Happy Halloween!

I know it is a little late, but it is not yet Thanksgiving. And we have some really cute Halloween pictures to share. I finished Julia's ladybug costume the night before (thank goodness for Liquid Stitch!) and she was just adorable in it. She was a little frightened at daycare because everyone was dressed up. So she didn't know what to make of the dragonfly, bumblebee, and little cow that were running around. The costume didn't last all day (the stick on velcro didn't stick too well) and we had to use some safety pin magic before we went out trick or treating.

Here in Seattle kids do not go door to door anymore. They go to the mall. Or they go to the downtown shopping area. Queen Anne always had a Halloween trick or treat event...we went last year and it was so crowded that you couldn't move down the sidewalk. Plus there were a lot of pushy kids and equally pushy parents. So I was relieved to find out that Magnolia was hosting it's own trick or treat event. They closed off the street, which made navigation a lot easier. And there are fewer people over here, which made it easier. And the relative lack of parent pushiness made things much nicer. Julia didn't quite get it though. She would take the candy, even grab some when a bowl was offered to her, but you could tell that the whole concept didn't make sense to her. She isn't into chocolate; in fact she got the most enjoyment out of the toothbrush from the dentist and the pencil/stickers from the lawyers. This, of course, is a good thing. I can tell her that she doesn't like candy when she asks why we don't have any in the house. She liked wearing her costume though, and was really into the pumpkins. She loved pulling out the seeds, watching me carve the face, and looking inside once the whole thing was finished. And while she is not too keen on pumpkin pie yet, she has been devouring pumpkin bread. (From a bakery on Kitsap that was selling it 2/1 because Halloween was over and it wasn't selling so well!)
We've had a nice couple of weather weekends lately and spent this past Saturday poking around Winslow on Bainbridge Island. It was Julia's first ferry ride and first bakery experience. She liked the boat, loved the bakery, and was in dog spotting heaving. We spent the day with the Beusches from Olympia and then went back to Olympia with them for the night. It was a lot of fun and I think we will be going back to Bainbridge soon. Anyway, since I know everyone is coming for the pictures and not the witty commentary, here ya go....

What, we don't get to eat this one?

Let me help you by hitting it!

I think it could use a few more teeth, don't you, Daddy?

Umm..this pumpkin should be over there and bring the other one here!

Where did all the seeds go?

Happy!!

This has become Julia's newest and most favorite word. She is still saying "no" of course, in her cute little girl way, but exclamations of "happy!" now come forth from her lips as well. We pull up in the car after work and she says, "`ome! (pause...) happy!" (loosely translated as "Finally we are home and I can get out of this car seat and be carried around by Mama while she does interesting things in the kitchen!". When we sit down to eat dinner she will declare "happy" again. It is very precious and makes us smile every time we hear it. She has also started saying "yeah", which is nice too. Because she used to grunt when she wanted to utter an affirmative and now she can actually say a word that is decipherable. Little things.

She is starting to show her independence more and more....lots of little things can set her off. Like asking her to put her toothbrush away. Now I probably shouldn't argue with a kid who wants to brush her teeth, but the mere suggestion that she might be finished is enough to make her run away and cry. We are slowly overcoming that one though. And she has started throwing/pouring food onto the floor to see what the reaction is. So far I have calmly told her that we don't do that, give her a towel, and ask her to clean it up. Luckily she likes to clean things.

We're missing Dan this week; he is in California for a conference. But we are hanging in there so far. We even managed to make minestrone yesterday for dinner. She said it was "happy". I think that means she liked it.

Out in the Woods

I spent four days and three nights out in the woods of the Olympic Peninsula with my brother Tom, in for a visit from Central NY. I had a great time, especially since it was our first time camping together. I think that Tom had a great time too (he doesn't say much, but he did catch three fish!) and I hope that we get to do it again sometime. We hiked up the East Fork of the Quinault River in the Quinault Rainforest; it was an in and out hike with the terminus being the Enchanted Valley. We saw elk, some birds, wild rainbow trout, some ground mammals, and lots of signs of bears, but no bears. He had a fun time observing Julia too and she finally warmed up to him at the end of the week.

