Firstborn Fridays

My workplace was closed on Fridays from mid-May through today, as an attempt to save some money on utilities during the hottest time of the year. When the free Fridays started, I had all sorts of ideas of how I would spend the time--maybe I'd do volunteer work! Maybe I'd really get the house in order for once and for all!

After the first Friday off, it became clear that I probably wasn't going to get as much done on these days off as I expected. The days tended to just fly by and I'd be scrambling to get things done before picking Emmett up from daycare.

The two things that I wanted to do with my free time were to spend quality time with the dog and work on some artistic stuff. When we first started this "summer Fridays off" thing at my workplace (two years ago), I started using the time to practice the art of bento and I decided that I'd try to do a bento for Lucy most Fridays this year. I had to take a couple of weeks off while we were traveling, but it was fun to have more than enough time to think of an idea and bring it to fruition.

Several of these bentos for Lucy were inspired by children's TV or literature, including this one of Red Fraggle (from Fraggle Rock):Or this one of The Lorax from Dr. Seuss.Other inspiration came from animals. One week I did a bento of a liger (part lion, part tiger):
This week, I made one of an owl. By the way, when I did the animals, I often used pictures from Emmett's clothes for inspiration.
I think that my favorite one is from last week, where I used some pictures from some Northwest Coast First Nations art to make this moon bento:

We are starting to give Emmett some food (mostly fruit pieces or crackers or mini-pancakes) in bento boxes, and in Vancouver I picked up some fun new bento supplies. It's hard to do artistic bentos while tending to a kid of his age, though.

I've been glad to be able to spend extra time with Lucy. Her mellow companionship is lovely at the end of the workweek.

Emmett's Birthday: How We Celebrated

I took the whole day off work on July 27th because (like on the day he was born) I wanted to spend every minute I could with him. It occurred to me that he would probably have fun being with his comrades at day care but I think the first birthday is about the parents as well as being about the baby. I felt thrilled for Emmett that he was experiencing a birthday, but also thrilled that he'd already fared better than my houseplants ever have and that we didn't end up dying of sleep deprivation or anything. We all made it to one year. Woohoo!

It's funny, on Mother's Day and on my birthday, I remember secretly thinking, "Hey kid, if you really want to give me a present, you could sleep for an extended period of time." And on both of those occasions, sleep was pretty terrible, enough so that I didn't even bother wishing for a good night of sleep before his birthday. But lo and behold, Emmett slept over nine hours straight on the night of July 26th! What a great way to start the day.

Before Adam left for work, we had him open presents from Grandma and Grandpa and I read him the Dr. Seuss birthday book. Adam came back from work early but having him go in for some period of time was unavoidable. Here I will admit that there are times when I've been alone with Emmett for a whole weekday and would find myself at a loss for what to do all day, but this time around I did some planning ahead of time to avoid this. In fact, I may have overplanned a bit because I didn't get to everything on my list, but that's OK because we have the weekend to do other things.

The first thing on my list was that I was going to bake him a cake. I thought about buying a cake, or at least using a cake mix, but in the end, I had this weird sense that baking a cake from scratch was this thing that I ought to do. In the days leading up to his birthday, I spent a lot of time pondering cake recipes, but in the end, I just used the recipe on the cake pan. I'd bought a cute cake pan that makes cakes in the shape of animals, figuring that if the cakes were in cute shapes, it would make it easy to avoid going crazy with frosting-making and frosting-eating. As always happens, I had most of the ingredients except one: milk. I've obviously read a few too many pieces of pro-breastfeeding literature because I momentarily looked at the expressed milk in the fridge and thought, "hmm, there's at least half a cup there!" Luckily for mankind, I snapped out of it and used some vanilla yogurt instead.

Next, I took Emmett to a storytime event at The Children's Store in Chapel Hill. This storytime was targeted more towards older kids but Emmett did well: he didn't start wandering away until after the third of four books that they read. Given that the store has a lot of cool toys as distractions, I was impressed. Of course, I ended up buying him another present while we were there. I was going to go around to a few other stores in the general area with him but then had a brief "OMG, I don't think I have wipes in my purse" crisis and felt it best to head home. While we were driving around, I made a point of playing various birthday songs on CDs on the car stereo (including tunes by Justin Roberts and Roger Day).

