Last Days on NE 23rd Avenue

Today marks two weeks until we finally move out of our house and hand the keys to the man who bought it from us.  While we’re relieved to have sold our home at last, there are mixed feelings about leaving the neighborhood.  We’ll be leaving so many good friends among our neighbors: The Moores, the Lapours, Sarah, Jerome, and Everton,  Chris, Jen and their kids.  This has been a great community to live in and we’ll always appreciate the people that shared our streets. In recent years, our kids have together scratched a great deal of colored chalk on these sidewalks.

Stole this pic from Kathy's blog. The grumpy kid is ours.

We bought this house just over 10 years ago, in May 2001, with just our one cat (Peet, 11 now and still very healthy despite his dangerous road-crossing, neighborhood-prowling lifestyle).  The house needed cosmetic fixing, but over the years, we seriously remodeled the place. We expanded the second floor and added another bathroom between 2004 and 2005. We updated the downstairs bathroom in 2006 and both the kitchen and the garage in 2008.  I sometimes wonder what it would be like to finish the basement into a living area. I also regret that I never put as much effort into landscaping as I should have. The little problems with the place will not be ours to worry about much longer; we’ll have new projects and challenges.

We thought we’d be moving into a new home at this point, but that’s not the case. We are still shopping. We’re hopeful, but cautious and realistic about a complicated home purchase we’re trying to complete. It could be a while. In the meantime, we’ll be renting, and looking, and waiting…

Something to love about Portland

They show movies in the parks. I was excited to hear they were going to show Wall-E in Alberta Park, just a block away.  I expected it would be a small scale projection. In fact, they had a surprisingly large theater-sized inflated screen 15 feet high!  We got there well before the show and the kids caught a magician-juggler fellow doing his thing up close. We soon realized it was a long time to wait until dark and that keeping the kids up late for a movie they’d seen many times was not worth the crankiness.

Zaeda running through Alberta Park. Picture taken by Oliver.

Another thing to love about Portland

 Here we are at our regular anniversary spot in the Rose Garden arena with a couple hundred other people. It was such a warm pleasant night. As always, we packed in food, wine, and a blanket. This year they had a mask-making activity table swarming with kids. Oliver and Zaeda joined the mix and soon had their own custom masks.

What a morning!

This was last Wednesday. Jenny had to be at work early, so I got the kids ready. The night before, Zaeda had discovered on old pair of Converse shoes that had been Oliver’s. They fit her just fine. She liked them so much she took them to bed with her. In the morning, they were the only shoes she’d wear.

They were laced and it took forever to get them on her. Once they were on, she danced around and soon was tugging them off. This went on all morning.

Oliver meanwhile had decided that his pirate costume from last Halloween, which had been bundled up under the futon, was exactly the thing he had to wear to school that morning. Under it, he decided to wear a tank top over a t-shirt. I was running out of time to fight them on their wardrobe choices so I just took a picture. Move it along, Blackbread!

The funny part was the way my kids marched proudly into their respective classrooms that morning, Zaeda stomping around and pointing and exclaiming “My shoes!” to everyone and Oliver posing grandly in front of his little friends and shouting “Aye, Me Hearties!”

Summer Days

Dessert time on the front steps

Oliver CANNOT stop himself from making a goofy face when the camera is pointed at him

So I tell him something funny to break his goofy face and get the smile

Neskowin beach, July 30, 2011

A boy and his dog



Silly faces



After lots of running and splashing, Abbie takes a break to watch the kids



The short low flight of Spiderman kite. That's about it.



A girl and her dog



Proposal Rock





Zaeda is starting with the silly faces too



Wash this!

How has so much time gone by between our last blog post? It’s been bugging me.

The last few months have been unusually active and crowded for us. Jenny and I have been busier than ever with our jobs; I spent much of June on the road for business during which Jenny handled the house and kids solo. We recently put our house up for sale, which involved so many weekends of preparing in the first half of the year and now requires us to keep the place clean and presentation ready every day – all while our little ones smear jelly on the walls, drag toys out of boxes, spill milk, drop globs of toothpaste, etc.  When we can, we head out to see houses for sale. We haven’t fallen in love with any properties yet. We’re in limbo.

In the quiet times, we cherish those mellow moments as a family, like story time at the end of the day. Zaeda is now in her own toddler bed to match Oliver’s, which means that we could no longer all gather to read on Oliver’s bed without a tussle. The neutral space is the rug in the center of the floor.

Oliver and Zaeda are playing together more and more. Now that Zaeda is talking, they have conversations and arguments – lots of arguments. Toys get thrown. They swap clothes. They hug, wrestle, and pinch one another – giggles, screams, and tears. All day long.

Birthday

Zaeda turned 2 years old at the end of May. We gathered at Old Town Pizza nearby with family.  All the attention upset her a little bit, but she is slowly blossoming into a little ham.  She enjoys attention. She’s more than happy with the inevitable pink stuff, the princess toys and tiaras.

I’m learning how much little girls are different from little boys. I had no sisters, so my exposure to little girls has been limited. Zaeda screams all the time – sometimes because she’s happy, other times because she’s mad or just bored. It’s quite a scream. She also cares about what she’s wearing more than Oliver ever did . There have been many mornings when the only shoes she’ll wear outside are her shiny white dress shoes that have grown a bit tight on her. (Just now, she came flying out of her bedroom in a flowered hat and diapers saying “Watch mommy!”). 

