chandrawu

05:34 pm: Gong xi fa cai!
I still have no photos but that will change soon, either here or at the other site, but in the meanwhile I wanted to give Kjell's friend a definition for the characters on her envelope (celebrate/congratulate-get rich/good fortune), the third character is also available simplified (as you might guess), it would be gung hei fat choy in cantonese...apparently the cantonese "fat choy" also refers to a type of algae traditionally eaten, as well as the phrase "nian nian you yu" which means "each year may you have plenty" where "yu" can also mean fish, and of course that is good too!

Sorry to be so random, off to cook our non-fish pirogies and bacon dinner!

02:38 pm: Back from snow

It snowed while we were up at Whistler. We had a lovely time and now Jess is back to working sane hours. I'm going to let this blog expire and move it over to my domain either tomorrow or Friday, so if the pictures all disappear, check www.chandrawu.com and hopefully it will show a new blog with faster loading photos and more options for the family to view them. But beware, I am easily sidetracked and it may just keep showing my resume for another week.

We did find a cool way to vote via mail-in Federal ballots despite not receiving our absentee ballots, it hardly counts for me, registered in Jim McDermott's district, but Jess got to vote for Darcy Bruner and we both enjoyed watching last night's election coverage. I read the new VA Senator, Jim Webb's book "Fields of Fire" in college and it really helped me understand the difference between the warrior and the war, or even the men behind the war, so I'm really happy to see him going places. Needless to say its hard not to comment on a successful midterm election, I certainly hope the Democrats can make good on their promises to bring back a strong middle class.

09:41 am: Happy Halloween!
Jackie gently reminded me that she was waiting for some pumpkin patch photos for Matreya and fortunately the teacher is a good picture taker!

She is standing next to Erin here and Ashley and Jack ore behind her.

Jesse was glad he got to take her and get his own pumpkin, so that we each had one to carve and put on the porch.

Matreya got to sample pumpkin seeds at kindergarten and was consequently really excited to grab the seeds when we gutted the pumpkins, she was proud and brave even though Quinn insisted on hamming up the grossness, refusing to touch the insides.



We went to the Halloween Howl at the school on Friday night, in costumes, and just before we left our littlest fairy princess decided she wanted to be a sith lord as well, I laughed so hard I couldn't talk as she pushed the "Join the Dark Side" button over and over. But she decided it was too cumbersome to wear to the carnival. She later cried tears of unfairness when Matreya, and not she, won the cakewalk. We brought home a lovely pink spiderweb cake that the girls shared with their friends Ana and Sera, who wound up sleeping over and staying up with each other until 10 pm!

Here is Matreya celebrating at school with her friends yesterday.

Here they are getting set to go out trick or treating last night. We walked up one side of the street and down the other with Natalia next door in her cow costume (a hand-me-down from us) and got PLENTY of candy. The girls just asked if they could bring some with them on vacation, as we are leaving for Whistler this morning so I should get off this thing and grab the camera.

06:47 pm: Quinn's trip to the pumpkin patch

Where is the right pumpkin? Quinn looked everywhere for one that wasn't holey or too dirty or too big.

Quinn and Rosalie's mom are not pictured carrying their pumpkins so that they can navigate the mud.

On the hayride back to the parking lot.

Tune in later this week for pictures of our pumpkins (Matreya is going tomorrow with her dad and the rest of her kindergarten class) and maybe even our costumes!

07:22 pm: Fall photos

Getting ready to go to the Apple Festival at the UBC botanical gardens...it was really rainy and we got to take the bus

Quinn at preschool

Grandpa Rod at noisy reading time at Matreya's kindergarten

Baby Scarlett on her new baby quilt made by the preschoolers (and me)

Thanks to Gramma Jackie we have a picture of ourselves...we usually only look this happy when we drink Crown Royal

I don't hae a picture of when it was my turn to get buried in the leaf pile, but I can tell you it was substantially more enjoyable than I expected. If you happen to have as many oak and maple leaves as we do, I reccommend hoods, even better combined with hats, and eye protection.