In the afternoon, we got together with some of his and my friends that we haven't seen much of lately, and the afternoon flew by. Adam came home early and we pondered going out to eat, but decided that it would be better to give him lots of time to play with new toys and we ate at home. We managed not to burn the house down during "cake with candle" time. (He actually had 2 opportunities for candle time--one was at Elaine's house earlier in the day--so I got to blow out one candle for him, and Adam got to blow out another one. It's good to share these important parenting duties.)

It was very funny to watch Emmett eat his cake because he basically just picked the whole thing up, held it in his fist and kind of gnawed at it. It was denser than I planned (not using that recipe again!) but tasted pretty good. Avoiding frosting was a good idea at this stage of lief. I probably could have written a novel in the amount of time it took him to finish "eating" it. Much of it ended up in his bib.

After cake time, we assembled his big present and gave him some time to play with it. We bought him a water table to play with outside. It gets so hot here in NC that it's good to have some sort of water-based toy, and I didn't want to get a baby pool since he's cried the few times we've tried those out. However, he did like the water tables at the Carrboro 4th of July celebration and I also thought that it was an appropriate gift for him since one of his hobbies is sticking his hands in the dog's water dish...the water table is like a really big dog dish in some ways. It was slightly uncertain whether the table would actually arrive on his birthday or at some later point, but it arrived while we were out at storytime that morning. He had fun and got very messy, but if you don't get messy on your birthday as a baby, you probably aren't celebrating hard enough.

He conked out after his bath while I was reading him a Sesame Street book about birthdays (The Case of the Missing Duckie), and I was optimistic about another great night of sleep, and well...let's just say that I'm pretty convinced that he's getting a new tooth. (Hmm, that would explain the all-day drooling...) I really enjoyed spending lots of time together and am so happy that this little guy is in the picture. We just love him so much!

(Being) One Is Fun

It's hard to believe that a year ago, my day started like this:


And then, just a few hours later, I was doing this:


And now, it's time for this big guy:


to do this:


Happy Birthday to my sweet boy Emmett! Hippo Birdie Two Ewes, Hippo Birdie Two Ewes.

Oh Canada!

Around this time last year, while I was extremely pregnant, Adam flew to Vancouver for his sister Robin's wedding. Some parts of this year's trip involved me doing some of the things that I missed out on by not accompanying Adam last year. Other parts of the trip involved introducing Emmett to aspects of his paternal culture. Most importantly, it was Emmett's first time meeting Aunt Kelly, Aunt Robin, and Uncle Step.

Our border crossing experience on the way up was quick and hassle-free. We stopped at the Peace Arch Visitors' Centre briefly. Adam loved that the parking area on the Canada side had an electric vehicle charging station; I dug the in-bathroom Canada trivia questions. On the return trip, our wait was longer but it was also pretty seamless. My US passport, Emmett's certified birth certificate, and Adam's green card were sufficient to be allowed back into the USA. You never know how much or how little a hassle border crossings will be. On the way back, there was a dog show going on at the border. If the crossing had taken longer, I might've gotten out of the car to check it out.

One thing that is nice about being in Vancouver is that Adam knows the city well and much of it is also familiar to me after repeated visits. It would've been expensive to use some of our fancy phone features like navigation while out of the US, but we mostly didn't need to since we knew our way around. We stayed at The Sylvia Hotel on English Bay and loved being in such a great location. There are cafes, restaurants, and even grocery stores within walking distance and it's right near the entrance to Stanley Park. The hotel is even the setting for a few children's books about a cat who named Mister Got To Go who used to live in the hotel. We ended up buying a copy of one of the books for Emmett because the story was sweet and because it was fun to see art with both animals and the actual hotel.

I immediately had Adam take Emmett right up to the ocean (Emmett has visited the Pacific Ocean before setting foot in the Atlantic Ocean!). Right across the street from the hotel are both grassy and sandy areas near the beach. On several evenings, we would take Emmett out to the grassy areas for walking practice. People were especially charmed when he'd use the umbrella stroller as a walker and push it along the grass.

