Pickles and ice cream

No, we're not pregnant again - we just couldn't resist the title because Sacha and her parents made pickles today. Yes, they made pickles. We have also recently made homemade blueberry jam, using blueberries we picked ourselves, and have canned peaches for the first time. We are going back to the land, people. Pretty soon, we'll be making our own granola. Watch out!

Anyway, I just wanted to quickly post to say that we made it through our first week. There were some ups and some big downs, especially on my part. It seemed to get harder and harder to leave the kids as the week went on. I think the fact that going to work was just a lot of absorbing of information and not much actual action on my part contributed to me feeling overwhelmed. Today, I actually got to practice doing some parts of my job and I left feeling much better overall. It helps to know that the kids are in really good hands with my lovely wife. She's doing great. And, I love having the mornings with them. And we're adjusting. I think it will probably just get better from here on out. At least, I hope it will!

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(Sacha) My first week at work has been good. As an update, after all the fuss, I was actually offered a half time teaching position back at the school that had unassigned me! I now teach reading and coordinate beginning Spanish language instruction.

Speaking of that - I have great news! I passed my praxis test and am now certified as a Spanish language teacher. I just have to finish the paperwork and send it in!!! Alayna says that the fact I managed to pass that with a 4 week old baby and 20 month old toddler in tow and massive sleep debt makes me the "greatest Spanish speaker the world has ever known." She does not acknowledge that she could be biased in any way. . . lol

Anyway, what I wanted to write about is what our afternoons look like so far. Briefly, we drew, yes literally, drew a schedule for our afternoons. Mateo likes to look at it. Here's what we've been up to: First I get home from work and change clothes, then put away the pumped milk. Then Mateo (who has hopefully been napping for at least a little while) gets up and has a snack and we all clean up from lunch. After that, we talk in Spanish (if we haven't already started), get dressed for the afternoon, do some activity outside and have a snack or dinner. At the end, I get him ready for bed time and our time is done. Alayna comes home, nurses him and he falls fast asleep. And that is our day!

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Finally, we had a fun visit with my mom yesterday afternoon and with Sacha's parents today. They spent the night on their way to a weekend dance camp about an hour away from here, so we got to all spend the morning together. On the spur of the moment, we went on a nectarine-picking expedition. I had to leave midway through to go to work, but Sacha and her dad and baby Talia ended up picking up a huge bag of pickling cucumbers while they were paying for the nectarines. By the time I got home, there were actual jars of pickles all over our kitchen!

Here are a few photos from the nectarine field:

Mama feeding Teo a nectarine:


Mommy and her boy hanging out:


Baby Talia and Bubby:


Teo giving Poppa a flower:


The kids and their grandparents:

First day

Well, we made it through day #1 of our new schedule. Each of our first days went well, although both were pretty procedural. Sacha sat through a long meeting and I nearly drowned under a mountain of forms. I also got to watch two thrilling videos on workplace harassment and fire safety. Tomorrow, I have my first afternoon at the shelter. I think I'm shadowing people for the rest of the week before I really get started, about which I feel greatly relieved.

I think it's actually good that I'm going back to work now, because I'm too distracted by not wanting to leave the kids to be too anxious about how I'm actually going to do this job.

We also had pretty good first days on our own with the kids. I took them to the zoo this morning and we saw umpteen million animals. We went all over the place. Mateo loved seeing the tiger, the hippo, and the elephant in particular. He was very excited to see their rear ends. He was fascinated! He also really liked riding in the stroller with the seat reclined all the way flat. I had it that way briefly for Natalia and he just couldn't get enough of riding while lying down. He's a man who appreciates leisure :)

This afternoon, he gave Sacha a run for her money with a very long post-nap tantrum, but then settled down and they all went to the park and for a long walk around the neighborhood to look for fans and wind chimes.

After I got home, we celebrated surviving the day by going out for barbeque.

We had to laugh at how we just popped the kids in the car and went out to dinner. We thought back to when we took them out for our first family outing whenever that was, to a nearby park, and how stressed out we were by what we did or didn't need to put in the diaper bag. We had a big turning point when we realized all we really needed were two sizes of extra diapers. And tonight, we didn't think twice about just putting them in the car and going. So, that has to be progress!

