Toddler Life

Sleeplessness seems to be some of my regular fare in life, which appears to be something I got from my dear mother, and perhaps caught somehow from my dear friend Dorothy as well.  Mom and Dorothy are both incredibly productive, wise women, so if that’s what sleeplessness gets you in life, maybe I need more of it.  There is something nice and quiet and alone about being up late by oneself, or getting up early (less my cup of tea… or shall I say less my three cups of coffee…).

Though am I alone if I’m blogging, hard to say.  Back in the day, back before blogging took over the world, I wrote in a journal.  With paper and pen and everything.  Now I think, like many of you, I have forgotten how to write anything more than maybe a grocery list with my own hand… thankfully, I’m finding that life with a toddler is all about learning what you thought you already knew.  Like how to write.  We’re practicing real live writing or letters a little bit these days.

Speaking of life with a toddler, it’s amazing.  We love it.  Alaythia could not be more adorable or energetic or sweet and curious and constantly learning something new.  Okay, occasionally it would be nice if the energy dipped, but that wouldn’t be a proper toddlerhood.  She runs all over the house, exploring every bit, usually stopping to 1) sit in her room and read a stack of books, 2) check on her shoes (“shoes, shoes” she loves to say, and even more, loves to grab and hand to you with a clear request to put them on, or an attempt to put them on herself.  she’s a girly girl…), 3) throw or kick a ball around, while somewhat a girly girl, she can throw and kick a ball better than i can, which is saying little, but i’m only getting worse and she’s quickly improving, 4) say “teeth, teeth” and point to them and walk to the bathroom, which means she wants to brush her teeth, which I’m delighted she loves to do, almost as much as she loves giving you a rundown of the names of all the parts of her face.  we’re having to teach her it’s not okay to point out other people’s eyes by pointing her finger dangerously close to said eyes, 5) point and say “doggy! doggy!” out the window.  When you live by a park one can pretty much watch dogs go by all day long, as she loves to do.  We get a lot of “doggy!” updates.  Her favorite things to say are generally either “Daddy” or “doggy”, which can on occasion be a teeny bit confusing, I’ll admit.  She recently went through a phase where anything she liked was referred to as “Daddy”, despite knowing—and addressing—Kabyn as daddy since she was eight months old.  She has a great sense of humor, and it seemed she was doing it as a joke—she thought it was uproriously funny to point to herself and say “Daddy!” and then we would correct her I think it was just part of the game to her.

Finding the line between endless fun and games (her way of living) and the need for learning discipline in order to function in the world is a tricky thing that we spend much time and thought and prayer on these days.  I’ve learned to be very careful in how I say things—if I’m giving a command, I need to be expect her to follow it.  If I’m giving a suggestion, I can’t phrase it as I would a command, or it’s fair to expect her to be confused, or to not know when she is expected to do something and when she is not.  I’m also learning that after we have worked on her learning something, for example, to understand “go in the kitchen” or “come here” or “get your shoes” (which I have found, is ALWAYS before I think she’s learned something… I actually rarely have to actually “teach” her things she is used to hearing… definitely a wake-up call to be aware of what I’m saying and doing!!), I need to be consistent in my expectations.  i.e. if I ask her to do something, I’m not being consistent if I then ask her three more times.  Then she just learns that after I ask her to do something three times, she must do it.  So I’m learning to make sure she understands a request, and then to be consistent.  These are not my strong suits, so it’s been an even better discipline for me to learn consistency and clarity, not to mention just some simplicity and consistency of verbage (can you tell I don’t tend towards brief??  at least not at this hour, apparently.)  So we’re definitely all learning a lot around here. 

Overall the little one is doing marvelously.  We have some whiny moments, where she wants something but either doesn’t know how to ask for something, or is just feeling too whiny to ask with words/signs (or at minimum, throw a please sign in there somewhere), but we’re learning how to help her communicate and be patient.  Which requires infinitely more patience from us than it does from her, which probably teaches her a lot more patience than anything we could tell her.  Not that we always get this, but, we’re trying.

Our new schedule has allowed lots of fun times for outings.  We take walks, and got a zoo membership which we plan to use as much as possible.  Alaythia loves to walk around the neighborhood, especially when the neighborhood cats pop out (they seem to love her as much as she loves them).  We have some dogs in the neighborhood, which she likes to look at but seems to have a keen appreciation for the fence that lies between her and them.  She stays on the sidewalk, and likes to point out and name all the things she recognizes as we go.  She sometimes waves at passerbys, unless they are walking straight towards her, in which case she gives them a dark look and refuses to continue walking forward until they’ve passed her. 

