gave birth at home! and other fun stuff

I haven't updated here in forever.

Lots of stuff happened since I posted here--my younger sibs both got married, for example. My handicapped brother James passed away. And I gave birth in my living room.

So now we have two kids and we are crunchily raising both of them!

My brother's passing was--a blessing, mostly. For him and for all of us. The last few weeks leading up to his death were excruciating to behold. He just got sicker and sicker and sicker. Eventually it got to the point that he wouldn't hold any food down, so we decided to stop feeding him. I told my younger brother about our decision early in the day. By the time I got Sam's protestations over the decision via text, it was too late: James was already dead. We hadn't even had a chance to not-feed him.

I miss him, but kind of... more theoretically than practically, I guess you could say. I miss the essence of him, I guess. But I don't miss him in pain, or him struggling, or me struggling to care for him, or any of that.

My new baby is awesome. We named her Sarah and she is adorable. Almost 12 weeks now. She smiles, and has tons of dark hair and big blue eyes--slate blue, almost gray. Very pretty. She coos a LOT and has since she was just a few weeks old. We took her in at 4 weeks and she was already kicking and holding herself up really well, and cooing. Basically all the stuff you're not supposed to do until 8 weeks. She's my little baby smartie. Right now she's sleeping next to me in her new Swaddleme. She really loves being swaddled, apparently. Good times. We're in the living room, mere feet away from where she was born right next to my coffee table. I'm really glad I aimed for a homebirth--I would have had one anyway. I was in active labor for 10 minutes in the end. Very intense 10 minutes, I might add.

But the point is, I recently decided I should be more proactive in updating the world about our crunchy life. Some of it might come in handy.