Recently in Family Category

We’re in Seattle for a week. It’s been raining off-and-on since we arrived; not exactly unexpected. What has been a nice surprise, though, is how stunning the fall colors are around here. I’d go so far as to call it New England-y, albeit with the disclaimer that I’ve never actually been to New England in autumn.

Although it’s our second trip to Seattle in the last couple months, this is notably the first time we’ve flown with two kids in tow. Preflight logistics turned out to be more daunting than the travel itself, though I did get a moment of excitement when (as Murphy would have it) our plane encountered a wee patch of turbulence halfway through Tamtam’s airplane-lavatory diaper change. Seeing the seatbelt light illuminate was like hearing a starter pistol fire — I’ve never wielded baby wipes with greater speed and dexterity, nor snapped shut a onesie with such machine-like precision and efficiency.

Anyhow, we’ve been keeping occupied with trips to the playground, zoo, puppet show, and other demographically-appropriate destinations. Most of all, we’ve just been happily hanging out with friends here. Which is why we came up in the first place.

Home, for us, is a dynamic variable. Its current state would seem to be “California”.

As such, there are friends and family and sun back in our lives now, all of which we’d missed.

Yet the move is still bittersweet for Az and me. Maybe it’s because Emelyn had suddenly taken to saying “home” in the weeks before we’d left; she’d proudly announce it every time we pushed her buggy through the front door. First words have meaning behind them; it somehow feels unjust that she won’t really remember Cambridge.

Emmie doesn’t say “home” for our new pad, yet. Nor do Az and I, when we talk with one another — I’ve noticed it’s still just “the apartment”. But what Emmie does say is “Emmie’s room”, and she says it with happiness and authority in her voice. That’s because she’s got a proper little nursery, now, with a small table and a rocking chair, and a place for all her books. She can freely wander from the living room back to her room to do, well, whatever she wants. And she certainly does.

So it’s a new beginning, once again; yet another foundation of flat-pack furniture and emptied suitcases for our little triumvirate to build a routine upon. Things feel palpably impermanent, at the moment, but maybe that’s a positive thing: I’m thinking this is a good time to just live in the present for a bit. And a good time to walk down our block to where the sidewalk ends, where we can go see the ocean and the evening sky, and still be home for bedtime stories.

One of the places I’ll miss most when we leave Cambridge is our local, the Cambridge Blue. We took Emmie to the garden there the first week she was home, and she’s been something of a regular ever since.

Here’s some brief footage from a sunny Sunday afternoon last week, as Emmie got a chance to play with all the ladybugs out back.

Emelyn is so tall now, she’s able to grab the windowsill in our bedroom, stand on her tippy-toes, and peer out at the world. This means that part of our early-morning routine- specifically, the part right after I stumble in from the nursery, deposit Emmie on the bed, and crawl back under the covers - begins with Emmie sliding back off the bed, running to the window, and chanting ‘Ooh-go, Ooh-go’ as she looks across Ainsworth Street to Helen’s house.

Alas, Ugo the cat died two weeks ago. This is sad news. Ugo was a good cat, uncommonly gentle, and Emmie loved her visits with him.

In fact, “Ugo” was one of Emelyn’s first words. She’d point at the front door and say “goo-goo” long before we figured out what she meant. It shouldn’t have surprised us — Emmie visited Helen’s house almost every day, and Ugo was always present. Emmie, for her part, would happily sit on him, chase him, pull his tail and yank all his whiskers. And he never so much as lifted a paw in return.

He was kind to me, too: On that long night when Emelyn was born, I came home alone from the NICU at 4am to find little Uggi sitting on the doormat. For me, it’s one of those strange coincidences that’s almost too hard to explain. Ugo wasn’t an outdoor cat, you see; I can’t say why he climbed his way out of Helen’s home and garden that particular night, or why exactly he chose to wait on my stoop. But there he was.

Our house was like a second home for Ugs, I suppose: We helped looked after him while Az was pregnant; poor Ugo was going through a not-very-nice-time in his life, then, having to wear one of those big plastic collars to protect a wound on his neck. Contrary to pretty much every other feline on the planet, Ugo would actually purr when you tied that awful collar on. Maybe he was smart enough to know you were helping him, or maybe he was just gentle to the core. Maybe both.

To be honest, I only saw Ugo really growl and act like a cat once. Helen had to travel to a conference in the States, so Ugs had been staying at our house; this was a month or two before Emmie was born. We were in the middle of a Cambridge summer heatwave, and sleeping with almost every window in the house open. Ugo took over the foot of our bed at night, and would migrate to the open windowsill as dawn broke, to watch the waking birds.

As for the growls: neither of us actually saw Ugo’s big moment. But it’s easy enough to put the pieces together. Azure woke from a pounce on the bed and “those awful chirping noises”; I woke from Azure shouting at Ugo. I saw feathers on the bed; you can imagine the rest.

Yes, Ugo had beaten all the odds: A greying ‘indoor’ cat, hampered by a four-inch plastic collar around his neck, and trapped on a second-story windowsill, had nevertheless managed to catch a birdie.

