Players

Shortly after Nora was born, Owen's best friend Leo's parents invited Owen over for a playdate. Owen had an amazing time (there was a farmer's market and ice cream involved) and immediately informed us when we picked him up that he wanted Leo to come see his room. So the next month Leo came over and had such a great time playing fort that he had Owen over again the following month. Back and forth they've gone for months, playdate steadies with mostly happy results.

Then one day, Owen started asking if he could have his other best friend, Sophia, over. We eventually extended an invitation and were able to coordinate a date with her mother. It did not go quite as well. At some point Owen knocked a tambourine off the ottoman and it hit Sophia. She demanded an apology; he refused. Things deteriorated from there. In the end, Sophia announced that she never wanted to return to Owen's house (though her mother has invited Owen over there) and Owen has started arresting Sophia at daycare because she doesn't want to come back to his house.

But what's worse is that while Sophia was "playing" at our house, Sophia's mom ran into Tadashi's mom and mentioned that Owen and Sophia were having a playdate. Tadashi has apparently never had a playdate and so now they would like to coordinate one. Meanwhile Owen now wants to have Chloe (whom I haven't even met) over and Fiona informed Allen when he dropped Owen off one morning, that she wants me to call her Mommy so we can arrange a sleepover.

Which is why we never should have "cheated" on Leo in the first place...

Elephant Parade

 

On Tuesday the circus came to town and while Elaine was off at a White House meeting on demographic data sets, Owen and I skipped out on our naptime/branch meeting to see the elephant parade pass by the Capitol. The weather was spectacular, a beautiful Spring day in DC, perfect for a playing on the Mall, riding on Daddy's shoulders, and watching the Elephants marching down 3rd Street.

Nora Sitting

The status of Nora's ability to sit-up has been source of contention for weeks now. Allen claims she's been able to sit upright since late February; I've been less generous. Allen is an eternal optimist and so the fact that when placing our daughter in a sitting position she didn't immediately topple over clearly meant that she was now a sitter. To me, the fact that she did topple over shortly thereafter meant she was not. (We had a similar debate when Owen was at this stage.) But now Allen has proof that our little girl has indeed mastered the art of sitting (or at least was kind enough to wait until after he stopped recording to fall).

 

Yellow Balloon

A retirement party at the Department of Labor typically includes a nice lunch, a framed DOL seal, a lovely parting gift and a balloon bouquet. Oddly enough, a number of retirees don't want to take 20 or so balloons home with them to commemorate their years of service, and so periodically a large bunch of balloon will appear outside the door of DOL's daycare, making some lucky tykes' day.

So it was on December 10th when I went to pick up Owen from a long day of school. I grabbed a balloon on my way in, only to have it liberated by 10 three year olds once I arrived at Owen's classroom. We grabbed another one on the way out.

A week and a half later, we were impressed that the balloon was still fully aloft as we left for Christmas in Iowa. We were amazed that it was still so when we returned. Weeks past and then months but this balloon continued to defy expectations regarding the shelf-life of helium and the laws of gravity. We wondered if the balloon had made some sort of pact with a higher being -- a kind of Portrait of Dorian Gray for the latex population.

But then 2 1/2 weeks ago, it began sinking. At first it hovered a few inches from the ceiling, but last week it reached Owen height. Allen responded by trimming its string, because as he stated so passionately, "That's what you're supposed to do" (there are apparently rules about maintaining neutral buoyancy of dying balloons).

It rebounded, coming to life in its extended period of neutral buoyancy, riding the air currents throughout the house, and turning up in the least expected places. But today Allen had to remove the last bit of its tether in order for it to stay afloat. This might have been a mistake, for now that the snows have mostly melted and the weather is feeling more like Spring here in our nations capital, we left the door open when we arrived home from our grocery store/ice skating outing. Owen was helping bring in the groceries, and our magical balloon, excited by the new air currents provided by the open door, glided out into the great wide open.

