everyday heirlooms

There are several handcrafted-yet-functional items in our house that bring me joy.

When I was four, my dad built us an awesome dollhouse as a Christmas present.  I played with it a lot and it's my first memory of contemplating recursion.  What if there was a dollhouse in a dollhouse in a dollhouse in a dollhouse...?  The house was passed on to D in the fall and is now inhabited by Mickey and Minnie and their assorted friends, including a T-Rex.  Rather than putting in the electric blinds D asked us for, Jack added colored lights to it, which was pretty fun during the long dark winter days. 

Next, using a word from my great grandmother Hazel's era, is the gaily colored braided rug she made.   The rug was in our rec room for my whole childhood and I have a few vague memories of my great grandma herself and her house, full of rugs and collectible spoons.  Born on New Year's Eve in 1898 in Kingston, WA she lived to be 96.  She is pictured below driving an old car and riding on a motorcycle, outside her house in the Rainier Valley neighborhood of Seattle.  She was my dad's mom's mom.      UPDATE:  My mom tells me I'm all wrong about this rug and it was actually her mom, my grandma Agnes, who made it!   She is pictured at the end of this post.

Many times a day we change diapers on the rock solid changing table Jack's grandpa, Kirk, made when Jack, his first grandchild, was born.  I think Dd must be about the 5th baby to use it.  We contributed the yellow wood stain, when we had time for that kind of thing, pre-D.

Lastly, there is the pair of over-sized pillows in our living room.  I remember having pillow races, using one to elevate my leg for months after my teenage knee surgery, sleeping with them during the constant heartburn of pregnancy and learning to nurse D while leaning on one.   The ticking and the corduroy covers were made by my grandma, Agnes, I think in the 1970s.  The feathers inside are from geese raised by Agnes's grandma, Mary, who also lived in Illinois, as far as I know.

So that means D and Dd are lounging on the feathers of their mom's mom's mom's mom's mom's geese (Cari, Janet, Agnes, Clara, Mary, GOOSE).

We can never know what random little pieces of our lives will linger and spark memories.

talking in 3... 2... 1...

Now that Dd is approaching 10 months, it is time to get excited about talking!

Baby sign language requires interlocutors who are actively looking for signs, just like understanding early spoken words requires a lot of attentive listening.  With that in mind, in the last month Dd has signed "book," "more," and "milk." 

It was exciting to see "book" signed in conjunction with saying "buh buh buh" and looking at a stack of books.  This was a few days before Dd reached 9 months, for those of us interested in accuracy :) and at the time his typical babble sound was "bah", not "buh". 

I recall that "buh" was a popular early sound for D as well (and probably most kids), though we latched on to the idea of it meaning "bus" given the context of what we saw so often on walks and out our downtown apartment windows.

Jack saw Dd sign "dad" but it has yet to be repeated.

Verbally he has said some joyful "dada" and just the other day "mommy" a few times when he was tired and a little distressed while being cared for by someone else.  (I heard it from the other room though). 

Dd is quite in to clapping and waving these days.  When we walk anywhere near a mirror in our house he starts waving in anticipation of seeing his reflection.  He claps (and slaps his knees) while listening to music, but also claps at other times.  It's funny to think that the sign for "more" so closely resembles clapping, and when you get down to it the meaning of "more" and bravo or encore are basically the same.

Lastly, a few interesting things I have read about early communication are:
- people sometimes think signing delays verbal speech, but the opposite is true
- bilingualism leads to some early confusion but does not cause delays
- extended pacifier use does lead to later speech
- leaving aside signing, speaking with lots of hand gestures is really good for learning, for babies and everyone else.
        - www.parentingscience.com/gestures "Babies exposed to lots of communicative gestures
              appear to learn language more quickly, and acquire bigger vocabularies."
        - I vividly remember how using gestures helped me understand matrix multiplication in high school.

siblings

When you tell people you're going to have a second baby, they say all kinds of quasi-mathematical things about how much harder life will be.  They don't tell you what an unadulterated joy it is to expand your heart again and to witness both of your babies doing the same. 

Nine months in to having two kids I am still waiting for the other shoe of jealously to drop, but it hasn't.  Maybe the 4.5 year age gap is a sweet spot.  It's the very same gap that has made me worry about whether they will be close, but now I am optimistic that they will be.  I hope we can be the kind of family that spends enough time together that they will always be friends who can come close to a full understanding of each other.  Right now they have a perfect match of silly energy and game adulation.  In a few months, I envision D moving from reciting books to Dd to actually reading to him.  Car rides are more fun for everyone too.  It's gravy.

I'll temper this slightly by saying that the hardest part of having two was putting Dd down for his third or fourth nap of the day when he was a newborn, when D would get fed up with being alone in the house.  He'd argue that he could stay in the room quietly, which never worked.  Through it all he was mature enough to never be upset with Dd, but only with the situation or occasionally me.

People also ask what it's like the second time around when you know more.  More than the knowledge, the increased confidence, and the hecticness, the biggest difference is that for this second baby, there is someone else who is as close as can be.

January

 February

 May

 May

 June

Jack's fun first fathers' day as a father-of-two

On fathers' day we had a great day with just the four of us up at Jack's family's property.  Our present to him was encouraging him to buy himself a new proper baseball bag.  He's used my childhood swim bag for many years and it is worn out.

At the property we hiked a bit up the same forest service road we usually go up, which gives a very impressive view, ate cherries, watered the saplings and enjoyed the relative peace and quiet.

D is on the woodpile, above

up with the diplomas

Years ago my parents kindly had my McGill diploma framed for me, and it has been kicking around our house since we moved.  Similarly, our CMU diplomas in their nice but very large leather folders failed to find a home in our home.   We were talking about how we should get them framed when Jack basically tripped over a matching pair of multi-picture frames I bought at Goodwill several years ago with grand unfulfilled plans.   Jack realized they actually they were the right size and even had the same white-on-black matting as my McGill diploma. 

Jack was good with an X-Acto knife even before architecture studio, so later that night we had them framed and looking pretty good.  A week later we even got them up on the wall in their new home on a perfectly sized wall in a decidedly unpretentious room.  The price of about $8 and two hours was right and the bonus was getting things put away!