Nostalgia and anticipation

We just received two boxes of Dutch's old baby clothes, which have been worn by other babies and lived in other people's garages over the last three years. Cook and I got all nostalgic while looking through them, in a sort of cynically sentimental way - "Oh look! Remember these pants? Remember how Dutch absolutely filled them with poop that time? I wonder how Jenny got the stains out!?" - and Dutch entertained herself by laying out outfits for her sibling for different seasons. She is annoyed that we have no skirts or shorts for her infant sibling, and was horrified to learn that she had no skirts or shorts until her legs got long enough for me to see any point in it (18 months, maybe?). I suggested that it might be okay for babies to wear just a shirt and diaper (or not) when it gets hot, and she looked at me with the look of disgust that she reserves just for my (frequent) expressions of fashion ignorance. So I told her she could be in charge of picking out outfits for her sibling until the sibling starts picking his/her own outfits, and she could purchase shorts for Anaximander from her own savings.* That mollified her, and she went back to laying outfits out on the floor.

Cook and I spent some time after our clothing-related sentimental outburst reminiscing about Dutch's infancy. These are my favorite memories from Dutch's very early infancy:

1. The way she screamed after they suctioned her. She was SO pissed off.
   
2. Holding her for the first time, of course. The first thing she did was to poop on me, which she now thinks is a hilarious story.
   
3. My first two separations from her, which are also stories about Cook. We resisted most of the staff's efforts to take her away, but they stole her away in the middle of the one night we stayed there, for some random let's-do-it-while-we've-got-them-in-the-hospital sort of test. Cook went with her, and that made me feel so safe, as we had now officially become a family of three, and he would look out for her when I could not, and vice versa. And when we left the next morning, I got a ride home from Jenny-the-stain-removal-queen, and Cook walked home with Dutch in the sling, the first time he'd really gotten to take full, solitary responsibility for her. I was so happy to see them when they walked in the door, the two of them. (Dutch was asleep, and not actually walking, but still.)

Those early minor events now are tied in my memory to my understanding of her personality and our family relationships. I remember the look on Cook's face as he arrived with that tiny sling bag in the context of his fathering ever since.

Even the fact that she was born on her due date, in a hurry, ties in my mind to her personality (while she is not reckless, she is endlessly determined), which is silly. That's the weird thing about reminiscing about a baby who is no longer a baby. I remember being kind of irritated during Dutch's infancy by people telling me that I should cherish this time, because I felt that they were all speaking from the perspective of having a baby who had grown up. They were all looking back just like I am now, remembering while knowing how it all turned out. Whereas I was experiencing the infancy raw, without context or the confidence of knowing Dutch and I would both survive to be healthy and reasonably well adjusted. (So far.) And now I get to do it all over again! I'm joyfully anticipating the pleasure of slowly getting to know this new person, but I know it'll also be just as daunting as getting to know Dutch was. Also, I'm sure s/he will poop extravagantly on those pants.

* Which are accumulating - she's saving up for this. Or maybe this. Or something else. It depends on when you ask her. But she's definitely planning on expanding her Playmobil empire. Or launching a line of baby clothes, or something.

In case you're not already avoiding high fructose corn syrup.

Here's another reason, also nicely illustrating the lunacy of our industrial food system.

More good news!

I wasn't thrilled about the Obama administration's appointments, but I'm pretty delighted with the first week. So far, so good! Today's news.

Not that anything they've done has been surprising, but it's still heartening to know that things are already changing.

In other, less important news, I dreamed last night that I was surfing (which I do not do), and I was just getting picked up by a wave when I woke up. It felt really weird, like the physical lifting and pushing of the wave turned into a pushing me out of sleep. And, no, I didn't have to pee.

Life around here

Here are some dull videos from the last three weeks....

This is Dutch wandering around the courtyard on January 2nd, inspecting the snowfall, which she did for about 45 minutes.


This is Dutch in Silly-Showoff mode, explaining a drawing she made at daycare this week.


This is Dutch this morning, playing an elaborate game in which Cook is her motorboat and she is a fisherman. Note that Cook and I think that the frequent mention of the word "gas" is very funny. And we wonder where Dutch gets her penchant for butt jokes.


This is Dutch in her beloved new bathrobe, grooming in our miniscule bathroom.

Yet another conversation I never thought I would have.

The Scene: This morning. I'm at the computer, and Dutch is off doing something weird.