Allen made a valiant attempt to save it, sprinting out the door and leaping after the balloon, but it just alluded his outstretched hands, clearly it was not meant for this world. We suspect it's now over the rainbow (having heard so much about it from Owen) and while we're sad to see it go, we couldn't imagine a better ending for it.

Family Cuddle Time

 A family selfie during cuddle time seems like a good idea.

Better than a Tie

Sometimes the stars just align. Several months ago we learned that Allen's friend Joe was going to do a month's rotation at Walter Reed Hospital and would be bringing his wife Cate and their daughter Gigi to DC for the month of February. We mentioned this to Allen's friend Nabeel and his wife Megan when we saw them over Thanksgiving in the hopes that they and their sons, Kaden & Liam, could make it down some weekend for a mini-reunion. Meanwhile, Allen's friend Chris, his wife Elise and their daughter Hazel returned to the area for an indeterminate stay while Elise took some classes and Billy announced he'd be flying in from China for a week or so to celebrate Chinese New Year.

Which means, that despite four time zones, two hemispheres, six kids and a colossal snowstorm, we managed to have a grown-up dinner with Allen's closest friends in a private dining room at Nora's followed by a massive playdate the next morning with their off-spring. Not a bad belated birthday present if I do say so myself.

(click here to see Allen's pictures)
(click here to see Nabeel's pictures)

Year of the Tiger

On Saturday night we celebrated Chinese New Year's and rang in the Year of the Tiger. I was born at the tail end of the Year of the Tiger in 1975, and according to Billy when the year of your birth returns, it is a very auspicious year. Well, it certainly has started wonderfully, we celebrated with some of our closest friends, Billy of course was back from China, Joe & Cate are here for the month with Gigi, and Chris & Elise are here with Hazel (although Chris was out of town for the party, quite auspiciously recording the first episode of 'Dan Vs.' the animated television show he created). The food was of course delicious, Mrs. Kung having out done herself again. Owen and Gigi had a great time dressing up in Owen's tiger costume and playing hide and seek. Hazel and Nora battled it out for who could look the most adorable. Chris' parents even came by to join the celebration. The next morning we met up with Joe, Cate and Gigi for brunch, and next weekend we're looking forward to Nabeel, Megan, Kaden and Liam coming into town from Boston. With such great friends to celebrate with, it certainly looks to be the start of a great year.

Blizzard of '10

A typical DC winter has a few inches of snow a few times a season, but every once in a while DC is walloped by a massive blizzard. The first one I remember was the Blizzard of '79. We were living in Annandale, and Ken & Helen were visiting from Iowa when a storm brought two feet of snow to the area (18.7" officially at DCA, but the DCA total is always lower than the rest of the region since it is right on the Potomac). Dad and Ken built a snow tunnel system through the yard for me to play in, and cemented early on my love of snow. My senior year in high school brought the Blizzard of '93 (a.k.a the Storm of the Century), over a foot of snow in McLean along with wind and ice canceled school for a week, and sent me trekking through the snow combat cabin fever by being snowed in with friends. The Blizzard of '96 happened the first week of January while I was on winter break from college. This storm was a one two punch with two feet of snow falling in the first part of the storm followed by another foot a few days later. Once again, the snow sent all my friends out trudging across McLean to meet up with each other (although I think there was more beer involved this time around;-).

Since moving back to DC from Austin, we haven't seen much snow. We moved back a year too late for the Blizzard of '03, and we drove out to Iowa the day before the big storm this past December. We may have missed the snow before Christmas, but the conditions (El Nino, Greenland block, and a negative north Atlantic oscillation) were in place for a very snowy winter. Sure enough, the day after my birthday brought the beginnings of the Blizzard of '10, the one storm to rule them all, Snowpocalypse, Snowmaggedon. By any name this storm was a monster. The snow started Friday afternoon, and shut down the Federal Government. By late Friday afternoon there was already enough snow for Owen and I to build a snow fort in the front yard. Our neighbors Hunter & Joy had some friends over, and not to be outdone started building an igloo to compete with our snow fort. After Owen went to bed, it was five on one in the neighborly snow fort building competition, so we ended up collaborating on the forts. Using a kitchen trash can, we packed the wet snow into ice like bricks for building materials and built snow structures that should last until spring.

