We have a ton of photos in the queue, and not just because we’re perpetually behind. In particular, we took a short trip down to the Monterey area last weekend, and managed to capture several dozen pictures just of the California coast.
In the meantime, while you have that to look forward to, I’ve uploaded Julia and Joseph’s most recent class pictures.
Last summer, our next-door neighbor Chris moved out of Willow Glen to be closer to where his daughter would be attending school in the fall. As he was packing up, he made a fateful (for us) decision: he was finished tearing down and reassembling the playhouse he’d built for his daughter every time he moved, and he graciously offered it to us.
Chris and Julie worked all afternoon one weekend, hauling the disassembled pieces of the playhouse over to our yard. The process was made more tedious by the dilapidated fence separating our properties; it might have been easier to just tear down the fence and carry everything directly across. Better still, the structure was apparently home to what Julie insists were black widow spiders, which lent the venture a heightened sense of excitement and danger.
The pieces sat on our patio for a few weeks, until Julie’s brother Bill and his friend Wayne swung through town for a visit. Never one to shy away from making good use of visiting family (as Bill probably should have remembered from his last visit, the month before Julia was born), Julie put the pair to work, and they got the frame of the first floor of the playhouse put together that weekend.
Julie and I made good progress on the second story—yes, the kids’ playhouse has more floors than our actual house—the next weekend, and there things sort of stalled. We took a trip to Chicago, the kids started school, and the next thing you know, the rainy season came.
This spring, then, Julie issued an ultimatum: we finish the playhouse by July, or she would hire someone to finish it for us. This made an impression on a couple of levels. First, not completing the project on our own would have felt like a massive failure of parenting, perhaps one that would leave a lasting mark on the kids’ psyches. Second, I’m cheap.
With renewed motivation, we pushed forward, and though we didn’t quite make it by the deadline, we did finally complete construction about 13 months after we started. Now the kids want to paint it.
We’ve posted pictures covering the long history of the project. Please don’t forward them to our insurance agent, as I’d like to avoid being forced to increase our personal liability coverage.
It’s summer here in San Jose, so naturally I’m staying inside to post pictures of the kids. The alternative—working outside in the yard—is too frightening to contemplate.
We actually have two new sets of pictures up on the site this weekend. The first is a batch of photos from the last month or so, including Joe’s sixth birthday. The second takes us a little further back in time, all the way to Christmas 2008.
Seeing as it’s early June, the biggest news, of course, is that Joe’s birthday has come and gone. We played it pretty low key this year: just the family, Joe’s choice of dinner (cheeseburgers cooked on the grill) and an ice cream cake. Lego Ninjago seemed to be the overriding theme. It’s become cliché to comment on how different Lego sets are from the ones people my age had growing up, but, well, they’re definitely different. Nevertheless, there are certainly worse pastimes, like his other obsessions, Sonic and Mario.
Speaking of toys I had growing up, my parents sent us a Magic Shot, which is a near replica of the one my brother had when he and I were little—it even has the same half-functioning bell. Magic Shot consists of a plastic box, a magnetic gun, and a slew of metal BB pellets that you can shoot at targets inside the box. Now that’s a good, old-fashioned toy.
I apologize for the somewhat low quality of the birthday pictures: our main camera is broken, and Julie’s fancy new phone wasn’t charged, so we were left to capture the moment with my old phone.
Just about a year ago, Joe had his first visit from the tooth fairy after he lost one of his bottom front teeth. This seemed a bit early, as Julia still hadn’t lost her first tooth yet, but still within the realm of reason: his teeth came in earlier than hers, after all. Well, as of this writing, Joe has lost six teeth altogether, including his two top front teeth and both lower canines just in the last couple months. Suffice it to say that he’s not gnawing on a lot of beef jerky.
At this point, I have no idea if this is completely normal, cause for panic, or something in between. We’re going to give it a couple weeks to see if his permanent teeth start poking through his gums. He still sucks his thumb more or less compulsively, so that may be a factor. He’s also been playing with his “loose” teeth constantly, so I’m vaguely concerned that he’s actually making them loose in anticipation of the big tooth fairy payout. If this doesn’t stop, we’re either going to have to coat his fingers with something foul tasting or give him a quick lesson in economics: he might be a bit less excited about the dollar coins the tooth fairy brings if he understands that each of them covers about fifteen seconds of a college education.
