Play Date with Elliot

As any new parent knows, when you run into people that have children your age, you immediately try to make play dates. It matters not what the parent does, if they have a criminal record or if they have a small cocaine problem. What matters is that they have children, your age, and they can string four words together, preferably at the same time.

Thankfully, Elliot's parents fall into the WunderBar parental category. They live on a farm. Mom worked for Lush (a large cosmetics chain) doing all their international sourcing and Dad used to  be in a band and is recreating himself in college and has many fascinating things to share. They're smart and can string many multi-syllabic words together in addition to sharing many of our family values. Win-win.  We'd be friends with them even if they didn't have a little the same age as Jamisen.

Their daughter, Elliot, is 5 or 6 months younger than Jamisen and is calm, quiet and obedient. She paints an impressive contrast to our son who runs everywhere, talks to everyone, and has no problem getting his face covered in dirt and then eating the dirt.

We've been loving the little town of Bow Edison near our home. It's only 20 minutes away but it has blueberries, two cafes, a bread/cookie store and a cheese store. Jamisen loves his $3 macarons (seriously, what 2 year old eats French Macarons over all the other cookies in the store?) and the delicious herbed flatbread at Breadfarm. He also appreciates the $45/pound black truffle chevre at the store next door (note to self: never share expensive food with this kid).

 

Here Jamisen is enjoying a lime-soaked polenta cake. See, I told you he had amazingly young foodie taste though admittedly isn't a big fan of the silverware,

  We heart Elliot and her folks and hope for many more play dates, in Bow Edison or elsewhere.

Bottle That

If I could bottle the feelings, the scent, the sighs and smells of a sleeping baby in my arms, I would be a kaljllion millionaire bajillionaire. The incredible mix of love, peace, fierce protection and wonder is something that I've never experienced except when holding my infant children. It's bittersweet that this might be the last baby I get to experience that rush of emotion with.

Lily is showing us her gummy, toothless smile every day, at every opportunity she gets. She loves to coo and talk to us, the we both make this strange trilling bird noise that we haven't made since Jamisen was a little teensy baby. It must be some strange instinctual thing. She reacts so well to the sound that I don't care that we sound like blind birds in a deep fog trying to find our way out of the cove.

Jamisen has started repeating adult phrases that sound hilarious coming out of a little man's mouth. Stuff like "What's going on here?" and "Oh man!" and other colloquial phrases that adults throw off without a thought.

He takes amazing pride in his independence. Every time he finishes something, he says "I did it!" Sometimes he even raises his arms in the air, in a solitary victory celebration of sorts. He loves to state what he is doing, "I'm running. I'm running."

Perhaps the most fun new trait for Jamisen is his ability to sing songs, to a tune! He knows the ABCs all the way up through G or so and can sing the refrain to most children's songs now. We do 'Ring Around the Rosie' to my perverse delight (since I actually know what the song is about) but we've added a nice second verse about cows in the meadow, eating the grass so now the song is some sort of smash-up of morbid death foreboding and happy methane-emitting beef machines.

We are still having trouble with sharing. It's not just sharing in his own house either. If Jamisen sees someone playing with something at a park and appearing to have fun (a bubble wand was the latest casualty), he will literally walk up and grab it. Just poof, the kid is all bravado and attitude. He has glimmers of sharing prowess where he shares his food with Mommy but so far, people his own size and height... not so successful. I bought the entire selection of sharing books at the store and am hoping that helps.

At work, I'm in a world of excitement and a haze of exhaustion. My Soap Crafting book is here (!!) and we have our big book release party at the end of the month. But no sooner than had it arrived than our COO took off for another week (fishing trip this time), leaving me trying to manage the 2 month old, and the entire company. Normally, this would be a piece of cake but on top of his 4 week trip to Europe when Lily was just 3 weeks old, I'm less excited and more exhausted than if he were here. We did manage to ship all 362 book pre-orders, in addition to our normal orders, on Friday though so that was quite a relief. Mark, in the bottom right, is holding just a fraction of the shipping labels.

