Sunny Cove

Tristram misses the beach so much that he will sit down in a patch of loose dirt and pretend that it's sand. He often does so next to our neighbor's porch while I'm gardening here. I've got to get that kid back to the beach.

He is still busy teaching himself to swim. He's decided he wants to learn to go underwater, and Jonathan took him to pick out a pair of goggles yesterday. He picked Iron Man goggles. Jonathan is getting really sick of the pool, and really tan.

Tristram's big treat yesterday, besides the library and the goggles, was meeting a vampire hunter. A friend of mine down the hall has a poster of himself as a vampire hunter next to his door. Tristram asked what it was, and we explained, and he made up an extended narrative about how the vampire hunter follows vampire tracks through the forest and the snow and then catches the vampires and eats them. Rick was willing to play along (though he was unable to produce an actual vampire despite the many requests to see one), so Tristram got to hear all about vampire hunting. Also, he got to watch some juggling and play with a dart gun and a light saber and practice swordfighting with real swords. Real by two-year-old standards, anyway. And he got invited to a play in September. He is utterly convinced that Mommy's office is the funnest place in the world. Just wait till I move to my new office next to the glowing-eyed dragon.

My other big highlight was seeing a one-day-old baby at lunch. Of course I realize that it was almost certainly more than one day old, but it was very young. It still had the scrunchy-pudgy newborn alien face, and it could only lift its head for about three seconds, and then not quite all the way. Given that Tristram first lifted and turned his head to look for the source of a noise when the nurse tested his hearing in the c-section room (she jumped and screamed a little when he did, so I guess it's not usual), and lifted it for ten seconds an hour after birth (which freaked out another nurse), that degree of head lifting seems to me like irrefutable evidence of a baby's being one day old.

Despite its being at the lowest possible level of head-lifting, which probably would have worried me had anyone told me how old it actually was, it was extremely cute. Jonathan reminded me that it shits itself constantly, pukes a lot, pees its pants about eleven times a day, and cries all the time because it's a black hole of need and can't talk, but it wasn't crying when I saw it. Just being cute. Tristram needs a little brother or sister. But not quite yet.

Tristram's First Beach Day

At Sunny Cove, when we got back last June. Now there's nothing resembling a beach within about 1000 miles. Sigh.

Tristram asked me for truffles last night, which he has not done for weeks now. Jonathan took that to mean that he was very tired, and he did indeed aver, "I love going to bed!" after we read his stories. Perhaps all the swimming is adding up. He is now very excited that he and Jonathan are driving me to work today, and he says he wants to go on Saturday to "see a new building." That works out well for me, since the writers are having a work Saturday this week.

Also--I got a second garden plot! It's late to be starting, but they just parceled out the remaining unused plots, so now I get to start a second one. We'll see how it goes; I'd probably better choose things that grow fast this late in the season. Add that to the list for tomorrow.


And then, tomorrow night, my quest to be made an honorary gay man in a third city begins. I doubt the dance clubs here are quite like they are in West Hollywood, but presumably still a lot of fun.

Stairmaster

T. going up the famous stairs at my grandma's house. Now he charges up and down stairs all on his own. He's determined to do it like a grown-up, too, so he does one foot on each step even though for him that means he has to lift his knees almost to his chest.

He loves the capitol building here in town for all the stairs. When we took him to Farmer's Market a couple of weeks ago, he decided the funnest thing to do would be to go inside the neat building. I am very gratified that he's retained that as a primary recreational goal from living his early toddlerhood in Paris. He liked the stairs then, too, especially the steps in the Louvre's sculpture court. Anyway, the capitol is no Invalides or Sacre Coeur, but it's not bad. And it's excellent for wearing out a kid who likes to go up and down stairs.

Last weekend was a good father's day, and thanks to everyone who sent their greetings to Jonathan. Especially thanks to Kelly for babysitting so I could take Jonathan out for the night.

This week was rougher; on Monday at staff meeting they closed with a story (which was actually very sweet and inspiring) about a kid who was born with severely cystic kidneys. Since the cystic kidneys were how we first found out something was wrong with Elissa, I got reminded very intensely at a moment when I was not prepared for it at all, and spent a lot of the afternoon crying. The social worker warned us before we even left the hospital that that would happen for the rest of our lives, and I suppose it helps some to know that that's to be expected every so often, but it's not a fun way to spend your afternoon.

The rest of the week has been better, and this weekend should be good: Work Saturday morning, dancing Saturday night, Chicago Sunday. Tristram desperately wants to go to Sea World to see the manatees and walruses, so as a compromise we're taking him to the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. They have none of the above, but they have lots of other stuff he likes. Sometimes I feel really guilty for taking that kid away from California.

Tristram and the Duck

When we got back to CA, he fell in love with this duck in my grandmother's backyard. If you talk to him about her (my grandmother, not the duck), he still might ask you where the duck is.

We got a rare two days in a row of sun this week, and I did indeed make it back out to my garden. I expect to be eating some chard in about two more weeks; I was also gratified to see that the tomatoes are setting flowers very nicely. Today it's rainy again.

Today I am tired again, too. Wednesday night I couldn't sleep for no good reason; last night I stayed up too late to watch the game. For a long time it looked that was going to be a terrible allotment of resources, but in the last quarter it turned out to be worth seeing. Suffice to say that phonics won. Nonetheless, I will be very sad if this whole not-sleeping-enough thing throws a wrench into tonight's plans, which also involve staying out past my bedtime. Don't be surprised if I'm asleep by 9:30 on Saturday night.

Tristram's First Swim

Is about to happen in this picture. It was at our hotel in Santa Cruz right after we got back from France. Like, the day after.

Now he's had many swims, and in fact demands at least one a day, regardless of weather. He is also really getting into T-ball (thanks, GrandRobyn and GrandDan), though he's not very goal-oriented about it yet. Jonathan estimates he can keep focused on a goal for approximately twelve seconds. This is sometimes frustrating.

He's doing very well with his swimming. He ditched the inner tube after about a day, and he's mostly ditched his shark floaty raft. He always wants to take it to the pool, but usually refuses to allow it into the water. He wears one of those life-jackety swim vests they make for toddlers now, and he does a pretty good dog paddle. Some of the other kids in our complex are impressed that he can swim better than they can. Also, some of them are convinced that he's four.