After another extended absence, we’re back, this time bearing pictures from the 2011 holiday season, highlighted by our trip to see Grandma Flack in Nebraska. This year’s trip was a little bit bittersweet for Julie and the kids, as it was the first time we’ve spent the holiday at Grandma’s new house in Norfolk. Of course, Julia and Joseph adapted quickly: they were thrilled out of their minds to be spending a whole week in a house with stairs (or, as they call it, a “stair house”) and sleeping in the basement.
As usual when we fly to Nebraska, our midday flight out of San José left us arriving in Omaha late in the evening, and the two-hour drive to Norfolk meant that we weren’t going to get there at a decent hour. In a change from previous Christmas trips, we rented a car at the airport; this assuaged our guilt about our late arrival somewhat, because it meant that Julie’s brother Bill didn’t have to trek down to Omaha to pick us up. The kids were inexplicably excited about the rental (more Wong vocabulary: a “borrow car”), but there was a small wrinkle: the box of gifts we’d checked on the flight over—necessarily only because I somehow managed to have most of our gifts shipped to our house instead of Nebraska—wouldn’t fit in the trunk. Somehow, Julie managed to squeeze it in, albeit not with doing significant damage its structural integrity. It wouldn’t be the same again.
Julia and Joseph are at an age where flying with them actually isn’t torture. This worked out well for us, because there was a glitch with our tickets that resulted in us being separated on the first leg of our flight. I probably should have been worried when United’s online check-in system wouldn’t work for my reservation, but didn’t have a problem with everyone else’s. Everything was fine when we got to the counter to check our luggage, however, and it wasn’t until I tried to board that things went sideways and the computer rejected my boarding pass out of hand. Fortunately, the gate agent was able to straighten things out in short order.
As I was saying, the kids were well-behaved pretty much the whole time we were airborne. Julia spent most of the time doing Mad Libs, which I wasn’t aware had made the transition to the twenty-first century. Other than the fact that she had to be dissuaded from using the same adjective for every blank on a particular page, she more or less got the hang of it. For Joe, the highlight of the day came as we were boarding the flight from Denver to Omaha. The captain, having overheard one of the flight attendants chatting with Julia, noticed Joe as he came aboard and invited him into the cockpit. He gave him a quick rundown of the controls, let him sit in the pilot’s seat, and even let him try on his hat. I have no idea if this was legal or kosher in this hyper-paranoid era, but it absolutely made Joe’s day. He spent the rest of the flight telling people that he had learned how to be a pilot and trying to explain to me which handle controlled the air brake.
On the topic of security, I got to go through the body scanners that are funding Michael Chertoff’s retirement on the way out of San José, so if you find naked pictures of me on the Internet, that’s totally the reason, not my seldom-indulged exhibitionist streak.
Everyone had a blast the whole time we were in Nebraska. We got to eat at Runza and, for the first time in almost 13 years, Jimmy John’s; we helped Julie’s brother Andy help set up a new computer for Grandma Flacks, which I sincerely hope is still working; Julie and I managed to sneak out of the house after the kids went to sleep to catch a movie; and we had lots of time to relax, read books and do Lego with the kids—Andy was especially involved in that process. Of course, Julia and Joseph were most excited to see their only cousins, Tony and Greg. Tony and Greg have lots of cousins on their mother Beth’s side, so they were probably a bit baffled by the raw intensity of the attention they received from our kids, but they handled the situation with grace and aplomb. Little do they know that their kindness only ensures that Julia and Joseph will be equally enthusiastic the next time they come for a visit.
Last night, just about a month to the day that Joe lost his first tooth, Julia lost hers. She never really said anything, but I have to figure that the fact that Joe was so far ahead of her had to be on her mind: Joe lost his shortly after his fifth birthday, and Julia lost hers about a month shy of her seventh. They say that all’s well that ends well, but we haven’t seen the new tooth yet. If the past is any kind of guide, I see lengthy consultations with orthodontists on the horizon.