I think that’s about it for tonight.  I’ll update more on our lives another day, I’ve no energy for it at present.  Enjoy this picture of little one on a walk.

Scientists, Part II

Like many scientists have done, I also have to publish a retraction.  The fallibility part…

For anyone who saw yesterday’s version of my Scientists post, I would like to point out that my reference to what Kabyn had said was out of context.  He was speaking (of scientists as magicians) from a particular philosophical perspective.

Scientists

I’ve been meaning for a while now to have a few posts on science… I don’t know how many I’ll have quickly flowing ideas for, so we’ll just keep it at “a few”. 

I know a lot of scientists personally, and have met many more.  Scientists have a few delightful things in common. 

1) They’re curious.  Scientists are scientists because they just keep asking questions.  We want to understand the world, and we actually think we have a shot at grasping just the tiniest bit of it.  This could lead to a small trend of scientists towards arrogance, but, scientists are more aware than anyone else of how little they know.  We’re obsessed with long hours of collecting and analyzing data because we know just how much more data could be obtained, and just how little of a grasp on things we have.  Which leads me to:

2) Scientists appreciate how complex the world is.  Once you’ve attempted to even get a handle on one tiny question that pertains to one tiny topic in the world, you get how difficult it is, and how many more questions can come from your own question.  That weird media image of a scientist explaining and understanding everything is just not accurate–the better the scientist, the more questions they realize are waiting to be answered. 

3) Scientists know that other scientists make mistakes.  Again, that media-scientist image of the all-knowing person in a lab coat is just not accurate.  Generally, scientists seem to take a bit of pleasure in finding the mistakes of other scientists–it even has a fancy name, “peer review”.  You begin the preparation for “peer review” when you get torn apart by professorial committees during graduate school, but it’s difficult to explain the level of intensity and debate scientists can achieve over topics of little general interest, full of equations and words that very few people could ever understand.  The level of thrill a scientists achieves over proving another scientist wrong is also hard to explain.  But it’s really just the process of science: one idea stands till more data and another idea comes along.  And on and on the scientific method goes… we get more information, but it is a rare piece of Science that sticks around very long, which is what breeds that certain kind of scientific skepticism.  It’s that awareness that most ideas get proven wrong that makes you a little hesitant to belief everything you read or hear.

4) Scientists are people.  This should go without saying, but Science seems to get de-humanized into some sort of weird force from a futuristic movie.  Scientists are people.  Pretty weird and awkward people, for the most part… unintimidating, plain, simply dressed… rarely in the latest styles of anything.  The stereotype of the scientist wardrobe holds true, and the better the scientist, the less they can be bothered with thinking about things like what outfit to wear that day.  Perhaps one’s level of fashion is a measure of how much their brain is thinking about ideas that will long outlast their outfit choices?  That’s a side thought, sorry… at any rate, scientists are human, they make mistakes, and each scientist’s perspective is a little bit different because each scientist is a unique person.  Each has a unique way of seeing the world, and a unique contribution to make to our body of scientific knowledge. 

In summary:  Scientists embody human curiosity, fallibility, and uniqueness, and the awareness that the world is much, much greater than what we can comprehend.

Walking!

In honor of Grandma Bibi Smith and Sarahbear (Sarah White)’s birthdays…  She did take a few very hesitant steps a few weeks ago, but today she walked ON PURPOSE, by herself, several times.  And amazingly, we managed to capture it for you!

(click below)

Your Photo Christmas Card from the Vikeslands

Merry Christmas!

Me and My Baby

Getting ready to head out in the cold cold weather we’ve been having:

After a trip out in the cold… brrrr….

She really actually for reals is looking at a real live snow leopard, at the Woodland Park Zoo.  Sorry no pic of said leopard.

Here, we are, thinking hard… how did a snow leopard get to Greenlake?

Non-zero derivatives wrt t

Thursdays and Friday mornings tend to be my work-free or light-work time, so today, it’s blog-writing time.  Why not.

Today I’m pondering time.  Time has always fascinated me–everything we know shows evidence of time passing: plants grow, babies are born, people die, cars wear out, information gets outdated, bodies wear out, the Universe spreads out, the Sun burns off mass, and my cookies are currently getting more and more done in the oven.  My cute little girl is growing right this second, as she naps.  Nothing is static in time, or if you will, has a non-zero derivative with respect to time.

So what do we do with our time?  I’ve become more and more aware of this lately, as I am paid by the hour and have to keep very careful track of time–both for the sake of honest reporting, and because I simply cannot afford to let too many minutes waste away in a day. 

