I do not like green eggs & ham....

Ohhhhh, but the Taylor kids do! We were getting pretty irritated that our chickens had not started laying eggs. We were told they would start laying by 4.5 months. This would have been some time in August. Here we've been feeding them, letting them tear up our flower beds, and letting the corner of our yard smell like a farm, all for NOTHING. Then Dane & his friend Augie were playing outside, and they ventured along the side of our house where Luke stores his paint and various other junkyard looking items. Nestled in some wild grass back there were some 25 green eggs! (The Americauna chicks we bought lay green/blue eggs). Apparently the hens aren't wild about the nesting box we made for them in the coop. We decided to get rid of the batch of 25 eggs not knowing which ones were old and which were new. And the very next day we went out to find FOUR more eggs.

And our ducks have started laying too! We have gotten 3 eggs from them in the last 3 days. I cracked one of each open, and they are beautiful inside. The yolk is a bright yellow, and the other part (I guess I should find out what it's called) is oh-so clear. The kids wanted me to hard boil them, so I did, and they gobbled them right up! Yum! If you want to try some FRESH eggs, let me know and I'll save you some.

Who does Zeke take after?

Some of you may know that Dane had his heart set on naming the baby "Big Mountain" for like 7 months. Then, just a couple months before he was born Grandma Buzzy showed him the 80's movie "ET", and he decided the baby should be named ET. We were really considering the name Ezekiel, so this was very fitting - Ezekiel Taylor~ ET. Well, as you know we didn't name him Ezekiel, however Dane DOES still call him ET occasionally. Well one day when I was taking pictures of Zeke I thought to myself, he DOES sort of look like ET.












Those were his early days. Now that's he's put on the pounds he has a new resemblence....




Do you see it? Kind of freaky to think I birthed a baby John Goodman.

Zeke's First Haircut

Yes, at 2.5 months Zeke had his first haircut. He obviously can't sit up on his own, but he does good at holding his head up, although it's still a bit wobbly. He holds the record for the youngest haircut at Juan's Barber Shop in Castro Valley.
He did pretty good until the end when he got a little fussy.

Dane's First Day of Preschool

All I can say is,
boy does Miss Christina have her hands full :)

Chubba Wubba

Bird Update

Forgot to tell y'all that we ended up with a rooster in the batch. How did we find out? Cock-a-doodle-dooooooo! at 5:00am :) So off to the Terpstra Ranch he went. And good riddance. That left us with 3 hens, that have yet to earn their keep. No eggs as of yet. They should start laying any day now....so hopefully we'll have farm fresh eggs here at Taylor Trash soon.
The ducks are getting HUGE, and ruining our yard. They dig up our lawn and flower beds looking for bugs or worms. So I don't know how much longer the ducks will be here.

Saving the Earth, one diaper at a time

In an effort to do my part in preserving God's beautiful green Earth, I'm cloth diapering Zeke. You say, diaper pins and dunking in toilets? Oh contrair mon frere. Cloth diapering has come along way. Beautiful fabrics with snaps or velcro are oh-so popular in the CD cult, I mean following :) It is so easy to do, and no more yucky chemicals against baby's skin. Well, almost none. I do use disposables when we will be gone for a long outing or weekend. Kind of like our parents did. Disposables have their place just as paper plates do. You wouldn't use paper plates for all your meals every day right? So wasteful. Same with diapers.
Every CD I put on Zeke is one less disposable in the landfill.

G starts Kindergarten

Genevieve started Kindergarten at Valley View Elementary school last week. She was so excited about starting school she had been counting down the days for about 20 days. She is really enjoying being a "big girl".

More lake fun!

Some boys never grow up...

Our 3 Munchkins

Mmmmm....hungry?

My newest hobby is making felt food. Luke thinks this is hilarious, and great all at the same time. For me, it's a little creative outlet that I can do at night when the kids are in bed. I get the satisfaction of completing a project or two a night, and it's relaxing to me. I love the process of not using patterns, just picking up some scissors and going to town. So here are my masterpieces...

What you are seeing: cantaloupe, s'more, marshmellow, cupcake, donut, carrot, strawberry, pancakes, tomato, & egg. The bacon is MIA.
Next on my list are ice cream cones, peas (in a pod), & watermelon slices. Stay tuned... :)
(Now this is a reason to bookmark this blog if you haven't already)!

Twaine Hart & Murphys

We spent the weekend in Twain Hart with Luke's family at their cabin. It was a good time for the cousins to play. Pinecrest Lake was beautiful as usual, and the kiddos enjoyed a round of Pee Wee golf. Luke and I took a drive to Murphys on Friday the 10th as it was our 11 year anniversary. 11 years and 3 kids....wow I feel old...

