Goodbye 2010, Hello 2011!

The years have been going by faster and faster since Gi was born in 2008 but this year in particular seems to have just flown by. It's probably because the pregnancy meant my body and outlook and then day-to-day life was changing with each month since January when I found out we were expecting again. Any year you bring a new life into being is bound to seem more important and more special, at least it is to me.

In 2010 we have seen our property complete an entire four seasons and we have decided we love it best in spring, full of blooming apple trees, buzzing bees and ripe blackberries perfect for staining our fingers purple and quite delightful made into jam. Gi underwent an adenoidectomy and ear tube surgery after many months of persistent ear infections and high fevers. We found out we were expecting our second child. We took our first family vacation to Hawaii and showed Gi the joys of hang loose beach life and shaved ice. We took many trips to the bay area to visit friends and family over the summer, alternately visiting the grand redwoods of Muir Woods, the picturesque coast near Pescadero, treating Gi to her first thrill rides at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk and listening to the sounds of the animal kingdom at the San Francisco zoo. By the end of the summer we were anxiously awaiting the arrival of our baby girl and in the first week of October she made her entrance to this world! We enjoyed a long visit with Ben's parents from France and took Gi trick-or-treating for the first time in the neighborhood. She still loves to parade around the house in her orange butterfly costume that her grandma helped make. The usual whirlwind of family and friends at Thanksgiving followed by a splendid first glimpse of snow at the house, a harbinger of the cold winter that greeted us as we counted down the days to Christmas. This year, Gi didn't cry when she saw Santa and even summoned the courage to talk to him a little, making sure to ask for lots of presents, so content with that she didn't think she needed to tell him what kind.

There are so many things to be thankful for this year. A new life. A growing, healthy family. All our family and friends who make such a special effort to stay in touch and visit often. But most of all, what I'm thankful for about 2010 is that my children, especially Gi after her surgery, have had no illness a little tlc and tylenol couldn't cure and we have every reason to believe 2011 will bring more of the same. Little Gi had a wonderful year. A first year of only minor colds and no trips to the doctor! That's all a mother could wish for.

Here's wishing you a healthy, happy new year in 2011. From our family to yours!

And now, here's a memoriam to 2010 in pictures:

Gi's 2nd Birthday!

Easter with Bon Papa and Macalou

Hanauma Bay, HI

Scott's Flat Lake day trip

Gi's first swim lesson!

Santa Cruz Boardwalk in July

San Gregorio SB with Becks

SF Zoo after a giraffe feeding in front of us.

August under an apple tree at the property.

September: The Draft Horse Classic and start of preschool!

9 months and still hiking in the Tahoe Forest.

Welcome Noa Gabrielle!

Bishop's Pumpkin Patch with the grandparents.

Missy piggy and Bon Papa

The cutest orange butterfly there is!

My two beautiful girls.

Noa: One month old

Little bear about two months old.

First snow of the season at the property.

Playing with Papa in the first snow.

Gi's first pony ride!

Gi talks to Santa. No tears!

Lots and lots of Christmas baking!

Noa's Two Month Birthday!

We went to the doctor to do Noa's checkup for her 2 month birthday and it turns out she's even bigger than her sister was! Amazing little monsters we have here. They both like to rock the 95% for height and weight--although in Gi's case it only lasted through infancy.

Noa is now 12lbs. 11oz. and 23" long. She's wearing 3-6month clothes and eating us out of house and home. Okay, really she's still just nursing but apparently that's all she needs to set the growth chart records! Her new favorite game is batting at her black and white hanging toys on her activity mat and her eyesight has improved to about 4 feet. All this means that I can now place her on her mat and expect to have at least 10 minutes of quiet free time but if I walk within an arm's length of said mat she knows it and won't let me escape unnoticed!

And some new photos of us picking out our Christmas tree and decorating it at home! Stay tuned for this year's shot of Gianna meeting Santa!

Noa's One Month Birthday!

Time is flying by us now and Noa turned one month old this week. Friends had warned us that the second one goes through the usual physical milestones much faster but I didn't think it would happen this fast.

