I'm pretty sure everyone here knows about this, but I wanted to note in the family timeline that I'm planning to donate a kidney. I've been planning to do this for a long time now, but I wrote about it here, in case you haven't seen that yet.
Perhaps Kels or even a guest blogger will be interested in sharing more about what that looks like to Team GW. Perhaps they will be interested in writing for my hypothetical book of short stories about kidney donation. If finding a job takes too long, that's going to be what I work on to keep myself busy. More on that later.
Things are good here- we are planning a camping trip to the Olympics for Thanksgiving, and STILL get to eat stuffing with the family this Sunday. Work is winding down, but I feel like this is a nice time of year for some free time.
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Sunday, November 16, 2014
More Kids, by Volume
I still have the same number of kids, but it's struck me that you are continually getting more kid available. Especially in those early months, you get pounds and pounds of kid added on every month. They're older now, and doing different things, would you like to hear about them?
Casey is still the smiliest baby in the world. She still only has her two bottom teeth, but she will show those puppies to *anyone*. She loves to see new faces and give them her biggest smile, it really melts the heart. She's crawling, now, too. Properly crawling, even. She had been doing some productive army-crawl stuff, but now she gets up on all four limbs and covers *distance*. We are officially at the point where you have to be careful, because the place where you put her down may not be where you need to go to pick her up. This effect can be carefully mitigated by surrounding her with toys, so that if she tries to escape there is something to distract her attention and get stuffed into her mouth. Swords, oddly enough, are a big hit in this regard.
I'll tell you the cutest way that this shows up, though. You'll be doing something else, either on your own or with Tyler, and tiny fingers will grab your toes. That part is pretty nice.
Also, she likes to crawl up to my pants and put her mouth (her always so-drooly mouth) on my pants. I'm not sure if it's a kiss or if she's trying to eat me. Though given how she interacts with nearly everything at this point, I suspect it's the eating one.
The one thing we're a little concerned with is that she's not made much linguistic progress. She's still pretty limited to raspberries, vowels, and "kkkkkkkkkk". Which I guess is a consonant. We'll get her checked out to make sure there's nothing wrong, but she may just be waiting until she knows what to do with communication before just *flaunting* it all the time.
Tyler grows. We've implemented a plan that I rather like. If Tyler does his chore (feeding the cats) and eats his dinner (still 50/50, I put lots of veggies in things) he get 15 minute of ipad time. He doesn't yet realize it, but this isn't a kindness for him. For us, it gives us a reprieve from having to keep him always entertained, and it serves as something else we can take away if he's being bad. I feel pretty Machiavellian when I think about it.
He likes to play 'Good guy and Bad guy' with me, but I'm always the bad guy. I told him I don't like to be the bad guy, and he said I could be the bad guy for a while and then be the good guy later. So we did that until he realized that he was going to have to be the bad guy, and he didn't like that. So we talked about how you have to share if you want people to play with you. You sometimes have to do nice things for other people if you want them to do nice things for you. He was quiet for a while after that.
Today, He said I could be the good guy and he would be the bad guy. We switched after a while, but I felt proud about that one.
Also I got sick this weekend, and now the entire household is coughing pretty much all night. I've spent some nights in the guest bedroom with the monitors just to let Jess sleep. It's noisy. But we did have a date night, the two of us. We went to a board game Cafe. Think game store, but they will also sell you beer or coffee. We played Lords of Waterdeep and "A Few Acres of Snow" and Jessie kicked my butt at both of them. She's vicious.
-N
Casey is still the smiliest baby in the world. She still only has her two bottom teeth, but she will show those puppies to *anyone*. She loves to see new faces and give them her biggest smile, it really melts the heart. She's crawling, now, too. Properly crawling, even. She had been doing some productive army-crawl stuff, but now she gets up on all four limbs and covers *distance*. We are officially at the point where you have to be careful, because the place where you put her down may not be where you need to go to pick her up. This effect can be carefully mitigated by surrounding her with toys, so that if she tries to escape there is something to distract her attention and get stuffed into her mouth. Swords, oddly enough, are a big hit in this regard.
I'll tell you the cutest way that this shows up, though. You'll be doing something else, either on your own or with Tyler, and tiny fingers will grab your toes. That part is pretty nice.
Also, she likes to crawl up to my pants and put her mouth (her always so-drooly mouth) on my pants. I'm not sure if it's a kiss or if she's trying to eat me. Though given how she interacts with nearly everything at this point, I suspect it's the eating one.
The one thing we're a little concerned with is that she's not made much linguistic progress. She's still pretty limited to raspberries, vowels, and "kkkkkkkkkk". Which I guess is a consonant. We'll get her checked out to make sure there's nothing wrong, but she may just be waiting until she knows what to do with communication before just *flaunting* it all the time.
