April 21,2010

Baby Sage left the warm and swimmy reality of her mamas womb and entered into her next big adventure around 10pm April 21. Joe and I joked about Carter scheming to have his little girl enter into this new world on earth day. I was out running and thinking about Rebecca's water breaking, the waves, and returned home to an email telling me the same. Baby is healthy, sleepy, and hungry, has dark hair, looks like Ro did, 8# 11oz.

So many many beautiful things to celebrate.

A week ago....

Tunneling through the sand and playing crabs (holding hands). 4 entrances joined in the center. Mass giggles.

Aunt J. celebrated her 30th birthday with her usual style and flair this past week.

Life marches on...

Postcard from Paradise

How many different ways can you depict joy? Gratitude?

We are on the Big Island of Hawaii spending Oliver's first official spring break visiting some very dear friends, friends who would take over our role as Oliver's parents if anything ever were to happen to Joe and myself. Meet Oliver's Aunt Jessica and Uncle Alex. Beyond wonderful, they are the real deal. Caring, hilarious, hyper-intelligent, super creative. Not a day has passed since they moved from across the street from us in Bellingham to their current reality on this big, beautiful volcanic paradise that I haven't missed them and I sleep better at night just knowing they are out there.

We have spent the week swimming, exploring, relaxing, cooking, laughing.

Oliver has seen rainbows, waterfalls, fed Jessica's goats Buckley and Mabel, picked avocados from a tree, 'excavated' on a real digger. His little footprints have traversed white and black sand beaches, he's trekked through a lava tube, explored the steam vents of Kilaua. This morning he experienced his first earthquake. Wow!

Time to take all of these wonderful memories and head home...

In absentia...

Cannot believe it has been almost 3 months since I last posted to Oliver's blog. I fall into a big, dark, hole during the winter months and it requires every ounce of energy I have to try to do much of anything at all.

We've been thru one heckofa flu season this year. I was always under the impression that once a person had a particular flu virus that the immune system developed antibodies that prevented a recurrence, but am now convinced that is all wrong as we three have had the same flu repeatedly. O. has it again.

I have some rules about being sick: he can eat anything he wants whenever he wants and he can watch as many videos as he likes (don't worry, I'm not talking Disney here - they're all educational) - it's all about comfort and distraction. So imagine my shock when he declined strawberry ice cream post nap today. He's NEVER done that. I toyed with calling the pediatrician with the following '...well he has a 101 degree temperature and is declining strawberry ice cream, should I bring him in?'

He is GROWING. I began noticing a few weeks ago that all of his overalls were giving him wedgies and I've used up all of the slack in the suspenders so we're moving into a new size. Poor guy has gone from highwaters to wedgies. Tall, skinny, incredibly strong, and fast. His buddy Rowan gave him some running shoes and it was as though they were magical - he transformed into this little lightening bolt ricocheting from one end of the yard to the next.

He's also regressed to a former clingy (is that a word?) phase and goes insane if Joe and I try to leave the house for anything. I am certain this must be addressed in some great child psychology tome I'm too tired to read.

All for now...

May Your Days Be Merry and Bright...

Joe captured the spirit of the season on Oliver's first visit to the holiday carousel in Seattle. We went south for a day in the city the Monday before Jesus' Big Day.

First stop, Mighty-O Donuts where O. exercised a considerable amount of patience (more so than I) waiting for the bakers to load the batter into the donut robot - could be it was the chocolate donut with sprinkles he was somehow slowly eating while waiting. Nose pressed to the glass, he was transfixed as the machine plopped two rings of dough at a time into the hot oil, a paddle flipped them over, and a conveyer belt eased them up to the shoot and down a slide where they were then dipped with some serious panache into the glazing bowl and out onto a rack.

Then it was on to his first trip from the Seattle Center to downtown on the monorail (a hit!) and down, down, down the escalators (another fave) and off to the carousel for a ride with mom and then with dad.

It's been a delightfully mellow holiday season for us. We've indulged ourselves with a lot of warm fires, staying up late, sleeping in, and wearing our jammies more than normal (me).

We were delighted to finally have a play date with dear friends Emma and Parker, whom we see less frequently as the kiddos have now moved into their varying preschool routines, and we had a great time at a gingerbread cookie-making (made with fresh ginger - yum!) party hosted by the Berdinkas.

As food is always a part of any holiday ritual and Oliver is into anything in the kitchen that requires a handle, buttons, cranks, wheels, presses, we made corn tortillas last night for tacos with prawns and Joe's fresh salsa. We are brining a chicken to butterfly (with my new poultry shears - woo hoo!) and roast for dinner tonite and are planning on making currant jam filled bombolonis (Italian donuts) for our paper-ripping gift finale for breakfast. Tomorrow night it's homemade ravioli. O.'s an experienced pasta chef - I once left him with his (dearly missed) sitter Laura, a recipe, ingredients, and the pasta machine and they turned out some very respectable sheets of pasta.

Wishing a truly peaceful holiday season and best wishes for the new year to all of you we love and hold in our hearts.

