We Will Love and Cherish You Forever

On February 15th Walter and I found out I was pregnant and by Feb 20th the doctor's office had confirmed it to be true. We were super excited at how it had only taken us 1 1/2 months to get pregnant and how it had been so much easier than trying to get pregnant with Padon (a very long 7 months). And I started planning how I was going to adjust to being pregnant while in a high visibility company run by men. Walter and I lovingly named the unsexed baby, Baby X. But on February 26th at 5 1/2 weeks I miscarried and lost the baby.
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This has been a devastating event for us. We had already become invested in this baby even though it had only been two weeks. My co-worker compassionately covered for me at work and sent me home, and I went to a wonderfully loving, and supportive husband who always knows the right things to say and who gives the most wonderful and reassuring hugs, and to a toddler who at the sight of my tear streaked face leaned over with one hand on my shoulder and went "Blaaaahhhhhh!!!!!!" in my face with a huge grin on his face making me laugh out loud. And then did it a second time.

My brain feels torn at the loss because the baby was so small but if had continued to be born in October would have been a whole human being and so this tiny heart beating being was no different and was one in the same.

I have bought a Willow Tree sculpture by Susan Lordi to commemorate the baby so I have something to hold and look at and this gives me some peace. It's title is Guardian and looks how my heart feels and what I wish I was able to do. How amazing two weeks in the environment of a new being can change you and make your heart ache so much.

Tag Lover

It doesn't matter where the tag is or where it comes from but if you have anything with a tag it will most likely make one trip to Padon's mouth, accompanied by his pointer finger for a zenful calming affect.

I must take a picture of him when he has one of the stuffed animal butts tucked up against his mouth because that is where their tag is. Too cute!

Tee-hee! Eatting Beaters!

To make groceries stretch to the max I concerve a lot of left over things and then once every couple weeks have a day of cooking to use up the bits around the fridge, freezer and cupboard like the chicken broth, spinich and brocolli juice, zucchini, and any other items hanging around the kitchen to refill the coffers and let Walter believe once again that we do indeed have food in the house. This past Sunday, until I ran out of eggs, I was able to make Zucchini bread from a Zucchini I got from Erin at the end of the summer, poor mans rice pudding, soup from my chicken broth and vegetable broth, wild rice, ham, and brocolli, made a huge batch of chicken broth from chicken bones and meat from last January's Feast of Revelry (About time!) and overcooked chicken fingers, and made two homepade pizzas using frozen left over spaghetti sauce, spinich, garlic, thyme, and dry salami. I also made chocolate chip cookies from the last of the chocolate chips and introduced Padon to the beater and spatula. I totally missed getting a picture of him trying to cramb the whole spatulla in his mouth but he really enjoyed it and was really wowed. I felt so tickled. And he was so good while I did all this cooking around him.
Supposedly the pointy part of the beater feels good when poked in your stomach.

Science Center - Round 2

Come on Daddy! You've got to see the Dinosaurs!
And Garbage Can (why, oh, why??!!)
Whoops! Got stepped on by one!
Oh, hey, Dad! Here's the button I can push all by myself again and again!
Oh, and the bronze catepiller that I totally forgot to taste last time (why, oh, why!!!??? Another Mom thought this was hysterical).
Thanks Dad for helping me with my pants that kept falling down.
And thanks for helping me see how to start the helicopter.
Next time I'll work on the air turbulence .

Man, Mom packs a sweet lunch! Bisquits with jelly and butter, yogurt, ham wrapped around mayonnaise and cheese, bananas, chocolate chip cookies, and Lemonade! Yum!

So glad you could come Daddy!

Fun at Lake Goodwin!

I'm totally in love with Lake Goodwin. It just nice and open and the water is super shallow for at least 100 feet so it is like one gigantic wading pool. The sun was shinning so nicely on Sunday that Padon and I just had to go.
Padon is always cautious with new things and often needs a moment to go "Whoah!"

But with some proding and encouragement will try just about anything.

Overall we had a wonderful time and Padon discovered he really liked slides,

was good at finding bark and putting it in holes,

Was especially good at rock and

sand throwing,

was a great chaser,

and definitely a little boy who needed to come here more often!

