black beans, rice, olives and gaucamole on it. i had two soft shell tacos, one w. pinto beans and one with black beans plus lettuce, salsa, tomaotes, verde sauce and some chips. i didn't feel comfortable with her drinking root beer instead of eating dinner so that was a big of a parenting challenge during dinner. hubs took her outside to play once she was surely not going to eat. and, the other hubs took the bear out to play with his kids. this left my BFF and i to talk with her youngest at the table.

when we got home, e ate pasta, sauce and nutritonal yeast. she ate part of a banana, too. later that night, i ate a waffle from the toaster and some little cookies.

earache and hemp milk ice cream

after glammy arrived, we spent the morning at the farmer's market. somehow we missed eating chocolate there but we did stock up on local peaches, tomatoes, peppers of all sorts, blackberries, squash, zucchini, purple cabbage and green beans.

Morning:
e and i split a banana and a bagel. we ate blackberries at the farmer's market.

we spent some time at the library that has a million more books than our local neighborhood library does. i started to feel achy and sore when we got back in the car. mainly, my ears were both aching but especially my right ear. i cannot recall the last time i had an earache but wow! are they ever painful! i knew i would need to rest when we got home. i tried to sleep with a hot wash cloth on my right ear. the pain had spread to a sinus like headache above my right eye and all in my jaw, even. i thought i was going to die, seriously.

afternoon:
i ate leftover tofu, brocoli and rice then went to sleep for hours!
not sure what e ate but i know her dada fed her well. and, they made pasta together. we went to a birthday party around 3pm although i was in so much pain. luckily, my best friend is a nurse and totally gave up time at her daughter's 2nd birthday to nurse me back to health. she did a candle waxing on my right ear and gave me some drops for it. then, she made me take vitamin C, echinacea and emergen-C once i came downstairs. precious nurser. thank you. i started feeling better as the day went on but was still achy and tired. we did eat homemade cake that resmebled a strawberry with hemp milk ice cream. yeah, sooooo yummy! we also ate crackers and mock chicken salad, pasta salad that hubs made with lots of veggies and basil, hummus and tortilla chips by zoe, and some sort of dip that reminded me of "nacho cheese". e ate a few jellybeans, too.

that evening, we were beat. i tried to fall asleep but couldn't. hubs and his mom made garlic mashed potatoes with fried kale. sooooo delicious! i came downstairs and ate a bowlful before bed.

does this look like it's made from cardboard and contact paper? how difficult would that be to replicate, i wonder?

friday festival day

we spent the day dancing to live music, seeing animal fossils and a live snake, playing in the water, hearing stories told, painting, eating locopops and drinking lemonade, a face painting and hearing lots of "she's so cute" in reference to the babes we carried around.

this morning:
hubs made oatmeal and coffee for he and our overnight guest on her way to the airport. e and i had some of the oatmeal but no coffee. i had a bowl of organic raisin bran and rice milk earlier in the morning. on the drive to the festival, e had half a banana.

afternoon:
we packed our lunch to avoid spending our life savings on food although we did miss out on some yummy treats, for sure. two years ago, we ate super yummy local indian food. this year, we snacked throughout the day on leftover beanies and weenies, grapes, dried apricots, raisins, "late july" brand organic peanut butter crackers, PB&J made with 9 grain bread, organic peanut putter and strawberry jam (that my BFF made earlier this summer with berries she picked) and potato chips (the really unhealthy kind that come in a can). lots and lots of water, a natural root beer and we splurged on a ice cold lemonade at the festival. we also bought 3 locopop popsicles with great delight. e ate pomegrant tangerine and i had a few bites while hubs ate two of them; one was verry berry and the other pomegrant tangerine. on the drive home, we all drank lots of water.

evening:
i ate sesame tofu with extra sesame and a spring roll. e went straight to sleep in the car on the ride home at 6pm and hasn't woken up to eat. (she ate a lot today though so hopefully she won't feel like she missed a meal when she wakes up early for the farmer's market in the morning. i brought some food upstairs for her in case she awoke hungry in the middle of the night.) hubs had tofu with brocoli and a spring roll. we chugged gallons of water after such a long day in the heat. i am eating those yummy chocolate covered raspberries as i type this.