On Saturday, the snows continued to cover the forts, and we tried to keep up shoveling the sidewalks to provide a pathway for the kids on the block to get to each others' houses. The snow in our front yard piled up three or four feet deep as we kept shoveling, and provided the perfect spot for snow tunnels to expand the fort. Saturday night the snow finally stopped falling, and we measured 21" of heavy wet snow on our back deck here on Capitol Hill.

Sunday brought sunny skies and lots of time playing with friends in the snow forts. Owen loved playing outside in the snow, but at three years old, his endurance out in the cold is limited, so we had lots of indoor time as well, and the first signs of cabin fever were showing. Monday brought more of the same, our street still was not passable, we played more on our block. By Tuesday it was becoming clear that another major storm was on the way, so we took advantage of the calm before the second storm to walk over to Grandpa Fawcett's house and go out for lunch down by Eastern Market. It was great to get out of the house, but walking that far with Owen on my shoulders and Nora in Elaine's baby backpack was quite exhausting. When we got home, the next storm was already starting.

As I write this, we're in our sixth day essentially trapped in the house, over ten inches of snow has fallen from round two of the the Blizzard of '10, and we've broken the record for the snowiest winter set all the way back in 1898-99. The winds are gusting over 40 mph, and the view out the window is a complete white out. There is little prospect of getting anywhere by car for the next few days, and who knows when we'll go back to work. Gotta love it.

(click here to see all the Blizzard pictures)

Owen Dancing, Nora Laughing

One of the best things about having two kids is watching them interact with each other. Nora adores her big brother, and while most of the time Owen is too busy playing to take notice of his baby sister, occasionally he'll decide to do something incredibly sweet. When he does, Nora just eats it up. Thankfully it happens often enough that it wasn't too difficult to capture on video. Here's Nora cracking up watching her big brother dance for her.

Nora's First "Solid" Meal

Now that Nora is almost five months old, we've started her on solids. With Owen we waited until he had his first taste of Avacado, a food a bit more substantial than rice cereal and breast milk, before we wrote a blog post on his first solids, but we decided Nora's first taste of semi-solids warranted a post. She wasn't quite as excited as Hazel was for her first taste of rice cereal, but she took to it fairly well. Our little baby is growing up...

Rolling Over

On December 15th, Nora rolled over for the first time from her belly to her back. It happened at 11 am and was so unexpected that no footage was obtained at the time or even when she repeated the feat that night for father and brother. She then refused to do it again for over a month. The past few weeks it's made a return appearance, and on January 25th Nora even added the more difficult back to belly maneuver to her repertoire. Alas, Nora has abjectly refused to let us record it for posterity and lately has taken to waiting until we leave a room or turn our back to alter her poise. She's apparently the Snuffleupagus of the rolling over world.

But after a couple of intensive nights of filming we were finally able to capture the elusive Nora rolling from back to belly (we've given up on filming the belly to back thing entirely). It's not her finest work, there's a lot of teasing, and I find it maddening that once Allen took the camera away she was practically doing flips, but at least we finally have evidence to back up the baby book.

Every Little Boy's Dream

Owen woke up today to a digger, a dump truck, and a bulldozer outside his window digging a giant hole to work on a sewer pipe. Needless to say, it's been a good day (and thankfully the sewer pipe work hasn't seemed to affect our plumbing ;)

I Like to Ice Skate Ice Skate

We took Owen ice skating for the first time on Saturday, and he had an absolute blast. Just a couple falls, and he jumped up and brushed himself off each time. His favorite part though (and the cutest bit of the movie below) is when he started 'ice dancing' while singing, "I like to move it move it, I like to ice skate ice skate!"

