We/re moving.

We're moving. On THURSDAY. We're pretty topsy-turvy.

This is what's going well in our life right now: Skipper can continue to attend daycare.* I got a call from the daycare office manager on Thursday while I was on the bus, and she told me that Skipper was excluded from daycare until August 16, because she wasn't immunized against chickenpox and one of her classmates has come down with it. This is the policy of the Multnomah County Health Department.** I completely freaked out and burst into tears and had to hang up on the nice lady, who felt really bad. I sobbed quietly to myself for a few minutes (this is okay to do on the bus) because HOLY SHIT our lives are so nutso right now and we're MOVING and we have NO MONEY to pay for a babysitter for three weeks and OH MY GOD what are we going to DO!? Then I calmed down and called back and talked to a different staffmember, and burst into tears all over again, and sobbed for a few more minutes. Then I called Cook who said "Oh my god. What are we going to do?" and then said "Wait a minute. Didn't I get Skipper vaccinated for chickenpox the last time I took the girls for shots?" "No," I scoffed, "why would you have done that?" (we both think the chickenpox vaccine is stupid, and Dutch only got it recently because she needs it for kindergarten). Then I freaked out some more. Then I called him again and he said "I'm pretty sure she got that shot."I called the doctor, just in case. And, yes, she's vaccinated. No problem. Cook recalls that he felt after the appointment that he'd been bullied into getting more vaccines than he felt comfortable doing. I am SO grateful that he got bullied into it.

Anyway, that's what our life is like right now. I had to call the daycare back and apologize to everybody I'd cried all over. They were very nice about it.

So that's the good news this week! Actually, we're also looking forward to living in our new apartment, which is just a 10-minute walk from Dutch's school and THREE frequent-service bus lines! Woohoo!

*At least until the end of August, when my student discount expires, and her tuition goes up to $1400/month. We're sad to be saying goodbye to the daycare, because it's been great, and Skipper has loved it (well, at least for the last 7 months), but sheesh. $1400 is a lot of money.

**Which has declined to hire me a number of times. Clearly, they have bad judgement all around.

The new things I love.

Frozen plain yogurt from Trader Joe's. Why did nobody ever tell me about this? I am going to pawn all my belongings so I can afford to eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I am going to fill the freezer of our next home with it, and there will be no room for anything else. I am going to buy a chest freezer and put it in the living room and fill it with frozen yogurt.

Also, I finally got around to using Pandora.* For my job-searching internet time, I set up a 2raumwohnung station and a Panjabi MC station. It seems that a driving beat is necessary to keep me going as I hunt down and apply for crappy jobs.

*Remember, I am slow on the whole internet meme thing.

Also

Daniel Schorr died! I cried!

No squirrels, at least

I haven't had much to say, or much time to say it in, lately. Things are changing - we've applied for an apartment, Dutch lost yet another tooth and read a whole book with only 4 helping hints, Skipper pooped in the potty and threw a toy in the toilet, my tomatoes are infested with some sort of fly... life goes on. I still have no job. I've caught on belatedly to an author and an internet phenomenon (what? I'm SLOW, okay?), both of which I'm enjoying.

Today I taught Skipper to say "Bye-bye, booger." I think this is my greatest parenting accomplishment so date. So to you I say "Bahbah, boohghah."

Recent movies

You have to watch this one to the end for the punchline. Watch carefully.

This is Dutch reading a book a few days ago. She's making progress!

boring bulletins

Today we went to the Sunday Parkway* in East Portland. It was great. We walked in the middle of the street, and sauntered slowly across the high-traffic streets, protected by traffic-directing police officers, admiring the long lines of cars backing up and waiting for us.** We entered some raffles, learned some things, hula-hooped, ate handmade organic ice cream (Oh, Portland, we love you!), listened to music, enjoyed street theater, and generally soaked up the opportunity to own the streets, for once.

Also, Skipper turns out to be potty training herself, sort of. This is a surprise to us, since we have been making no efforts in that direction (Dutch potty-trained between the ages of 2.5 and 3), but we were told that she used the toilet at daycare on Friday, which prompted us to begin responding to her occasional requests for diaper changes by taking off her diaper and offering her the opportunity to sit on the potty. And... she actually pees in the potty. Who knows if it'll last, but it's at least a lovely excuse to watch her run around in all her nudie chubby baby glory.

