Things Go Moo In The Night…

Moments ago we heard a visious scream and then watched in wonder as a seagull chased a male Hen Harrier out of our walled garden. I think this is our yearly visitor - the lad that hovers just outside of the bathroom window now and again while searching for a meal from our neglected garden.

My email never alerted me to the fact that folk had been commenting on my other post! So I never thought to come back here and reply. Ooops. As for “Lambing season is over” we are done with the ovines but hopefully we ourselves will have more “lambs” to add to our expanding ranks.

Ingebjørg helping out at the tattie patch!

 We have the tattie patch planted, all of the sheep oot, all but four cows out and calved, annnnnd any day now silage will descend on the farm. Just great ~ trying to feed a silage crew while wrangling three kids under two. I look forward to this with baited breath.

Benji-man

And now I’m going to go to bed. I’m exhausted. I love the return of the constant daylight!

Observe how I cannot upload photos! Drats. Anyhoo, Lambing Season is officially OVER folks! This means that we can crawl out of our monastery-like existence here on the farm and RE-ENTER SOCIETY!!

Our debut (furtive trips to Birsay Farmers does not count) will take place at the Homestart “Teddy Bear Picnic” at the picky center at the beginning of June. I even have a nice new dress picked out… only I’ve kinda shrunk and now it doesn’t fit. (Arrrg!!) Er… do we even have a teddy bear?

Husband has the veg patch just about ready for planting and as I’m not pregnant this time around I can actually work out there in the sun and the dirt, three howling kids by my side. I have a 3-seater buggy so I’m on the go: even made it, via a minor miracle and an act of Congress, to the local playgroup. (The first time I managed to escape the farm and head to the school for playgroup I discovered that the group was not on … because it was voting day. Go me!)

Geez, 99% of my post is not going to happen now that I can’t post photos. I guess I’ll try and add to this post if I can get the photos to work?? Until then, Cheerio for noo!

Newborn lambs, Texel/Shetland/Blue-faced Leicester x Easy Care tup

This blog has been poorly neglected. No prizes for guessing why LOL! Ahhh… (that’s a contented sigh, not a cyber-groan) life is good. It is amazing to me (and a huge relief!) how having children helps to cure the wretched pain of homesickness. I no longer feel as if I am living in someone else’s hoose - with the arrival of three sweet little faces over the past two years this place, once so unfamiliar, has become home.

What a lovely winter we’ve had! So full of joy and fun! I’m amazed by how many of my American kin have come over here and stayed with us on the farm over the past two years. Aunt, sister, a variety of cousins, even a dear friend who I dub “Mennonite” even though she’s not strictly Mennonite. (I don’t mention names simply because I don’t have their permissions to do so.)

Now Elspethy is walking about in wee rubber boots! And Benji and Inga are smiling - with Benji starting to laugh. They’ve grown so huge with Benji at 13 pounds and Inga at 11 pounds and they are only three months old! (And finally starting to settle more.)

Lambing season is in full swing with the yows popping out a startling number of surprise triplets. Apparently I have the genes for triplets as well. Eeeeek! 3 for the price of 1 !!

It’s rainy and windy today but spring has deffinately arrived. Our yard is full of daffodils and the trees are starting to bud. Meanwhile Elspeth is about to turn 18 months!! Time has flown by so fast. It still feels like just yesterday she was a howling baby. Now she’s a chatty little girl! I can’t wait to see how she responds to the popup pool full of “ba’s”

Benjamin and Ingebjorg wide awake and happy as can be.

Benji and Inga sleeping through their first ferry ride.

Warm and cozy in their crib doonstairs!

Life is good. We’re all exhausted but life is still good. The dryer died. So has the Aga. (Only ours is a Stanely??) it’s 4am and I’m tending the coal fire ~ because, of course, Agas only die at 3am in the dead of winter when there’s snow and ice aboot. Seriously, it wouldn’t happen any other way! LOL

Oh, Aunt Diane and my sister Emily are arriving… tomorrow. I hope they bring lots of spare socks! “Welcome to Scotland. You have to beat your laundry on the rocks down at the creek and heat your bath water over the coal fire.”

I can just see their faces HA HA HA!!!

Buuuut we still have internet and my iPod…

Benjamin and Ingebjorg at home in their cot

Behold! The twins! They are finally on the outside and I’m shrinking back to normal size. Benji and Inga were born by a swift and trouble free c-section on January 21st! They were both robust and healthy with Benji weighing 7lbs 4oz and Inga weighing 5lbs 9oz. Both of them howled in rage as they were brought into the glaring light of day ~ so we kent they had nice, healthy lungs!

We’ve been home now for three weeks and I’m healing well and the babies are busting on the weight like there is no tomorrow! Inga is over 6lbs now and Benji is just about pushing 9lbs. (As a matter of fact he might already be 9 pounds!! The wee man never stops eating!!!)

Elspeth is doing very well. She’s delighted with the twins and was only baffled at first because she had no idea what they were. But after seeing peedie feet and peedie hands and peedie eyes everything seemed to click and now she knows they are wee people. After about a week of being totally over-excited she calmed down and has been as happy as ever. As a matter of fact she wants nothing more then to help with the twins - especially at feeding time!

