Bye bye 2007 and hi to 2008

We're back in our rainy adopted city. Within the first several hours of our return, the weather gods gave us sunshine, dark clouds, rain, wind, and finished up with a crazy hailstorm that left everything as white as if it had snowed. We just had to laugh - it was quite the welcoming gesture on the part of the atmosphere.

We had a wonderful week down in sunny CA. Thanks to our many family members, we actually got to relax quite a bit, which was really the best holiday present we could have gotten. Unfortunately, our poor little guy picked up a bug and had a low-grade fever show up a few days before we left. I still don't get how 101 is low for a baby, but whatever. He spent the day sleeping and sleeping and it all felt quite peaceful. I mean, we felt terrible for him that he was sick, but he hasn't slept that much since he was a newborn and it really was quite restful for all of us! We marveled at how our kid isn't one of those that doesn't sleep when he gets sick.

Then we woke up the next morning and were nearly drowned by the massive river of snot coming out of our son's nose. We probably could have sailed home on it and skipped the plane altogether. Even though he's all better from the bug, his body is still producing massive amounts of mucus. I mean, it is crazy. Apparently, this is normal! Just goes to show you how much I know about kids. So we've spent the last several days wiping and aspirating and saline-solution-ing and generally getting everything we own covered in the remnants of M's cold. We are praying that when 2007 leaves, it will take the snot with it. Please, please.

To celebrate New Year's Eve, we had a lovely dinner with my grandmother and her caregiver tonight. Mateo roamed the house saying "hi!" to everyone and generally having a great time. We're home now, cozied up on the couch, and are planning an early bedtime. Could there be a better way to start the new year?

Actually, there could: today, Sacha felt the first flutters of the little one in her belly. It was thrilling for her and for me (and I think I might have felt something, too, when I had my hand in the right place at the right time) and filled us both with thanksgiving for events of the past year as well as those to come in the next. She said I could post some belly shots, so here they are.

First, her at 4 weeks pregnant, standing out in the sunshine.



Then, tonight at 17 weeks with her cute baby bump.


As Mateo might say, if he could grasp the concept of a new year, bye bye to 2007 and hi to 2008!

Happy holidays!

We've had a wonderful week visiting my parents for the holidays.  Sacha's parents came down for several days, as well, and we all spent lots of time eating, drinking, making merry, catching up with old friends, and exploring the area.  We even went to the Oakland Zoo on the day after Christmas, which ended up being quite the experience.  After the terrible events at the SF Zoo, there were news cameras everywhere at Oakland and quite the crowd at the tiger exhibit.

In more important Dec. 26th news, we celebrated Sacha's 30th birthday that day!  Happy birthday again, sweetheart.  We met when Sacha had just turned 23 and I was 22 and look at us now!

Adding to the lineup of big days around Christmas, today is the 7th anniversary of the day we met.  Wow!  I'll tell the full story of how we met some other time, but suffice it to say that we never could have predicted that we'd end up being married and procreating!  I'm so glad it worked out this way. 

We fly home on Sunday and then we have Sacha's next pre-natal appointment on Jan. 4th.  She's been feeling really good these days, for the most part, and we are both very relieved that the nausea and exhaustion seem to be gone!  Her belly has really popped in the past week or so.  Her uterus was apparently tilted towards her back originally and the nurse practitioner told us that it would tip forward at some point and her belly would pop out.  It did!  She has a very cute little baby bump going on.  Maybe I'll get her to let me post a picture :)

Mateo's been having a fun time basking in attention from all sides.  He's spent quality time with all his grandparents and his auntie and uncle.  He's also learned some new words and signs - where, car, neigh, moo, bear, grrr, sleepy, book, bath, water, mommy, bubby (grandma), poppa (grandpa), dance (the sign), and maybe some other ones.  We looove watching him learn!

Life is pretty great these days.  We feel so lucky to be at this point in our lives.  Happy holidays and a very happy new year to all! 

Sugar sugar sugar sugar sugar sugar

Today, in a burst of energy and in homage to my grandma, I made a batch of sugar cookie dough and we rolled it out and made a bunch of holiday cookies. Then we ate and ate and ate them until we just about made ourselves sick.

Then we took a little break until we felt slightly better and ate some more. Mmmmm. Sugar, butter, and frosting are just an unbeatable combination.

I was telling Sacha that it's too bad the baby's not quite big enough to feel yet, because I'm sure s/he was zooming around like crazy in there.

Yay Christmas cookies!

New addition

For some reason, I started thinking about birth today and how we'd never put M's birth story up on this blog. Sacha and I wrote it down soon after he was born and are so glad now that we did that. Since this blog is kind of like his baby book, we wanted to post the story of his birth here. It's backdated to his actual birth day and it's here if anyone wants to read it.

13.5 months - photos

I just have to show off some pictures of our kiddo. Here he is at thirteen and a half months:

15 weeks!!!

We have some good news to share. In fact, it's great news.

First, some background:

Soon after Mateo's birth, Sacha and I started to consider who would carry our next child. Our deal from the beginning had been that I would carry our first and that Sacha would probably carry our second. She wasn't completely sure, however, and wanted some time to think it over after the intensity of labor and delivery. By this summer, she was sure. She wanted to be pregnant!