Her hair is whole other thing. She hasn’t yet had a hair cut, so it’s long and curly and easily tangled. Sometimes she lets up put it in pigtails or a pony tail, or at least place a clip so that she can see. But just as often, she’ll tolerate nothing in her hair and she goes out like a wild animal half-blinded by own auburn locks.

Photographer

On weekends we try to get out and see some open houses. When the kids come, this can be challenging. They’ll either run through each house like maniacs or fall asleep in the car so that Jenny and I have to take turns going in.  One day we handed Oliver our Camera and he proceeded to take about 100 flash pictures – most of which were self-portraits of the back seat of the car.  He also took quite a few pictures of the houses we visited. Some of them were better than the promo pictures the realtors had taken.

Last weekend we went to a field to pick strawberries. You can see the kind of messy dusty fun we had.

I’ve mentioned before, Oliver watches more TV than he should and we try to ration his screen time. It’s easier to do in the summer when we can get outside and visit the park or walk or ride bikes. Last weekend, I took Oliver to his first movie in a theater. We saw Pixar’s Cars 2, which is about as perfect a movie for a 4 year old boy as they make. I never buy soda and popcorn at the movie theater, but I made an exception in this case. He loved it. The only part he struggled with was the theater seats that fold up; he’s so small, his chair kept folding on him.

Oliver Quotes
“Quite” as in “I don’t quite remember”
“My tummy hurt and then the next moment it didn’t”

(and in response to Jenny’s medical assessment question trying to understand Oliver’s mysterious tummy aches – “Oliver, are your poopies different?”)
“My poopies are ALWAYS different.”

Zaeda Quotes
“I’ll be right back”
“Wash (watch) Mommy!”
“Rub my back!”

Faffles

Dressed in Easter Best

Zaeda is talking a lot! She is stringing more words together and it's fun to listen to what she comes up with. Here are a few:

"I like faffles (waffles)."

"Mommy's hot foffee (coffee)."

She knows most of the parts of her body. She can identify various animals and mimic the sounds that they make.

It's hard not to compare your children but I love it when Zaeda surprises me by doing something Oliver never did. It reminds me that she is her own person and will do different things than Oliver or the same things as Oliver but in her own time.

Zaeda skips when she is happy. Not your typical skip -- more of a little hop over and over again across the floor. She dances when she is happy or being silly. When she told me she liked "faffles" she did a little shimmy from side to side. She sometimes walks just on her tippy toes. She is more interested in what she wears than Oliver was/is. It isn't to a point where she is difficult but occasionally she seems to have an opinion on what coat (the big white furry one) or shoes (gold lamae) that she wants to wear. Sometimes we get her dressed and turn around to find that she has taken everything off.

We've also started to reach a tantrum phase. Sometimes it's quick and in some instances it seems to last forever. She's also been fighting another diaper rash so that probably plays a part. But one thing did seem to snap her out of her most recent massive tantrum-- the recently earned Tootie Cushion.

Easter

This year we did the egg hunt in Fernhill  Park and then went over to the Prices where the kids can hang out with their cousins Luke and Cami.

Egg hunting with Luke and Cami

This isn't an egg....

Cami shows them how to open eggs and organize the candy

Sweet siblings

Oliver's Dragon drawing

Oliver practicing his numbers with the calculator

Tired and giggly after wrestling. Bedtime!

For some reason Oliver loves to wiggle his butt at people and smack it. He managed a toot just as the shutter went  off on this picture

For most of you reading, this item is commonly referred to as a Whoopee Cushion. In our house, passing gas is referred to as "tooting" hence the Tootie Cushion. Before we get into all the great fun we're having with the Tootie Cushion, it's important to explain why Keith and I (mostly Keith) would choose to purchase such a thing for our children.

The Tootie Cushion was purchased as a reward to Oliver for pooping on the toilet. We've been struggling with this piece of toilet training for some time. We tried everything except punishment and we knew there wasn't any physical hang up. As mentioned in an earlier post, Oliver is fascinated with passing gas. What better 'carrot' to offer in exchange for successfully pooping on the toilet. At first he wasn't interested. This went on for weeks. He didn't even want us talking about it. The other night Keith came upon Oliver on his little toilet-- he had pooped on the toilet! Once we confirmed the obvious, the first words out of Oliver's mouth were, "I want the Tootie Cushion". Oliver loves this thing. Fast forward maybe 30 minutes and Zaeda is in the throes of her tantrum. What pulls her out of it? You guessed it-- the Tootie Cushion.

The Tootie Cushion is non-stop fun for the kids. Fortunately, Keith purchased the Whoopee Cushion that inflates itself so we are not having to constantly blow one up. The funniest part for us is watching the kids react. Zaeda has taken to copying her brother's response which is sitting on the cushion and then falling backwards laughing.

Meanwhile, Oliver in now regular and confident about getting himself up on the pot.

House for Sale

Earlier this year we decided to finally get serious about selling the home we bought ten years ago, into which we’ve put so much time and effort fixing it up. Now it’s early May and we’re weeks away from listing it. The evenings and weekends have been entirely occupied with getting the house ready for month. We’ve packed up many of our belongings, repainted, installed new hardwood floors, sealed our basement walls, and attended to a hundred little odds and ends we’d lived with, but must address before selling.

We’re just starting to look for a new home that better suites our little family. We haven’t found a new home yet, or even settled on a new neighborhood. We’ll still be in Portland. We want many things in a new home, and it’s a tough decision. We must weigh schools against the size of dining rooms and the layout of kitchens. Like so many major life changes, it’s a bit stressful, but also fun.