One of the first ways that I relived Adam's trip from the previous year was to have us all visit the Vancouver Aquarium. Last year, Adam went there and took pictures and videos and bought otter-related souvenirs, but I really wanted to see things for myself, especially the otters holding hands. Also, we were excited about having Emmett see his first otters, so we watched them first. We also spent a lot of time watching the belugas. One of the baby belugas was pretty close in age to Emmett. There was a funny moment where the baby was trying to nurse and the mama beluga was trying to swim away. The aquarium also has a very nice kids' play area that includes a space where kids can do x-rays on stuffed animal versions of seals. I have to admit that I wanted to play with a lot of that stuff!

Another day, Robin suggested that we check out the baby-friendly matinee of a show at the Arts Club on Granville Island. It was called "Mom's The Word: Remixed" and was a funny and poignant show about various aspects of motherhood. Several of the actresses in it were also the playwrights and I especially liked that the play had certain Vancouver-related elements to it. I'm not 100% sure, but Emmett may have been the only baby who stayed in the theatre for the whole performance--not that he was silent or sitting still the whole time (he in fact spent a lot of the second half crawling around the back of the theatre). Still, I was impressed with how well he dealt with sitting through a play. We haven't even yet taken him to the movies (not because we haven't felt it appropriate, more because of being unsure it'd be worth going since we're not sure we adults would stay awake).

In the program for the play, I saw an ad for a show at the Museum of Anthropology about Japanese-influenced Inuit art and suggested that we go to that museum another day. Besides the special exhibit, I wanted Emmett to see some of the totem poles and other First Nations art there. We also spent some time on the campus for the University of British Columbia and Adam got to see some of the things that had changed since he'd studied there.

Another big highlight of the trip was something that wasn't entirely planned. On our last full day in Vancouver, we were hanging out near Chinatown and it was raining hard enough that we didn't really want to be walking outside as much as we had on other days. When we realized we were pretty close to the Vancouver Public Library's central branch, we decided to go in and check out what the children's section was like. I went from being in a terrible mood to being really happy and excited. First we spent some time in an area with a lot of wooden puzzles and puppets. After being camped out in that section for a while, I decided I wanted to see the rest of the kids' floor and I found an enclosed space with lots of mats on the floor and toys for building and playing. After several days of having Emmett play in our hotel room, it was nice for him to have the chance to play in an area like this that was meant for play. I really love the libraries that we visit locally in North Carolina, but this one had some impressive options.

That same day, we had another fun surprise. We'd gone to Stanley Park to go see the totem poles and it turned out that there was a "Celebrate BC Parks" event going on right nearby. As we arrived, there was a kids' play going on where a beaver and a raccoon debated who was better equipped to be Canada's mascot. Some audience voting was involved and consensus was that the beaver was most appropriate. There were also tables from various organizations available, including one group that brings a full orca skeleton around to school groups and has kids put it together. They were giving out paper beaver masks at most of the tables. As we were leaving the park, we actually saw an adult raccoon with two babies.

Much of the rest of our time was spent on shopping and dining. We went to quite a few baby/kids' stores. One favorite was Kidsbooks on West Broadway. Everyone there was super-nice and we found some cute early birthday presents for Emmett, including a Haida-inspired beaver hand puppet.. We also went to a couple of fancy pet-related stores in order to buy presents to bring back to Lucydog. In terms of dining out, eating early and quickly proved to be a good strategy for a trip that involved a lot of restaurant meals. We tended to bring a variety of items along to help amuse him during meals and this worked out pretty well.

Having a baby along meant that this trip was much different from previous Vancouver trips, but it was more fun in a lot of ways. Many people would start conversations with us about Emmett wherever we went and being with him around the clock was good in terms of bonding.

Trip Summary: The Washington Portion

Although Washington wasn't our main destination on this trip, we had a lovely time there and I'm glad we spent a few days there before heading to Vancouver.

We flew from NC to Seattle (via JFK) on July 7th and arrived at my aunt's house in Bellevue at something like 2 in the morning. It's interesting to me that Emmett's first flight had the same destination as my first flight. My first time on an airplane was when I was about 11 and my mother and sister went to visit my cousins in Washington state. Aunt Susan lives in the same house and it was nice to have that first destination be so familiar. We were a little bit torn between talking a lot and catching up then and there and just going to sleep, but of course sleep was badly needed.