Matreya protected herself too. Her leaf collection is enormous, I haven't figured out what to do with it yet, but the leaves up here are beautiful.

03:08 pm: just pictures from Polly Pocket land


We were so glad to have our dad home for Canadian Thanksgiving, the girls loved helping him make stuffing and turkey and mashed potatos.

Grandma Hansen visited by train yesterday and is leaving today. Yesterday while we waiting for her train to unload we saw a scene from the new Fantastic Four movie being filmed in the commons in front of the trainyard. They had a Huey helicopter on the lawn and they ran the rotors while they filmed a scene where The Thing jumped out with some Marines and a blonde Jessica Alba. Matreya was thrilled to see one of the Xmen in "real life." The train is a nice way to visit because Grandma stays until 4 o'clock today without having to worry about driving home tired in the dark, instead she can sleep and study Mandarin. We are approaching the near end of the cycle for Jess and he will get plenty of family time soon, in the meanwhile, we are looking forward to simply having him home for dinner and bedtime tonight.

11:16 am: Acorn fairies in the works
I don't have much time to post because I'm the gluing assistant for the acorn fairies we are trying to make from all the cute little acorn that were falling madly on us and the car when we parked at the grocery store today! But, when we got home and got out the supplies, Quinn drew a lovely drawing for her dad I thought I'd share, it has some lovely people, a sun, and an orange one-eyed person with a very large eyeball:

And also a photo of Matreya surpising me with her mastery of the first seven Mandarin counting characters when she got out the zen boards yesterday...


I want to thank my family for giving me such a great foundation to raise my own children from. Even though none of you would want to see the state of my house lately (Jesse ran out of clean underwear even though there's been a mountain of unfolded clean laundry next to the bed, that's been growing all week while he'd been mining through it for fresh clothes), the children are happy and having a lot of fun. This weekend is Canadian Thanksgiving, so we will be at home making acorn fairies and dong whatever else doesn't lead to them fighting while I quilt and stitch the quilt squares all the kids in the preschool decorated for their teacher who is on maternity leave's new baby girl. It feels good being involved in that school and Matreya's kindergarten in a community of like-minded people, who value community and social responsibility and are fighting standardized testing and budget-cuts from a much more informed perspective than seemed to be understood in the States. I'm so thankful to have a family that valued individuality, autonomy and creativity in my childhood, and still supports me now as a woman and a mother. I may not have planned out my next career move yet but I am so glad I spent the last 5 years at home with my daughters. Now that I am seeing them as confident little people at school, expressing themselves and developing as empathetic indivuals I feel very rewarded. Unfortunately with so much of my time being spent on them and at home I sometimes have a hard time appreciating how far they've come and the routine sometimes feels dull, but when dad comes home to play with them and I see what they can do on their own while I'm sewing in the kitchen it makes me so happy that Jess and I have been so supportive of each other and so dedicated to our daughters.

06:23 pm: Apple cider pressing photoblog

Phil and Marnie enjoying the sunset, apples waiting in crates

Looking down from the deck onto the orchard

Helping to pick more apples in the morning

Grandpa Alan helped them pick, especially Quinn, Treya could do it great even one-handed (notice her cast came off on Wednesday, but she is still getting reacquainted with using it)

Washing and paring the bruises off the apples

The girls loved passing the apples into the grinder

and Quinn was thrilled to taste the juice as it was being pressed

siphoning it into jars

Quinn counted 37 in all, Matreya got 49, but it was a lot regardless!

delicious

and a great beach as well!

It was even worth the longest wait to cross teh border yet, with our smuggled apple cider waiting patiently, almost as patiently as the kids. We arrived to this horrendous line up a little after an hour after CBP had walked off their posts in protest of an armed murder suspect headed our way. We saw lots and lots of motorcycle riders but none were violent.