Dutch: Maaaaamaaaa.....
Me: Hmmm?
Dutch: Come heeeeere....
Me: Umm... why?
Dutch: There's something in the toilet for you to see!
Me: Oh. What is it?
Dutch: It's a surprise!

Personality holiday

I'd really love to take a vacation from myself this weekend. Not a vacation from my life - I like my life just fine, in spite of its challenges. A vacation from ME. I'm tired of my physical, emotional, and intellectual habits. I'm sick of the way I talk, the things I think, the way I respond to people, etc. I'd like to be somebody else for a few days. I frequently resolve to change my ways, but it seems nearly impossible. So the best solution is clearly to be somebody else for a while. Though... not Dutch.

Still bummed about Sam, but moving on.

Stuff to celebrate this weekend:

1) Passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, way overdue. Gosh, I hope the Republicans' fears don't come to fruition in a flood of frivolous lawsuits by women who have been discriminated against. Those poor discriminating businesses.
2) Real support for international family planning.
3) No more Guantanamo. Also, following the Geneva Convention is once again a good idea! Woohoo!

Icy rivers, indeed.

I was listening to Marketplace on NPR (I really must stop doing that) tonight, and it was so scary and depressing that I started to feel panicky. They set me up with a little chitchat about how this is an "equal opportunity" recession and people with college degrees are no longer recession-proof.* That made me feel pretty awful. Then they nailed me with a throw-away story about a guy in Portland. He's not eating sushi anymore, poor guy. While I'm not feeling TOO awful about him, I am feeling panicked that he's joining the 174000 other unemployed Oregonians** competing with me and Cook for work. Recently several major employers in the Portland area have announced layoffs. Also, our brand-new, ambitious, decisive, action-oriented mayor has (just after kicking off a bunch of chaotic changes and new programs) ... embroiled himself in a classic stupid-politician sex-plus-lying scandal, which is making everyone feel a little paralyzed, not to mention massively annoyed.***

Anyway, my point is that I am SCARED. Cook and I have, between us, 62 hours a week of temporary, unbenefited work. Getting a decent job in this place and time seems to be nearly impossible, even for people who are much better at networking and self-salesmanship than we are. We've already cut sushi out of our budget. Things don't look good, folks.



*They said nothing about people with multiple semi-pointless masters degrees. Maybe we're safe!

** Officially unemployed, that is. They don't count the many many Portlanders who are over-educated, under-employed types eking by on part time work. Like...um... ME.

*** WHY do people in power seem to think that they can do whatever moronic, pathetic things they like, lie about it, and get away with it? Does power actually make people stupid?

diligently practicing

Braxton Hicks* contractions are driving me crazy. They started at around 20 weeks, and I'm sick of them. Dutch Braxton Hicksed me like crazy, so much that I several times panicked and had to sit down and time them, because the rule of thumb is that if you have more than 4 per hour, you might really be in labor. I had more than 4 an hour pretty often in the last few months of pregnancy. I decided not to freak out, and in the end I didn't go into labor until my due date.** This now seems silly to me because labor contractions turned out to be so very much NOT like Braxton Hicks contractions.

Anyway, my mostly-unfounded theory is that the super-efficiency of Dutch's birth was due to all those Braxton Hicks contractions - my uterus, unlike the rest of my body, apparently spends most of my pregnancies working out, making itself incredibly fit. If my theory is correct, this next baby should be born after about 12 minutes of labor.


*Also the name of a character in a silly British series of which I am fond.
** The last time Dutch did ANYTHING without dawdling.

Through a haze

I'm sick (again - stupid immunosuppressing baby), and I experienced yesterday's Inaugural hullabaloo kind of disjointedly. For all the people NPR interviewed yesterday, I didn't hear anybody providing the perspective of a person with painful sinuses who just watched "Mulan" (because it was already in the DVD player) while sitting in bed, surrounded by crusty tissues, eating 2 cold pancakes with peanut butter. So here it is, because we don't want to miss even the smallest demographic in our media analysis:

1) I know it's good to have pageantry and celebration and joy and whatnot, but I just kept thinking "Hey, mister! Shouldn't you be GETTING TO WORK!? I think we've got some little problems you could get started on!"