This tooth had been hanging on by a thread for a few days—I fully expected that she was going to lose it in the pool at camp, where it would be lost until they drained the water at the end of the season—but she actually yanked it out herself last night at bedtime. The girl’s got more guts than I would have given her credit for.
The tooth fairy paid us a visit overnight and left behind two shiny dollar coins: an outcome Julia was quite pleased with. In fact, she’s sleeping with her coin bank in her bed tonight, for reasons that she wasn’t quite able to articulate. As long as she’s happy and isn’t wandering the halls, I’m not going to argue.
The unfortunate and sudden demise of alumni access at IMSA has necessitated a move to new environs. The old site may stay up for a while, or it may not—it’s impossible to say what the capricious IT folks at my alma mater will do next. Fortunately, we have copies of everything that was posted there, so we’ll be moving it all here over time.
Joe lost his first tooth this morning, after a solid week of wiggling it with his fingers, carefully chewing with the side of his mouth, and rolling it around with his tongue. It was just about ready to come out last night: Julie offered to finish the job, but Joe, a little uncomfortable with the idea, demurred. But today, he marched right into our bedroom, woke us up, and informed us that he was ready to make it happen. You can see the happy outcome above.
Note: I’m actually cheating a bit here, and posting this on July 9, as I’m moving the contents of the blog from iWeb to WordPress. The official story is that IMSA’s summary termination of shell services left things in limbo for months, including the time period during which Joe lost his tooth. A more cynical reader might take the view that I just copied over the post about this very tooth’s arrival, and realized belatedly that we hadn’t written anything when it fell about. Well, if nothing else, we posted on Facebook.
Two years ago, my parents took us, my brother and his wife on a cruise through the Mexican Riviera. To this day, the kids still instinctively call any large, oceangoing vessel they see the Norwegian Star, and they’ll be sorely disappointed if we ever take another cruise and we’re not on deck eight.
As part of our ongoing—and seemingly futile—effort to get caught up, here are our photos from the trip.
We’re back from our Christmas trip to Chicago, and although everyone had a fantastic time, the kids were definitely happy to see their little yellow house again. It didn’t help that the torrential rain and mudslides that slammed Southern California while we were gone dominated the news, even in Illinois. As a result, Julia asked whether San Jose was in the southern part of California or the northern part at least five or six times during our trip. Of course, once we got home, Julia spontaneously burst into tears more than once because, she insisted, she missed Grandma and Grandpa.
Santa delivered most of the kids’ gifts in Chicago—the children were evidently better behaved last year than I would have given them credit for—leaving us with suitcases and boxes full of stuff to take home. We mitigated the pain somewhat by shipping a few boxes via FedEx, making things a lot more convenient at the airport and providing us with the satisfaction of not having to give extra money to the airline.
On the topic of luggage and travel-related hassles, we took a big step with Julia just before the trip by moving her out of her bulky and massive convertible car seat and into a belt-positioning booster seat. She’s actually the last kid in her peer group that I know of to make this transition: the car seat was a complete bear to travel with and made it next to impossible for her to secure herself in the car, but it felt safer and seemed to offer greater support. Julia finally outgrew the seat’s height limit, however, so we were forced to make a change. On the plus side, the new seat is much easier to deal with when we travel, because it’s about half the size and weight of the old one and doesn’t require a complicated installation process.
We’ll have pictures from Christmas and the rest of our trip shortly, but first we wanted to post some snapshots taken after we returned home. In addition to the gifts Santa delivered to Grandma and Grandpa’s house in Chicago, Julie and I reserved two big-ticket items to give to the kids here in California: a two-wheeled bike for Joe and a big-girl bed for Julia.
The bike was something of a no-brainer: Joe is already older than Julia was when she got hers, and when they have Wheels Day at school, he’s usually the only one who shows up with a tricycle. Granted, he was a little later than most to get the hang of actually moving under his own power on a trike, but the timing felt right.