510 NW 62nd St, Seattle WA - $499,000

In 1976(?) my parents bought this cute little yellow house in Ballard for about $70,000 and about a year later had me (1977) and Sarah in (1979). We lived in this house for 5 years and then we moved to upstate New York, to Poughkeepsie - Hyde Park. I remember this house so well!
In this living room my Dad flung my first loose tooth across the room and it bounced off the then diamond shaped ties on the fireplace, after slipping a piece of floss around the tooth in a slip knot and snapping the loose ends of the string away from each other, thus popping my tooth out of my mouth. I was just so glad he didn't tie the string to the front door knob like he had first suggested. I also remember laying on the red, orange, and mustard yellow, round rug as Barbara Streisand's Yentel record played on the Atrak stereo, propped up on a very large wooden spool. I layed there warmed by the fire place as my Mom and Dad read (or did something of the like) and I thought to myself, I wonder if this is what it means to be romantic.
The house's floor plan was much like the shape of a donut with a stairwell going up the middle to the second story. I remember the cat chasing the dog, or was that vice versa, around and around the house. If you were standing in the kitchen as pictured below to your left would be a door leading to the then unfurnished basement. Down there my Dad had a really large bird cage full of finches. He had little nests in there and they would lay these tiny eggs. When we moved to New York he took the cage outside and let them all go and they all flew up onto the telephone wire in front of our house and just looked back. I thought it was sad, because where would they go home to now? I used to go down into this basement also to listen to my record player and my one record; Aquarius - you know, "This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius..." and play with the rope mop because it so much looked like a person to me with long stringy hair. If standing in the picture below the back door would be to your right. It was here that my Dad held our gentle Husky down on the floor with his hand on her head cutting the bone she had gotten wedged in her mouth with a hack saw. She was afraid but so trusted him and just layed there the whole time.

In the above dining room we used to do so many art projects! My Mom ran a daycare and we did finger painting with paints and pudding and cookie cutters, we glued things with macaroni and paper, played with home made playdough which when baked or dried would last quite a while, wrote letter to ourselves that we mailed and then were delivered to us (that was too cool!), among many other things. It was at this table that my Dad told me at 5 that it was my birthday. I had never celebrated my birthday and found it interesting but that was as far as it went. I really felt like "Huh! Interesting!" and I went off and played. I also remember having conversations about nose picking, and thinking about what I was going to say before saying it, and to stop stuttering. It was also in this room that I leaned against the door jam where the photographer is standing in the picture above and watched fully suited firemen (hats and everything) (3?) rush through the living room with Sarah in their arms as my Mom cried hysterically because Sarah had stepped off the dining room chair and had fallen face first into the Microwave cart slicing her nose open across the bridge. It was bleeding badly enough that the blood was in her eyes and my Mom thought she maybe blind. It was tramatic for all of us. But just imagine two of those fire fighters with Sarah (1 1/2 yrs?) in the tiny bathroom below.

This bathroom had a vent that allowed you to hear everything that was going on in the house. I also lost at least two paddle ball/bouncy balls down the toilet, showed one of the daycare kids I could pee standing up, and used to sit on the toilet and hum the Star Trek theme song to myself because the acoustics of the bathroom would creep me out. Across from the bathroom were the stairs that led up to the second story that was one large playroom for the kids (way cool!). I remember braiding my rag dolls hair on the stairs and thinking to myself that I would definitely be a hair dresser when I grew up. I also remember watching my Dad shave while sitting on the stairs and telling him I thought he looked weird because he had shaved his beard off and then immediately felt guilty because I wondered if I hurt his feelings.

Upstairs truly was the coolest - it was like a tree fort for kids (that was the feeling I had anyway)! It ran the length of the house and was full of learning activites for Daycare and toys as well as toys and books borrowed by the Book Bus. We had giant blocks made from milk cartons, a felt board to play out stories and songs, we would sit in a circle on the floor and sing songs that required hand movements, and we had a large poster of the food group pyramid on the wall. In this room the kids played during a winter party, thrown by my parents for people in our church congregation, and I remember playing on the rocking horse with another boy while watching frosty the snowman on the small TV on the floor and thinking this is the BEST day EVER!!!!! I had such a good time! We also had a cupcake party (we had cupcake parties until we moved back to Seattle where we would watch movies, have a friend or two over, eat cupcakes until the movie was over, and then the friend would go home) and watched the Wizard of Oz. I was so scared for Dorthoy who cried into the Wicked Witch of the West's crystal ball as Auntie Em cried and called for her.

