Out-Takes from the Photo Shoot

I found this old post that never published..... so.......

 Our friend, Roger J. Porter, shot some family photos for us right before Christmas.  We just played around downtown Portland near Pioneer Square and the old Carnegie library.

One of the shots made it onto our Christmas card.  Here are some that didn't make that cut but show a bit of the Sprout's spunky personality.

 

The Sprout at 4

Dear Sprout,

In March, you turned four years old.  It's not just another year in the calendar, but truly a transformation from plump, adorable little girl to some new long-legged creature that looks more like a kindergartner than a baby.  As always, I cheer each new development and I'm always excited for the next stage.

I'll admit though to being slightly sad that many of your toddler speech patterns have slipped away.   I love when you are watching t.v. with me and a commercial comes on and you tell me in your wise and knowing way, "That's just and advertusement, Mom!"  I grin inside every time I hear you talk about "hairplanes" and "hairports" and I hope that is the last mispronunciation to disappear.

This year for your birthday you really wanted a ballet themed party. I tried to talk you into an artist party since you've declared that is your future career, but you were not dissuaded.  Personally, I was just trying to avoid a Pepto Bismal pink party.  Every ballet themed birthday party geegaw that I saw in the party store was pink, pink, pink.  And I am not a fan of pink, pink, pink.  Fortunately I also saw a lot of cute black and white party decorations so we put together a black and white ballet party with just a hint of pink.  You were thrilled.

You are really interested in reading and writing.  In fact, the word "obsessed" comes to mind some days.  You want to know "What that says?" and "How do you spell ___?" and "Mama, what does a little 'm' look like?"  Because you practice writing, drawing and cutting all the time, your fine motor skills are developing really quickly.  Already the difference between how you write your name now and only three months ago is very pronounced.  You meticulously addressed all the envelopes for your birthday invitations and then signed thank you notes for everyone after the party. 

The nice thing about four is you have friends.  Real friends.  And you actually play together with little adult support.  It's nice to know that we can take you places and you and your friends will run off for an hour or two of uninterrupted play.  Of course, we can't let down our guard too much.  One night Cara and I were having a beautiful heart to heart conversation while you and Little Bear were playing in the basement.  We heard much gleeful laughter but thought little of it, until we discovered both of you covered from head to toe in marker.  Fortunately they were water-based markers and came off pretty easily leaving only mild bruise-like discolorations the following day.

Your personality remains fiercely independent and intense.  You can maintain focus for an hour or more on a detailed craft or writing project, and you can just as quickly become frustrated with a mistake and destroy what you've been working on in one quick crumple of the paper and an exasperated shriek.  You do not like to be told what to do in any way shape or form.  As parents, we're constantly evaluating which battles are worth fighting and which ones are not essential.  Like most strong-willed girls, you like to have choices and generally that works to defuse situations.  "Would you like to go potty or brush your teeth first?" goes over far better than a directive.  (Thank you, Love and Logic!) 

You love to have routines and checklists.  You have a "Morning Routine" taped to the door of your bedroom in an attempt to smooth the workaday morning hustle.  You like routines so much, you carefully numbered and drew a 6 step routine for your Rapunzel doll so she will know order in which to proceed when she takes a bath and gets dressed.  For a while, you were refusing to wear underwear because they were "uncomfortable".  Magically, Days of the Week underwear seem to have solved this problem.  The compulsion to wear the Right underwear for each day apparently overrides any sensory issues.
 
Child, I KNOW you. That part of you--that fierce, frustrated, checklist-loving part of you.  That's me.  I only hope and pray we can steer your stubborn little will in the right direction so you can grow into a woman that is kind and strong and wise and true.

Love,

Your Mama 

Snow Day

The great privilege of living on Portland is that we can chose our weather.  Sure, it's rainy and grey in town most of the time, but all we have to do is drive 45 minutes up the mountain to be in sun and snow.

The Sprout must have read too many Christmas books about snowy winter days because she was insistent that we would have snow for Christmas.  We didn't.  She was sad.  So we took her up the Mountain one Saturday to play in the snow.





Apparently, her romanticized dream of snow did not include:  a) cold  and b) snow so deep you can barely walk in it. 



She was not a fan.  She made a few snow angels, walked a few hundred yards and was done.

Two big thumbs down.

Maybe next year.

"Orphan" Christmas

We jokingly refer to our Christmas day celebration as "Orphan" Christmas.  Over the years we've collected a few souls who also have no family in town for the holidays and we have brunch together on Christmas day.

