Snow!

We made it up to the snow today!  The camera battery died right after I got a couple of shots of Rosa seeing the snow for the first time, and the charger seems to have been a casualty of the move, so photos will have to wait.  I think I got some cute ones, though.

It took us some time to actually find snow for several reasons, the chief one being the huge traffic jam between us and Mt. Hood.  We had anticipated the traffic, though, and planned to just find a little side-road before we got to the mountain and do some sledding there.  However, it has been unseasonably warm and dry this year and the snow levels are higher than normal, so the location we had in mind was muddy and slushy with no snow in sight. 

We kept going up and up this little road and finally found a place with a couple of inches on the ground.  That turned out to be more than enough for the kiddos.  In fact, it might have been better than piles of snow, because they could easily walk around in it.  They did some tobogganing on a very small hill, threw snowballs at us and in the picturesque creek that ran by the road, and made the best snow angels they could. 

When our toes started freezing and we had played quite a bit, we piled back into the car and drove back to Portland.  Once we were back in the city, we had a spontaneous and fun playdate with friends in our old part of town.  Then, we drove back by our old house on the way to a New Year's Eve kids' music show. 

It looks like the buyer is really remodeling the kitchen and who knows what else, because there is a big dumpster outside and the toilet was sitting right next to it!  New bathroom, perhaps?  Anyway, the show was packed to the brim but Sacha found us a place to sit up front and the kids rocked out while we juggled the baby and all our stuff.  We took off at intermission and now Sacha's putting the kiddos to bed. 

I'm sure one of these years we'll be all caught up on sleep and actually stay up until midnight, but not this year :)  It will be an early New Year's Eve for us!  Happy New Year to everybody!

Photos from the holidays

Here are some photos from the holidays.  I took a number of them before presents started happening on Christmas, and then I got caught up in the swing of things and didn't pick up the camera until a few days after Christmas!  So, these are the bookends for the holiday.

Post-Christmas, here are the kids and my parents working on the gingerbread houses that we finally manged to make!

Also, on Wednesday, Sacha and I celebrated 11 years since we first met!  Our anniversary fell on Wednesday this year, which is our regular date night, and Apa helped us celebrate by coming over early and staying late!  We had time to have a lovely dinner at Andina, browse the shelves at Powell's Books, and then attend Cavalia, which is being staged downtown.  Apa and Mateo had gone to see it together on Christmas Eve and came home raving about it, so we gladly took the opportunity to see it for ourselves!  It was designed by one of the founders of Cirque de Soleil and had lots of amazing acrobatics combined with horsemanship.  We had a really good time and enjoyed having such a full evening together. 

Our vacation is beginning to wind down, but we're still enjoying ourselves.  We haven't made it up to the snow yet, but Sacha and the kids went to Zoo Lights last night in the rain!  And, we undertook a little project yesterday:  we painted our dining room and kitchen again!  We had originally picked a mustard yellow color for it, as you can see above, because we had a nice yellow kitchen in our old house, but the mustard just ended up not working for us.

We asked Apa to pick a different color, as he is very good at such things, and he suggested a creamy antique white.  A number of color samples later, we picked a nice cream color and then taped and painted yesterday.  I did most of the painting and Sacha did most of the kid-wrangling, which worked well for both of us.  We were pretty pleased with ourselves that we pulled off such a big project while the kids were awake!  Having white walls is a big change for us, but we really like the way it turned out.  It feels vastly more open and light in there.  Yay!

While I was at the store getting the paint, I noticed that they had rugs on sale and made an impulse purchase of one for the dining room area.  It's a long, narrow room that serves as both a dining room and a hangout area and we've been casually thinking about getting a rug, so now we have one.  We're still trying it on for size, but we think we're going to keep it.

The photos came out yellowish, but you can still get the idea.  You can also see evidence of our constant struggle against clutter!

Ukulele playing by Mateo and Natalia

"I like the Ukulele."