10:02 pm: Cast came off today
Matreya got her cast off today, I still haven't rectified the first day of school pictures, but school is going very very well. Matreya is making lots of friends, demonstrating resilience and compassion in the new school environment, and her writing and art demonstrate that she is certainly very detail-oriented and hard working. She draws so many pictures of herself, complete with sling, holding her dad's hand it is touching. They both miss him very much and he does them. Our new plan is to enjoy the time he gets off at the end of the project mostly at home, where he can enjoy taking them to school and just participating in the day to day stuff.

After Gretchen left on Saturday, I got out the huge bead collection Jackie brought back from a visit with Jennifer and we were so so appreciative. Matreya was delighted to spend some of her own money on a magnetic beading kit last week and we were both disappointed she couldn't really manage seed beading with one arm in a full cast! So I hauled out the box of beads and cooked up Quinn's Dora the Explorer shrinky dinks and we went to town making gorgeous beaded necklaces. I was really glad that both Matreya and Quinn could bead the elastic thread themselves, although for awhile I was worried Quinn would make hers too short cutting off the frayed ends every time she strung a bead, it worked out fine. Matreya used her fingertips on her left hand to hold the beads and loves her new necklace. We can't wait to make more.





Today we went to meet with Matreya's surgeon and we were looking at the X-rays and she said we could take the cast off today. I wasn't really expecting that but thank goodness we hadn't parked at a meter. We began walking down the hall to the cast cutting room and Treya looked a little nervous and I asked her if she was worried about the cast cutter and I reminded her it was kind of like a vacuum cleaner and that it didn't hurt, it just made a lot of noise (we heard the boy she shared a room with having his cast cut off the day she was discharged). She said that wasn't what worried her and I new what was in fact making her worried...those 4 inch long pins that we'd discussed would come out. I told her they would just slide right out when her cast came off, but when we arrived another boy was having his removed and crying so I took her to another room while we waited. We met two other children who'd broken their arms falling off the monkey bars. When it was our turn we went in and told Quinn to sit ont he stool so she could watch while I held Matreya and the tech was awesome, calm and soothing even though he had a long line and was the only one working. I held Matreya and told her she could look out the window and hold my hand while he worked. Quinn decided that she would like to wear the ear mufflers since Treya did not and she was very pleased, I wish I could have taken a picture of her face squished between these giant headphones. The first pin came out really quickly but the second two required pliers and some hard yanking, I stroked Matreya's cheek and helped her breathe and look out the window but even I was moved by the fact that she didn't even cry, not even a whimper. After that we got a bandage and a new little sling but no more cast! Dr. Alvarez met with us again for review of yet another set of x-rays and Matreya finally burst into tears when she said that she had to take it easy on that arm and no more hanging from bars for 3 weeks. Matreya was upset that she thought her doctor was saying she couldn't do all the new one-arm tricks she'd been doing off various climbing structures at school and I assured her that she'd meant not to hang with her BROKEN arm for 3 weeks. What a little monkey! Her latest trick is hanging by the good arm, her right one, and getting her feet and legs up there so she can hang by her knees upside-down. I am mostly just thankful she didn't break the other arm while this one was casted.

When we came home, dad was already there, taking a break and we watched the Princess Bride with him and had dinner together before taking him back to work. He was so happy to be home that he'd done the dishes and vacuumed and tidied up the house so I can write this long ass entry tonight guilt free! We love him so dang much, we will be glad when this game ships. Here are the drawings Matreya and Quinn did during meet the teachers night at school last night in the kindergarten room. The table had a handheld mirror which you could use to look at yourself while you drew your self portrait, which Quinn included in her drawing:


Matreya's is very similar to the one hanging on the wall in her class, including the sling and arm in cast, except that this one includes our beloved Jess. She is very proud of her pigtails, no wonder she won't let me style her hair any other way for school!

