Big Finish!

Our days in Seattle draw to a close this week, but not without a good deal of excitement. On Saturday morning, we said good-bye to Grandma and sent her on her way home via Portland. Now it is just the three of us again, enjoying a few days to ourselves before we too return home, to Colorado. We are spending the time readjusting to the give and take of the baby hand-off, carefully managing our time, and making sure that diapers are clean and plentiful. My boss Phil's words still ring in my ears, "It's all about the hand-off."

Last week Dana's Dad Michael, stepmom Moira and brother Michael W visited us, thanks to a very well-timed engineering conference.

Alex and his People at the Space Needle (left-to-right, Moira, Michael, Michael W, A-man, Carla, Dan and Dana)

This was the first time that Alex got a chance to meet his Grandpa and Grandma Leite, and Uncle Michael. I believe he successfully charmed each and every one of them, but it was especially fun to watch Alex and Grandpa Michael playing together! We shared several meals together, and also enjoyed a wonderful 19th birthday party for Michael W poolside at the hotel. (I will post more pictures as soon as I get copies from M, M & M)

Alex has taken to squealing, mostly with joy. It is really cute. He makes little squeaks while he's playing with his stuffed animals. I don't know - maybe he's talking to them. Maybe he thinks he's a dolphin. Maybe it's something Mr. Rabbit said.

Another really amazing thing he did this week is play peek-a-boo with us. He initiated the game, and his intent was clear as day. While we were all lying on the bed playing, he had one of his burp clothes in both hands. He slowly pulled it up over his face, then quickly pushed it back down. Each time he did this, he looked at both of us expectantly. After about 2-3 tries, we finally got the idea, and as he pulled the cloth over his eyes, we would both say, "Gosh, where is Alex?? I don't SEE him. Where did he go?" As soon as he pulled his blanket down, we would cry, "There's Alex! Peek-a-boo!" Each time he would either give us a huge smile, or a giggle, or a squeak, or all three. We must have played that game for 20 minutes straight!

Alex with Dad and his Great Grandma Jane

In the midst of preparing for a big move of her own, Alex's Great Grandma Jane took some time off and came up for a quick visit along with Aunt Alison last Thursday. We had a lovely dinner at home, and Alex spent several hours with Grandma. From the looks of it both of them had a great time. We plan to visit Grandma as soon as she gets settled in at her new place in Washington.

Also this past week, Alex has really begun to put together the basics of crawling. While lying prone on the floor, with his hands out in front of him, he has started pulling his legs underneath him so that he is essentially on his hands and knees, albeit a bit wobbly. From this position he can push himself forward with his very powerful legs. Unfortunately, his little arms just aren't quite up to the task yet, so he generally finds himself supported by his legs and forehead in a sort of uncomfortable-looking wheelbarrow position. But he is generally in good spirits when he tries this, so he just flops back down and repeats the maneuver. He can scoot himself along a few feet, at least from one end of his big receiving blanket to the other. We think it is just a matter of weeks before he gets enough strength in his arms to really do some damage.

Bye-bye Alex. Don't forget to be home by dinnertime!

Finally, it appears Alex is very close to having his first teeth. Sticking a finger in his mouth, you can really feel the little lumps along his jaw line, and he has taken to chomping down on fingers, pacifiers, or anything else you care to poke into his mouth. He's no gorilla, but there is quite a surprising amount of strength there. He should have no problem with his first box of Crackerjacks.

He has been drooling pretty regularly, and last night he seemed to be pretty unhappy about his mouth area. We gave him a dose of baby Tylenol drops, and that seemed to soothe him eventually. Hopefully he can wait to pop those teeth out until we are back home in CO.

Fun Times, Sad Times

Daddy, let's update the blog!

For the 4th of July, we all congregated at my Aunt Kim's place in Eagle Creek, Oregon (outside of Portland) for a big party. After the bocce ball, awesome ribs and playing in the inflatable kiddie pools (THREE of them this year!) we brought a bunch of folks back to Seattle for a couple of days. My Dad flew in to Boeing Field on Thursday morning, Ali left her newly remodeled travel trailer behind in Oregon and drove up Thursday afternoon, and my brother-in-law Eric flew in on Saturday to join us. We had a full house!

Eric & Alex getting silly on the floor (Guess which one has a MS in physics?)

On Saturday, Dana, Eric, Me and my Dad all went over the bushes to the South of our condo to play a short round of golf at the Jackson Park city course here. It was a gorgeous afternoon, and despite our general lack of skill at the game, we had a ball. This was only my second real golf game ever, and considering that I was asked to leave the course for going too slow in my first game, Saturday's best-ball game was a marked improvement!