My plan for the day:
1. Go to work.
2. Go to the work garden to keep up on weeding. We've had so much rain I haven't been out much lately, but things are growing like mad. Looks like my garden problem so far is that too many of my seeds are sprouting, and not enough of my transplants died (so far, none).
3. Go to the grocery store for supplies. Game-watching supplies, specifically.
4. Watch game seven. Really that's Jonathan's plan, but I'm joining in. Now that it's going to seven games, I'm finally getting invested in it. I don't really care if the Lakers win, but I definitely want Boston to lose. No matter what happens, the Celtics will never win the knowing-how-to-pronounce-your-own-name trophy.

High Chair Kiss

Tristram got his first cat scratch yesterday. Not from our cats; they still consider him sacrosanct. From a cat named Butterscotch he met when we went to the post-marathon grill party hosted by some neighbors Jonathan met in the park. And not really a scratch, either; the cat unsheathed his claws and swatted Tristram, but there's not a mark on him.

Nonetheless, he was stunned, much like someone from back East experiencing his first earthquake (if he'd never heard of earthquakes). He stretched his arm out in front of him and walked over to me--slowly, because he was so dazed--crying, "What did that cat do to me?" I explained that cats have to use their claws to say "stop it" because they can't talk, and then he went right back over and started trying to play ball with the cat again. Eventually the cat just left.

On the whole I consider it a very salutary experience, and I was pleased that I refrained from quoting Christopher Smart's "My Cat Jeoffry" at him ("He is an instrument for the children to learn benevolence upon").

Today is for altering my next sewing pattern so it will fit, before I have to return my precious, precious library copy of Fit for Real People. It's also for weeding one of the big garden beds at the complex, since my garden is a big hit and I'm now the garden volunteer in charge of the rock & hosta gardens, and for taking Tristram to the pool for his first swimming venture of the year. And probably for taking him to Olbrich again, since we got there so late on Saturday that the inside garden with the fish was closed and he cried his poor heart out.

The Famous Skirt

My skirt! The first thing I ever knit! Here I am wearing it in the Parc de Bois Preau, right by the statue of Josephine. It's to my left. Stage left, that is--it's to MY right. Behind me, unfortunately, is the fence around the lower pond, which was fenced off while they were cleaning out a very large accumulation of leaves and other parkly debris. We used to walk there for a picnic lunch about once a week last spring. I miss Rueil-Malmaison a lot. I bet Josephine's roses are amazing right now. And I bet the Seine is still gorgeous, and the English translations at the local history museum in the old Mairie are still hilarious, and the farm up by the old fort is full of baby goats...

Anyway, I need to get this picture up on Ravelry. I've been promising for ages. I no longer have the skirt; it got stolen when our mover's van got broken into on our way out to Madison. I was inordinately proud of that skirt, but looking at the picture I miss France a lot more.

Work is going well, and Tristram is great. He's finally gotten to the point where he can play by himself for a while--he talks to his toys, he makes them interact, he makes up long stories about what they're doing. Now, every day, I'm thinking Yes! This is what I had in mind! Babies are very cute, but not very fun. Toddlers are awesome. He is making me want another. Till now, I wasn't quite sure. But this I've got to do again.

Tristram is a complete daddy's boy now, too. Last night Jonathan went out to a nerdcore show, and Tristram sobbed like his heart was broken. He couldn't believe that Daddy went out and left him behind. He's used to having me go to work, and it's predictable enough that he doesn't really mind. But Daddy leaving? His world collapsed for a minute there.

On another note, we've now visited all the botanical gardens in Madison. Olbrich ranks first. The arboretum is second--it's so big and varied that just in my own opinion it ties Olbrich, but Tristram doesn't have as much fun there. He likes the landscaping with clear paths and hidden treats around corners and lots of different levels. Allen Centennial garden is also nice, but very small, and part of it is getting renovated right now. I intend to go back there in a couple of weeks when the peonies start blooming.

Mother's Day

It's a little maddening that the more there is going on to blog about, the less likely I am to blog, precisely because interesting things are going on. Since the last post we had a great visit from my parents. Tristram adores them and is still asking where they are, and we had lots of fun seeing them too. We took them to the botanical garden, the next-door park, and for a tour of Epic. They were feeling generous, so we got early mother's and father's day presents, which means that now I have a garden outside the door here and Jonathan has a bike.
The garden is quite nice--a mix of Wisconsin natives, things that aren't native but should do well here, and disposables. Sorry, annuals. I resigned myself to using tender perennials as annuals when I saw that here they're just marked as annuals--which is silly, granted, but they're pretty and they'll work well to fill in space while other plants are growing to their proper size to fill the bed. All the better that then they'll be gone instead of competing for space. The higlight--which should last--is my tree peony.
We also had a good mother's day this weekend. We went with four friends to the New Glarus brewery, which is of course in New Glarus. It's basically the Wisconsin version of Soquel Vineyards. It doesn't look out to the ocean, of course, but it is on top of a hill with a great view. It's beautiful, we had fun, Tristram chased a killdeer who had made the very foolhardy decision to nest in the mulch between the parking lot and the lawn...The comparison to Soquel, though, has me wondering: Why don't brewers ever grow their own hops? You go to many wineries, you expect to see the grapes. Not all the grapes; then their wines would be kind of boring, but some of the actual grapes. You never see breweries overlooking fields of hops. I will grant breweries equal cultural and artisanal status with wineries when they start cultivating their own hops and showing me how they grow them on site instead of just showing me rooms full of machinery.
That said, I recommend going to New Glarus quite a lot. We might head back out there soon for miniature golf, and if you are visiting you should go to the brewery.

Spaghetti Face

He still loves pasta, but he's gotten a lot better at eating it. It's still messy, but his forehead stays out of the action. Now the drill is that, after he eats something messy, he has to run into the bathroom with his hands held up above his head so we can wash them before he touches anything. Kid needs a stepstool that fits him, though, so he can reach the sink on his own!