2) I loved loved loved seeing the pictures of Obama and Biden and their spouses waving goodbye to the Bushes as they wafted away in a helicopter. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

3) For all my grouchiness about point #1, I was pleased to hear from Dutch that her daycare teacher had them all watch the swearing-in on TV. She was most impressed by the cannons ("Mama, they shot off bombs!"), but I'm sure that she will be happy to have witnessed this. (Happier than I am to remember MY school-news-watching experience, watching the Challenger launch on TV in the library of my elementary school when I was nine.)

That's all. Now I've got to take one last nap before my nine-straight-hours-of-classes marathon tonight.

Emphasizing the positive

This week, we achieved the following triumphs:

1) I have finally mastered breathing on both sides while swimming the crawl. I have mastered it so beautifully that I can no longer remember which side I used to not be able to breath on at all. Gold stars for me!

2) Dutch has slept in her own bed ALL night for seven of the last eight nights. I had been pondering the issue of her sleep habits (in her bed to start the night, with a parent there until she falls asleep, then getting up in the wee hours and coming to our bed), and considering whether I should take action to get her to stay in her bed before the baby comes. I decided I was just too lazy to do the work of training her, and we have a co-sleeper for the baby anyway, so whatever. We'll make do. But she seems to be making the shift all by herself, with no prompting at all - she's decided she wants to sleep all night in her own bed, and maybe there's been a physiological change. I don't really care what the reason is. I won't be surprised if this turns out to be a temporary change, but I'm enjoying it for now.

Two things about this - the first is that both Cook and I are happy to find that we miss having her in the bed, after years of wanting her out of it. It's lovely to look at her sleeping face in the morning, and to wake up with her tucked against my back. It's even more lovely to not be kicked in the kidneys all night.

The second thing about this is that, in my experience, all the big growing-up changes have happened this way. All my efforts to get her to do things like take naps, poop in the toilet, etc., have, in the end been totally fruitless. She's worked her way around to everything all by herself. I cringe to think about the thousands of hideous hours I spent when she was new, trying to get her to take three 2-hour naps a day, the way All Babies Are Supposed To. I worked SO hard at it, and made both of us miserable, and in the end she has always changed her behavior (particularly in the area of sleeping) when she was ready for it, for mysterious reasons that seem to have nothing to do with any parenting. I finally reconciled myself after a while to this, and once I embraced it, my life got much easier, and I think Dutch's did too. Supernannies and other experts would be horrified by the sort of things I've done - letting Dutch nap on my chest when she was a baby, letting her sleep in our bed half the night for years, stuffing her into a backpack and running errands instead of having her take her alleged 2-hour nap every afternoon at home, giving her a diaper to poop in at her request when she was almost 3, etc. I think they'd say I was letting her manipulate me, and actually doing her harm. And as with every parenting dilemma, half the parents I know are horrified too, and half just shrug and say "well, she won't be sleeping in your bed/pooping in diapers/etc. when she's 18, so who cares?"

This doesn't mean we haven't put (effective) work into parenting. We've taught Dutch some basic manners, and we occasionally make her clean up her room. We've taught her (with the help of many wonderful daycare teachers) that hurting other people is not allowed. She's turned out to be a perfectly fine kid who says "thank you" to the bus driver when she gets off the bus, sleeps through the night (!), eats whatever we've cooked for dinner, uses the toilet appropriately, and doesn't seem have any major sociopathic issues, in spite of her bad table manners. (Those really are our fault.) But the stuff that seems more physical than that, we haven't taught her. We've just tried to set the stage, and then waited for her to arrive on her own time. Pushing things just makes everybody cranky. Life is short, and I've got better things to do (sleeping, baking cookies, reading trashy books, etc.) than try to force my kid into doing something she's truly not ready for yet.

I think Kid #2 is going to really enjoy manipulating us - we're not going to even try to impose our own timetable, this time around. Hopefully s/he really won't be still wearing diapers and sleeping in our bed at age 18.

Speaking of which, I haven't yet provided Kid #2's Secret Fetal Nickname, but this is it: Anaximander.* My mom translates it as "Salamander" and Dutch translates as "My Aximander." Dutch was called Plog** in utero, so we apparently have a tradition of bad Fetal Nicknames, eschewing the adorable classics like "Peanut" or "Bean." But it does make sense to prepare the kid for a childhood of bedtime stories about famous cartographers. I was totally nonplussed one morning when Dutch started telling me about the life of Gerard Mercator.*** Little Anaximander will have a head start.


* You have to skip down to the "cartography" section of that link to read why Cook decided that was a good name - he loves knowledge for the sake of knowledge.