Knowing that these things often take some time, and sometimes quite a bit of time, we got things lined up with Z and planned to start trying in the fall. We decided to start in September, so that just in case a miracle occurred and she got pregnant on the first try, she would be able to give birth after school let out for the summer. However, we both expected that it might take quite awhile.

Well, in the words of a friend, we have a One-Shot Sally on our hands. My fabulous wife managed to get knocked up on the very first try! We started to sense that something was happening when she couldn't keep her eyes open past the middle of Chicago, which we rented in the middle of the two-week wait. After getting faked out by some inconclusive cheapo tests, we got a couple of higher-quality ones and watched in amazement as two lines came up immediately. It was a moment of true surprise and delight and lots of shrieking and jumping around.

After being very public about Mateo's conception, we wanted to keep things more private this time. Now that she's reached 15 weeks and is in her second trimester, we're thrilled to share the news.

We've seen the little bean twice, once for pregnancy confirmation and once for a dating ultrasound (unnecessary since we knew the date of conception, but still cool) and heard its heartbeat twice, too. All very reassuring and awe-inspiring. Sometime around early June 2008, we expect that Mateo will be a big brother! And that we'll have two kids approximately 19 months apart. We may be a little crazy, but we couldn't be happier. Yay!

Thanks and bananas

Hey everybody, thanks for all the sympathy and good thoughts (here and via email and phone). We're doing a little better and have been reminiscing about all the funny things Beso used to do. We still have his blanket down at the foot of our bed and think it might stay there for awhile.

Sacha said that today, while I was out getting my hair cut, Mateo kept coming up to her, signing kitty and saying "mow, mow" over and over. Like, where is the cat, moms? He must miss him, too. I wish we could explain better.

In happier news, Mateo spent the day doing a sign that we didn't recognize and he had us totally stumped. Then tonight, when we were watching Baby Signing Time (which he has spent most of the last several days asking for), we realized it was the sign for banana. After the video, we sat down to eat dinner and he kept signing it and saying "ba! ba! ba!". He normally hates bananas. For that reason, he hadn't had one in long enough that we couldn't imagine he even remembered what a banana really was.

Anyway, finally the ba-ing wore us down. We gave him a banana and pretty soon he had eaten a tummy full of it! I guess he really did want a banana. It always amazes us what a clear sense he has of what he wants. He really has his own mind and strong preferences about things. It's cool to begin to communicate about them instead of always playing a guessing game.

In loving memory

Last night around this time, we brought our kitty, Beso, to the emergency vet. He had been acting a little off for several days but seemed normal enough that we figured he must be okay. Then he took a turn for the worse. His chest was heaving and he seemed lethargic and weak. It reminded us uncomfortably of the chest infection he had about a year and a half ago. At that time, he went through several rounds of antibiotics and chest taps and ultimately (and ambivalently on our part) had a chest tube placed that saved his life.

After a very kind friend came over to watch our sleeping son, we took Beso to the pet ER in town. We'd been there once before and had to wait hours to be seen then. Turns out, having a breathing problem sends you to the front of the line, because this time they whisked him into the back right away. The vet came to talk with us and showed us some of the fluid they had tapped out of his chest. The chest infection was back. Instead of the clear fluid that was in there last time, this was thick and red and very infected. There was a lot of it. We had had over a year to think this over and were clear that we didn't want to do another chest tube. It was so traumatic for all of us the first time that we just could not do it again. And, he was so sick this time that it might just have prolonged things.

So, when they said we needed to decide between a chest tube and putting him down, we sadly opted for the latter. They made him as comfortable as possible and brought him to us in their "comfort room," which was actually somewhat comforting. We cuddled him and petted him and told him how much we loved him and what a good kitty he had been. We told him what a great job he had done with helping raise Mateo, and how much we would miss him. He nuzzled our hands and faces and gave Sacha one of his trademark lickings. And when it was time for him to go, he went peacefully, cuddled up in our arms.

*******************

Our Beso came to us on July 5, 2004, just after we moved to Portland. We had gotten one cat (Rio) and decided he needed a friend and playmate. We went to pick out a kitten, having heard that it was best to pair an adult cat (which Rio was) with a little one. It came down to two black kittens and one was just about exploding with purrs and love. We knew it had to be him.


Beso had a rough start in life. Someone had found him near a busy intersection and brought him in to the shelter. We found out as we were filling out paperwork that he had a bad cold that hadn't responded to three courses of antibiotics. He was in the middle of his fourth course and they hoped he would get well once he stopped being constantly exposed to other cats' illnesses.


We all had a roller coaster of a beginning together. We fell in love with him right off the bat. He was so loving and lovable that we named him Beso, which means kiss in Spanish. We also had to deal with his formidable respiratory issues. He was so congested that he would spray little showers of blood when he sneezed. He only weighed three pounds and lost even some of that before he started to recover. We gave him lots of TLC and eventually he began to thrive.


He developed into a cat with quite the personality. He had episodes of loving where he was just beside himself with affection. He would climb all over us, purring and grooming and letting us know how happy he was. At other times, he exuded that aloofness that cats so often have. He and Rio, our first cat, got to know each other and mostly got along quite well.


Beso's life changed when we decided to let him and Rio roam outside. He trotted around the neighborhood, making sure things were in order and sometimes skirmishing with the many other cats in our area. He proudly brought us birds and spent most of the rest of the time lounging in the sun, when it was out, or snuggled up somewhere inside.