Our golf pro, Gene, shows us how it's done. He's caddy'd on the PGA Amateur Tour

"So I'm supposed to hit this thing over there??"

Eric gunning for the green from the rough on the 3rd

Three of our intrepid golfers, Eric, Gene and Dan

Eric sinking a putt, Dana and Gene watching in silent awe

Our condo is just behind that big fir tree

On a more somber note, on Friday morning we got word that our very dear family friend Bob had passed away after struggling with the "Big Black Bear", cancer. Bob and my Dad met at work when they were both fresh young guys, and our families have been close ever since. Us kids were almost interchangeable at times. It is a very tough loss for everyone.

Finally, we have come to realize that Alex does not really like his car seat. He gets fussy just about anytime he's awake and strapped into his "Baby bucket". This can make car rides none too pleasant when he wakes up and realizes he's in a car, facing the boring gray seats, and hungry. Anytime outside of the car we can toss him in the Baby Bjorn, but the car seat is the only way to travel by car for some time to come. Maybe we can work on this and create more positive associations for him, but I just don't think he's a big fan of the thing.

We have found the surest short-term fix is to distract him long enough to forget about the situation. We have a leftover paper flag from Canada Day in the back seat, and anytime he gets upset, whoever is sitting next to him can usually buy at least 5 minutes by waving the flag around above him, brushing it across his hands or cheeks, or when worse comes to worse, letting him try to stuff it in his mouth. After the novelty of the Maple Leaf wears off, it's a free-for-all to try and find other objects, songs or facial expressions that will hold his attention. We have gone through bright neon pink key rings, various stuffed animals, fishy-faces, pulling on Daddy's hair, every Christmas song we can remember, and much more.

Why is it that Christmas songs are the only things I can think of to sing when he's fussy?

Oh Canada (or, How I Spent My Vanishing Summer Vacation)

Continuing my bulk update of the 'blog with summer happenings, I thought I'd share some photos and recollections of our recent and delightful trip North to Vancouver, BC for Canada Day.

We decided to play it loose for this trip and "wing it" as we usually do for complex, foreign travel. That is, no set plans, just see what looks interesting or fun. In fact I wasn't even going to book a hotel for our (optional) overnight stay at first, but wiser heads prevailed, namely my Mom's. So we booked a night at the Pacific Palisades, part of my favorite boutique hotel chain. A bit of a splurge, but hey it's in Canadian dollars, right?

Note: The exchange rate currently offers us Americans a paltry 5-6% discount, dollar-for-dollar. When you tack on the credit card foreign currency fee, it might even cost more to buy most things in Canada these days. Thank you very much, Bush administration monetary, foreign and energy policies.

We set off from Seattle on Sunday morning with empty bladders, large Starbucks coffee drinks (sorry, we had free coupons), and best of all a sleepy, happy little boy. I printed out the Wikipedia articles for Vancouver and Canada, as it has been a long time since grade school, and the WikiTravel article for Vancouver, and for the first half of the trip Dana read these aloud to us. Did you know that Canada didn't become fully independent until 1982? But in fact, Canada Day (formerly Dominion Day) celebrates not that final, bloodless thrust for independence, but an earlier legislative victory in 1867 when Britain officially organized the territories. The more you know...

By the time we got to the border, I was downright giddy with excitement. The only other border crossing I've made by car is the French-Swiss border, and we just about had to run over the Swiss agents to get their attention long enough to stamp our passports. So this was a treat.

The border along I-5/Canadian 99 is marked by the stately Peace Arch that rises high above a large, well maintained grassy median and signifies the border's always-open status. While drivers wait in line to cross the border, families and kids get out of their cars to play and picnic in the grass. Their lawn is superbly maintained. Dana assured me that the counterpart crossing in Tijuana is not quite as picturesque, but I'll wait to see it for myself.

For Canada Day, they were handing out little paper flags and lapel pins, so we got all the necessary paraphernalia to not look like silly Americans for the big day. And we sweet talked the agent into giving us courtesy stamps for our passports. Alex didn't get his passport in time, so we just showed them his birth certificate.

Canada looks remarkably similar to Washington State, except that the road signs are all in kilometers. It took me a few minutes to adjust and remember to look at the small-print numbers on the Hyundai's speedo. We decided that the Mounties have probably already heard the line, "Gee officer, I thought that sign was in MPH." Better not to test our luck just yet.