Here is a video of Mateo and Natalia playing one of their very first songs on the ukulele. They can play Old McDonald had a farm, and they can also play Row Row Row Your Boat.

I'm sure that with some time, they will learn even more songs.

Although Alayna would not let us video tape this, she sang a song with two chords in it today! Go Alayna. Before you know it, she will have caught the ukulele bug too!

The holidays

Wow, it has been awhile since I last blogged!

We have had a wonderful holiday season with just a few bumps in the road.  Sacha's first week off work was filled with lots of family time, some house projects, and a big old-house clean-out followed by the closing of the sale.  Yes, we sold it!!  We are so excited and relieved to have that behind us, and to know that the house is in good hands with its new owner.  Apparently, they will be redoing the kitchen, so we wish them all the best.

Of course, the holidays wouldn't be the same without a little excitement, and this year it came in the form of a stomach virus that flattened Sacha and me a few days before Christmas.  Luckily, oh so luckily, we got over it in the nick of time to welcome family to town and celebrate the Christmas and Hanukkah holidays.

Christmas itself was full of presents and amazing food.  Apa cooked Christmas dinner for all of us and it was sublime.  Prime rib, glazed vegetables, incredible mac and cheese, gravy, and Yorkshire pudding were all on the menu.  It was so good that I wanted more even after dinner was over and I was stuffed to the gills.  YUM.  Thanks, Apa!!

We also had fun earlier in the day with opening presents, starting with a very excited Mateo waking us up at the crack of dawn and concluding with a major ocean of wrapping paper in our living room.  It was a great first Christmas in our new home.  Many thanks to Sacha's parents, my parents, and Auntie E for traveling to us during a very busy time of year. 

Today is Sacha's birthday and I want to send a big happy birthday out to her!  We had another wonderful day with lots of family time and lots of chocolate to boot, so I think she felt well celebrated.  Happy, happy birthday, Sacha!

I feel lucky to be married to a teacher, because this is just the start of our second week of vacation.  We're going to spend some more time with my parents in the next couple of days and then have some days to fill after that. We're thinking of heading up to the snow for a day and are also planning our very first family sleepover for the end of the week.  Fun stuff!

I think it will be a good week to round out the end of the year, and hopefully I will start blogging more regularly again.  I've been feeling a little uninspired for awhile, which I attribute mainly to having three small children!  I'm often really spent by the end of the day and it's just easier not to blog, but then I miss out on both writing and recording how we've spent our days.  I'm hoping to start both blogging more and taking more photos again in the new year. Until then, happy end of 2011 to all!

New do

Well, we took the plunge today.  What do I mean?  Ever since we had a daughter, and practically since we had the ultrasound when Sacha was pregnant, I have sworn that she would never have bangs.  I know, it's silly and rather inconsequential, but when I think of bangs, I think of the headache and awkwardness of growing them out, and so I just wanted to avoid them from the get-go. 

So, when Tali finally got hair, we let it grow and grow until she had beautiful curls coming from everywhere.  There was just one (predictable) problem:  she couldn't see!  It was always in her face.  This was exacerbated by the fact that she rarely wanted it pulled back.  I held my ground on the bangs thing for quite awhile, but recently, I began to rethink things. 

It was seeing her up onstage at her winter celebration that sealed the deal for me, because she had hair in her face even when it was up in a ponytail and I just wanted her to be able to see out!  So, this is a long way of saying that we took her to get her hair cut today.  We all go to this great alternative barbershop in northeast Portland, so we went there and asked them to give her bangs.  They turned out really cute, and, as much as I've read that you shouldn't comment on little girls' appearances, I couldn't help telling her a zillion times how cute she looks. 

Here's the girl of the hour with her new haircut:

And, her brother, with his own cute do:

Baby photos to come, as we are way overdue for a photoshoot with Rosie.

