Yard Sale, Army Crawling

Xander gets a ride on our neighbor's trail-a-bike.
He couldn't reach the pedals very well, so I jogged behind them.
All the stuff is from our massive three-family yard sale.

The most relaxing part of the week is always Monday morning, after Xander's been dropped off at school and the nanny has arrived to take care of Kai. The boys are wonderful, but wow, a lot of work. Fortunately, every day is filled with moments that make it all worth it. 


This week's big activity (aside from Xander's play date with a friend from school on Saturday) was the yard sale. We teamed with our upstairs neighbors and one of their friends and filled the front yard and driveway with an incredible amount of stuff. We've been going through closets, the garage, storage shed, and under bed storage for a month to cull only the finest items for the sale (like my used Fimo, which I insisted would sell, but did not, and Micah's antifreeze, which I had doubts about but was one of the first items gone that day). Net income after subtracting the price of coffee and banana bread (an attempt to increase attendance): $80 or minimum wage. On the other hand, we donated a trunkload of kids items to Children's Hospital, and another truckload to Goodwill.


Lately, Xander has been a sweetheart. And a goofball. For example:


"Mommy, I love you all the time. I love you when you snuggle. I love you when you don't snuggle."


Sitting on the porch eating breakfast with Micah: "Daddy, I love you."


"Frackles! Pickles! Frackles! Pickles! That rhymes, right?"
"You mean freckles?"
"NO, frackles."
"Like spots on your face?"
"Yes, frackles. Frackles! Pickles! Frackles! Pickles!"


"Gyroscope, gyroscope, gyroscope."
"Are you singing a song, Xander?"
"No, I'm just saying gyroscope."
We laugh.
"It's NOT funny!"

Me, reading a Dora book. "Will you come to my birthday party? (pause) Xander, are you going to go to Dora's birthday party?"
"No, mom, I'm not in the book."

Saturday morning there was lots of giggling coming from the boys room.

Kai is officially mobile. He rocks on all fours, and pulls himself along in a surprisingly fast army crawl. It's fun to see what interests him: the computer, certain toys, mommy. He gets really excited when I come home and nearly launches himself out of the nanny's arms to get to me.

He loves eating. His menu has expanded to include spinach, broccoli, yogurt, and tofu. Whenever he hears someone eating something, he looks around and sees if he can get in on the action.

Pear and spinach: a big hit.

Kai has perfected the teary-eyed, hold me look.

  

Kai has also perfected the chunky baby look.

I leave you with a peaceful image: I'm reading on the sofa, Micah's making dinner in the kitchen, Kai's asleep, Xander's entertaining himself with something. Ahh, a moment of relaxation! And then, from the bathroom, Xander calls, "Who wants to wipe my bum?"

Busy Weekends

This past week flew by. All I can recall is the last two days, which were filled with spontaneous play dates, an impromptu dinner party, and a delicious brunch in the Mission with my friend Brooke, who spent something like 6 hours (and an overnight dough rest) making amazing, yeast-risen, sugar-bomb waffles.

It's great that we can bump into kids and parents in the neighborhood and just invite them over to play for an hour or so. That happened twice this weekend, and it seems now that we're getting to know the parents and kids at Xander's school, we meet people on the street all the time. Forget alcohol, kids and dogs are great social lubricants.

This afternoon, Meredith came over with her little girl, Sasha, who is nearly 9 months old. Kai and Sasha had a nice time lounging around on the grass in the back yard.

Sasha and Kai's picnic.

You look lovely in the hat, my dear. 

Kai may end up being a linebacker,
judging from his girth at 7 months.

Barbershop Harmony in Portland

I love it when separate plans come together into one great big, fun event. Our Fourth of July vacation was like that.

We decided to go to Portland, Oregon since my mom was going to be there with her friend John for the International Barbershop Harmony Competition. Our trip ended up being a mini family reunion: Micah's sister Emma and her family lives there, we stayed with Emma's in-laws, Micah's parents drove up from Humboldt, Eric and Colleen--friends from UC Berkeley--drove down from Seattle with their adorable two-month old, and we met up with one of Micah's friends from high school.