Here are our friends, Dave, Krys, P and M, who we love dearly:



Here's our former housemate hamming it up with the Sprout.  They are good friends and even better enemies.



In a quiet moment, listening to "princess stories".



We gave the Sprout a dollhouse for Christmas.  I bought it used from a friend and cleaned it up a little bit. It used to have pale pink floral wallpaper.  I don't know if you can tell it in the pictures, but on Christmas Eve we stayed up late painting out the pink with black chalkboard paint.  I think it's a big improvement plus we can draw on the walls any pattern we choose.



More photos on Flickr for friends and family

Fall 2012, In which I prove once again that I am not Superwoman

Dear Long-Forsaken Blog,

I feel like I've been pretty careful in the last few years to not take on too much at any given time. But this fall I got a little carried away. I took a graduate class toward my administrator's license and  I signed on to two heavy-duty committees in my school district.  These duties on top of my already busy full-time job and roles of wife and mother.  Add to this, the Wise and Bearded One's new job in an architecture firm--a new job in which he has increased responsibilities and has been averaging fifty-plus hour weeks.

And it was all too much. Some of my favorite parts of life fell by the wayside.  I did almost no reading for pleasure, almost no crafting, and (obviously) no blogging.

I struggle with being an ambitious career woman while valuing a creative life, a nurturing home, and spiritual/emotional balance.  I've searched for blogs by women who work fulltime outside the home and are involved mothers.  I haven't found one yet.  They probably just don't have the time to blog.  If you find one, let me know. 

I take comfort from conversations with many of my female friends who are in the same place I am---trying to find balance and figuring out when to say "no" and when to say "yes".  I also really appreciated the Atlantic article by Anne-Marie Slaughter that made the rounds of the internet this summer. If you haven't read Why Women Still Can't Have It All, I recommend it.

What's Really Important:



 Things that Happened This Fall that Did Not Get Blogged About:

--Our housemates moved out. We love them and are happy they can finally get their own space and we are glad to stretch out across our whole house again.

--The Sprout got her own room--we repainted and are in the process of making one of the upstairs bedrooms her special place.

--The Wise and Bearded One renovated half of our basement into a work/studio space and play space.  It's almost done.  Happy Dance!  I can't wait to have a space to sew that is somewhere other than the dining room table!

--We now have a guest room/office too.  So, out-of-town friends, come and visit!

--I read several thousand pages about using data for educational decision making, common core curriculum, formative and summative assessment, and evaluation systems for teachers and administrators.  I am not any smarter than when I started.

--We watched four seasons of Sons of Anarchy in quick succession in the evenings after the Sprout went to bed.

What Will Be Different Next Semester:

--The Wise and Bearded One and I have a deal:  Only one of us is allowed to be stressed at a time.  Since his job promises to continue to be extremely busy for the next few months, I will scale back my extra duties
.
--Hopefully, that means I will have time to read, to create, to blog.  But I'm not promising anything since I have definitively proven that I am not Superwoman.

Deb

Summer, Where Did You Go?

It's hard to blog after you haven't for two months.  Where do you start?  Do you even try to start again? For me the answer is "yes" because this blog is really the only journal/photo album/recuerdo that we keep around here.

And so, here's an omnibus blog post, meant to clear the air and record in brief what we've been up to this summer.

1) Two weeks in Indiana for me and the Sprout to do the family tour--cousins, aunts, uncles, grandmas and grandpas.

2) A 7-day graduate course for me at Lewis and Clark. Compressing one semester's work into a week and a half nearly put me over the edge.  Fortunately, we had a second weekend to finish writing our papers.  I'm considering working toward my administrator's license so this was a little dip in the pool to see what I think.  I'll probably take another course this fall but at a much more sane pace.

3) Two weeks of swimming lessons for the Sprout.  She was pleased to be able to take lessons with her great friend Tait ("I gonna marry Tait when I grow up.  I'm going to be a princess and Tait is going to dance me.").  She will now tolerate water being poured on her head but still is careful to never ever submerge her head in water.  Hopefully more swimming lessons will cure that fear.

 4) A round of flu swept through the household.  Fortunately, I avoided it but the Housemate and the Wise and Bearded One were out for the count for about two weeks there.  And then the Wise and Bearded One let his cold/flu morph into a nasty sinus infection.  He was so sick that he lost five pounds because he had no appetite.  


5)  Cleaning.  It's frightening to be home on a sunny day after being away so much and realize how awfully and astoundingly dirty our house is (was).  Goodness!  Moving the couch to vacuum required a bio-hazard suit.  Fortunately, this blog isn't about cleaning, or  I'd have to just declare a "fail" and stop here.

