Chris Coldewey’s Neighborhood

At 31 weeks, I have reached the stage of pregnancy where I inadvertently emit a small grunt of effort when standing up, sitting down, bending to pick something up, or rolling over in bed. Basically shifting position in any way. Plus the steady forward expansion of my belly means that I have to twist slightly sideways to get close enough to the sink to wash the dishes. All in all, I am not feeling very graceful these days. N00b Baby is due March 6, so there are about two months to go. How on earth do elephants stand being pregnant for 22 months?

We are currently attempting to recover from colds contracted at some point near the end of our vacation. We spent two weeks in Oahu visiting Matt's sister Sasha and her kids Brooke (4) and Ethan (7). Husband/Dad Greg is currently deployed in Iraq and we wish him a safe and speedy return.

We had lots of rain (including thunderstorms that knocked out power across the whole island), but lots of beautiful sun as well, with the side benefit of seeing rainbows just about every day. We got to see a whole range of beaches, from the legendary surfing heaven of Sunset Beach on the North Shore to gentle, reef-protected beaches where the kids could play in the water and we could snorkel around to see green sea turtles and lots of beautiful tropical fishies.

Apparently Kara is a surfer girl at heart. She got the world's cutest tiny pink

wetsuit from her Auntie Sasha, and would stand with one of us where the towering 7-foot waves ran up all foamy on the beach, and jump up and down shouting "BIG Waves! More! More!" She would occasionally play in the sand for a bit, but really couldn't stay away from the water even when her teeth were chattering. She also had lots of fun splashing around in the calmer water on a boogie board.
 
Of course, the highlight of the whole trip for the kids was waking up Christmas morning to the Santa-visited living room laden with presents. We proceeded to torture them mercilessly by making everyone wait until after breakfast (and vitally, coffee for the grownups) to open presents. The fact that we could have a proper Christmas in the morning and go to the beach in the afternoon made the whole experience that much sweeter.

We flew back to San Francisco on the red-eye (sorry, Kara, that was rough!) just in time to celebrate New Years with Tammy, Olli, Max, Jeff & Denise. We made moules mariniere, fresh sea bass, golden couscous and spinach/orange/jicama salad. Various lovely bottles of wine and dessert wine were consumed by those of us not pregnant or breastfeeding.  Kara slept through midnight but Max just couldn't stand being away from the party, so he stayed up with us until we all variously collapsed of exhaustion or decided to stumble home. All in all, my absolute favorite way to ring in the New Year: good friends, good food and lots of laughs.

May 2009 be full of many blessings and much love for all of you.

After the August fog clears and the tourists go home, September is really the heart of

summer.  San Francisco has had gorgeous late summer weather and we even got to enjoy some time in sunny New Mexico for my sister Hannah's wedding to her sweetheart Ben. There's a bunch of photos up on my Flickr page, so check it out for more baby cuteness.

Kara is getting more and more confident in so many ways- she doesn't hesitate to voice her wants and preferences ("want monkey, want!" or more simply "NO!"), and she squirms and protests mightily if someone picks her up when she is engaged in something interesting.

She is, of course, the center of the universe (as she should be), and has not quite grasped the tsunami of change that is about to come into her world when her little brother or sister arrives in March (you all knew that already, right?). Her current favorite book is "Waiting for Baby" which is about a little toddler whose family is preparing for a new baby (it brings tears to my hormonal eyes).  She pats my growing tummy and says "Listen... baby" ever since we took her to a prenatal appointment and she watched while our midwife Judy listened for the baby's heartbeat (FYI, a very healthy 140 bpm).  I'm sure the reality of sharing the center of the universe with a squirmy little newborn will be a bit of a shock, but she has surprised us in the past with her adaptability. I really do trust in her innately sunny and loving disposition to make room for the newcomer. Now it will just be up to Matt and me to display some of that adaptability, along with extra helpings of patience and tolerance for chaos.