*Streets closed to cars in a nice big loop, perfect for walking and biking. Activities and food and whatnot along the way.

** I know I'm becoming extreme in my loathing for cars, but I really don't understand why anybody thinks they're a reasonable way to travel. We went to a birthday party, and I found myself looking at the cars with a kind of appalled amazement - you people actually put your kids in those things and DROVE them here? Good god, why? - and then a kid said "Where's your car?" and I said "We don't have a car" and the kid said "But then how did you GET here?"

Me, free to be me. Whee!

Today I took Dutch to a birthday party, and left Skipper at home with Cook. I left Dutch at the party for a while and walked over to a nearby park, where I sat on a bench in the shade of a tree and read a book BY MYSELF. I had no time-keeping device* but I believe I did this for about 30 minutes before I got to feeling guilty and had to go back. It was blissful.

*I just can't handle these new-fangled contraptions.

Cars suck

People are driving less. Isn't that cool? Also, people want to be able to walk to stuff. Isn't that smart of them?

My job (part-time, for the last 9 months or so) is to convince people that they should try getting around without their cars. It's a really, really hard job. I'm also hampered by the perception of the people with whom I'm talking that I'm just some crazy Portland hippie, and possibly a socialist. I've learned NOT to tell people that my family of four has been car-free for ten years, because they often immediately decide that I'm a loser. I had thought that I could use that to show people that they can choose to be car-free and still live a full and satisfying life, even with small children. But it turns out that this is not true. People who are successful have cars. If you don't have a car, you're not successful, and therefore not worth listening to.

I also don't usually tell them that putting their kids in a car and driving them somewhere is the most dangerous thing they do with their children. It turns out that people don't like to hear that, either.

Anyway, if you drive in a car, (aka "isolated bubble of death and pollution that people mistakenly associate with success, freedom, and happiness"), you don't get to enjoy stuff like this:

But who's counting?

In the last four months, I've applied for at least 15 jobs, had four informational interviews, and interviewed for one job. Applying for jobs is like dating, or looking at potential new homes; no matter how hopeless the effort seems, you have to invest in the target of your attention a little bit, and imagine yourself living with this job/person/home. If you're me, you think about which bus you'd take to the job.* You imagine your schedule. You think about where you'd put your furniture. It's exhausting, and then when you end up not living there/marrying him or her/getting the job, there's a little bit of grief. (Or a lot, if you really, really wanted that damn job.)

I should mention that we've also looked at four apartments. I haven't been dating, though.

*The old me would have done that. The new me isn't even sure where the last job I applied for is located. It's definitely in Portland somewhere.

Milestone

Our housemates like to make puns (ranging from deeply terrible to pretty damn witty), and Dutch* is paying attention. At dinner last week, Dutch complained that she didn't like her fork, prompting a brief collective (and bad) wordplay riff - "Well, you're forktunate to have any silverware at all!" "Oh, forket it!" - and Dutch said cheerfully "Well, I'm not going to fork out about it."

Her very first pun. We are so proud!


*She spends at least part of every dinner eating in attentive silence, absorbing the conversation between four cranky, sarcastic adults. You can almost see her rolling words and sentences around in her head, puzzling and poring over mysterious clues from The World of Grown-Ups. Sometimes the fragments surface later in our conversations with her, frayed from much handling and almost unrecognizable. God only knows what she says about us at daycare.

Oh, dear

Moving often during childhood is bad for you. (According to the NY Times Fashion & Style section.)

It's hot.

I saw a baby today wearing a diaper designed to look like it was made of denim. Baby clothes can be really creepy.

Skipper is wearing a (regular) diaper, and a patina of blackberry juice (she scorns cherries, blueberries, and plums, but thinks blackberries are The Best).

Casting a big net

Today I got a rejection email notice for a job that sounds like a great job. I can't remember applying for it, though. A friend of mine was impressed that I'm getting unsolicited rejection notices. I'm aiming to apply for five jobs a week (but I'm usually only managing two or three), so I'm trying to give as many people as possible opportunities to reject me. I'm generous.