today, the bear wore the same dress that e wore to the festival two years ago. another babe at the kid's area had the same dress on! by the end of the day, e had worn three different outfits. she arrived all stars then got her swim gear on for the river and then changed into a dress after the water. my favorite part of today was seeing my girls have fun. watching e enjoy the day was the best. she ran to the front of the audience to dance, watched the little chickens and their mom, painted with her dad and even helped the bear paint! so much fun for us all.

crackers and peas, beanies and weenies

Thursday Morning:
no idea...will try to remember later.

afternoon:
we brought snacks from home to the museum with us. oddly enough, if we were millionaires and wanted to burn money at their cafe, we could have purchased hummus and pita, a black bean veggie burger, banana, french fries, apple, juice, and perhaps some green beans (they may have had cow's butter though?). instead, we ignored the "no outside food" signs and ate our lunch from home. our friends shared their from home lunches, too. we ate ginger sesame crackers, apple slices, almonds, a few chocolate covered raspberries, "just peas" by the handful and water. later, i finished off my stromboli from yesterday. e had some rice and part of a bean burrito with her dad later in the afternoon. we ate more almonds and raspberries on the car ride home.

evening:
i ate leftover yummy soup! it was sooooo good!
while camping with our best friends (who are seasoned vegans; what a funny term!), they made "beanies and weenies", which e devoured by the bowlful. so, at the grocery store yesterday, for the first time in my life, i bought hot dogs. vegan hot dogs. weird. then, hubs made beanies and weenies for her to eat. she ate a healthy portion of them and so did he. he ate a big bowl of the soup, too. later that night, i had a natural root beer (hansen's brand), a slice of 9 grain bread with peanut butter.

oatmeal, pizza and homemade soup!

morning:
hubs made organic oatmeal with rice milk, lots of earth balance and brown sugar. e ate a bowl with him downstairs. then, he brought me a bowl in bed. yep, breakfast in bed. sorry, ladies, he's taken...and on that note, he was one of a handful of men today promoting the CPM bill at our general assembly. yeah, snatched him up real quick. you can see why.
e ate a rice cake on the drive to the GA.

afternoon:
e ate half a granola bar and half a rice cake on the way to lunch.
a fave local pizza place that makes stromboli's as big as tires. i had tofu, BBQ sauce, pineapples and veganrella in mine with a side of dried cherries. dipped it in tomato sauce every few bites. e ate a serving of mine and the portobellos mushrooms out of her dad's. his fillings included black olives, roasted red peppers, the rooms, veganrella and tomatoes with the same side of cherries and sauce for dipping. the cherries are probably the best accompaniment to the strombolis. so yummy!

evening:
i had a bowl of granola with rice milk. e had more oatmeal w. the same fixins.
for dinner, hubs made an amazing soup that i could drink down each day. it was full of local garlic, kale and onions, the rest of the zuchinni, thai basil, chives, and rosemary from our garden, ca. carrots, red kidney and white northern beans from a can and veggie broth. i had a large bowl of it, ez ate the beans and broth with a few sneaks of zucchini.

"daniel boone slumber party"

When I was in Bali and laid up in the bed with lots of "morning sickness" and other things that people were guessing was amoebic dysentery, I spent a lot of time reading blogs. They made me feel warmed and loved and happy, inspired and all dreamy. They did make me long for my house, getting crafty and my friends though, which was hard when I was a gamillion miles away from most of those things. Yes, I did take a box of bead stuff with me but never really worked on it while in Bali...though, in a hostel in Singapore I spent some precious time beading. One of my favorite blogs to read then was Posie Gets Cozy. I still like it a lot now but don't have the same dedication I once did...or maybe I don't have the same amount of internet browsing time, I should say. I was checking up on her today and laughed out loud at this really great post about a dress she made. I don't know how to thread a sewing machine despite attempts by my mother, bliss and denise to teach me how over and over, again. So, I think that I can safely laugh b/c I hold no competitive threat to any dress maker anywhere in the world. The funniest part is really how she frames the whole thing...and the words "daniel boone slumber party". i am laughing right now about it even.

