the squibix family blog

I did eat fruit because people who say fruit is sugar are crazy. And I okayed maple syrup and honey to be there in case of emergency. And on sundays I put equal in my coffee because the point is just to miss something, not to hate life entirely.

But still. It was kind of a big deal.

I had a big thing to ask God. I wanted a real relationship with Jesus. Not a theoretical relationship with the historical Jesus. I wanted to meet the guy.

Now, of course I had a relationship with Jesus before. I'm saved and all. But what it felt like was, I'm this prisoner and I have a big hot-shot lawyer in the best law firm in the country. But he's so busy that I never see him, I only sometimes get to talk to him on the phone. And mostly I don't even get to talk to him on the phone, he's so busy he never picks up, so I only write my notes on the margins of the legal briefs and pass them along and hope he reads them. I'd like to see him sometime if he gets the chance, but all the same he's a great lawyer and I'm really glad he's representing me.

Like that.

So I did this sugar fast thinking it'd help me get closer to Jesus. And I'm happy to say I don't think it had anything to do with the sugar. Jesus was more than happy to take a meeting.

Of course, the way I am, I think to change my life I have to change my diet. What a Jew I am. Perhaps I over-think things.

I am looking forward to the return of sugar this Sunday with some excitement. I really do miss ketchup (Oona, I know you're laughing at this if you read all the way to here). But there's also lots of trepidation. I don't miss walking into the kitchen when the kids are screaming and thinking, You know what would make this day go better? CHOCOLATE CHIPS!!!!! Maybe the next time that happens I should call my lawyer.

I used a cashmere JCrew sweater that will no longer accommodate my post-baby body. Did I really ever wear a size small? It was a favorite sweater, though, so I was very conservative with the fabric. I made 10 baby chicks from just the two sleeves. There's still the entire body of the sweater left! Maybe I'll make a cashmere chicken sometime down the road...

Continuing with the bird theme, I ordered some white rubber duckies online and decorated them with sharpies. The "Joseph" duck is for Harvey and the zebra duck is for Zion.

I washed them with soap and hot water after coloring, so I think they should be safe for both bath time and chewing on. It's a fun little project, although it's hard to keep colored fingerprints off the ducks while you're doing it, as evidenced by Joseph duck's head tattoo. I have 10 more for the kids to color at our easter party. Sharpies and Easter clothes? I don't know, I'll see how the other parents feel about it.

We are hosting an Easter party you see, for our small group and accompanying ten children. I wanted this to be the biggest egg hunt these kids have ever seen. It's the first one I'm making personally, so I'm just full of a converts zeal about it. I ordered a gross of easter eggs online and then when I had them in front of me decided that this was nowhere near enough. This is what it looked like in our living room when I stuffed 190 plastic eggs.

In addition to candy, playdough, and plastic trinkets, I also made bunny finger puppets for each child.

Sorry the shot is blurry, I took it in the midst of egg-stuffing madness. Yes, I put the bunnies in eggs because I thought they'd be fun to find, and I wanted a mix of hand-made stuff with the store-bought crap. Dan asked me, "How can we ensure one child won't find them all and hog them?" The answer is, I don't know. I mixed up all the eggs so that the bunnies won't be hidden close to one another. Beyond that? I'm relying on the resurrected Jesus to help me out. Also, their godly parents will probably make them share. If I have a few extra minutes before Sunday I might make another two bunnies to keep in my pocket just in case.

Of course, I don't anticipate many free minutes before Sunday afternoon. The boys outfits (as you can see from Dan's lovely photography) lack ties. I'll write more about the clothes next week when I get some good on-person shots. What I will say now is this: I get quicker every year at turning out these Easter clothes and yet.... For some reason I remain surprised that my idiotic refusal to make muslins results in stupid alterations to what should be finished garments. Whatever, I don't want to talk about the pants now. I'll talk about them in a later post. Now I have to find a bow-tie pattern for a one-year-old.

This is going to be the best Easter ever.

I was safe for a while, happy dog owner, but three years later the bubbler started up again. "When are we going to have a baby? Let's have a baby! Can we get pregnant NOW?"