Here's hoping tomorrow will go as well as today did.

I love you more...

Today, Mateo and I were walking home from a playdate and I picked him a plum off a neighbor's tree. As he was eating it, I said, "Mateo, I love you more than a mango." Mangoes (freeze dried, mostly) are his favorite thing. Then I said, "I love you more than a plum." And, "I love you more than a strawberry."

He paused and considered. Then he said "Love you...sour cream."

I said, "I love you more than sour cream?"

"Yeah."

Then he said "Love you...shower." Then, "Love you...poo poo." Then, "Love you... pee pee." Then, "Love you...vegetables."

This, without any prompting! I had to write it down before I forgot the list. I love this age.

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On another note, here's our quote of the day from the New York Times:

"It's ironic - when heterosexual couples remarry, it's to new people. But same sex couples can just keep marrying each other as laws come and go." Here's the article in full.

We've been pondering whether to get married in California, which would be our fourth - oops, I mean, fifth - time at the alter or courthouse window. Anyone got an opinion? We can't decide. We will actually be in the great state of CA on our fifth wedding anniversary, so it might be a fun thing to do then...

Natalia at two months

Dear Natalia,
Today, you are two months old! Mommy and I agreed that it seems like a very long time ago that you were born, although our memories of your birth are still very fresh. We started writing to your brother when he was two months old and so we thought we would start now with you, too.

You are doing wonderfully well. We took you to your two-month check-up today and we really didn't have any questions for the doctor. After all of the hospital and doctor visits of your first few weeks, it felt great to just tell them that you are doing really well.


These days, you breastfeed like it's the easiest thing in the world. Mommy has weaned you off the nipple shield (wahoo!), so you are nursing directly at the breast and you seem to love it. Mommy is doing a fabulous job of feeding you (and I am, too, for one feeding a day) and it shows - you weighed in today at 10 pounds, 11 ounces. I'm not sure what percentile that is, but I think it's right around the 50th. To us, you are deliciously chubby. We love watching your cheeks and thighs and tummy pudge up. Here you are at one week old, and then at close to two months:



In addition to growing well, you are getting stronger and stronger all the time. It seems like most people who meet you comment on how strong you are. You can easily hold your head up at a 90 degree angle and look all around. You remind us of a little sphinx! You can also hold your full weight on your legs if we hold you up. It is so cute to watch you putting so much effort into it!


In terms of sleep, which is a big subject around here, you are rocking our worlds. Most nights, you go down around 10 pm and sleep until 3 or 4 am. Then you nurse for five or ten minutes, no joke, and go right back to sleep. Usually, you wake up for the day sometime around 7 or 8 in the morning. In our wildest dreams, we couldn't have imagined that you would sleep this well. We are so, so, so, so happy about it! You do still sleep upright in your bouncy chair, which helps with your reflux, and we are going to start transitioning you to the co-sleeper pretty soon. We are kind of dreading it, because we don't want to mess with a good thing, but we know sleeping in a bed will be better long term. Can you imagine taking a huge bouncy chair with you to college?

The last thing I want to say is that you are a social kid! Once a person comes into your field of vision, you reward them with huge baby smiles and grins and often some cooing. I swear that most of the time when I say "ah-oo" to you, you say it back a few seconds later. You can be very serious sometimes, but you have spurts of major happiness. We love it. You've been able to meet quite a few people during the past two months - both sets of grandparents, your Apa, your auntie and uncle, lots of friends, and even some other babies and kids!


Talia, you are our very favorite girl in the whole world. We love you exactly the way you are right now and we will always love you in just that way. Being with you, getting to know you, and caring for you in these first months of your life is pretty great. We can't wait to see what you have in store for us as you enter your third month!

All our love and lots of kisses,
Mama and Mommy

Back from vacation

We just spent a lovely six days on vacation! I think that our trip to Eugene really prepared us for taking a longer trip, because we knew what we needed to take and had some confidence that we would make it home in one piece. We went up to Washington and then out to a beautiful house on a lake with some neighborhood friends and some new friends that we met on the trip!