In Murphys we saw this truck parked on Main St so we had to take a picture of Zeke with it...

Our Handsome Boy...

Dane Luke - 3 years old.





Dane will be starting school this fall at Shining Light Preschool. He will be going two mornings a week. He is oh-so excited. Whenever we drove past the school Dane used to proclaim "there's sissy's school!" Now, he shouts "there's MY school!"
I think he will enjoy it, and since Dane has only one volume (loud) I will enjoy the 5 hours a week of relative quiet. :)

more Zeke

He will be 6 weeks old tomorrow...actually at 1:22 am tonight. He's just started to really try and lift his head up. And look at those eyes! He definitely has Taylor eyes. But I think I may end up with another blonde boy yet!

This is the most alert he has looked so far ....

Just because he's so cute

Posting this just because he's too cute to not share :)

Lake Video

Well this is my first attempt at a video.
Not sure why the quality is so bad, but I'll be working on it.

Fun at the Lake

We spent our first weekend at our new housboat on Lake Berryessa. It was good to be back on the water. The kids LOVE LOVE LOVE it. We bought this new boat with our good friends The Kings, and Luke and Brian have spent soooooooo much time fixing it (it aint even funny). But the results are great, and we have the space for our growing family. We will hopefully even use the boat year round now. Here are some pictures from the weekend...

Unchartered Waters...

Today I entered a land where no 5-week postpartum mom should ever go...............


That's right, the bathing suit department. It was frightening to say the least. The list of "must-haves" was so long I thought I would never accomplish the task at hand.

A looooong tankini so no midriff could show, and loose enough to not hug my "curves". Enough support so that the "girls" are above what used to be my belly-button (now it's just a stretched out mass of circular wrinkles.) And a skirt. Yes, I said a SKIRT. I have officially reached the point in my life where I need a skirt on my bathing suit.

If you thought dressing room mirrors were bad before, just try them out a few weeks after carrying around a 40lb beach ball in your belly.

So I came home with a couple suits that *almost* met all the criteria. I went to one store and one store only. That's all my psyche could handle.

If you thought I was going to post pictures like I usually do, you were so WRONG. :)

They adore him...

One of the questions we keep getting asked is "what do the kids think of the baby?" I think this picture says it all....

Multi-Tasking

What do you do when you have a baby in your arms and you need to carry the laundry basket?



Duh...put the baby in the basket!

BMX track...here she comes

Genevieve decided she wanted to learn how to ride her bike without training wheels like her friend Johnny. To our surprise she "got it" really fast. Here she is practicing on the one paved portion of street in our neighborhhod.

Rounding the corner...

I felt so sick about this that I couldn't even blog about it. But now that we've "rounded the corner" so to speak, I finally feel I can share with you. I took Zeke in for his 2 week well-check on Thursday July 12th. To my surprise and horror, he was only 8lbs! He was 8 lbs 10 oz at birth. It is normal for babies to loose some weight (up to 10% is normal), and then they are expected be back to their birth weight within 10 days, then gain about an ounce a day thereafter. Zeke did loose the 10%, but was not gaining it back. At the time of the check-up he should have been close to 9 lbs. The problem is Zeke likes to sleep. He doesn't wake up to eat, nor does he cry when he's hungry. In fact. he doesn't appear to get hungry. So for the last 4 days I have been feeding him more frequently (2.5 hours), doing some pumping to stimulate my milk supply, making sure he get's FULL feedings, and setting the alarm at night to make sure he doesn't go more than 3 hours between night feedings. It has been really stressful, as I felt like I had failed him. I felt the pressure to make every feeding count so he wouldn't wither away.
Finally, we had a follow-up weight check today, and PRAISE GOD he has gained 8 ounces!

Keeping up with this schedule has made me really tired. If I haven't returned your call or e-mail, just know that I am still in a bit of a sleep-deprived fog. The phone has been ringing alot, and I feel like we are doing a lot of "entertaining" as we have had so many visitors (it's a bit exhausting). It has been overwhelming adjusting to life with 3, and to the lack of (or greatly interrupted) sleep. I had forgotten how hard these first few weeks can be. I feel bad for Genevieve & Dane as they have been homebound quite a bit. But slowly we will enter back into society and the normal swing of things.

Oh, and to top off everything - our A/C is broken!!!!! We have someone coming tomorrow to look at it though. Thankfully it has not been too hot these last couple of days.