**The secondary inspiration for this is that Bill Lee, in the Ken Burns "Baseball" documentary, seems at one point to be indicating that his dogs are named Plog and Yewpie - Kid #2 is lucky not to be called Yewpie. Cook and I are terrible dorks, and we love Bill Lee.

***He's an interesting guy all on his own, actually, but when you filter his life through the brain of a sleepy preschooler, you get a pretty crazy life story.

not yet cynical

The Scene: This morning. I am in the tiny bathroom, putting in my contacts. Dutch is standing in the hall, nattering about something while I ignore her. Cook, who has a job interview scheduled, comes out of our bedroom wearing a Superman t-shirt.

Cook: If the interview starts going down the tubes, I'll just fly out the window and fly around the world a bunch of times to reverse the direction of time, so I can start all over again.

Me: Great plan.

Dutch (condescendingly): Daaaaaa-deee, you can't fly.

Cook: Why not?

Dutch: Because you don't have a cape!

Cook: Well, it's under the bed.

(Pause)

Dutch (intrigued): Daddy, can I see your cape?

A wonderful way to wake up

While I was making coffee this morning, I had the pleasure of hearing Patrick Leahy ask Eric Holder if he agrees that waterboarding is torture, and Holder reply that he did. 

This should NOT be exciting. I'm sorry that it is, I guess. But oh, it feels good nonetheless.

The brainwashing, it is complete.

Last night, when I was talking about potential class projects with Cook at the dinner table, Dutch put her hand on my arm and said helpfully "Mama, I think it would be a good idea to build a lot of houses and apartments." 

Cook and I looked at her, and I said "Why?"

She said "Because then there would be enough homes for all the homeless people to live."

She clearly has a career in government ahead of her. This morning, we were all riding the bus together across the Ross Island Bridge into downtown, and Cook and I were talking about how if we were in charge and had lots of money, we'd put the highway underground (sometimes we like to fantasize like that), and Cook asked Dutch what she'd do if she was in charge. She didn't hesitate. "I'd do something to make the world a better place," she said (thank you, Miss Rumphius), "I would get rid of all the cars and get lots of busses for everyone to ride."

So my question is this: if we now gave her to a more normal family to raise, would she convert, or is this a permanent brainwashing?

The uses of enchantment

Dutch is really into fairy tales these days, inspired by the evil Disney Princess obsession of some of her classmates. She's seen a couple Disney movies, and lately we've been reading the Grimm versions of some fairy tales. The Grimm versions are totally bonkers. We refer to them in our house as "The Bloodthirsty Fairy Tales." Dutch, who is so terrified by the comically inept policemen in the Pippi Longstocking movie that she can't watch the rest of the movie, accepts with equanimity all sorts of psychotic cruelty in The Bloodthirsty Ones. She has no problem with the notion that the world is completely black and white. Some people are good, and some people are bad. Bad people deserve to be tortured to death. Good people deserve to marry royalty and have clean little animals sing to them.

Happily, Dutch appears to understand completely that Pretend Life and Real Life are different. In Pretend Life (which is where she lives most of the time), stepmothers are bad and deserve to be rolled down the hill inside a barrel studded with nails. In Real Life, lots of people have perfectly nice stepmothers. *

Anyway, I'm pretty sure I'd rather that Dutch has lots of violent and cruel fairy tales read to her than that she buys into the evil Disney Princess worldview. Some of the DP-generated things she says and does make me feel sick. I go back and forth between thinking that A) this is no big deal, and she'll grow out of it and figure out a more ethical and non-misogynist worldview, and B) yes, she'll grow out of it, but it's leaving LASTING DAMAGE! At this point, because I'm lazy and DP is just too big to fight, I'm going with option A. I also do try to respect her interests at least a little, even when I find them to be sick-making, so I struggle with finding the balance there, too.

The princess thing is playing out kind of hilariously in Dutch's daycare, though. Dutch was very upset the other day because the alpha female in her class, whom she worships, keeps making Dutch be evil when they play princess. Dutch said "I ALWAYS have to be evil!" And last week, she was mad because Alpha Girl makes her be "the handsome girl-prince." Hee hee. I suggested that it's way more fun to pretend to be evil than to pretend to be good,** but she's not buying it.


