Root cellar progress, new chairs & birthdays

The root cellar is coming along nicely. Aleks and the boys work on it pretty much everyday. With all the rain we got it flooded, so they had to bail out the water and frogs that had taken up residence there. ;-) You can't really tell how big it is, but it's about 4 feet deep (so that's 2 feet under the frost level) and about 8 feet long. The doorway will go about where the shovel is now. Aleks dug it by hand and only uses hand tools for all his work. It is such a good feeling to see your children embrace your values and ideals; I couldn't be more pleased!



Below are the chairs that I kept forgetting to take pictures of. I have had these for years and finally this year they got re-upholstered. They date to the 1920's which is an era that I find really pretty, furniture-wise. My sisters had just dropped off the bedframe in the background, BTW.

Levi and Micah's birthday was August 29 but we didn't celebrate it then as we were all sick. We gave them their presents yesterday; Levi wanted a box trap and Micah wanted a knife. Knives are really expensive, *way* more than I thought they would be, but it was all he asked for and I know he'll take care of it, so we bought him a nice bone handled one. They also got a DVD of Buster Keaton's The General, we're in a silent movie phase right now and had rented this fron the library before. They think it's hilarious. ;-)

For those of you who find birth stories boring or nauseating, you might want to skip this next part. I was going to give a recap of the twins birthday on their birth day but better late than never.

We lived in Yanceyville, North Carolina at the time (1996) in a log cabin. It had heat and running water but was pretty quaint and primitive. There was no bathtub or air-conditioning so I took about 3 showers a day to deal with the heat. I knew I wanted a homebirth as we had one with Katie and it was wonderful but I wasn't overly concerned about going preterm because I had followed the midwives advice and eaten a lot of protein to give the babies the fuel to grow. So, we get to my due date. We get a week past my due date. In August. In North Carolina. With twins. Enough is enough already! The midwife brings me castor oil. She isn't sure about the dosage so she brings me 6 ounces of the stuff of which I manage to drink 5 ounces. As a side note, that is WAY too much castor oil, a regular dose is a tablespoon or two. So, the castor oil does its job and I'm thoroughly cleaned out but the diarrhea keeps coming. Hours worth of racing to the bathroom to go and all there is is an oil slick in the toilet. OK, I know that is too much information but remember, you were warned! I feel horrible. We go to bed around 10 and I get back up at 10:30 to go to the bathroom and my water breaks. I call the midwife and say in a *very* whiney voice "I can't do labor NOW, I'm so sick!" She gets there about 11 or 11:15 and contractions have started, we fill the pool because I'm having a water birth. I get in and it feels really relaxing. The midwife checks me at one point and says that I'm at "6" so I jump out of the pool to go fix my hair remarking that it's almost transition so I better hurry! There were 5 midwives there and 1 accompanies me to the bathroom, I'm not really sure why. At 1:19 Levi is born, he weighs 6 lbs 14 oz. I hold him in the water and he looks at me and all around for about 5 minutes and then I don't want to hold him anymore. A midwife takes him but his cord is really short so she doesn't go far. The midwife checks me again and she feels the other baby's cord prolapsing. She says we have to get the baby out NOW! So, I stand up and push and push and push. With contractions and without. Micah is born quickly and weighs 7 lbs 15 oz. At the time they were my biggest and littlest babies. They both nursed like champs though I never got the hang of nursing them together; they were weaned at 16 and 17 months respectively. And now they are 12. How did that happen?