Thanks to GrandRobyn and GrandDan, he has two new favorite things. One is his fishing pole. He's been seeing all the people fishing in the river & lake, and he's taken to picking up sticks, dipping them in the water, and saying that he's fishing for hyneria. They got him a "real" fishing pole, with a real, sinker, and everything--just no hook. He loves it. He will stand at the edge of the lake, cast (which for him just means dropping the sinker, but no matter), pull it back in and say he's caught a fish for hours. He gets so excited he starts whispering, "I'm a fishermannnn!" We generally have to help with the reeling, but he's getting the hang of it. Also, it's a good chance for me to watch the local muskrats swim around.

The tricycle, though, is the real prize. He's too old for a stroller, but he can't walk as far as we can, and he's not very goal-oriented in his travels. We put the tricycle together on Sunday, and it's a good thing it has a push-handle for us because he's still trying to figure out this pedaling business. But since then, they've had it out for at least three hours every day. They make it from our place to James Madison Park, which is about a mile and a quarter to a mile and a half, depending if you go the prettier way or the faster, bigger-roaded way. This might be the trick to get him out to the Farmers's Market with us. Every night when I get home, he points out his tricycle to me outside the back door. Best present ever!

The big upcoming excitement is that GrandBob and GrandToni come into town this weekend. They'll fly into Chicago and drive from there, which is a very clever move on their part. They are going to flip when they see how much bigger and more advanced Tristram is than when they last saw him in December. If last night is any indication, he is going to ask them to find him a video on YouTube of a snake giving birth to live young.

Stroller Laugh

No more stroller for us! If we were to buy another, we often said, knowing how much we were going to use it, we'd spring for some of the extra features: more all-terrain-friendly wheels, adjustable-height handlebars for the sake of Jonathan's back...But then again, it got extremely heavy use for exactly one year and hasn't been touched since.

I am frustrated today. While the soil here is very bit as good as I've said, apparently it will do me no good since you can't get a single plant worth having anywhere in the state. I went to the nursery again, the one that is supposed to be the good one and that fortunately is close to us. I'd even looked at their list of the plants they supposedly carry for 2010, and were it true, they would indeed have excellent selection. However, they should start calling it their Ha-Ha Tricked You List instead of their Plant List. What they have is in robust health, but the selection is just awful. What's most infuriating about it is that it's not remotely tied to the region--if they had limited selection because they carried only zone-appropriate plants, I'd be fine with that. I'd be enthusiastic, even.

But no. They have any kind of pelargonium you want--so many that they're doing a weird sort of trickery by pretending that some of them are pelargoniums and others are various types of geraniums. More lies. Not a geranium in the bunch, though that's the one thing I went to get, and though every last pelargonium in the place is guaranteed to die in this zone. I don't get it. If you want to grow annuals, fine! Good! Lots of them self-seed well, and they can be very self-sufficient and worthy of garden space across generations. Plus, then you get the interesting sports they breed just for you. But growing perennials as annuals? That's just obscenely stupid, as far as I can tell. Why not grow perennials that are actually suitable for where you chose to live? Of which there are plenty, if nurseries would only have the courtesy to sell them.

Walls and walls of pelargonium, vervain, and petunia. Plenty of ipomeas and coleus and caladiums. Not a single plant worth its space in an outdoor Wisconsin garden.

Curses!

Something He Doesn't Do Anymore

Things I don't do enough when I stay up too late:

Sleep
Blog
Work out
Knit & sew
Cook
Play with Tristram
Stay awake during meetings


What do I instead? When I stay up too late, sadly, it's usually because I'm finishing a movie when I ought to go to bed. I've been doing a lot of that lately. I should stop.

Tristram has made great strides in his cat-befriending efforts. He still can't restrain himself from chasing them if he sees one in the distance, but now if he is sitting quietly on the couch--and it does happen once in a while--I can bring one over and hold the cat for him to pet, and he will be very gentle. They are starting to think that maybe he doesn't only bring terror and destruction to their world. He is starting to think that they are "my cat-friends" and they are "soft and furry and tickly" and that "Seker is a really nice cat. He is my favorite pet." That's right--Sekerdycat is the one to warm up to Tristram. Belial is still more inclined to hide. I think it's because, while he has all kinds of GAD, Seker is by far the smarter cat and knows on which side his bread is buttered. He rubs himself in Tristram's clothes every day, so he's clearly decided that winning Tristram's favor will gain him status in the house. It's not a bad plan.

Dress-Up Handymom

This week is busy at work; we are reviewing notes to get ready for the next phase of development. It's hard to believe that a couple of months ago I was complaining on here about not having enough to do while I waited for the final training projects to be graded. I like it much better with slightly more than I can finish than with not quite enough to keep me occupied. They will keep me busy now that I am now certified in EpicCare Ambulatory, EpicCare Link, EpicWeb, and MyChart. Go me! The last three are relatively small applications, but they still look very nice on my office wall. I got the hammer and nails from the mailroom this morning and climbed up on my desk barefoot, velvet dress and all, to put nails in and hang them up. That's one of the benefits of not having a dress code. Sure, most people take it to mean "casual dress code," but I'm just as entitled to wear my evening dresses--which is especially fun when there's hammering to be done.

I am contemplating what to plant in my garden plot at work. A few kinds of tomatoes, certainly. Jonathan would like me to plant the onions that have sprouted in our kitchen because we bought a slightly bigger bag than we got through in time. I am excited about chard, and I think I want some lemon cucumbers, too. And maybe bok choy, since I often crave it. But I think I might also plant myself some summer flowers in the garden so I can have my own at-work cutting garden and get a fresh bouquet in my office every week.

It was finally hot enough today that Tristram got a little heat rash on his belly. He asked Jonathan plaintively many times if he could take his clothes off in the park. He'll adjust again, just like he did last spring & summer, but I've spent so much of my life in the heat that it's hard to remember he's spent most of his in cold climates. His skin does not like sweat one bit. He also found a new sign at the park and learned the names of many fish--muskie that we never eat, sun perch, black perch, blue catfish...

Short Hair on T. Grey = Old PIcture

Recent gems:
4/13/10, picking up a letter and "reading" it: Dear Tristram, A monster sent you this to be your friend in a letter.

4/10/10, a poem of apology for hurting a spider:
I am sorry, spider.
No! Sorry.
Cheese for the spider
Bats for the spider
and clothes for the spider
and monsters
and daddies for the spider
and monsters like this
and paper like this.
I would like the spider to see divers.
All done.