On that first full day of vacation, we managed to see 4 of my five cousins and several of their kids. It was especially interesting to see the contrast between two of the female second-cousins...my cousin David's daughter Grace loves babies and loved holding and entertaining Emmett, whereas Dawn's daughter Kate had the "babies scare me" mindset. I suppose I can relate...babies kind of terrified me for quite a while there, too. It was really fun to see everyone. We had dinner out at a restaurant called Szechuan Chef, and Emmett surprised me by enthusiastically eating a spicy potato dish that Adam ordered. Before this, he'd seemed affronted by spicy food. I think the trick is to let him discover things on his own. In this case, he was sitting close enough to the potatoes to grab and start eating them.

Dawn and Kate spent the night at Aunt Susan's house, which gave us more time to catch up in the morning, then we headed out to Bellevue Square Mall for a playdate. As it happens, one of my best friends from the Cornell art dorm days lives in Bellevue and has two kids, one of whom is only about a week older than Emmett. We met up at the mall's play area, which apparently gets kind of mobbed whenever the weather is crappy, which is a lot of the time (especially this year). The play area was adorable and it was a trip to see Jeremy. There was a surreal moment when a song by 10,000 Maniacs was playing in the background where it really felt like maybe 18 years hadn't gone by. We talked alot about mutual friends we'd seen in the intervening years and parenting stuff. After some playspace time, we all went out to lunch at Boom noodle, where I somehow managed to spill a sippy cup of water on the floor twice. ("Karin, I'm afraid we're going to have to cut you off!" Jeremy sort-of-joked.) I was lso amused by the moment where Jeremy and I were talking to each other under the table while we each cleaned noodles and things off of our kids' highchairs.

We hit the Bellevue Farmer's Market on the way back. I am always intrigued by the things that "foreign" farmer's market have. For instance, this market had soup. "Why doesn't ours have soup?" I wondered, temporarily forgetting all of the times that it's been too hot to even go to the market.

We spent the rest of the day having quality time with Aunt Susan. My cousin Doug and his sons visited for a while; we took the dogs for a walk and spent some time on the swings in a nearby park; and we spent some time that evening at a local shopping center called Crossroads, which has a surprisingly good and varied food court.

We drove to Vancouver the next day, stopping in Bellingham. We'd stopped there on another trip and I remembered the existence of a really great pizza place where we'd had rosemary lemonade. Unfortunately, I could not remember the name or location of the restaurant. Aswe looked for a place to eat, we crossed paths with the last five minutes of a gay pride parade, then decided to try a place called the Mount Bakery Cafe. This place was very family-friendly, with books and toys available and other babies and small kids present. It took us a while to get our food, but it was excellent: I had a portabella Benny (Eggs Benedict) and it was served on a savory waffle.

As it turns out, we found the pizza place (La Fiamma) on the way back to the airport, and it was as good as we remembered. We spent a bit of time in Seattle before heading to the airport on the following Sunday. My main goal was to get pictures of a building that has walruses on it, so we used the navigation capabilities of our phones to find the building. We also had time to visit the Elliott Bay bookstore (especially cool because it's dog-friendly!) and have a bite to eat at a vegan eatery (Plum Bistro). At some point, I imagine that there'll be a trip where we take Emmett to see more of Seattle's kid-friendly attractions, but with limited time and attention spans (including those of the adults on the trip), this worked out to be enough excitement.

Little Nest

During our recent week in Vancouver, Emmett went to lots of different restaurants and tried a variety of types of food. Some of it he ate, some of it he smushed with his fingers, some of it he dropped on the floor. It was sometimes hard to tell ahead of time whether a restaurant would be family-friendly, so I was excited when my sister-in-law Kelly mentioned that her neighborhood had a restaurant that tailored to moms and kids called Little Nest. We went there for lunch with her on the same day that we visited the Vancouver Aquarium.

Usually when we go to a restaurant, the first question is whether they have a high chair available. This was not even a question at Little Nest--as soon as we walked in, we saw numerous vintage high chairs available. Kelly took a great picture of them that is available here. I snagged one and brought it to the table but was immediately drawn in by the play area.

Against the wall of the play area was a mini-kitchen that was actually better equipped than most of my grad student year apartments. I couldn't resist the temptation to look in all of the cabinets. When we first came in, this area was in heavy use but later on, Emmett had the chance to play there. It was a good place for him to practice his Favorite Thing Lately, which is Standing Up.