But an interesting thing has happened as I’ve been keeping track of all my minutes.  Much like when someone dieting keeps track of everything they eat for a while, or people on a tight budget keep track of every penny, you start to notice things, and it seems simply by being more conscientious, you spend better.  For example, I realized from the patterns on my work timesheet that I consistently do not do any work between about 3 and 7pm–post afternoon nap and pre-baby-bedtime.  Four hours, every day, is actually a long time–20 hours of the workweek.  For a while I didn’t even notice where that time went, and 20 hours a week is a lot of time.  What on earth was I doing with it?  Even just thinking about those four hours has been helpful for me, and if anyone out there is having “time budgeting issues”, I highly recommend keeping track of your time for a while.  I daresay you, like me, might suddenly realize you are spending more time on Facebook than listening to your husband (or roommate, coworker, or child) talk about his/her day. 

Speaking of husbands (or whoever you live with and are close to), I needed to re-budget time for mine.  Pretty much every night since around when Alaythia was born we watch 21 minutes of comedy online before bed (an episode of The Office, The Simpsons, 30 Rock, Community, Parks and Recreation, or the funniest show of all time, Arrested Development), and then a quick read of part of the Bible.  Because I work in the evenings and Kabyn works on his classes, we, and especially I, need a little mental wind-down space to cut the intensity of thought so we can sleep.  Any of you students can probably understand this.  But in my head, that 21 minutes of laughing together seemed to be enough time together, plus all the little interactions with-baby over dinner, before her bedtime, whatever.  Friday evenings we usually spent time just relaxing together post-baby-bedtime, but we didn’t put much energy into actually talking.

So as you can see, my time budgeting had left no focused husband-time, which a week or two ago, we decided to change.  We’ve been doing a bit better at talking each evening, and then making sure we do take time, actual time, each week to talk and catch up.  And it’s been nice!

My other time budgeting decision has been to spend at least two focused hours a day with Alaythia, and she is up now, so I must go.  WordPress (or some future version) will be here in 20 years, but my little girl will no longer be little.

I know I chatter on far too much… but if you only knew how many things I want to say and don’t!

Oh, dear Anne.  I had yet another moment last night of realizing why Anne of Green Gables is the icon of life, love, girlhood, womanhood, and pretty much of everything of any significance. 

I realized last night that I had held two ideals during my growing up years–ideals for my future life.  One was the ideal of the wildly successful doctor, or lawyer, or professor, or just something very clever, maybe famous, and likely scientific.  Maybe some fortune tossed in for good measure.

The other ideal was the Cheaper By the Dozen family, tons of kids sitting around the dinner table, getting into all sorts of interesting situations, all of the kids good friends and busy learning all kinds of things.  Me busy teaching them about plants and bugs and numbers and baking lots of cookies for them and lots of their friends.

But everyone grows up–Anne and I both had to grow up.  All Anne’s ideals of being a dramatic poet and marrying a dashingly handsome man who spoke often in dramatic poetry came crashing down when she hit the real world.  Her dramatic poetry was only good for baking powder contests.  Her dashingly handsome men, like most dashingly handsome men, proved to be nothing one could call ideal. 

And so, I find myself looking to have neither a brilliant, impressive career of fame and fortune, nor the huge, boisterous family.  Or do I have both?  I’ve got a simple career that is usually interesting, at times meaningful, and pays money, and a little family with the most adorable little girl ever to be seen. 

Will I ever have either of my ideals?  Probably not.  That made me sad when I thought about it last night; I had to mourn the loss of both of the childhood ideals. 

But then I thought about Anne, and I realized–our grown up lives rarely end up like our childhood ideals, but… that’s okay.  God knows what we need, and maybe it’s not the same as what we thought we needed.  When we’re children dreaming up childhood ideals, we don’t really get how the world works, that it’s not as tidy and romantic as a book full of romantic poetry.  

And which would you rather have—the “ideal”, dashing, romantic hero… or Gilbert?

I thought so.

Pumpkin Patch Trip

The photos pretty much tell the story, and I didn’t even have to take them myself.  Click here to see all about our trip to the pumpkin patch with the Haggard family.

Many Thanks to Many Folks

The house is, at long and wearisome last, sold.  As of yesterday we are happily and gratefully renters of a cute, cozy apartment literally overlooking Greenlake.  It would not be proper to say anything more about our lives without a few notes of thanksgiving.

Firstly, it must be acknowledged that God has faithfully and graciously answered our prayers.  I’m not sure if many hours have gone by in the last year that Kabyn did not pray for the house to sell.  It was a lovely house, with many charming, beautiful features, but it was just not the right place for us—too big, too much, and when it comes down to it, we’re just not cut out to be homeowners, at least not at this point in our lives.   Not only were our prayers answered by the house selling, but our prayers are answered by the wonderful little apartment we are currently living in.