Smiling Picture, Cranky Post

Remember how I didn't let Jonathan get an iPhone because it was only AT&T, and they stole about $300 from us by promising us a refund when we showed proof we'd canceled our phones because we moved overseas, and then they acknowledged receipt and promised the refund, and then no power on heaven or earth could ever induce them to actually cough it up?

Really he just wanted an iPhone, but he tried to turn that into an argument for going back to AT&T in hopes of getting the refund. I said that getting ripped off by a company is quite the opposite of a reason to sign up with them again, especially when their service isn't so hot to begin with.

Well, I stand by that assessment, and Verizon continues to have much better signal-getting-service. But check it out: In January, I switched our policy to my name to take advantage of my employee discount. 15% off--hooray! Then, since I was used to bills coming in Jonathan's name and his taking care of them, I didn't notice that they stopped showing up. Last Thursday he got a call saying his policy was about to be canceled for nonpayment. We scheduled a bank transfer payment for the earliest possible day (today), and I called to find out what happened. Turned out when they switched it to my name, they also switched it to my old address and started sending our bills to Irvine. I got them to add his name to the account so he could call on his own behalf in the future, and to waive the late fee since they screwed up the address, and to resend the bill--but today, his phone stopped taking calls or texts and won't let him send anything out. Mine, for some reason, still works perfectly.

All I can say is, they are making a really good case for him getting his iPhone one of these days. Not good enough, but getting extremely close.

Eat It!

This picture is a full year old. We finally found a cord that works to download computers from the French camera, and we got quite a trove. The comparison is interesting--it's unbelievable how different Tristram is now, but I'd also forgotten how much he was already doing. But this one? Still the same. Only now the thing he's shoving into one's mouth is much more likely to be food than blocks.

Today was the first nice day in a week or so, and it was really nice. Tristram and I planted a hosta (a cheapie from the grocery store) and a packet of alyssum seeds. The soil here is unbelievable! I'm not even talking about gardened-up soil, like I'll have at work when our plots there open up next month. This is apartment courtyard soil, never rehabilitated since the building crews destroyed it, as builders always do when putting in a building. No clay--it's practically loam, and it's beautifully dark and crumbly and full of earthworms. Plus, it actually rains here, which bodes well for plants.

That only took about five minutes. Then we went to the zoo, which is high on our regular list of free Tristramtainment for the weekends. We saw just about every animal there, though the tiger was the only one he wanted to climb in with so he could pet it. We said no.

There was somewhat of a meltdown at the playground, which had never been open on any of our previous trips. The zoo was packed today, since it was one of the first really beautiful, warm, spring days, and the playground was really, really full of big kids and babies so small and slow that their parents were more or less stopped two abreast behind them on the stairs & bridges--which meant that a two-year-old big enough to slip through their legs was in short order off and out of sight and nearly irretrievable, which never leads to good things. I said he couldn't go on one climbing section where I couldn't follow, and he lost it. We also said no carousel today, since there was no chance he'd have waited through the line. We ended up promising that he and Daddy could have the car tomorrow so he can play on the playground and ride the carousel when it's not so crowded. He said his favorite animal was the meerkats, but he's mostly talking about the giraffes--when we got home, fed him, and put him down for nap, the first thing he said when he woke up was, "I want to go to the giraffe zoo!"

We have a one-zoo-trip-a-day, at most, rule, so instead we took him to the park. He threw a lot of rocks, and found roly-polies, and chased ducks, and swung, and used all the equipment pretty thoroughly, and played with other kids. We seem to be making friends with a family that has a one-year-old and another due later this month. Then he bit his tongue and insisted that I kiss it, and then he started jumping to scare ducks again, but was tired enough that he very nearly pitched face-first into the pond. So we took him to the ice cream shop, where he had his first milkshake and all but refused to let the straw leave his lips till the whole thing was gone. Then we came home and made vegetable soup, and he announced that I was tasty and spent ten minutes licking my face and chewing my hair.

And that was our Sunday. His list of things he wants to do tomorrow: Read his pop-up books. Read every issue of Babybug. Watch a movie about orcs. Go to the giraffe zoo. Ride the carousel. Go to the park. Play with Charlotte. Go on every slide. Go to another park. Throw rocks. Talk to a giant cat friend. Eat carrots. Find pine cones. Scare ducks. Sneak up on rabbits. Run in circles. Come to Mommy's work to eat an apple, climb on the wall with Humpty Dumpty, and visit the old dinosaur (we're not totally sure which one that is).

Jonathan's going to get worn out.

Monster Pajamas

What a weekend. Saturday began at 6:30 am with some heart-rending sobs and a cry of "Please help me! I'm having an accident!" Which was a little puzzling, given that we're pretty well agreed two years old is too early to expect night-time dryness and put him to sleep in pull-ups. Turns out that one (which was the last of the smaller size anyway) didn't do the job and he'd woken himself up leaking onto his pants & shirt & sheets. So I though, well, I can't tell him to go back to bed if his bed his wet.

I got him up, and took him to the potty and put him in dry clothes, and reassured him that he did everything just like he was supposed to and it wasn't his fault, and read a book to get him settled & happy again, and then had him help me change the bed and start a load of laundry so he could see that one just cleans it up when there's a mess. Our washing machine takes a long time to run, so Jonathan and I had just had some food and were sipping our coffee, Jonathan in Tristram's room and me in the living room, when the cats suddenly ran in panic and we heard a bizarrely loud noise (in that order--they hear faster than we do, apparently). I looked over and saw something coming out of the wall just above the washing machine that I couldn't remotely interpret until I realized that the room was filling with steam and there was a quickly spreading puddle on the floor. Strange how one doesn't recognize water out of context (like, erupting from the wall) until one sees a puddle.

In the time it took me to turn my head, shout, "We have a a water emergency!", and look back toward the kitchen, the puddle had spread about six feet from the fridge to the front door. Jonathan estimated it at about 40 gallons a minute.

A frantic scramble ensued, which involved neither of us knowing the emergency maintenance number offhand, Information's listed number for our complex being no longer in service, some frantic throwing of towels at the floor (which was about as effective as throwing towels into a pool), desperate attempts to get Tristram dressed to go outside, desperate attempts to turn the water off...I did get T. Grey out to the front door where the phone numbers are posted and called, only to find a several-step click-through menu with the slowest message narration I've ever heard.

