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

One Year with Alaythia Esther

September 16, 2009 marks one delightful year with one delightful little girl.  Inspired by my friend Keisha, who regularly posts beautiful photo series, here is a little stroll through the past year.

We love you, our little Cutesos!

Love, mommy and daddy

Competition and Grace

Our sweet little girl.  Full of curls and sugar and spice and everything nice…

Turns out little miss A has inherited a good healthy sense of competition from her mother and her Auntie Misha.  Click below to see her with her friend Elijah (hint: keep your eye on the purple ring).

I didn’t happen to see this little interchange that Elijah’s mom snuck a great video of, but I did see Alaythia nicely try to include Elijah in her ball-throwing game (her FAVORITE thing to do), which he didn’t seem to quite know what to do with.  She threw her ball to him, waiting for him to send it back, but he mostly wanted to study it.  That’s what Elijah generally does when they play–studies all the toys, and graciously puts up with Alaythia not always being the perfect little lady.  Once Alaythia threw the ball but missed Elijah, and it rolled maybe five feet away from them.  They both took off crawling, neck and neck… Elijah had the advantage of being a month and a half older, and equally more experienced in crawling, and Alaythia, well, she’s just kind of quick and little and scrappy (like her Auntie Hilary .  So who won?  Well, I think based on the video above you can guess.  She won a little more fair and square this time, and I congratulated her–but then I wondered if I should have.  I definitely would not have condoned the purple ring-tease-stealing she had done earlier, but the ball race she seemed to have won fairly (and of course, quite happily… maybe it was the gloat of victory, in retrospect, that I should have not quite smiled upon).

I got to thinking about this business of being competitive while I ran for an hour in the drenching cold rain the other day–a truly exhilirating experience, I might add.  How do I encourage little A to “run in such a way as to get the prize” and also to “consider others as better than [herself]“?  How to let her experience the discipline and joy of athletics (which she seems very naturally gifted at for being 11 months old!  she can already throw and catch better than I can, and swim better than Kabyn can…), while still teaching her to be kind and serve others?  Feel free to leave a comment if you have a thought on that one. 

As I kept thinking about competition, I couldn’t help but think of her Auntie M, my sister Michelle… our growing up days were often defined by competition.  Two sisters, very close in age, size, ability, everything… yep, as any such siblings would be, we were competitive.  VERY competitive.  I had of course the slight advantage for a while there of being older, but in time, she caught up and surpassed me… she became a much better swimmer (I never hit the national rankings as she did in college), she got more majors in college and definitely got better grades, she lives in a cooler place, has a cooler job, is thinner, and has more cats than I do.  But in the process of her starting to “beat me” at everything, I did find it was humbling.  Over the years, God has been gracious to make me simply excited for her successes and accomplishments, rather than feeling like I need to out-do her.  Not that I’m totally there yet, I’m sure there will be a whole new wave of weird mommy-competitions (yes, moms, we all do it… we all hate it and yet we can’t stop…) once she and Andrew pump out a kid or two, but it has changed some. 

Growing up, The Smith Girls SWAM.  That’s about all we did.  Swim and swim and swim, in every body of water and pool and puddle we ran into.  And we competed.  When we were younger, we made up synchronized swimming routes and judged each other.  When we got older, we swam in a club team, high school team, and nearby college teams, and often raced against each other–which unless I’m mistaken, she may have beaten me in EVERY official head-to-head race we ever swam.  I somehow thought last summer, as I was 36 weeks pregnant but she hadn’t swam in a long time, that I could “beat” her at swimming around Priest Lake, but I was definitely mistaken… I threw up in the lake when I tried to keep up with her.      But all in all, we have had a lot of fun swimming together over the years.  Swimming is one thing that’s hard to do very regularly in “real” grown-up life, which is too bad.  It’s hard for her to do it Tanzania, and hard for me to do it with a baby and the difficult to get to and fairly expensive Seattle pools.  Someday.  Michelle and I always said we’d find two friends and set a 90-95 year old women relay world record together, so we’ve got lots of time to get back into it.

Alaythia and Kabyn Watching Football

As promised… (click to watch)

And a little bonus, in honor of Kabyn’s stepbrother Austen and his now-fiancee Sherry, as of this weekend (they gave her the bear you will see featured in the clip).  Congrats, Austen and Sherry!