Chris's company is busy, busy, busy with ramping up domestic sales as the sales cycle in the Middle East continues to be fraught with any number of issues beyond their control. He's actually cold-calling paper mills, oil processing plants and other companies that would be interested in their services and doing his smooth Chris talk until he gets a decision maker. Already, his hard work is paying dividends and he has two major domestic jobs that should ramp up this year. I'm extremely proud of him and hoping 2014 is the year that it all comes together for his company after a few years of recession-related-doldrums.

On a funny side note, Jamisen only wants Daddy to change his poopy diapers. This is the best turn of events ever and I love it so much. "Daddy change the diaper. Daddy change the diaper." I am so glad that he gets that extra bonding time with Daddy.

Foraging, Gardening and Kissing

 

I had a modified work week this last week. I stayed home for at least 5 to 6 hours a day and took care of Lily, and gardened up a storm! Behold, the garden trellis I made for our Sugar Snap Peas. They may not grow up to be 32 and appreciate all the work I did but by golly, my belly will when I harvest them in three months. I also planted broccoli, groomed our kale forest down and planted Basil + Rosemary.

 I also had this insane opportunity to go to The Willows Inn for their "First Harvest Dinner." The inn brings in the top chefs from all over the world, forage and fish and harvest everything they can from the island and then make the most elaborate meal (ever, ever, ever). There were 24 courses! I was so lucky that Chris watched BOTH kids for hours and hours. I couldn't get a sitter so Chris was extremely gracious and kind to let me go experience this once in a lifetime experience. There was a waiting list of 1200 people to get into this dinner - and there were only 38 people that got tickets. Thank goodness that the dew was too wet to allow for hay baling and I was the only one that could come on such late notice to cover the missing rancher's plate.

Jamisen got very bold with Miss Eliza Rose and tried to kiss her. She backed way, way far away. She was not having any of the affection. And speaking of no affection, the deers are feeling very lovey dovey towards us and our yellow squash that we clearly planted for them. They ate EVERY SINGLE ONE of them. Those little (swear swear swear words). They couldn't get to the zucchini, primarily because of my neglect in pruning the big leaves from them. Now the stupid deer are just eating the flowers so there will never be another yellow squash ever. Obviously, I will be building a deer fence. And by "I", I mean, I will hire someone to build a deer fence.

 

Lily went to a fundraiser this week and got the prime spot in the house - in the Mayor's lap. She is quite the natural at politics already.

 

Lily continues to attend every meeting and comes to work with me every day. She is getting to be a pro at sleeping through the most heated discussion. 

Lily turned 2 months old and is quite the little personality now. She smiles, laughs and giggles all the time. Notice Daddy off to the right making her laugh?

 

Lily continues to have a favorite parent - me - and for some reason, Chris can't seem to quiet her. no matter what he does. She'll grow out of that - about the time she starts taking a bottle and not just the breast. Oh, speaking of breasts, Jamisen keeps trying to feed his teddy bear. "Bear is hungry. Bear is hungry." I'm pretty sure this won't be permanently traumatizing for him but it makes me wonder. 

Blueberry Picking

 

We took Jamisen and Lily Blueberry hunting last weekend.

Funny story; we showed up and the woman behind the counter suggested that Jamisen buy a 'grazing pass' for $5. We (Chris) assured her that Jamisen would only have a handful of blueberries and we did not need to buy a pass. She graciously let us out into the field, without the $5 pass.

Well, she knew better than we did because Jamisen ate and ate and ate and ate. Daddy and Jamisen made the long walk back to the shop and bought the $5 pass so Jamisen could eat to his heart and belly's content.

 Jamisen soon learned that it was much more efficient to just take blueberries from Daddy's bucket than it was to pick his own.