When Sacha's cousin, Rachel, lived with us, she and Beso became best buddies. When she would come home, all it took was her opening the door and Beso's little ears would perk up. He would trot happily to the door and say hello. When she would open the door to go downstairs, he would hear it and come running. After she moved out and would come back to visit, he would sometimes act aloof at first, but it never took him too long to warm back up to his best friend again.


When our little guy was born, a lot changed for Beso. His normally doting mommies had a baby to take care of and he and Rio didn't get much attention for quite awhile. As Mateo got bigger and started to notice the world around him, the kitties came to his attention before many other things. He loved his cats and they seemed to love him right back.


After Rio ran away a few months ago, Beso and Mateo developed a special bond. Mateo would chase Beso all over the house and try to pull his fur and yank on his tail when Beso came into range. Beso would never anyone else treat him like that, but he seemed to understand that Mateo was his baby. He treated Mateo with more patience and gentleness than we could believe. On the morning of Beso's last day with us, Mateo finally learned how to pet him gently.

**************************

We really miss him. We were so sad at the vet's last night and fell into an exhausted sleep after we eventually came home. We're sad today, too. We keep seeing his favorite places around the house and expecting to see him. We took a nap this afternoon and he was missing from his usual place at the foot of our bed. For some reason, he had a habit sleeping on my side of the bed, so I've been adjusting my feet around him for months. I'm going to miss my little foot warmer. And we're all going to miss his presence in our lives. He was such a good kitty.

We love you, Beso. Rest in peace.

This morning

Me, after Sacha and I watched Mateo say kitty, kitty, kitty about ten thousand times: Mateo, what does a kitty say?

Him (very softly and seriously): Ma-ow.

So fricking cute.

(Also, some new words/signs from today and yesterday: more, eat, water, please.)

13-month letter

Dear Mateo,
Little guy, you are 13 months old! You've had quite a month since turning a year old. Here are some things we want to remember about you at this age:

Mobility:
What's that whirlwind spinning around our house? That's you! You zoom from one interesting thing to another, distributing toys and books wherever you go. You love to empty our bookshelves and make little mountains of books that you then slip and slide around on. You also love to unload the various toy stashes that we've distributed around the house.

Recently, you've showed some interest in putting things into other things. For example, you dragged an empty laundry basket into the kitchen and filled it with some toys and other things you found lying around. We have two drawers in the kitchen that are just for you, so it's a hotbed of fun things to play with.

You are learning how to do some more complicated things, like stacking blocks and sorting shapes. You can stack blocks when you want to and yesterday you made a tower of four blocks! Mostly, you stack just two or three. You have a hard time getting them to stay stacked, because your fine motor control hasn't caught up with your intentions quite yet. And, because it is just so much fun to knock them over and throw them around the room!

You are just starting to learn to get the right shape into the right part of your shape sorter. Often, you seem to know where the shape should go and sometimes you can even get it to go in. You have a stacking wooden train set with lots of pieces and yesterday you got quite a few of them to actually attach to the train.

Words:
Of all the aspects of your life, words are most interesting to you right now. For the last week or two, you have been learning a new term practically every day. As I was telling Grammy this morning, many things you say sound exactly the same to someone who's not around you very much, but context plus sign language usually makes your intentions clear. We've listed words you say/sign before, but here's a quick list just for posterity. Some you say a lot and some have escaped your lips only once or twice: milk, juice, shoes, tree, cheese, poop, mama, uh oh, fish (learned yesterday, big favorite today), dog (most favorite thing ever, ever, ever), kitty, whoo whoo (train sound), down, hot, cheep cheep, hi, and all done. It would be hard to overstate just how much you love dogs these days. You are a dog boy, through and through. In fact, you seem to love animals in general.

Sleep:
At the risk of causing a sleep catastrophe, I will say that sleep is going very well. You take two naps a day, usually, at 9 am and then around 3 pm. Most of the time, you nurse off to sleep. Cuddling you off to sleep is one of my favorite parts of the day. I never thought we would still be nursing at this point, but I love it and you seem to love it, too. Mommy and I think we'll just let you decide when you want to stop. You've tapered off quite a bit in terms of number of nursing sessions, though. You're down to once in the early morning, twice during the day before naps, and once before bed. And once at night. Sometimes twice. We're shooting for no feedings at night but that looks like it may be a long process!

At night, we do your bedtime routine and then you either nurse to sleep or Mommy puts you to bed. Mommy has the magic bedtime touch and you go down almost always without a peep. After all our sleep struggles in the beginning of your life, we don't take this for granted and marvel at it nearly every night.

Eating:
At your own pace, you're becoming a more adventurous eater. You still love the old stand-bys (yogurt, cream cheese and cheddar cheese) but are more willing to branch out than ever. You love dried mango and most kinds of soup. Being a kid, you love anything with carbs in it - bread, crackers, animal cookies, etc. You also show some signs of liking kiwi and papaya. Vegetables are more scary for you, but you do like zucchini and sometimes broccoli. You loooove apples, either in slices or in applesauce. And you enjoy sweet treats on occasion. You went nuts for some peppermint ice cream at your great-grandmommy's house not too long ago.

Cuddling:
Although most of the time we can't slow you down, you've started to cuddle a little bit more. You and Mommy have time together in the early mornings (thank you, Mommy, for the extra sleep!) and you spend a lot of it cuddling together in the comfy chair in your room. You sit happily on our laps to look at books and to watch Baby Signing Time (our sign language teacher of choice - a great, great video series).