Feels Unlike the First Time

We don't coddle our children. Sure we buy organic food, have a dvd player in the minivan and our toy to furniture ratio is somewhat askew, but dammit, when we decide it's time for our baby girl to start daycare we make her sit in a stroller in less than 30 degree weather for the 1.67 mile trek to the Department of Labor.

In our defense, both kids were pretty well insulated from the elements and Nora actually slept the entire walk in. She continued sleep even after I dropped Owen off and so Nora and I hung out in my office for another 45 minutes until she woke up. We headed down to Ms. Kita's room and settled her in just in time for a walk with her classmates (inside, because it was less than 32 degrees and DOL's daycare apparently does coddle our children). We nursed and played for a while, she slept, we nursed again, and then she joined me for a discussion of health insurance coverage of part-time workers before we grabbed her brother and headed home (she slept through that commute as well).

Nora took the whole day in stride, and while her sleep was a bit off (1.67 miles doesn't equal all that long of a nap), she seemed surprising chill about being separated from her mother for extended periods of time (if one considers an hour an extended period). I for the most part was too distracted by a backlog of queries to pine away too much. Really the most traumatic part of the day was returning home and realizing that I'd lost one of Nora's first shoes in the flurry to leave.

Owen's first day was definitely harder on both mother and child, though the fact that Allen was in Japan at the time might have been a confounding factor. Regardless, Nora and I are staying home for the next few days and regrouping before we venture back to DOL on Friday -- when the weather is predicted to be a balmy 50 degrees.

2009 - The Year in Sleep

It's become customary on our blog to start the year with a look back at the previous year in something. Last year was a look back at 2008 - The Year in Phrases, the year before way 2007 - The Year in Language, and kicking it all off was 2006 - The Year in Sleep.

This year we could continue the recent language theme, but Owen talks far too much now to condense into a year end list. Alternatively, we could do the year in potty training, but that didn't really start until the very end of the year, and it wasn't until he went back to Classroom 9 starting on January 4 of this year that everything finally clicked with wearing underwear.

The best plan though is to focus on our beautiful baby girl and give her a Year in Sleep post of her very own. As you can see, Nora's wonderful sleeping patterns that emerged in her first month have continued. With Owen, we looked back on the year that was 2006 with a hopeful note because he finally slept for eight hours straight twice at the end of December. With Nora, our sleep has hardly been interrupted, as she's slept eight hours or more at least thirty times this year. As much as we'd like to take credit for her great sleeping patterns, it wasn't any skill on our part, all the credit belongs to our wonderful, sleepy, baby girl.

Nora Dancing

One last post for 2009 to give our baby girl the spotlight. We haven't yet captured her rolling over on film, but here's a cute movie of Nora 'dancing'.

Christmas 2009 in MD

We finally reached the end of our Christmases with our Christmas gathering at Mom Mom and Grandpa Don's house on the 30th. It was Aunt Katherine's dream Christmas, she always wants to delay opening presents as long as possible, and this year the lateness of opening presents was beyond her wildest dreams. Not only did we wait till the 30th to celebrate Christmas on this side of the family, we didn't actually open any presents until after dinner. Despite the delayed presents, it was a lovely Christmas. Katherine and Lee were in town, Jen came with her friend Brian, Jeff made it (although Krysta was feeling sick), and Joe came over (but Holly was back in Texas). Nancy and Danny were out of town, but Christoper was there to represent the Smiths. All and all it was lovely Christmas.

(click here to see all the pictures)

Chistmas 2009 in Iowa

At 8:50 on Christmas morning, Owen awoke, walked past the stockings and tree to his grandparent's kitchen and demanded a bowl of cereal. He promptly ate 2 spoonfuls of Cheerios and then declared he was going back to sleep, which he did, until 11:30. After another trip to the kitchen for some more cereal, he finally declared he was ready to open presents shortly before noon. 