It was a victory that woke every dormant feline instinct in that cat. Because no matter how hard I tried, and no matter how much Azure yelled, and no matter how much the poor bird cried, Ugo wouldn’t surrender his prize. I wound up chasing Ugi all around the bedroom, down the stairs, around the house, and eventually into the garden.

It ended there, finally, with me prying Ugo’s jaws open, and a mess of blood and feathers. Ugo was livid; he growled and growled at me like I’d never seen. And growled some more. He was, in a word, wild.

For just a few minutes, though.

Other than that he was a softie, always. He tolerated Emmie better than I could imagine any cat doing; and she loved him for that.

We had a good Easter, yesterday. It’s a 4-day holiday in the UK, so there’s been plenty of time to relax and just hang around the house. We’ve squeezed in a few great bike rides, too — the weather seems to have finally turned, and it feels like everybody in town has decided to stroll or cycle along the Cam this weekend.

Emelyn had a little surprise waiting when she woke from her nap on Easter Sunday: a little (very little) egg hunt in the backyard. We actually wound up doing it three times, as Emmie enjoyed it more with each go; she’s been talking about eggs all morning long today, too.

Here’s a few of the clips that wound up on my desktop after making our little Valencia video. B-sides, Outtakes, Deleted Scenes… dunno what to call ‘em, but I figure they’re still worth sharing:

A week after the fact, and I think we’re finally recovered from the long weekend in Valencia. It’s a great city to visit for a few days — really manageable size, nice people, and plenty of toddler-friendly attractions.

We only ran into one problem, which stung us pretty bad: the whole idea of ‘lunch at 2:30, dinner between 11 and midnight’ doesn’t mesh well with a strictly-sleep-scheduled baby who naps promptly at 2 and needs to be in bed by 8. We wound up foraging a lot of cold tapas and chocolate & churros, which ain’t half-bad, though the foodie in me quietly wept a few times. (Comment from Azure: “Quietly? I don’t know if you can use the word quietly…”)

‘Twas also a learning experience about what to expect from a kid at attractions. Valencia has a pretty awesome aquarium (L’Oceanografic) and a small zoo in the city gardens, and Az and I were both super-excited about taking Em to these, since she loves animals so much. (Without exaggeration, I’d guess that 40% or so of her current vocabulary is animal names.)

Yes — Emmie had a good time at both the zoo and the aquarium, no doubt. But while Azure and I had debated whether Emmie would enjoy the penguins more than the giraffes, etc. etc., we hadn’t anticipated that the show-stealing attractions would be the aquarium’s crowd-management equipment, and a particular 3-inch-high curb outside the zoo’s Primate House. I mean, Emelyn seemed to like the fish, and all, but it became obvious that she’d have been even happier in a room full of retractable belt barriers and their rope-and-post brethren. As for the curb, well, it was sized ‘juuuust right’ for Emmie to step up and down, and down and up.

This is all on tape, of course. Here’s a video — click through to Vimeo for HD:

Anyhoo: there’s a ton of stuff to love about Valencia — the noise of Las Fallas, the Syd Mead stylings of the City of Arts and Sciences, the constant availability of freshly-fried churros, and so on. My favorite, though, has got to be the Parc Gulliver in the river gardens. Pretty much the coolest ‘concept playground’ I’ve ever seen, it’s a gigantic Gulliver that makes all the children playing on it perfectly Lilluputian in proportion. The folds of Gulliver’s coats are slides and steps; the ropes tying him down are made for climbing up, etc. Genius. (Here’s Emmie and I on it, and here’s a satellite view from Google Maps.)

The Turia river gardens are great, overall — apparently the old river Turia flooded in 1957, nearly destroying the city, so that the city fathers wound up diverting the entire thing elsewhere, and created this long, narrow, meandering park in its place. The landscape changes every few blocks — different fountains, little orchards, bike rental shops, grassy knolls and cafés as you stroll along. Urban planning done well, which you rarely see.

And that’s pretty much it. I suppose it’s worth noting, just for our own memory’s sake, that we actually did run into another major problem, and one which didn’t relate to restuarant opening hours. Problem was that Emmie didn’t sleep. Something about being out of her crib, or hating the hotel’s playpen, I guess. It seriously felt like raising a newborn again — we were up almost every hour to console and coax her back to sleep in our bed. (Although when she was a newborn, she just mewed or cried, and didn’t start jumping up and down wildly in bed.) Hence the quip in the opening line about being ‘recovered’ from the trip.

We’re in Valencia for the weekend, on a much-needed break from the grey skies in Cambridge. Emmie is saying “hola”, now, and loves nothing so much as a tall glass of cold orxata. She also had her first taste of hot chocolate and buñuelos, which was followed with an immediate, unsurprising reaction of “Mama, more, Mama more!” repeated three hundred and seventeen times.

Neat city, Valencia. More soon.