Another great feature was the wooden barn and the toy farm animals. There were enough toys there that even after we put aside the ones that Emmett had mouthed (for sanitizing by the restaurant staff), there were still lots around.

And the food was quite good! Kelly was even able to get a sandwich on gluten-free bread. Mostly Emmett just ate "the usual" but it was nice to be in a place where there was no question of whether it would be OK to nurse him publicly. (Little Nest: A Great Place to Lactate!) There were at least 3 other moms nursing during the time that we were there.

It was also nice to be in an atmosphere where kids were free to actually be kids. On the flip side, I imagine that non-parents would find the place chaotic, but hey, it's not like it's the only place to eat in the area. It's also within walking distance of about 3 different baby/kids' stores.

Of course, now I'm trying to figure out if there's a way to convince restaurants in my own area to be more like Little Nest. I've even contemplated building a play area in my own office with cool wooden toys.

Travel Tips, Before I Forget Them

We recently got back from our first extended trip with Emmett. We spent about a week and a half in the Pacific Northwest, with a few days in the Seattle area and most of the time in Vancouver.

Before this, the furthest we'd traveled with Emmett was a two-hour (each way) car trip to the Ikea store in Charlotte, NC, so it was fairly ambitious to have his first trip be one that took us all the way across the country and then across an international border. However, I know that lots of people have taken babies even younger than Emmett on much longer trips and have more or less survived, and I reminded myself of this when I'd feel anxious about the trip.

I asked friends online for advice on flying with babies and got some very good suggestions, such as bringing extra clothes (for baby AND parents) in case of poopsplosion/vomiting and having the baby suck on something (pacifier/bottle/mother's breast) during takeoff and landing to help equalize pressure in the ears. My favorite suggestion, from my friend Peter, was to just have the spouse take the kid(s) on a separate flight altogether. Heh.

Many people advised me to buy Emmett his own seat on the plane, but he's been so clingy recently that I figured he'd be happier being held on the flights. I sort of feel like I should go on record and say, "Yes, you were all totally right about the extra seat thing!" but actually, on the very small plane that we took between RDU and NY city, there were only two seats on each side of the aisle and not having a seat for Emmett seemed fine with both of us sitting with/attending to him. It was harder on the longer flights where the row had three seats. Each time, the third seat was occupied (and the flights were too full to necessarily find a row with a free seat) and it was challenging. Emmett gets pretty wriggly at times while nursing or trying to sleep and I worried about him kicking the person in the neighboring seat. We were lucky that the seat neighbors were friendly people who liked kids--one told us about his toddler son and the other was about to visit grandkids--but we ended up putting Adam in between me and the other passenger so that he could be a human shield of sorts. Although Emmett slept almost continuously on the redeye flight that we took home, Adam and I didn't sleep that well and perhaps we would have slept better if he'd been strapped into a seat and we hadn't had to hold him. But holding him did make it easy to nurse him a bit when he started showing signs of turning into That Loud Baby.

One tip I'd picked up on a blog or somewhere was to bring extra earplugs and offer them to people in your surroundings. So we did bring these along and mentioned it to one person who didn't already have headphones on but didn't end up even opening the package. Emmett had fun playing with the unopened package (it now has baby bite marks on it). These days, so many people wear headphones while traveling (especially on a carrier with in-flight entertainment like Jet Blue).

I looked into different types of companies that rent baby gear to travelers (including one that would let you rent a Bugaboo stroller for $25 per day!), but in the end we just rented a car seat from the car rental company and rented a crib from the hotel. If you go this route, be sure to enter the situation with somewhat lowered expectations. The car seat thing was a little weird. We rented from Alamo and after they gave us the keys and had us sign the rental agreement, they just directed us to an unmanned small building in the parking garage that had a random assortment of car seats and boosters in it. The good thing about this was that we could choose a type and size of car seat that we were somewhat familiar with (after discovering that 1 a.m. is not the best time to try to learn to install an unfamiliar type of car seat). Perhaps when it's not 1 in the morning, it's less of a free-for-all? I have no idea. Anyway, I could definitely see the appeal of bringing one's own car seat after this experience. What can I say, we were trying to travel light.