And, you get more and more cuddly as you get more and more tired. We had a very active playdate a few weeks ago with a two-year-old friend and he wore you out! When we got home, I was checking the voicemail before putting you to bed...and suddenly realized you had fallen asleep on my shoulder. Since you usually avoid sleep at all costs, it was quite a moment.

Mateo, Mommy and I comment all the time on what a sweet little boy you are. You get so excited about discovering the world around you. And you show us all your feelings exactly the way you feel them. We love you and all your toddler exuberance.

Big kisses and lots of dogs,
Mama and Mommy

PS: I'm posting this without photos because our camera is on the fritz. More photos coming soon, hopefully!

Run, run, running

I know I don't post very often these days. Between teaching and tutoring and life, I'm lucky if I check my email. But, today was a staff development day, and Mateo and Alayna went to a lovely play date, and I have some down time before my next student! Yah.

Mateo's new thing for the day is that he is starting to run a little bit. He has been walking for a while now, but he actually started to move his feet like he is running. Mainly it happens when Mama changes room and he decides he must follow. So, he fusses trying to follow her and actually did a bit of running.

Another thing I've realized is that Mateo really seems to know our weekend vs. our weekday routines. On the weekends I try to wake up with him and spend the earlier morning with him, while Mama attempts to catch up a bit on sleep. He actually seems to prefer me a bit in the mornings and we have a lovely time sitting in the chair, reading a book, playing etc.

But, on the weekdays, I think he knows that I will be going to work. I do sometimes get up with him (I think a little bit over half of the mornings, but I'm not exactly counting) and he enjoys that time with me, but the moment Mama gets up, someone gets clingy.

This morning we A and I just realized that it really depends on the day. During the weekends he doesn't get clingy in the same way as on the weekdays, and he is likely to be clingy with me in the mornings. . . but not on weekdays! The inner workings of minds!

New words for the week:
Shoe
Who, who (train)
Down (while doing ten million squats)

Dog days

On a lighter note, today has been the day of the dog. Mateo learned how to sign dog yesterday, as I mentioned, and today he developed a dog obsession! All day long it was dog, dog, dog, dog. If we said dog, he would immediately sign it and say "da!" He found a couple of board books with pictures of dogs in them and kept flipping through on his own to find the dogs. We even saw a real live dog at the park! By the end of the day, he said what I think was "woof" when I asked him what dogs say.

The highlight of the day (other than when he was nursing and kept signing dog, dog, dog even while gulping down the milk) was when Sacha read Good Dog, Carl with him (thanks, Kristin and family!). I wasn't there, but she said he just went nuts. A dog on every page! I got this of them later, looking at it again.


We're raising him to be a Cal fan and always say Go Bears, but today I think we all have to say Go Dogs!

Projects and paranoia

I've been working on a new project at our casa recently - repainting all the window and door mouldings, as well as the doors themselves. As with many things, it seemed easy enough when I started and now I realize that it's going to take forever to finish! Add that I can only paint when M is sleeping to the fact that we have about a jillion windows/doors and you get a very slow-moving project. Doing things little by little makes me crazy, so I guess this is good practice.

The reason I'm repainting is that we've finally come to terms with the fact that our lovely house is filled with not-so-lovely lead paint. Knowing that it was 100 years old, we had a fancy paint test done on it before M was conceived and it came out negative. Whew, we thought. And that was the last time we thought about it, until M turned one and we got his blood lead levels checked at the doctor. It's standard if you live in an old house, at least in these parts.

(Not really related, but the blood draw for the test was awful. I don't know if M just hates needles or if they didn't get the needle in right, but he totally freaked out. He screamed through the test and then kept on crying for the next couple of hours. Very unusual for him. Poor guy.)

So, the results came back and showed that he does have lead in his system. It's not a crazy amount, but slightly over the national average. The doctor said not to worry about it, and so we didn't...until a lead safety guy came to talk to our baby playgroup. Knowing me and my always-searching-for-something-to-obsessively-worry-about personality, I told Sacha that I would probably be upset when she got home. And I was right - the lead guy freaked me the f**k out. His basic message was that any lead in the blood is bad news and the next thing you know, your kid will have lost IQ points and will be doomed for the rest of their life. Or something like that. That, combined with the fact that we did more tests on our paint (this time on the cracked parts so we could get at all the different layers) and several came up bright pink for lead paint, sent me right into a bit meltdown.

I've mentioned before that I had a tough time with anxiety during pregnancy, and that I've struggled with it on and off for a long time. I've been doing really well recently and again thought naively that I must have finally conquered it. Apparently I'm not quite there yet. This lead thing has thrown me. I can't get past the feeling that our house is poisoning our child and that we should panic. I even dragged Sacha to go look at houses this weekend because of the intensity of my feeling that we must. get. out. now!

I know I'm being irrational. No one else seems overly concerned about all this and M is, from what we can see, doing great. And, our environment is full of all kinds of stuff that we wouldn't escape just by jumping ship in this house for another one. So, I'm trying to channel my worries into something productive. We've established that our paint issue is in the window and door frames and that it would probably solve most of the problem if they were painted over. Enter my new painting project. I've actually felt a lot better about things since I started working on repainting everything. I've even been using zero-VOC paint! Hopefully this will make our home safer and give it a makeover to boot. And maybe one of these days I'll learn how to calm down a little.