Tyler grows. We've implemented a plan that I rather like. If Tyler does his chore (feeding the cats) and eats his dinner (still 50/50, I put lots of veggies in things) he get 15 minute of ipad time. He doesn't yet realize it, but this isn't a kindness for him. For us, it gives us a reprieve from having to keep him always entertained, and it serves as something else we can take away if he's being bad. I feel pretty Machiavellian when I think about it.
He likes to play 'Good guy and Bad guy' with me, but I'm always the bad guy. I told him I don't like to be the bad guy, and he said I could be the bad guy for a while and then be the good guy later. So we did that until he realized that he was going to have to be the bad guy, and he didn't like that. So we talked about how you have to share if you want people to play with you. You sometimes have to do nice things for other people if you want them to do nice things for you. He was quiet for a while after that.
Today, He said I could be the good guy and he would be the bad guy. We switched after a while, but I felt proud about that one.
Also I got sick this weekend, and now the entire household is coughing pretty much all night. I've spent some nights in the guest bedroom with the monitors just to let Jess sleep. It's noisy. But we did have a date night, the two of us. We went to a board game Cafe. Think game store, but they will also sell you beer or coffee. We played Lords of Waterdeep and "A Few Acres of Snow" and Jessie kicked my butt at both of them. She's vicious.
-N
Saturday, November 15, 2014
Gold medal lesson
I've been reading "The Boys on the Boat," an early birthday present from Mom. The book resonates for me because I went to the University of Washington during the years the boat in question was hung in a commons room at the Husky Union Building. At least two or three times a week, I'd walk past the boat and the small plaque that said something like "Gold Medal, Berlin Olympics, 1936" and feel an unspoken, surge of pride in our Husky heritage.
I had no idea of how much effort and drama went into winning that race. Read the book, please.
The part I like best is towards the end. The UW crew has just blown away the other crews in the US Olympic trials in Princeton NJ. The big wheels in the Olympic committee take the UW coach aside and tell him, oh by the way our committee has no money to actually send you to Berlin. If you can't raise $5,000 by the end of the week, we'll have no choice but to send the second place boat from the Pennsylvania Athletic Club.
Remember this as the height of the Great Depression. Penn may have had wealthy people standing by with pockets full of money, but hardly anybody else did.
The books says the UW coach, Al Ulbrickson, didn't bat an eye. He immediately huddled with sportswriters from the Seattle P-I and the Seattle Times, who started writing dramatic columns and headlines to be telegraphed back to Seattle overnight. Then the book continues, "within minutes, phones began to ring in Seattle."
The director of the UW Alumni started calling prominent UW graduates. The Seattle Chamber of Commerce sent telegrams to every chamber in "every city, town, and hamlet in the state." UW "coeds grabbed tin cans and started going door to door." Hometowns of the nine crew members sent what they could, $50 from Montesano, the timber town on the coast, $50 from Bellingham, and on and on. In the first, day UW students sold $1,500 worth of lapel tags for 50 cents each.
"At the end of the second day, T.E. Davies, chairman of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce put a $5,000 certified check in an envelope and airmailed it to Al Ulbrickson."
Call me idealistic, but that's my idea of what people, especially Northwest people, can do when we work together. Maybe someday we can do it again.
I had no idea of how much effort and drama went into winning that race. Read the book, please.
The part I like best is towards the end. The UW crew has just blown away the other crews in the US Olympic trials in Princeton NJ. The big wheels in the Olympic committee take the UW coach aside and tell him, oh by the way our committee has no money to actually send you to Berlin. If you can't raise $5,000 by the end of the week, we'll have no choice but to send the second place boat from the Pennsylvania Athletic Club.
Remember this as the height of the Great Depression. Penn may have had wealthy people standing by with pockets full of money, but hardly anybody else did.
The books says the UW coach, Al Ulbrickson, didn't bat an eye. He immediately huddled with sportswriters from the Seattle P-I and the Seattle Times, who started writing dramatic columns and headlines to be telegraphed back to Seattle overnight. Then the book continues, "within minutes, phones began to ring in Seattle."
The director of the UW Alumni started calling prominent UW graduates. The Seattle Chamber of Commerce sent telegrams to every chamber in "every city, town, and hamlet in the state." UW "coeds grabbed tin cans and started going door to door." Hometowns of the nine crew members sent what they could, $50 from Montesano, the timber town on the coast, $50 from Bellingham, and on and on. In the first, day UW students sold $1,500 worth of lapel tags for 50 cents each.
"At the end of the second day, T.E. Davies, chairman of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce put a $5,000 certified check in an envelope and airmailed it to Al Ulbrickson."
Call me idealistic, but that's my idea of what people, especially Northwest people, can do when we work together. Maybe someday we can do it again.
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