Winter break

We have been having a truly lovely time with Sacha home on winter break.  It's so nice to have her home and to be able to just spend time as a family.  This weekend, we spent most of Saturday in north and northeast Portland, finishing Christmas shopping, having burgers, an even attending a Christmas party (at which someone complimented us on how well-behaved our kids were.  So nice!).  It was a beautiful sunny day and not even too cold outside. 

Sunday, we had a lazy but project-y day around the house.  We had been unhappy with a lot of the house's lighting ever since we moved in, and decided that yesterday was a good day to do something about it.  We got some new fixtures from Ikea and Apa wired them all in for us!  He is also working on all our windows, putting up curtains and generally making the place look beautiful, so he put in some more curtains while he was at it.  Thank you, Apa!!  We love how our kitchen and eating area look now.  I'll have to post some photos.

Today, we did some exploring and some organizing.  We all walked down to the rec center at the corner, which is about a five minute walk from our house.  We checked out the preschool there, which we are thinking about for Tali for next year, and we also saw some gymnastics classes going on.  Both kids are signed up for gymnastics there, starting in January, so it was nice for them to see a bit of what they'll be doing.  After lunch, Sacha cut me loose to go to a cafe and address holiday cards.  My hand got really tired, but I had a good time!  I finally found a good cafe that is both relatively close by, independent, and yummy!  The closest place to us is Starbucks, which I admit to having a weakness for, but I'd rather spend my money somewhere local. 

Also, I had to laugh because, as I was addressing cards, I realized that our holiday cards have two little birds on them that I hadn't noticed before.   That made me think of the Portlandia line about putting a bird on it, and I thought that was pretty funny, because we had put a bird on our cards without even realizing it. 

After I got home, we did some purging of the zillion toys we have around the house.  The kids were actually really great about it and Mateo picked out quite a few toys to give away.  Sacha explained to them that we were going to be getting a lot of new toys for Christmas and that we needed to give toys away, in return, to kids who might not be getting so many.  This is the first year that he has seemed to get the concept of that, which was nice to see.

Finally, Sacha took the kids to the store for provisions and came back to make a delicious, delicious salmon hash.  We had made teriyaki salmon last night and left it marinating just a little too long, so it was too intense to eat by itself.  We had the idea of making hash and it turned out perfectly.  Sacha even made poached eggs, for the first time, to go on top.  Even the kids gobbled up their portions, which is saying something, because they're normally suspicious of new foods.  Poor Mateo is working on another loose tooth and is mostly into soft foods, so this fit the bill.  And, poor Rosa has a nasty cold and has hardly nursed or drunk much of anything today.  Let's hope she sleeps tonight, although I'm not betting on it.  I guess we should go to bed early!

Traffic

We just got back from Mateo and Tali's preschool winter celebration.  We almost didn't make it to the school in time for them to perform!  The traffic was awful, awful, awful.  It took the kids and I an hour and fifteen minutes to get there, leaving us fifteen minutes late and very grateful that they were running behind.  We walked in about a minute before Talia's group went up to sing their songs.  Whew!  I had already explained to both kids that we weren't going to make it in time, including how sorry I was, so it was a very welcome surprise to find out that they were going to get to perform after all.

They both did great, although it was obvious that Tali was way outside her comfort zone.  She did go up on stage and stand with her group, although singing along was not in her plan!  We were very proud of her for getting up there at all, given how shy she is.  Mateo seemed very much in his comfort zone and hammed it up along with the rest of his friends.  It was fun to watch him with his group and see how much they have all grown in the three years that they have all attended the school. 

We just made it back, and all I can say is that I am glad we don't have to keep up this routine for longer than the rest of this school year!  I'm not a big fan of all the driving back and forth, and I don't think the kids are, either. 

As part of our mammoth journey to get to school tonight, we got off the freeway and cut through our old neighborhood for the last leg of the trip.  Mateo said wistfully that he liked coming back to the old neighborhood again, and, when asked why in particular, he said "because we didn't have to drive so far to preschool when we lived here!" 