It was actually pretty appropriate given the holiday has largely been a series of fits and starts. The weather meant that Cousin Caitlin (along with Uncle John and Paxton) had to come down Monday rather than Thursday in order to meet her god-daughter but that Auntie Ellen had to work. It meant that Uncle Bernie couldn't come at all. And it meant that Grandma Z's Christmas dinner for 18 was more of a Yuletide lunch for 8. 

But eventually gifts were opened, candy eaten, and visiting done including a playdate with second cousins Ethan, Simon and Grace. Owen and Nora got a lot of extra time with Uncle Dave and Aunt Kara and eventually Uncle Steve and Aunt Becky made it along with cousins Olivia, Maura & Sam.

 

 

(click here to see all the pictures)

Sledding in Iowa

Our original travel plans this year were drive from DC to Katherine and Lee's house in Cleveland on Saturday December 19, and to drive on to Iowa the next day. However, on Friday morning we woke up to a forecast that called for up to two feet of snow to fall in DC starting that night, so we amended our plans, quickly packed the car, and hit the road on Friday afternoon to beat the snow. While this was clearly the right decision from a travel perspective, it saddened us (well Allen and Owen at least) to miss the blizzard '09. According to our neighbors (who thought they were getting a great deal when we told them they could use our house for their family who were coming into town, but ended up having an extra house to shovel out) 18" of snow fell in our neighborhood. It surely would have been great fun to play with Owen in the deep deep snow, but as a consolation prize, we did get about six inches of snow in Iowa, and went sledding at the pond with cousin Kent, and later in Iowa City with Olivia, Maura, and Sam. All and all, Owen's first real sledding adventure was a big success.

Christmas Miracles

It was a momentous day: Nora rolled over for the first time and Owen had his first concert. Guess which one was captured on film (although in our defense, Owen's was scheduled weeks ago whereas Nora's was spur of the moment)?

 

Classroom 9 sang, "Jingle Bells," "Happy Kwanza," and "Spin the Dreidel." It was short and sweet, and I'm sure there will be many more to come, but this first concert of his was pretty cute.

1000! & the Potty Train

We just changed Nora's 1,000th diaper! She reached 1,000 diapers a full 45 days faster than her big brother. Supposedly girls potty train earlier than boys, so Nora might still have a chance of staying under Owen's lifetime total. Speaking of which, Owen is over 7,000 diapers now (7,386 to be exact), but I don't think he'll reach 8,000. He likes to say that he's, "on the potty train," and he really is doing a great job with what we like to think is the more critical half of the engine. In the last 48 days he has only had 4 accidents pooping in his pull-up! He is quite proud to tell us that, "we don't poop in our pull-ups, we only poops in the potty." On the other hand, he also likes to say, "we can pee in our pull-ups, or in the potty." With the drive to Iowa and back coming up later this month, we're not in a huge rush to get him out of his pull-ups, but after we're back, it'll be time for the potty train to really leave the station.

Trains & Trees

 

We made our annual trip to the U.S. Botanic Garden on Sunday to see the Holiday Trains, and I have a feeling Owen is going to be watching this movie a lot in the next few months ;-) If a trip to see the trains wasn't enough, we also met up with the Brad & Marlo and Andrew & Claire and their families for the Christmas tree lighting in the Brown's neighborhood. It was a bit too dark for pictures (at least with tired kids on our shoulders), but the tree was beautiful and the cookies were delicious. Not bad for a cold December day. 