Over the course of the five days we were there, we went sailing, bouldered at the local bouldering gym, shot off fireworks in the driveway, soaked in the hot tub, made and ate amazing barbecue, watched John compete in the Barbershop Competition, got some running in, drank lots of beer and wine, and watched the cousins run around.

Portland knit-bombers strike again.

Some highlights:

John's chorus, the Sounds of Concord, was great. They were one of twenty-eight choruses competing.  Micah and I got to watch, and were amazed at the quality of the choruses, including John's. My dad sang in Barbershop quartets and choruses for many years, and hearing the music after nearly a decade was really nice.  Check out this video of John's chorus singing All Aboard for Dixieland:

Xander did some rock climbing at Circuit Gym. The kids section was great. Even better: Colleen and I bouldered V1's and V2's while Eric and Micah watched Xander, Kai, and Milo.

Micah spotting Xander on the kids bouldering wall.
He made it all the way to the top, then did it four more times!

Xander and Kayman played hard every day. These boys completely rile each other up. And love to take off their clothes and run around naked. Oh, to be three again.

Emma with 1-year old Walker Falcon

And a miracle: while we were there, Kai started sleeping through the night. Not sure what triggered it, but it is just in time. We were going to do cry it out when we got back from vacation.

In other news, Kai can now sit unsupported on his own. He's getting his belly off the ground, and is rapidly making progress toward crawling. (We're betting on two weeks from now.)

I'm sitting up on my own, mom!
And moving so I'm all blurry.

Locomotion

We've added to our travel modes over the last few months. When Xander turned two, Micah and I gave him  a push bike for his birthday. We were so excited, we even gave it to him before his birthday. Of course, he would have nothing to do with it...until this past May. I took Xander to the Bike Away From Work Party in downtown Oakland on Bike to Work Day. We took BART there, and brought his bike (actually his second push bike--Micah felt that the first one we got him was inferior). A miracle occurred, and Xander insisted on riding his bike back to the BART station after the party. Hardly a day goes by that he's not on it. He rides it to school with us, and is probably going to get a pedal bike for his fourth birthday.

Kai is moving around on his own, too, though I can't figure out how. He's still belly-heavy, but somehow manages to inch, and scootch, and roll across the floor. A long way. Quickly. Unobserved. In an attempt to figure it out I started filming him using time lapse.

And just to make this a truly multi-modal post, here's an old video of us on the Tilden Steam Train with Xander when he was two and a half. This is one of our frequent family outings, and at $3 per person for a 10 minute ride through the redwoods, a great deal.

Mealtime!

Micah and I often wonder over the fact that housework never seems done, and we spend so much time on the weekends cleaning and tidying. We've managed to streamline some things, but one task we never seem to simplify is meals. Over the span of the last three days, we've made peach cobbler, pancakes, barbequed korean beef, potato chip cookies, irish oatmeal, cold brew coffee, lentil soup, strawberry-rhubarb cobbler, carrot salad, and, at Xander's request for Friday night dinner: bacon, broccoli, tofu, and potatoes.

Xander with olive bread in his mouth, and yams on his plate

Beyond the pleasure of eating, mealtimes are special family time. Kai goes to bed before dinner, but the rest of us almost always have dinner together. We take turns saying what made us happy that day. We practice "having a conversation," and Xander hones his negotiation skills (Dad: Two more bites of broccoli, and one more bite of soup and you may be excused, Xander: Four more bites of broccoli, no more bites of soup, etc...)

Given this, it's very exciting to start Kai on solid foods. I feel extremely satisfied when I watch him throw back four tablespoons of mashed yams. He clearly enjoys it, too, lunging with his mouth agape, grabbing the spoon and putting it in his mouth. We'll have to shift our schedules so we can start including him at the dinner table.

Kai nomming on some yams

And just look how healthy and happy this little boy is:

Kai rolling around diaper-free on the floor

Oh my goodness, shall I try again?

Kai Lucas at 5 1/2 months--born December 5, 2011

Oh dear, the last post on this blog was nearly two years ago. Given that there's still life going on, and still far-away relatives and friends who want to stay updated, I'm going to give it one more go. To assist me: a public commitment to update the website every Sunday.

