Reading · this little dream life

A very foggy summer morning on the farm This was a few days after all the wildfire smoke from Canada had passed.

Hello hello from the summertime Little Dream Farm!

Writing this to you on a fully blue-skyed Friday afternoon with the windows and patio doors open in the house while the wind chime on the porch plays its beautiful song, our son is fast asleep in his swing and Chris is finally sitting down and taking a load off and relaxing. I’m telling you that man is always go go go!

We spent the morning bopping around our village running some postpartum labs for me, stopping at the hardware store, popping into the cafe for coffee and a slice of cake, then onto the library to get our baby boy his library card and a bunch of books to read to him, and finally a stop at the village co-op for a loaf of my favorite sourdough cinnamon raisin bread.

On the way down to the village and on the way home we took the long way and turned down a bunch of country roads we’d never been on. We love that getting baby to get a solid nap means we get to explore more of where we live and places and things we’ve never seen before while we’ve lived here!

Last you hung out with us I was recounting the woes of our broken down zero turn, broken down truck, fridge on the fritz and a big hospital bill from our son’s birth.

Let’s go ahead and add onto that the washing machine completely crapped out and needed to be replaced with a new one.

Chris came down with a really crappy cold, and then he got a crazy case of cellulitis on his calf…we think it was from a tick he picked up while hiking even though he ended up thankfully testing negative for Lyme.

When the farmer we work with didn’t show up this year with cows or haying equipment, we reached out but got ghosted. That means all of our land will have to be mowed (instead of it being grazed and hayed) and that hefty bill will come due in October. That also means we have to buy in hay for the donkeys and pay to have it delivered right around that time, too.

We had to cancel our family beach vacation because there was nothing but rain in the forecast for the entire time we’d be there.

And the other day I was using the plunger on one of our toilets that has seemed a little slow lately and the plunger broke in my hand. The plunger! I LAUGHED so hard at the ridulousness of it.

Sometimes when it rains, it pours, but in our case we’re currently in a bit of a monsoon.

The upside (because there’s always an upside) is that everyone here on the farm is safe and healthy and we’ve got the funds to take care of the crazy mashup of inconveniences these last two months. My mom calls things like these “luxury problems” and so while it’s been wildly uncool for our wallets, we’re hoping we’re on the upswing from the woes and we fully recognize that these are in fact luxury problems.

Chris is now about halfway through his paternity leave and he has been quite busy being the man of the house! He starts his day before the sun comes up and heads off to the gym a few days a week while baby boy sleeps on my chest for those sweet morning hours. When he gets back, his days have been filled with caring for the donkeys, our one remaining chicken, Rosie, and all the cats. He’s been tending the garden, mowing the lawn, fixing little stuff around the house, and keeps our schedule going day to day.

Before our son was born, he started a little project that we call, “What can dad make?” that we’ve been having so much fun with. Chris really wanted to start cooking both for me and for our son when he starts eating solids (which is in about two to three months!), so he’s been looking up recipes and finding inspiration and putting his skills to the test in the kitchen and coming up with fun new stuff for us to try (this week he made us meatballs, some protein bars, and he’s planning to grill wings later this afternoon). It’s been fun watching him in the kitchen and seeing the joy on his face when I genuinely love what he makes for us.

It was Chris’ idea to take his paternity leave later than most would because he works from home. He felt like it was more helpful to me if he was off once I was healed from birth and ready to move again, that way I could get out of the house on my own or go do things I wanted or needed to do and that we would have time to go do lots of things together as a family.

Most mornings these last few weeks we’ve gotten out for a nice long family walk on our quiet country roads. Our son loves to coo at the trees and it’s been the perfect way to start our day. We’re going to keep doing it for as long as we can together since it’s good for the whole fam and we think it’s one of the reasons why baby sleeps so well for us!

This week, Chris drove me to the gym and then took the baby for a walk while I worked out. I’m calling this season, “Operation Mom Gets Strong” and it felt so good to get back in the gym and start strength training again. I’m back to my pre-pregnancy size and in complete awe of how incredible my body is and the entire experience of conception, pregnancy, birth, and postpartum. I’ve never felt more convicted about the ways I eat and train and teach my clients to do the same because the proof of how well it works and how important it is for your health is seen in how well I’m doing postpartum and how healthy our son is. It’s had me thinking I’d like to work with pregnant and postpartum women in some capacity.

For our Saturday adventure this weekend we’re planning to head back to the blueberry patch at a nearby farm to pick one more round of blueberries for the season and then over to one of the most incredible cafes in the area for some coffee and lunch. The owners are American and Japanese and a lot of their baked goods we’ve tried have Japanese-inspired elements—it’s such a gem for this area. Next we’ll stop at our favorite local woman-owned farm stand for some freshly harvested veggies for the week and for another quart of this lemon yogurt that Chris has been obsessed with. It is made by a dairy farm up near Lake Champlain and Chris is going to get to visit the farm for the very first time on Sunday when he drives up to Montreal to meet a friend for a night.

So while you’re reading this Chris will be zooming up to Canada for a night and baby boy and I are going to have a lovely Sunday together taking care of the animals and the daily chores on the farm. I’m thinking I’ll take us out for a little mom an baby coffee date together and pop into a garden center and a few antique stores I haven’t been to in a while.

I keep saying that the silliest thing I’ve ever thought was that I didn’t want kids. Our son turned 100 days old today as I’m writing this and Chris and I were super sentimental about it. I told him how much I love being a parent with him and that this experience has been so amazing for me thus far, and he responded that he’s so thankful we were open to allowing ourselves to start a family and that we are going through all the highs and lows together as a team. He said it’s a life experience he’s glad we aren’t missing out on, and I couldn’t agree more. I love the ways that being a mom is stretching and growing and changing me, and I am so looking forward to having a front row seat to watching our beautiful boy grow up through the years, even if I’d really love to freeze time and keep him as my sweet little baby forever.

On one of our recent just keep driving to let the baby nap drives, we were coming down a hill that has the most incredible view looking down into the valley of where we live and I said to Chris from the backseat sitting next to our sleepy son that I’m so glad we took a chance on the farm. It has paid off in ways that have multiplied through the years in a way we never could have planned, imagined, or dreamed of.

I think that about does it from ol’ Sappy Sarah for this month. We’ll catch you back here on Sunday, August 30, if you can even believe it’ll be August in just a few days!

Take care of yourself until then…we’re sending you love from all of us here on the LDF!

month 7: the upside

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