The Sleep Update, Day 2

Night 2:  Alaythia went down around 7pm with minimal fuss.  No re-visiting required.  I decided not to pump before bed ~10pm, as I assumed she’d wake up to eat within the next few hours.  I assumed wrong.  Fortunately, I woke up at 1.30am and pumped, then tried for a while to go back to sleep–sleep-training me is more work than her!  At 7am, we all woke up, her singing happily in her crib, and me feeling more human than I have in… ummm…. a year and a half! 

Tonight, she went down around 7pm, and by the time I got upstairs to turn on the monitor, was down with any bedtime pouting and was sound asleep.  Amazing!!  Hopefully another 12 hour night…! 

Don’t have the video of her watching football uploaded yet, soon….

Alaythia Crawls, and Spends Her First Night in Her Crib

We have a number of big milestones around here lately.

Alaythia is now officially crawling.  She had been working on it, working on it, thinking about it, for several months. For a while there she just bounced and scooted (see the below video for an example).

Then, on Friday morning, July 24, 2009 in Olympia, under the watchful and encouraging eyes of grandparents, Alaythia took the plunge.  One knee… then another… and she was off!  She was quite exhilirated at first by her new skills–though she had to be encouraged by balls (her favorite toys) being tossed to chase, and they had to be at that far-but-not-too-far distance.  By then end of that Friday, however, when Kindra and Elijah came over, she was busily chasing Elijah (a much more confident crawler) around our living room–which likewise exhilirated her.  She had never explored at our house before, and because we had been in Olympia, she didn’t have a chance to explore before Elijah came over.  So, he did the exploring, and she chased him from exciting finding to exciting finding.  I captured a little bit of it here, though by the time I thought of filming it had calmed a little bit. 

She also came up with her first two little bottom teeth recently.  Thankfully for me, she doesn’t bite when she should not be biting.

Last but in NO WAY least, Alaythia spent her whole night in her crib last night!!!  Here you wondered what sort of weird freakish hippies slept with their kids, and now you know.  The Vikesland sort.  It’s a Viking thing, you know… it’s so cold in those Viking lands and they just live in tents, so everyone sleeps in one bed to keep warm….

The night went better than we had expected.  I had studied up–again, yes we did do this before, and though babe adjusted we had some milk supply and other issues–all the sleep books, and knew to be braced for some crying.  And let me tell those of you who have never had a baby, or are so lucky as to have had those sedate sleep-through-the-night-from birth babies, crying in the middle of the night is LOUD.  And you are incapable of making decisions.  Or remembering any kind of plan. 

We decided on the Ferber plan, which oddly enough is sort of the famous original Cry It Out plan, but is actually nice and gradual and reasonable–while being effective, or so many people had said.  We had decided to take one step at a time, so the last few weeks we had been putting her to bed in her own bed, a little earlier each night, and checking and consoling at intervals (you have to read his book to get the plan, but pretty much you go about every 5 then 10 then 15 minutes the first night, 10-15-20 the second night, as so on.  Actually anything that has increasing intervals is fine, he says). 

Let’s just say bedtime was not a hit.  She’d go to sleep, and if we were lucky and timed it right, it was about 15 minutes till sleep.  If we weren’t lucky, it was like an hour.  So not fun.  Sleeptraining going well is like labor going well–it’s misery regardless, at least for the mom. 

So back to First Night in Crib night.  We actually moved our beds downstairs just so we could do this, so the rooms would be sort of close but not too close.  Close enough to hear a real nighttime crisis, but not so close as to hear every little moan and groan and baby mumbling in the night. 

