Here is a picture of the couch I was sitting on, the dog I was petting, and the phone I was using… when my best friend in the world, Angela, told me that she’d just given birth, unassisted, at home.

She had what’s refered to as a “UC” or unassisted childbirth, meaning that no birth “professional” was there. Just her and her husband. Her kids and her mom were just outside the room. The birth was incredibly perfect, and she feels great. She sounded amazing. I am so proud and filled with admiration and love for her.

Have I mentioned that we’re back to raw-feeding the dogs? Some refer to it as BARF (bones and raw food) but that just makes me want to barf, so I call it raw feeding. However, the dogs aren’t too hip to the idea. I’m on a few yahoo groups specifically devoted to raw feeding, and I’m just going to wait them out. Eventually they’ll get hungry and eat. Here is Deuce in a place you will rarely find her — ON the couch — because after eating some raw food, Tex literally barfed in their crate, and I had to wash their crate pad. While I was washing it, the dogs wouldn’t go inside, and I guess Deuce wanted to find a quiet place to rest.

If I could, I’d never take a picture with the flash. I just love pics in natural light. However, this camera can’t handle it, and causes blur when I don’t use the flash. (Or maybe I just need a tripod. Yeah.) There’s just this dichotomy between being able to take spontaneous pictures and have them come out as “good photography.” I rarely toe the line. I take spontaneous pictures. Maybe one day I’ll take a class on photo (or read some books about it. Yeah I could do that.) And learn more.

So what happens after you Furminate a dog? You hand the kids a Dyson and tell them to get to work. You might notice that Rory is holding the Dyson extension by a handle. Dustin just showed me how to do that. We’ve had that Dyson for at least 4 YEARS. All this time, I could have been using the extension with a handle! I really love that vacuum, it’s very… it seems like the Dyson company actually put a lot of thought into making a vacuum!

Who knew that I had a gray dog? We have this new dog brush called The Furminator and it’s pretty amazing. It just gets out so much hair. Like, I brush the dogs for five minutes and I’m amazed they still have any fur left. I really should use it outside, but it’s so humid here lately, I can’t stand it. So I do it inside and then Dustin vacuums. I’ll have to take a pic of Dustin tomorrow. He’s been so amazingly awesome — I’m pretty debilitated by this pneumonia and pleuritic pain, and he’s really stepped up with the kids and the cleaning. I think his new job has really helped him multi-task better. He used to have issues if I gave him more than one thing to do. Like if I’d say, “Please vacuum the stairs and put the girls’ laundry away,” he’d only get the stairs. Now he just needs me to write it down and then he does these weird visual charts to show what has gotten done. I’m very happy that he’s so willing to help.

This is about 10 minutes of Furminator’ing with Deuce. Not counting all the fur that flew around and got on me. Pretty incredible, isn’t it?

Another cute pic of Sydney, cleaning the floor and eating everything that comes into her path. Is there anything cuter than a baby in a prefold? (Other than a Tex curled up into a ball on the couch.)

This one was taken right under the wire, around 11:30pm. It was on Friday. I always tell Dustin that by Friday afternoon/evening, I am really grouchy and ready for my weekend to start. Plus I’d seen the ENT with Tiger and Allegra (and Rory and Sydney) and he’d listened to my chest and my breathing, still heard pneumonia, labeled the pain in my ribs as “pleuritic pain,” and recommended that I see a pulmonologist. Or pulmonary doc. I have an appointment tomorrow morning and I’m kind of freaked out. Anyway, I’d napped for about 5h and woke up around 11pm.

Here is Deuce waiting to come back inside. I make the dogs sit before I let them back in. Yes, we’re missing like 3 blinds and that sliding glass door faces west, which sucks.

Sydney is getting so big. I mean it. Ever since she started eating food, she’s really grown. She’s still eating num-nums (or “nummies” which I’ve been calling them lately) at least 4-6x/day. She can crawl, but she can’t quite figure out how to go from sitting to crawling (unless she falls over). As I’m still sick (still! and actually feeling worse than I was a week ago!) the dog hair hasn’t been vacuumed up lately, and Sydney is basically a human Swiffer. Here she is sucking her thumb (a sign she’s getting tired) with Deuce in the background. She’s wearing crocheted wool shorties that my mom made. Love them!