Noa is now SMILING! When we coo to her or make funny faces at her she rewards us with her own goofy grin. I'm sure Gi didn't give us smiles until she was at least 8 weeks old and the first predictable and big ones came a month after that. Maybe we just have a happy-go-lucky baby on our hands this time. She certainly is a better sleeper and less easily startled kid. For one thing, she can be crying in her car seat but as soon as we hit the rode it's like a magic "off" switch appears and she's out for the duration of the ride. Many of you will recall how stressed out we were as parents of a newborn Gi who not only refused to nap in her car seat but would scream bloody murder until her face became splotched with angry red hives. She was like that on any length trip and just getting to the grocery store 5 miles away was a painful lesson in endurance. But not for Noa! I finally understand what all those other parents were telling me: "just put her in the car and go for a ride if you need some sleep", "she'll eat when she's hungry," "give her a bottle and go out for some mommy time alone". I CAN DO ALL THIS AND MORE! I feel like I have done my penance for whatever sins I committed in a past life and now God has rewarded me with the Easy Baby. Hallelujah! It's enough to make me want to start going to church again.

And here's your reward for reading this celebratory post, a video of our bundle of cuteness!

Cookies, Pies, Cupcakes and more!

It turns out my mother-in-law is the perfect enabler when it comes to my lack of self-control with butter, eggs and sugar. Since I've been home from the hospital (approx. 2.5 weeks now) I have led a crusade for baked goods in my house and none of our creations have had much of a shelf-life. The average time from a full-batch-out-of-the-oven to a full-batch-in-my-stomach is about 1.5 days. I consider this quite impressive and think medals should be given to anyone who can keep up with the amount of creativity it takes to think of new things to bake and the unprecedented speed with which I can put away said baked goods.

Thankfully, my mother-in-law received a cupcake cookbook of Martha Stewart designs from my husband and I as a thank-you-for-changing-all-those-newborn-poopy-diapers and for-putting-up-with-my-hormonal-weepy-self. She glanced through all the pictures and decided on an aptly Halloween-inspired confection, our most polished and blog-worthy.

I should also note that this over-indulgence in all things sweet and homemade is directly a result of my 9-month long self-deprivation of sugar. It didn't in fact help me create a less than gigantic baby but it did help me appreciate and feel absolutely worthy of 2.5 weeks worth of non-stop baking! Thank God for breastfeeding because despite my unapologetic, blatant display of gluttony, I continue to watch the scale point to weight loss (only 6lbs left to lose) having effectively transferred all the buttery goodness to the simply scrumptious buttery thighs of my newborn. Those dimples are much cuter on her butt anyway!

Cheers to a season of baking to come! Now I have a chocolate pecan pie and French gaufres to bake!

The 2 Week Meltdown

Well, here we are at the two week mark and our cuddly, cute, sleepy newborn has entered that familiar stage of colicky crankiness. It happens to most infants but most parents may be too sleep-deprived to recognize the pattern. At approximately two weeks old, most babies go through a period where they cry for long periods and seem to never sleep. Noa is true to form, good ole girl that she is, and has gone from sleeping approximately 20 hours a day to sleeping about 10. Now, I'm lucky that my mother-in-law is still here with us and I can take a break once in awhile but in another week I'll have to face the music and figure it all out on my own. I imagine much hair pulling and tears on my part, and just when Gi was getting into a rhythm of her own.

Big sister Gi has had a rough go of it from the start. We had to leave her for much longer than we had planned due to the long labor and then my extended hospital stay and she was passed around a bit for those days. Yet, after about 10 days at home with her new sister it was obvious she was doing much better. She gives hugs and kisses to her baby sister all the time, plays with her and sings songs to her too. She still misses her one-on-one mommy time but I keep assuring her that I'll be able to pick her up and spend more time with her once my "big boo-boo" heals and Noa is a little older. Unfortunately, I know all too well that we're looking at at least another 4 months before Noa will be less needy and I have another 4 weeks before any heavy lifting won't leave me sore or worse.

I didn't think it would be this heart-wrenching to watch my first-born adjust to having another child in the house and having to accept my divided attention as good enough. Mommy guilt over here is in full swing.

P.S. Noa's stats at 2 weeks: 9lbs. 14oz. 21 inches. She put on a full pound in one week!