* Dutch has a step-grandmother of her very own, whom she adores. Not to mention the fact that she apparently wants a stepmother and a stepfather.
** I know this first-hand, as Dutch occasionally asks me to play the roles of the Evil Stepmother And The Evil Stepsisters, if she can't procure any more fun playmates (ie anyone else in the known universe), and I get to give orders and be mean while she runs around and dusts things. Now THAT is a fun game.

Miscellany

1) One of my professors is eerily like Mr. Bean. I'm afraid of being the person who fails the class taught by Mr. Bean, which would make me really unique.*

2) I found a list of resolutions of mine from some time ago (in the last decade, I think). Not New Year Resolutions, since I don't really make those, but definitely some sort of self-improvement effort. The list includes stuff like "Buy less" and "Exercise more" and "Complain less" and so on. I have actually slipped backward on nearly all the elements over the last five years, so I've tacked it up to our nifty cork lamp, and I SWEAR I'll get right on the self-improvement program.

3) I can't seem to win any diaper covers on ebay. Help me out, please - send me your old diaper covers. (With Dutch, we scored bigtime when a friend of Cook's went to help HER friend clean up after a fire in her apartment building, and was offered a bag of elderly diaper covers by a neighbor of the friend, who had gotten them from a friend of hers. If you see what I mean. Anyway, they were free, and therefore wonderful, and Dutch enjoyed the special cachet of being the only baby around who smelled faintly of smoke for the first 9 months of her life.) We'll be cloth diapering again, with a diaper service, and we need some waterproof linings...

4) My excessively brainy cousin wrote a blog post the other day that made me feel both depressed about the world and embarassed by my own frivolous inanity. Sheesh. Anyway, when you're tired of reading my profound musings on swimming-while-pregnant, check out Joel's blog.

5) Today I described Dutch (who was demonstrating how terribly exhausted she was after being told to put away her books) as "stooped" and she whirled around, pointed at me, scowled, and said "DON'T call me STUPID!!!" And I'm pretty sure she's never even seen Kevin Kline.


* I should note that my Mr. Bean is an excellent communicator and seems like a very nice guy. It's just a little hard to take him seriously, through no fault of his own.

On the loose

I had my first really successful swim today in five weeks. This pregnancy is hitting me much harder than the first, and since I hit the 20-week point, I've been struggling with dizziness and shortness of breath whenever I exert myself beyond just ambling. I've apparently finally worked out an acceptable compromise with my body, and today I was able to swim for half an hour, at a glacial pace,* without feeling like I was going to pass out. Happily, I've reached a degree of buoyancy that keeps me afloat even when I'm barely moving,** and I surge to the surface after each breaststroke like a barrel filled with air. I'm majestic, actually, making my ponderous way across the pool. You'd be amazed. The lifeguards certainly are; they keep a very sharp eye on me.


* Actually, I do move more quickly than a glacier. I DO!
** So I'm really more like an iceberg than a glacier.

Exciting report about my day.

Today Dutch woke up at 8:30, which is the latest she has ever slept in. She also slept the whole night in her own bed, which doesn't happen very often. Maybe she'll do this every night from now on, now that she'll be The Big Sister. I, of course, woke up at 6:30, unable to sleep any more, and braved the cold, dark morning to get up and bake things. By 8:15, I was pretty sure Dutch must be dead, but I figured there probably wasn't much I could do about it, and I might as well eat a muffin. Happily, she turned out to be alive, and the muffins turned out pretty well, too.

Dutch is currently all about Heidi. This morning she went off with Cook on an adventure, wearing a pseudo-Swiss outfit of a dress, white tights, brown leather shoes, and a backpack. "Daddy, when we go outside, I will scamper off to take care of the goats!" she announced as they went out the door.

Anyway, I'm just writing all this because I'm procrastinating. I have about 200 pages of land use reading to do, and I guess I should go... do that... or something.

And hey, Joel, thanks for the link! Chocolate parents... mmm.. I'll have Dutch watch that as soon as she comes down from the mountain.

Thinking happy thoughts.

I got it! I got The Wrap. (Thank you, o gifters of Christmas cash!) I love it, though I have yet to try it on an actual infant, with the corresponding screaming and spastic wriggling. Not that this baby is going to scream, ever. EVER.

I'm back at work this week, with an obviously pregnant belly, and I've been getting all sorts of weird commentary. This did not happen the first time around. One coworker told me confidingly that she thinks God put us on earth to have babies, and three minutes later another coworker ominously told me that the second kid is "exponentially harder. EXPONENTIALLY!" and she didn't even follow that up with any sort of cheesy codicil like "but there's so much more love" or whatever, just frowned at me in a scary way. Yikes.

