Let the Balloon Training Commence!

We we attended the Infant Safety and CPR class in December, the instructor spent a little time talking about pets and how to adjust your pets to having a new little creature in the house. It seems like most of the problems that can arise do so with dogs and cats are fairly benign. Knowing that our cat is anything but benign, we asked about training the cat to stay out of the crib and bassinet. The instructor said that we had three options, ranging from mild to extreme. The first is to fill the crib with balloons. When the cat tries to jump into the crib, it will pop a balloon or two and become so traumatized by the noise it will never approach the crib again. If you cat doesn't quite get the whole one-trial learning thing, you can move on to Method #2. This involves buying a sensor that is hooked up to an air can. When the cat jumps into the crib, it gets blasted with air. And then, if your cat is unfazed by puffs of air (I am sure Sierra would be as she is unfazed by water spraying), you can try Method #3. This method uses another purchased product that consists of a blanket you place into the crib. When the sensors in the blanket sense a change in weight (i.e. when the cat jumps into the crib), it gives the cat a small electrical shock. About what you would experience from static electricity. Very annoying to the cat, but sure to provide entertainment for the adults.
At first I didn't think that Sierra was going to even attempt to jump into the crib. She didn't like us putting it up and seemed to spend a lot of time sniffing it, then running away. But then I discovered her sleeping in the crib one night as I was making dinner. Right on top of some nice warm baby blankets. She looked at me like I was crazy when I told her to get down (I am sure she thinks that we have set this crib up just for her to take naps in) and I decided that we needed to try the balloons.
It took forever to find balloons. Seattle, unlike most of the country, seems to think that balloons are not one of those staples that should be carried in grocery stores. We have noticed this with other products as well, like risotto, pignoli nuts, and barley. Even the little card store, which had an entire wall devoted to party supplies, did not carry balloons. I guess they are not that popular for birthday parties anymore. We finally found some over the weekend and filled both the crib and the bassinet with balloons. Sierra was terrified of the balloons as we inflated them...she usually doesn't like anything that moves on its own. Especially if it is about her size or larger. But now she seems even more curious about the balloons in the crib. Two of them have popped in the crib, seemingly spontaneously, which has really scared her. But she has discovered that she can climb up into the changing insert on the bassinet, look out the window, and be totally unbothered by the balloons. I think we will have to line it with aluminum foil...something else that cats are not supposed to like.

Happy New Year!!!

Lots of big exciting changes await in 2006! Only three more months until Claude/Maud makes his/her appearance and we have been getting ready. We went baby shopping this weekend, picking up several things. We got our cool stroller so that we can take lots of walks around the neighborhood. We also picked up a chest of drawers for storage; the unfinished furniture store was having a "No Sales Tax" sale so it was like having a 9% off coupon. We also got some onesies for newborns, a dust ruffle, and more little socks. I am contemplating making some little flannel pants, especially since the fabric store has the flannel on sale right now. We are waiting until Christmas is over to start putting the nursery together.

We had a pretty quiet Christmas, once again forgetting to take any pictures. It was different not to have a bunch of family around this year. But we had a nice breakfast with two of the other women from the church choir, then went down to Olympia for dinner and to spend the night. I made way too many cookies (so they might be appearing in lab this week) and also date bars. I have concluded though that Seattle is too humid to make date bars properly as the powdered sugar kept melting. Maybe I will get to watch Granny make them next year and see what secret tricks I am missing out on.

New Year's was quiet as well, although we did walk down to Kerry Park to see the fireworks shooting off the Space Needle. Today was another day off of work (although we both went into lab for the morning) and another day spent watching football. Both Louisville and Notre Dame lost. Playoffs start next week though and we will be watching the Bengals play and eating the "Who Dey Bar" that my Aunt Dotty gave us for Christmas.

Here is a picture from our baby shower in Maryland where I am opening Bobby's gift of a Ravens sleeper. I said that we would have to get a little Bengals sleeper as well. Especially since the Bengals were playing the Ravens that day and beat them soundly. At least it wasn't a Duke outfit. It was a nice shower though and Dan's family was very generous. Our favorite gift though was from Uncle Chuck, who gave us a little horse stuffed animal. We promptly nicknamed him Charlie Horse. We also recieved lots of Pooh things, which will only aid in converting our small nursery into the Hundred Acre Wood. I will be starting on the drawings I have planned later this week.

More Updates....

Pregnancy seems to be agreeing with me. We're at 26 weeks now and things are still going fine. I am showing now, as the pictures below illustrate. It is hard to believe that we only have three more months until we welcome Claude/Maude into our little family. We picked up the crib yesterday, but will wait until after Christmas to set it up. After the tree comes down we will begin the major repositioning of furniture in the apartment. We also went ahead and bought our new car: the family-friendly Honda CRV. I never thought that I would own a Japanese car, but we really like it. We will have to wait for another sunny day before we take pictures of it. It has been nothing but rain since Monday. In fact, today I don't think the sun is going to come up at all.

We went to Kentucky for Thanksgiving this year; mostly to avoid the possibility of getting stuck in Chicago while I was six months pregant. It was so great to see family though and we had a nice time. We even got to see my brother Tom, in from the wilds of northern New Hampshire. He was elusive though and we couldn't get a picture.
We also celebrated Dan's birthday on the 19th....he is getting be an old man at 28! I didn't have any birthday candles so we made do with the tea light. He received lots of good wishes from family and really enjoyed his cake. We also decorated the house with lights this year. It is amazing that five strands of lights covers so little. I think the house looks good though. Too bad we haven't been home enough to keep the lights on. More pictures to follow once I remember to rotate them before posting....

