Tuesday, December 22, 2009
time outs.
for the first time, i've tried putting zane in a time out a few times. he keeps playing with the cats' food and water, and he just won't listen to "no." i don't know if it's his age, or if he's just being stubborn. time out only consists of my putting him in his crib and then leaving the room, just for a minute. i'm worried that he'll think i don't love him by doing this, and studies say that time outs (and especially spanking) are not good for kids, but i don't know what else to do. i try to have a firm i-mean-business tone of voice when necessary, but he doesn't seem to recognize it. i also try to have him look me straight in the eye, but it's hard to get a 14 month old to look at you. sigh.
Monday, December 21, 2009
Saturday, December 19, 2009
spoon?
z was playing with my breakfast spoon this morning, while daddy & i were doing some planning. after awhile, the spoon had disappeared. it wasn't on the floor. it wasn't in his high chair. we looked around for awhile before i found it in z's hood. he had no idea it was there. thought it was worth a picture.
z brushes hair
i have an extra hair brush that has retractable bristles. z loves it. it helps keep diaper changes crying-free. he loves carrying it all around the house. it's just this week that he started brushing his hair with it, and in the case of the movie below, brushing other peoples' hair.
Thursday, December 17, 2009
hug.
yesterday z & i went to target. it was pouring rain outside, so all the carts were wet. i decided to just let z walk around with me, and i have to say, he did a fantastic job of gripping my finger & walking with me. we ran into another little one his size, a girl, who started following us. z didn't really pay any attention to her until we were in the baby section. once he actually noticed her, they did the typical toddler things... touching each other's faces, walking away, walking towards each other, babbling... when it came time for us to walk away, z gave her a hug! TWICE! this was without any prompting from me. it was the sweetest thing ever! totally made my day.
z draws!
on tuesday, m & l came (along with little e of course) to check out our new home & play. we had lots of fun, and z drew for the very first time! he didn't draw very much, or for very long, but he's come a long way from just chewing on the crayons. he also loves just taking the crayons out of the plastic pack, throwing them on the floor, picking them up & putting them back on the table, and throwing them down again. sigh.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
monster?
our little pumpkin is turning into quite the rude diner. his recent behavior, which originally we thought was cute, was to feed us pieces of food, which was all fine & good until he started pretending to give us bites, only to steal them away & put them in his mouth.
yesterday & today, he's started to either spit things out that he used to love, or lick things & then spit them out. in the past, if he didn't finish all his pasta spirals or carrot pieces, we would eat them. if he licks them & then puts them back on his tray, that's just too disgusting. sometimes his behavior is so gross, but so funny, so i have to turn away in order to keep a straight face with him, so he learns the proper behavior. he's so cute, but he needs to learn better table manners!
giant tinker toys
did any of you play with these giant tinker toys as a kid? here's a brief video of z moving a huge contraption (that daddy made) around. he's a strong kid!
more blueberry pancakes
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
puffy coat
z always tends to fall asleep in the car whenever he's wearing his puffy coat. it's so comfortable. i think i would too.
puffy coat
we were on our way out to my birthday lunch. the weather is really cold here at the moment, so z was bundled up in his down puffy coat. it's so cute seeing him waddle around.
chocolate chip cookie
climbing buddies
on saturday we went to our annual ugly x-mas sweater party & book exchange at our climbing friends' house. we couldn't stay long because z was beginning to get super fussy, and it was way past his bedtime, but we caught a couple shots of him & his friend m.
xmas tree
z was getting too fussy while i was assembling the tree, so i waited to finish until he went down for a nap. this is a video of him seeing the tree for the first time...
moving
before all this moving took place, i spent an evening out with friend j at a lecture by lawa ole nydahl on tibetan buddhism. we stayed for a blessing, and my refuge name given to me was karma pema - lotus flower of all buddhas. the evening helped me cope with the events as they unfolded. eventually, everything fell into place, although not without a lot of encouragement from our realtor, and we closed in time to keep our moving appointment the day before thanksgiving.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
happy thanksgiving
happy thanksgiving everyone! we're slowly getting moved in. i'm stealing internet at the moment to post this. we don't get our phone & internet back until saturday. first night in the new house went well. cats didn't keep us up. i didn't successfully program the thermostat yesterday, so we woke up to a super cold house, but that's certainly solvable.
