Bright Lights, Big City

Just another day at work on a beautiful day...sunset sure was gorgeous too. I'm up on the tenth floor tonight (we rotate between 3 floors for mother-baby) which is my most FAVORITE floor, I think you can see why...also, it's just bigger with more room to chart. So far it looks to be a pretty good night. Patient's are good, babies are behaving. Hopefully I don't have to admit any sections with duramorph on board because I'll then have two patients with hourly 02 sat checks, then I'll be hosed. But for now, it's a GOOD night :-)

Edible Landscaping

I have been interested in growing fruits and vegetables long before I heard of Rosalind Creasy or the concept of edible landscaping, but reading an article of hers really solidified it for me. As she puts it, people spend all this money putting in maples and azaelas when they could grow apples and blueberries: Also gorgeous, yummy-scented, and with good foliage, but it provides good food as well. When honeycrisp apples hit $3.99/lb this winter, I put 3 dwarf apples trees in to help save money and give us some good, local produce. They're pretty and smell great. The concept doesn't shun traditional plants, but rather encourages people to grow edibles among their inedible decorative plants. Not only does the combination look really cool but it's the environmentally responsible thing to do, what with the price of gas, the resources needed to ship produce around the world, and the cost of food. The geopolitics of food is obviously a complex issue and hey, we go to McDonald's, too (they have a playplace, what can I say...). But I think if most people could make even a small effort to grow some food, it would really make a difference. Especially schools. What better way to introduce the concepts of healthy eating and economics than to have students prepare meals they themselves helped grow? If anyone wants to chat more on the topic, I'm open, and I also recommend:




Happy Reading!

For Sale

For Sale: House next to ours. Clearly the realtor isn't too motivated, so I figured I would help out. Wanted: Nice young family, but willing to consider other family types as well. Young playmates for my children preferred. Wife/Mom who likes to have fun also preferred. So come be my new neighbor, and you can borrow a cup of sugar whenever you want. I'll even bake you fresh cookies. Deal? Awesome.

Like a pile of rocks

This should keep us busy.

  

 Miss Andie Lu loves her bath. Aili is away until Tuesday with her grandparents in Molson since Jeff and I both work this weekend. We'll miss her but I'm sure she'll have lots of fun, and Andie and I get to play :-)

All that fun makes for one sleepy girl!

Let Them Drink Beer

...or drown in it. Whatever. Death to ALL slugs who dare eat my strawberries and lettuce! I was thinning the mulch in the strawberry bed today to ensure all the plants got enough sun and whaddaya know, major slugfest going on in there. I decided to make it a REAL party and offer them the good stuff.

Dear Mr. Slug(s):
Stay away from my strawberries or enjoy a good "chelada." Really, I can think of worse ways for you to go. Just try me. Sincerely, Shani

PS- Stay away from my romaine or I will cover you in chicken scratch (AKA chicken candy) and unleash the birds. Consider ya self warned.

She thinks my tractor's sexy

 

My yard sure is pretty right?  He calls himself 'The Grunt.' We sure do wish they had done the lawn right the first time. Then we wouldn't have to tractor the whole thing.Oh well, it should look good when it is done!       

My little lady- She sure has the easy part of the ride! We've been going on a lot of rides lately. The other day Andie went in the seat and Aili and Ari went in a trailer- man oh man is that thing hard to pull! Good work-out though....

                                                              Onions for your omelet?

 

Our cherry trees outside of our garden are starting to bloom. One of our apple trees is flowering right now too and the scent is wonderfully good. I don't think there are many smells better than apple blossoms in the springtime...

Our bigger girls (the 2 orps and 2 rocks) like to range but stay pretty close to their coop. In particular they like weeds and bugs. Hopefully they'll take a dent out of the mosquito population this summer when it starts to warm up. The araucanas are still pretty little and timid. They don't stray far from the coop, and even when the door's up they are often still inside. Jeff thinks they're smart because they're small and know they need to hide out from predators. They like to hide under my car.

It Was Beautiful

Well, for one day, anyway. We sure did enjoy it though! We are lucky to live right near the Centennial trail, which goes right over the Stillaguamish river and is really pretty. Aili did awesome- she rode her bike the whole 3 miles to Arlington (the trail's longer, but that was our destination for the day) and most of the way back- when she wasn't riding her bike she ran or walked. What a trooper! If she can do the 6 miles now I'm hoping by next year she might be able to go 10 and mama can get a good work out! (by the way, the picture above isn't the Stilli, it's Lake Washington. We went there too- gotta squeeze as much sunshine in as possible!)

Anybody want to go for a ride? I think we'll be here a lot this summer.

We All Have Those Days...

