One of the great benefits to starting a family in Latvia is the maternity leave. It starts 70 days before your due date and continues for up to a year after the birth. For the record, I got to choose my own due date (within a certain range) as was most convenient for my work schedule - I chose February 8 meaning I've technically been on maternity leave since December 1.
The first weeks went by in a flash - lots of midwife and doctors visits and a few trips to government offices to get the maternity leave squared away. (Luckily, since sunrise isn't until nearly 9am in December, I showed up at the offices when they opened at 8.30 and was able to avoid the lines.) Plus I actually spent a fair amount of time at school still in December wrapping things up, and will still be in to finish up a few things in January.
And of course I could not just allow myself to relax during this time - I am on three graduate level online courses (two of which I'm aiming to start and finish in the month of January before we become a family of three). I figured I sure won't have extra time on my hands after February, so might as well take advantage of these 70 days I got. At the rate we're going though, I feel like I could blink one more time and February will be upon us!
Lots of my time is filled with reading - preparing myself for birth and parenting, reading texts for coursework, and also just for fun. Mims the Wondercat has taken this as a time to start getting to know the baby. She kneads my stomach for a while, then lays down and he kicks and pokes her for a while, then she kneads him again, and so we go on.... It's a pretty cozy way to spend this season of hibernation if I do say so myself. :)
It's not that the last year and a half in Latvia hasn't been as deliciously sunny, as soak-you-to-your-bones rainy and as magically rainbow-y as the previous years. It's just that I didn't really care as much to experience it in the same way.
After the first years of excitement at every new experience, friendship and opportunity, realities started settling in. Dear friends who had become our local family moved away one or two at a time. The economic situation was a whole lot rainier than sunny for longer than was comfortable, and the repetition of one-step-forward, two-steps-back just wears on you after a while. And just as promptly as we were filled with excitement again at the biggest ray of sunshine we'd seen in a long time, that got rained out as well when 2010 started with a positive pregnancy test that ended with a miscarriage exactly on my Name's Day a short 8 weeks later. Not so much a downpour as storm that just plain knocks you off your feet.
Now that I am finally slowing down and taking some much needed time for reflection, I realize how I've stepped back from life in the last year and a half. It's not even that I've identified more with the rainy side of life during this time, it's just been more comfortable to spend lots of "me time" in the calm and relative safety of our home. Not sunny or rainy, it just "is".
Happily, this chapter of my life has wrapped itself up (and that's not said in regret, it was certainly a time that was needed and served its own purpose) and I'm ready to waddle back out into the highs and lows of life in Latvia - smile intact. :)
Why waddle?
In the next 5-9 weeks we'll be joined in our journey by a new little person - also already lovingly known as Mazais Saimnieks ("little farmer"), Little Drummer Boy, Pucite (little owl), Chupins (short for "chupins of cuteness" or "little pile of cuteness"),
Mini Dude and "Mazins bet Mighty" (little but mighty). I'm quite sure I'm joining mothers around the world in saying this, but from my point of view, never before has another little human being been awaited with this much love and excitement. :)
I recently had a conversation with my own mom in which she was reflecting on how having children impacted her own life. She remembered actually having free time before us, but even now that we have been out of the house for years, she still hasn't been able to regain that sense of "me time" because something always needs to be done. I already put it down for the record with her, but now I am going public with that (and feel free to remind me of this at any point in the next X amount of years that I'm on earth) - I realize my life will never be just my own anymore and I am ready for this.
Surely there will be days that I'll be ready to give anything for five minutes to myself, but at this moment which I hope I'll always be able to remind myself of - I am ready for this little person to come into my life with all of his quirks and needs because with that comes all of his magic. If I haven't been so interested in getting out to see something new or even to do the same-old in the last while, I simply can't wait to do it all - new and old - with our little person because for him EVERYthing will be brand new and magical. There is so much to learn and experience and do in this life and to see it all through his eyes will be amazing. I've seen it with children I've worked with for years, and I'm thankful beyond words that this will be part of my daily experience. He will bring heaps of sunshine, undoubtedly plenty of rain, and above all brilliant rainbows into this home.
We're working hard to catch the Christmas spirit this year with the soupy gray weather just outside our window and sloppy ground that instantly absorbs any chance at brightness that the few attempts at snow have tried to bring. The thing that warms us every time is talking about how next year, our Mazais Saimnieks will be enjoying his first Christmas - probably already pulling himself up on furniture and cruising around as we hold his hands, wide eyes taking it all in.
How can that thought alone not make you look at the whole world with a smile again?
