End of the impromptu hiatus

It seems to have been quite a long time since last we blogged! We've had a busy two weeks, including a week of Sacha being on spring break. Since I have no hope of catching up if I attempt a full rendition of everything that happened since the dentist post, I'm just going to do bullet points.

Marshall the dentist continues to play an active role in our house. Since our dentist visit, Mateo has been very excited about brushing his teeth and even flossing the front two. We're thrilled that his first dentist visit was such a positive one!

We had a rather traumatic few days immediately following the dental visit. Among the things that happened:

• Sacha had been experiencing pain and sensitivity in her right eye for several days and finally went to the doctor. After ruling out any major problems, the doctor found...wait for it...a piece of saran wrap in her eye. It was about a centimeter in diameter and apparently had been hanging out in there for three days! We have no idea how it got in there, but she was very glad when they fished it out.
• However, a few days later, as Sacha was attempting to find the hidden key to our friends' house, so we could get in to feed their cat, she knelt down to look for something and didn't see the plant in her way. It poked her in that same eye and the bruise that it caused is only now beginning to go away.
  
• Later that weekend, while Mateo and I were hanging out at their house after feeding the cat, we were playing upstairs and Mateo wandered out of my sight for a minute. As I was going to find him, I heard the thump thump thump of him falling down their steep (but carpeted) stairs. Ack!! Luckily, he was okay. I felt horrible, though. Ugh.

After that, we all tried to be more careful and things have gone more smoothly. In fact, we had a lovely rest of Sacha's spring break. Sacha's mom came down to visit for the first weekend, which was the same weekend described above. It was actually a really nice weekend overall and filled with adventures! We all took in a young people's concert by the Portland Baroque Orchestra, the purpose of which was to demonstrate instruments played centuries ago. Mateo sat transfixed for an hour with Sacha, while I held our sleeping baby. She always goes to sleep to classical music on the radio and this was no exception! We then had a big adventure to find a place to eat dinner, which ended unexpectedly at the food court at the mall. It was too long to detail here, but we had a lot of fun getting there. It was wonderful to get to spend the weekend with Bubby!

Also that weekend, although not in chronological order, we went to two other concerts. It was a musical weekend! We saw the city's gay symphonic band with some friends and my grandma took Mateo and I to a big choir and orchestra concert at her church. Both were very fun. We felt extremely musical after three concerts in three days!

We then capped off spring break with a trip to Arizona with my family. We've gone with them several years for spring training and my parents very generously offered to take us again this year. And we happily accepted. We got there and we saw the sun! Shining! And emitting warmth! That was really all we needed, but we also got the company of my parents and brother and sister, a luxurious hotel, the fun of going to baseball games, and as much delicious food as we could eat. We returned to Portland with more vitamin D that we've gotten in months, plus memories of a great trip.

Here are some photos, including a comparison of Teo and Talia in the same outfit. I think he was about five months old and she just turned nine months.

First, him:

Then, her:


Also, us at the game, which we attended for about two innings due to nap schedules:


Teo on the plane, acting only slightly crazed:

And, cuddling at home:


I'll post more photos once I get them from my mom, who was far better about taking photos than we were!

Today, we're back in our cloudy city and back in the swing of things. Sacha's mom is down here again and we went to a mental health conference together this morning. Then, after we got the kids mostly ready for bed, I actually went out with a friend to a book reading in an actual bookstore. We went to see Dooce read and she was just as funny and engaging in person as in her blog. It was very fun. And so novel to have an actual social outing! Thanks, Megan!

Coming up, hopefully, are monthly letters to our kiddos, who are now almost 29 months and 9 months, respectively...