Thanksgiving 2009

A little bit of catching up to do in this post. First of all, we had a lovely, traditional Thanksgiving at Nancy & Danny's house this year. Nancy made her famous mole gravy, and Elaine baked her fabulous pumpkin pie. Katherine & Lee were in town, and Adrienne came up as well. Danny built a gigantic dining room table to accommodate the masses, while Owen and Makayla were relegated to their own, private kids table. Some traditions weren't quite the same, for Katherine, Adrienne, and Christopher the drinks weren't flowing quite as freely as in years past. They are getting older after all, or maybe it was just the marathon Katherine and Adrienne had just run in Richmond, or perhaps it was Nancy's twin brother taking up the slack (the less said about this photo the better ;-). Despite the lack of alcohol, Owen was sure to maintain one Thanksgiving tradition, as half way through dinner he took off his shirt and ran around the house shouting, "naked boy!" Yes, a wonderful time was had by all.

The next day, despite a freak hail storm, we ventured out to Eastern Market to pick out our Christmas tree, and then went up to Silver Spring for dinner at Mom mom's house with aunt Katherine & uncle L and aunt Jen. Owen and Makayla had a great time playing together, and we all stuffed ourselves with a lovely dinner for the second night in a row.

To complete our Thanksgiving weekend, on Saturday we took advantage of sunny skies and relatively warm temperatures for a trip to the zoo with the Hyatts. Nabeel and Megan were in town with Kaden and Liam, and it is always wonderful to see such great friends. Owen and Kaden had a blast looking at all the animals (they even learned a thing or two about giant tortoise mating habits), and Kaden even tried to teach Owen how to read a map.

All and all, we had a lot to be thankful for this year, and we celebrated in style.

(click here to see all the pictures)

Where the Wild Things Are

We haven't written up our Thanksgiving blog post yet, but in the meantime we thought we'd put up a few movies for your post-Thanksgiving enjoyment. Both videos are inspired by the previous post, "Soothing the Savage Beasts." First up, Owen may have been a bit shy at the instrument petting zoo, but he was very enthusiastic when Grandpa Don broke out his old trumpet. He wasn't sure what to do at first, but once we showed him the zerbert sound he had to make with his lips, he started trumpeting like a pro.

 

The next movie moves from the instruments to the savage beasts. Here is Owen's dramatic reading of 'Where the Wild Things Are.' (Note that he won't read this book to his baby sister because he thinks it's too scary for her, so he prefers to read 'If You Give a Mouse a Cookie' to her instead.)

Soothing the Savage Beasts

We live a few scant blocks from the Atlas Theater and while we've walked by it numerous times while making our way to various eateries and taverns on the H Street Corridor, we'd never partaken in its cultural offerings. But a few weeks ago, I received a notice that the Capitol City Symphony would be performing a children's concert complete with an instrument petting zoo at Atlas and decided that we should broaden our horizons.

Owen and I were joined for our inaugural concert by Mia & Marlo and Luke, Claire & Andrew (Allen and Brad stayed home with Nora and Ben). Owen was a little freaked out about touching the instruments and wanted to storm the stage instead, but Mia had a blast with the timpani and Luke got some quality time with the strings, before taking their seats.

They sat in rapt attention for the conductor's introduction and Skidmore's percussion piece, and did pretty well through Copland, Strauss and Britten. But Luke decided to get his groove on during Bernstein's Candide Overture and Owen & Mia followed suit. By Shostakovich's Festive Overture the eight year old in the row ahead was giving us dirty looks. We probably should have left before the Strauss finale...

After snapping a few pictures in the lobby, the crew literally ran back to our place to grab Nora and the boys before chicken racing to the Argonaut for some pub fare. Which I understand mirrors Itzhak Perlman's post-concert ritual...

A Room of One's Own

We've been debating when to move Nora to her own room for a while now. Allen has been advocating sooner rather than later since she's been sleeping through the night for over a month now and he'd like his side of the bed back. But I've been a bit reluctant as Nora is our baby and probably the last one we'll ever have sleeping in our room.

However, Nora's a restless sleeper and after a fitful night where she slept seven and a half hours but I was up every hour to check on her, I finally caved and agreed to move her into her own room. She slept 8 hours and 29 minutes the first night, a personal best which she then topped the next night at 9 hours and 1 minute.