Noa's Birth Story

It all started around 5pm on the 5th. I was getting pretty good contractions at pretty regular intervals though the timing kept changing (8min, 10 min., 5min.). I thought to myself that this was going to be the night and I told Ben too. We did our normal thing and went to bed around 10:30 but I couldn't sleep. The contractions never let up and were getting stronger. By 12:30 I was so uncomfortable I needed Ben to help me get through them with breathing. I waited them out until about 2:30 then took a bath to help ease them. I wanted to call Chrissie--my aunt--to come over but I didn't want to call her at that hour in the morning so we waited until 4:30. I started to get my last minute things packed for the hospital and took a hot shower. We left the house a little after 5am and got to the hospital at 6. The contractions were strong but still not regular, I just knew transition wasn't far off. As I got checked in at the hospital they told me I was at 6cm and I felt very happy to have gotten there when we did. My water still hadn't broken though and I was wondering if/when that would happen. My doula showed up at 7am and the doc came to see me at 10. I was still at 6cm and she offered to break my water but the baby was still floating really high and I was worried about her descending posterior like Gi had so I told her I would wait. I labored to a 7cm and at 4pm I finally let her break my water since my strength was waning and I knew I had a long way to go. After my water was broken all hell broke loose and I went through wicked contractions that left me feeling like I had when they had given me pitocin with Gi. After an hour of that I had them check me and when they said I was at 8cm I was so relieved. Progress! And I had made it past where I had ended making progress with Gi. But I was in serious pain and needed rest so I begged for an epidural and QUICK! It was about 7pm by that point--a full 26 hours into labor--but I finally got some relief. I was tired, hungry, shaking and catching about 15min. of sleep at a time on the epidural. I was thinking a c-section would be inevitable because of my previous experience with the epi and Gi turning posterior but this time, the baby stayed in good position and I kept dilating. They checked me at 10:30 and said I was completely dilated!! You cannot imagine how excited I was! At 11pm the nurses had me start pushing but I really couldn't get it together. The epidural was wearing off but even so the pushing didn't come naturally to me, probably because Noa was still pretty high, only at a zero station. 2 hours of pushing later, the epi had completely worn off and I was back in horrible pain. Each pushing contraction was excruciating and the nurses were getting more and more invasive and aggressive about maneuvering the head and trying to keep it coming down. My efforts were finally paying off and we could see hair and the molding of her head but she just wouldn't descend. By 3:30 I was begging the staff to turn the epi back on and was just screaming through each urge to bear down. Finally my doc arrived, put both her hands inside to see if she could manipulate the baby into a better position (her head was a little asynclitic) but even with that and a good long push on my part, she didn't budge. I just looked at the doc who said, "well.." and I was like, "C-SECTION!".  I was just done. The anesthesiologist came back in, put some meds in my line but it took 3 more agonizing pushing contractions before it stopped the pain. I couldn't do anything but grunt and push even though I knew it wouldn't make the pain go away. That was terrible but at the same time, those last few pushes were the ones that gave me the greatest sense of urgency and completeness about what it is to give birth. Now I understand! I can imagine the rest entirely and leave it to all the other moms of the world!

The whole c-section experience was totally different this time too. There was no pain for one, and it all happened in such a way that I could experience it. Noa was just a stronger baby than Gi was. She cried immediately after birth at 4:14am on the 7th and never let up. She was pink and her apgars were 9 and 9. They cleaned her up 6ft from where I was. My arms were never strapped down and I got to marvel at her for a few minutes before they took her to be cleaned up and weighed and measured. I didn't have to be knocked out so the rest of the surgery didn't take long and as soon as they wheeled me into the recovery room they put Noa on my chest naked and she army crawled to my boob and latched on all by herself! I mean, this is the stuff of natural births not c-sections!

I was and am just so incredibly grateful for having gone through this experience. It was a healing journey even if it was incredibly long and painful. The recovery has been smooth and though more painful in some ways because my perineum was stretched and I had pushed for so long (but no tears), it is less painful in the incision area and I am able to walk and move about, get out of bed etc. with much less pain than I had with Gi. I love knowing I gave it my all, I never let things get out of my control, I called all the shots, (including a little battle over my hep lock not becoming an IV straight away when I arrived) and Ben was the most supportive, most encouraging partner I could have asked for. It really brought us closer to have gone through this together and to have seen what is possible when you're prepared to have the birth you want.

It may not have been a successful VBAC but you cannot control everything and it was the best birth experience for ME under those conditions. I even asked my doc about a third pregnancy and the state of my uterus a day after going through all that! She says there were no areas of thinning in my uterus, not a lot of scarring and she would happily okay me for a third. We'll see about all that of course a LOT later.