All is well. Our house is delightfully chaotic and I can’t wait until I’m able to get oot and go for walks with the big double pram. THAT is going to be so much fun!!

Oh: Elspeth started walking on Christmas day. And she’s been on the go ever since!!

The twins hit a growth spurt, new stretch marks have appeared, and I’ve lost the ability to sit in ANY position with any comfort what-so-ever. (And most of the time I just plain can’t as The Belly gets in the way haha)

And I’m as ill as a dog. Lost my voice. Have some kind of infection and I’m on antibiotics. I hope they work because I feel worse every day. This’ll be a sluggish Christmas ~ but wonderful just the same.

I can hear my wean wailing. I’ll see if she wants a sook of milk. We had twin calves born last night! I’ve been beaten in the race by a cow!!!!

As we are not able to shut the electricity off here on the farm we did our best to participate in the “Power Off Weekend” by visiting Malcom and Rachel at their candle-lit home instead. The three of us (Me, Erlend, and wee Elspeth) spent a lovely afternoon, and part of the evening, at their home before an open fire. I sat by one of the windows and was afforded a fantastic view of Scapa Flow and Stromness in the distance.

As the sun set (and Stromness lit up!) there were candles lit, the conversation continued, and toasted cheese made ~ as well as roasted chestnuts heated in a cast iron skillet. As we sat aboot talking and enjoying each other’s company Elspeth made sure and spread her toys far and wide and then poke aboot everything that she could get her hands on. She was especially interested in The Coffee Table of Delights! But I must admit, she’s a very accomodating baby and had no problem allowing us adults to enjoy ourselves for several hours ~ all without her having taken an afternoon nap! She slept in her car seat on the way home and now we are preparing the wee beastie for a quick crawl aboot the sheep byre (while daddy feeds the sheep) and then off to bed with little miss curly head!

We have a friend from America due on the midnight Aberdeen ferry so today, “Pink candle Sunday” in Advent, is turning out to be Gaudate Sunday indeed! As well as tiring haha! I’ve not had a nap so I can hardly type and Erlend is the one that has to drive into Kirkwall at 10:30pm. It’s nice having an Aberdeen-to-Kirkwall ferry. Just wish it came in at a better hour…

Double Pram for Twins

Thanks to a friend that happens to be a Bargan Huntress we now have a much more affordable Dream Pram option ~ to the tune of nearly £600 less!!!! Erlend said we can get it and so V~~ is going to make an offer and do all that fancy Ebay stuff for us. I’m so thrilled!! Now I won’t be hoose-bound after the twins arrive! I can get back to my nice daily walks… good for mum and for babies!

Turns into double pushchair

Photo evidence that Elspeth DOES, on ocassion, hold still long enough for a cuddle!!

(A bit of a rambling post. Hope I don’t bore you to death… but I dunno, I feel rude if I just ask for help locating stuff without having a bit of a conversation at least!!! Haven’t given very many updates about anything since getting preggo again…)

Ok, so, I have really sensative skin and I break out with synthetics and the same goes with Erlend so I am playing it safe with our kids. Problem is, I can only find super-expensive organic cotton hats and such on line. Is there anywhere here in Orkney that sells basic cotton (or even wool, wool-blended-with-cotton) baby hats that don’t cost the earth?

Also, last time I ended up with a bazillion scratch mitts that were HUGE! They were sold as “newborn” size and they are so big Elspeth could wear them right now! Are any of you in the know where I can find small, actual *newborn* sized scratch mitts?? Either that or I could use cheap cotton socks.  (We used socks for Elspeth’s hands ~ even after she left the newborn scratchy phase she kept ripping her own hair out and leaving awful lumps on her little scalp!!! If these two come out hairy… we still use socks as mittens for Elspeth. That’ something I learned from mom…)

If you know of an on-line store with decent prices or a store here in Orkney I’d love to be let in on the secret haha! I just haven’t been able to waddle about toon with this awful pelvis. I go shopping for the basics like food and then I’m too trashed to poke around from shop to shop looking for cotton hats and mitts and such.

So far I have two cotton swaddling cloths, a lovely cotton bumper for the cot we were given for FREE via the Bruck Swap show, cotton sheets, .. I’d like to have some of those nice cot drapes to pull around the top of the crib as it will be in the livingroom but they cost something like £35 on naturespurest.co.uk … not sure if that’s a good deal or what? Any ideas? Can I find cot drapes elsewhere for less? I’ve been googling but to no avail. They don’t need to be cotton as the weans won’t be snuggled in them. But I’d like to avoid garish bright colors. If I could sit down like a normal person I’d just sew some up from an old, mellow-color sheet! (This pelvis issue won’t let me sit on anything that’s hard. Even the chairs at the mart are hell!)