Long story short, the hot water hose for our washer exploded. Jonathan did manage to turn it off before maintenance called back, by shutting off the main breaker so the pump stopped running. Amazingly, all we lost was a bag of flour, a bag of sugar, and a bag of rice. We still have the industrial fan going to dry the carpet, both in our apartment and in the hall outside. Oh, and it soaked through to the basement below us enough that the carpet by the elevator down there is probably ruined too. But it was quite a start to the morning--and add to the basic adrenaline rush and crash of a scalding water explosion the fun of rushing a two-year-old out the door and trying to make him understand that it's important to get where you're going ASAP, and then the fun of keeping him out for three hours so maintenance can work while yourself have not yet showered, had coffee, or even brushed your hair & teeth. I think I may have been mistaken for a homeless person, especially given that I was wearing my rattiest around-the-house sweats.

Tristram had a great day, though. There was a puddle inside the house to jump in, then Mommy got him breakfast at the cookie shop, then he played in the park for two whole hours, then we took him to get takeout Chinese and a root beer float because we weren't up to cooking. Between the mess and the adrenaline crash, we would probably have cancelled our plans to have work friends over for games and root beer floats, but it was actually the best thing for me that we did have a fun night.

Today, in contrast, was pretty idyllic. We went to the botanical garden this morning, and saw all the buds on the trees and bulbs coming up from the ground, so I am quite content that Tristram says he wants to go there every weekend. Grass actually comes out from under the snow already growing, I've discovered. Stays green and springs right back into action.

We went to the park for a couple of hours this afternoon, too. I've been making noise about moving closer to work, because what's usually a half-hour commute gets really unpleasant when there's much snow overnight, but now I'm remembering why I was so gung-ho to live next to the lake and the park.

The plan for tonight is to finish my coat. I've got it seamed, so I just need to do the edging with button loops and then decide if I'm going to add a high collar or leave it low. And then, of course, get the buttons and put them on.

Dragon and Mothra

So, we kept the hat from his dragon costume for playing dress-up. He also is a big fan of the crowns Jonathan makes him out of paper bags and the robot hats he makes him out of cardboard boxes.

This whole working full time thing is not so helpful with the blogging--many days I feel like I would just be talking about work, and that would be either inappropriate or just boring for everyone. Or both. But now that Olympics are over, I may get back into it a little better...

Tristram is getting much better used to the snow now. It's clearly almost spring here, since temperatures are warming up a lot and the snow is starting to melt, and now T. Grey has finally gotten to the point where he'll walk over to the park and have fun. Yesterday he saw some kids playing outside our window, and he wanted to go play too. They were too big, and gone by the time we got him dressed, but it bodes well for the rest of the year. Instead we walked up to the ice cream shop and had a snowball fight on the way back. His first one, and mine too! When he was getting ready for bed he told me it was his favorite part of the day.

He also is suddenly able to sit through much longer books. He had gotten bored with his old books and was much more interested in TV; now he's leveled up and can read new books that were too long before, so he doesn't care about TV at all and he wants to read all the time. Well, read or make forts or be swung around by the ankles.

It also is nice for me to see how much closer Jonathan and Tristram are now that Jonathan's the one taking care of him all day. They always had fun together, but I used to be clearly the favorite parent. Now I think Jonathan may be edging me out--but I'm still in charge of bath and bedtime, so hopefully I won't fall too far in his estimation.

I'm Really Sad

That's what Tristram says when he strikes this pose. By "sad," though, he mainly seems to mean bored. In the last couple of weeks, he's dropped that one; now the emotion of choice that he's exploring is fear. He loves to pretend to be scared of things, and in the last few days has proclaimed everything from a squirrel to our refrigerator to be a "really scary monster."

Today is an exciting day for me--I get to start wearing contacts instead of glasses again! My lenses got stolen in the theft on the move out here, and I couldn't get an optometry appointment till today. So I will go get air puffed in my eyes and so forth, and come out with a shiny new prescription and corrective lenses that can't be grabbed off my face by grubby toddler hands, won't bounce around in that infuriating manner if I try to run, don't have wire frames that try to freeze my ears when I go outside, and don't get blurred up with eyebrow sweat. In short, life will be more comfortable and convenient, and it might even be the tipping point to get me to start working out again (see the no bouncing vision and no eyebrow-sweat-obscured vision, above).

My other new obsession is that I want a house. Namely, this one. 4-bedroom split-level ranch on 10 acres, close to work, just gorgeous and an unbelievable deal. However good of a deal it may be, though, it's just not something we can afford at the moment. It seems like the steal of a lifetime ($289,000), and like someplace we could actually be happy living for as long as I can foresee--I mean, it achieves Jonathan's goal of no visible neighbors in one fell swoop and puts me close to work, while also giving Tristram both all the woods he could want to play in and membership in one of the best school districts in the Midwest. But alas. I'm trying to take stumbling on this one as a good sign that, when we are ready to buy (i.e., have two incomes), we will be able to find other great deals around here. But I suspect I may still be sighing over this one in twenty years. Oh, and did I mention the built-in floor-to-ceiling bookcases?

In the Fort

Tristram LOVES this fort. Most every night, as soon as I get home, he demands that I play in his fort with him. It's been up so long that it's going through a bit of a lull at the moment, and we might put it away today, but if we do he's guaranteed to be panting to get his fort out again in two or three days.

He has several new feats. He can count to twelve, though he usually chooses not to. He also can recite the alphabet up through F, though he then gets frustrated and shouts, "This is not a really great song!" He also is much closer to making friends with the cats--at least, he and Belial clearly both want to be friends with each other. Sadly, they have largely incompatible ideas of how that is to be accomplished.

I have getting lots of work done, and it is fun to be doing actual work. I finished my certification for one more small application, and am waiting on test results for another small certification. But it is so, so nice to be surrounded by smart, competent, interesting people, and eat good food, and be on a beautiful campus. I'm learning some of the frustrating things about writing based on developers' notes. They vary widely in their completeness and clarity. But then, if they could do their own writing more reliably I probably wouldn't have a job, and so far they are all happy to explain if you call and ask a question. Oh, and how cool is this: We all got a little box of handmade chocolates from a local artisan for Valentine's Day!