10:47 pm: school
Hey everybody! I took pictures of the girls and Jesse heading off to the first day of kindergarten and preschool with them but I did it without the card in the camera so you'll have to wait until I get around to posting them by actually downloading out of the camera, something I actually haven't done before so it'll be interesting to see what else is in there. In the meanwhile I can just tell you that they are awesome little girls, adjusting well and making me really proud. I am also meeting new parents at the school, both preschool and kindergarten. I'm really glad I wound up on the executive board of the preschool because its been great for me to get involved and lead other parents, and I got a chance to see where that leads tonight at the parent council meeting. Be prepared for the deluge of fundraising from the kids, I'm warning you. Overall my impressions are that its a great school and they are going to start spending a lot of money updating the school for computing and the like so its a fun time to get involved and hopefully be able to shape the community and lead the school our kids are going to attend for at least a while longer.

Jesse is still at work, not just because he went in late to see the girls off to school, but because this is the shape of things to come for the next month. I am doing pretty well, awesome compared to past years like this. We are totally sympathetic to each other's roles and Jess is sooo understanding of the energy required of me to keep cool with the kids...and I know he's maxxed out and I just hope you all can keep us in your thoughts. In the past he's done jaunts like this but keeping up the 7 day work week, 12 or more hours a day is hard for longer than a week, so far he's been at it a month and probably has another month ahead with it getting even longer, but he seems to be doing as well as me. He is the best friend ever, and an awesome dad to the girls too!

In the meanwhile, here's Treya sporting her new sling cover. I can't believe it actually worked out as good as it did, and now she doesn't have the ratty hospital one hanging from her neck. And I can safely wash it now without it falling apart, although I should probably line dry it because of the foam liner.

07:59 pm: Mandarin School!
I did take pictures this morning of Matreya and Quinn in their dresses and backpacks heading out to take Matreya to her first day of Mandarin Preschool, but I misformatted them so I can't share them at this time! Regardless, Quinn was sad we couldn't stay for the whole class after she enjoyed the very animated teacher, Chen laoshi, talking to her panda puppet and quacking like a duck. It was quickly forgotten when we went to the mall to ride a loonie mall ride because it finally rained here and parks weren't a good bet. We also got an antibiotics prescription filled because Quinn's fever on Wednesday resulted in some tonsilitis and her "neck" has been hurting. We are keeping her on softer foods and giving her tylenol for pain. Overall though, she has been having a great week and is very much looking forward to the new routine next week, as am I. Matreya is getting everything she was hoping for out of Mandarin class I hope, there are a variety of students with varying degrees of familiarity with Chinese and Mandarin, today they got their excellent little textbook readers and they learned to count to five. Matreya is pleased that she will have weekly "homework" and there will be some writing, something she may not even get out of kindergarten, much to her disappointment.

Jess is working all weekend but he is looking forward to taking Tuesday morning off for Matreya and Quinn's first day of school. Technically Matreya starts Monday but the first class is only an hour long. She is in the afternoon program, which works out very well because the kindergarten classroom is right across the hall from preschool during the exact same hours, so Matreya will go 4 days a week and Quinn will go 2. The preschool orientation meeting last week was a lot of work and preparation for me so I am relieved to have it behind me and am looking forward to another very successful and rewarding preschool year there. I am really finding a lot of good mama friends in the community and am even making other friends as well. Of all the tiems when Jess has worked hours like this, this is going very well for me, and this is certainly a long stretch for him, since it will probably continue like this with him working evenings and weekends through October. We are both just relieved that we are getting along and I am finding mothering 2 preschoolers easier alone than I did while I was breastfeeding babies. We are looking forward to some vacation time after he's done and Matreya's cast comes off!

10:25 am: Thanks to Grandma Jackie for immediately snapping photos as soon as she got to the hospital yesterday! She arrived in time to get Matreya's soft cast before they gave her the permanent one. She's been such a good patient, we are happy to have her home now and she is happy and doing very well.