A Good Ole Fashioned Book Burning

On Monday night, I burned three books in the fire pit at my neighbor's house. We had a bunch of brush in the back back of our yard and our nighbors have a fire pit on the back back of their yard. So, they let us burn stuff. earlier in the day, i bought a few books at our thrift store where paperbacks are .25 cents each or 10 for a $1.00. i bought "happiest baby on the block", "siblings without rivalry" and a book about avoiding discrimination from toddlerhood. Also, there are three books that i bought with no intention of reading...ever. One of them is a famously horrible book that encourages parents to ignore their child's natural cycles of hunger and rely on three hour increments of "feedings". It also encourages parents to ignore their tiny babes as they wail and cry. I don't know about you but when I am in distress, I sure do like to be ignored by my loved ones as I scream for help. It helps me feel loved by them and that they (and the world around me) are trustworthy and safe. Yes, sir-ee! So, two copies of that went into the fire. The other book that went up in flames had a wonderful title along the lines of "sleeping through the night". Who does that, anyway? Certainly not me. And, i would seriously worry if any newborn slept without eating for 8 hours.

Thus, the book burning. Any guesses on the title of the two copies i burned? I will post pictures after someone guesses correctly! (I have a feeling it won't take long.) If you were at my house, you cannot vote though...that would just be too easy!

Tuesday Food

Morning:
we all had new granola mix from the bulk bins at whole foods. strawberry and almonds, doused with rice milk.
e- a rice cake on the way home from the library.

Afternoon:
i made coleslaw with our local cabbage from the farmer's market (cabbage, carrots, an apple, veganaise, apple cider vinegar, salt/pepper, lemon shot, celery seed, chili powder and some sugar). hubs fried some organic extra firm tofu then covered in in organic BBQ sauce. Did you all know the some BBQ sauce has anchovies in it? Yeah, gross! We made BBQ sandwiches with fresh bread and ate out on the deck. Even had some semi-sweet tea. a good ole southern meals goes vegan. Very yummy! I had 2 chocolate covered raspberries.
hubs made smoothies but i don't even know what was in them. he and e drank them while i rummaged through the shed tossing junk out that my mom brought down from my old room.

Evening:
e may have had a banana while helping dad make dinner. she didn't eat much for lunch. i had a bowl of chocolate chip granola and rice milk.
for dinner, hubby made tomato sauce with our first zucchini!!!, (we plucked it from the garden as it grew huge) farmer's market eggplant and onions and local tomatoes, basil from our garden and farmer's market garlic. over bow tie pasta noodles with lots of nutritional yeast. We eat lots of that stuff around here as it's full of B vitamins plus packs 8 grams of protein in just 2 tablespoons. What else has 8 grams of protein in 2 tablespoons? Very yum dinner. e didn't like the sauce but she did eat some of it.

Dress Up

For a long time, I stocked a basket with dress up sort of play clothes but she was never interested in them. it's hard enough sometimes to wrestle her into any regular clothes. but, that was before she befriended AnnaB. Those two could play dress up all day long...could? Okay, those two DO play dress up all day long. A dear friend gave us a huge bag of clothes her daughter had outgrown, including a "grass" plastic skirt, a velvet beret, one dressy black shoe with a pink bow and lots of coll normal every day clothes. (Thanks, thanks thanks!) So, as usual, i put them out front a center in hopes that she would go for them. And, after she woke up from her nap, she totally was into it. To the point where she adorned herself with every single article of clothing!
grass skirt, beads, and a beret.
we made them look sad on purpose. really, that's what we do as parents.
e shared lots and lots of her old toys with the bear as she pushed her in the swing. love her face!
okay, she really is happy!
cutest lil jumper!
the full head back in the air laugh. that's a good laugh, my friends.
picture them with big smiles, up close in my face asking in sheer delight, "can we get in the hot tub?" then jumping up and down before running off to get in!