My Babies

Look at these two. My babe, and my baby. Try not to melt.

Those smiles.

I love this one. She's holding his face.


This is what she does when he comes home from work. Look at the little teefies!!


He's totally in love.

Stick a fork in me, I'm done. I fainted. My heart just burst like the Grinch at the end.

I love you, my Babe.
I love you, my Baby.

Love my Babies,

Dirt Road Mama

Whine Country!

Here is a little synopsis if our weekend of fun! Fun and...eventful. As always. :)

Let me start here. We went to Long Island to visit the family, which is always a fun little road trip. Hubby and I love road tripping. We call anything over 2 hours a road trip, in case you were wondering. So Thursday and Friday was lots of planning and packing for me. Packing clothes/shoes/socks/blankets/burp clothes/42 bibs/onesies/PJs/hats/jackets for Reilly. And bottles and 5 containers and frozen food. And a cooler full of breastmilk. And her monitor, toys, stuffed animals, binkies, spoons, and my breast pump. And her vitamins and just-in-case medicines. And her bouncy seat. Oh, and I had to pack myself. Plan, plan, plan.

Fast forward to the weekend! Hubby and I wanted to take a day trip for ourselves out east to the wineries. It's such beautiful farmland on eastern Long Island, and I'm a huge fan of vacationing in your own backyard. So off we went. The world was our oyster. Well, the island was at least. I packed my breast pump, and off we went!

[FYI: As an exclusively breast feeding mama, it is essential that I take my breast pump everywhere I go without the baby. I will continue to produce milk at the exact rate that the baby usually drinks it. Therefore, when someone else is giving her a bottle, I should be pumping in order to keep up the milk production. Also, for my own comfort, as it becomes painful and can possibly cause an infection if I go to long without either feeding or pumping.]

So our first stop was at a pretty amazing farm and market that we saw. It was pretty much my heaven.

This is inside. Every kind of apple you can imagine, as well as every other fresh fruit you can imagine.


Brussel sprouts still on the stalk! Have you ever seen anything like it?


Every single veggie you can imagine. And every single thing was fresh from a farm. GIANT cauliflower, GIANT eggplant, GIANT cabbage. Literally everything.

And a pink tractor. I love pink.


Of course, a manly tractor for the manly man.


Find the inappropriate squash that hubby made me take a picture of.

Then we continues on to Love Lane, which is where we had breakfast. Love Lane is actually the name of the street, as well as the restaurant, and has a plethora of adorable little shops. My parents had found this little street a while back and told us we would love it. They were right.

After breakfast, we went to this cheese shop to get some goodies to have at our winery visits.

You can't see from this picture, but right next door is the Love Lane Sweet Shop, which was also amazing. I asked Hubby, "Why are my favorite places always right next door to each other?! This is amazing!"

It's true. It started at Providence Place Mall where we went to college, where Godiva was right next to TCBY. I told Hubby (then boyfriend), that I wanted to live there. Then we went to San Antonio, and Ben and Jerry's was right next to the Life is Good store. And so on.

This is one of the cheese we got. Cave aged for a year. Delicious.

Pretty clock. I think I'll make one.

Then it was on to our first winery! Yay.

Handsome man. I love you!

Pretty old barn we were in.

The grapes (or what used to be grapes before the chilly weather) literally went as far as you could see! Pretty amazing.

So after our first lovely wine tasting, we bought a bottle of this wine, because Hubby is a mathematician. We planned on going to a few more wineries, and passed a few adorable shops we wanted to stop in. We also saw a historical and museum district that we wanted to check out, I love learning about Long Island history! We were planning to eat our cheese and olives at our next winery, which had a beautiful outdoor space.

And then came our little glitch. Which was actually a big glitch. I went out to pump in the car. I put on my shawl, and got my pump all hooked up to the battery pack. Then I went to take out the bottles to pump into.

The bottles.

Bottles?

*&%$.

The bottles are sitting next to the sink drying from when I pumped and washed them this morning.

I couldn't pump. I couldn't pump. It was 1 pm. I hadn't fed baby since the morning. Theoretically, I should have already pumped once, but the morning was so fun and carefree that I put it off a bit. I was FULL of milk. To the point that it was painful. And we were 1 1/2 hours from home. Breast feeders are cringing right now.

We had to go home. I had no choice. There was nowhere to buy the pump attachments where we were. And I needed to get the milk out. So, without getting specific, let just say I had to squeeze the milk out the whole way home so I did not get an infection. Let me tell you, it's not easy. A mammogram will be a cinch for me when the time comes. I manually pumped 2 1/2 ounces of milk, until my arms were burning I was pumping so hard. Ah, motherhood!

(FYI: This is when I whined. And cursed. And then I said, "Well..we had a really fun, romantic morning!" Sigh.)

So we got home, I pumped, and fed baby. And then we cut up our cheese, the my mama did this.

She had just bought some new delicious wines. Like 4 or 5 different reds and blends. And she set up a wine tasting. She felt so bad about what happened to our day.

She was very good at it! She gave us tons more information about each wine than the wine tasting people even did. She red the description of each bottle, told us her personal experience of how she found out about and/or tasted them, and then we tasted and discussed.

This is her face that she makes when she tells a story. I think Reilly inherited her eyes.