Milk, milk, milk, and other words

Mateo must have hit another developmental spurt, because he has had a veritable word/sign explosion in the past couple of weeks! He's been expounding in his own little dialect for some time now, but now has several recognizable words. They may be identifiable mainly to us, but you have to start somewhere!

He can say:

Hi!
Dog (Da)
Kitty (Shee-shee)
Juice (juice)
All done (ah da)
Mama
Pictures (pishu - he's obsessed with all the photos on our fridge)
Da da (which seems to mean a variety of things. When accompanied by waving, it either means bye-bye or night-night)

and, his crowning glory: poo poo. He's become a champion imitator and likes to repeat simple words after us, although it's unclear if he understands them or not. He repeated soup, door and shoe today after me.

We've started introducing some animal sounds. The main success so far has been getting him to say cheep-cheep, which, as we all know, is what birds say. My mom taught him how to do it. Watching our little guy look at a magnet with a bird on it and say cheep-cheep was just about too much for me. Overpowering cuteness. Our friend S was over a few days after M learned this and added some confusion by reminding us all that birds also say "caw!". Oh, the complexity of life.

He's also suddenly started making signs. We started signing with him when he was about six months old, but hadn't had much to show for it until recently. Out of nowhere, he started signing milk and all done. He can even put them together to tell me that he's done nursing. He also does the sign for dog and attempted to sign kitty earlier today. That's a tough one. Except for the really basic signs, most of them require a lot of coordination! He signs juice, which looks similar to all done, and I'm sure there are more, but I can't think of them right now.

One more thing on the language development front - today he was looking through a board book and made the sign for dog while saying "da!" every time he saw a picture of a dog. It sounds simple when I write it, but it was pretty amazing in person. He's turning into a walking, talking little boy right in front of our eyes.

Earlier this evening, we went out for dinner and as we were driving home, M kept signing milk, milk, milk. Then he'd sign dog or just babble to himself and then pretty soon it would be milk, milk, milk, milk again. Obviously, there was no milk to be had while we were driving, but Sacha pointed out that it just goes to show us how much he must think about milk in his little baby mind. Like, "milk, milk, milk...ho hum...doggie...dum da dum....milk, milk, milk..." We were cracking up. He had just had a mega serving of horchata, a Mexican rice drink that he is in love with, and maybe he was trying to tell us about that. We decided it must taste like mama's milk with a little extra boost of cinnamon. Yummy.

Feeling better and Happy Thanksgiving!

M's temp was over 102 last night, so he was a sick little boy. Thankfully for all of us, he bounced back and is feeling fine today. We're thankful for that as well as for many other things. Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

Discoveries...

1. The day after you casually mention to a friend that your child has really never been sick, save for a couple of cases of the sniffles, he will get sick. Along with both of his parents. We are all fighting something off. We all feel like we have fevers, but we actually don't. I guess this falls into the category of having a cold, then?

Poor little M is the only one who really might actually have a fever. He's sleeping on S's lap at the moment and before that he slept on mine. Before that, earlier today, he actually fell asleep in Sacha's arms, which was shocking because he hates to fall asleep under any circumstances. And before that, he slept for 13 hours last night. He slept in until 8 am this morning. And he has only been awake for about four hours all days long. All signs that he's not feeling well.

2. Infant Tyle.nol works very well. It really knocked out whatever was getting him down this morning. For his four hours of wakefulness, he was chipper and mostly his usual self. It seems that his tyle.nol has worn off now, however, because he was whimpering in his sleep at the beginning of his nap and feels really hot to the touch right now. He's like a little space heater for Sacha's lap.

2. Kids with (potential) fevers breathe really fast. During the hour I sat with him attached to my mammary gland before handing him off to Sacha, he was breathing like he had just finished a race. We're going to attempt to take his temp (ahem) internally after he wakes up.

3. Thanksgiving seems to be becoming a holiday of illnesses for us. Last year, when M was three weeks old, I came down with a freak 24-hour bug and spent Thanksgiving with a 101-degree fever. This year, we're all fighting something. I hope next year is healthier!

Here's our little guy sacked out with Mommy:

Three things

1. Yesterday, in the middle of a million other things, I put a load of diapers in the washer. We've suddenly found success at cloth diapering at night (thank you, new Bum Geni.us diapers!) but only have a few night diapers, so they must be washed every day. Right before M went to bed, I suddenly realized I hadn't dried the dipes, so quickly threw them in the dryer. When Sacha pulled one out for bedtime, and left the rest going in the dryer, she commented that it smelled funny. I smelled it and it definitely did smell odd. We talked about how we've stopped doing the prewash cycle on the washer and how maybe the diapers really do need that extra rinse.

Then I went to nurse M before bed. As I was sitting there in the dark pondering the day's events, I wondered to myself when exactly I had put the diapers in to wash. Then I realized I couldn't remember actually starting the washer, just putting in the diapers and leaving. Then it hit me - I had not actually washed them. No, I had thrown them in and gotten distracted. Then in the evening, I had taken them out again and put them in the dryer. Where they were still all saturated with pee and drying on high heat. Not a smell I needed to smell. Ewww.

After I switched them back to the washer and it became clear that I hadn't permanently smelled up the dryer, we had a good laugh. Especially because it took us so long to realize that the diapers didn't just need an extra rinse!