Last year in the springtime I couldn't go to sleep for looking at pictures of different chicken breeds online. After we got our chickens, though, I was sure I was safe from the manic oppression of the bubbler. We can't have any more animals now, certainly, and two babies in diapers is enough for the time being.

And I WAS safe, for a whole twelve months or so. Then I saw this blog and something clicked into place. And that thing is the bubbler going "I HAVE to get dreadlocks."

Dan says, "Dear Lord, these episodes are coming closer and closer together!"
"Yes," I reply, "But of all the things I ask for, dreadlocks will require the smallest time commitment from YOU."

Now back up. I've thought about wanting dreads on and off since 2003, but I always dismissed the idea as too crazy for any number of good reasons. I was trying to get a job or I never wanted to go through a short hair grow out phase or I'm afraid my sensory integration issues will drive me batty if I can't wash and comb my hair every day. Then again, you'd think there are rational reasons why someone might not want to own a dog or chickens or two children in diapers, but something beyond ration drives those choices, and that something has turned on under the dreadlock issue for some reason. That's the only way I can explain why I'm spending every free moment watching dread maintenance videos on YouTube.

I've been praying a lot over the past few days whether I should move forward with this. Will my neighbors judge me more harshly and call the cops when my dog gets out? Will people in my Small Group stop taking me seriously? I prayed and prayed about it and today I heard God laughing, "LEAH! I JUST DON'T CARE!"

I mean, we're not talking about gender reassignment surgery or anything. This is a hairstyle.

The next step is seeing if I can save up a month's worth of babysitting money, given that I also need to pay the real estate tax this month, and also buy some meat to eat for God's sake, because Dan and I totally both have a protein deficiency; we're like mainlining peanuts after every meal. Something has to be done. I don't care if we're poor we need to allocate a greater percentage of our budget to eating animals. Seriously, our brains need protein to function. HEY! Do you think that's the source of the bubbler? Lack of brain fuel? Okay, so real estate tax first and a roasting chicken second and when there's enough money left over I'll call the hair salon and ask them about extensions.

Harvey for his part likes getting dressed in lots of clothes, and together they made a striking pair.

The sewing details are as follows: The pants are the Little Heartbreaker pattern from the book Sewing for Boys. A good pattern, even though it is long and exacting. Nothing too hard, just a lot of steps with the pleats and the pockets and the edge stitching every which way. Still, I really like the look, if you can make it in the right size. I made Harvey's in size 4/5 and that was a big mistake. He normally wears a size 4, but the pattern came out way too big and I needed to take in an inch on either side. Even so the pants were falling down throughout the day, and I had to make some impromptu pleats in the back with safety pins. So he won't get much wear out of this pair, but I'm thinking of making some jeans for him in the 2/3 size. He really does like those pockets.

The vests are based on a free Burda Style pattern that Dan helped me size up for Harvey and down for Zion. They go together really easy for a big presentation value. I got some great compliments at church along the lines of "Where did you FIND those outfits?!! Gasp! You made those?" (Yeah, that's totally why I do this, ego pet pet.) Unfortunately, our best guess at the pattern drafting wasn't quite wide enough for Zion's ball-shaped body, so I used elastic closures around the buttons instead of button holes. It ended up looking really cute, and gave him a lot more room to maneuver his pudgy little torso. And it was easier for me than making another entire vest. Drafting is not really my strong suit. One day I'll learn my lesson and make a stupid muslin.

Dan came up with the idea of bow-tie for Zion / tie for Harvey, and as always he was spot-on with his fashion sense. Both come from internet tutorials that I altered so much it will not serve you to see the original links. If you want the accessories like the ones you see here you can come to my house and copy my pattern. Or you can buy some from my etsy shop... when I get around to creating one.

Harvey is so lovely to sew for. What an appreciative little child. In every fitting he just gushed over the pants. "Beautiful beautiful pants you made, Mama!" "Can I try on my Easter pants again?" And when he knows I'm making something for him he's so excited about it. "Is my tie ready?" "Can I wear my tie tomorrow?" What a doll. I sure do have a nice family.