Dentist trip

M had his first dentist appointment this morning. We had been meaning to take him in forever, because the ubiquitous "they" say that the earlier you take kids to the dentist, the more comfortable they'll feel at appointments in the future, but, of course, had been putting it off. Then, yesterday, he started pointing to one of his teeth and saying that it hurt. He has all his teeth in now, thank God, and the tooth looked a little odd next to the gumline, so we thought maybe he had a cavity. I called a pediatric dentist that someone recommended and the earliest they could see him was this morning. I was dreading the visit, because I was sure he had a cavity and the dentist would give me a lecture about all the things we're doing wrong from a dental point of view (namely that he still nurses off to sleep at night and that's really bad for your teeth).

Not sensing my anxiety, Mateo was beside himself with excitement over the impending dental visit. All day yesterday, he kept begging to go to the dentist right now! He knew the dentist's first name was Marshall and he kept asking when we would get to see Marshall. This morning, we had to leave pretty early to make it on time, but we had a few minutes of extra time for breakfast and he pretty much refused to eat anything. He said something to the effect of 'no, I don't want breakfast, I want to leave for the dentist RIGHT NOW!"

Anyway, the long story short is that he doesn't have any cavities. Whew. His tooth was a little bit stained, which is why it looked weird, but there wasn't anything wrong with it. The dentist said that his gums were still a little irritated around one of his most recent molars, so that could have been causing the pain.

And, Mateo was a total rock star throughout the visit. He played happily with toys in the waiting room, as I explained to the receptionist that Mateo has two moms and hence I had crossed out the "father" part of the form to add another "mother". (This whole gay parenting thing seems to include coming out to people in the most random places.) He trotted happily back to the exam room and sat on the chair without a word of complaint. He got a bit discombobulated when they started reclining the chair, but was quickly distracted by the cool sunglasses he got to wear so the light wouldn't shine in his eyes. And, not only did he let them look in his mouth, but he sat patiently through the whole cleaning. The dentist and the hygenist said at the end that many two-year-olds won't even sit in the chair, so he did really, really well.

He was so excited about the whole thing that, after we got home, he spent the first 10 minutes "showing" baby Talia how to floss. Priceless.

Yay for healthy teeth!

Sleepy time changes

Home on the sleep front has been different, and is going well. About a week ago I went in to see that Natalia had rolled over and sat up in her co-sleeper. Clearly it was time to move into a different sleeping arrangement and so we set her up in the pack n' play. She is now sleeping in the front room in her pack n' play.

For the last few nights, sleep has been going fairly well. She goes down with nursing and then a bottle of 4 oz. I normally put her down awake, without the pacifier, and she gets herself to sleep in 5-10 minutes. Then, she sleeps till morning before she gets more milk. Some nights she is up a few times to get the pacifier inserted, but she seems to sleep much better if she falls asleep the first time without the pacifier.

Alayna and I are really enjoying getting more sleep and more rested. Hopefully with more nights she will actually start sleeping through the night without needing too many pacifier re-inserts! (Alayna says that she has hardly been needing the pacifier at all.) All I can say is that I am so excited that at eight months she is sleeping through the night. I think we all needed this. Knock on wood, knock on wood - says everyone!

Bye-bye student nanny

We just found out today that are student nanny has dropped out of nanny school. I actually feel somewhat sad about the whole situation, though I do think it is for the best. I just feel like our kids have made a connection with her and I hope that she comes by sometime to say goodbye to them. For the last few times she has been saying that she doesn't really want to be a nanny, so maybe nanny school doesn't make that much sense.

In other news, it's the weekend! I just spent part of the day observing at another school. It was so interesting to see how this other bilingual program worked. Really, all of my working in other teachers' classrooms and observing has been driving home a point to me: it's not the school that matters the most, it's the teacher. Unfortunately, you don't have that much control over what teacher your child gets, and so people all try to get into the "good schools" hoping that those schools have more "good teachers." I saw a few really amazing teachers at this school, and I saw some not so great teaching in quite a few classrooms too.

Another change for this year is that I have been thinking that in the future I would actually enjoy teaching younger kids. Before working in first, second and third grade classrooms I thought that I would never want to teach below third grade. Now I would be excited about the idea of teaching in a first grade classroom, or really any grade between first and fifth.