Quinn proudly wore her eyepatch to the hospital yesterday morning because she was so happy to see Grandma Jackie and she really wanted to make her proud. I'd told her she could take it off when she got to the hospital, but she was so distracted she kept it on until Grandma and Grandpa got her home an hour later. She generally wears it "out" so sometimes she takes it off as soon as she knows she is "home."

Matreya was discharged after she got her new purple cast but she still had a lot of morphine in her system so she was very wobbly and still adjusting to holding up her arm cast.

She ate pizza and watched Pirates of the Caribean when she got home. Jess took an unanticipated two days off, and even though we saw very little of each other because he was staying overnight with Matreya, here he is in his native habitat. Doesn't he look lovely? It was nice to spend the afternoon at home with him and the grandparents...it made me realize how little I see of him during daylight!

07:24 am: broken arm
Matreya will be in the hospital in traction until Monday. She appears to have landed on her arm and it actually broke in three places, once in the radius above her elbow and twice in the ulna/forearm. I was so proud of her as she mastered the monkey bars the last few weeks I'd stopped spotting for her. I think about how determined she was to do everything herself and how much she hated help and now I wish she wasn't quite so brave or that it wasn't a quality I helped foster! She fell about 5 feet onto the sand at Kits Beach park, her favorite because they have the most monkey bars to practice. Jackie is coming up to help us with Quinn because I think realistically Jess will probably have to go to work tomorrow if not Monday, so that is great that she can help. Gretchen said she could take Quinn from Jackie before she leaves for Minneapolis if Jackie can convince Quinn to come back to Washington and otherwise Gretchen can come up here Wednesday afternoon just to help out with two girls with different needs.

11:55 pm: arr!

04:19 pm: Hot!
Jesse warned us it was going to get hot up here, but man, I am cranky up here! I hope wherever you are it is not so hot, but that liklihood is slim. If it wasn't for the children I'd be sleeping it off and waiting for evening to cool down. Quinn had an eye appointment on Tuesday and they've decided to try patching her good eye to bring up her vision. I am on day three of an eight week program to work her up to 8 hours a day of patch on her good eye. The first day she cried for the first five minutes begging me to patch the other eye, and then colored for 5 minutes and told me her blue pen was green and her pink one was red, so she's definitely seeing something. Then the patch broke loose at the top (probably from all the wet tears!) and so we said ten minutes for the first day. Yesterday we did 20, some of which was spent coloring and some of which we spent "finding" Nemo all around the room as we pretended it was the bag of marshmallows and Quinn was the "Yeti" who climbs down from the trees to steal them (this was a story related by a fellow camper last weekend and Quinn was intrigued byt hte story and has had lots and lots of questions about the "big hairy guy" and whether he eats kids or boots and how to keep safe from him). We finally made up a story about how Yeti's mother got angry with him for stealing marshmallows and he got a tummy ache and went to bed early, thus not disturbing any sleeping campers. I told her the yeti story again on my lap as we ticked off the last few minutes of 20 minutes of eyepatch. Today is day 3 and I confess, I haven't done it yet. We got some great chinese dragon pictures to color at the library today but I can't cough up 40 minutes of dedicated mama-Quinn time to pull it off. I'm thinking maybe if we're lucky it will be cooler after dinner and she won't be too tired to color and read books or whatever else. I know it would be easier if we did it first off in the morning, but I've only just now gotten myself 30 minutes a morning for my exercise and meditation and then the morning just accelerates rapidly into the next meal...we've also been spending a lot of time with other preschool families at local parks, but today it is too hot. One of the parents gave us a little inflatable ppool and I put it out early this morning so it wouldn't be too icy. Well, its like very warm bathwater now and Treya won't let me add any cold. Nice free pool though, and no Suburban required for transport! Unfortunately our new neighbor to the west did something even more unsightly than what I did to the trees at the Lake City hose, he had all the 12 foot high cedar hedges ripped out and replaced with...dirt. So now he has nice dark green turf and little pavings stones and a huge view of our yard and a really awful view of the apartment building across the alley and even some of the arterial. It sucks, and we lost some of our afternoon shade. Most sadly is I think he was kind of shocked and regretful too, but he doesn't seem like the remorseful type. He is going on vacation for two weeks and hasn't even decided what to plant. I wish he'd waited until after the heatwave! He apologized but there's nothing to be done now. And with people finally focussing on global warming I wonder about the lost carbon dioxide sink! I sure love our evergreen tree in the backyard!
Here are the girls on vacation last weekend at Lake Millersylvania:

And here they are looking remarkably similar today in the new little pool:

12:54 pm: Happy! Happy!
Birthday! Birthday!

Today is the birthday of Grandpa Jon Eric, also our minister Paul Bergman, and last but not least (okay, actually technically least as he is youngest) our friend Connor Bailey. Happy Birthday my fellow Cancerians! Did I miss anyone? I suspect so.

01:02 am: I have some sweet goofy captions I'll add l8ter
But for now simply accept my heartfelt apologies that I never take the good digital camera on trips. The one drawback to our dvd cam is that the photos tend to be low res, but I kind of like that in the same way I enjoy polaroids. Plus, check out the awesome hairshot of Matreya in the last one running on the deck of the Quinault ferry today from Pt Townsend on our way back from Ocean Shores. What the camera sacrifices in pixel count it makes up for in fast focus and great action captures. I haven't ridden on the Quinault since I was a kid, the upper passenger deck is small and you can run completely around the outside. Plus its electric engine hasn't been replaced since it was built at the turn of the century, even though the diesel generators have been and the zodiac lifeboats are mounted on the upper deck. I wish I could share all the videos because I have great preschool graduation videos too.


Quinn eating a homegrown carrot at Grandma Gretchen and Grandpa Jon's...delicious!

Playing in the sprinkler

Our trip to Copalis at Iron Springs Resort. Next year I hope Kjell and David and even Ariel can come. Steve and Joann were there adn the kids loved hearing them play music at night before bed.

We made smores in the campfire and Quinn and Matreya loved helping Jess build the fire (and even he was surprised it started out so well). Quinn continually asked him when she could add more wood to the fire and they took turns throwing driftwood on. Steve found a package of bottle rockets earlier in the day and Grandpa Alan lit a few off but it was very windy and the kids were disappointed that they were all bang and no brilliant explosions.

We took the MV Quinault back from Pt Townsend. It wasn't necessarily faster, but it sure was a nicer drive!

02:23 pm: (pre)school's out!
The graduation ceremony and picnic were yesterday and I was organized enough to record it! But I haven't got any pictures here yet. I got lots of compliments on the graduation gowns and it made me feel good to contribute. I am amazed at how motherhood has transformed me and still more surprised to feel like a success. I will post pictures when I get them off the camera, maybe tonight. Meanwhile, I am sorry to report we will not be coming out there this weekend as Jesse is working and so the girls and I are thinking of coming up midweek next week for a visit with the Hansens in Seattle and then maybe Jackie's on Thursday. We'll be in touch and hopefully I'll have added some photos shortly.

02:45 pm: Okay, the girl has rhythm

I thought it was foolish but I couldn't resist the drumset when I came across it used at a local secondhand store. Not only did Quinn enjoy it, she exhibited the same natural drum sensibility she does when she dances. That toddler soul that wanes in my family lines if not nurtured. And Jess and I do dance and stuff with kids, but somehow they learn to be self-conscious anyhow. Not Quinn, not yet. And thank goodness the babysitter came over today and she has better rhythm than I, she was teaching them both fills. Matreya was such a good sister all weekend, she hasn't been too sad about all the gifts for Quinn and she's been patient about sharing. So when we walked to the music store (have I mentioned there are THREE music/equiptment store within walking distance? This neighborhood is so so cool!)to get drumstiucks and SHe asked if they might have harmonicas there, I was more than happy to oblige. So they take turns playing the harmonica and attempting to keep time on drums. Matreya is creative, here is what she does if I don't hide the Q-tips:

It was a nice message to come across last week, I only wish the stairs provided more contrast.