The house had a really cool backyard too. My Dad built a really nice jungle gym for us including a dock like structure and I remember laying on my back on it listening to the birds, looking up at the perfectly blue sky with hardly any clouds, watching and listening to a airplane fly by, and thinking I will never forget this. I think we were just about ready to move and to this day on a warm sunny day I can look up at the blue sky and remember the smells and the sounds and the total comfort I felt that day. We also had a Deadly Nightshade plant in our backyard that I snacked on one day exclaiming to my Mom that I had been eatting raspberries. I soon was on the kitchen floor throwing up because she had given me ipecac and milk because the berries I had been eatting were poisonous. I also squished a fuzzy caterpiller to a mushy mess in Winter Jacket when it climbed up my sleeve and I freaked out. And I remember my Dad having to call a bee guy to come and remove a large bees nest from our tree. That was cool.

Now what was the garage has been remodeled into a bedroom, the attic play area has been remodeled into a bedroom and small office, and somewhere they have stashed another bathroom; I'm guessing somewhere in the basement. My Kindergarten- two or three blocks around the corner and down the street, where they made me pledge allegence to the flag but I made the teacher mad because I woulnd't keep my hand over my heart, where I stashed snails to keep as pets, and where I put holes in my winter coat sliding across the very smooth cement in the entry way- is now gone due to asbestos. It is such a cute house and the current owners have done a wonderful job of remodeling it.

When I was five it was a 3 bedroom, 1 1/2 bath, living room, dining room, and rec room house with a smallish kitchen where the fridge didn't quite fit, as well as 2 rooms downstairs in the basement that my Dad built. I still love this house. I think they should just give it to me because i love it and could never afford it. I hope a family moves in and loves it as much as I did. And I hope that Padon loves our house as much as I loved this one.

"I Love You Daddy"

So Walter was sitting on the living room floor with Padon the night before last and said " I love you Padon!" Padon, who had been running back and forth between Walter's lap and his lego blocks that I guess needed to be with the fireplaces tools, paused , looked at Walter and said" I love you........"longer pause, "Daddy." It was totally I love you. As well as his little mouth and tongue could articulate it but when Walter said "I love you Padon" again to affirm what he had just heard Padon did the same thing. So Walter said "tell Mommy, I love you Mommy." and Padon smiled getting shy and said " I love you.........." long pause again "Mommy." Walter just about cried. We called my parents to gush cause we had to tell someone and my Mom said that he needed to be able to say "I love you Grandma." next time we saw them.

What a wonderful first sentance!!!!! Yeah!

I love you too baby!!!!

What a Good Brusher!

I love that Padon loves brushing his teeth. Cause I don't love brushing my teeth but one crown has me faithfully flossing and brushing my teeth every day. If you put Padon's PJ's on and ask him if he wants to brush his teeth he runs, not walks, down the hallway to his bathroom.


And once there he has four toothbrushes to choose from. He picks one or two and I get one. I turn on the water and ask him to get his toothbrush wet which he is now starting to get and then he holds out his toothbrush (with prompting) so I can put toothpaste on it. And then I let him go to town until he starts playing with the toothbrush. "No, the sink has no teeth to brush." and I ask him if it is my turn.And he is so good. He will drop his toothbrush away from his mouth and let me tilt his head back so I can brush his teeth. I sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, because Erin told me it was 20 seconds long and because Sarah said her doctor said you should brush your babies teeth for at least 20 seconds, and I stop singing the words when he bites on the toothbrush or makes it so I can't brush his teeth. This has worked amazingly well.

In the end I ask him to rinse his toothbrush and let him put them back in the toothbrush holder.

We're such a good team and I feel like such a good Mom for brushing his teeth. I keep meaning to schedule a dentist appointment with a toddler specialized Dentist to see what they think of our process and how Padon's teeth are coming in. Heck, when you're paying for the insurance you might as well use it!

We had such a good time - oh to have a smaller camera!

Padon and I went to the Science Center again on Sunday and I totally forgot to bring my camera! Again! I wish I had a smaller one so it was pocket size and I could just carry it in my jacket because there were so many wonderful picturesque moments. I'm going to upgrade my phone sometime in the next 6 months (personal goal) so I can have a "Go" phone that has a camera. That would rock!

So anyway, with the power of google and old pictures I have been able to come up with some pictures close to what I would have taken myself had I been able to.

Sunday is Padon and my day together without Walter and I suddenly felt that we needed to go to the Science Center. So I got a lunch together, Padon's umbrella stroller (totally bus friendly), his backpack of diapers and things, and my bus pass and we made a bee line for the Everett Freeway Station, hopped on the bus which is always fun for Padon and made our way to Seattle. Traffic was great and we were down in Seattle in no time. The closest we can get to the Seattle Center is one mile without waiting for and taking a second bus and so we always walk it. Sadly as far as Downtown Seattle goes it is through an always uneventful part of town. It would be fun if we had to pass through the Pike Place Market or something because there would be all kinds of cool things to see and smell but that would be in the wrong direction.

