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!

second season of t-ball for D

Jack and D wrapped up a much improved t-ball season.


via GIPHY

D now can actually play catch and will definitely be ready for coach pitch next year.   Thanks to the friends and family who came out to cheer them on!

Franklin Falls

The kids and I went hiking recently at Franklin Falls with my sister.  All the lists of good hikes for small kids recommend it and now that Dd is okay on car rides, I felt ready to brave the drive.  It was pretty and it was shorter than most hikes, but the two miles felt pretty long.  What with t-ball, baseball and family biking we have not been on the trail as much the last few months and D's hiking mindset has slipped a bit since our trip to the Azores where he happily did four mile hikes that were actually quite steep.   In any case, we made it!

Can you tell from the angle that the photo credit goes to D for this one?

voluntees

I used to volunteer, now I just volunteer my children, making them voluntees, exemplifying a great scrabble word for the argumentative people you know and love.

D is participating in a study on reading and dyslexia this summer, involving brain scans and a reading intervention billed as a "camp."  He has also participated in a few other short studies.

Dd is in a longitudinal study on autism.

The compensation is nice, but not enough to justify the time.  I find them interesting, I like to help out scientists and if either of them is dyslexic or autistic, we'd have the advantage of early diagnosis.

finally, my nose is in heaven!

Our Japanese snowbells are blooming and this year they actually have scent!  It’s just as delicious as I remember and strong enough to smell it in the office or by the front door.  The downhill tree still doesn’t look too happy but the trend is good.

D has also been a good helper in our little yard and we finished pulling out our grass today and planted a meadow mix.  Fingers crossed!

Here's my post about when we had the trees planted in February 2017.

mothers' day gratitude

Mothers' Day made me feel very grateful this year.  We went for a nice bike ride along Lake Washington on the first Bicycle Sunday of the year.

Some things I appreciate:

• my healthy and happy kids
• Jack for so many reasons
• my parents and in-laws who help us out sooo much, have such good relationships with our kids and hold back the criticism they must harbor for our messy house and whatever ways they think we're parenting wrong.
• work, in a way.  I've had some tough days since going back post-Dd, but for the most part I feel valued and I appreciate the 5 months I took off and 80% schedule I've had for a few months now.  I think it will matter more when they are older but I recently remembered that I want my kids to know that I do skilled and interesting work outside of parenting.
• our home, which remains a work in process but brings me joy
• parts of myself.  At the moment this includes my body which can handle as many vegetables as I can consume, has no allergies, and is making all the milk for Dd.  Although postpartum mental health issues can come up even after the first few months, I am feeling good, thankfully.
• my kindle, which is usually on airplane mode with an endless seeming supply of Outlander novels to consume

three firsts for Dd!

In the last week Dd has had three exciting firsts.  He went swimming, splashing in his great uncles' lovely backyard pool for his first swim, just like D did.  Then he went to a Mariner's game, in the newly named T-mobile park, no less. Lastly he slept in his own room last night!  I never thought we'd make it to seven months with him in our room, but we did, because for a long time moving him down to a different floor of our house felt too far.  He slept well on his own though and so did we, especially for the last few hours of the morning, when he is prone to light sleep.

pumpkin cake recipe

We made a tried and true pumpkin cake for D's 5th birthday.  Frosting is quite important to five-year-olds, it seems, so we made a blue cream cheese frosting, but usually we make the cake with no topping, or maybe a tiny sprinkle of powdered sugar.

1) preheat oven to 350, grease two loaf pans or large baking dish (like pictured)2) in large bowl combine flour through cloves3) in medium bowl (mixer bowl) blend sugar, oil, and eggs  and then stir in pumpkin4) slowly blend wet in to dry, adding water along the way5) bake at 350 for 90 minutes (for loaf pans), or about 60 for larger, more shallow pan6) cool in loaf pans for 10 minutes before removing

3 1/2 c all purpose flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp allspice
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
3 c white sugar
1 c oil  (we used olive and was fine)
4 eggs
2/3 c water
2 c solid pack pumpkin puree (more than one 8 oz can)

baby gate!

Jack just built a baby gate I've been anticipating for years!  We had the contractors build a little cut out at the very top of the shelf that makes the wall of our stairwell and Jack recently build the gate.  Yes, it needs a latch, which might be the hard part and yes, we'll also use a temporary gate between the the third floor and the stairs, but I'm still quite happy about it.  I look forward to being able to access the third floor bathroom without going through a gate sometimes.

Once we considered the fact that the metal railings of the stairs have horizontal bars and could therefore be climbed like a ladder, we realized that this gate is not the gate-to-solve-all-problems.  I am a happy customer however.  We like how it looks and think it will slow down a kid at many developmental stages.

house plant roll call

When Jack said recently that our bathroom Boston fern would look better if it had companion plants, I took it to heart and tapped in to my desire cultivate more house plants.

But first, I'm sad to report that our Meyer lemon tree succumbed to something at the beginning of the year, after 1.5 years with us.  It smelled so good and we made lemonade once or twice.  I'd consider getting another, if we had a better idea of what went wrong.

Before I get to the new plants, here's a picture of our aloe, which was actually sun burned from being in the kitchen.  It looks so much better now.  Yes, having a sunny kitchen is kind of a nice problem.  The other senior members of the house hold plants are the fern I mentioned earlier, some spider plants for the cats to occasionally munch on and an absolutely easy going rubber plant that was a house warming gift.

Now for the newcomers, whose names I will mostly not remember unless I document them here. 

Though they are not yet in their ideal pots, we welcomed a trio of sansevieria trifasciata (mother in law's tongue, from IKEA).   I've been dreaming of plants here since we got the coat rack up two years ago.  The two story open space around the entry gets eastern light  Did you notice the young black cat who wishes we would take him for lazy cat walks?  

In the bathroom, the fern's new friends are a purple waffle plant and a pothos 'N Joy' (the variegated one on the bottom shelf) .   In the kitchen we have a trio of succulents, called echevaria afterglow (red), sedeveria (jet beads, the small green one) and crassula (curly green, large green one).

Not quite in the house, we have a pair of perennials in a pot together. The smaller flowers are a Touran white saxifraga and then there's a hellebora, by the door, ah...  whose full name is shooting star lenten rose (heleboro shooting star).

The stairwell is one of our favorite features of the house, and it has a lot of diffuse light from the skylights and the transparent panels between the stairs and the second and third floor rooms.  We have a lemon button fern and then this little tree is a dracaena (marginata sunray)