Plus, he seemed to have some difficulty discerning the green blueberries versus the actual ripe ones so it was probably better from a food-poisoning standpoint that he chose from Daddy's bucket.

We bought 4 pounds of blueberries for $12.50. It sure made going to the store to buy a pint for $5 seem like it was super, duper expensive but it was sure fun to go picking and see Jamisen's joy.

Jamisen misses Grandpa

Jamisen is turning into quite a reader. He loves reading at bed, he loves reading in the car and he loves reading basically all the time. What's super funny is that he'll be done with the iPad within 15 minutes but he'll never be done with reading. He's his Mother's son.

Jamisen is missing Grandma and Grandpa Faiola. He got used to having Grandma here a lot and with Grandma, comes Grandpa ("Grampa comes on the train! On the TRAIN! ON THE TRAIN!!!!"). He sings himself to sleep at naptime with the song "With Grandmpa in the family, happy happy home." It's adorable to hear him trying to sing his toneless little tune. Thankfully, we have Oskar's birthday coming up this weekend (play date buddy) and that's distracted him well. Click through to see the video of what he wants to share with Oskar:




 Lily really enjoyed this meeting of the Meritage marketing team.

We came up with a name for our shopping cart - sadly, predicated on only what domain names we can get and basically, there is nothing left out there to buy. We ended up with Merchello (merchant + hello) but also have some other names banked, like Coinetta and Merchetta if we need to change for any reason. I could buy USales for the low, low price of $20,000 or "FunDabble.com" for the low low price of $99,000. Thus, we are perfectly happy with Merchello.

Here Jamisen is with Nanny McKenna and demonstrating his incredible love for his sister. I'm sure he will appreciate these photos when he's older. He went in for the mouth kiss at least 10 times. It was charming, as opposed to creepy. In 13 years, we will probably have crossed the line into creepy but for now, seriously cute-a-rific.

Lily's neck strength is getting much better. She is still like a little wobble bobblehead but it's in an adorable way and not in a "support her neck or else she will DIE" way.

I was worried that Jamisen had never tried Jell-o (nor will he in our home; there is so much sugar and artificial flavors and colors in that stuff) so I harvested marionberries from our garden and made a marionberry juice for the gelatin base. To get all fancy, I did a layer with coconut water and a layer with the marionberry. All Jamisen's body said when it showed up was "Nom nom! Sugarsugarsugar SUGAR!!!" and was unimpressed with all the work it took to make the berry juice and do a two layered gelatin dessert. Whatever. Me and this blog will know and eventually, when Jamisen is 32, reading this, he will finally understand how much his Mommy loved him and all of the work will be worth it.

Interview with Jamisen

I want to ask Jamisen  (and Lily when she can speak) these questions periodically. I think it might make a fun long term project. Thus, Jamisen at 27 months old:

What do you want to be when you grow up? "Dentist"

What are you afraid of? "Bugs"

What do you dream about? "Trains"

What is the meaning of life? "I teach you."

I'm trying not to read too much into the last answer but gotta admit, that answer gave me shivers.

 
This week has been a mix of good days and bad days. The thin dividing line between the two is how many hours Lily sleeps. Shockingly (not), there seems to be a correlation between how easy going Chris and I are with each other and how much sleep we get. Lily must be going through a growth spurt because she's back to eating every 2 hours, including at night. It's been a less than optimal week. Jamisen has had a few time outs, mostly for hitting Mommy or not obeying on the first command.

But, this week saw the return of the amazing Norm, Bramble Berry's COO and with it, my sanity. Finally, I feel like I can exhale. He's been gone over 4 weeks and though, in theory, I can do all his jobs at Bramble Berry (ha! who's kidding whom? there's no way ....), I do them all poorly. I'm out of practice managing the entire company on my own and the cracks were widening into chasms when he walked back into the office on Friday. To commemorate his return, we made him his very own bobblehead. It's been so hot in the office that Lily has been virtually naked every day this week to keep cool.

