Have your people call my people

Jason, prepping the kids for bed: "Our kids have a team at their beck and call to style their clothes, cook, help with their grooming, comb their hair, take them places, arrange their schedule, and provide entertainment: being a kid is basically like being a superstar."

Preschool bedtime to-do list

Books read? Check. Doll? Check. Two fists full of trains? Check. Nighty night!

Aroma therapy

Ava: "I love the smell of this place." Spoken like true urban kids. Trying out the new Westlake Park play structure.

Sunny with a chance of frostbite

Post-bike rides, Beacon Hill twilight.

My baby is three!

We spent the last couple days celebrating Dylan's 3rd Birthday: treats at school, dinner with both sets of grandparents and several new Thomas the Train-related gifts that now accompany him to bed.



Hard to believe he's grown from a little month-old butterball in my arms 3 years ago to that smiling kid next to Jason who knows every train in the Thomas and Friends world and who comes home every night and heads straight to his room to craft a new masterpiece before running to us to declare: "I built you a beautiful train track! Come see!" while dragging us by the hand to see for ourselves.

He loves climbing and jumping off of any stationary object and is impulsive and physical in ways that still surprise us, mainly because he's so different from his older sister. With her, we didn't child-proof anything, simply telling her: "Don't touch that." She'd nod solemnly and do so.

This guy? Left to his own devices, he'd touch, bang, throw and drop anything not nailed down, as if to say, "This? Don't touch this? Right here? Don't push it off the table like this?"

12 months old and already into things

Last week, while he stood on the bathroom counter waiting to get his teeth brushed, I turned away from him and bent over to help his sister with her shirt. A moment later I was nearly knocked over as he launched his nearly 40 pounds through the air and landed on my back with no warning. What the?! Who does that?! Apparently him. After a stern warning to never do that again if I wasn't facing him, he gave me a huge hug, kissed me and said, "I love you Mom."

I love you too, you little character! Happy birthday.

Location, location, location

Oh, is running my rail yard through the kitchen while you try to cook dinner a problem?

I always joke that although we are blessed with a lot of space in our house, somehow everyone ends up within an arms length of me at all times. Guess this makes up for all those (happily) solitary days as an only child.

Train-induced euphoria

Dylan climbed the fence to get a better look at the trains rolling by in Seattle's Georgetown neighborhood. You can't see the ear to ear grin that lit up his face when the engineer blew the horn and waved.

Service with a smile

Business idea: The Frohawk Waffle Haus. Delicious breakfast fare, served with a smile.

Would sir prefer the clown shoes?

See Dylan's blue Crocs? A month plus of speech therapy and his first sartorial declaration is that he wanted "this ones." Fashion-wise, I may have preferred him mute.

Spring break

Lovely spring break stay-cation day off. Light rail to downtown with grandparents & kids for walking, people watching & lunch, then sous chef for Jason's first chicken fettuccine, which was the bomb. Life is good.

Who's bad?

Even before Trayvon Martin's death, I wouldn't put Dylan in clothes that played into negative stereotypes of African American males as trouble or somehow bad.




Which means this pre-loved shirt we received, though apparently part of one of the most beloved Japanese cartoon shows ever, will be donated.

Extreme? Maybe. Ridiculous? No more ridiculous than Geraldo saying Trayvon's hoodie got him killed - a statement for which he later apologized directly to Trayvon's parents.

NPR's Michel Martin wrote a great piece that captures the fear many parents of color feel for their  sons as they reach the teen years: Trayvon was scared too.

Earning their keep

Dylan, our two year old sous chef-in-training, helps dice mushrooms. Next lesson? Meal planning!

This was moments after he tripped over his trains left in middle of the hall (again) and fell headfirst into the pantry door knob, raising a huge goose egg at his temple.

A group hug from all of us seemed to help, along with a call to the consultant nurse and an ice pack.

We've got to check him for concussion symptoms every two hours for the next 12 hours, but so far, so good.

Also, that dish he and Ava helped make? It was delish.

Verbal breakthrough

Just a month into Dylan's six months of weekly speech therapy sessions, he's had quite the breakthrough. We're not sure if it's the therapy, the different approaches they suggested for our verbal interactions with him at home (putting things out of his reach to force him to ask for them, not guessing or aticulating for him, letting him lead the conversation, etc.), our increased emphasis on verbal interactions or if he was finally just ready, but the night before his therapy sesson, he said about 25-30 new words from a toddler "first words" book for the first time.

This was part of his therapy session. Saying something that he knows is incorrect has been a reliable way to get him talking, as the therapist does here.

He even added a new word during the session when the therapist blocked the tunnel on the train tracks he'd built: "Move!"

