snoozin'

From g's fourth month

whazzzup!?

From g's fourth month

what's new in G-town--TOYS.

As G gets more and more alert he craves interaction more and more. HIs face lights up and he kicks his feet in delight when someone bends over to talk to him. He smiles and coos and tries his hardest to have a conversation with you. He's also interested in toys. Our friends Amy and Kris sent him a red bag with dinosaurs on it and we have all of G's toys and a couple of books in it. When he's looking playful we'll pull out the toys and hold them up for him. Over the last 5 days or so he's gotten to the point where he will grab onto them. One of his favorites is a bee/butterfly toy. He grabbed it once and promptly smacked himself in the head with it (the hand-eye coordination isn't quite there yet). Anyway, here are a couple of pictures of G with two other favorites--the rings and a very soft frog (from my mom's lovely friend, Iris). He's sporting one of his favorite onesies from Aunt Jenn, Uncle Vance and cousin Lucy.

Oh, and G wanted to say happy birthday to Tom. And a belated happy birthday to Unkie Vance!

this just in: dirty baby takes bath!

Last Friday we had the pleasure of finding a flooded utility room. Ick. We had been planning to replace the aging water heater for a while, and just hadn't gotten around to making the call to have it done yet. The water heater forced our hand. Anyway, we got a tankless "on demand" water heater, which we did for two reasons, the freed up space in the utility room and the energy efficiency. When your house is 900 square feet reclaiming roughly 42 square feet is a pretty big coup, so we were willing to shell out the extra dough it cost to go tankless. 5 x 5 storage places in seattle cost at least $40 a month, so...The bad thing about the water heater going on Friday was that we couldn't have it install next-day. It ended up being a multi-day affair to install the thing (pipes were moved, etc.) so we were without hot water until Wednesday night. Thankfully we have the electric kettle to boil water, because that's how I had to do all of our bottles and dishes. Because of some funky plumbing in the utility room, we were also without a clothes washer, so we were really roughing it. The new water heater is great, and we have a digital thermostat, so we'll never get scalded. Why do the Brits use these hot water heaters almost exclusively and we use those stupid dinosaurs that take up so much space and waste so much electricity?

Needless to say, we were all ready for bathing after the water heater was installed, G included. In honor of the new water heater we got G a REAL tub. Until now we'd been using a foam thing for sponge baths, and doing it on the kitchen counter. We decided he was ready for a big-kid bath. The one we got him is cool and folds up for storage (again, ideal for our tiny house, I will probably store it in my 42 sq feet of space in the utility room). At first when I put him in he was a little bit freaked out, but in about ten seconds he quieted down and seemed to enjoy himself. He definitely liked it better than the plain old sponge bath. After the bath I rubbed him in olive oil (that's what our doc recommended we use for moisturizing, because it's so safe) and he was just so tickled with himself. It reminded Amos of how Miles Davis is after a bath--really excited and happy.

Oh, and congrats to Amos' former colleague and our friend, Amy, & her hubby Kris who welcomed their new daughter Eloise at 1 pm today.

Mommy, does it always hurt this bad when ILL loses?

what obama means to me.

Sitting tonight and watching Obama accept the democratic party's nomination for president was quite emotional for me. It wasn't just the speech or the setting or any of that, but it was the fact that I was watching it with G. You see, many of you may not know this, but Barack Obama is directly responsible for G.

Yep, that's right.

You see, when Amos and I got married it was June of 2001 and dubya was already in office, then 9/11, then the war, etc. By the time we'd have wanted to have a kid my outlook for the future of this country and the larger world was dim. Why would I want to subject a kid to a world like we've had the past eight years, is what I thought.

My parents were always amazingly generous to me. Not just with stuff, but with time and love. I've often asked how I would ever repay them for all of the good they've done for me, their reply was always, "just do the same for your child." You have no idea what a huge burden that is for me...I mean they've been such good parents and given me such a great life, and I wondered how I could ever do the same in this world as it is.

That's where Barack comes in. You see, I had no HOPE for this country's future. People ridicule Obama for using that word so much, but they are foolish. Hope is a powerful thing. Barack restored my hope. He restored it and paved the way for me to see the possibility of a world in which I'd want a child to grow up. MIchelle Obama spoke of how she had heard Barack talk about "the world as his should be" and striving for it. It's not that I think that Barack himself will make the world as it should be, but that he has given me the hope that we, TOGETHER, want to remake the world as it should be--the hope that we CAN and the BELIEF that we will.

So, without Obama, there might not be a G. And without G there wouldn't be the urgency I feel. Tonight we inched one step closer to the world as it should be. We are the ones we've been waiting for!

Si se puede. (if you liked what I wrote, go donate a few bucks to the campaign. I just did--again. Oh, and that's Sheppard Fairey's Hope poster.)

I wear my sunglasses...in my car seat.

here's the little dude in his sunglasses. we bought them before he was born, but his head is just now big enough for them. He didn't seem to mind them too much. sunglasses and footie pjs, what a combo.