FFF - "New"

We had Julian's final readoption ceremony at the courthouse.
Well more like a visit than a ceremony. I'm in a rush so just posting my FFF photo, will get to more details later!

He finally has his official NEW name.





For more Favorite Foto Friday, see Sarah's Blog. :)

When it rains it pours.

This morning I got to work and made my usual drink- green tea powder and vanilla hemp milk. When I got back to my office I had a few sips. It was really sour and just not right. So I walked back to the kitchen and took out the "milk." Rotten. Nasty. NASTY. I swore loudly. That's no news for anyone that knows me, even a little.

Little did I know that this would be the highlight of my day.

Around 1pm I got a sharp pain in my foot that dropped me to my knees. I have a nerve tumor that lives in my foot and has occasionally caused me some distress over the years (they were supposed to take it out during a prior foot surgery about 8 years ago but that's another bitch session altogether.) I could put NO weight on my foot. So after swearing loudly again I hopped and crawled around for the next few hours while my fabulous receptionist tried to track down some crutches. A lovely patient overheard and drove home to get me hers. Very sweet.

The day went on, not too stressful other than trying to do everything on crutches. I called the practice who did my surgery to get in for an appointment. Not only are there no appointments available for a month but if I want to see a different doc in the practice my prior surgeon (see above, grrr) has to give me permission. I asked the scheduler dryly what the point then would be of having a group practice but she didn't seem to understand the question. Again a few choice words flew- after I hung up, of course.

I finally get in my car to drive home- it's freezing cold and I'm juggling my bag and my crutches, almost falling on my ass getting into the car. Then about a half mile down the road I look at my dashboard and see a yellow light with an exclamation point. Hmmmm. I wait until I can pull over in a safe spot and pull out my manual. "Do NOT drive your car if this light is on." Um. OK?

Thankfully Jon was home and picked me up about half an hour later. I just left the car there. We'll see if we can get it towed to the shop before it starts getting tickets in the morning. I was safe and sound but very, very cold. The little mister was sobbing in the back seat "I want to get out" over and over again. Poor kid can't stand that car seat but c'mon I know he understands that he has to stay in it.

We arrive home and I go back to the bedroom to change.

I look over and the cat has puked all over my comforter.

Awesome.

Edited to add: As my child is feeling better, Obama is about to be sworn in, I have AAA and good health insurance (yes I'm knocking on my desk as I'm typing), I'm actually amused by all of this rather than irritated. Lucky Jon.

Edited again (!) to add: After a mere $75 diagnostic and a laundry list of things we should repair on the car, we learned that the light was "nothing." I can walk on my foot again, albeit gingerly. The associate at the doctor's office can get me in in 2 weeks. The cat puke cleaned up swimmingly. And as I was stranded at home yesterday with a bum foot and no car I got to curl up, watch the inauguration, and organize my to do list. It was worth it.

De-lurking Day and FFF (eyes)

I apparently missed that yesterday was national blog de-lurking day. I was clearly too busy with my giant meat cake (see yesterday's post.)

Oh, and for those of you are not regular blog readers, to de-lurk means you leave a comment and let me know you're visiting.

C'mon y'all I'd love to see who's out there keeping tabs on our silliness!

And I'm still trying to get that FFF thing going. Sarah started the Friday theme that ties so many of us. This Friday was EYES.

This is my favorite photo of Julian's eyes. I can't believe it's a year old.

Happy Birthday to Me (the author, not the grinning child.)

Jon's birthday was last week. We celebrated both of our birthdays with a lovely romantic dinner on Saturday. Then we met some friends for drinks after that to toast our birthdays but mostly to celebrate for Jon. As much as I want to dig into the story of that night right now, I'm not ready. But do check back, I'll post soon. It's a doozie.

And my birthday is today.

Honestly I've been feeling a bit unnerved by turning 40.
I know my life is great, it only gets better blah blah but it was just a bit tough, that's all.
Part vanity, part just feel like 40 is a lot of years to pass...
No yelling from those of you over 40 please. I know when I'm 50 this will seem like nothing. But here I am today, and it's a little hard.

Well for my birthday Jon got me a very thoughtful gift (he's more the last minute type so it's a big deal)- a personalized mini Flip video with a photo that I took outside of Flores, Guatemala on the actual Flip case!
And 3 beautiful photos from our recent family photo shoot mounted on bamboo. Beautiful.

Here are a few shots from that incredible photo shoot. The photographer/artist is Jen Downer of She Saw Things. I'll post more of them later.