01:07 pm: Soccer mom alert!
Sorry, I just didn't want mammatoni (Toni) thinking I was too good to be called the name I called her the other day! Today is the sweet Quinn's birthday. We rolled out sugar cookies last night and decorated them with sprinkles and baked them while Quinn beamed that the next day she would wear a crown and everyone would sing her the birthday song. I noticed this morning at 8am as I put away the sprinkles that they "might contain peanuts" which stopped me dead in my tracks as I went to the fridge for more cookie dough, and yes, cut out, baked, and engraved little "3's" on 20 cookies while I fed and dressed the children and we were only 5 minutes late for preschool. I had to be there early because I was the parent teacher today and we were making a pancake breakfast for the dads for father's day. We were so glad our dad could come. He was too. He stayed home at the last possible minute this morning waiting for the plumber to come because I stopped doing laundry this weekend when the utility sink backed up, and of course its not just lint, its the kitchen drain as well, so I have to space out my dishwashing. I was away last night and my sweet but-not-entirely conservationist husband did the dishes and I hadn't made it clear to him how the blocked plumbing might affect his love of running the hot water whenever he's in the kitchen. Okay, I might be exaggerating a little bit, but I can tell you exactly how much cubic volume of water he ran. So the plumber didn't call. Another mom did a spectacular fling of pancake batter that splattered us both, got the ceiling pretty darn well, and actually broke the rubbermaid container. We made more and there were enough pancakes for everybody. Only afterward when I took the girls to the bathroom did I realize she wasn't the only one with pancake batter splattered on her clothes, face and hair.

I already mentioned that I'm a week behind on laundry, right? Because see the utility sink is backed up, but thank goodness the plumber is coming today because I have to make more cookies for the parent meeting tonight, where I may or may not have learned a lesson from my sweet friend Toni and may wind up taking on even more executive responsibilities at preschool. And then if the plumbing is good and the kids are soundly asleep when I relieve the babysitter, I can enjoy the birthday that has already passed.


This is how the pictures look if I take them on my cell phone, pretty good actually! Kind of a Polaroid sort of quality!


Here she is getting ready to pass out her cookies with our preschool teacher Rachel

I so love Quinn, even when she spends the entire time at the playgroud climbing up and down the same ladder over and over only to freak out at the very last step before it joins the climbing structure she so wants to play on, and then makes her way back down again. This is new, only in the last week has she found the courage to climb and support her weight on ladders other than Treya's bunkbed, which she also hesitates at the top of. Even when she pitches an oversized fit because she doesn't want to give another kid a turn because she's too busy going up and down the ladder to pause at the bottom and let the line of children waiting past. Remind me to tell those moms how patient their daughters were tonight. She beamed during the preschool happy birthday song and she did the Dora and boots birthday dance. I can hardly believe the last 4 years have passed so fast...Jesse proposed to me on Mother's Day, we married in August and then I cried on the porch about how time was slipping by and I needed to have another baby. And the same enormous head and shoulders that make climbing ladders awkward also made her quite a pain to deliver on Father's Day 3 years ago. We almost named her Soviet, or Crane or Shiva, but once we were holding her she was most definitely Quinn. She ran out into the yard a few weeks ago waving frantically with both hands at our 2 year old neighbor: "hi hi hi! Remember me? I Quinn!"

I'm so glad we will have some family coming in from Seattle for the party. There should be lots of chaos and plenty of paper plates, just in case the dish washing moratorium is still in effect.