Big News on the Home Front!

We'll, we haven't posted in awhile, but there has been a lot going on. Becky's parents came for a visit, which was throughly enjoyed by all. We went to the Olympic Pennisula, saw a dry rainforest, some elk, and the Pacific Ocean. Then we spent the whole month of August working. Just working. And enjoying our recent good news that we will be expecting our first kid on or about March 29, 2006! We are thrilled to pieces (as are the soon to be grandparents), and feeling fine. No morning sickness for Becky, just tiredness. The doctor says that everything looks fine so far and gave us these pictures to take home
The little jellybean in 3-D. Looks pretty cute, no?

Just some more profile pics. We got to hear the heartbeat (a steady 159 bpm) and at the second ultrasound actually got to see the heart beating in real time. Pretty cool. We'll keep you updated with more pics as they are available.

Trip to the Land Up North

This past Friday we made the drive up to Vancouver, BC for Canada Day. Really. It was only a coincidence that our friend Martin was in town at the same time. We spent Friday evening enjoying the various Canada Day events, including a lumberjack show. That was pretty cool. We also went to an excellent Chinese restaurant, where we had spot prawns and Dungeness crab. We had to walk down E. Hastings Street to get the restaurant, experiencing Vancouver's "funky urban authenticity" as the guidebook put it. The food was good though.
On Saturday we drove even further north, stopping in Squamish for breakfast, some lunch provisions, and a pocket knife. Then it was onward to Garibaldi Provincial Park, to hike the Garibaldi Lake/Black Tusk Trail. We didn't make it all the way to the Black Tusk, but we did have a nice lunch at the lake. It is hard to see in some of these pictures, but the water was incredibly clear and a nice turquoise blue. There was plenty of snow on the nearby peaks and the air was a little chilly. Dan took some nice pictures on the way back down to the car...that is Martin in his adventure hat.




Here is another shot of Dan and Martin at the lake, with snow in the background. This was right after the clouds came out and right before the rain started.









Martin took a picture of us near the lake too...you can see what I mean about the water being turquoise...reminds you of the Carribean. This was after lunch on the way back to the car.

After we reached the car, we spent another hour eating trail mix and watching the waters of Rumble Creek rumble by. Then we continued on up the road to Whistler, as Martin wanted to show us the town he was a ski bum in before he became a respectable Yale graduate student. We did a little window shopping, visited a Canadian Starbucks, and spotted what looked to be an Amazing Race cluebox. If we see that the race goes to Whistler this fall, then we will have found the cluebox before anyone else. We finished our visit with Martin by eating some delicious BBQ back in Vancouver. We even had BBQ poutine! I wish now that we had taken a picture to send to our friend Ali in Baltimore.

We made it back home to Seattle in time for my cousin Saundra's Air Force Band Concert in Kirkland. Unfortunately, we didn't realize that you needed tickets in advance to get into a free concert. Instead we snuck backstage, told Saundra we weren't going to be able to hear her play the trombone, but made dinner plans instead. She came to our place back in Seattle, we had a good dinner, then walked down to Kerry Park to see the city skyline. Dan took our picture, but it turned out blurry because we didn't have the tripod.

We did get to hear Saundra and the band on July 4th though when they played at Myrtle Edwards Park. The music was excellent, especially the piece they played from the Incredibles soundtrack. The fireworks were good too.We also had a visit from Helen this week...I've noticed that a lot more people visit us now that we live in Seattle...something about the water in New Haven? It is really great getting to see everyone though. So if you are coming to Seattle, look us up! Or just plan a trip to visit!

More Pictures!!!


Here is a recent photo. We were taken aback by how much older we looked! It is an entirely different thing to see your own face in a picture rather than in the mirror every day. We still need to order a copy of the picture to add to our family picture display. And get more picture frames for the pictures of other relatives we have yet to display. Like my brother AJ's senior picture. Right now it is just resting on top of another picture. This is fine, except for those times at 4am when the cat decides that she really likes AJ and wants to lick his picture incessantly. Then something startles her, she jumps down from the table, and knocks off three pictures in the process. She makes a great alarm clock.

This is from when Laura came to visit us from Baltimore. It was in April, so the Skagit County Tulip festival was in full swing. We spent a day just driving around, looking at tulips, stopping to eat a late lunch in La Conner, then browsing through stores. The tulip fields were pretty impressive with rows and rows of color. It looked like a picture of Tuscany. There was also lots of mud, which we considered scooping up and selling as healing tulip mud, but weren't sure about the packaging. We also bought some lovely tulips from the one farm....they lasted for a week before the blooms died. Unlike all the other tulips that I've ever had, these actually opened as well. Now that June is here, we would like to go back to the Skagit Valley and get some strawberries, but we never seem to have a free weekend any more. I guess I won't be able to make strawberry jam this year either.

Another gorgeous sunset in Seattle! We've started going on our evening loop walk almost every night now. It has been warmer and staying light until almost 10pm. Now that solstice is over though, the evenings will be getting shorter---we just won't notice it until October.

Okay, I haven't had any time to add pictures or sign up for photo hosting or anything yet. Today's Friday so I might have time this weekend. It looks like the weather is going to be nice though, so I may spend the weekend out hiking/picking strawberries/goofing off. We'll see.

Testing, testing, testing

this is a test of the blog....

will it display my picture? have to sign up for image hosting....