In the meantime, we have spent lots and lots of time this month trying to find a house to buy that has enough space for us, the kids, our gear (not inconsiderable tonnage), and visiting grandparents. As much as we adore our current digs and neighborhood, we have definitely outgrown the space. So far we feel like Goldilocks- every house has some disqualifying defect- too small, bad neighborhood, too expensive... but we are cautiously optimistic that we'll be able to find a good bargain in a decent neighborhood before the baby gets here. Navigating the real estate market right now is a daily exercise in stress and uncertainty (yes, you can get a mortgage... no wait...).  Anyway, I promise to keep you all updated. 

Hi everybody, As many of you know, Beth and I got married on August 2, 2008. Check out some of our wedding photos from our photographer's site here and more on our wedding website.

How did it get to be nearly Labor Day already??!!! We thought that things would slow down a bit in August, giving us some relaxed family time and a chance to go househunting, but obligations just kept popping up.

And of course Little Miss Kara has been growing awfully fast and hitting lots of milestones over the past few months as well. At her 15 month check-up, she had sprouted like a little beanpole:

Height: 32.5 in (90th percentile) - 82.5 cm
Weight: 23 lbs 4 oz (50th percentile) - 10.55 kg
Head circumference: 48 cm (90+ percentile)

I guess that answers my question as to whether she's been eating enough! She's also talking up a storm- among other things she already knows the difference between one and two, and between big and little. She asks "Doing?" to her baby doll and then says "busy!".

In July we celebrated my Grandma Rainie's 80th birthday down in Simi Valley. Great party with lots of relatives (like my great aunt Ditty) who I hadn't seen in years. Kara had LOTS of fun playing with her cousin Emmett Orion and tiny little 2-month old Sadie Lorraine. At Grandma's insistence we took lots and lots of family portraits- you can see some here. When we were waiting at the Burbank airport to come home, Kara took her first independent steps - just a few wobbly ones between me and Matt.

For the next couple of weeks she was content just doing  that- no more than a couple of steps between collapsing into someones arms. Then suddenly last week she stood up and walked around for a good 30 seconds. She's been getting more and more confident ever since.

Just as a little taste of how time flew by in the intervening month or so, we went to the 12th annual "Friends 'n Family" campout up in Willits, CA and also celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary (and 7th anniversary of first meeting). Its amazing what can happen in six years, isn't it??

Anyway, I need to get this post published so I'll sign off with a really short video I just took today of her toddling like a little drunken sailor:

I swear we didn't coach her to say this. One day she found some dollar bills and asked what they were, and the next day she decided that they were really fun to shake while saying "Money Money Money!"

Ah, finally we're all back home after an epic summer journey consisting of about 10 days at Matt's family's house ("Berry Hill") in Newport, Rhode Island, then 4 days in Washington DC, then separate flights home for me and Kara, and to Helsinki, Finland for Matt. He finally came back home today.

Lots of fun times in all locations with the adaptable Miss Kara Michelle; she weathered a 104 degree fever for a couple of days, and temperatures from bone-chilling cold for the first week in Newport to extremely hot and muggy days East-Coast style.

It was especially important for Matt to have her spend some time in Berry Hill, which has been in his Mom's family since 1887, because the family is planning on selling the property pretty soon.  He spent all his summers there as a kid, and has glowing summer memories of romping in the woods and at the beach with his dog Sherlock.  Sherlock is buried under a big tree at Berry Hill; every time we visit we clean off the big flat rock with his name on it and say hi. More often than not Matt gets a little tear in his eye remembering his old pal.

Kara, of course, loved the place; her favorite things were sitting in the little wagon with her cousin Brooke while cousin Ethan pulled it as fast as he could, and of course, going to the beach. She learned lots of new words, including the heart-melting "huggy" followed by a big snuggling hug for her Nana (Matt's Mom, Kate). She blew on her first dandelion, calling it "bubbles", and noticed the moon in the sky for the first time, which she also called "bubbles".  She couldn't believe how wonderful the beach was- all of her favorite things (sand and water) in one place. See the video below for a clip. Sorry about the blinding whiteness of my skin, I think it may have messed up the automatic exposure on the camera :-)

And now the downside of travel with a toddler: the POOP.

