Life in the Fast Lane

There are more pictures I would like to post, but they aren't uploading...I'll try tomorrow. Sorry.

Well it's been three weeks today that I gave birth and I'm doing much better now than I did right after Meredith. Maybe it's because I'm so busy that I have to keep up or all hell will break loose. I haven't had much of the baby blues yet, and hopefully I will be able to keep them at bay for a bit longer. I started exercising this week. I know it's a bit early but I couldn't keep myself away from it. I'd been looking forward to running for a few months now. Don't get me wrong, in all actuality I hate running, or any form of organized exercise. But I want my old body back, or at least as close as possible to its original form. I am taking it slow and I'm getting better everyday. Yes, it's only been three days but I can tell I'm already falling back into the groove of my routine. And to add a bonus to it I found 3-4 cherry trees on my route. Right at the edge of our property...okay so they are right off of our property, but it's the government land that is waiting to become expanded highway. I don't think they are going to eat those cherries. So we are gathering them as the ripen. We are pitting them and then freezing them until we have enough for a pie. They are the sour cherries, which is what you use for baking. Meredith loves them.Our lettuce is starting to go to seed because of the excessive heat so we've picked it and we are in the Ceasar Salad season! We have our Romain Lettuce, our juicy and very flavorful chicken breasts and we are loving our salads. Hopefully by next year we will be able to add our own bacon to the list. We didn't get an opportunity to buy a piglet like we wanted. Money got really tight, and we had nowhere to house the little guy. But we did just buy a Commercial Freezer at a flea market on Saturday. It's a nice new one that only costs $75 a year to run and we bought it for $50. I think that's a pretty good deal. It was used at the Drive-In Theater. They bought a larger one and needed the space so they were selling four of them. So now we have excessive room to put meat. We can now butcher all of our chickens at once and then have room to store them...good for us, bad for the chickens.

It has been very hot here but I'm doing my window tricks and keeping the house decent until around 2 or 3 in the afternoon. Some good friends of ours gave us two window unit A/Cs. So we are limiting ourselves to the dining room area for a few hours a day to stay cool while the A/C runs it's little heart out. This gives me a great chance to just sit down and write for my book. Too bad I don't have a laptop to write on. It's a pain to have to hand write it and then transfer it over to the computer. But it's one way to edit I suppose. Meredith gets very creative when I'm breastfeeding Xavier. She makes so many messes. I can't really feed him infront of her because she either gets jealous or she tries to join the crowd and breastfeed as well. So she plays alone. So far she's put on all of my shirts...at once; climbed onto the counter and "made" some food with ALL the rolled oats. She's painted the window panes with her popsicle; autographed Julia's Red Sox blanket with marker; drawn on several walls, herself, her desk, the floor, some books and the couch; and she's "rearranged" all of Spencer's expensive baseball cards. But life doesn't last forever and these are all just tangable things that don't really matter in the long run so I just laugh and try to find the camera to get a good picture.Xavier has really grown. He's put on at least 3 pounds since he's been out of the hospital. He's just like his sister, a good eater and he keeps it on. He'll be a chunker soon enough. Meredith loves to be "mommy" she's tried to breastfeed him herself complete with taking her shirt off. She doesn't care for her baby doll when there is a real one right there! She wants to hold him, lay with him on the bed (usually ends up on top of him), dance with him ( aka jumping on the bed near his head), feed him (sixlets candy fit nicely into his little mouth we've found), dress him and carry him. She makes sure we never forget "bebe" when we're getting into or out of the car either. She really loves him. I was afraid there would be more of a jealousy complex, but nothing much except for a few tears when I start to feed him.

Yesterday when Spencer was mowing the lawn before work we saw Miss Sophie chasing a poor baby rabbit through the yard. She must have found it in the garden trying to eat our vegetables. Spencer set off to catch the poor little thing while I went after the cat. The little thing was scared stiff. Meredith loves rabbits (not bunnies but rabbits) so we let her hold it for a while. She was in heaven! She cried when Spencer set off to release it away from the farm. She wanted to keep it, and Miss Sopie was very upset at us taking her toy away. She would have played with it until it died and then she'd have just left it there for Spencer to find later when he'd mow over it's dead body. That would have been a sight!Xavier sleeps really well most nights, and by sleeping well I mean he sleeps until usually two, or sometimes three in the morning and then wants to eat. And then it's eat every two hours. But he's awake for a good part of the morning and then in the late evening he's awake as well. So it's good. He's started smiling back at you if you smile first. But mostly he has a look of shock on his face or suprise when he's staring around the room. He grunts a lot. I think it's related to his pooping, but he just seems to like to grunt. Especially when I lay him back down in his crib at night. He hates the dark. He wants to see, or be held so you have to accomidate him constantly. But that's what being a mom is all about!