Close call

I just barged into Lili's room, armed with the dreaded late-night cup (that we so thought we were all done with), marched two-thirds of the way across the room until I could finally see the chair against the wall, and did not see what I expected to see. You see, usually in this situation, Sara would be sitting with Lili as I prepared the demanded cup and brought it upstairs. I would then tiptoe into the room and Lili would decide which one of us was to join her for the midnight snack (lately I've been getting the call more and more, to my whispered 'I win!').
But the chair was empty. So I whirled around, and there was Lili in her crib, sleeping peacefully. Bad dream she had, I guess. I tried so hard not to start cracking up right then, and snuck out as sneakily as I could sneak. I had a glass of water for Sara, too, so I brought it into the bedroom and had a quiet laugh.


On another note, we went for a hike on Saturday to pre-celebrate Sara's birthday, only to be turned back by the signs that be.

So we said, 'Fine! We'll find another lake to walk around!'
And we did.

Crunchy

One of our good friends likes to call us crunchy people who live in the wilderness. I take this as a compliment, however it is meant...

We're not living in a straw-bale house, off the grid, with composting toilets or anything (yet) but we do try to live relatively lightly on the land and keep our bodies free of toxic stuff, etc. (as Americans go, anyway).
This kind of stuff became even more important as we were thinking about having kids, and yet more important when Lilienna was born with that extra little chromosome. I get more and more questions from friends on these kinds of things recently - maybe this stuff is catching on? I wanted to throw some of how we live out there - feel free to laugh, ask questions, or give us some fabulous advice... ;)
We buy organic as much as we can. Probably three quarters of the food in our house is organic. Most people either say 'what the heck is organic anyway?' or 'isn't that really expensive?' when this comes up. Pretty much, organic food is raised without synthetic pesticides, etc. - here's a USDA brochure that goes into a little more detail. And yes, it is more expensive at the grocery store, but I think we even that out by belonging to Tait Farm CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) where we buy a share of organic vegetables from a local farm and pick them up every week. Man, are they good, and if you do the math it's a lot cheaper than buying the same conventional produce at the grocery store. I've felt better since I started eating organic, and I'd like to think that Lili has thrived eating mostly all organic food. Check out this site to find a CSA (or farmer's market, crunchy food store, etc.) in your neck of the US wilderness.
We eat gluten-free, which isn't crunchy by itself, but it makes for a way of eating that I think is much healthier. We eat very little highly processed food - cooking is a bit more work than, say, frozen dinners, but it's a whole lot yummier too. Eating GF means you have to 'know your ingredients', so the simpler, the better - which leads to buying more locally made food.
We bought an old house in an old village that needed a bit of love rather than a new one in what used to be woods. Of course, that means more work for us to make sure lead paint and drafts stay away from everyone, but I love our house and the stories it tells.
Well, we're really not that crunchy, because I'm not coming up with a laundry list of other things we do to reduce our footprint. I guess we've changed light bulbs to compact fluorescents, and we drive a car that gets pretty good gas mileage; but I've got a bigger list of things we need to do on this front: insulate, compost, buy wind power, go solar...
Any other crunchy wannabes out there?

Crunchy Lili picking out some mums at Harner Farm

Lili's newest word

Hugs!
With arms outstretched.

Love it.

The Man

Some kids get it. It was neat to find an article like this from near where we live posted out on the blogosphere. I saved this link a while ago, and I forget where I found it - but check out this article.

Turtle-K

Lili's slightly frantic version of bits and pieces of the alphabet, for your viewing pleasure...