At home, I have been knitting a lot. I finished the whole back of my jacket, and am mostly done with one side of the front. That leaves the more complicated side of the front (with the pattern on it) and the sleeves, but big huge yarn is really fun to knit with, because it goes so fast that you feel like you're a superhero of knitting. Plus it's easier not to mess up because you can see every stitch so much more clearly. Pictures, and a design poll, to follow.

Pictures also to follow of my new hair color, which is conceptually based on the patina that develops on old copper. And more pictures of the embroidered vest I finally finished, only to discover that 1) it is more beautiful than I had hoped and 2) it doesn't fit AT ALL. I need to find either someone who wears a size 4 or smaller or a friendly child to give it to.

Birthday Party Crasher

Tristram did love having so many kids, with so many birthdays, close at hand in Tustin. He got alarmingly good at heading straight for a cake and grabbing a handful of frosting before anyone realized it. Fortunately since those kids' parents, by definition, also had kids, they were pretty understanding. On this particular occasion, he was invited to come have a cupcake. I believe that was also on Halloween.

We have finally finished off this year's round of birthday cakes. Or, as Tristram calls them, "ice cream with cake on it." He will have to wait almost eleven long months to get another.

I went shopping! I got authorization from insurance to spend a reasonable amount to replace my stolen wardrobe, so I went with a couple of friends from work. We hit a good sale at one resale store, and the other was Goodwill (which is fantastic in Madison, speaking of gazelles), so I got basically all I could carry and still only spent half the money. For the other half, I got some stuff from my cousin April's Etsy shop, landof1000dresses. Everyone should know that store--she has the most amazing clothes. And, while vintage is always pricey, she charges much more reasonable rates than any other online seller of same-era clothes. Plus the clothes are really high-quality--none of them are "surprise! it's too worn to wear" and none are damaged. I now own the softest shirt I've ever had.

I have also been sewing, now that I have my table & machine set up. It's a really nice machine. It even has a needle threader and to raise the needle to its highest position, all you have to do is press a button. It is much more difficult than I ever realized, though, to sew a lining in smoothly! I think some judicious ironing will help, but still, this first vest is likely to come off the machine looking pretty sloppy. Hopefully, even if my seams are not as smooth as I'd like, I'll at least get the darts in the lining & the facing fabric to line up reasonably well. And now to my pre-work knitting.

Dragon on a Train

It's hard to come up something better than being a dragon WHILE riding a train--but actually his favorite part of that day was petting the milk snake, Leche. He talked about that for at least two months afterward. He has to wait a few years to get a snake of his own, but we are thinking maybe a turtle next year. They're less destructible.

Work is good! I finished my certification project to be allowed into Cumulus (the in-house cloud computing network), so now I can write actual stuff and I doubt I will ever again sit around wondering what I can find to do. Now I have actually start the multiple projects that have been waiting for me. Plus, next Tuesday I get my certification in another small web app, and then I'll finish another certification the following week, so by the time I've been there three months I'll have gotten certification in one big application and two small ones. Good progress.

Home is good, too. We sold our old tv, so we have a lot more space. I got a new sewing table, that soon-to-be-antique one. I'm not sure it will answer for the purpose; turns out it's missing the bottom piece of wood to allow one to put the sewing machine inside it. I'm hoping, instead, that the hole is small enough that I can just put the sewing machine on top of it when the extension piece is folded out and use it like a sewing table. If not, I'll get that desk I put up the link to before, keep this cabinet folded over so it just looks like a pretty antique end table, and consider it a good price on a cute wooden table. But hopefully it'll work--I'll find out at naptime today.

Feeding the Geese

This picture is from Halloween morning, when his GrandBob and I took him to Breakfast with the Beasts at the zoo. He is looking over the wall by the geese pond. Throwing lettuce to the geese is by far his favorite mode of animal feeding, preferable even to holding up slices of turkey for Belial or stealing the goats' food to eat himself.

He had his two-year-old checkup on Tue. He is in the 92nd percentile on height and the 75th on weight. We are pretty sure, though, that he's actually taller. He wouldn't stand straight for the nurse to measure, but we did get a good standing-up-straight measure at 36 inches back in November, and he seems visible taller to us judging by how far his head pokes up above the table.

He did not like his shots; apparently the cry-less days of pure scientific curiosity are over (at least for the time being). He didn't yell about the first one, but he did say "I don't like that" very clearly, and then they gave him three more! So it was more a cry of outrage than of pain. He was so upset he switched from No to No thanks, which is tantrum mode. "No THANKS! No thanks to have a shot!"

Meanwhile work is progressing nicely. I'm waiting for a project to be graded so I can pass that segment of training and be allowed into our cloud computing system, where I can start doing actual work. I'm a little concerned I'll run out of things to do again today, but come February once I'm up and running it should be very busy...it's just the tail end of training, where there aren't many projects left to do, classes are scheduled when they're scheduled, and all of that has to be done before I can really start, that tends to drag. I am still really pleased to be working with so many smart, competent people.

I am a bit perplexed, though, by the tendency to call every "ing" form the gerund form, even when sometimes it's the main verb in a progressive verb phrase and sometimes it's a participial adjective. I mean, imagine if eating in "I am eating" were actually meant to be understood as the gerund form! (Which, Jonathan points out, should properly be called the gerundative.) But that's minor, and I don't see any reason to get bent out of shape over it as long as people use it correctly.

Dragon

Oh, Halloween. He loved that costume. We kept the headpiece and the mittens so he can still play dragon at home. Jonathan has been talking about having me sew him more play costumes, now that I have a sewing machine again.

And a sewing table, soon! I found a borderline antique sewing cabinet in solid wood on eBay for a good price. A couple of shelves, one of those nice folding leaves, and hopefully my machine fits in it to be tucked away when it's not in use. If not, it will still work as a table. Should be here by next week!

In the meantime, I am feeling like a very accomplished knitter working on this sweater. I am doing it in two shades of grey, since I don't care for the orange and the woman at the store warned me against using black till I'm more expert (the darker the yarn, the harder to see your individual stitches as you go). The yarn is gigantic, so it's really easy to work with and it knits up extremely fast. I started Sunday afternoon, and now I have more than nine inches done on the back.