After Rhode Island, we flew down to Washington DC to visit Matt's old and dear friends Adam and Einat Moskof, along with their two baby boys (Gidi, 20 months and Jonathan, 7 months), who we had never had the chance to meet.  We were on the plane just getting ready to take off when Kara made a little grunting sound and we smelled a full poopy diaper in the works.  Of course, at that point we couldn't get up to change anything until the plane had taken off and reached altitude. Predictably, in a few moments I felt a warm wet patch on my leg as things started to leak out of the diaper. Pretty soon a little chunk worked its way out and down her leg, intercepted by a cocktail napkin just as it started to create a smeary mess on her shoes. There was nothing to do but attempt to control the mess and grit our teeth until the "fasten seatbelt" sign was turned off.  We used every wipe in the diaper bag, and by the time we got off the plane she looked like a little trailer trash baby with a shirt and no pants, just a diaper. Of course, she was pretty unperturbed by the whole episode. I guess I would be too, if someone else was responsible for wiping my bum.

As if that wasn't enough, the day after the two of us flew back to San Francisco, I plonked her down in the bathtub just before bedtime, and not 5 minutes later she smiled at me and gave that little grunt. I panicked, tried to drain the water before anything came out (no luck there), and then tried to pick her up and put her on the potty. Needless to say, there was a huge mess and a gagging Mama trying to shower off an unhappy baby.  My main thought as I was scrubbing out the tub with various noxious disinfectants later was how much I missed Matt being there.

Anyway, the house and Kara are all back to normal now. I remain traumatized.

At first I wrote this as part of the previous post about our vacation in general, then realized that it really needed a post of its own.

One of the key reasons we went to Rhode Island in June was to attend the memorial for  Matt's maternal grandmother, Molly Howe Lynn (aka Omie), who passed away earlier this year. It was a loving tribute with lots of her family and old friends.  Everyone told stories about her adventurous life as a dancer and teacher. She was an inspirational, independent spirit who was biking across Minnesota in her 80's and teaching Pilates and movement to seniors until very recently. A dancer and traveler all of her life, she really never stopped moving until the end.  She visited us in San Francisco in 2006, arriving with no luggage, just her little scarcely-filled backpack. We took some wonderful walks at Chrissy Field and visited the fantastic deYoung Museum. We hope that some of her fierce independence and grace lives on in her great granddaughter Kara.

We scattered her ashes in the lovely Rose Garden at Berry Hill, a place she loved and where she can rest peacefully and be remembered with love.

Last weekend, my (Beth) work threw Chris and I a surprise Indian wedding!  It was amazing - complete with mehendi (henna), red saris, flowers, sweets and a stand-in Hindu priest (my colleague, Himanshu).  We were so touched that they created something like this for us, and will forever remember this as our other wedding anniversary.

We've been having a heatwave here in San Francisco- on Thursday it must have been around 95 degrees. It gets miserably hot in our greenhouse of an apartment because we're on the top of the building, have huge south-facing windows, and a really sucky ventilation system. On the very few days of the year when it is honestly hot in the city, the only cure is to leave the apartment for most of the afternoon. So I took my laptop to the closest shady cafe with decent coffee and free wifi, the "Bean There," to get some work done.

The year is just flying by. Last Sunday we celebrated my second Mother's Day (the first is just a blur... I hardly remember) with a visit to Grandpa Kentyn up in Forestville. He actually gets a proper summer there- hot and sunny and beautiful. We brought up the cheap little kiddie pool from BabiesR'Us and Kara had a blast splashing around on the back porch...

Yesterday (Friday) afternoon, Kara and I I escaped the heat by going to the beach at Chrissy Field. Its just inside the Bay so it has waves that are smaller and more baby-friendly than Ocean Beach. As soon as I put Kara on the sand, she started crawling toward the water as fast as she could.  I held her hands so she could stand up as the waves washed over her feet and legs, and despite the water being absolutely freezing, she was grinning and babbling (wa-wa! wa-wa!). I literally had to hold her back from walking all the way into the water. I've never seen a small baby so fearless about waves. A couple of times I picked her up and brought her back up to the dry sand, and she turned around and high-tailed it back for the water. I was laughing so hard I almost cried- I really wish I had had a free hand to take some pictures. She didn't want to give up, even when she was so cold that she turned all pink and goose-pimpled.

Hooray for a successful first beach experience- I can't wait for June when we're headed to Rhode Island to visit with Matt's family!