So after she got to sleep, which went well and was by 7.30 or so, she then woke up SCREAMING at 8.45, which is odd…. I went down after giving some time to make sure it was a for real wakeup, and it turns out she had a giant poo.   cGIANT.  This is what comes of eating as much spaghetti for dinner as we ate….  I nursed her, calmed her, put her back into bed, though then she was exhausted and out of sorts and hadn’t wanted to wake up, so she screamed and screamed out of sheer half-asleep half-awake tired grumpiness, and finally got back to sleep.  Then at 10.30 woke again, nursed her, then we went in every few minutes to calm and soothe, me, then Kabyn, then me.  My second time in I just held her and swayed for a while, trying to get her all sleepy though not to sleep, as then she’d just wake up as she landed in the crib again, and the whole drama would start over.  As I held her and swayed I thought, “this is never going to work.  this is going to be a terrible night at this rate.  i’m so tired.  we may have to give up.  she can’t do this.  i can’t do this.”  I finally put her back in her bed, and after a few minutes, silence.  I figured she must still be crying, but I turned on the monitor briefly, and sure enough, asleep!  Whew.  I was too stressed to go to sleep, but finally did around midnight.  And woke up at 7:17am, hearing some happy morning baby singing.  Kabyn woke up too.  “LOOK AT THE CLOCK!!”  I said.  “She did!!!  WE did it!”  I went in to get her, and she was happy and smiling and rested and calm.  We played for a while, she calmly and happily ate a huge breakfast and played for a while, then around 9am went down for a nap.  A nice, long, happy nap.  Then off to church, where she played with some other babies and little kids quite happily, then another good long nap–the longest nap total she’s had in one day in a while.  She’s been happy and silly and sweet all day. 

And what is she doing right now?  Think about it, folks… Sunday afternoon, August… what would Kabyn be doing right now?  What does Kabyn love to do on a Sunday afternoon?  (no, not sleeping.  he already took his Sunday nap).  Pre-season football!!!  Alaythia, as she did last year, LOVES watching football.  She has no attention span for Baby Einstein videos, but she cannot hardly look away from football.  She stares and makes happy noises, and occasionally claps.  Stay posted–video of this coming next post.  And hopefully, more success in the sleeping department.

Heat in Seattle

What is this strange stuff… the stuff the rest of the country knows about?  We moan and groan about the rain all year, then we get some honest sun and heat and we moan and groan incessantly.  Maybe we just like to moan and groan here.

I’m not moaning and groaning much, however–I’m getting an unexpected little break from work (most of which is done on something called HEAT, html editing and authoring tool) this week.  So I’ve been jogging, cleaning, playing with the baby, hosting mommies and babies, and even cooking dinner. 

It’s good to be reminded how much I love getting out and running… it’s been a long, slow road back post-partum, between a lot of back troubles, a PhD to finish, wanting the baby to have good napping (not stroller-cat-napping that ruins a good nap in the crib, which ruins mom’s precious few hours to work), and those good old days of the madness of trying to sell a house and having to be prepared to tidy and race out on a moment’s notice.  My friend Annie’s blog posts (we swam together in college) have been inspiring, as well as Jason and Elisabeth’s  recent decision to be IN TRAINING.  So the babe and I have been heading out every other day, in our wonderful $25 dollar stroller we got at a garage sale that I would have paid 10x that for.  If I leave the house by 8am she can generally stay awake, though I can occasionally be seen swinging the stroller back and forth and singing at the top of my lungs as I go, while occasionally dumping a little cold water on her.  It does the job.  The roads up East of us, Greenwood/North Greenlake/Phinney Ridge area are nice for running, even some good non-paved edge of road to cushion my aging knees.  Alaythia gets pretty excited when we see people out walking their dogs, which also helps to keep her awake.  I tell her to savor those doggie-encounter-moments as she will never have a doggie.

People have also been asking us what Kabyn is up to, what our house is up to… Kabyn is working with our dear friends Calvin and Dorothy Echodu for Pilgrim.  I’m not sure what could be more of a work culture shock than from going from a lifeless grey cubicle to an African NGO.  Needless to say, he is ever so glad not to be in said lifeless grey box, which is making him much more fun to be around.

As for the house… ah, the house.  Let’s just say it’s nice and cool in the basement, and we have all the room we need and then a bunch more.  So, it’s nice.  We can’t really afford to keep it.  And we are sick of maintaining it.  So it failed in its first market attempt, but it’s headed on again soon, in  hopes of snagging those first time homebuyers who want to get their discount while it still exists.  They can have our big, sunny four bedroom house on a lot with a big lovely yard, cheerful creek, with plenty of storage, daylight, and charm.  We want a nice small apartment somewhere for a while.  We’ve only just recently gone from needing one bedroom to two, so four is really not necessary at present.