But, enough navel-gazing. Here's the first installment:

Welcome Kai Lucas! Six months old now, and already making it clear he's a strong-willed, active boy with a great sense of humor.

It's very different watching him go through the stages after having experienced them with Xander. I know what milestones to expect and so time goes by much quicker. Kai's already eating his first solids, starting to sit on his own, and rolling over.

Seeing the boys' different temperaments confirms my belief that there's not much we can do to influence basic personality traits. (Nor would we want to.)

Kai is very physically active--he has collapsed his play gym on himself several times, can't crawl yet, but mysteriously ends up eight feet from where I put him on the living room rug, and arches his back and twists his body when he's on the changing table. I predict he'll be walking at 12 months or so--5 months earlier than Xander.

I suspect Kai is going to be outgoing and assertive. He's already managed to get himself out of daycare and into a nanny situation by making his needs known (loudly and inconsolably).

Xander, at three and a half, has become a stellar big brother. He comforts Kai with a pacifier or a song, makes Kai giggle, and has shown few signs of jealousy. He recently told Kai, "You're so cute. I love you." It's heart-melting. I think it may be a bit harder once Kai starts crawling and taking Xander's toys.

Xander has hit several milestones since Kai was born. He's completely out of diapers now--even at night. He rides his push bike to preschool nearly one mile round trip--with us riding alongside, of course. He's starting to show signs of wanting to learn to read, and he has a fun imagination. Yesterday, he was a mama piggy and made a nest of blankets for his purple eggs, out of which hatched ten little brown baby piggies. Today they joined us in the shower (don't step on my baby piggies, mommy!), went to school with him, got left at school, then mysteriously reappeared at home (shhh, my baby piggies are sleeping). Apparently, his imaginary friend might turn out to be a herd of egg-hatched, purple pigs.

Words, words, the bird's got the word

From SoHum Perseid Shower

Xander is twenty-one months old now. Our pediatrician said we'd start seeing Xander's language explode, and it's happening. Just in the last week, he's said about two new words a day, and it's clear that his understanding of language is much more developed than his expressive skills.

Just this weekend, he added, "wie-ps" (two syllables, for wipes), "upsigh" (upside down), "muh plz" (more please) "out-sie" (outside). Other favorites are "ah-coh-coh" (avocado), "gac-gac" (grandma/grandpa) and all versions of mama and dada.

He's very self-directed in his play, and can entertain himself for a while. Everything-toast, socks, legos, turns into a car or airplane and gets pushed around with sound effects. He's also into rocks and dirt, and loves standing at the sink playing in the water. We just got him a plastic step stool, and he carries it around the house and places it in front of the sink, or next to something he wants to climb. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea, after all.

The other day, I wasn't paying too much attention to him while I was cooking dinner. He was saying "chee, chee" and walking around the kitchen. I had left the fridge door open while turning to do something, and he went in, opened a drawer, pulled something out and walked over to where I was chopping vegetables. Tiptoeing, he pushed it up onto the counter in front of me. A block of cheddar cheese. Of course.

Going back over the other postings, I see that a lot has happened since the March one. Micah did very well at the Reno interview, and was ranked second overall, but the first place candidate decided to take the job. He's applying again for other faculty positions this fall.

Xander's maternal grandmother, Dixie, visited two weeks ago to help out while Micah was in Australia for work. We did all kinds of fun things--Tilden Steam Trains, Little Farm, the Sonoma County Fair (where we lost a shoe), Stinson Beach. It was a great visit.

We also flew out to South Carolina to meet Xander's cousin Kat, who was born in February. We had a lovely time with family there, took several walks in the hot, humid weather, went to the Columbia Zoo (an excellent zoo), and had amazing barbecue with Uncle Steve's family.

We have no plans for travel in the immediate future, which is nice, since we've been cross country with Xander four times since he was born, to Albuquerque once, to Reno once, to Portland, Oregon twice, to Yosemite once, and to Humboldt at least half a dozen times. He's a good traveler, but recently started becoming susceptible to motion sickness, which may curtail any future travel.