our refrigerator still isn't working, so i guess we'll have to get a new one. that's not an expense we really wanted to face, but hopefully we'll get one from sears, where we can defer paying for the whole thing for a year.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
low rider mothra
our little z is getting less dependent on one of us being in the same room as him, and more adventurous. z was roaming around the bedrooms, and walked back into the living room as we found him here... sporting the low-rider style pants. too cute to not photograph.
my favorite percussionist
z loves to make beautiful music for his momma with his pot lid cymbals. they have such a gorgeous ring...
helpful mothra
mama was busy doing something - most likely washing dishes, and z wanted to help out. he pulled out all the towels & rags. and then proceeded to put them back, although not necessarily into the correct drawers.
little mischievous mothra!
last dinner
this was our last nice dinner in our old house. rib eye steaks (frozen & defrosted), purchased awhile back on sale. mushrooms sauteed in butter. grilled zucchini & red pepper. garlic parmesan bread. panther creek shea vineyard, bought awhile ago, which wasn't my favorite, but still good. i don't think i'll buy panther creek again. decent wine, but overpriced. great food. good bye (sometime... still not sure when we'll get to move) old house. you've been good to us. so many wonderful memories here. our wedding, my pregnancy, z's birth & first year. sigh.
moving hell.
ok. there's a lull in the moving activity because we're waiting to see if we'll close today or not, just as we've been waiting every day since last thursday. everything is as packed up as it can be. i thought i'd take a moment to catalog the craziness.
at the end of july, we made an offer on a house we liked, which i found online only because of z's lead crisis, which turned out to be nothing. our offer was accepted, and it was contingent on selling our house & closing by oct 30th. we quickly de-cluttered our house, moving a sofa to a friend's house, packing up non-essentials, and making several trips to goodwill, all in a flurry while gma & gpa tigard watched z. the cats went to live with our friend and saviour, r. mid aug our house went on the market. one month of showings ensued. no solid offers, but lots of interest, so we asked for an extension to close by nov 30th. more showing craziness went on (which involved me cleaning the house meticulously before EVERY showing, sometimes even baking cookies or brownies, and hiding all of z's stuff). several times we would have to vacate the house only to find out that the lookers had flaked out or cancelled after the fact. after many more open houses & showings, several people made offers. two of them didn't pan out, so we accepted the remaining one. nov 20th was the date by which we were to close on our current house. our buyer was to close on the sale of his condo (on which his offer for our house was contingent) on nov 12. we seriously started packing the weekend before the 12th. however, the 12th came, and he didn't close, simply because the lending industry had not factored veteran's day - a holiday - into the mix. that's totally understandable, as veteran's day was a new holiday this year, and thus easy to overlook (NOT). grr. thus began our troubles. i think he finally closed on his condo on friday the 13th. on friday, our agent said we'd sign to close on our current house on tues or wed (the 17th or 18th). she asked if the buyer could move some things into OUR HOUSE - either the garage or the bedroom in the basement, while we moved our things out. this request has made me more & more upset. #1 - in our agreement with the buyer, we are renting our current home back from him for 2 weeks. we have TWO weeks to move out. THE HOUSE IS STILL OURS. that totally defeats the idea of RENTING BACK. #2 - we need full access to the garage in order to move all of our stuff out, and we cannot do so with his junk in it. #3 - moving his stuff to the bedroom in the basement was not an option because a queen bed does not fit down the stairs - that's why our box springs have been hanging out in our garage for the past 4 months. #4 - i do not want to be liable for anything happening to his junk, as i was still teaching, and had people going through the garage & basement. our realtor told the buyer no, and that she would help pay him to move his stuff from his parents' house to our house once we're out (which is so ridiculous, because his agent should have advised him to schedule a much later moving date than the 19th. she totally dropped the ball on this one).
anyway, j ended up signing on the thursday. throughout the waiting/inspection period, both our agent and our mortgage broker said we would close sooner than later. not quite. it is now tuesday, and our current house just closed yesterday. we're still waiting for the funds to go through. it's 1:45 pm, and we don't know yet if we will close today, or tomorrow (wed), or perhaps next monday, due to the thanksgiving holiday. oh wait - i just got an email saying "funded" from my mortgage broker, and told j, but he said "they still need our current house to go through." i have no idea what is going on, if we're being told the truth about anything. all we can do is wait. we were told something about the buyer's lender changing his software 3 weeks ago, and that the buyer's entire file was deleted, and they had to resubmit documents. there's no excuse for that - 2-3 weeks ago. he should've been on top of things. and there are rules with banks and underwriters and the whole motley crew, about things needing to be wired by 10:30am, or they won't be accounted for until the next business day. in this day and age, those things just shouldn't be.