Yes, the babeso is going to her own little bed at bedtime now.  That’s our Change of the Week.  I’m all about the one-change-at-a-time thing, which is going pretty well.  We pick one change, then stick with it for a while, once it’s going well for a bit, add another.

Speaking of, the Babeso, as we call her more often than most anything else (pronounced BABE-zo), is doing well.  Currently she is sleeping very soundly after utterly wearing herself out at swim lessons.  Today and also Sunday, at Greenlake, she was almost giddy with joy of splashing and paddling around (with me helping her support her weight).  She doesn’t mind taking a quick dunk under, as we’re learning in our swim lessons, and she stays incredibly happy for about 25 minutes—after which she’s exhausted and hungry.  She was so tired today after lessons that, at lunch in her high chair after, she threw her piece of chicken down onto the tray and burst into tears.  Real, streaming tears. 

If it wasn’t so sad looking I would have laughed pretty hard, so I only laughed a teeny bit.  If she’s less tired, one of her favorite foods is chicken–at a BBQ in Olympia recenly, she held tightly onto a 1″x2″ piece of moist, yummy chicken BBQed up by my dad (not the edge, the soft inside), and patiently worked on it for about half an hour, at which point she had eaten the entire thing.  For all you food worriers, don’t worry, she has no teeth and thus can’t really bite any huge chunks off, and I was watching her closely.

Speaking of food, she likes it pretty well.  She’s not a huge eater, but she’s slowly learning to enjoy more.  She loves to carefully pick up each piece with her fingers, and knows to only eat one bite at a time.  She likes cooked ;peas, little pieces of peach, strawberry, or blackberry; she’ll eat pasta, especially with flavorful sauces, with great delight; and she is in every way a carnivore: beef, chicken, pork, and even vegan or turkey sausages.  She’s a classy eater–no bland baby food for her–and likes things well cooked and well seasoned.  She seems to be pretty willing to eat most fruits and vegetables, if not at first, then eventually.  And if all else fails, Cheerios and baby crackers are rarely turned away.  No matter what, she loves drinking water, which is good in the heat.

Bring Keane Home

If you have a moment, here is a beautiful story.  It’s well-written and captures your heart, and you have the opportunity to be a part of their story going from tragic to joyful.  I heard about them through another friend, but don’t know them otherwise.

Oh Mr. Bennet, Three Married Daughters!

And indeed it is.  Michelle got wedded this past weekend, to Mr. Andrew Sandeen (is he the most like Mr. Darcy?  He may be too sweet to be immediately thought of as Mr. Darcy… though his little sister’s touching toast revealed he is much Mr. Darcy indeed).  Mr. and Mrs. Bennet pulled off another grand wedding in Olympiatown.  Lots of great food, and Michelle was the most relaxed bride anyone had ever seen in their life–either because my mom had all details taken care of beautifully, or because when you live without power at unknown intervals you learn to just go with the flow.

In celebration of the event, Alaythia Esther almost crawled.  Tonight she put one knee in front of the other… twice.  So we think that is the first crawl, though it’s hard to know on that one.  You look away for a moment and she’s gone five feet, but doesn’t exactly crawl yet. 

We got Thai food tonight, and after they set a plate in front of me, she sweetly turned to the waitress and said a quick and clear “tang u”, which we were both shocked by, and seemed to be nothing other than her toothless version of Thank You.  The waitresses at Mr. and Mrs. Wok love her, and this in no way lowered her from the status of Baby Guest Who Can Make As Much Mess As She Wants.  Which of course she took full advantage of as she ate sweet basil chicken pieces and spicy beef and broccoli bits.  No bland food for that kid.

I haven’t updated this in ages, so I’ll let that be the news from Lake Wobegon (i.e. Piper’s Creek, yes, we still own our little piece of the creek), where the woman is strong but getting weaker every day, the man is good looking and always getting better looking, and the child is above average in talking and pincer grasp, though not most other areas, unless you talk to her doting grandmothers who claim she is in all ways superior to every other child to ever walk–er, sit on–the Earth.

A closing picture… all I have from wedding season for now is this shot of her with her new cousin-in-law, or something like that, Zeb.  This is moments before she sweetly and adorably reached out and knocked him flat over.  Poor kid is a third child who took it all in stride.  Yet again, she proves her knack for looking at the camera.