The first bull elk we saw....he only had a harem of five girls.

Anderson Glacier and Mt. Anderson as viewed from the Enchanted Valley

The very frightening suspension bridge we had to cross to get into the Enchanted Valley. It was easily 50 feet above the river, narrow and wet. And did you see that there is only 1 handrail? I had to talk myself across or else I would still be up there in the middle of it.

Last day, at the trailhead....13.5 miles x2 in four days!!! Not bad for not having backpacked since high school (for me, Tom does this for a living).

Uncle Tome gives Julia some fashion pointers on his last day with us. She was awed that she got to wear the grey fedora.

Discontinue Use When Your Child Can Defeat Product

The title sums up Julia these days. She is into everything and into pulling everything apart. We bought safety corners for the coffee table--mainly because at our last PEPS meeting Dan thought that all the other parents were warily eying our sharp oak corners. That and the few close calls Julia has had with said corners convinced us that we needed to be more proactive in that child safety area. So we applied the corners. They didn't seem to make the corners of the table less hard or sharp, but we figured that it was a little better than bare wood.

Almost immediately, Julia noticed that something on the table had changed. She cam over to inspect and started pulling at the corners. We gave her a gentle admonition that the corners were not to be pulled out, but instead we should bang them down. We naively figured that banging would be more fun than pulling. Not so. Within 5 minutes she had all four corners pulled up (On a side note, her daycare teachers marvel at her "fine motor skills"...we think this is code for "We cannot keep anything taped up to the walls or her paper taped to the table."). We continued this game (and variations wherein Julia would run from corner to corner, trying to beat my block) for a week before we gave up. We had laughed when we read about "your child can defeat product", but realized that she is just too smart for safety corners.

She has started to defeat other things around the house too. She is quickly learning how to open doors. She learned earlier how to shut them and that another fun game is to run to another room and shut the door when Mama wants to change your diaper. The closing doors though has come in handy...when she gets too close to the dishwasher, we just ask her to close the door and she willingly complies. This can sometimes make loading the dishwasher difficult, but we love a challenge.

She has also learned how to defeat the pony tail. Her hair is getting so long in front and I am heeding the warnings not to cut it ("or else the curls will never come back!"), so we put her hair in a "pony" every morning. Today was the first day that I picked her up and it was still there. She struggles against having her hair combed and discovered on Thursday that she could simply reach up and pull out the pony tail as soon as I had finished putting it in. I am glad that we are raising such a clever girl, but I think it is going to make parenting more of a challenge.

On the plus side, she is learning more and more sign language: please, thank you, delicious, help, stop...and other gestures that we don't understand at all. Her words are becoming more clear as well. She greets you at daycare with a big "Hiya!" (I think my mother was trying to teach her how to say hi y'all). She says diaper with a thick Southern accent (dyeuhhhh-phur) and has shortened her own name to "Ju-ya" or sometimes "Ju-Ju". But the hardest thing lately has been feeling like I am not getting to hold her enough. She always wants to be down and exploring and sometimes being held by me is equivalent to being held back. At daycare she doesn't run to greet me somedays---a wave from the sandbox suffices. So I can see her growing up and becoming more independent, and I didn't know it would be this hard.

Pictures of the New Digs

Yes, we moved. We moved into a really nice house in another neighborhood in Seattle, a bit closer to the sound, still on a hill, and only about 5 minutes further away from work. We are unpacked, although not totally organized yet. I think all of my moves growing up have left me well-prepared for unpacking immediately. We had 90% of our boxes unpacked, broken down, and given away by Sunday night (we moved in on Saturday). We had some great help though from our friends Paul and Stacy (she just moved here from New Haven! Yea!) and Dan's family in Olympia (Chip and Ed did the heavy hauling, Christina and Clare helped with the cleaning). And a special thanks to Mikael from our PEPS group for watching Julia.