So Padon just sat uninterested in his stroller until we had checked in at the Member Station of the Pacific Science Center and started down the wheel chair ramp. But the minute we rounded the corner he suddenly errupted in bursts of excitement, arms pumping, because he totally recognized where we were. After a short potty break for me we made a bee line for room 1 where the dinosaurs were and Padon got even more energetic. He loved the dinosaurs. And I mean love! With lots of growling and roaring and running back and forth and slapping at the tiny plexiglass dinosaur displays on baby thigh level I thought we might end up staying in this one room all day. It was the dinosaurs pictured below that really peaked Padon's interest and we had to visit them quite a few times with of course more roaring and clenching of fists in a Tyrannosaurus Rex fashion.

After we broke away from the Dinosaurs we made our way to the Tot play area in room 2 where there were a lot of things to play with. But the water feature seemed to be where all the fun was and Padon wouldn't stop drinking the water and so we had to leave. We moved onto the Insect Village where the "Human Fly" resides and where when you push his button he starts talking about coming inside his circus tent to see the death defiying diving beattle, and other really cool bugs. This was the first time Padon got that pushing the button outside the Human Fly's inclosure made him talk and he pushed it again and again until another little boy his age took over and Padon was too shy to go up and push it anymore.
Over all he seemed to miss, even when I showed him, that there were bugs in the aquariums to look and ogle over but he did feel the need to hug this catepiller quite a few times and to plaster himself against the windows in the back ground licking the window for good measure. (I'm amazed at the gross things he comes up with to put in his mouth. I tell myself this is his way of keeping himself from getting really really sick... Well he hasn't gotten sick yet so my theory proves correct so far.)

We finally wandered out and I thought with how much he was getting so far that he might get the tidal pool. I washed his hands as directed and tried to show him the hermit crabs which he couldn't see and so I brushed his fingers gently through the pink sea anemone. He got that, and got that they feel a little sticky, and he didn't like it. Huh, licking public carpet is not gross but touching a sea anemone gets a "ugh!" response. Maybe he hit his head harder on the pavement getting out of the car then I thought.

I kept asking Padon if he wanted lunch as my stomach was telling me again and again lets have lunch and finally he responded in a way that meant, yeah, let's have lunch! We made our way to the Seattle Center Fountain and plunked ourselves down in a Seagull poo free spot and had lunch. It was really nice. Padon was so cute as he kept putting his balogna purposely back on the tupperware top/ plate with both hands and placing his cup gently back to his right side as he gingerly reached for more banana. It was just sunny enough to keep us warm and there were other people sitting around us listening to the music being played in time to the fountain. It was just such a pleasant lunch.

By the time we finished lunch Padon started to shiver so we went in the Center house to warm up and change his diaper and gaze longly down at the Children's Museum on the 1st floor. I'm dying to take Padon there and I think I will for his 2nd birthday because even he was dying to go down there but it is too expensive to go on a whim. It is supposedly 8,400sq ft of wonderful tiny tot goodness and how can you go wrong with that.

To the left of the look down on the Children's Museum is the dance floor Center House. And on this floor they had set up a bunch of little kid push cars for kids 5 and under. I asked Padon if he wanted to go ride the cars and he totally lit up. I don't know where he was holding in the energy. He sat on a little red car and rocked back and forth and finally got that if he shuffled his feet he would scoot forward but I think he still only went 5 feet and then sat content, rocking, watching the other kids. About this time two kids about the age of 9 and 7 came and made it not a safe place for kids under 5 as they were tearing around with the cars. I was so irritated. So it was a perfect excuse to give another little boy the car when there was no car to ride because the 9 year old and 7 year old had each taken one.

I offered Padon the stroller to ride in but he still wanted to walk having walked this whole time with a little kid harness which surprisingly he was loving to wear, and hug, and caress. He picked it out himself :).We must have gone about two more city blocks on our way out of the center before I asked him again and he turned to the stroller. I put him in and he immediately fell asleep. He slept the mile back to the bus stop, the 30 minute wait for the bus, and almost the whole bus ride back to Everett. What an amazing and wonderful day we had. It was really tough to get up the next morning and not be there to greet him when he woke up and to not have the opportunity to do more things with him. It is times like that, that hurt my heart to not be the one home with him. When the weather turns warm we will have to explore the greater Snohomish area every weekend. That will be so much fun! What a great Sunday!