2. We've been doing an informal experiment on our child. We've discovered that, when we talk to him before bed about the night ahead, he sleeps longer and better. It's an experiment because we forget to do it half the time. Last night, we talked to him about how he was going to sleep for a nice long time before he woke up to nurse. And he slept straight from 6:30 pm to 5:15 am! And then fell back asleep until 6 am.

We've been trying this for about a week, mostly with Sacha having the talk with him, and he's slept through the night or close to it several times. The nights when we haven't had a little chat, he's been trying to wake up earlier and earlier to nurse. Who knows if it's a coincidence or not, but we think it's pretty cool. And, it backs up our impression that he can understand a lot of what we say.

3. Ha. I can't remember. Would someone bring my brain back? I think I left it somewhere in the delivery room...

Winter arrives

We had a nice snuggly day at home today. S had the day off, as well as a work day this past Friday, so we had a cozy day to finish off our long weekend. Fall seems to be finishing up and winter is on its way in - we had quite windstorm today and are expecting rain for the rest of the week.

The yucky weather kept us inside for most of the day, but that was fine with us! S and M let me sleep in until almost 8 this morning, which was fabulous. Then we had a nice breakfast and just kind of lazed around the house in our jammies for the rest of the morning. Or, at least Sacha and I did. Mateo was in his jammies until a bizarre diaper leak led to a large puddle on the floor that I managed to step in. Somehow neither his diaper and nor his pjs failed to absorb any of the liquid and it just dripped right down onto the floor. After a year of parenthood, the first thing I thought after I stepped in it was, "huh, something is warm and wet like when Mateo pees on me, but it's under my foot..." I had to laugh when I discovered what I had stepped in.

Anyway, I really enjoyed having time with the three of us this weekend and today. Mateo is becoming quite the little person and more interactive practically by the day. In addition to waving bye bye and night night, he's started making hand gestures along with us when we read one of his favorite books.

And, he's picked up a couple of signs (milk and all done) that we've been doing with him for a long time. If I ask him if he wants milk, he will sometimes make the sign for milk. Then, the other day, he made the signs for milk and all done consecutively right after he finished nursing. It was very cool. I just love seeing how his little brain works. I think he's starting to understand more of what we say, which is both exciting and terrifying!

M has a new favorite game, too. He'll look at you from one side of something - a fence post, the pole of the swing set at the park, a tree - and then dart around to the other side of it, look for you, and then squeal in delight when he sees you.

At the end of the day, we nurse and read some stories and he falls right asleep, exhausted from a hard day of playing and exploring. His tired parents usually follow soon after :)

Night night!

Still here

We're still here! Mateo is running us ragged, but in a good way. I'm working on his one-year letter, but here are some new things:

He's waving when you ask him to say hello, goodbye, or night-night. He's also started to say "da-da" when you ask him to say bye-bye, and I think that might be his way of saying it.

He's started hiding behind our legs when a new person shows up, which is very cute.

He claps!

And he is in motion pretty much all the time from dawn to dusk except when sleep overtakes him.

It's hard work, being one year old!

First bday photos

We're still here, just recovering from a busy couple of weeks! We had our anniversary and M's birthday, Apa and Sacha's parents all visiting from out of town, and then capped it off with a quick trip to see my family this weekend. I had to get my yearly fix of a Cal football game in Memorial Stadium and having my brother and sister both in town at the same time made the trip very fun.

I still expect travel to be like it was before M came along, but I think I really need to get used to the fact that things are different now. At least until we're all sleeping through the night again. This would probably be a good place to mention that I did, indeed, jinx our good sleep by blogging about it last month. M has now started wanting to get up once or twice a night again, which is okay with me in some ways. He's such a busy little guy during the day that having some cuddle time is kind of nice. On the other hand, sleeping is kind of nice, too. I guess we'll get there when we get there.

All of this is to say that I feel like I've been run over by a freight train and we were only away from our house for two nights! I feel like I'm stuck on the slow setting, so hopefully this is making some sense. Before I go to bed, I wanted to post some photos from M's birthday. We did his first piece of cake on his actual birthday, thinking it would have been too overwhelming at his party, and it was so much fun. Here are some photos:

The cake before M got his hands on it:


Letting Mommy do all the work to blow out the candle:


Hmmm, what is this stuff?:

Practicing his new favorite skill - feeding his moms:



Yes, I believe I will have some more...

One year old

Happy first birthday, Mr. M! I can't believe that a year ago, we were waiting for the Pitocin to kick in...and now here we are with a one-year-old son. It is the best thing ever.

We love you to the moon and stars and beyond!

Here's a little video I made about Mateo's first year. It's about 9 minutes long...

Wedding photos

By popular demand, here are a few photos of our wedding day. First, before the ceremony. Then, at the end of the night. Finally, a photo of our rockin' cake. It was not only fabulous, but also delicious. Thank goodness we still have some pieces of chocolate goodness frozen in my parents' freezer...

Happy anniversary!

On this day four years ago, we were married in front of a wonderful group of family and friends.

It was a beautiful late October day and very warm - probably 80 degrees by the time of the ceremony. It was an amazing experience for both of us and a very important milestone in our relationship.