But what is Easter really about? Photos? Presents? Bragging about my sewing and my stunningly cute children? No, Harvey said it best when he was playing on the floor this evening: "Life is risen! He's risen indeed!"

Happy Easter everybody!

We spent most of our time playing around the house that burned down. ("Why'd it burn down?" "You see that big fireplace in the middle Harvey? Well the fire from the fireplace went onto some of the wood by mistake, and it made the house catch on fire and burn down." Two minutes later: "Why'd it burn down?" "Because the fire escaped the fireplace and got onto the wood and that made the wood burn." Two minutes later, "Why'd it burn down." "Because it caught on fire, Harvey." One minute later, "Why'd it burn down?" "Fire, Harvey. Fire.")

We also took a long walk behind the Hartwell Tavern and looked at some now-uninhabited chicken coops with sticks over the window as bars. I wonder if that was ever really raccoon proof? Maybe raccoons had more wild prey in 1775.

They probobly didn't have mesh flooring in 1775. I wonder when they put that in, and if the historical society every kept chickens back here.

Then we played in the sheep pasture. This space is really wasted without animals. We need some intrepid young farmer to propose raising sheep on the national park land... it would really up the authenticity of the place, especially if the shepherd dressed in colonial garb and brought in heritage breeds.

Zion found a bucket in the sheep pen and exercised his love of containers. You can see why his mother took up baskets weaving for him.

All in all, we spent a lovely morning with the park to ourselves. It turns out I have great boys, and they act great when I let them explore someplace new, rather then letting them turn the living room into the site of a cage match while I desperately try to fold laundry. I don't think field trips are the only solution to my personal rain-cloud... paying some bills and eating some protein and getting some sleep would probably help to. But outings are a good start.

Logistics

It seems like there are two ways to dread your hair when you're a white person. One, you can roll them yourself and gradually let them dread over the course of a year. This is the more messy route, and your hair is kind of a long-term project you're working on. The other ways is to pay a professional to backcomb and seriously break apart your hair. It costs something like $300, but then you have the basic shape of dreads in a day, with them looking more like normal tight dreads in 6 weeks.

I'm not a real hippy, so I'd get salon dreads. I hate gradual change.

The other logistical decision is whether to add fake hair extensions in there. The extensions would make the finished hairstyle look fuller, and they'd also enable me to get smaller dreads. White people often have big thick dreads and few of them. I would love thinner dreads and more of them, but it would require the addition of plastic hair. I was really set on getting extensions before I saw them today at the beauty shop. Then all of a sudden I had second thoughts about both the look and the weight of the plastic on my head. Still, I want to look more like Shakira and less like Buckwheat. I don't know, jury's still out.

Why do you want dreads?

There are very few hairstyles you need to defend with an ideological argument, but dreadlocks is one of them. I'd start by saying that first and foremost I think dreadlocks look pretty. I think I would look pretty in dreadlocks. Hairstyles are about vanity foremost, and I wouldn't do something to my hair if I didn't think it would look better than many other alternatives.

But of course that isn't sufficient. Dreadlocks are an identity statement, for good and for ill. I am excited that strangers just meeting a me with dreadlocks might assume some of the following things:

I am more poor than rich. This is true.

I hold liberal to extreme political views. This is also true.

I am a calm person who enjoys chilling out. This is not true, though I wish it was.

They might also assume the following negative things:

I do drugs. This could not be any more untrue. I have nothing against drugs, I just have no desire to spend my time that way. See above re: inability to chill out.

I am dirty. This is sometimes true. I do spend a lot of time with poo-producing children and animals. But mostly I shower, and even with dreads I would wash my head with soap.

To conclude this point, I think dreads are prettier then my normal Fran Drescher looking hair, and the messages they impute are more positive to me than negative.

Yeah, but then you couldn't get a job.

I am not on a professional career track right now. Indeed, I've gone in and out of wanting dreads for almost a decade, but I've never seriously considered doing it because I was, like, trying to get hired or keep a job or whatever. Now that I am raising children and out of the workforce I feel that dreads would be a better expression of my personality then curly hair perpetually pulled back into a ponytail. I don't think I'll have dreads forever; if and when I want to go back to work I'll cut them off and have short hair for a while.