It's a little lonely back in our room with her gone, but much more restful.

School Daze

We live in the District of Columbia, a district not generally known for its public education system, except in notorious terms. While we purchased our house in anticipation of Owen's arrival, we didn't anticipate that we'd still be living in DC once his elementary education began, and so no consideration was given to what school was associated with our address.

This appears to have been a terrible oversight.

See, while we love our neighborhood and don't want to leave it for several more years (there's lots of kids Owen & Nora's ages; it's close to H street and its numerous cool bars and restaurants; I can walk to work; we're close to Allen's dad's and a reasonable distance to Allen's mom's...), we're not loving our neighborhood school. Miner Elementary is a lovely campus, but it's on the border between our neighborhood and one which isn't particularly safe, has no diversity, and regularly scores below the district's average test scores (which are significantly below the national average).

This means that when applying to the District's school lottery, we will be out of area for all of our top choices. Moreover, as it is a lottery in the truest sense of the word, there is nothing we can do to improve our chances of getting into one of our preferred schools.

But Owen turns 4 before September 30th 2010 and so the search for a suitable educational institution is on. Last night we went to Peabody's Open House, Thursday is Maury Elementary and next week is Ludlow-Taylor. The week after Thanksgiving we attend the Capitol Hill School Information Night at St. Peters. All of which culminates on January 28th (or there abouts) when we electronically submit our application and hope for the best.

And begin weighing the pros and cons of homeschooling...

Oh, What a Night

Despite living a mile from the action, we spent the Fourth of July at home watching the Capitol concert on TV because I was eight months pregnant and Owen is a bit freaked out by fireworks. At some point during the concert, the cast of "Jersey Boys" started singing and I turned to Allen and made some comment -- the nature of which is a source of debate. I maintain that I conveyed that we could skip that show when it was in town. Allen states that I actually insisted we should go and while he was surprised by my new found love of the falsetto, since I regularly sang "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" to Owen when he was an infant, it wasn't completely ridiculous that I would want to see the Frankie Valli story live and in person. So Allen very lovingly purchased tickets to the musical as a "thank you for carrying my child for nine months" present to a less than enthusiastic me, and convinced Mom Mom to babysit.

When Mom Mom signed up to babysit two kids under the age of four, she didn't realize that she would be just getting back from a business trip to Austin that afternoon and that Grandpa Don would be in Florida that weekend, leaving her outnumbered and weary when she arrived at our place. We have to hand it to her though, she really rose to the challenge. While Owen was pretty self sufficient (he wouldn't let Mom Mom go upstairs with him at bedtime and actually gave her a kiss through his closed gate before putting himself to bed), Nora refused to go to sleep and so Mom Mom was "on" for pretty much the entire 4 1/2 hours we were gone. Fortunately, Nora spent most of the time smiling and cooing at her grandmother, which made the evening easier to bear.

As for us, we learned that "Jersey speak" involves a lot of swearing, that Frankie Valli has a lot of fans over 50, and that maybe I shouldn't be so catty around my husband.

Storytime

Halloween 2009

I've always found Halloween to be stressful, which I attribute to my Des Moines roots. Des Moines has always been a town that believes in quid quo pro and so while most municipalities feel that donning a costume and the implicit threat of tire slashing is sufficient to warrant candy on Trick-or-Treat night, Des Moines insists that in addition, young children tell a joke at each home. From an economics standpoint, this makes no sense as the jokes tend to be bad, the telling painful and the process time-consuming which means ending the practice would be a Pareto improvement. However, the custom persists which meant I spent the weeks prior to Halloween studying my brothers' Boys' Life magazine to cull some suitable joke which was invariably appropriated by my best friend by the third house of the night, forcing me to resort to, "What's big, red, and eats rocks?" (A big, red, rock eater).