Due today

Today, July 8th, is my Due Date. But instead we have an 11 day old! Genevieve and Dane have been enjoying the last few days with the grandparents up in Twain Harte, so we have been toting little Zeke around on all kinds of "First" adventures.

At 8 days old he went to his "first" county fair. We went back to the fair to go through the exhibit halls, and look at all the stuff G & D weren't interested in.

At 9 days old he went to his first "Concert in the Park" in downtown Pleasanton to watch The Bell Brothers play....



At 10 days old he went to our houseboat for the first time...


And at 11 days old he went to church for the first time (no picture of that).

Zeke has had a slow start in the eating department. He doesn't wake up to eat, and at first wasn't eating well at all. He had lost more weight than the Dr's like to see, so we have been working hard at the feedings. He is doing better, but we still have to wake him.

He rarely cries, usually just when he has a bubble in his tummy. He is just soooooooooooo sweet. I love to just sit and look at him - he melts my heart.

Meet Zeke

Yeah, he's here! Our precious beautiful baby boy. I can't believe how much I am already in love with him. I think I can now fully appreciate how fast they grow, and I am enjoying every minute of this tiny newborn baby.

For those of you interested in his "birth story" keep reading. If that's TMI for you, stop here!



So I went into labor 12 days early on Tues June 26th. Contractions started mild at about 11:00am, and were about 12 minutes apart. Luke was working in town, so I told him that it looked like it might be happening and to stay close by. My friend Bev came by for lunch at about noon, and the contractions were still consistent. Luke came home and Bev stayed and helped me labor through the contractions that were getting more intense and closer together. We decided to head for the hospital (Kaiser Walnut Creek) at about 5:00pm (right in the middle of rush hour!), but still got there in decent time. I felt like I was pretty far along and was pleased when they skipped triage and took me to a labor/delivery room. I was checked and told I was 7-8 cm, 90 % effaced, but the baby was still high at -3 station. I really wanted that epidural, but was afraid I would need to walk to help get the baby lower, and wouldn’t be able to “help” if I was confined to a bed. I continued to labor for a couple hours, and the contractions became more than I could handle. I started asking for the epidural, then was told the anesthesiologist had just gone to help another patient and it would be another 30-45 minutes before she could get to me. It started to feel like the baby was coming, so the midwife checked me and told me I was still at 8 cm! I actually started to cry at this point. The thought that I wasn’t progressing AND I wasn’t getting the epidural AND the contractions were getting worse, was more than I could handle. After about an hour more of intense laboring I finally got the epidural, and felt like it was the best decision I had ever made. Unfortunately my progress then became sooooooo slow. My contractions before the epidural were REALLY strong and hard, and then decreased intensity after the epidural (from what we could tell by watching the monitor). The midwife broke my water at 9:00pm, and we thought that would finally kick things into gear. Still we just kept waiting and waiting. I was getting impatient, and second-guessing my epidural decision as my cervix still had a tiny lip, and the baby was still somewhat high. I started having Luke and my sister help me sit-up in bed to get the weight of the baby on the cervix to help open it up. Immediately the contractions intensified and got closer together. This did seem to help. Finally at 1:10am the midwife had me do a “practice push” with a contraction. The next thing I know I am full on pushing and our baby was born 3 contractions, or 12 minutes later.
At the time I felt like I had made the right decision about the epidural, I felt like I HAD to have it. But I just know that if I had been able to hold off that the baby would have come a lot sooner. I am convinced that my body just doesn’t labor well on my back. Still, no regrets.



Oh, and the prediction was confirmed that I had a TON of amniotic fluid, so that was probably why I was measuring so huge, and why my belly was so round even at the end of the pregnancy. And I mean A TON of fluid, can you say "open the floodgates..."


So my first baby was 36 hours of labor with epidural (although it didn’t work very well) and 45 min of pushing, second baby was 2 hours of labor without any pain meds and 2 min of pushing, and third baby was 14 hours with epidural and 12 min of pushing.


We STILL hadn't decided on a name when he was born. I think sometime the next day we decided on Zakayo which is the name of a friend in Kenya, and is the Swahili version of the name Zaccheus from the Bible. We thought it was a nice unique name, and has special meaning to us as part of our hearts are in Kenya and the work God is doing there.


It took us another 5 days to decide on a middle name, which is Reed. Yesterday we had to go back to the hospital to finish his birth certificate paperwork. So our sweet little Zakayo Reed Taylor is here. If it's too much for you, you can call him Zeke!