Alpaca Madness

Two weeks ago I spent part of a day at the Estes Park Wool Market (Estes Park, CO). DH came along to take care of the kids and bring me DS for nursing as needed. We had arranged this months before DS was born so that I could experience this regional fiber extravaganza. I really appreciated DH's work to make it possible. And next year, I'll leave bottles -- it was challenging for both of us to be there, away from the comforts of home, with two kids who weren't particularly interested in being there.

But oh, those couple of hours I got to myself were fun! The Wool Market features a sheep wool tent; tents or barns devoted to sheep, goats, paco-vicunas, llamas, and possibly other species I'm forgetting; animal judging shows and fun events like the Llama Limbo and sheepdog demonstrations; and a giant tent with market stalls for yarn, fiber, spinning and knitting equipment, and other fiber-related treats. I didn't want to bring home a lot of bulk this year, since we're moving soon and my time for hobbies is pretty limited with an infant in my life, but I found a couple of beauties to bring home:



These are alpaca rovings from fiberinspirations.com, in beautiful natural colors, 4 oz. each. I hope to turn them into some kind of scarf or shawl, and perhaps a hat to match if there's enough. They're so snuggly soft!



I also brought home this 0.5-ounce spindle from woollydesigns.com. I had seen their stuff on the web, but one time trying this spindle in person was enough to sell me. It spins like a beautiful dream. The bent hook on top helps a lot -- why didn't I think of that? The cop of honey-alpaca singles has grown to about four times this much since this photo.



Hooray for small projects! It's much easier to spindle for 5-10 minutes between child-care and house-care duties than it is to get going on my spinning wheel (or write a blog entry...), mostly because the spindle is portable. DS even likes watching it for short periods. Think he'll be a Fiber Boy?

Hats Off to Single Moms

The last three days have been DH's first business trip since DS was born 10 weeks ago -- he returns tonight. I have to say, I don't know how the single moms, especially those with more than one child, do it. Just handling bedtime for both kids the last two nights has worn me out. I've had a helper two afternoons, and DD's been at preschool two mornings, and I'm pooped. And I'm not even bringing in an income! If I were, I guess I'd have some kid-free time with the kids at day care, but then there wouldn't be any nap opportunities. Oy.

On the other hand, this has been an excellent exercise in time management. It reminds me of 1996, when I started training for triathlons. I needed to fit in six training sessions per week, two in each sport, and my life already felt chock-full. (I was single and living alone with my two cats then -- I had NO IDEA what a full life was like, my friends.) But I found that having that high-priority, time-intensive commitment forced the rest of my life to fall into place as it never had before. Suddenly I was keeping my house cleaner, eating more healthy meals, getting to bed on time -- things that had been really hard to do before.

There is immense power, for me, in realizing that I have little or no slack in my schedule. I look at what I want or need to do, all of it high-priority, and how tightly it fits into my 24 hours per day. And then I realize that I can either get my s*** together, or I can watch the wheels fall off my life. Business-trip SAHM-hood with two kids triggers the getting-the-s***-together response. I'm eating well, getting the chores done, taking care of the kids (albeit with less quality time for each than I'd like because there's no DH to trade off with, and thank goodness no one's sick...), and getting almost enough sleep. And these things often don't happen as well when DH is around. Of course, when he's around I get more slack, and that slack can feel sanity-saving.

I guess it's time to take another look at what sanity means to me. Time for hobbies and lazy time with the kids, or healthy meals and an orderly house? Of course it's a balance of both. But noticing how good it feels to have the kitchen clean every evening is an eye-opener about how much the orderly house part figures in. It's as if the clean kitchen and cleared floors are a symbol to me, each night alone, that I can do this after all. It's hard, but it's not impossible, and my own character flaws, daunting though they may seem, aren't enough to put it out of reach.

My hat is off to those who pull it off, day after day.

Mars and Venus?

I've been thinking about editing yesterday's blog entry to eliminate the somewhat-negative description of my husband's behavior in the second paragraph. But instead, I want to ruminate a bit about it.

DH watched me write most of that blog entry. He explained, in his defense, that the way he was brought up, surprises for things like birthdays were supposed to be magical -- completely mysterious, produced invisibly, and so on. Even to let on that a surprise might be in the offing would be to spoil it.