I do feel bad about dragging them through the commute... but, I have to say, I have been having some guilt about uprooting the kids and taking them to a whole new place/house/suburb, so I have to admit that having him only be able to come up with one thing he missed about the old neighborhood kind of made me feel better about the whole thing! 

Anyway, in the end, we made it in time and we all had a very nice time.  And now, we are all on winter break!  Wahoo!  For Sacha in particular, it has been a long road to make it to Christmas, because her class has been so crazy, so I send big congrats to her and wishes for all of us to have a nice holiday season. 

Busy day, plus house news

We had a busy day today!  Sacha was busy wrapping up at school and getting ready for the winter break.  Our older two kids were busy at their own school, practicing for their winter celebration tomorrow night (the agenda of which is highly secret and known to only the kids, who are doing a great job of keeping the secret, surprisingly) and spending the whole day there, which is unusual for them.  In fact, it was the first time Tali has spent a whole day there and she did great.  Even though they only go two mornings a week, normally, they both consistently have fun there.  I was reflecting at dinner that the longer drive is really worth it, because both kids listed preschool as their favorite part of the day.

Anyway, back to my point:  finally, Rosa and I were busy spending the day together!  We went out to coffee and made some new friends, who were 13-month-old and his dad.  We've seen them at the same coffee shop a number of times and finally exchanged numbers to set up a playdate.  Do you still call it a playdate if the kids involved are not quite capable of playing together?  I think so!

Rosa and I also did a bunch of Christmas shopping and had lunch at school with Sacha.  We concluded the day with a trip to a new chiropractor, who came highly recommended.  The appointment was too early in the afternoon for Sacha to make it back in time for, so I had to bring Rosie with me.

That turned out to be a Bad Move.  Our mellow, easygoing girl turned into a fussy mess upon entering the quiet, peaceful clinic.  She pretty much fussed and cried throughout the appointment, stopping only when I sat her down next to the table and fed her with my arm outstretched as I was lying face-down and getting my back worked on.  It was more than a little embarassing, but the chiropractor was really nice about it, at least. 

And, the chiropractor seemed awesome in general.  She was very sympathetic about my fall, found exactly where it was hurting, and diagnosed me with a soft tissue injury around my sacroiliac joint.  She said these types of things normally take four to six weeks to heal, and since I tend to be a slow healer, I'm going to assume I'll be better in closer to six weeks.  Since it's already been two weeks, I'm a third of the way there!  I'm going back next week, but I will not be bringing the baby with me.  Oh, no.  That will be a solo event. 

One final piece of news:  I don't think I've mentioned this on the blog yet, but we have another offer on our house!  This one is looking like it might actually go through.   The person has already had the inspection and submitted to us a very reasonable list of repairs to make.  The appraisal came back today right on target, so now all we have to do is finish the repairs and hope that the buyer gets final approval on the loan.  The buyer wants to close by Christmas or soon thereafter, so let's hope it works out!  It would be a huge relief to have the sale closed and the house sold and all that. 

On that note, Sacha and I are going to catch up on the Biggest Loser and have some ice cream and go to bed.  Happy almost-holidays!

Round-up

We have been having a lot of fun exploring our new house and new neighborhood with the kids.  Yesterday, we checked out a big library that's part of the county library system in our new county.  It is huge and beautiful and is home to tons and tons of books.  Luckily, we thought to bring a piece of mail with us, so we were able to get a library card right then and check out lots of books.  We also got lots of helpful library advice, more than we needed, really, from a friendly must-be-gay librarian, who seemed to recognize us as a family. 

Back at the ranch, we have been having fun making cookies...

...snuggling with Mommy...

and spearing olives on our fingers, because, really, what is childhood for if not for putting olives on your fingers?