We have been settling in over the last two weeks and I think Julia is starting to like the place. It has stairs that she can climb, a big deck with flowers to pull out of their pots (I don't think she likes my arranging skills), and lots of room to run around in. Here are some pics of the new place:

The backyard, with Julia successfully scaling the steps.

Time to take a break and eat some Raniers.

Our messy bedroom...this is where the unpacking stalled.

The living room...Julia's favorite place to read aloud to us.

The dining room....I think she was rushing to her chair to be fed some cheese.

Looking from the dining room to the kitchen...the door to the deck is on the left hand side across from the island.

Two sideways pictures of Julia's room...there is also room for a toybox (read Becky's GS footlocker)!

Finally! We get to check out the playground that is three blocks away. Right next to a baseball diamond....I think we will be spending lots of time here this summer.

Julia and I are off to California tomorrow to join up with Dan for a visit to Granddad and Grandpam. Then we come back to Seattle to get ready for a visit from Gramma and Grandpa. I think she is looking forward to showing them all of her new tricks.

This one is for Granny

She likes to be chased, but now has started trying to run away. But it is still really funny when she pauses and waits to be "caught".

Behold the Power of Cheese

We're waiting for the Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin to contact us about a new advertising campaign starring Julia. I think she is a natural for it.

Yes. We are still alive in Seattle

We are still here in Seattle. We've just been busy lately with trips to Kentucky, work, ear infections, NIH grants, more work, chasing after Julia to change her diaper, deciphering her words, and trying to enjoy the first glimpses of the Northwest summer. Plus we leave for a meeting in Colorado on Saturday and move in three weeks. Just over to Magnolia, but we have a lot of stuff to pack. In other news, Julia is walking, talking, pointing, laughing, reading books, and is totally weaned. Not too bad for almost 15 months. Here are some pictures from her getting ready for bed tonight....

She share her food with Pig (who is a little greedy...she wanted to drink lots of milk)

Kicking back in the old booster seat...

Contemplating the meaning of life....

Yeah....this will ensure that she is not hyper when it is time to go to sleep...

We've got some nice pictures from my Dad's ordination too...keep bugging me with comments to post those as well.

Happy Birthday!!!

Well, we made it through the first year. And we didn't kill one another. And Julia survived. It was quite a lot of fun actually, although there are some things I would rather forget. But the things that I would like to remember? Her curly hair...which most definetly does not come from my side of the family. How hard she struggled to push upright on her arms and learn to crawl. The look of pride on her face whenever she does something she thinks is really neat. The way that she claps her hands when she is upset in an effort to cheer herself up. The way she smells after a bath. How amazingly fast she has grown; nine inches doesn't seem like a lot of growth until I realize that she no longer fits in my lap while nursing. Those first little smiles and grimaces she gave while asleep. The year has been filled with a lot of good memories.


We spent Julia's birthday mostly at home, continuing to battle the rotavirus. She finally conquered it on Sunday. But since she wasn't that sick, I took her to the conservatory in Volunteer Park here in Seattle. We had fun walking around, looking at the orchids, cacti, ferns, hydrangeas, etc. She throughly charmed the Japanese tourists and they took our picture. We did let her open some of her presents that evening, which she throughly enjoyed.

But I wanna eat the paper, Dad!

Oooh! Aaah! Pretty!

Hmmmm..wonder what's in this one?

Hey! I'm ready for the rain!

On Sunday, Chip, Chris, Clare, and Ed drove up from Olympia and we spent the day with them. We took them to Julia's favourite restaurant, Tutta Bella, and enjoyed several of their pizzas. Julia ate a whole slice by herself. (Since recovering from the virus she seems to have finally discovered her hollow leg. Some nights we cannot get the food in her hands fast enough.) Then we headed on to the zoo and saw lots of animals: gorillas, monkeys, birds, snakes, giraffes, and African dogs (Julia liked these the best). We came home to open more presents and eat cake. Well, everyone else ate cake...Julia just pretended that she was going to. Instead she wanted more Cheerios.