In terms of life after you get out of the airport, I have a big piece of advice to share with the world. You know those plastic outlet covers? Bring 5 or 6 of them on every trip until your kid gets past the "I want to play with electrical outlets" stage. They don't take up much luggage space and might be needed. We were staying at a historic hotel in Vancouver, and while most of the outlets were located behind furniture, there was one outlet that was right on the wall in an area near where Emmett would play. I would end up sitting in front of it to keep him away from it. I almost bought outlet covers at one point but resisted since I have tons of them at home.

Although I brought enough clothes for Emmett to wear for the duration of the trip, it was only a few days into the trip that I realized I wanted do laundry anyway, because at Emmett's age, if he gets an outfit messy, he really gets it messy. Even though we brought bibs, he got a lot of food on clothes. On a shorter trip, we might've just let it go, but we were away for 11 days and decided to outsource his (and our) laundry a little more than halfway through the trip.

Overall, Emmett was great on the trip. We joke that he flirts with people (of all ages) wherever he goes. We'd be sitting in a restaurant and would realize that he'd be making eye contact and smiling at someone at another table, or in the airport he'd crawl up to people to say Hi. A friendly baby is a major icebreaker with strangers!

Patriotic Holidays

I can't believe that it's July already. Later this month, we have two milestone birthdays to celebrate (my 40th and Emmett's first), but we're already in celebration mode here.
We always do something to celebrate Canada Day on July 1, even if all we do is sit around at home eating vegetarian poutine and drinking Canadian beer. This year we decided to invite friends over after work to have Canadian drinks and snacks and it was pretty fun. Emmett dressed for the occasion in a cute Canada t-shirt that Adam brought back from a trip to Vancouver a year ago. We listened to Rush and the streaming version of a Canadian radio station. I think that having some recognition for Canada makes it easier for Adam to handle the rampant patriotism of the Fourth of July.

Our town has a fun Fourth of July celebration that starts with a very small parade. Kids decorate their bikes and walk a few blocks and end up near Town Hall, where a variety of games and music await them. In the past several years, Lucydog and I have walked in the parade along with our friends Elaine and Chas and their kids. Their daughter has a strong record of winning recognition during the decoration/costume contest that precedes the parade and this year she and her brother won a joint prize for bike decoration.

We decided that we should decorate Emmett's stroller at least a little bit, and Adam came up with the word "patrioctopus" a few days before, so the night before the 4th, I drew a cartoon octopus on some fabric (see photo). Our octopus is holding flags for both the US and Canada (as well as a firecracker). We used red duct tape to attach it to the stroller. While we didn't get tons of "Oh my God you're so clever!" comments, we amused ourselves and that matters.

Though it was ridiculously hot outside, we all really enjoyed the town celebration. They had a special "toddler zone" set up with large tinker toys, xylophones, water tables, and sandboxes and we spent some quality time there. In the heat, the water tables were especially fun.

Our friends gave us two great recommendations: check out the ska band, and enter Emmett in the baby crawling race. The baby race was set to start at 1 p.m., and we weren't sure that we'd be able to survive in the heat from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., but the ska band played in between and was a great way to spend time (especially since they played in a shady area).

Once they were done, we focused on getting Emmett ready for the race...diaper change, a little breastfeeding (but not enough to make him sleepy), sussing out the competition. We met another race participant, Charlie, who was just a couple weeks older than Emmett and joked around with his parents about the upcoming race. The race itself was one of the funniest things ever. The babies only had to crawl about 5 or 6 feet, but somehow once it was "1, 2, 3, go!" none of them wanted to move. The baby next to Emmett started to cry and he watched that baby instead of moving. Eventually Charlie crawled across (the only baby to do so at all at that point) and secured first place--we were happy for him. The contest judges reminded all gathered that second place mattered, too, so we stepped up efforts to get Emmett crawling. Even though Adam was busy with the camera, I was yelling at him "keys! We need keys!" (since he's always trying to steal my keys). After jiggling the keys a bit, I gestured towards my chest and this got his attention. Having little Emmett crawl towards me with friends and onlookers cheering was its own reward...but as it turned out, both first and second place qualified for a trophy. So Emmett has his first trophy! We are flabbergasted by this. Already he has more in the way of athletic achievement than I have managed in my entire life. One friend warned me that Emmett now has a lot to live up to, which is probably true. As I was saying to Adam, "I didn't think that I cared about winning, but I'm pretty psyched about it."