We have also been getting used to our new preschool routine, which is much longer than it was before.  The kids' preschool is back in our old neighborhood and was, at most, a five minute drive from our old house.  It was also about a 10 minute bike ride, which was nice in the summer.  In moving to the new house, we have added a half an hour onto the drive time, which usually clocks in right around 35 minutes.  Luckily, the kids have been great in the car and haven't whined once, for which I am very grateful. 

Today, we lengthened our stay in north/northeast Portland to visit some nearby friends.  The kids had a truly spectacular playdate, with both Mateo and Natalia playing with their friend while Rosa played with her younger brother.  It was a big first for Tali, to actually play with another kid at a playdate.  She's so shy that she usually just hangs onto me for dear life, even with people we know well.  It was amazing to see her leave me and go play in the other room with the big kids.  I was very proud of her!  And, it was a first for Rosa, to have any kind of exchange with another kid.  Our friends' little boy would say "aahhhh!" to her and she would say "aahhh!" right back.  It was adorable. 

In other news, my butt is still giving me trouble.  It is getting better, but very slowly, and I'm constantly aggravating it with my day job.  I'm looking forward to the day when I'm able to exercise again, but that may be a ways off.  I actually still have quite a bruise from the fall, which was two weeks ago, so I guess my body is really still dealing with the aftermath of that. 

Finally, in exciting news, we're going to Europe!  This summer, in July!  My parents are taking us!  Thank you, Mom and Dad!  We may be a little crazy, but we're way excited.  We'll be mostly in Barcelona and Paris, with a stop at a hotel in the middle that my family visited when I was a kid.  Let's hope that our five-year-old, then-four-year-old, and then-one-year-old, along with their parents, are ready to experience a really big trip!

Stacking states

Soon after my parents gave me an iPad for my birthday, Sacha got an app for it called Stack the States.  It's a geography game where you can answer questions about different states, like naming their capitals or states that border them. When you answer the question correctly, the state falls onto a platform, and you stack them up towards a line (like you would stack blocks). Unlike blocks, though, the states have a tendency to fall because they are not square.

When you stack enough states so they reach the line, you "earn" a state for your map of the US. Basically, the game goes over and over until you have earned all 50 states. In the beginning, Mateo would ask us the answer to every single question (not surprisingly.) Now I would say that he knows more than I (Sacha) do about US geography. He almost never asks us a question.

He is on his second time of earning all of the states. We have also gotten the game stacking countries. That game is a bit more complex, but I'm sure he will grow into it with time. 

We have been so impressed with his ability to absorb the information in the Stack the States game.  I (Alayna) remember being very confused about cities, states, and countries when I was a kid, but Mateo has no such confusion.  It's pretty neat to have seen him start with no knowledge at all and just set out to master the information by practicing over and over and over.

So much better

I am finally noticing some improvement in my lower back situation.  The past couple of days, I've been able to be drug-free during the day and have felt about how I felt with lots of ibuprofen on board over the weekend.  I still get pretty sore in the evening, after a long day with the kids, but I think I've made a lot of progress.  It's a relief to be feeling better, although it is driving me nuts not to be able to exercise!  Even with all the improvement, it still hurts to walk, so running is probably out of the question :)  I'm glad to be on the path to recovery, though!

I went to an all-day meeting today and the kids were with a babysitter.   I really don't leave the kids very often, with the exception of dropping them off for preschool, but I periodically have day-long meetings that are related to my family's business.  The last time they had this babysitter, a couple of months ago, Mateo was awful with her and nearly drove her away in the middle of the day.  Luckily, she hung on until I was able to come and take over, but it was bad and we weren't sure if we should have her come again or not.

As circumstances worked out, she was available for today and so we booked her.  We then had lots of talks with Mateo about behaving for the babysitter, and this morning I sat down with him and we made a schedule for the day together.  I'm thrilled to report that he did great, Tali did great, and Rosa did great!  Sacha and I did come home to find the baby dressed in a sleeveless jumper (in the middle of December!  in our somewhat cold house!), so that was a bizarre clothing choice on the part of the sitter, but other than that, things went fine.