Anyway, after hanging with my amazing little boy this morning I went to the spa for a facial, massage and mani. Heaven.

And then against all odds 11 of my girlfriends showed up for a happy hour snack even though I just sent out the invite a few days ago.

Then I got a phone call from my amazing girlfriend Stephanie who lives in Florida. She told me that she had a special surprise for me waiting at the local health food store.

I'm figuring it's a cake, but really, I'm not so into cake.
To me, things that are that sweet are icky, I'm more of an extra helping of organic meat and skip the dessert kind of girl.
I am marveling at how thoughtful it was, regardless.

I arrive at the store, walk in and go up to the catering area and tell them I'm picking something up but I don't know what it is. I give my name.
They all light up and start laughing.
They deliver me the box, tell me not to open it until I'm home, not to let it jiggle from side to side at all, and that when I open it I should imagine all of the people working on it having the most amazing time.
???!!! What the???!!!

Here it is.
A cake made of MEATLOAF
with CATSUP FROSTING
and "40" spelled out in BACON!






The perfect ending to a perfect day.

It's snowing again. And yet another loooong post.

The last week has been a joy as the snow finally melted and we got our sorry asses out of the house. But I am looking out the window and it is snowing again. Now don't get me wrong, I like the snow. But Portland is unable to handle even the slightest accumulation. The city is useless. Businesses close. Buses don't run. No one shows up for their appointments. In short, it sucks. The forecast is for it to turn to rain any minute now but I'm not counting my chickens. It is apparently very difficult to properly forecast here.

The last day of snow after xmas.


Julian's Chanukah gift from Nana and Papa.


Over the last snow, as I mentioned in my last post, we let Julian watch The Jungle Book. Remember how I said I was glad we caved? Well, I was WRONG. After days of begging for the movie again we had the brilliant idea to download a few of the songs from iTunes. Great idea, right? Again, WRONG.

There is a song from the movie called 'Colonel Hathi's March', otherwise known as 'The Elephant Song', or at our house simply 'Elephant March.' So cute, we thought, Julian wants to march like an elephant! Well it was cute the first 20 times, but I shit you not, after 3 days and a play count of 148 times it was not cute anymore. We're on day 12 and count 408 (thank you iTunes for pointing that out.) Oh, and did I mention that he wants us to actually march with him each time? On our hands and knees? Anyone have a fork I can stick in my eye? Thanks.

Marching into the zoo.


And btw, my sister keeps saying my boy looks like Mowgli from The Jungle Book. I thought for a while that this might actually be a bit racist...every indiginous kid looks like the character of the indiginous kid, right? Well, after seeing the movie, and seeing him running through the living room the next day, I get it, he looks like Mowgli, for real.



So last Friday I'm chilling out, it's 4:30 in the afternoon, we all had the day off, I'm still in my pajamas, and as a matter of fact I still have my breathe-right nose strip on from the night before. I mean really, I have a little cold and any little bit of extra clear nose is an immense relief, right? Anyway, the doorbell rings and it's a neighbor I've never met with her 4 month old. She's bearing holiday cookies. So sweet! I then try to explain, as I'm pulling off my nose strip, why I'm in my pajamas at 4:30 in the afternoon. And after I explain that no, there is nothing wrong with my nose, I just always sleep with them and I never really got out of my pajamas blah blah blah, I let her in. She was very gracious and came in, even though I'm clearly a weirdo.

Julian and Jon joined us and we all sat down on the floor with the kids. I mention Chanukah and realizing we're Jewish she says something about not knowing if the cookies she brought are ok for us- but that she's a vegetarian so she thinks they're alright. What I meant to do is say "Oh, we're not kosher anyway, we eat everything!" (smile) What I actually did, bending over backwards trying to make her comfortable, is try to explain that we're not kosher, we're really secular jews, that we even have a holiday tree and exchange gifts on Christmas then I blurt out "I eat pork about 6 times a week!" Which is followed by this very...long...awkward silence. Oops. Jon gave me the look which is meant to convey one word: "f-i-l-t-e-r." I'm not so good at that. Sigh.

And a few more bits of news.

1. Julian is learning to eat with kid chopsticks. He's awesome.


2. Jon has trained his new assistant.


3. Julian's nanny is taking a full time gig with her other family so we're going to transition him to a small local in home daycare the 3 days he'd been home with her. We found a great nanny but in the end being with other kids won out. We'll fill you in on that later.