Looking at people

Natalia is obviously too young to be really communicating with words, but I found out yesterday and today that she does understand some things we say. I asked her to look at Mateo, and she looked at Mateo. I asked her to look at Mama, and she did that as well. She also looked at me when asked, and then back to Mateo, which I did just to see if it was a fluke!

Also, she consistently says a-dah when someone leaves the house. And sometimes she will hit her leg. Maybe waving will be her next skill to learn. Alayna says that she thinks she is waving, because she is flapping her arms.

This afternoon was much more peaceful than last afternoon and I feel nicely refreshed. I had a wonderful time with the kids, we took our first trip into the hot tub with just the three of us. It was a little bit challenging to think about how to do that safely, but with the floaty (for Mateo), and Natalia still not able to roll (key for getting her and Mateo out and keeping her out of the water), it was all quite successful. It was such a nice way to spend part of the afternoon. Yesterday it was snowing, today it was warm enough that we all headed outside to go in the hot tub.

I made a nice, easy dinner for everyone. A spinach salad with peas, broccoli and tempura chicken with orange sauce along with some garlic bread left over from last night. All in all, it was a successful day.

Tonight we are planning on watching The Biggest Looser, our latest obsession, and to do the Jillian workout video. We can't watch the TV program without at least working out too!

Adventure with a student nanny

I want to talk about life with a student nanny. For the past few months we have had a student nanny. Now mind you she was supposed to start in December and come once a week, every week, for 17 weeks. It is now March, and she has come 7 times. Do the math. Ah. Anyway, it started out with bad weather, snow storms, stomach flues ect.

Anyway, today was the day that our nanny was supposed to cook us dinner. It started by her calling to say that she would be 30 minutes late because her teacher had not given her back the meal plans. Now, she wasn't at school when she called, and it was a Monday, so she should have known ALL weekend that she didn't have her plans, but somehow she didn't notice till right before 11am on Monday.

Today we were going grocery shopping and she was supposed to do all of the meal prep and clean-up, while watching the kids. This is what happened. I had her get the kids ready to go grocery shopping all on her own. She did decently, but needed to be reminded that:

1. You should turn out the lights before leaving the house.
2. One should bring the diaper bag for an outing.
3. We normally put down the blinds.
4. You should take Mateo to the bathroom and make sure Natalia has on a clean diaper before leaving the house.
5. The buckles should not be twisted in the car seat.
6. You should always check to see if the seat and buckles are actually buckled in (thank god I checked - ahhh.)

Grocery shopping went quite well. During the shopping she said she was hungry. The "I am sooo hungry" look and stare at me type of look. So, I bought her a power bar. Whatever.

We got home a bit before 5, and the meal prep then started. I encouraged her to get going while Natalia was taking a nap, and it took her about 20 minutes to whip up the brownie mix. I am not honestly sure what took so long (add two eggs and butter and mix), but whatever.

The dinner was challenging. Things I taught or coached:

1. You do need to wash your hands after touching raw chicken.
2. If the spatula touched raw chicken, it should not touch the cooked pasta before it is washed again.
3. What does the word dice mean and how to cut, handle, cook and test for being cooked with chicken.
4. Use the kitchen timer. Did you put on the timer for the brownies - no. Did you put on the timer for the pasta - no. How long has it been going for - I don't know. How long is it supposed to cook for - I don't know. (3 minutes . . . opps)
5. When you should put the pasta in the water - ie after it boils
   
6. How to drain the pasta.
7. That you should not ignore Mateo if he is behaving well, but give him some positive feedback.
8. You can not spread refrigerated butter on cold bread - it must be warmed gently in the microwave.

And the list goes on, and on, and one. I actually feel like I could use a drink. . . and you know what, I have almost never said that, even with two kids.

What have I taken from all of this? Beyond being horrified at this poor girl's lack of life skills. We will be teaching our children how to cook! How to fold the laundry! How to help out around the house. Will we have another student nanny - well I just don't know.

The fam

My mom took this. We love it! Thanks, Mom!