The kids can be a handful sometimes, but I am still so glad that I am able to be home with them.  We are so lucky that we are able to have one of us at home, and days like today remind me of that.  I'll just be glad when I'm back at full strength and am more able to be my normal picking-them-up-and-spinning-them-around self!

The house: living room and kitchen

Here are some more photos of the house.  I took them without a flash, so they're a bit blurry, but I think they give a good sense of what the rooms are actually like.

First, we have the living room, complete with our new Christmas tree, chopped down this morning by my lovely wife. As well, note the gorgeous curtains that Apa just put in for us.

Here's the kitchen/dining area.  It's one long room and we're still trying to figure out what to do with it.  Right now, we have the table at one end and a big open space between it and the kitchen.  Options on the table include a better seating area for the fireplace, which is bizarrely right next to the kitchen, and possibly a big farmhouse table going lengthwise in the eating area.

 

Finally, here are the kids with Apa!  They were all on the big chair by the fire (love having a fireplace at last!) and I thought this came out about as well as I could hope for with three wiggly children all in one place. 

Rosa's eight-month letter

Dear Rosa,
You are eight months old!  You turned eight months old last weekend, when we were in the midst of our move to our brand new (to us) house.  It's a bit crazy to think that this is the first house you will remember, despite spending all of your life, up until now, in our old one.  So it goes.  Here's what you're up to now, having started a new month in a new place!

First, you marked your new age by getting a new tooth.  You had three and now you have four:  two on the bottom and two on the top.  You are quite balanced.  The teething was pretty rough on you this time around, but you are back to your happy self now that #4 has come all the way through.  We love your little toothy grin! 

You are crawling like a maniac now, and still with your own trademarked version of the crawl.  You have shown us what a true army crawl looks like.  You drag yourself forward with your forearms while your feet sort of hippity hop along the floor behind you.  You do this very much on your belly and the whole routine is quite entertaining to watch.  You're just so earnest about it, and always focused on the thing you want to get to, somewhere across the room.  We used to think that you would army crawl and then you would crawl the regular way, but we're starting to think that maybe this is your version of crawling the regular way! 

In the food department, you are eating us out of house and home.  Every day, you put away more food than your older brother and sister would have eaten in a week at the same age.  You eat with gusto and have started to recognize certain foods, such as yogurt, a bowl of baby oatmeal, bananas, and so on.  We can tell that you recognize them as food because you make the same "heh-HEH!" noise that you make when you see a bottle or know that you're about to get Mommy's milk. 

Speaking of noises, you're a communicative little girl even though you don't have words yet.  You let us know when you're hungry with the sounds I mentioned above, you babble, and you even seem to sing sometimes.  And, of course, you cry when you're upset or tired.  That doesn't happen much, though.  Your evolving personality is still a happy one.  People comment a lot on what a happy baby you are, and we heartily agree.  You're a pleasure to be around.

We'll close with a couple of your favorite things in the whole world:  your brother and sister!  You look at them with big eyes and laugh for them like for no one else.  You think they are absolutely hilarious, and they, in turn, will do all sorts of things to make you laugh.  Today, you were in the Jumperoo and they both slid underneath you, so they could pull on your feet or get you to jump on top of them.  They and you both thought this was the funniest game ever created and there was a lot of laughing going on.  We hope you three still laugh together when you are much older, so the fact that you do it now is a great first step!

Oh, one final thing, which I can't remember if I mentioned last month but will just repeat again:  you know your name.  You will turn your head much of the time when someone says "Rosie!" or "Rosa!"  You don't do it all the time, but much of the time, you do.  Also, you have shown us that you can play a give and take game.  Recently, you were playing with Grammy and she leaned in and rubbed your nose with her own.  She did this several more times, and then you started to get it.  She would lean her face close to yours and you would reach out your nose to hers, basically asking for her to nuzzle you.  It was a magical moment and heartbreakingly cute. 