Today, four years later (and almost seven from when we first started dating), we have a fabulous marriage and a little boy who lights up our lives. We live in a place we love and in a home we own. We have a wonderful community of friends and live close to family members from both sides. We are so, so lucky.

Happy anniversary, sweetie pie. I love you! Here's to many more.

Photos

Sacha is telling me that it's bedtime, and it is, but I just have to post a couple of photos.

First, a self-portrait by auntie E:


At the park, in the midst of lots of lovely puddles:


And sweetly cuddling with Mommy:

Fires

If you can today, send some good thoughts out to our friends, Briar and Gus. As if being 41 weeks pregnant wasn't enough, they're on the verge of needing to evacuate their home ahead of a very scary fire down in southern California. Needless to say, it must be a very scary situation and I'm sure they could use all the positive energy they can get.

We're thinking of you guys!

Wow

I was putting M to bed just a little while ago, while my lovely partner was occupied with a student. In the absence of Mommy to say goodnight to, I asked M if he wanted to say night night to our bedroom. I wasn't really expecting a response, just babbling away to him as I usually do. But just after I said "want to say night night to the bedroom?", he started waving! He must have understood me! It was very cool. I tried it again in the living/dining room and in the kitchen with no luck, but then we came back to the bedroom and he again waved night night. It was very exciting and I was, as you might imagine, very proud.

Also, I'm hesitant to say this and thereby jinx us forever, but M has been sleeping well. Very well. SO well that he has slept peacefully from 7:30 pm to 5:30 am without waking up for the past two nights. And, has consented to go back to sleep for some period of time after that, including sleeping in until 7:30 am on Saturday. Let me tell you, when you haven't slept through the night for a year (me) or haven't slept past 6 am for a year because you get up with your early-rising baby every morning (Sacha), it feels great to sleep through the night. Or sleep in. Or (I feel the jinx coming down on us) do both at the same time. Wahoo!

Fall

I love fall. I have concluded that it is my favorite season. I think I love it because it's all about transition. As my erstwhile wife could tell you, I loooove the times in between seasons and tend to get bored rather quickly when the season, whatever it is, eventually arrives in full force. Fall, however, is all about change. I love the changing leaves, changing temperatures, changing weather, etc. I love all the cider and pies and baked goods. Add to that our anniversary (Oct. 26) and M's birthday (Oct. 31), plus my grandma's birthday (Oct. 27), and you have the makings of a great season.

To get ourselves started with the whole fall thing, we went with some friends to a pumpkin patch on Sauvie Island earlier this afternoon. It's this island in the middle of the river that runs through Portland. We became obsessed with going there to pick fruit this summer and when our friends suggested going for pumpkins, we thought it sounded perfect. And it was, despite the fabulous fall weather the northwest graced us with. It was freezing and raining and muddy. Oh, was it muddy. And the patch was a little bare, since pumpkin-picking time apparently peaked last weekend. But it was so much fun and we all had a great time.

In addition to pumpkin gazing, M tried to chase a tractor outside and ran around the little country store (where we ran into some more friends) and petted some goats...

...and he posed for the ubiquitous pumpkin patch pictures with his moms. His pumpkin of choice was a bit small for sitting on, but he made do!



Happy fall!

PS: My mom and sister have been visiting this week and I'm going to post some photos of that as soon as I get them from my mom. M loves to hang out with his grammy and auntie and has been perfecting his giggle with them, among other things!

Haircut!

M got his hair cut yesterday and came out looking very cute. I was telling him that he's a big boy now, although really he's still our baby :) He needed both of his moms' cell phones as distraction toys. Here are a couple of the big event in progress. First is of Sacha holding little M, then of M with his almost-finished new do.




Also, here's one of Mateo (pre-trim) and Nils pushing a cart together. I tell you, it is so cool to see them becoming friends. Yesterday, we were the first ones at our baby group and, as other people came in, Mateo was acting shy and staying very close to me. Then Nils and Emily came in and he warmed up right away and started playing with his friend. It was neat to see.

Exploring

We drove around this weekend and saw some beautiful fall colors. The fall started early this year where we live and the trees are showing us some beautiful oranges, reds and yellows. We also got in some solid yard work, which is a good thing. We bought our house from two avid gardening enthusiasts and we have more plants than we know what to do with.

However, my real purpose in posting this is to put up a couple of pictures (they're a bit grainy, since I took them with the video camera and no flash). Being the fall enthusiast that I am, I got a little pumpkin for our dining room table last week. I gave it to Mateo today to play with and he loved it. So, here is our little pumpkin with his little pumpkin :)

Preparing

I got onto a big emergency preparedness kick before M was born. Maybe it was a way of nesting? Sacha and I got together a pretty decent disaster supply kit, including lots of canned food and some essential first aid items. We tried to figure out where the best place to keep it might be - in the basement so it would be close at hand? or in the shed out back so we could get to it if the house were to collapse? Fun stuff.

Anyway, fast forward to recently. On one of our date nights several months ago we went to see a movie about the fallout from Hurricane Katrina. It included some intense footage of the storm. After we left, I got to thinking about how we might respond to a disaster now that we have a child to think about. Some time later (I'm such a procrastinator), after months of driving by a billboard advertising www.ready.gov, I finally went to check it out. It got me very motivated to update our disaster kit.