Here are some more first photos:

From stems to stemware

It's no secret that Ben's ancestry in the Old World can be traced to a famous champagne house and when we bought this property with an eye for restoring the vineyard, we dreamed of our fate as champagne growers and reprising the long-lost family art of champagne making. Well, we haven't been able to accomplish as much as we had hoped in the past year towards those goals. The vines are all chardonnay, that much we have discovered. That's both good news and bad news. Chardonnay grapes can be used to make champagne, though in France, pinot meunier and pinot noir are more commonly used or comprise a greater proportion of the grape blend in a bottle. Chardonnay is also not as frost resistant as we clearly saw this year and it needs to be planted closely together which is not the spacing chosen by the previous owners of this vineyard. It's likely we will want to replant some acreage with pinot meunier considering our high elevation and tendency for spring frosts and somehow tighten the existing spacing of the chardonnay grapes if we are ever to make a bottle of champagne.

Until we have the time, energy and resources to see our dreams of a champagne vineyard materialized, I have tasked myself with appreciating the history of other aspects of champagne, namely the champagne glass. What better way to pass the time than to do a little antiques troving and online shopping? Did you know that most salespersons in a home goods store will look at you like you are speaking a foreign language if you ask where the champagne "coupes" are? It appears this classic and, in my opinion, ultimate statement of elegance has almost completely disappeared from the commercial scene in this country. Currently, the only options for purchasing champagne coupes, also called saucers in the U.S., are to buy extremely expensive etched crystal glasses like the ones offered by Waterford or Orrefors or to scour the antiques houses and ebay listings for those that were mass produced as late as the 1970's. Good luck finding a complete set with no etchings or chips if you go the antique route.

Since I just cannot fathom my half-French household, owners of vineyard property to NOT also be in possession of a set of handsome but not overly ornate champagne coupes, I naturally turned to www.google.fr to find some. With the baby on the way and my mother-in-law set to arrive in a week I had a deadline to find myself an easily available or at least deliverable-to-my-mother-in-law option that could also be transported duty-free to my home via her checked baggage. One of my first shopping stops was to a store called Habitat (Ah-bi-tah in French). It's a store that Ben and I are quite fond of shopping at whenever we go back to France and is like a Crate and Barrel meets a more colorful, more upscale IKEA. Suffice to say it's a modern, but not monochromatic (like West Elm) home goods store ranging in price from Mervyn's to Macy's. It runs the gamut and we always turn up some interesting, affordable surprises there. It's no surprise this is the place that had my kind of champagne coupe!


Et Voila! A red beauty of elegant proportions to show off the handsome bubbles we will pour over the holidays, hopefully coming to me unbroken, courtesy of Air France and my mother-in-law's one free checked bag.

So, we may not have our grapes or our wine but we will have the perfect glasses this holiday to serve someone else's fine bubbly!

Homeopathy and hippies

It's no joke that up here in the Sierra foothills there are more pot growers and commune-living, yoga-practicing, hemp-wearing, dread-locked hippies than some parts of San Francisco. In fact, I think they all migrated here when they had kids because it was cheaper and they could "live off the land". I have no great mistrust or dislike for this group seeing as I have crossed the dark side after almost 3 years of living here. I now visit their chiropractors, acupuncture specialists, homeopaths, and holistic food and medicine shops. Don't ask about my borderline obsessive eco-habit of stopping in at the bamboo stores and my love of all organic bedding. My credit card tells the tale, monthly.

I just never thought it would happen to me. I'm fairly liberal politically and socially but when it comes to health and lifestyle I was a pretty mainstream consumer before I moved here. And yet, in just 3 short years, I have managed to conquer my fear of chiropractors and eastern medicine so much so that I no longer wish to see an M.D. for any reason. My primary care physician is an osteopath, which suits me perfectly since I am not someone with myriad complaints, just a few aches and pains of the joints on occasion and lo and behold, osteopaths get special training in bones and muscles!

As it turns out, I'm also a big fan of prenatal chiropractors and the wonders my new doctor has worked on this aching, tired body over the past 40 weeks. I was the biggest skeptic ever when it came to chiropractors and had heard all the horror stories of injuries being made worse and how they get you with the return visits but when I found myself on the floor writhing in pain with no relief in sight I desperately put those concerns aside. 5 visits and two weeks later I was pain-free! I kept going in order to keep my pelvis balanced for birth and we'll see how that worked out in hopefully just a few more days.