I'm thinking about taking it to work with me; I've had a lot of time with nothing to do in the last few workdays. I finished training projects ahead of schedule, and they haven't given me the next ones yet. It's a little frustrating, because the second week of February is supposed to be crazy with lots of writer deadlines, and I COULD be getting that done now if I could just get my hands on it already. I find it more stressful to be at work not working than I do to have more than I can finish in a day, or even in a week. But I have some stuff to do today, and (I think) more coming once I finish this afternoon's class, and hopefully that will keep me busy at least through tomorrow.

Jonathan and Tristram are coming to have breakfast with me at our at-work coffee shop, since they have the car today. Tristram has his 2-year-old checkup, so they will drop me off and pick me up.

Long, long ago

Jonathan needs to send over some more recent photos. I have a small cache of newborn photos like this one on my computer--it is nice, at least, to see that I have some pictures left after the theft.

It's been a weird week. I had a great birthday, but learned the next day that one of the other new hires who started in December died on Monday. His memorial service is today, and I'm not sure if I'm going. On the one hand, he seemed like a great guy and I'm genuinely sad for him and for his family, but on the other hand, I really didn't know him well at all and I would feel weird being a funeral crasher. I just don't know the etiquette about attending coworkers' services. I contributed to his memorial fund, at least, because that seemed like it would just be indecent not to do. It is also strange because he was one of the other writers, so he would have been in all the writer-specific training that started this week. In fact, on Monday the rest of us where wondering where he was. Turns out that's the day he died.

Jonathan also had another bout of stomach yuckiness; I am badgering him to call his doctor. It seems less and less likely that it is gastroenteritis when it's happened three times in the last month now and no one else in the house has been affected. I don't know what it is, but I think he should find out.

The happier news is that we got a new TV! We have a big flatscreen on the wall now, and I will have to contrive to get rid of the old one. It's much nicer to have it nice and neat and flat and not bulky and huge. Plus, the picture is much better.

Next up, I want a sewing table! I would really love one of those sewing cabinets where you can drop the machine down into the interior when you're not using it, because that way Tristram can't get into as much trouble, but those are way too expensive. So a sewing table it is, ideally with a couple of drawers for storing stuff. I have my eye on a couple of Craigslist and Ebay options for $50-75, but if that doesn't happen I'm going with the Sullivan portable sewing table and keeping an eye on sewing cabinet sales forever.

Today is slated for sledding and football.

Wedding Nostalgia

If you want more Tristram pictures, tell Jonathan to hurry up and send me some over from his laptop!

I am having a very good week. I am certified in EpicCare Ambulatory, and I am very pleased that I did it so far ahead of schedule. I actually didn't have much to do at work yesterday; I finished things faster than they expected, so I spent most of the afternoon waiting for the HelpDesk to fix a computer issue so I can do what I need to for my classes today.

As soon as I got home, Tristram leapt up and ran to the kitchen shouting, "Mommy is happy to hold those flowers!" Turns out that when they went "to get ice cream for Mommy to eat with cake on it," the ice cream shop was closed for one day of remodeling. So they got me flowers to allay the disappointment (Tristram picked them out from the pictures on the web page), and Tristram had been waiting for hours to get to hold one. Jonathan told him if he gave them to me as soon as I came home, he could have one for himself.

We got takeout Jamaican food and drank champagne, and Tristram went behind the curtains to sing me Happy Birthday as a ghost. The ghost version is somewhat shorter; it goes, "Happy Birthday to you Mommy." He also has been singing his own version of the Bob the Builder song; it goes, "Bob the builder, Bob the builder, yes we can, we can fix it." And the emphasis is on the syllable build, not Bob. But he actually sings!

I opened presents that had come in the mail, and now I have lots of good stuff to eat and a lovely scarf and an incredibly comfy sweater. Jonathan got me a very generous spa gift certificate, and has promised me a free day to use it, so I am looking forward to that. Then I sewed on a button that fell off my coat and went to bed. All in all, a very nice birthday.

Jessie is a great photographer

Sorry for the long delay. Things have been a little crazy here. Jonathan had gastroenteritis twice in a row, I had a mega-hours week since I had a doctor and dentist appointment (it's really nice to have insurance again and get things like, say, clean teeth and regular physicals) and had to make up the hours at work while also getting projects done and tests taken for certification. Okay, so I didn't really have to get it all done this week, but I don't have anything else to do at work yet, I get a pay bump as soon as I finish my training requirements, and it's easier to do your homework and take your tests sooner after a class before you forget too much. So hopefully now I am certified in my first application as soon as the last test and the last two projects are graded. Long story short, I got used to seeing the sun both rise and set from my office window. (Of course, I only actually see it rise; the window does not rotate from east to west through the day. But it does eventually get dark.)

Tristram's potty training is progressing pretty well; he is usually dry through his naps now and has not yet had an accident in my car, which I appreciate. I think, though, that we need to get him one of those kid seats to go on top of the regular seat and then put his baby potty in his room as a backup. He is starting to insist on using the big potty, not the little one, and if he does have an accident it's because he's a) at the dentist waiting for someone else to get out of the bathroom so he can use it, b) at the zoo and lacking the foresight and self-control to go use the potty instead of going to look at the next animal, or c) playing in his room and too wrapped up in what he's doing to notice before it's too late. So a backup potty in the problem spot seems in order.

He also gave us some really awful tantrums this weekend. We handle the tantrums themselves appropriately--tell him that he's welcome to cry if it makes him feel better, but it won't get him what he wants, and then wait it out--but it seems clear that we must be reinforcing bratty behavior at a lower level to get him to escalate it like that. We both need to watch really carefully to make sure we don't give in when he gets fussy, or change our minds if he acts unpleasant, on small things when it really does seem easier to just accede to his demands. And we have to respond the right way every single time; that's the kicker.