Vancouver is a huge, huge city. It is actually the same overall population, almost to the thousand, as Seattle, with a slightly smaller overall metro area population. The remarkable thing about Vancouver is how DENSE it is - over twice as dense as Seattle. Apparently the city actually exerted some energy and political will in the 50s and 60s to plan for and head off urban sprawl, and their efforts have paid off in spades. This is a concept totally foreign to anyone from either California or Colorado, so we were in awe of the efficient, vertical architecture.

After checking into our hotel we strolled around downtown a bit, settling on a nice looking upstairs Thai restaurant for lunch. The food was excellent, service not too good, but who can argue with a really tasty green curry?

On our way back through downtown, we discovered the True Spirit of Canada Day, so to speak -- which appears to be random free cupcakes and scantily clad Brazilian carnival dancers










I still have no idea what these nice young ladies had to do with Canada Day, but there they were handing out very yummy cupcakes. And friends, I'm not about to say 'no' to a free cupcake.

After that Alex needed a snack, and who could blame him?


After lunch and a break, we set off to ride the SkyTrain and get a birds-eye view of Vancouver and its surroundings.

Before we could ride the train, though, we had to have some of Canada's own Tim Horton's Donuts.
They're not that great, especially by Seattle standards, but they're sure better than Krispy Kreme. While we were sitting down to eat, first one policeman came in, then two, then three. I thought at first it was some kind of bust, but soon realized it was just what policemen do everywhere - sit around and eat donuts. It turns out they were having a staff meeting there, or something. By the time we left there were 5-6 very friendly cops sitting behind us chatting up a storm.

And I'll be darned if they weren't the most stereotypical Canadians we've met, right down to the "Eh, you hoser!"

Cheers, eh Alex?

We rode the train and stopped in a wooded suburban park. It looked like the places I used to go camping as a kid in California. As we walked, we would occasionally hear the roar of a distant crowd. Walking farther on, we eventually came to an unimposing stadium, where it turns out Spain and Uruguay were competing in the World Cup (of soccer). We decided to move on. The whole outing was a bit surreal, kind of like finding yourself in the middle of Cupertino or something, and realizing there's a major league baseball game going on at the local park.

That night, before the fireworks at the waterfront, we attempted to go out to a nice Mediterranean restaurant near our hotel. Alex had other ideas, however. He let us get seated and order drinks and entrees, and then proceeded to cry and scream for the next hour. We pulled out all of the tricks in the book to try and console him, and even invented some new ones, but nothing worked. He just had too many new experiences to process, on too little sound sleep. We spent most of the hour standing in the restaurant stairwell and courtyard trying not to offend the other patrons, and eventually Dana walked Alex back to the hotel while Mom and I got the food to go. It took him another 2 hours or so to finally fall asleep back in the room, and we were so exhausted by then that we just watched what we could of the fireworks from our balcony. It was the worst "baby storm" I've ever experienced outside of the house, and I hope not to repeat it again.

A very flustered Dana and a very unhappy Alex at the restaurant. Dana is a real trooper, and a terrific mom.

We learned our lesson about baby input/output. A light nap while taking a walk is no substitute for the real thing. And if me and Dana are amazed and awe-struck by the Big City, then Alex is absolutely overwhelmed and probably unsettled by it.

The next day we decided to take it easy and foreshortened our plans, stopping only at the beautiful Van Dusen Botanical Garden, before returning home.

Visitors from the South

Alex likes to help his Dad on the computer

Our adventure in Seattle is now more than half over, and in fact we have less than two full weeks left here. It has been absolutely amazing how much Alex has changed just during this short summer. He's now babbling, manipulating things with both hands, turning over (still infrequently), exploring his environment, putting things in and taking them out of his mouth, responding to his name, and so much more. He has clearly identified some favorite toys, among them his monkey man, Sinclair the dinosaur, and Mr. Bear. He is very comfortable around the people he knows well, although a little apprehensive of new faces.

Speaking of new faces, he has had lots of visitors in his home away from home. His aunties (Great Aunties, to be precise) came up for a visit near the end of June. We had a ball touring Seattle and just relaxing.Auntie Regina holds her very cuddly grand-nephew for the first time (perhaps the first baby she's ever held?)

Aunt Ediy is no stranger to the charms of a wee lad (She was a particular favorite of Alex's)

Auntie Kim likes 'em young

The whole gang together, Ediy, Regina, Dan, Dana, Alex, Carla and Kim

Later that week, our good friend Erick, who Dan has known since grade school, stopped by from Puyallup, where he's an up and coming optometrist. We had dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant nearby, Masala. Yum. Erick also brought us the largest teddy bear we've seen, easily twice as big as Alex!