And, our tastings were MUCH more generous as well!
Thank you, Mama! We love you.

Delicious.

Over all, it was a fun fun weekend.

And it goes to show you, no matter how much you pack and plan and pack and plan, you can never plan everything. God decides what you do each day, but we can decide what we do with it. Go with His flow. Know that he made it happen for some reason for another. Sure we had a beautiful day planned, but the one we had was just as beautiful. And you can whine about it. I certainly did on the ride home.

But it's much funner to wine about it. :)

Love,

Dirt Road Mama

Crickets are Not Cute.

Here is your warning: if bugs gross you out, do not look at the pictures that I posted today. But keep in mind that this one is dead, even though he looks alive. And also keep in mind that I had to encounter this bug in my basement at 5:45 this morning, so suck it up. It's just a picture.



But the bug is gross. Awful. Horrific.



Well, let me explain the encounter.



As a backstory, I would like it to be known that Eric Carle has lied to me. I love Eric Carle. Amazing autor, artist, writer. He taught me about the Very Hungry Caterpillar and the Clumsy Clickbeetle, and I read him to the Reilly Baby. However, he also taught me about the Quiet Cricket. Such a cute, sweet, book...with beautiful music at the end in the scene of a starry night. You lied to me, Mr. Carle. Crickets are not cute. Not at all.



So I had to go down to my basement fridge to get some more juice. I need to drink gallons a day for the breast feeding, so I need to start early. So I was at the top of the stairs, and then I saw it. It was at the bottom of the stairs, and it was crawling slowly and creepily. It looks like it was crawling with 5 arms. A slow army crawl. It. was. GINORMOUS.



I screamed for Hubby and said, "ComehereComehereComehere. Drop whatever you are doing and come over here right now right now! And bring a textbook." Of course he thought I was dying so he ran over and said, "What's the matter!" Then he saw my nemesis, and he said the unbelieveable words:



"Honey, it's just a cricket."



WHAT! A CRICKET!! That is the very quiet cricket who learns to make beautiful music?!

[Now I will admit, as angry as I was that such an ugly insect had such a misrepresented reputation, I was relieved that it was not a cockroach. Cockroach would mean horrible things. Namely, that my home is dirty. And that would make me cry. I've only ever seen a cockroach in the bathroom of a Burger King in Arkansas. Good times.]



So then it happened. Hubby ran down the stairs, searched quickly for something to hit it with, and nothing was nearby. So he killed it with his bare hands. Actually his fingers, but that doesn't sound as cool. He flicked it. Hubby always flicks bugs and kills then on contact. I don't have enough finger flick power, I've tried to do it. Something about the potential engergy of the flick, I imagine. Same reason I can't snap my fingers. Not enough finger power.

Anywho, here is the demon. That Hubby killed. With his bare fingers.



OKAY! RIGHT! Now you understand my panic. And hatred for all things cricket. He looks like he should have become extinct with his cousin, the Pterodactyl.

And let's just give a cyber high five to my Hubby for saving my life!! And Reilly's life! From this creature! Wait, not yet, first put that awful thing down, then we'll high five you.

(This is it's belly. Ugh.)

Okay, HIGH FIVE! You all should get yourself a tough country Hubby. Not mine, but a different one. One who flicks bugs. It's really a wonderful thing. Love you, Handsome.

Side note: When he began coming upstairs with this creature, dead, in his fingers...I ran in the other room and hid from him. Just in case he came back to life and decided to jump out of Husband's death grip and attack me.

Why are these creatures only in the country? I did not grow up with this. We only had ants where I grew up. The occasional bee. Maybe a worm when it rained. Lord help Reilly when she looks to her Mama to be brave. Mama's not cut out for these horrific encounters. Especially not before my coffee. Thank you for listening, I feel better already.

Love & Snug as Bug,

Dirt Road Mama

Reilly Appleseed

Rei Rei, did you have fun apple picking?!

Mama and Daddy had fun with you. We love apple picking, and we wanted to show you how fun it is!

You and Daddy had fun before I came along, Mama? said Reilly.

Of course we did, silly! We went apple picking every year! Wanna see?

Yes! said Reilly.


Here we are apple picking in New England during Mama's first year in college! We went to the same farm every time.

That candy apple looks yummy, Mama. Can you put that in the ice cubes for me? asked Reilly.

Soon, baby, soon,

Here we are the next year, at the same orchard. We had just gotten engaged the month before!


And then this was the next year! Aren't Daddy's sunglasses cool, Reilly?

Yes Mama! I think everything Daddy wears is cool! said Reilly.




And here we are with you this year! We always had fun at the farms...but never as much fun as seeing it all through your eyes.

Mima and Poppy, and Auntie Mimi and Uncle Eric loved having you there, too! Something tells me it would have been harder getting everyone to drive an hour to go apple picking if you weren't there in your cute little jeans, Reilly!

You guys love me a lot, huh Mama? said Reilly.

Yes, baby, we do. You make us smile a lot.




Mama, there's me going for the apple! Daddy helped me, cause I'm small. said Reilly.

Yes, you did so well! It's so much fun showing you everything we love to do, baby.

What else is there to show me, Mama? Anything else? asked Rei.

Yes baby, lots of things. We have lots more things to show you.

Love & Appleseeds,

Dirt Road Mama