He was initially thrilled when he saw the bike: he let out a delighted exclamation that could be heard up and down the block. He remained enthused he started to climb on, but his excitement began to turn to worry once he realized that the bike was significantly less stable, even with training wheels, than what he was used to. We convinced him to pedal slowly up and down the block a little ways, but in typical Joe fashion, he wasn’t quite sure he liked it, and he wouldn’t let Julie leave his side. In contrast, Julia was zipping around the block almost on her own the very first time she got on her bike. Afterward, we lowered the seat a couple inches to make it easier for him to pedal, and we’ll give it another shot this afternoon.
Likewise, Julia’s move to a real bed was probably overdue. She had been in a a daybed that we’d converted from her crib since Joe was born, and she was getting to the point where she couldn’t stretch out comfortably. We knew she needed to move up, but we weren’t sure how to approach the matter. The obvious answer was to get a new twin mattress and a separate headboard, but we were a little apprehensive about the expense. We looked at more exotic choices, like elevated beds with desks beneath them—she’s going to need somewhere to do her homework eventually—but they were even worse from a cost perspective.
Finally, we remembered that Julia’s crib / daybed could also be converted to a full-size bed using a kit sold by the manufacturer. And, as it happens, we’ve had a full-size mattress and box spring taking up space in our garage ever since we converted the guest bedroom into an office. We decided to try attaching the crib headboard and footboard to the rails we already had and, lo and behold, it worked. We still need to tweak things to make the bed as stable as we’d like, but it looks as though we’ve found a workable, low-cost solution.
This strategy isn’t without compromises: because the bed takes a full-size mattress instead of a twin, it eats a lot of space in the kids’ bedroom, making getting around a challenge. And, when the time comes for Joe to get a bed, he might end up a little disappointed if he only gets a twin. That said, we saved some money and freed up a not insignificant amount of room in the garage.
If all that wasn’t enough excitement for one week, Julia at last hit a milestone that she’s been looking forward to—and I’ve been dreading—for more than a year: her bottom front teeth are loose. She’s been talking about loose teeth ever since her friends started losing theirs last year in kindergarten, but hers remained stubbornly fixed even as younger and younger friends started getting visits from the Tooth Fairy. At her last checkup, the dentist said there was nothing to worry about: her adult teeth were perfectly fine, but just a bit slow to develop; she thought Julia might be seven before there was much progress on that front.
It was a bit of a surprise, then, when I came home from work on Thursday and heard the news from a gleeful daughter: one of her teeth was wiggling. Friday brought a bit of confusion, as Julia couldn’t remember which tooth had been loose the night before. We double-checked, and found that both front teeth were visibly wobbly. I suspect this might be due to the somewhat idiosyncratic placement of these teeth—when they first came in, I started calling Julia El Chupacabra, until Julie made me stop—so one adult tooth might be killing two birds with one stone. We’ll find out in a few weeks whether we need to start looking into a second mortgage to pay for braces.
We’ve posted pictures of the bike and bed and should have more, including photos from Chicago and a couple albums from the archives, ready to go soon.
Update, 7/10/2011: As loyal readers of this site know, the loose teeth referenced above were a false alarm. Six months later, Julia’s front teeth are still firmly ensconced in her gums, though one of them is finally starting to show signs of being ready to get moving.
As you may recall, Julia won the Student of the Month award for her Junior K class just about two years ago. This month, it was Joe’s turn. Julie and I got a letter from the school a few weeks ago letting us know that he had won and asking us to keep it a secret. Then, this past Thursday, we got to surprise him at an all-school assembly, where he got called up on stage with the winners from the other classrooms.
The day was relatively devoid of drama, unlike Julia’s turn in the spotlight. Joe didn’t know what was coming, but he started to catch on when he saw us in the back of the room at the start of the assembly. He was a trooper about getting up on stage, though he did end up chewing on the zipper of his jacket, a habit we haven’t figured out how to break: he can’t actually zip up most of his coats, because the teeth on the zippers are mangled and bent. It’s probably not doing his teeth any good, either.
We have video and pictures from the extravaganza. I apologize for the poor quality of the video. The exposure settings on my camera got confused, so the second half—unfortunately, the part with Joe—is a bit of a mess.
Occasional Dispatches from San Jose 