My mom got Rory and Tiger new bikes. New HUGE bikes. These bikes are seriously ginormous; Dustin can actually ride on them. They’re way too big for Rory and Tiger, but they’re practicing, and I’m hoping they’ll grow quickly. The biggest problem is stopping and starting: they can’t get these bikes going without some help, and they can’t stop without falling off. The bikes are just too tall for them. I might have to have Dustin make the seats on their old bikes higher (and fix the broken pedals) and see if that will appease them until they get a little bigger.

Every once in a while I insist that I get a pic of all four kids together. Every time, I take like 20 shots and there’s usually only one with everyone looking at the camera and smiling. So here is one for June, and I think it’s a decent one. Usually they’re on the couch, being silly, but I decided to try a new place and see if that would distract them into looking into the camera and smiling. Not bad.

Rory and Tiger fighting, using various items they find around our house, plus annoying plastic McDonald’s toys. Everything they play with is used as a weapon, usually a gun. I find that the less TV they watch, the more creative they are about playing. (I know, this is not some kind of revolutionary discovery, researchers have been saying it forever.)

Last “out of order” post, I swear. If only because I’m a little anal-retentive and it drives me crazy when I see all my little pictures and there’s no number 99. So, this is not THE picture I wanted, but I’m pretty sure in my pneumonic state I deleted it accidentally. The doctor gave me Darvocet for my rib pain and maybe it makes me a little loopy, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just getting stupid because I haven’t taken a deep breath in 4w, depriving my brain of oxygen. Anyway, you get the idea with this picture: Deuce and Tex are very devoted to each other, and since being reunited with us, they sleep in the same crate (or “house” as we call it) at night.

Isn’t this a sweet picture? Dustin hanging out with Sydney. She loves him. I have to give Dustin a lot of credit for this weekend while I’ve been in a lot of pain in my ribs. He’s done almost everything. He’s also turned the kids into sweatshop workers, but I’m okay with that. I went to college never having done my own laundry, so I’m totally fine with my kids vacuuming and changing their sheets and sweeping and moving the laundry from the washer to the dryer.

Holy cow, I’ve been doing this for over 100 days! I’m impressed with myself. I’m giving myself a pat on the back. Here’s some things that make it easier: bringing my camera everywhere, uploading more frequently, and being really organized with the folder I use on my computer. If you want to know, I have a specific folder labeled “Project 365″ with every day labeled like “day1.jpg” etc. Recently I started labeling “day100.265.jpg” because I can never do the math in my head when I post. And then I use photobucket, which is a fairly handy little site, for the image hosting.

At some point, I will print every picture, and put them all in an album.

Anyway, I’m going out of order again, because I had a day 99 picture that was great, and it’s lost somewhere on my computer. I uploaded it SOMEWHERE and I can’t find it now! I’m searching. I hate losing things, whether it’s in real life or on the computer.

So here is Tiger, after he found a catalog for fireworks (don’t blame me, I’m just a yankee carpetbagger) pointing out which ones he wants for the Fourth of July.

Whoops, I’m a little out of order. Can I blame it on still having pneumonia, three weeks later? It is just lingering and I’m having a lot of pain in my ribs from all the coughing.

Anyway, Sydney is back in cloth diapers, after a hiatus due to yeast, which was actually IN the old diapers. I noticed because when we moved her up to the new (bigger) diapers, the rash went away. Yeast totally sucks, I’ve decided. No matter who gets it (or where) it’s so hard to get rid of. Kind of like pneumonia.

Anyway, here she is, in a prefold, and a wool cover crocheted by my mom. I love wool for covers. They absorb 30% of their weight in water, and they breathe very nicely. Also, I don’t even worry about compression leaks, because crocheted wool uses a lot of yarn.

My dad is wiping up on the carpet where she spit up just before I took the picture.

I know the lighting isn’t great in this picture, but it’s been forever since I posted a picture of the boys on their bikes. The boys are getting way too big for these bikes. We originally got them such small bikes because we thought it would be easier to learn on. And it was, especially for Tiger. But now they’re sort of laughably small — the boys look like giants on them. My mom ordered them new bikes, which will arrive on Monday, hopefully. The kids will be so excited, and we’ll hand down these bikes to Allegra. Or at least one of them. Anyway, the reason I haven’t posted a picture of the boys on their bikes in so long is that it’s officially summer here and DAMN, they weren’t lying about the humidity. It’s a little sticky and wet and just steamy here. So the kids have been going to camp in the morning, and then playing inside in the afternoon. But on this day it was unseasonably reasonable outside, and they biked.