6) Dog care.  We have two dogs, a large, beautiful and stupid Weimaraner named Abraham and a slightly smaller, sweeter and more neurotic German Short-haired Pointer named Keegan.  Keegan is probably about twelve years old.  We don't know for sure because she's a rescue dog.  But over the last year, we've seen her age rapidly.  She has severe arthritis in her rear legs which makes getting up every morning painful, and our 1930s house is in no-way handicap accessible.  She has to go up or down stairs to get anywhere.  Some days she needs us to help pick her up to help her get out of the house first thing in the morning.  She's been cleaning her plate, wags her tail occasionally and even goes for very short walks down the block with me.  But it's clear her days with us are numbered.


7)  Not blogging.  No, but I've whiled away many happy hours taking photos and posting them on Instagram and pinning away on Pinterest.  If you're an Instagram user, please find me at beesnestdeb, and if you're a Pinterest user, I just installed a "follow me" button in the sidebar and I'd love to see you there.

There.  Let's see if that's enough to get this old blog machine rolling again.
-Deb

Summer Camp

This week the Sprout and I are in the middle of the country enjoying time with our family. My sister and her five children also converged on my parent's house for the week. This convergence we're calling Grandma and Grandpa's Summer Camp. Keeping six kids 8 and under supervised and entertained every day can be quite a task. Fortunately, my mom planned some activities in advance and my sister and I added some too.

So far we've:
--visited Great Grandma
--played outside a lot--swing, wading pool, bubbles
--visited my aunt and uncle's dairy farm to pet the calves and climb on the tractors
--went to an Amish zoo (no, not Amish in cages, but a zoo run by an Amish family on their farm)
--watched the Ramona and Beezuz movie
--the Big Kids went to Vacation Bible School every night in the best Midwestern summer tradition

I brought along a personal crafty project--a little quilt top to piece that has been niggling around in the back of my head for awhile. Ha ha. I forgot how much energy keeping up with a pack of kids requires. When they sleep, all the adults sleep too.

Just like Summer Camp.

Hello, Summer Deb!

I know there are a few other teachers who read this blog and will understand when I say there is a rocky transition from School Deb to Summer Deb every year. Most years it takes me about a week to move from full-press Go mode to a more relaxed summer pace and routine. This year I felt like Clark Kent whipping on his cape when I made the transition in record time--one weekend.

On the last Friday of the school year, I worked all the way to 5:00 pm tying up the last loose ends. Then I went to Birthday Party #1 at a friend's house (a barbecue, the perfect summer activity). Saturday morning we helped host Birthday Party #2 for our little housemate (sitting on the front porch in the sunshine, the second most perfect summer activity).







Then I had a haircut (summer hair) and a pedicure (summer sandal feet) before Birthday Party #3 for my dear friend Stacey at our favorite Mexican restaurant (which, of course, included a margarita, the perfect summer drink).



Sunday was Fathers Day so we slept in most deliciously, and then the Sprout and I took the Wise and Bearded One out for his favorite coffee (Stumptown). Then we roamed around the Pearl District and checked out Salt and Straw, the much-hyped fancy ice cream shop in town. If you're a Portlander and haven't been there yet, let me say the hype is well-deserved. Salted caramel ice cream (the pinnacle of summer desserts).


And that's how I transformed from hyper-focused School Deb to mostly-relaxed Summer Deb in the blink of an eye. I feel a tiny bit like Superman.

Back to Blogging

The last few weeks of blog silence can be directly attributed to the intensity of the end of the school year in my district. I work as a Teacher on Special Assignment (TOSA) for the director of special education in my district coordinating the high school and post-high special education programs. That means I work beside the teachers on the cases of complicated students and oversee a lot of legal paperwork. The end of the school year is always busy but this year was even more so with shrinking budgets (again) causing the closing of some schools and a reconfiguration of buildings that means my office needed to be completely packed up before I left for the summer.

Whatever. This blog isn't about my job, but I thought you deserved an explanation for the absence. So let's get on to the real business of this blog, alright? Pictures of the Sprout for her adoring fans (aka grandparents)









In the midst of the end-of-year stress, the talented Rachel Austin and family invited us out to the Oregon coast for the weekend. Miss A. and the Sprout are good playmates and friends so it was a restful break for me and gave me the energy I needed to power through the end of the year.