The other thing I can’t find anywhere on-line or in the local chemist shops any more: these FANTASTIC Tommee Tippee milk bibs. They are plain terry-cloth edged in either cream, pink, or blue. But their selling point is the padded collar that snugs right around the fat baby neck and keeps milk from rolling down into those newborn fat rolls. We’re still using them with Elspeth but I need another stash as Elspethy goes through them quickly! Have any of you seen them either on line or in any shop around Orkney??

(I love organics and I love to buy Fair Trade but these things are so expensive and thus are not necessary for newborns because the babies grow so fast! (Or even young babies for that matter.) You spend £28 for a hat-bottie-and-mitt set only to have it not fit in a few weeks! Regular cotton or wool or other natural blends are fine.)

Everyone back home keeps asking me, “What do you need? What do you need??” but to be honest, except for scratch mitts, baby hats, and those stellar Tommee Tippee bibs, we pretty much have everything that we need! So I don’t know what to tell folk. They are dying to spoil the twins rotten but everyone, even folk here in Orkney, spoiled Elspeth so rotton that we have enough clothes to outfit a small tribe!! We have several winter coats, several winter “snow suits” (I don’t know what to call them ~ one peice padded wintery outfits for ouside in the or car seat??) boatloads of clothes for 0 - even 18 months!! Our attic is absolutely groaning with clothes.

Oh!! I know: I can ask folk back home to send some hooded baby towels. We only have two. But wait… if I do that we’ll end up with 300!!! Nevermind. Eeeek! Uh… hmmm… I am tempted to say, “We don’t need anything, thanks” but will that make people feel shut out and snubbed?? It’s not that we wouldn’t use what is sent it’s just that… at what point do you tell folk to save your money ~ we’re honestly 100% all set… and at what point do you zip it and let people enjoy GIVING??

(Yessirreee… Elspeth is on the go and several of our doors are so warped they won’t close properly. Besides, who wants to live with closed doors? I’d rather have gates so we can all see and hear and… breathe!!)

And now: how about some cheerful updates?? The twins are doing very well. Growing like fat weeds in my belly while tormenting my internal organs to no end. However, regardless, I’m doing very well also! No health issues, just crippled pelvis galore. Which is awful but not a threat. Meanwhile our friend from the States is on her way TODAY! Erlend will pick her up from the Aberdeen ferry at midnight on Sunday. (Er… midnight Monday morning??) She’s staying until mid-March and cannot wait for the adventure of seeing Orkney!!!!!

Elspeth is doing REALLY well. We still haven’t seen any of those major spasms. Her cluster-spasms (less violent) still come and go but not as frequently. They cause weird problems like the other day when she crawled head-first into the kitchen cabinets while having them. (Yes, she can crawl while having these spasms. As a medic I saw epileptics having seizures while stumbling around and talking! Seizures are odd things.) Me and Erlend are crossing our fingers and hoping Elspeth is outgrowing these things ~ which apparently isn’t uncommon!! They get them for the first year or so and then they go away… but without test results we don’t know if this is brain tumor or what? She does have developmental delays (also learning delays) of a minor nature but hey, no matter what we’ll accept her for who she is. And the cool thing is: even with the delays, she learns! She’s very bright and sharp even if it takes a bit longer for things to “click.” Eventually they DO click so that’s great!!

When Elspeth grows up she

If anyone would like to see Elspethy in the flesh… we are having a carole service at our kirk on December 17th at 7pm. (Athiests, agnostics, Pagans welcome hehehe!) I just can’t get out and visit. I can’t walk. I can’t chase Elspeth if she’s at your house. I just sit there like a slug in pain going, “no, don’t touch that!” 857 times while YOU chase MY kid. I waddle aboot town every now and then but I’m so trashed I end up back in the car. So if anyone wanted to say “howdy” and have a good visit ~ and a good time singing! ~ and a good pinch of Elspeth’s fat wee cheeks ~ I’ll be in a central location on the 17th hahahahaha! With Amy, our Mennonite friend, and Erlend my handsome farmer. You’ll easily spot me: I’m the HUGE one dressed like a French peasant. (I love my maternity smocks!!) So, with all of everything said in this lonnnng post, I wish you all a lovely Advent season (not Christmas yet!) and hope you are enjoying a lovely winter wherever you happen to be!! And now… I’m going to TRY to work through a pile of laundry upstairs. Erlend has the wean… I have freedom… will my pelvis and heart allow me to work? LOL! That is the question of the day every day hahaha!! Cheerio for noo!!!!!!!!!!

Which, uh, isn’t a surprise. More then likely the results are in but you know how hospitals are. “Call the patient and let them know the results? NEVER!” We are trying to be patient but once I can take it no longer I’ll make an appointment with Dr. H~~~ and whine and see if he can find anything out. But “they” doon sooth are so incredibly oot of touch with “us” up here in the Wild North and I’ve yet to have anything show up on my records here that have been done down there. Will this be the same fate with Elspethy’s tests etc??? Arrg.

There is good news: She hasn’t had any of her really big spasms in a while. She continues to have the smaller clusters of spasms every day (Where she’s far more responsive and they are much less violent) so maybe she’s outgrowing these things?????????? That’d be great!!