He has decreed that I can work no more than 10 hours next week and that if he sees me at work before noon on any day, I have to eat a burger.... from McDonalds. YUCK! As a lifelong vegetarian and McDonald's boycotter (have not eaten at McDonalds in over 17 years), that is definitely some decent motivation to stay away.

Thus, I am doing a staycation next week. I'm trying to convince Chris to join me as I garden, clean, and keep moving into our home. It would be lovely to have Lily's room finally unpacked and artwork up on the wall by the end of next week. But, the bigger goal? All the prep work to build Jamisen his own play house (!!) in the upper lawn, by the garden. Chris is grudgingly rolling his eyes at the idea but I think we can do it.

Lily was a big help this week on the SoapQueen.TV set (shot at our house because the set is way too warm). She was a model for the baby massage oil recipe we designed and did amazingly. She also attended many meetings with me this week and was extremely well behaved. I think she likes all the talking and activity. This is the meeting (at law offices, no less) for the official formation of Meritage Technologies, our new company to code a full open source shopping cart system.

I've been cooking up a storm - chocolate chip banana and oat cookies tonight and quinoa pancakes for breakfast to have with the homemade dandelion apple rhubarb syrup my Dad and I made last week. Tomorrow, I'm hoping to make Quark protein yogurt popsicles for Jamisen and harvest enough blackberries to make a coconut water blackberry gelatin. The boy has never had Jell-o and I'm pretty sure I'm about to get my Mom License yanked if I don't introduce him to that special joy and wonder.

Jamisen had his first Dentist visit this week. He screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed. The Dentist declared that the age of the binky was done and just like that, childhood.... over. No more binky for bed. This is the Dentist's office with a full play area!

Planes, Trains or ... just trains

 

Life is settling in with two children. Those who have made the transition from 1 child to 2 know the tiredness, pain, frustration and moments of glee and hilarity Chris and I are going through. Jamisen remains 95% loving and curious and 5% mischievous when it comes to his little sister.  

 Like, is he helping in this photo? It certainly would appear but ...  

Lily remains a textbook baby (thank goodness, since Jamisen was definitely NOT) and is able to come to work with me every day. She is quite the little office mascot and is comfortable with the smells and sounds of the Bramble Berry offices. 

 Lily is a full 6 weeks old and is sleeping 4 hours at a time now. I feel like a new woman, capable of coherent speech and patience (a miracle!) if I get a stretch of 4 hours of sleep per night.

  

We had a fun (busy, exhausting) weekend with Grandma and Grandpa here. It is always a blessing, and such a relief to have extra hands to help wrangle the children and give Chris and I a moment to ourselves every so often. It's nice to get a quiet moment to remind each other that we do indeed, like each other and catch up on the news of the week.

  

 With their help, we ventured out onto a good old-fashioned train ride - emphasis on the OLD. The trains that we took were over 100 years old and never would pass safety inspection today. Thankfully, they never traveled over 5 miles per hour, making a very short trip last and last and last. Jamisen's first handcart ride was a success (though the same can't be said for the next group that took it. Their handcart jumped the tracks, leaving us all very thankful that Jamisen wasn't on that particular handcart ride).

  

 His sister was less excited about the train trip and did not delight and amaze our cabin. She screamed and screamed for 85% of the ride. I tried to walk her around each train car to give equal opportunity screaming to each train car.  

Jamisen is obsessed (OBSESSED) with trains. This trip was epic for him and he was awake over 2 hours past his nap time, running on pure happy adrenalin. I see many more train trips in our future this summer.

  

We had lots of play time this weekend, including three different parks. It was wonderful to have Grandma and Grandpa there to help with both kids. Jamisen is developing a close relationship with them, especially Grandma who comes to spend entire weeks with us. Both Chris and I feel thankful, blessed and exceedingly grateful to have such a strong support network on both sides of our family.

 

The weekend went far too quickly but, there's always next weekend!