so WHY am i so upset about all of this? what's the hurry??? it's all about the schedule. i had every single thing lined up. even so, there were bumps. such as, last monday, all of a sudden, our cat sitter had to get rid of vinny & persia because she's moving and the landlord wanted to start showing the apartment. she never let the landlord know she had our cats, and should've paid a deposit. luckily j's parents have been able to take care of them for the past week, but they're the ones hosting thanksgiving this year, so the cats need to be out of their house with plenty of time to clean. i'm very lucky i had time in my schedule to go pick them up and transport them to canby, with z in tow. for over a month, i've had the carpet surgeon scheduled to clean the carpets in the new house, which needed to be done because there were awful blood/oil stains on the 2nd floor, all before all our junk was moved in. j planned to take this week off from work, and i cancelled all my students. i scheduled the movers for wednesday. we needed to move this week because my mom has the week off from her language program, so she could watch z. packing was hard enough with him running around, un-packing everything and getting into things that weren't so safe for him. we also had workers scheduled to begin framing the basement for drywall on monday (yesterday), which had to be pushed to today, which had to be pushed to monday, which means more time i have to teach upstairs, around the cats, around z. and the buyer's realtor came asking for a key yesterday, which we didn't give to her, because the buyer shouldn't have one until we're out of here. i don't want him moving things in while we're still here.
time is so valuable, when you're self employed, and when you have babies. everything has to be planned out. on top of all of this, somehow i had a massive miscommunication with my pianist. in the past two days, i've had to reschedule all the rehearsal time slots on the next two weekends in a hurry, before we lose our phone and internet on wednesday. we'll be without both until saturday, due to the holiday. saturday is my birthday. i get to spend it unpacking and waiting for the fios verizon people. i do have a lot to be thankful for. but honestly, i have no idea how these lending industry people keep their jobs, with all the mistakes that have been happening.
as of now, something has funded, but something involving funds through us bank has not. something got screwed up last night. sigh. what a gong show. that's all i have to say.
and i miss my pumpkin.
childrens' garden
fridays tend to be long, so z & i went to visit my friend j, who works at legacy emanuel hospital in north portland. we got there early (also got to drop off an old car seat to recycle, given to us by a student), so z & i explored the childrens' garden.
here he is with a giant, colorful turtle.
note the mask on the child statue... their sense of humor in the wake of h1n1 craziness.
boarding downtown???
i was running errands one weekend and found this in the pearl district downtown. they were constructing a jump.
Friday, November 13, 2009
friday the 13th
fridays really drag on these days. today is friday the 13th. this is my third post today. it's absolutely pouring outside. it's a good day for african chicken peanut soup from mcmenamins. and a black and tan brownie. and a pint. sigh. here's a picture of z playing with the toilet in a Really Ugly Bathroom at the new house (assuming things get moving some day soon...). we're certainly not buying the house for its beautiful bathrooms.
z is asleep, so maybe a nap will make things better.
crazy teeth
ok... another update. fridays are long days for me. i just flipped z upside down, giving me a front row view of his teeth. he now has the four front teeth on the top, the four front teeth on the bottom (central and side incisors), four molars, and he's getting the 4 canines in now - 3 of them are showing. no wonder he's been on the fussy side this past week, and drooling up a storm! he'll only have 4 more molars to go after this. i think this is all sooner than normal...
update.
our little z can now say ma, da, nana as in banana, z, p, t, v, wa... he can clap two blocks together imitating us when we do it, he can bring us a book to read, he can put the book back on the shelf when we're done, he helps us put his toys away before bath (although we do most of it). he still isn't signing at all, but has his own signals for things. we just cancelled the cloth diaper service, because of the move, and because he soaks through them so quickly. i don't have time or the concentration to remember to change him every single hour. he's getting very good at standing up by himself without holding on to anything. he's getting a little pickier about eating. bananas are his favorite food! he likes pumpkin pie, too.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
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