Endings...and beginnings

Farewell to the Hilltop- it was so good to have everyone over one last time before we move out. Marshmallow roasts and frankfurter toasts and baby squeezes.

The next morning Lauren and I rolled out of bed, into the car and drove out to Berlin NH, to attend the Baptism of our favourite little boy. My first time at an orthodox church. He definitely yelled, and the Father had to stop with his liturgy and ask for the holy binkie, seen here falling from the startled babe's wailing mouth.

Lauren and me and the newly christened child. He took it all very well, considering he was stripped naked, rubbed with oil head to toe, dunked fully under water and paraded about for the better part of 2 hours.

This orthodox church is a really neat blend of New England architectural aesthetics and classic onion domes. Can't help but wonder if the domes were stuck on afterwards...

Lauren and I got up wicked-early one day last week for a 7:30 am photoshoot date at Claudia's- we are all saying goodbye to our respective houses. Lolo is the backbone of this blog, as it turns out. See the rest here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/larlar1286/sets/72157629830884092/

tumble into spring

Sometimes when I haven't been posting it's because I've been so glum and bored I don't think I have anything constructive or inspiring to share. Sometime sit is because life is so full and varied and luscious that I don't want to stop and sit and type for a second longer than school requires. The latter reason applies to my most recent hiatus.

To sum up:

Spring on the mountain is glorious: hiking, swimming, running, sunning, new foliage, burbling brook, enough ticks to make this song an appropriate sound-track to my life: ticks

I will be done my first year of midwifery school in exactly 2 days.
In that time I have learned lots of booksmart facts, ways to talk to clients and handy skills, like venipuncture, IM injection, physical examination and catching techniques. I am also developing some honest respect for the thing we call "intuition", though I think of it as my mind's unconscious smartness logically synthesizing sensory input. If I think a baby is a boy, or 7 pounds 6 oz, or a mama is going to have a difficult labor etc, I don't think of it as psychic knowledge, I think it is something along the lines of what we call a "gestalt" approach in plant identification- taking in the whole being of a plant with all our senses and just 'knowing' what it is we are looking at. 
I was sole catcher at a birth a couple of weeks ago- first time ever. The euphoria I'm still carrying from that is indescribable. I felt her little face emerge feature by feature, in the reverberations through her mother's perineum (I'm still not sure how to spell that word). I originally considered calling my blog "in pursuit of natural highs", because I expend a lot of time and energy pursuing an endorphin rush. As it turns out, giving birth naturally is one of the most mind-blowing experiences a person can have, and we birth workers get to go along for the ride.
Another triumph: For the first time ever I was paid money to attend a birth.
Shit got real. In a good way.

This summer I'm going to be out west on an island in BC- more to follow on that, I'm sure.

Molls

Went for a hike the other day. Mollcat came. She is the worst hiker ever- has to stop and rest every five seconds, gets hot and grumpy, is slow but yeslls if you leave her too far behind. We love her anyway. Left to right. Me , Andriana, Alyssa. (photo likely taken by Alyssa's Pop- her parents came to visit over the weekend).