There are more questions this raises, however, because dreads might bring greater public scrutiny to certain choices we've made regarding our financial situation. It's a complicated issue, but I'll try to touch on it quickly. Even though we face pretty big financial challenges, Dan and I still think it's best for me to stay home with the kids rather than trying to return to work. Our ideal situation would be for Dan to get a slightly higher paying job so we could make ends meet with me staying home. Because his current job isn't ideal, we accept assistance to make our bills work out, both from the government in the form of food stamps and heating assistance, and from private charity at our local food pantry. There's this sort of stance one expects from someone taking charity: "Of course I would help myself out of this situation if I could, but I lost my job and then I just keep getting knocked up..." At least, I feel sometimes that I have to justify myself, give a reasonable reason why I'm poor that people would believe (that I don't know how to use birth control) rather than a rationed explanation why I've make certain choices that keep me poor (that I believe raising children in the absence of money is preferable to raising children in the absence of me during the daytime). If you come into a food pantry as a white girl with dreadlocks then it's something different though; you're willfully flying in the face of people who diligently try to find employment. I don't think that's necessarily bad... it's true after all. It's just, I've made a decision to be out of the workforce for the time being, and I wouldn't be able to hide that decision anymore. Dreadlocks would mean that I'm wearing my choices in a way that I can't pretend away. Is that good or bad? I don't know. It's challenging.

There are other little things to consider. Would normal people stop being friends with me? What would the neighbors think? Will Dan ever totally get behind this decision?

Anyway, I think that covers my thought process up to this point. I'm mostly doing this to be pretty and because I want to change my hair, but there's a lot of background stuff to consider. Anyone else have an opinion on this?

I does give me pause sometimes to think about the things I write about and the people who could be reading them. I believe there's value in being transparent, but I do wince sometimes to think that an ex boyfriend will find out that I'm living in poverty, or that I only ever had sex with my husband twice and I got pregnant both times. (Well, that's an exaggeration.... that I plan to tell my children when they reach puberty.)

I hope everyone follows the blog on an RSS reader, because if you don't that stresses me out that I should be putting up new content every day. And also we put all the content into the RSS, and we don't serve ads there or anywhere, so there's no excuse for you. Download NetNewsWire and stop wasting so much of your time seeing if your favorite blogs posted new content. I'm only saying this for your own good.

Anyway, if you want to start reading this blog but haven't ever before, here's the rundown:

I (Leah) am a stay at home mom of two lovely boys, Harvey who is almost 3 and Zion who is almost 1. Dan works in the public schools. We live at around the poverty line, and sometimes we write about how we have no money. I do a lot of crafting and sometimes I pretend like this is a craft blog and put up photos and talk in lingo that no one understands. Dan is an awesome gardener and sometimes writes about that, as well as about biking at which he also smokes the competition. We have four chickens and a dog but they're not allowed to hang out together.

We are also people of faith and sometimes we write about that. I hope in a way that isn't too off-putting, but I don't try hard enough to not put folks off. We also sometimes talk about politics, and I'm SURE we're off putting when we do that.

If you want a blog that is both beautiful and sexy, you should read my cousin Helen's blog. If you want to read about my hair and cute things my kids say, you're in the right place.

Thank you everybody who reads our blog! You are always welcome to come over and hang out and take home some eggs. Just email me and give me a little warning so I can pretend like I keep a clean house.

Here's another banal deep thought coming your way. It's hard for me to reconcile my current sense of self with the person my facebook friends knew ten years ago. Of course, the Leah who goes to reunions is the same person: I certainly present the same combination of fake-outgoing anxious over-sharing bubbly exhaustion that I did in high school. That's just the way I talk. But from a values perspective there are few things I cared about ten years ago that I still care about now. (Of course how banal again. I had kids in that interim and that changes everything; I'm not saying anything that everyone else hasn't figured out, and yet and yet...)