Waiting for the guests to arrive

Look! It's a wild, camera-wielding Mom!

More presents!

A book all about peek-a-boo!

It's a Peep! No, it's a pillow! No! It's a Peep pillow!

Mmmm...cake....

We saw the doc yesterday and Julia got a clean bill of health. She is almost 19lbs now, 30 inches long, and has a head that is 18 and 1/4 inches round. Julia can point, shake her head no, show you her nose, show you your nose, play peek-a-boo, patty-cake, make the motions for "Wheels on the Bus", find her shoes, doll, and pig, stand for several seconds by herself, take small steps forward before falling, and drink out of a cup (with and without a straw). Not bad for a one year old! We have our PEPS Birthday party on Sunday and hopefully will remember to take more pictures there.

Some Pictures To Satisfy the Masses

I've been too busy to think lately...we had a weeklong business trip to Baltimore (scientific meeting) and work has been keeping both of us busy since we got back. Julia's latest tricks: standing alone for up to 30s at a time, falling forward while standing alone (hasn't quite figured out that the feet need to move too), pointing at almost everything, and just being loads of fun. Here are some more recent pictures to satisfy all of the relatives (read grandparents) who have been needing a Julia fix. I have lots of good posts rambling around in my head, I just need to find the time to write them down.




These were all taken at the Bellevue Botanical Gardens (Papa, I have some pictures of some nice witch hazel and lenten roses to show you in April). The frog was named Grumperina.



Two dolls for an early first birthday celebration! This was with Dan's family in Baltimore during the meeting.

Once we got back from Baltimore, she headed straight for the toys. Then she started to chase the cat.

Upside Down

Julia thought she would give musical comedy a try. Thanks to Aunt JoAnne for sending the octopus and brightening our day. In other news, we stopped feeding her at night. This may explain the uncontrolled head bobbing. It also may explain why her waking has moved back to 4:30am instead of 2:00am. More as events warrant....

Julia's Movie Debut

So here is the little one, helping with the laundry. Thanks to Mike and Amy for letting us in on how to post the video. =)

The Old Lady Who Whispers "Hush"

My life recently has been marked by lots of crying and sleepless nights. It seems as though Julia has decided to hit a whole bunch of developmental milestones at once. Things like crawling (video to come soon!), pulling up, cruising, sitting back down, feeding herself (with fingers, hands, and spoon). All of which are absolutely amazing to watch in progress and most of the time very funny too. But when added to the numerous colds she has suffered through since Christmas, it has made for a lot of sleepless nights. It has gotten so bad that I've gone back to reading sleep books!

At first it was kind of funny that she would be standing up in the crib, crying out for us at 11:30pm. But then it kept happening. And it would happen not only at 11:30pm, but then again at 1:30am, 4:00am, 6:00am, et cetera. The worst nights are those when the first wake up happens just as I am getting into a deep sleep. Then I know the whole night is shot.

Now some of you may ask, "Why are you getting to bed so late yourself?" Well, there is the after dinner cleanup to do, the bottles and pump parts to wash, the milk to store, the lunch prep for the next day, Julia's food prep for the next day, toys to put away, et cetera. And that darn cat always needs water (We've attributed this to the fact that Sierra's water dish acts like a tractor beam that pulls Julia into the kitchen whenever she is placed on the floor. She is helpless to stop crawling towards it. She must put her hands in the water, no other dish of water seems to have the same power over her). So there is a lot of work to be done before we can go to bed to wait for the morning.