This year was going to be easy, however. Owen had informed us in September that he wanted to be a lion and I ordered a costume right away, we inherited a pumpkin costume for Nora from a neighbor and Allen and I decided to recycle our costumes from last year (as he'd spent hours on his which wasn't properly appreciated at the time, and with a new baby and the Cap-and-Trade bills, didn't have time to create a new one). The plan was to attend the Brown's annual Halloween blowout, do a little trick-or-treating there, and then swing by Grandpa Fawcett and Claudine's for Owen to help hand out candy.

Only Owen's costume was too small and the day was too warm for Nora to wear hers. Owen didn't nap and interrupted Nora's while practicing his roaring. It started raining. And after three hours of playing at the Browns, Owen announced he didn't want to go trick or treating, he wanted to go home.

While perfectly understandable given the inclimate weather and the absence of a nap, we'd made promises and we were going to keep them, by damn. So we drove back to Capitol Hill with both kids asleep in the car, looked for a parking place near Grandpa Fawcett's and when one did not become available, drove home, parked illegally, made a very grumpy Owen don his costume again, and had Allen push him in the stroller (with its rain cover) while I carried Nora (with an umbrella) to East Capitol street.

There Owen sulked for a while but ultimately rallied and Nora mostly slept. Allen and I had a much needed drink. We never did any actual trick or treating (though strangers did hand us candy as we walked the mile in the rain), and we didn't get a picture of the kids with their jack-o-lanterns until the day after, but all in all they had a pretty good time.

And no one asked us why the chocolate chip cookie went to the doctor's office. (Because it felt crumby).

(click here to see all the Halloween pictures)

Pumpkin Patch

For his birthday, Uncle Dave and Aunt Kara gave Owen a Peanuts DVD which includes, among other holiday specials, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. It's become Owen's go-to DVD whenever he tires of watching The Sound of Music (because occasionally Owen does tire of it), and so it was clear that for Halloween we needed to find a sincere pumpkin patch to pick out our jack-0-lantarns.



Unfortunately the weather and a fairly packed weekends schedule had conspired to keep us away from Butler's Orchard until this past Sunday when none of our friends could join us. Owen, apparently inspired by the Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown special, picked out a particularly sickly looking specimen (Allen eventually nixed in favor of some more robust gourds --clearly he needs a few more viewings of said Christmas special) and carried it around with him while Nora slept the morning away. After some caramel apples, we headed home for the carving and obligatory "You didn't tell me you were going to kill it!" outburst. It was pretty good day and Nora even woke up for a brief photo-op.

(click here to see all the pictures)

And so it goes...

Owen's interest in his baby sister has been fairly limited -- specifically to when someone asks how he likes being a big brother or when a present is involved. This hasn't been an altogether bad thing as it's limited the number of times Nora's life has been in immediate peril to one (it involved our leaving her in the high chair while fixing breakfast and Owen almost tipping said chair over trying to get a better view). We feel particularly fortunate in that Owen's latest past-time involves acting out various scenes from "The Sound of Music." We're less concerned with his spinning on a pretend mountain top and singing "So Long, Farewell" than searching for the children in the abbey and saying he's going to kill them (somehow the message our son took from this classic is, "Pretending to be a Nazis is fun!" Fortunately, he's now moved on to telling us that Rolf made bad choices and that we don't like Nazis).

But lately, Owen's been a bit more protective of Nora -- making sure his daycare friends don't touch her, letting us know if she's asleep in her carseat while we're driving somewhere, giving the odd kiss. On Saturday he even helped give her a bath before the neighborhood block party so she would look extra pretty while meeting our neighbors.

The brotherly love was short lived, however. After a well-meaning but horribly misguided neighbor gave all the small children on the street nerf guns, Owen and his friend Jalen decided to use Nora for target practice (thankfully they both have very poor aim). I found myself uttering a phrase I never thought I'd have to say to my son, "Please don't shoot the baby."

The gun has mysteriously vanished (thanks to Daddy), but given the Supreme Court's overturning of the DC handgun ban, we're now practicing constant vigilance in our household.