Some other key thank you’s that are by no means a complete list, but rather a smattering of figures I can remember in my tired state:

~Marc and Mae Fulmer: you know how much you worked on that house, year after year the last three years.  Even if we don’t live there any longer, we appreciate how much love and time and effort you put into it to make it a good place to live, and a place we can feel good about passing along to someone else.  And during the big key hand-off, the buying agent said a number of nice things about the house—namely the beautiful wood framed porch, built by Marc, and she specifically pointed out the nice flowers Mae recently spent a day putting in.

~Greg and Madelaine (Dad and Mom) Smith: we spent many days of crazy houselooking time camped out in your house like wandering teenagers, lying around waiting for the phone to ring, dumping our junk all over your living room, lounging on your couches in our pajamas, eating all your vegan food, and rarely even doing a dish.  It was great.  Thanks for letting us just take a break after frantically getting our house eerily clean and depersonalized.  The agent also commented on “good staging”, which was Mom’s masterpiece in a crazy day of furniture moving and cleaning and arranging less than 24 hours before it went back on the market, and today our new apartment is perfectly organized thanks to Mom’s ability to turn a somewhat-unpacked somewhat-home-feeling apartment into a beautiful arranged, peaceful home, complete with more drawer organizers than I even knew existed.

~Jason, Elisabeth, and Ian Haggard:  I can’t even begin to count the number of hours Alaythia and I have spent camped out at your house in the last 6 months.  It all started as “we might drop by on occasion while someone looked at the house”, to spending the better part of a day there 1, 2, or even 3 times a week.  It has been such a blessing to have a little “home away from home” that always feels welcoming.  Not only have you given us a place to land, I generally get fed a fantastic lunch, Alaythia has a blast playing with Ian (or in earlier months, took many a wonderful nap right in your bed, which I suspect is still her favorite bed on the planet), and we just get to unwind and enjoy time with you guys.  Not once did I get the feeling we were overstaying our welcome and it would be great if we could invade someone else’s space for a change, though I’m sure you must have felt that way sometimes, given the excessive amount of time, often unpredictable or much longer than planned, we spent in your home.  Thanks for taking hospitality to the next level and letting us into your lives.  And home.  And don’t worry, we won’t tell people about the whole not flushing, no matter what, when Ian is sleeping thing…

~Liam McPherson and Jon Stanley:  thanks for the invaluable and timely help on the house on more than one occasion.  We are VERY grateful.  Make that VERY VERY. 

~All the people that ever came to one of our “work on the house parties” that were more work than party.  There are embarrassingly too many people here to mention, and they started before I even came on the scene.

~All the people who prayed for our house to sell: you and God know who are you, and we are very grateful.

~Ted Dietz with Windermere, Rob Luecke with ShopProp, and Kelly Hopper with Century 21: all great agents, many thanks to each of you for playing a role in the sale process.

~Little sweet Alaythia Esther:  for months she patiently and happily let me drag her to and from the UW for long days of grad school lab work, and as soon as that stopped she patiently went with me from place to place to get the house fixed up, and to stay at many other homes while our house was being shown.  She has let me drag her in one arm while cleaning with the other arm for more hours than I can count, and has been entertained by singing and narrating and trying to make interesting the description of what I’m doing when I’m doing work on the house that I can’t hold her during.  She started this patient endurance while I was pregnant, during which I did a few things I shouldn’t mention lest you be shocked, like hanging out happily while I painted the South side of the house at 36 weeks pregnant with one of those giant extension-roller things.  Note: to Kabyn’s credit he NEVER insisted I do this, but Alaythia and I felt we had the energy… 

~Hilary and KC Dameron: among others who let us camp in their house, you let us enjoy many wonderful, peaceful times of rest is your apartment—including the key day in which The Buyer toured our house (twice).  Hilary–your help with Alaythia on numerous occasions over the past year, and your desire to see us have some time of rest and calm as you take care of us, has been such a wonderful blessing. 

~All the others who let Alaythia and I drop by your homes, or who have come to help me get enough work done these past months despite the house interruption: Shirley, Sarah, Kindra and Elijah, Susannah and Sam, Dorothy and Ellie, I know there are others but we literally have been at so many homes I cannot recall them all in my current tired state

I’ll stop here, as my dear child who looks so much like her father is showing signs of being much like her mother… after a little “evening nap” on yet another day of house/moving/settling schedule weirdness, awoke singing and playing and ready to party, as her poor tired parents were just thinking of going to bed and watching a movie.  Why watch a movie when we could just watch her… and so we shall.

Blessings,

The Vikeslands