You may say, what's the big deal about chiropractors and osteopaths? They're still fairly mainstream. And that's true. Plenty of non-hippies utilize their services too. But here's where I break with the center, I am now a convert to homeopathy--that much maligned offshoot of herbal medicine that most people associate with backwoods midwifery and shamans or worse. (By the way, I'm a convert to the midwifery model of care as well but I just don't have access to that with my particular pregnancy health concerns.) So, when Gi got sick last week and I picked it up too I thought it was going to be a minor inconvenience. When it took a turn for the worse and I'm now a sneezy, snotty, congested mess I took matters to the homeopath. Funny enough there's a safe-in-pregnancy herb called Pulsatilla known for doing everything from turning breech babies to ending runny noses. I'm also using Herb Lore's (a local homeopath) Pregnancy Tea Plus Tincture--a concoction of herbs like nettle and raspberry leaf to tone the uterus and prepare for birth as well as to prevent blood loss. The word tincture alone would have had my eyebrows raising and my head shaking 3 years ago had you told me you were using one personally and not just buying one in some dungeons and dragons game online.

It's unlikely, had we not moved here 3 years ago that I would have ever known about these remedies in the first place, so entrenched were we in our belief that physicians cure everything and pharmaceuticals are always safe and more effective. Today, I feel like I have done an about face on the medical community thanks to my hippie friends. I have never enjoyed a greater sense of knowing and power over my own health and body than I do today and for that I thank the hemp gods! Go ahead and call me a hippie. It's not such a weird label to me anymore.

A Blessingway

What it is: A few close friends and family gathered to celebrate a woman's journey into motherhood, a few hours of shared stories, poems, scriptures and rituals meant to help suffuse the mom-to-be with their support, confidence and love, a time to be reflective about the labor and delivery process as well as to calm a mother's fears.

What it is not: A "shower" where the emphasis is on gifts for the mom-to-be and baby, a time for silly and embarrassing baby games, a large gathering of close and not-so close friends and family, typically thrown for first-time moms.

My two aunts, Chrissie and Karen, were the magical hostesses of this event last weekend. They knew I really didn't want a traditional shower again--both because I have all the baby paraphernalia I could ever need and because this time I am facing a more intense labor and delivery experience as I attempt a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) and was hoping for a more meaningful gathering of friends and family. We did our research together and found the idea of a blessingway fit our goals best.

Chrissie hosted the day at her house and 9 of us made a circle of friendship on her living room floor. We began by each lighting a candle and invoking the names of our maternal ancestors as far back as we could remember, to remind us all that birth has been happening for aeons and we are part of a very long lineage of strong women giving birth to their babies.

Then, we each read a poem, quote or passage that held some significance or spoke to some aspect of motherhood, sisterhood or birth which we felt compelled to bring. The very wise words I heard in that room transcended our varied personal backgrounds and ages and they each impacted me in unexpected ways. I have kept those papers and will bind them to bring with me to the hospital for inspiration! 

Next, Chrissie did a lovely job of selecting stones for my labor bracelet, wrapping them in tissue with an inspirational word on each one which was then used by everyone present to "bless" me with. I love that the package of stones I chose was labeled "HOPE", perfect for a gift to myself in this sometimes scary, uncontrollable and mysterious process of birth. We strung the stones together on some silk and tied it off to make a bracelet, another item I am packing in my hospital bag!

And to top it all off, we ended with food and cake and a little belly painting! The girls were more artistic than I could have imagined and my belly looked so beautiful after I didn't want to have to wash it off.

I am so thankful to my aunts for creating this special day for me and to my friends for joining us and bringing their heartfelt words of wisdom and support. I know I will need it all in the upcoming days and during those trying times of labor and I feel so blessed to have such an empowering group of women around me. Thank you all!

Apple craft

It's not often that I peruse the Martha Stewart website and I can't even tell you why I ended up there today but I landed on a craft page that works perfectly for my over-abundant supply of apples from our orchard that are now going rotten on the kitchen counter and my endless-energy toddler who loves to paint. It's a fun way to decorate any plain old piece of paper or canvas bag and I immediately thought of my eco-friendly canvas shopping bags hanging in the pantry when I saw this. The best part is that no one will know my apples are actually half rotten and their wrinkly skins might even make this a little more Van Gogh interesting! I'll have to post pics of our little crafting time later today when they're finished. Until then, for all you crafty types I heartily suggest a quick look at the Martha Stewart website for other cute ideas: http://www.marthastewart.com/article/3-tiny-creatures-costumes?page=4&backto=true&backtourl=/photogallery/baby-costumes#slide_9

And here's the finished product! I can't wait to show it off when I bag my groceries.