This correlates with comments he makes about housekeeping sometimes -- comments that really burn my grits. I'll spend all day cleaning the main level, and he'll walk in and say, "Wow, the mess magically disappeared!" He insists that to him, this would be a compliment. I'd much rather hear, "Wow, you really worked hard on this! Thank you -- it looks so much better!" And if he threw in, "I'll be sure to pick up after myself every day to help keep it nice!" well, that would be amazing. And actual follow-through? The stuff of erotic stories, I'm telling you.

But getting back to the main idea here, is this a gender difference? I can't think of a reason men would tend to want to be seen as magicians, at least more than women. Is it a software-engineer thing? DH's work is to design and program the tools other programmers use to make great casual video games. Perhaps the highest compliment you could pay his work is to say that it's totally invisible -- that is, that it makes the game programmer's work effortless because they don't have to think about the tools.

I think the reason it feels like a gender difference to me is that so much of my work, "women's work" (raising the kids, cleaning the house, cooking dinner, etc.) is most noticed when it's not done, or done poorly. Plus, a lot of people who haven't done it look at the life of a stay-at-home mom and wonder what she does all day. So to me, it's a compliment when someone who's not a SAHM notices how much work I've managed to get done in a day with one or more kids to take care of as well. It's really challenging to do the housework and still pay decent attention to the kids, especially with an infant in the mix. I aspire to do both better, and it may be a little easier when the kids are older and can help more.

But a word to the wise: When it happens that the kids are happy and the housework is done, it ain't magic. It's 70% perspiration (skipping the nap is the hard part), 20% careful planning (transitions, anyone?) and 10% dumb luck (no major crises today, thank goodness!).

Birthday Blues, and the Cure

So I had a birthday. Ever try having a non-decade birthday (I'm in my late 30s) a month after giving birth to a baby, and only a week or so before the other child's birthday? Oh, and while you're on a really stripped-down diet to try to determine what's making the baby colicky? (No dairy, eggs, spicy stuff, onions, garlic, citrus, soy, wheat... the list goes on. For a while.)

Add to this mixture a husband who sometimes appears to forget birthdays and anniversaries. He seldom actually forgets, but sometimes his preparations are obscure enough to make me wonder. The night before my birthday, he actually let me get to tears about feeling neglected before he told me that of course he was doing something for my birthday. Could he just tell me, "Don't worry, I have something planned." Noooo! Well, eventually he did, I guess figuring that blowing the secret that a surprise existed was worth it to avoid further angst and get to sleep.

So on my birthday, he comes home with a pair of earrings (this hint obtained long enough ago that I'd mostly forgotten), and that evening he makes a birthday cake.

Now, did you read that first paragraph?

I'm not going to go into the details of the cake, because you can find them on DH's blog, here. Suffice it to say that it was yummy, had candles, and shouldn't set off DS's colic. And that DH went WAY out on a limb inventing it. Ever try making a cake with substitutions for practically every ingredient? Okay, he used sugar and baking powder. Still, stone soup this ain't. This is baking -- supposedly an exact science.

If that isn't enough to cure the birthday blues, well, I don't know what is. (Okay, okay, I know what is, but it's only been one month postpartum!!)

In keeping with the main theme of this blog, I should also note that two days ago, DH took care of DS and DD both (well, I ended up nursing DS a fair amount, but still...) so that I could host an evening gathering of spinners and knitters at our community house. It was a nice substitute for the monthly knit/spin-in at the yarn store, which will have to wait until DS is either not nursing so often, or can travel better.

Cared for? Yes. Still sleep-deprived? Yes. But that's a different post.

Who Needs Cashmere?

Have I touched knitting needles since I went into labor?
No.

But I've thought about it. Here's one of my conclusions: When people lust after super-soft cashmeres, alpacas, etc., part of the reason is that they haven't had enough chances to handle a baby's feet recently. Or stroke their cheek against a baby's downy hair for minutes on end while he falls asleep on their shoulder. I haven't felt any fiber that touched that level of softness, and folks, I've handled qiviut within recent memory.

I'll give the fine fibers this: They are a lot lower-maintenance and, even at a king's ransom per ounce for qiviut, less costly than a baby. (This is especially true when the baby in question spends his first week in the NICU -- thank goodness for health insurance! This hospital stay is the sort of thing that could have made life very hard if we had been in a different stage of our financial lives.) Don't get me wrong; I'll take what I have, sleep deprivation and all, thanks! But the fibers may help ease the transition when my babies aren't babies anymore. And they don't need 3 a.m. feedings.

They don't, right?