My mom came back, because my parents are on their way to Michigan for the summer. Some people summer on the coast, or the cape, or the shore; my parents summer in the midwest. My dad wore this shirt every day for the entire 3 days he was here. Or maybe he has 3 of it. And of course, there’s Gammon, my parent’s toy poodle, who is really my dad’s baby. I think this is a pretty cute picture!

This was the first day of YMCA camp, aka The Day My Husband Came Home and Wondered Why The House Was So Clean and I Explained That I Get a Lot Done With Only One Small Child Instead of Four. I tried getting a picture of all three kids smiling, happy, and actually looking at the camera, but that didn’t happen. Tiger always does this weird thing where he juts out his lower jaw and shows his lower teeth, Allegra smiles so big she scrunches her eyes, and Rory usually stares kind of blankly. Anyway, this is them, just before we went to camp! They are all in day camp, Rory and Tiger are in a sports-focused program, and Allegra is in a traditional day camp with lots of different types of activities. They all loved their first week.

I have almost this exact same picture of Allegra with Deuce, from when Allegra was a baby. They are on my bed, in Arizona, in that pic, and Allegra is wearing just a diaper, like Sydney is in this pic.

Did I mention how happy we are to have Deuce and Tex back with us? We are! Dustin’s Aunt Dr. Carol is actually the one who paid for their rides back here. We are so grateful to Aunt Dr. Carol! She is a dog-lover, and she’s also deaf; she uses a service dog. Her most recent dog was Lavery, she had him for 11 years and she’s still waiting for the right match to replace him (although no dog could ever replace Lavery in her heart). Aunt Dr. Carol is a Doctor of Pharmacy and is always willing to do research for me about medications that are safe/unsafe during pregnancy or breastfeeding. She says I keep her on her toes.

Here is Rory (being silly) and Allegra (probably yelling at him not to be silly, and smile!) and Deuce (guarding a bone) and Tex (wondering if Rory will give him some food).

Sydney loves food. Here she is eating yogurt — which reminds me, the boys loved yogurt when they were babies. I remember Thanksgiving when they were about 10 months, and together they ate practically a whole container. Anyway, Sydney will eat anything that we give her, so far. Usually it’s small pieces of whatever we’re having, or fruits and veggies that Dustin purees for her. I’m not buying jars of baby food this time around; it’s a waste of money. She’s still eating num-nums of course. However, we’re in a difficult stage: she is very easily distracted, and she has two teeth now and she is not afraid to use them. On me. But we’ll push through it. I plan to nurse her until she’s done, which hopefully will be at least 18 months, but I’d prefer 2 years. The World Health Organization suggests 2 years. Also, I recently read a study about the average age that children around the world self-wean, and it’s when they quadruple their birth weight. Which would have Allegra still nursing — and possibly Rory too!

I’m so happy to have Tex back. He is such a love. I have to say that I’ve completely crossed the line into believing that although adopting shelter dogs is a huge dose of good karma, you just can’t guarantee personality with them at all. And when you have young kids, you have to know the dog you’re getting. Otherwise you just run into trouble…

We’ve had a total of 5 dogs from the shelter, and we’ve had problems with 3 of them, issues that actually led to us returning one to a shelter (a pit bull named Rocky), and giving two to animal rescues (a lab called Big Bertha, and Gypsy). Deuce tolerates the kids well enough, but Tex is a lover and a wonderful dog.

When he first came back, I was really strict about not letting him on the furniture, but now I’ve kind of given up. Is there anything sweeter than a Tex curled up into a little ball on the couch? I don’t think so!

And this was the day we got the camera back! Can you tell how thrilled I am? (And a little sunburned. I sprayed sunscreen all over myself but I still managed to get a little burned. Dustin told me you can’t just spray it; you actually have to rub it in. Oops.)

I’ve decided I simply must include myself in more pictures. I don’t care how much I weigh; these are my family’s memories that I’m making, so I have to be in them. I’m a mom, I’m happy, I love my husband and my kids — that shows no matter how much I weigh.

The kids healed really nicely from their surgeries. It went pretty much as I expected: the hardest part was getting Tiger to rest, and getting both of them to drink enough water and take their meds. But overall, I think they both healed wonderfully. Here is Allegra, 5 days post-op, getting ready to go to Carowinds.

I’m still catching up with the Great Crash of 08 — and the Great Plague of 08; did I mention I had bronchitis that turned into double pneumonia and I’m still not 100% yet? — trying to figure out what pictures where taken on which days and such. But I think with these four entries, I’ll be up to date.

Here is Bubbie, doing what she does best: crocheting something for Sydney whilst watching TV (I think she was watching “Recount” on HBO).