The person that I was ten years ago, overanxious and striving and wicked concerned about my appearance, that person died (theology alert!) and was buried in the waters of baptism. Yes, I know the way I appear in this blog post is overanxious about my appearance, but, er, it feels different and I swear I'm a different person. And theologically speaking I can be both that person and a different person; we are resurrected both in the "now" and the "not yet."

Dot dot dot. I feel like I started to write this post with an air of "You guys don't get me" and now that I've written it I find the whole thing kind of bitchy.

Dot dot dot. I've left this post and come back and I've completely changed my mind. Of course I am the same person I was ten years ago, extremely anxious over how other people view me and whether they accept me. If not, why would I vomit so many words about whether people like or dislike a hairstyle that I haven't even gotten yet?

No. The Leah I was at 6 and at 16 (theology alert!) is the Leah that God created, the same Leah that lives today saying every stupid joke that comes into my head and being more exuberant than the social situation warrants and having my heart break into pieces every time I see a fuzzy animal. But. (one last theology alert and then I'm done.) The Leah at 16 did not live in freedom, and I do. On account of Jesus, yes. Primarily so. But also on account of pursuing a life of freedom. Living freely sometimes feels very easy (thank you Jesus) and sometimes very difficult (thank you facebook). But that's the struggle that we've set ourselves to, and I hope that's what my friends see in me when they look at me and see a crazy person.

Okay, enough on this already. Hair is going into dreads on Thursday. I'm not going to talk about it again until I have photos.

Now. These are not the first Christians to conclude that their liberation from sin plus their love in Christ for every man equal open hunting season for hippy booty. (Has anyone used the phrase "patchouli booty" before? They should.) We talked about this in bible study last night in fact... Why should we stand agape at an open marriage and not, say premarital sex or driving on the sabbath or wearing garments made of mixed fibers. I mean, Jesus invalidated lots of laws. Isn't where we draw the line only based on our moral relativism?

By the way, if your bible study doesn't discuss free love when you read Revelation then I feel bad for you. I'd be happy to sign on as a consultant...

But back to the topic at hand. I have often found myself defending polygamy. Polygamy solves a lot of problems... the need for extra help and companionship in chores and childbearing, the need for someone else to have sex with your husband when you're recovering from giving birth.... for 13 months. Of corse societal polygamy causes problems too, notably the need to purge a large number of boys from the fold every generation, but I then there are drawbacks to everything.

I confess, however, that sometimes I fantasize TOO MUCH about polygamy. I would just love it if someone else could jump in and solve all the challenges that being married presents. I can even concoct very loving looking orgy fantasies. But they're not really biblical. "An elder must be blameless, the husband of but one wife..." (Titus 1:6) I have a tough time arguing that Jesus's death invalidated laws written in the New Testament.

Dan's conclusion last night in BStudy is that whether or not free love works for the Sparkling family, blogging about it risks putting a stumbling block in front of those who are struggling with promiscuity and its negative effects. I think that's a nice counterpoint to a theology of complete freedom.

And hey, there's another lesson to be learned from this: If you want to increase loyalty in your readership base, announce something sexy on your blog. I just can't wait to hear what happens next.

And here's how I'll wear it until it tightens up and looks less messy in the front

I actually think the wrap looks pretty cute! I have like an imperative to accessorize now.

I've had some moments of "Oh Lord, what did I do to my hair??!" in equal measure with "Oh my God this looks so adorable!!!" My curly hair was lovely, but I needed a change and a reprieve from the way the curls pulled at each other and hurt all over. I'm happy to report the dreads feel feather light, as if there's nothing on my head at all. Not to say that I dreaded my hair to help my sensory integration issues, but it's definitely a plus.. All in all I'm enjoying the feeling that this hairstyle, while feeling major in a way, is actually a rather low stakes life change. If I don't like it I can have really short hair in a few months. Is that really such a big deal? Anyway, for now I feel good, and I'm excited to see how the dreads will cinch up and get thinner in the coming weeks.

I want to make a cute funny joke here, but I stayed up past midnight with the hairdresser and Harvey woke me up at 5:30. So, um, yeah. Dreads. Yipee!