So, since I have been reading the sleep books again, I've been running through all of the sleep solutions again. Don't want to start co-sleeping because then none of us get any sleep. Don't want to rock her to sleep because it is almost impossible to put her down once she falls asleep (I think she pretends to be asleep in this situation). Oh and she likes to pull my hair instead of drifting off peacefully while we rock. Tried crying, but she just gets more and more upset, to the point where she is crying even though I haven't even left the room. Did I mention her separation anxiety issues? Prolonged crying at night sets off the anxiety for the entire next day. Plus the crying forces me to try and think of Julia doing cute things to convince myself to keep going back in and trying to soothe her. So I did something that I used to try when she was a wee little one and I wanted her to nap in the crib. I pulled a chair into her room and I sit there. Whispering "hush". Sometimes I need to pat her back (she prefers to sleep on her stomach now...must get this from her father). Other times I need to gently ask her to lay back down. Still other times I need to help her lay back down. But the plus is that in the three nights we have been doing it, there is less crying at bedtime. And while she is still waking up at night, it does not take two hours to coax her back to sleep. I just get back in the chair and start whispering "hush" again. If only there was enough light to knit by I would be all set.

The next place we live will have a nice comfy chair in the kid's bedroom just for this purpose. With a blanket for me in the middle of the night. And enough light to knit by. Because in the book, the old lady gets to knit while she whispers.

There will be pictures later in the week when I remember to add "recharge camera batteries" to the list of evening chores.

These are a few of my favorite things....

1. Julia's little grin that keeps everyone laughing....

Every time she flashes this smile, people just start to laugh and it eggs her on. She started it soon after we left for Baltimore and has been keeping it up since. It is even funnier now that she has two top teeth pushing their way through and you can see them. This was taken on Christmas morning with my 100 year old great-grandfather. He was quite taken with Julia.

2. Julia's little pink tongue....

Nowadays the tongue still makes frequent appearances. But now she has taken to playing with it with her hand. This is especially funny in the car when she is dressed in her bunting and can only touch her tongue with her mitten. Why she thinks this is so exciting I will never figure out, but it does keep her entertained.

3. Her love of paper.....
Seriously, the paper at Christmas alone would have kept her occupied for months. All she wanted was paper: tissue paper, wrapping paper, foil paper, paper from the chocolate covered apricots, the credit card bills in January. She just loves paper. This weekend we caught her in the living room with a catalog in her hands. She had maneuvered across the room on her belly, then sat back up at the coffee table to grab said catalog. She was in heaven until Dan took it away from her.

4. Her love of music...

This was one of the few ways that Gramma and Grandpa got to spend time with Julia. They would just take her to the piano so that she could bang away at it. It occupied her so that she forgot that Mom was around the corner taking her picture.

We had a really nice vacation (3 weeks!) for Christmas. We got to see lots of family members, open lots of nice gifts, and eat way too many spritz cookies. Gramma and Grandpa babysat for a night so that Dan and I could have a dinner out (our first since Julia was born!) and Nannie took Julia one morning while Dan and I ran errands. Seeing how enchanted (even my brothers Tom and Andrew) was with Julia was worth all of the sleep lost during and after the trip.

Julia's latest tricks include lots of rolling over, more backward scooting and some forward creeping (belly-flop style). The funniest thing now is her night waking is because she rolls from her side (her now preferred sleeping position) onto her belly. I've come in several times to find her crawling around the crib. Backwards of course. But she has also recently figured out how to sit back up from her belly, how to cruise to the end of the coffee table to find the remote control, and how to stand up using the nearest parent. She had a nine month check and weighed in at 17lbs 10 0z, which drops her down to the 25th percentile. The doc seemed a little worried and told me to start giving her yogurt, cheese, butter, anything to fatten the little girl up. She still doesn't show a tremendous amount of interest in solids on any kind of consistent basis. But with all of her moving around I don't think that she is starving. My dad said that she just needs a good German cook....I guess we should have let her eat some of those spritz cookies. Anyway, we hope everyone had a nice holiday (whichever one you decided to celebrate) and got to spend it with family.