But you know, it's summer. I've got little tiny squashes and green tomatoes growing in the yard. I've got one kid who's cuter than all get-out and also kind of scary, and one kid who is !!READING!! Go Dog Go and also likes kimchee. I've got a husband who knows how to get the scary kid to sleep, is willing to watch Star Trek with me tonight (I hope)*, and tells me repeatedly that the whole universe is not rejecting me. So I think I'll be able to get over today's rejections, and tomorrow's too, without too much trouble.

*It won an Oscar for Best Makeup - it's got to be good, right? And I have always loved Spock.**

** My early imaginary-people crushes were on Mr. Spock and Sherlock Holmes. I think you can pretty much extrapolate everything you need to know about me from that.

clarification

I don't think Skipper's stupid. She's alert and observant and grasps concepts quickly. She just has a different approach than Dutch, to almost everything, and it's definitely slower in a lot of ways.

Dutch and I both love squeezing Skipper's cheeks, kind of hard, in a way that reminds me of Chunk in The Goonies* (did one of the bad guys do that to him, maybe?) - Skipper thinks this is very funny, and she laughs this hilarious squished chuckle.

Holy cow, it's hot here. It's close to 100 degrees in our bedroom. I'm a little reluctant to go to bed.

*One of the challenges of parenting for me is waiting for my kids to get old enough to enjoy movies/books/activities that I loved as a kid. Come ON, Dutch! Age!

Siblings

On our epic car trip this weekend, I heard Skipper making her "I want something and pretty soon I'm going to start shrieking" noise, and I assumed that she wanted her water bottle back - she'd been playing with it obsessively and had dropped it on the floor. I asked Dutch if she could retrieve the bottle - she was already digging around in the bag on the floor - and she said "No, she doesn't want that. She says she wants crackers. I've got it." And she got out some crackers and gave them to Skipper, who received them with every indication of having gotten exactly what she wanted.

This wasn't exactly an earth-shaking moment, but it was, I think, the first time that I had witnessed the two of them relating and effectively communicating with each other completely outside the parental influence. It was pretty sweet. Dutch has learned all the signs Skipper knows, and likes to use them, which gives them a way to communicate independently.

Also, nobody was crying for about five minutes, and that was excellent.

Every child is unique, like a precious snowflake.

So ... Skipper is a little slow. Not officially - she's totally fine, and falls comfortably into the range of normal. Were not concerned about her development. But she has been, right from the start, slower to hit every developmental milestone than her sister was. I felt, when Skipper was new, that she was taking her time in arriving, while I remember Dutch as being very much HERE from her first breath. Dutch wasn't any sort of super-genius baby or anything, but she ticked off her milestones early or right on time.

Skipper doesn't really talk yet. She has a few semi-recognizable word-esque noises (for hat, dog, and uh-oh, mostly). She says "Hi!" very clearly. Signing for Dutch was a temporary bridge during the short period when she wanted to communicate but couldn't yet talk. Dutch, at this age, was saying quite a few words, and had pretty much left signing totally behind. Because of

this, we've been pretty casual about signing with Skipper - she knows the basics. She uses conventional or invented signs for more, all done, drink, eat, sleep, nurse, cracker, music, tickle, and help. Now I'm thinking it would be useful to learn and to teach her a few more, since the words aren't coming, and she clearly wants to communicate.

Another parent at the daycare today said to me "So, is Skipper walking on her own yet?" and I looked at her in puzzlement. Skipper is nearly 15 months old. She's been walking for 2 months. But I can see why the parent was confused - Skipper is the youngest kid in her daycare classroom by a month, and she's always so far behind the others that it's easy to start thinking of her as being WAY behind.

I look forward to looking back on this* and seeing how her early personality developed into her adult personality. I'd like to think that her unhurried approach to life will translate into a willingness to try new things and make mistakes, which would also differentiate her from her sister. Anyway, Thomas Edison's teacher apparently described him as "addled."

*I do this a lot.

Happy Fourth of July! I didn't get any good pictures, but here are a few not-so-good ones.