Cheers!

Terry, Joe, and Oliver

strange things we see on our nap drive:

1) small sign at edge of road that leads back into the trees - 'Family Way - Private Drive' (ewww...)

2) a massive gravel excavation project

3) spray painted onto something (?) the words 'No Jail'

4) the rock man - a stone assemblage of very large flagstones that vaguely resembles a large man standing

5) a cul-de-sac in the middle of nowhere (there seem to be a lot of these in the county) with a (few) mini-mansion with a massive thatched roof and (if that weren't odd enough) a sign pointing to said cul-de-sac reading 'airbrush tanning'.

Santa Fe Smiles from September

Our dear friends Hal and Vicki in the back of Big Blue. 'Fire up the engine, Uncle How-oh!'

More photos to follow...

Latent Blogger

Some Halloween highlights from the purple dragon.

A Sensible Guy

OK, just a quick post here from the latent blogger: I picked Oliver up from preschool yesterday, asked him about his morning. His reply: 'I had a really good time at preschool, but I'm just not going to go to college. I'm a sensible guy.'

Mantra for Parents of 3-Year Olds

Take nothing personally.

When you have a 3-year old and they: put their stinky cute little feet in your face (after you've asked them politely not to repeatedly), hit you, hit the dog, kick the dog, tell you they are going to run away (genetic), prefer their father (to the complete exclusion of their mother), prefer their mother (to the complete exclusion of their father), urinate in the avocado plant, again (it's fertilizing mother), throw dirt in your face, scream at you, refuse to go into the (insert any location here), refuse to leave the (insert any location here), refuse to nap, refuse to take a bath, refuse to eat, I could go on.

All completely age-appropriate behavior. When I was a child, he would have been labeled a spoiled brat and beaten into sobbing submission - thankfully humans have the ability to evolve. We'd die before we'd ever resort to any form of corporal punishment. We have a lot of family meetings. We have a lot of dialogue. We ask a lot of questions. His dad is totally amazing. I am less than, but have decided that my purpose here on earth in this lifetime is to cultivate patience within. Oliver is 'helping' with this project. I get to work on myself daily.

We love him insanely, which is really fortunate for all of us right now.

He's 3 feet high and rising, take nothing personally.

First Day of Preschool

Sheesh...his dad dropped him off, mom picked him up, he was busy in the sandbox. He was so excited. 'I went to Montessori school and I had a lovely time.' He was just squirming! We headed out to Kent's Nursery and bought an oak tree to commemorate the moment + dad's birthday. Checked out the waterfalls and ponds, the lily pads, the bargain area, the trees, the fish, the dogs, the dinosaur tree, the gunnera fountains, the frog and alligator, the incredibly cool staff.

Then, during possibly the most anticipated week of the year, he promptly begins sneezing, sniffing, and coughing, feeling 'punky' and now he'll be missing the rest of the week! Dad felt punky past week or more, so...

We stayed home. We nuggled and ate Fig Newmans and watched the camels in the Gobi desert footage. Played in the yard. A little. It was sunny. It rained. We took a drive in the country to fall asleep for a nap. Now it's a 3-year old film fest with Milo and Otis.

Movies make the punky go away. Really.

Oliver and Freda

So this is Freda, daughter of The Great Mandini and Charley and she IS as pretty as this. Last Tuesday, a lovely warm morning at Lake Padden, they met (in the flesh - he's been reading her blog and looking at her pictures at the salon for more than a year) for the first time, though it was as if they'd always known each other. They just started right in with the play. Into the water. Trading snacks. Easy splashing. Sitting in the sun. It was one of those sweet little moments in life.

Except that Oliver had a leech on his ankle which I just unthinkingly plucked off (it didn't seem to be attached) and started examining. It was about 3/8 of an inch long. So we went home and launched a leech info gathering mission. We had to google, get a library book, but he's totally into it (as am I : )

Turns out they are related to earthworms, annelids (segmented worms). They have 33 or 34 segments (sources, or perhaps it's species differ). Suckers on both ends of their bodies (how convenient), 3 jaws.

3 main classes of leeches (no pronunciation help here, though gnatbobdellida seems like a good password and makes me think of mr. bob dobalina):

Gnatbobdellida - have jaws, bite their hosts with their teeth, and secrete hirudin, an anticoagulent.

Rhyncobdellida - no jaws, but they insert a proboscis into the host, secrete an enzyme called hemetin, which dissolves blood clots (handy!).

Pharyngobdellida - no jaws or teeth - they just swallow things whole, eating mall invertebrates (supposed to be small invertebrates, but I liked the typo better).

Leeches can ingest several times their weight in blood and can survive several months without feeding (again, how handy!).

They have one or more pair of eyes. They have sensory organs on their heads and bodies that detect movement, and fluctuations in light and temperature. They also have chemical receptors on the head that allow them to smell.