Rosie, we love you so much that you probably won't understand it until you have kids of your own!  You are the best, the cherry on top, the icing on the cake.  We wish we could save you up at just this age and enjoy you this way forever.  At the same time, we can't wait to see what the next month will bring.  We love you!

love,
Mama and Mommy

Update

Well, I seem to have really done a number on myself.  Despite three days of taking it mostly easy (as easy as one can when one is the mother of three children ages five and under), I still feel pretty banged up.  I was feeling quite hopeful yesterday, when I took only ibuprofen and could move around without too much pain even at the end of the day.  However, I woke up this morning feeling like my rear end had been in some kind of a fight and got the message that this may be a two steps forward, one step back sort of recovery.  Slow and steady wins the race, I guess.  Hopefully, things are healing and I'll be back to myself sometime soon.  In the meantime, on with the icing and heating and hobbling around!  I'm getting quite good at finding innovative ways to pick things up when bending over isn't much of an option.

House photos, part 1

Sacha took the kids outside at some point today and I decided to photograph them through the glass doors.  I came out with a couple of photos of the back yard that qualify as "before" pictures.  We'd like to do some landscaping and replace the fence as finances permit, but for right now it's a fine space for the kids to run around and such.  Our lot backs up to the very large, parklike back yard of the house behind us, so we look out through our yard at beautiful big trees and grass. 

Owie

The kids and I were having a good day yesterday until I took a big fall.  We had gone to my grandma's hosue for a visit and it became clear that the older two needed to blow off some steam, so we went to our favorite park, which is now just minutes from our new house.  It has a little lake with ducks, in addition to a great play structure and swings and such.

The ducks are really the main attraction, so we spent much of our time there by the water.  As it turned out, the water in the lake was down lower than usual, so there was a little beachy area between the grass and the water.  Mateo climbed over a log to get down to the water and Tali asked me for some help to get down there, too.  So, I took her hand, and, carrying Rosa in the Ergo, stepped on the log to help her down.  That turned out to be a big mistake!

Just like slipping on a banana peel, the log turned out to be VERY slippery and my feet went right out from under me.  I involuntarily flung my arms out, which, in turn, flipped Tali onto the ground and she hit her head on a rock just as Roas and I came slamming down on the log.  It was quite the scene, with Tali screaming and reaching for me as I grabbed my butt and tried not to cry.  At least the baby was completely unscathed. Good times!

Eventually, Tali calmed down and convinced me that she was okay.  I was pretty worried about her, because I had heard a crack when we both hit the ground and I thought it might have been her head.  Or my butt!  Either way, she turned out to be just fine and some ibuprofen at home helped her feel a lot better.  Back at the park, I convinced Mateo that we really needed to go.  I thought that I had broken my tailbone because of all the pain I was having, but was surprised to find that I could sit comfortably once we got to the car.  Still, I was in a lot of pain and couldn't bend over or really move at all without aggravating it.

Ultimately, I took the kids to urgent care on the other side of town and Sacha met us there.  The doctor looked me over and pronounced nothing to be broken, which was a relief!  However, I definitely did something muscularly to my sacrum, which I now know is just above the tailbone.  I must have come down on that and just narrowly avoided my tailbone, which is why I can sit, but why doing anything else hurts.  Needless to say, it's not very fun to move around and picking up the kids or getting them things is difficult.

Thankfully, Sacha took today off of work so that I can recuperate a little.  I'm hoping that today will make a big difference and that I'll be more functional tomorrow!

Meanwhile, Mateo is giving poor Sacha a run for her money.  I don't know if the accident scared him and he's acting out or if he's just being difficult, or maybe it's all the change we've had lately, but he's had several major meltdowns since I fell.

Anyway, I'm hoping to be on the mend soon and am SO grateful to Sacha for taking today off.  Even though my butt hurts, it feels rather luxurious to get a day to rest when I'm not actually sick!