Since then, he's added even more words everyday, including the critical two and three-word sentences that the experts were concerned about him not using. Like last night when I was helping him wash his hands and showing him how to blow bubbles through his fingers. When I stopped, he said, "Make more bubbles!" He added the requisite "please" once I reminded him. Now he's regularly adding "please" and "thank you," which are musts for us.

A couple  days ago, Jason said Ava was dawdling as they tried to leave the house one morning and he sent Dylan back to get her while he loaded the car. He heard him march back into the house, track her down and say, "Ava: come on!"

He's picking up steam verbally and it's lovely to see. The therapist said he may not even need to continue the full six months if this progress continues. And best of all for me as a book lover: he now will not leave the house without one of his Thomas the Train books and asks for at least two every night before bed. We've come a long way. I can't wait to see what the spring and summer bring for him.

Light rail adventure

Dylan & Ava playing with trains on the light rail train. We had a lovely outing on a cool but sunny day.

We window shopped, people-watched, and I tried to keep a close eye on Dylan, who is so low to the ground and fast, that he can disappear among clothes racks the moment you turn your attention to something else. But I brought some of his little pocket-sized Thomas trains, so those kept him semi-occupied as I tried to speed-peruse the racks. Later, we sat in the sun outside Starbucks at 4th & Pine, people watched in Westlake Park, and ate snacks we'd packed.

As we headed back to the light rail station in the tunnel, the afternoon was marred by discovering we'd been spit on, apparently from an overhead walkway at Westlake station downtown.

Didn't see or feel it, only noticed the goo on me and Dylan as we walked along the platform. Who the
eff spits down into a crowd of people?! "Dirtbags," said a friend on Facebook. True dat.

I was disgusted having to clean it up as best I could with pocket tissues and sanitizer (traveling with kids means being prepared) and rode home seething, knowing I'd have to wash our coats once we arrived.

But I didn't want the kids' day spoiled, so I put on a happy face, which lasted until we arrived back at our car and I went to gas up and discovered gas is now $4.19/gal. At that price, light rail may become more a part of our weekend outings.

Despite all that, it was a lovely day. Dylan conked out a few minutes before we arrived home and I put him in bed to finish his nap and started dinner. Ava buzzed around me as I grated squash and zucchini for turkey meatballs.

"What was your favorite part of today?" I asked.

"This right now," she responded, hugging my leg and stretching up to kiss me. "Just being with you."

*verklempt*

I will try to keep this scene in mind during her next meltdown over something inconsequential.

Man of few words

Dylan's two year doctor appointment went well: he's above average for size (88th percentile) but being referred for some speech help to get his word count up.

He's good with "B" and "S" words (Ha!) but isn't stringing enough of them together. Luckily, he's good at pointing and showing what he wants and all his caregivers are good at reading him.

Plus, I'm great at reading people's non-verbal cues, so I can infer more from an eyebrow slant than some people can from an entire conversation. Which means that while I rock at charades, I probably am not helping him stretch verbally, even though we talk and read with him a lot and verbal communication is kind of the lingua franca at our house.

But we'll go get some tips from the speech and language pros so that he can start sparring verbally with his sister, instead of just screeching in frustration or whacking her when she's bugging him.

If he turns out to be a great orator, this will make a funny story some day. Kind of like actor James Earl Jones: he has one of the most recognizable and enthralling voices of a generation but he overcame a severe stutter. Fascinating story.

Birthday boy

Two years ago today, this little dumpling popped into our life. Happy birthday to the cutest little boy in my life.

On the mend

2am ER visit, 2 hours, 2 throat swabs, 2 nurses to help hold him down, 2 meds, 3 stickers, 1 popsicle. Diagnosis: something viral. But meds clearly working: he tried to push every elevator button on our way out of hospital.

Milestone: big boy bed

I've finally grown tired of trying to curl up with Dylan on the crib mattress on the floor to put him to sleep at night. That would be from the crib that he refused to sleep in. Ever. Even though the people at his daycare put him in one and report that he quickly drops off to sleep. Grrrr.

Mere weeks after we bought it at a consignment shop, drop side cribs were outlawed anyway. So he's alternated between our bed and the mattress for months. First in our room on the floor, then in the room he now shares with Ava.

So we found a great deal on a twin bed and mattress on Craigslist and picked it up this morning. The afternoon was spent getting bedding and a new boxspring.

His favorite part of the new bed? The squishy football & baseball pillows that he picked.

My favorite part? If I fall asleep in his bed now, I won't wake up with a crick in my neck that last for days. Winning!

Like Norman Rockwell

Some fathers and sons fish, some hunt, some do tandem technology.

Stylish siblings

All dressed up for cousin's baptism.Dylan wasn't having the clip-on tie though: clearly he already has taste.