Where all we want to do is THIS:

This weather is really getting me down. I'm ready for the outdoors for sure. We have all sorts of projects over here at Chez Sluys that just don't get done if there is rain. Tomorrow, we're supposed to tractor the back yard to remove all the sod and weeds in preparation for sowing the grass. That's just not happening if it is raining (There would be a good chance of the tractor getting stuck in the mud). The other day we got so desperate we painted the chicken coop under a tarp nailed to the roof. Classy. The birds did get to free-range for the first time the other day though. The verdict: Bugs: way yummy. Slugs: so-so. My decorative plant by the front porch: gourmet. They're getting a little bit better about being picked up too. I guess they've realized that we're not as scary as the great outdoors. They don't like to separated either, if one gets away from the flock, a lot of distressed clucking is likely to ensue. We put the Araucanas in with the big girls today, and unfortunately, the mean girls picked at them. So, they're in a cage within the coop now. Hopefully they'll all play nice soon.
In kid news, the little ladies are doing well, and Aili continues to make me laugh just about every day with the things that she says. We were at the grocery store the other day and were walking by a few policeman outside of their car and she stops dead in her tracks, right next to them, points, and asks, "Mom, are they bad?" I tugged at her arm and tried to get her to keep going but she was quite insistent and would not budge, and asked her question again (loudly). I told her, "No, they CATCH the bad guys." Clearly, we need to be playing more cops and robbers here at our house so she can differentiate. Andie's doing well too, I think she is just starting to get a little seperation anxiety. She knows her mama for sure. She can be a little clingy at times (I call her my kangaroo kid) but she's just so sweet. We love her for sure....we'll keep 'er.

Don't Cry (or Cuss!) Over Spilled Milk

I was a brat today.
I guess I was a brat yesterday, since it is 0218am right now! Hopefully I am not being a brat to anyone right now...
I'm not really sure what my problem was yesterday (tired? stressed? not wanting to go back to work again?) but evidently, I had one. I woke up wondering why my baby hadn't been brought to me to nurse- I slept for 6 hours and Andie Lu didn't come to visit! Husband informed me she wasn't hungry. Well. I then launched into a lecture about how solid food doesn't replace breast milk in the first year, yadda yadda (because he doesn't have 2 kids or anything and know this already!)Then, I discover I had left 9.5 ounces of breast milk in my purse, out for 7 hours. Lovely.  I force husband to do a taste-test on it (He wanted to just toss it. The horrors!) He decides it tastes ok, but is still leery. I tell him to bag 'er up and feed it to her later, going on about how breast milk has natural antibiotics and so on. He then proceeds to "fling it around carelessly" (in my tired, irrational brain) and promptly spills about half of it all over the floor. I then flip out and accuse him of not "respecting" my breast milk and not being "appropriately sad" that it had spilled. (Yes really. I know.) Anybody who pumps knows how much of a bummer it is to spill your milk and this DIDN'T just happen to me last week at work when I was so tired that I accidently knocked the pump shields off, promptly spilling 5 ounces all over the floor which is why I am SO careful not to have any "accidents." So, I was bummed. And then when he got frusturated and yelled at me for getting all upset at him about spilling the milk, I yelled back. And that errupted into a ridiculous little fight. Thankfully I realized I was being a whacko, and apologized to both him and Aili (who got to witness said whack job yelling at her daddy).
Raising children, working, and keeping the house in order can be tough sometimes. But I am DARN LUCKY to have the most understanding husband to make it a wee bit easier.

April Showers Bring May...Showers.

Did you ever see the movie "birds?" I think the bird with the starring role is living in my yard. Now that Woody the Woodpecker finally took a hike I am dealing with this fellow: He seems to like to run into the window. Repeatedly. And of course this had to happen during nap time. (Nobody wants me to actually be well-rested, including the birds!)

The weather here in the Pacific Northwest is a bit of a bummer. It's supposed to be nice again tomorrow but of course I'll be sleeping- it's back to work tomorrow night for me. Maybe husband will get some of the concreting done- the fence for the garden is coming along, he's put in 14 of the 28 poles for it. I'm pretty excited to get that thing up, especially after I found deer prints in my garden bed and nibbles off my lettuce and cabbages.

Labor's having a potato potluck tonight which was pretty yummy, and then someone patted my tummy and asked how baby was doing. Huh. Maybe I should lay off the carbs...? Right after that she followed with how small I looked for having a young baby (laughing here- she claimed she knew I wasn't pregnant but STILL!). Oh well.

The picture above is kind of an old one of my lovies, taken in California during our last trip. I just love how proud Aili is to be a big sister. She loves miss Andie Lucie so much. Today Andie fell over and hit her head on a toy and started crying and Aili was so upset. Andie was fine, but Aili was bawling and had big fat tears rolling down her face. When I asked her what was wrong she just kept saying "She's hurt! She fell on her toy!" What a sweetheart. Another funny thing Miss Aili does is to bring her to me when she is crying and tell me "She's crying, she wants to nurse." Apparently mama nursing the baby will fix everything. More funny Aili-isms? I told her today she didn't need to put on her jammies to take a nap, she could just wear her tinkerbell undies and call it good, it would be like a panty party (really, I just was trying to get her in bed as fast as possible, I had a very limited amount of time left to lay down before I had to leave for work). She throws her hands up and says, "But there is no cake! No balloons!" She was NOT pleased that this "party" did not include any of these fun things. One of my top mama lessons, which I always seem to forget, is to always THINK about things before you say them out loud to your three and a half year old! Many a regret here...

I really should get back to work. It's 0240 am and I have done no charting. Zilch, nada, none. Not in the mood. It really feels like we spend just as much time charting as we do doing actual patient care. It's so depressing, how litigious the medical field has become. My job would be so much easier if there was no charting involved and all I had to do was take care of people. Wouldn't that be nice!