7 quick takes

Here’s the thing, I want to blog, I really do…. I write blog posts in my head all the time, but they never make it to the computer, cause when I sit down my mind turns off.  So I’m going to try joining up with the 7 quick takes linkers.  It is what it says- every Friday, I’ll try and blog about a few random things, and not worry too much about pictures or telling a coherent story.  Cause right now I would not describe myself as coherent.

taking pictures with my left hand requires a serious face

1.     First and most important, little Miss M.  Sorry to post a teaser picture and not follow up (although if we are real life friends, go check my facebook page for lots of pics!).  Miss M is one month old today!  We  have been her parents since she was only 30 hours old, and if everything goes right we should be her long term mom and dad.  I don’t like to write a lot of details or use certain words to describe our situation here because Belize is such a small country, and I am quite recognizable (how many skinny gringa girls with goats in Belize?  Not that many.)  so to prevent certain google searches from linking to my site I’ll continue to be a bit vague on that front.  Miss M is the most laid back, chubby little kiddo and we love her to pieces.

2.     And of course we still have the babes, baby K, who will be 2 years old in a little bit.  That means that in the last 8 months we have gone to from childless to having 2 under 2.  We have the lost brain cells to prove it.

3.     For example, today has been the pinnacle of my brainlessness.  I decided to start a wash of cloth diapers (more on that in a bit) which involved turning the hose on to fill our washer since we use a vat with no water pump and I have to fill the washer manually.  An hour and a half later my husband came home and discovered  the filled washer….and  the solid 2 centimeters of water covering our entire bathroom floor since I forgot to turn the hose off. 

4.     Miss M is a good sleeper, but she is still a newborn and gets up a couple of times a night.  I do not do well with lost sleep.  I made it through college and grad school without pulling a single all-nighter because my brain does not function that way.  Anyways, about the advice “sleep while the baby is sleeping”… how does that work when you also have an almost 2 year old?  When people meet the babes, the #1 comment is, “wow is he energetic!,” [followed by nervous laughter as they mentally cross fingers hoping we will never ask them to baby sit].   My father-in-law had 7 children, 5 of them boys, and after our weekend visit he kept repeating in astonishment, “that boy has been here all afternoon and he has never stopped moving.”  Yep.  No naps for me.

5.      Cloth diapers.  I have not figured out how to adapt this to Belize quite yet.  We are part-timing it, doing disposables at night and when going out, and cloth during the day.  Mostly to save some money and also because we have to burn all our trash and wet diapers are a nightmare to burn.  Anyways, my problem is what to do with wet  cloth diapers.  I’m nervous to throw them in a water-proof bag until I do wash cause I don’t want a moldy mess.  Here people throw them in a bucket to soak until washing, but having a bucket with water around the babes is a no-go.  Most likely it will end up dumped on the floor, but I don’t want to take the chance of him falling in either.  Right now I just throw them up on the line when I get a chance each day but this sometimes leads to a buildup of stinky wet diapers hanging out in the bathroom till I go outside.  Ideas?

6. On to goats.  We are down to 6, from about 20 (we downsized to our best), and we are finally seeing the benefits of almost 5 years of breeding.  The babes drank powdered milk when he came to us, but a few months ago we were able to switch him to goats milk exclusively.  We saw a change in a week, no joke.  His skin cleared up, he looks sleeker, and his digestive troubles stopped.  He’s gained more weight in the last 2 months then he had in the previous 6 months.  We are so fortunate and so happy that we decided to get into the goat hobby years ago.

7.    And finally, I realized that I first came to Belize almost 9 years ago, which is the longest I’ve been in any place other then the town I grew up in.  Maybe in another 9 years I will finally have this living-in-Belize thing down pat….

Edited to add:  aaaaand just to cap it all off, I published this on Thursday instead of Friday, and it seriously took me half a day to figure out why no one else had put up their Friday posts...