FOR MATURE READERS ONLY: Leeches are hermaphrodites, with both male and female sex organs. This perhaps will be interesting when Oliver brings it up in preschool. They also have something called a clitellum (we skipped this part), an area of thickened skin that is only visible during mating (hmmmm...). They reproduce by intertwining their bodies and depositing sperm into each other’s clitellar area (speed-breeding?) - good thing we don't have that capacity. After fertilization, the eggs are in a cocoon, which the leech deposits under a log, on a leaf, or maybe in your daughter's ponytail. They hatch several weeks or months later (oh come ON, is it weeks, or is it months???), mini-leeches. They die after reproducing once or twice (I can relate).

Yes, there was widespread 'medicinal' bloodletting, which was eventually abandoned, though medical researchers have recently rediscovered (or discovered?) some benefits. Leeches produce substances - anti-coagulants, anesthetics. Maybe one day we'll carry leech packs in our first aid kits.

We also learned this week that urine will anesthetize the wound from an urchin spine sting while you get to the medic.

I just never saw parenting quite like this...

The Process of Elimination

This post is now a week+ old, but what's time, eh?

Oh my. Can't keep up with the laundry with this potty-training reality. If you are at all squeamish, please read no further. It is funny. However, yesterday I found myself with my son accidentally knocking the once out of reach most disgusting cat food can from its perch - all over the porch, rocks, etc. Yellow jackets everywhere, the dog pawing the rocks to get more of that glop, batting the yellow jackets with her paw or snapping her teeth. So I hose everything down and attempt to clean the mess.

Then, dog poops in the front yard. Off to get something with which to get rid of that poo, into the Herald bag and to the garbage. Meanwhile, OLIVER has pooped on the grass, so more Herald bags.

And then it was Ro and Oliver both failing to either get the message or make any move to align the pee with a potty in our house, both in the space of 10 minutes. It's comical!

Went to buy more tidy whities for O. and everything seemed to need to have some sort of sport ball motif around the waistband (cac!) or the wrong size. Back to the laundry room...

Dad shows up later in the day with about 18 pair of new plain vanilla undies. Who says chivalry is dead?

Taters

Okay, this is starting to look like a food blog...first harvest. Beautiful, shiny, smooth, new red fingerling potatoes dug from the sweet soil in the evening sun yesterday. Smallest was the size of a grape, largest about the size of a small russet. Oliver was sooooooo excited. And did you see that moon last night?

PIE!

No utensils needed. Mmmmmmmmmmm. This was the first pie of the berry season, a collaboration between the 3 of us and the 3 berries that were ripe in the yard - blueberries, raspberries, currants. The pie looked like a performance art piece, but ooooohhhhhh, did it ever taste great!

95 degrees in the shade.

Wphew! This qualifies as a major heat wave. So what's a guy to do? FIND WATER! These are photos from Oliver's second foray into lake swimming in a week. Last week found him jumping off the dock with his buddy Rowan at Crescent Lake (Lake Crescent?) on the Olympic peninsula. Today, Lake Padden, tonight we were free climbing the sandstone boulders and cooling off in the cool water on the submerged sandstone islands at Larrabee State Park - living in the northwest has its sweet rewards. We're navigating the yard for the coolest places to picnic (for breakfast too!).

Polly Spenner

This artwork was created for Oliver's 2nd birthday by Emma's wonderful sister Polly Spenner. Here is her bio: Born in Sydney, Australia. Her art work is inspired by the organic shapes and structures found in nature and the repetition of those forms that create man made objects are often balanced within her work.

 She strives to portray the dynamic between airplanes, skyscrapers, and scaffolding with their counterparts; gnarled tree trunks, wild animals, open sky, waters and the forest undergrowth. Formally trained at Interlochen Arts Academy and Rhode Island School of Design, Polly makes Rhode Island her home. Original prints and cards made to order. 401 440 7133

Cack-o-whacky

So when Oliver gets upset, he says things such as 'stop that now, it is making me all cack-o-whacky!' No idea where this came from - perhaps his own language. And he'll let anyone know when/if 'that's jamming me out!' (making him VERY angry), just now it was my doing yoga. It was making him very cack-o-whacky. So no yoga this afternoon I guess. 

Skipping the nap today, he had a great playdate at Zuanich Park (Riley was there!) and met some new friends, shared some snacks (we're into organic, they brought chocolate covered things and oreos, here we go...), met some new friends at the touch ponds in the Marine Life Center, and he LOVED (much 'WHEE!!!') biking (despite his initial Extreme Protest). It was a continuous stream of 'hey look, we're right by Georgia Pacific', 'hey look, there's a moving train next to us!', 'your backpack is hitting my head and it's making me very cack-o-whacky! Mom!, it's jamming me out!' while he's macking me on the back. Ah, yes.

And we've had The Deep segment of the Blue Planet Seas of Life on more or less continuous play since dad left for Oregon. It is absolutely wonderful and amazing. Right now he's watching it with his hand over one eye. 

Tool Talk

The Cheese Grater

In most kitchens, this is a cheese grater. In our kitchen it is an amazing shape-shifting mystery machine, an auger, a conveyor belt, a digger, an excavator, a tower crane, a feller buncher, a tub grinder...