The harvest has begun! Tomatoes (red, yellow and brown), cucumbers, lettuce, basil (red, green and our own marbalized hybrid), green peppers, chili peppers, habanero peppers, green onions, oregano, parsley....all coming out of our greenhouse at astonishing rates.
The greenhouse (also fondly known as 11. trolejbus - and some of our 5 and younger visitors have taken the title seriously, locking themselves in and taking "rides" this summer) has been one of KB's main projects this summer, and we are definitely enjoying the benefits of all the hard work.
But the "surprise garden" is happening at Jaunvitagas this summer. This spring we tried an experiment - KB plowed a small area of land, we threw some seedlings that had been sprouted at home into the gound, put up a quick fence around the area and decided to see what would happen. Our neighbors were convinced the wild boar would tear it apart. We were a bit discouraged when we saw how quickly weeds were coming up and even more discouraged by the massive heat this summer, and felt sure nothing would survive as no one was there to water, weed or otherwise maintain the garden.
Much to our surprise, this week we came home with five massive zucchinis that were buried among the weeds, uncovered two pumpkins well on their way to being full grown and many pumpkin flowers, and are unsure whether three very healthy plants are also cucumbers or squash, but are excited to find out. Seems us not weeding probably helped these plants not get dried out in the great heat and they thrived regardless. And though there are animal tracks circling the garden, the fence has not been touched.
Another great surprise was sugar peas. The ones in our greenhouse did not do well, but somehow, a good number of pea seeds got mixed in with a bunch of wildflowers KB planted at Jaunvitagas and we unexpectedly picked a bag full of peas as well.
Along with the regular mushrooming and berry picking, I've been quite busy in the kitchen with all the goods from the harvest. To me, a very good way to spend my last few days before school begins again.
I've decided there are two seasons in Latvia - hibernation and the active season. This makes blogging more of a challenge, because during hibernation, there's not much to write about and during the active season, well, I'm out there living it and there's not much time to write about it!
This weekend I'm sick in bed with a fever watching the beautiful weather through my window. I wanted to update the blog with photos, but the camera is out with KB who's more active than ever this active season with Laimins, the new (to us) blue mini-tractor. Sun up at 4:30 am and sundown after 10:30 pm makes for some very long workdays for him. I myself am trying to keep my head above the water with the inevitable end of the school year craziness coupled with a fairly intensive (or maybe it just seems so with all the other work right now) six-week online course.
Updates on the farmer front this year include two greenhouses constructed right here in Sigulda and a fenced in garden at Jaunvitagas. Photos to follow hopefully soon. Hope everyone is enjoying their own active season, no matter where you are in the world!
....the more in awe I am of how I choose books (or books choose me) at just the right times in my life.
Today's quote that went straight to my heart:
"Every time I thought that I was 'put together,' I realized that we're always putting ourselves together, gathering the world in, letting it sift down and form us."
(Calla Lily Ponder, herione of my current Kindle book)
Spring and winter are absolutely hanging out together at the moment. I'm trying to think of it in nice terms, it doesn't feel like they are fighting each other, but rather playing together, each taking short turns making their appearance. Even with the ever increasing sunlight, the choirs of birds and the unmistakeable smell of spring in the air, yesterday it snowed again. This added just enough snow to the many centimeters already on the ground, that the fence separating our yard from the neighbors is now completely buried. Thus, we have a temporary visitor, the neighbor's German shepard now lives in our yard as well. :)
The pictures don't really do justice to the mountain of snow, but in the photos, he is literally laying on top of fence. The good news is, hopefully there will be no more neighborhood cats peeing on our front door trying to get Mima's attention, now that dog smell is all about. The bad news is he found several plastic flower pots in our backyard (I think they were on our back mini-porch) and destroyed them all over our backyard.
And Mims also wants her fifteen minutes of fame, so here is a bit of photo evidence of her latest hobby: alternating between loving and attempting to kill her catnip lion, her Christmas present from her family in the US.
This is the yearly post in which I can officially announce that the sun has come back to us! The days have been noticeably lighter and lighter for a while now (that's what happens when you gain sunlight at the amazing rate of an extra four and a half minutes a day), and today I left the house for the train at a few minutes to 6am with a band of light on the horizon and when I got home at quarter to 7 the sun was just on it's way down in a beautiful sunset. Hooray! Nevermind that we still have centimeters upon centimeters of snow on the ground (not particularly in any hurry to melt), the sky has been blue for six days in a row now and the smell of spring was unmistakeably in the air. It's like reuniting with an old friend. :)