It was sunny and gorgeous while we were staying with my parents and then rainy and cloudy basically the entire time at the lake. We played on the beach with Poppa and Mateo had a great time playing with both his grandparents. Natalia also had a great time, although in a more subconscious way. When we got to the lake, we went in the hot tub in a floaty inner tube, I jumped in the lake, we went out on a paddle boat to look at water lilies and had a fabulous time.

Our drive there, though, was not fabulous in any way whatsoever. We left around 12:40pm last Friday to drive up to my parents' home. With a pit stop or two, it normally takes around 3 hours. If we have a lot of traffic, it may take another 30 minutes or so.

That is not how our drive up occurred. We drove about 15 miles into Washington and then the freeway came to a complete stop. It stopped enough that we turned off the engine, and then after some more waiting, got the children out of the car seats and nursed Natalia right there on I-5. We waited, and waited, and then drove on the side of the road up to a truck rest stop we found a way up the freeway, where a there was a cop.

The cop informed us that there was a brush fire closing all lanes of the freeway in both directions and that somehow an RV caught fire, causing even more delays!!!! Ahh

After an hour or so of waiting, calling both of our parents to find an alternate route, and some incredible "good" luck, we were able to get off the freeway at the next exit. We had found a 5 mile detour around the fire! Yah.

Unfortunately, everyone else in the world with their GPSs also found the same one lane road detour for both directions (remember I-5 was closed in both directions), so after some smooth driving for two or three miles, we were stuck another in complete gridlock. We couldn't really turn around, because neither direction was moving.

We sat, and sat and eventually I decided to walk with Mateo, and passed tons of cars. After an hour and 40 minutes, we decided to brave the other direction, which had cleared up.

When we got to the freeway again, we had a complete mental breakdown over if we should attempt to drive through the still very slowly moving traffic up to Washington (another 3 hours) or just turn around and try it tomorrow. We decided to drive home and try again tomorrow. As we were heading onto the freeway to go back to Portland, we realized it was rush hour and would take us forever to get home anyway. We pulled off at a rest stop and regrouped, and then took a deep breath and got back on I-5 going north.

In the end, the trip took 8 hours, and the kids did remarkably well. I can't say the adults did remarkably well. . . but we did get there in one piece!

The trip to the lake house, which should have only taken 30 to 45 minutes, took 2 and a half hours, because we got totally lost. But, like I said, we had a wonderful time once we got there and the drive back was totally and thankfully uneventful!

In the end, the driving aside, it was a great vacation!

Same shot, different kid

When M was 8 weeks old, we took what we affectionately call some sumo photos. We thought it would be fun to try to recreate them with Talia now that she's approaching that age. The crib mattress is much lower than it was when M was little (since now it's actually a toddler sleeping area instead of an infant play place), so it was hard to get the same angle, but we came pretty close. It's funny - in some photos, they look a lot alike, and in others, they look very different. I guess that's just the way it goes!

Here's Teo at 8 weeks:



Here's Talia at 7.5 weeks:



Finally, here she is having some tummy time. Check out that head control!

So, um...

I got it! The job. In something of a whirlwind, I interviewed yesterday and they offered it to me today. It's a 20 hour a week position working with homeless and runaway teens, doing assessments and counseling and such. The word therapist is actually in the job title. Woah.

After spending several months last year and a very short time this year looking for jobs, Sacha and I both knew a good thing when we saw it and so I accepted the offer. It's going to be part-time in the afternoons, so our plan of Sacha working in the mornings and me in the afternoons (and early evenings) is actually going to come to fruition! Amazing. There will probably be a steep learning curve, as I haven't worked (in a professional sense) in two years, but I think it's a really good opportunity.

I'm definitely sad to be leaving the kids for part of the day, as I have love love loved being a full-time stay-at-home mom. But, I'll still be with them for the first half of every day as well as one whole weekday every week. I'll be able to put Mateo down for his nap and then hopefully be home in time for his bedtime. And Talia's bedtime, once the blessed day arrives when she actually has one. I think it will be a good balance. It will be a big adjustment, but I'm really excited!

We're leaving this weekend to see Bubby and Poppa and then spend several days at a waterfront house with friends. Let's hope we all get some sleep and rejuvenation somewhere in there! Then we'll come home and have the rest of next week and then Sacha and I will both start our respective positions in the middle of the week after that. Big times coming up at our casa, so stay tuned...