Then, on the bus home, Dutch told me, after a conversation about some neighbors of ours, that she hopes Cook and I get divorced, so she can get new parents.* I laughed out loud, but the people around us looked pretty appalled. I told her she'll have to settle for what she's got. Poor kid.

*For what it's worth, I'd like to reassure you, my reading audience, that this impulse seemed rooted in curiosity and some discontent with the mean things we do to her (like making her take baths), rather than in any sort of fundamental trauma. I'm pretty sure.

You asked for it.

My broken-butted Lawyer Lady friend wanted to know how I look pregnant. This is how I look pregnant. * 24 weeks and counting. (24 weeks, when it's your second pregnancy and you were already not exactly svelte, looks pretty freaking huge. I was a little worried they wouldn't let me fly home after Christmas vacation.)



















This is how I look when I get tired of having pregnant pictures taken of me.














This is Dutch after Ballet Class #2.




















*Pissed off, in spite of the delightful antics of my crazed midget companion.

Tomato, tomahto, potato potahto...

The other day I found myself talking about parenting with a friend,* and I went trundling off on the topic of the weirdness of parenting a Person. Dutch is a kid, obviously, and prone to the usual kid annoyances (tantrums, whining, non sequiturs, etc), but she's also turning up, as she grows, with some behaviors and interests that are clearly based in permanent parts of her personality. There are very minor things - she likes strawberry ice cream, a completely unreasonable preference that I fear will outlast her current passion for all things pink. There are bigger things (I'm not going to list them, because I'm beginning to think I need to respect her privacy more, and not describe her personality all over the internets). Sometimes she annoys me or embarasses me. Sometimes I'm not even sure that I like this Person. She's as different from me as I am from my own mother (of whom I am very fond, and whom I no doubt irritate and embarass on a regular basis, though she would never say so). 

I think I  somehow expected that my child, though of course imperfect and subject to toddler and teen tantrums, would inevitably turn out to be a person with whom I had a great deal in common, and yet was better, like a new and improved version of me (with, of course, some of my husband's characteristics that I most like thrown in). This has not come to pass. I see quite a bit that we have in common,** but she's clearly not any sort of version of me or of Cook. I have to respect that, and leave space for her to be herself, and try not to constrain her with my embarassment or disapproval.*** It's really hard for me to do, which is a character flaw that hopefully she didn't inherit, and I'm trying to do better at it. Hey, look,  a resolution for 2009! Happy new year!

*I try not to do this too much, but damnit, she's such a good listener and so thoughtful, and I couldn't help myself. 

** We both like pickles!

*** Within reason. I reserve the right to disapprove when she says that people are only beautiful if they wear fancy dresses.

We're home!

We're exhausted. Though Dutch slept 12 hours straight, which is a seriously unusual accomplishment for her, so I have high hopes that she will be a happy camper all day.

We had a wonderful vacation, though not as full-of-sleep as I had unrealistically hoped. Dutch really loved seeing her grandparents and her uncle and aunt and doing Christmassy things.

This is Christmas morning.
































This is Dutch's grandfather's Little League kit.













More snow pictures:














































































We also spent a couple of days in Boston, saw a few friends (though not as many as we'd have liked, or for as long as we'd have liked, due to a crazy blizzard and the fact that people actually work during the week), and revisited some of our old haunts. We walked around a LOT, ate at places we remember fondly (pizza, icecream,* hot chocolate, etc), browsed through some of our favorite bookstores, and checked out the results of the Big Dig, which was going on during the three years we lived in Boston (six years ago!). Dutch said she loves Boston, and thinks it much better than Portland, because... it has a subway.


Did I mention I got a video camera for Christmas? Now I can pepper this blog with lots of exceedingly dull videos. Enjoy!

We flew back yesterday. Now we have to prepare for normal life, including the start of school on Monday. Laundry, groceries, thank you notes, finishing Christmas cards, Also, Dutch is coping with the crushing blow of the departure of our wonderful downstairs neighbors, who are moving (tragically beyond the reach of public transit), and will be gone for good in a few days. 2009 is already full of transition!


* We hiked a couple miles in that crazy blizzard to get to this place just so I could eat a micro-sundae. I'd have walked three times as far for it.