I never gave it much thought, but you really do need to prepare to take care of your kid in a disaster! I went down the list of recommended baby items to have stashed away (diapers, formula, diaper cream, bottles or cups, warm clothes, etc) and realized that we had...nothing. We're doing a good job of taking care of M's day-to-day needs, but we'd be in trouble in an emergency.

And, as I went through the rest of ready.gov, I realized that we needed some more things for all of us, too. The website also mentioned that if you have a nursing mom or baby (or a pregnant person, older person, or someone who gets sick) that you're going to need more water on hand, and we had only the bare minimum as far as water goes.

So, I went on another kick! I seem to be having some protective mama bear instincts kicking in. I inventoried our current supplies and compared them to the list of recommended stuff. Then Sacha and I went through and figured out what we already had extra of in the house that could be used. And then we prioritized our top five things to get that we don't have.

Now we're on the road to having a good (but not too overwhelming) supply of emergency essentials close at hand. I feel really good about it and am relieved to know that we'll be able to take care of ourselves and the little guy if we ever need to.

11-month letter

Dear Mateo,
You are a busy 11-month-old boy! Your eleventh month was all about exploration and quite a lot of frustration. It's funny to write about it now, because you became such a happy boy when you learned to walk at the ripe old age of 11 months, 1 week...but that's for next month's letter. (The tenses might be wacky in this letter, because some things only happened last month and are now obsolete, while some are still quite current.)


During September, you worked hard practically around the clock on walking. You seemed to realize suddenly that there were more things in heaven and earth than the chair you might be holding onto and you wanted to check them all out. However, you didn't want to crawl to them, you wanted to walk! You spent a LOT of time feeling unhappy about this. At some point, you transitioned from appearing to be teething all the time to just plain being cranky all the time. I realize it sounds like I'm complaining here, but I'm not. From my perspective (of being with you pretty much around the clock), this is an objective fact. You were cranky. It was kind of a tough month that way. And we still managed to get through it and to find happy moments interspersed in the crankiness. Here are some things that make you happy:

Being with one of your moms. When you weren't struggling with gravity, you wanted to be with one of us. You wanted to be carried around and close to us all the time. If we left the room for a few minutes, you let us know that you wanted us back. You began to discover your cuddly side, which we thought was very cute. And, you continued to really enjoy being with Mommy.



And, pushing your own stroller! This was one of your most favorite things to do this month. You pushed your stroller everywhere! You even walked most of the way home from our local park one night.


Also, you've started to develop more of an appreciation for solid foods. Once we stepped back and let you decide for yourself how much you wanted to eat, you got a lot more comfortable with the idea. You developed a love (bordering on obsession, really) for cream cheese. For some reason, you prefer it spread on something instead of just in a little lump on the plate. We've had many breakfasts together in which you eat all the cream cheese off the top of my bagel and I eat whatever is leftover. Since cream cheese was all you would eat for quite awhile, we were happy that your one food of choice had some solid calories in it.


You've also gotten more into fruits and occasionally veggies. And, a particular combination of rice, beans, chicken, avocado and sour cream available from one of our local restaurants. We love going there, too, and are always happy to take you there :) You also, like most kids, love bread. Especially Grammy's special cheese toast.


I am happy to report that sleep is actually going better. In fact, (knock on wood) it's actually going pretty well. You nurse off to sleep fairly regularly these days, which we are okay with because you now know how to get yourself to sleep, too. For those times when you don't nurse down, Mommy reads you some stories and rocks you to your lullabies and you drift off peacefully in your crib.

I write this, I'm imagining myself of a few months ago reading this and passing out in shock. There were times (and many of them) when I thought you would never learn how to sleep on your own. It has been a long, hard road and I'm sure there are still some bumps waiting for us. But, for now, it is very satisfying to be at this point and be able to say that sleep is going well.

Here you are in a rare sleeping moment in your old carseat, which we still use occasionally:


So, those are some of the things you've been up to. Overall, you've been exploring. You have figured out several new things, including how to open the cupboards in the kitchen and how to open the oven. Needless to say, an oven lock is soon going to become the newest member of our family. You are showing signs of wanting to climb things, such as baby gates, bookshelves, and the rocking chair. You are a busy little boy and we are having tons of fun with you.

You also had a big old time exploring your grandparents' house recently. You walked all over with Grammy...

... and loooooved playing a finger puppet game with Grandpa.


You had tons of fun with Apa when he visited, too!




So far, here are some personality traits I associate with you (thanks to Wendy and Karen for the idea!): sweet, inquisitive, determined, and energetic!


Mateo, we love being your parents. We are thankful every day that you came to join our family. And, we can't believe you're almost a year old! More on that in the next letter :)

In the meantime, we love you oodles and oodles of noodles. Mwa, mwa!

love, Mama and Mommy

PS: We want to wish a very happy birthday to Nils and Liam, your friends who turned one on October 6th and 7th, respectively. Happy birthday, little guys!

Walking! Really walking!

Mateo learned how to walk for real today. He had been taking a few steps at a time and then all of the sudden, after we got home from the airport, he started walking all over the place! We got copious video footage of it at our neighborhood park, some of which I'm posting here.

I was looking at M after we got home and feeling very nostalgic. It was just 11 months ago that he was this tiny squirming little eight-pounder. We had to pump his arm up and down to keep him awake while he was nursing and he could barely lift his head off the ground. Now he's so big and coordinated and he's walking. Amazing. We love our little bear.

Pics

Some photos from our trip: