Adventures at The Bunny Manse

Our happy ttle surprise girl arrived mid February. I've spent the past month with her cuddled in my arms, nursing, sleeping, and enjoying her random hour of wakefulness here ave there. This is the last little infant I'll spend so much time with and I'm revelling in the experience.  Also, I'm ecstatic to not be pregnant anymore.  Marianne, the icon of Liberty, the dreaming middle sister of Austen, a song and poem. Hillary, the woman who should have been President. Spring, because we're alternating last names In reverse time lapse order, after the last picture, the story of her birth. Like her sisters, she was born at the women's birth and wellness center in chapel hill. She was born at 41 weeks, 6 days. We resorted to castor oil after every other thing that worked previously did not work and I was approaching the point of transfer to a hospital setting that I very much wanted to avoid. Marty came down for the weekend to sta...

There are often little details in old houses that go unnoticed. These never make it into new houses because it costs money to do these things and 'no one is going to see it anyway'.  For example, this is the inside header, trim, and casing on the doorway of a small closet off the kitchen. You only see it when standing inside the closet which is almost impossible to do. And yet, when building the house, they wanted it to be beautiful and consistent throughout. One of the reasons I love old houses.  We used this small closet as a pantry since we moved in. Some crappy plastic shelves and viola! all of our dry good storage could be dumped in here. It was fine.  However, with the advent of the pantry, we decided to move the washer and dryer here and make the former laundry area the temporary cat home. It's fine.  So here's the empty space with the gas, water, and vents all hooked up, and then as Harris started stacking and hooking up the machines. Luckily...

There's the beautiful princess tub that I looked for on Craigslist for over a year. That Harris almost didn't get because we got into an argument the morning he was to go get, that Madeline rescued from adult drama by quietly saying, 'but my princess tub...' with her head hung low making the adults feel pretty low.  It's been sitting, waiting upstairs, for two-ish years.   There was a gross shower here. Now it is gone forever and the tub will go there using existing plumbing.  Us checking out paint colors. We all mutually decided we liked a peachy pink color for the walls.   Harris getting rid of paneling after I got rid of the shower stall. Well, I unscrewed and unbolted everything so he could chuck it in the dumpster across the street. The last of the paneling is now gone from the house. I think. I'm sure I'll find another little bit here or there.  The tile arrived in August.  Harris built a partition wall...

Someone is eight years old today.  She's very insistent that until the time of her birth, she is not yet actually 8. Precision is important with this one. 

Because I'm a million months pregnant, we did not drive to DC, but instead to Raleigh where we joined 15,000 other people who marched. The girls were getting restless in the crowds, so we did a fair bit of walking around in search of open spaces.  The sign says "I stand up for..."  Madeline wrote, Women's Rights.  Margot told me to write, Mommy, YaYa, Margot.  with our signs, Madeline decided to write, Be Kind and Brave Mine said My Body, My Choice, another mother raising Smart Strong Girls! The crows were a little too much for Madeline, Margot liked them, but not the massive puppets in attendance. 

It's been a harder than expected winter.  Hillary losing the election has hit our family hard. Many of our friends will be hurt by the policies being put forward, our communities will be damaged, and there are kids and adults all around us sad, scared, and afraid for what this means for our county. Harris works at the Jewish Community Center - his clients, friends, and families have seen Jews be vilified, images of their children in ovens, references to the Holocaust. Jews make up less than 3% of our country. Why are you picking on them? Why are you silent when you allies seek to hurt them?  I get it, everyone disagrees about political ideas and concepts , but fundamentally, I'm not saying the religious right has no place in our society. I'm not saying that Republicans should all die and yet, the rhetoric I see from others is that immigrants don't belong here, that some people 'deserve' more than they are getting, that gay people are gross and shouldn...

Madeline was Luna this year for Halloween. Margot a bumblebee. We 'made' Madeline's costume after a trip to the Trosa thrift store and scrap exchange to get some supplies. Total cost around $12. maybe.