You know the instructions on fireworks that say, “Place on ground, light fuse, move away”? Emelyn was doing something along those lines earlier today with the answering machine.

She’s figured out that she can mash the buttons on our phone so that, with some luck, it will play back whatever old messages are hanging around. She’s scared of how loud the speaker is (it’s loud) so she generally makes a run for it the moment the phone starts its playback routine. Then she’ll stand back and admire her handiwork.

Anyhow, she was awfully pleased to hear Jami on the machine today. Kept playing a message from Jami again and again, saying, “Auntie! Auntie!”. She probably did it four or five times in a row — we caught a few of ‘em on video.

Wow, what a week.

First off, the biggest snow in London for fifteen years saw airports close, trains delayed, and me stay home Thursday - and all that after a mere 5 inches of the white stuff landed overnight. Just a light dusting by most standards, but hey, I’m not going to pass up a free snow day with E.

I spent a lot less time than I wanted with Emmie on Thursday and, frankly, for the last couple of weeks as I prepared for a significant launch at work. (‘Twas the bundle-launch of Gmail open signups, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, and Gmail for mobile.) It’s something of a shame because she’s developing so rapidly now - new words and opinions every day. My personal favourites are ‘mail’ (mail), ‘whaatch’ (rabbit), and ‘yellow’ (yellow). As for how ‘whaatch’ came to mean rabbit, I have no idea, but she says it all the time.

Anyhow, it’s 11pm on Friday night, now, and I’m slumped in my seat on the commuter line after a well-timed ‘team-building’ event that consisted of a trip to the Tate modern to ride the ballyhooed slide installation - a twisting, curving five-story slide that’s just as fun as it sounds. That was then followed by drinks at the Absolut Ice Bar, where everything between the floor and the ceiling is made of ice (stemware, too), plus dinner at some hoity-toity Moroccan joint. Probably a normal Friday night for a Londoner, but coming from the ‘burbs, it was a real treat.

The plan, of course, allows for Azure to get her payback on Sunday, with an all-day escape to London on her own. And I’m looking forward to a full day with Emmie. Sure, there’s that niggling fear that she’ll suddenly freak out without Azure around for such a long stretch (since that normally happens… when?) and who knows how I’ll keep her mind off of Bod/Boohbah these days (she can repeat those words for hours) but we’ll manage fine.

For now, TGIF.

We went to Ely weekend before last, one of the nicest Sundays I’d had in a long time.

An unremarkable lunch at the Maltings, some time wandering around a cold cathedral, and a long stretch of me pushing sleepy Em around the town square whilst Az shopped at Waitrose.

Not much to write about, really, but somehow it all came together perfectly. Plus, I got to play with the new videocamera some more. Click through to see in HD:

I’ll be honest — there’s a part of me that regrets ever putting a Boobah DVD in our player. It buys you 25 minutes of sanity in the morning, but payback hits in the afternoon, when Emmie starts querying, “Boobah?” every 5 minutes.

She’s pretty adorable when watching it, though. Here’s a video:

We had our first (and only?) snow of the season on Tuesday. Luckily, I happened to be home that day, and caught Emmie’s first encounter with the stuff.

It’s all fun and games until somebody gets cold hands:

We finally got ourselves some weather, here.

Last Thursday’s wind storms were apparently the UK’s biggest in 17 years, shutting down rail networks across the country. Last Thursday also happened to be our fifth wedding anniversary.

And so it was that I spent Thursday night sleeping on a coworker’s sofa in London, while Azure and Em hunkered down miles and miles away in Cambridge. Not exactly romantic, but one to remember, nonetheless.

Well, we’re back. It’s been a rough couple of nights; infant jet lag is a monster. Two nights ago, we were up at 2am watching Emmie dance with herself in the living-room mirror. (By ‘dance’, I’m describing a full-on, feet-stomping, body-spinning affair; it was the first time I’d ever seen her do that.) We’d all woken up at 1:15 PM that day, so I suppose the general lack of tiredness wasn’t a surprise. To quote WS, the time is out of joint.

Emelyn, though, is otherwise unfazed by all the location changes. This is partly because she’s discovered a new foundation that she can build her life around, namely, Cheerios.

In fact, “Sheerhoah!, sheerhoah!” is pretty much all she says of late, and in this tone of voice that’s half-ecstatic, half-imperative. She’s got a Tupperware dispenser chock-full of cereal that now gets lugged anywhere she moves. Of course, her dexterity is a tad limited, so half the Cheerios drop to the floor en route to her mouth. In other words, it’s like having a crazy Cheerios-spraying machine in the house, not unlike some wayward Roomba that sheds breakfast cereal all day instead of cleaning it up.

The craziest thing, though, is Emmie’s wild-eyed zeal for proselytizing these Cheerios. She’ll happily walk half-way across the house, Tupperware banging on the walls, just to wave a Cheerio in front of your face and bark, “Sheerhoah!” at you. Disconcerting, perhaps, yet surprisingly effective: I’ve had two bowls of Cheerios in the last two days, for the first time in years…