The tantrums themselves, though, are mostly because he's just hit the "do it myself" phase HARD. If we pull his pants up for him, he will pull them back down to do it himself. He has flipped out twice about my unbuckling his car seat for him, even though I explained that he just has to be bigger and practice unbuckling more things before he will be able to (he's usually very receptive to explanations like that). It kind of builds to a head over small things, then something like that sets him off, then he spends half an hour standing by the car door trying to open it again to do it himself and screaming. We are trying to remember that we want him to be persistent and not easily discouraged when it comes to problem-solving, and it would be much worse if he never went through this phase and we still had to do everything for him in a few years.

The small light, to which we both cling for our hope of sanity, is that the new insistence on independence seems to have been accompanied by a vast multiplication of his willingness to play by himself for up to 20 minutes at a time.

Tristram Reigns Victorious

Day 3 scorecard:
1 small accident
Independent requests for the potty, for both purposes--he learned to tell when he needs to pee!

He has achieved a great victory. I'd consider him pretty well potty-trained at this point, though he still needs to be prompted at regular intervals to avoid things building up to a catastrophic urgency. Plus, we are quite lucky that he hates poopy diapers so much; I did not relish the prospect (though I was warned it's quite common) of BM training lagging way behind other potty training.

I am now quite the fan of this one-day potty training method. I am less of a fan of the fact that I seem to be developing another right tonsil abscess. Sigh. Hopefully this one pops soon; in any case, I am going to work well-armed with ibuprofen, and I can get all the hot tea I can drink anytime I go to the kitchen. I have an appointment with my new doctor in a couple of weeks, and I'll see what she says about treatment. Jonathan thinks I should just have the thing out, and it's enough of a recurrent nuisance now (though thankfully not the torture it was that first time) that I'm willing to do it. But hopefully it's just that it's never been properly drained, and that they can do as a much simpler outpatient procedure.

Jonathan and I are busy now trying to think of things for Tristram to do. Snowshoes might be good, and toddler skating lessons might be good, but we'd also like to get him around more kids. It wasn't an issue in Tustin, because there were so many kids in our complex all we had to do was walk outside. But social groups are not so easy to come by in the frozen north. We'd really love to get him in preschool, but that would require Jonathan to get a job...which he might be ready to do before long. In the meantime, I'm looking for playgroups and so forth online. There's a drop-in YMCA indoor playground, and a Little Gym, and the Madison Ballet company has parent-child dance playtimes for kids as young as he. Unfortunately the Children's Museum closed yesterday to move to its new location, which won't be ready till the end of the year.

But not today. Today the car is mine--I have to take Belial in for teeth cleaning. Ironically, I've gotten dental cleaning scheduled for the cats before I have for us. I'm going down the list calling dentists on our new plan, but they don't so much call me back. Maybe every dentist on our plan is already flush with patients, or maybe they all take obscenely long winter vacations around here.

A Real Boy

Tristram has adapted our claim that using the potty makes him a big boy. He says it makes him "a real boy." I overheard him explaining this to his blue-footed booby yesterday: "Booby, I don't poop in a mess anymore. I put it in the real boy potty. Tristram is a real boy, Booby!" He then took Booby into the bathroom and taught him to potty too.

I'm pretty pleased with our success. Tristram is still a ways off from potty independence--for one, he doesn't have the manual dexterity to quite get his underpants up and down on his own (like, he'll pull them up in front and leave his rear hanging out). More importantly, he still relies on us to notice when he needs to pee and get him to the potty. He had two accidents yesterday, one very small one because I was about 15 seconds late in noticing the pee-pee dance and reminding him to run to the bathroom, and one larger one because he walked into the bathroom while I was running his bath and stuck his hand in the warm water. I'm not sure that a running-water-sounds plus hand-in-warm-water induced accident counts like a regular accident, though. He will run into the bathroom shouting, "Potty! Potty! Potty!" if he needs to poop, which seems like the more important accident to avoid.

I predict he'll learn to recognize impending peefulness on his own gradually over the next month. Our next big hurdle will be taking him out--we may stick to pull-ups for trips out of the house till snow pants season is over, in defiance of empirically sound potty-training advice. I just can picture getting about 10 minutes from a potty, and seeing the pee-pee dance, and trying to get his jacket off so we can get his snow overalls down and then his pants and then having him throw a fit because his nether regions are exposed to the cold...

In any case, despite the first very painful day, it's pretty sweet to have your kid wake up the second morning mostly potty-trained.

Riding Dan

Tristram misses this summer's pony rides a lot. He also misses Sea World. I am trying to find him replacement activities here. Turns out lots of kids start skating at 2, and there should be skate rental at the park next door. Our worry is that, since we don't really know how to skate, that will lead to tears and recriminations. The more immediately promising path is to get kids' snowshoes for him. They make some good small ones, including several that look like dinosaur feet. He might like that a lot. He tends to wander off the trodden paths and then despairingly shout, "Help me!" We also might be able to get him on cross-country skis sooner than I thought, which would be good. Or I could try just pulling him on his sled while I ski...

Anyway, all these things must wait on the current project, potty training. We started yesterday, and we're doing the one-day method. So is he now trained? No, not as I'd define it--he can and will go in the potty, but he can't yet get himself there to avoid an accident.

Nonetheless, we're pretty pleased with our progress for one day. He tries very hard to get there; it's just that he's still learning to tell when he needs to go and to develop the self-control to stop playing and run to the bathroom in time. I think he might make it today, though. In one day yesterday, he learned how to use the potty for both his, ah, outputs, and got incredibly proud of himself for doing so, and he is genuinely sad when he has an accident. I am reminding myself of three things:

1) He is extremely young for potty training--barely to the minimum age pediatricians recommend for girls, and earlier than most recommend for boys. We went for it anyway because he's started trying to remove his dirty diapers himself, and we don't want a poopload dumped on our carpet. Plus, he is starting to get really upset if he pees in his diaper when we're out, and says he had an accident and has to go clean up.

2) The "one-day" method was, when it was first developed in the 70s, conceptualized as a 1-3 day method. The "less than a day" label is more of a marketing term than a guarantee.

3) I have heard from plenty of parents who spend weeks trying to get their kids to go in the potty at all.

I figure if I toilet-trained cats, I can certainly toilet-train a human.

But before all that, we had Jonathan's birthday! He is now 28. He likes his presents, he got to go out for what is supposed to be the best burger in Madison (and Tristram behaved perfectly at the restaurant), he got to see OU win its game, and I had the day off work to celebrate with him.