4. I'm starting Latin guitar lessons! I taught myself some rudimentary guitar in college to accompany my singing. I've wanted to start playing again for a long time but the only music I can play is folk music, feminist folk music, lesbian folk music, lesbian-feminist folk music, and some children's music, none of which I'm really into playing anymore. So a few years ago we heard this amazing Latin guitarist named Alfredo Muro and I've decided to start lessons with him. I am so psyched! I pulled out my guitar last week- it's in tune for the first time in ages.



Sorry for the long post again. I'll try to get on it more frequentlly for the new year.
Love y'all.

Warning: Long post ahead.

I know it has been so long since my last post. First I was just busy. Then I forgot. Then it started snowing. Then Julian got sick. But I'm back. So here we go...

We live in a place where it rarely snows. When it does snow the city practically shuts down because it owns only a few snowplows. No salt because it harms the environment. So here we are after a week or so of snow and ice. Only a handful of patients showed up last week. There's not a chance that tomorrow will be any different. Now ordinarily a few days off would be great but my kid has not been outside in 7 days except to go to the hospital and the doctor. Yep, you heard me. He got sick (will fill you in on that at the end of the post) after being outside and getting very chilled and now he says "no like dat coat" if we try to put a ski jacket on him and "no, mine no like dohz, i no wear them." if we try to put the snow pants on him. I suppose it doesn't matter all that much because his only boots are too small anyway. Sigh. Like I said, we're not prepared for this kind of weather here.

In this photo you are looking out our front door across the street. The snow you see will sit there until it melts. All of it.


We've been stuck inside making caves, forts, and tunnels, cooking, and trying to say 'what else is there that we can do?' when julian is whining to watch baby signing time one more time. When he was sick we put on his first movie- The Jungle Book. It was really fun, I'm glad we caved.

Speaking of cave, here are some cave and tunnel shots.






And Julian helping his Papi make pancakes.
Don't tell anyone about our secret ingredient.




Our holiday tree with handmade ornaments that the lovely Erin made in Guatemala where she has been living while she waits for her daughter's seemingly interminable adoption to come through (which it looks like it finally has!!) Please check out her shop if you're in the market for cool handmade crafts and jewelry from recycled Guatemalan fabrics and eco beads.


Julian, always wanting to be "'kitty #1" will follow Elwynn around until she loses her shit and just scratches him. He then cries and it starts all over again. Ah, the undefeatable toddler spirit.




Coconut curried rice noodle...yum.


And static...another unusual sitch here.


And the night before Julian got sick.


So here's the story. Jules had a little runny nose. No biggie. I was home with him because it was icy and I'd closed the office. Jon rode his bike to work (I know...I know.) At naptime Julian had a low grade fever so I gave him some Tylenol. He seemed much better, just a little punky that afternoon.

Ok, then it's after dinner and Julian and his Papi take a bath. Julian crawls up next to me to read a book after that and he is hot. His fever is about 101 so we give him Tylenol again and I walk to the market to get eggs (this is one of the reasons I love the city but I digress...) When I get up to the front porch I hear this awful wailing from inside. I open the door and Jon yells that he's called 9-1-1. Julian has had a seizure. We both know that this can happen from a spiking fever for a little one but it didn't make it any less scary. The fire truck and ambulance arrived a few minutes later.

Julian and I took the ambulance to the hospital and Jon chased us with the car chained up on a highway with no ice on it. Strapped into his car seat on the sled in the ambulance Julian said with a proud and very serious tone to the EMT "I'm a big boy," and then "I'm Latino." It was a fabulous moment...I laughed so hard.

So by the time we got to the hospital Julian was alert and fine. He got wheeled in on the sled and we were transferred to a room where we sat for 2 hours. By the time the doc got to us we're simply managing his freaking asthma- which could have been done from home. But how can you say no? Same drill...steroids, nebulizer (administered by a scraggy hippie therapist that smelled like an ashtray with body odor- delish), xray, blah blah blah. We got home after midnight and Julian headed into another bout of bronchiolitis and bad asthma such as the one that landed us in the hospital in February. He's just coming out of it now.

And life goes on...

Here's my non J shot of the week.

Seek.

On Friday I spent about 4 hours designing our holiday cards. Got the photo from the photographer, looked at about 15 websites for a design that I liked that could be printed on recycled stock, picked a design, chose the colors, arranged the layout, decided on the wording, etc etc. Saturday night I called Jon over to look at it. He smiled and said "Looks great...quick and easy!" Um, yeah. Quick and easy.

Julian is getting super into hide and seek. He hides under a blanket with one parent and the other counts to 10 in Spanish or English, and then the remaining parents seeks and finds. Then we do it "again!" 8,000 times. The thing is he loves it SO much I don't even mind.