Fall Creek Falls

Sometimes, I feel a little guilty raising a child in the city. I have fond memories of growing up in small Midwestern towns where we were allowed to roam outside by ourselves.  Where our backyard butted up against woodland (or swampland, in my case).  Where we built fairy houses under the trees and pretended we were the Box Car Children or Swiss Family Robinson.

And then I take my child an hour out of the city and we are in the most enchanted forests in the world, and my guilt instantly dissipates.




This weekend our favorite William L. Sullivan hiking book pointed us to Falls Creek Falls in the Columbia River Gorge not far from the town of Carson, Washington.  At 3.4 miles round trip with gentle terrain, we thought the Sprout might be able to handle it.  She regularly runs the .8 mile to the park, plays, and runs back home again so we know she has some endurance.  But still hiking with a three year old is always a gamble.  Heck, hiking with a thirty-eight year old is a gamble!








This was our first time hiking this trail, and it's definitely one we'll be repeating. The trail follows the creek that has hollowed out a mossy canyon, and the pleasant sound of rushing water accompanies nearly the entire length of the hike.  Most of the trail is wide enough to keep my mom-panic from kicking in.  There were only a few places that I demanded the Sprout hold onto an adult hand because my over-active imagination could not help but see her slipping over the side of the trail and tumbling to the rocky river below.





The same strategies that keep a thirty-eight year old hiking also apply to a three year old:  comfortable shoes, frequent water and snack breaks, and some tomfoolery keep us all happy hikers.






These pictures do not do justice to the gorgeous, moss-covered punchbowl at the bottom of the falls.  I've taken to leaving my big camera at home and using my iPhone for quick photos, but next time I think I'll lug the camera along.



3.4 miles seems like a good distance for a three year old.  On the way back out, I did give her a piggyback ride for about .2 mile but other than that she hiked it all herself---and kept up a continuous patter of conversation and nonsensical songs.  We stopped to gather mini pine cones, Special Rocks and Sticks, and moss.  Our pace was slow, but we all had a great time.




So, no guilt for this mama. My city kid can out-hike your city kid any day.

At Three

Dear Sprout,

At three, you are the fiercely opinionated and independent child I expected you to be.  Part of that is just being three, I know, but part of it is also your intense personality coming through.

Last week you had your three-year check up at the doctor's office.  You are still in the 95th percentile for height and the 90th percentile for weight.  That, coupled with your long honey-colored hair, causes many people to assume you are older than three.

Then you open your mouth and some delightful vestige of toddler speech issues forth.  I love all these "frontings" and mispronunciations. I will, indeed, be sorry when your speech self-corrects.  Some of my favorites: "hairplane" and "hairport" and "bo-zoo-e-um" (museum).  You call yourself "Sibbie".  You like to pray "BERRY LOUD" at the dinner table: "Dear God, GANK GOU for the food!  And that we are all learning to share and be nice to one another."  Sometimes you add odd references to things you've been mulling over in your head, like "Gank gou that Grandma Grace Shirk is dead so that we know where she is in the ground." (My grandmother passed away this winter and we went to the funeral and it made a big impression on you.)

You really love Wonder Pets and Diego and Arthur on television. You love to count and are mostly accurate up to "eleben".  You're also really into rhyming words.  In the car, you will say, "Mama, tree and bee" or "sun and fun" or "Tait, bait".

Speaking of Tait, he is your best buddy in the world.  You play (and fight) with him every day.  You give each other hugs and have silly phrases and names you call each other like "tooter-head".  Yesterday you both were in the front row at the Community Bible Study children's program performance.  I didn't get to go, but "Mama Nomi" reports that you were both standing on the bottom step of the stage singing your songs.  Tait inadvertently fell off the step, and you thought it looked like fun so you jumped down too.  The two of you spent the rest of the performance taking turns jumping down the steps.

You exert your independence on a daily basis by selecting the clothes you want to wear and getting dressed all by yourself.  Some times the combinations are a bit garish as if you are trying to cram all of the colors of the rainbow into one outfit.   In general, I let you wear whatever you want as long as it is weather appropriate.  When I do need to intervene and require different clothes, you let me know that you disapprove strongly of my choices.  We're working on having you obey anyway.

Every night we pray that you will grow up to be kind and strong and wise and true.  Every night I tell you, "I love you more than coffee" (or chocolate or whatever else you know I really love).  Last night you said "I love you more than potstickers!"

I love you more than a million potstickers,

Your Mama



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This post is part of the Sprout's virtual baby book.  Someday I'll put it all together in a book and have it printed.