House Arrest / Prison Break

At long last, the snows dumped on us by one of the worst winter storms in Seattle's history -- and certainly in the ten years that I've lived here -- are receding from our driveway, lawn, and most importantly, neighborhood streets. Meh and Zachary had been pinned at home for nearly a week; I myself had gone to work one day (only to barely get the car back up the iced-over office driveway on the way out) and done a few grocery runs, mostly ending with the car abandoned at the base of our driveway. Meh attempted to go to work on Friday, but couldn't drive with the deep snow on our street. When she headed out on foot for the bus stop (itself four blocks away on an alternate snow route), there was no sidewalk to use (the snow having been plowed up onto it), and cars were having difficulty keeping control when she tried walking on the street, so back home she went.

Finally, the cabin fever got to be too much, so I put the chains on my car (for the first time ever -- and this counts my entire upbringing in Michigan) and we all went up the street to the grocery store together Friday afternoon. I think the drive was even more stressful for Meh than her cabin fever: at one point she just put her hands over her eyes, though I didn't think my driving was that bad. :)

The roads were still sloppy (and our own street and apparently much of Seattle mostly inaccessible) yesterday, so Meh had to cancel a date with a friend for proper tea at her favorite (favourite?) tea house. As a substitute, Meh had the brilliant idea to prepare afternoon tea for the family at home. There were homemade scones, sandwiches with the crusts cut off, sweets, and of course a lovely pot of freshly brewed tea. Zachary actually ate several bites of scone (I think the jam that I put on it helped a bit), though he preferred cheese and veggie booty to the sandwiches and sweets -- not that I'm complaining, more tea for Meh and myself!

It was wonderful to just have a relaxing afternoon all together, and really despite the week's stress of the ongoing bad weather and the occasional light flickers that had us thinking the power would be the next to go, it's been a nice opportunity to all just snuggle up at home. It's been Chanukah as well, so we've gotten to enjoy lighting the candles, sing the blessings, and watch Zachary tear open and play with the wrapping paper (often ignoring the actual presents). Tonight, the 8th and final night of the holiday, I finally caught a video of his response to candle lighting:



With the temperatures rising (inside of the house as well - we finally got our original circa 1970s attic insulation updated yesterday) and the snow finally starting to melt, today we were again ready to brave a different kind of inaccessible/inhospitable environment: the post-holiday shopping mall. Despite the chaos of finding a parking spot and the crazy jam-packed nature of the children's play area (which is even smaller than the one at our local mall), we had a nice lunch and stroll around the mall, and Zachary even took the rare stroller nap while mommy found a few cozy things on super-duper-extra-discount post-holiday sale.

I saw the sign

Many months ago, Meh read a book on baby sign language, which cautioned that a baby being exposed to signs at 10-12 months could take "2 to 3 weeks" to start actively making those signs, though toddlers over a year old are in "prime imitation" period but "may take a few days to a week". Or in the case of Zachary, perhaps many months or even a year?

While we'd gotten him to more or less sign "all done" by waving his hands in the air (as discussed in this previous entry), he never signed "more" -- he'd instead make a guttural "ahhh" sound when he saw more cheese or fruit being cut up in front of him, which communicated his point effectively. Yet for many months now, we've kept futilely signing it at him, more out of rote repetition and habit than anything else.

So it was with incredulous surprise that Meh saw him suddenly and cautiously sign "more" during dinner last night when he wanted more of his favorite quesadilla - he successfully repeated it several times, and we captured one rendition in this video:



Then he again signed 'more' when Meh was reading books to him, and once again when they were singing and playing! So even though the first sign took an eternity, he appears to have already leaped to an understanding of the concept beyond the realm of food. We've pulled the signing book back down off the shelf to see what other words we can teach him, though I'm not sure how interested he'll be when he's already starting to speak a few bits of actual words.

The Kosher Omnivore's Dilemma

Seattle is a pretty tough town to keep kosher in -- or at least to be a kosher meat-eater in. There are no kosher meat restaurants in the city; the few that have opened in the past have gradually reduced their hours to impracticality and then folded. I don't think the kosher hot dogs at Costco really count, since there are questions about the buns, and there's the cheese/pepperoni pizza and non-kosher chicken being served right alongside it. There are no kosher butcher shops. A small handful of grocery stores (all more than 20-minute drives away from our house -- and that's when there isn't tons of snow like we've got right now) offer kosher butchers in-house. Typical grocery stores don't offer any pre-packaged kosher meats (heck, even kosher hot dogs are at times hard to find). Even Trader Joe's, which had started suddenly stocking a decent variety of pre-packaged beef and poultry, has more recently backed off their inventory.

It's against this backdrop that friends J and S mentioned a few months back that they were looking at going in on a kosher meat 'co-op', where you place somewhat large bulk orders for a monthly meat order that the co-op organizes. As these are bulk orders, J was looking for other people interested in splitting the results -- and we said sure, why not. But since it's possible (if not always practical) to get chicken and beef from those few grocery stores I'd mentioned, J wanted to order some of the more, er, exotic meats that the co-op offers: various kinds of bison and elk. Bison pastrami? Why not, and we placed the order -- a month or so later, it came in, and I came home from J's with a large box of meats to fill our freezer with.

Since then, we've cooked almost all of the meat, and it's been mostly quite good -- bison burgers, elk meatballs, elk burgers, bison meatballs... Okay, clearly my preparation options for ground beef are a bit limited. :) But only the elk steak, which only papa was brave enough to actually prepare during their recent visit, was disappointing -- not due to papa's preparation; the meat was just (what else but) gamey. Our only rule in this regard is that Meh doesn't really want to know what kind of animal it is before she eats it.

This is all a long-winded way towards setting up yesterday's lunch, where I pulled out the last package of our order of bison and made buffalo burgers for Meh and myself -- ostensibly under the fear that the snow and windstorm might knock out our power, so we should prepare our perishable foods. These burgers were particularly tasty with some fresh sage mixed in (leftover from the tasty turkey papa had made during their visit). As we try to do whenever we're actually eating at the same time as the little man, Meh cut a small piece and put it on Zachary's plate. He looked at us, grabbed the piece of burger, and actually ate it. Meh and I resisted the urge to cheer or otherwise be outwardly excited, but subsequent pieces offered to him went in the mouth as well -- it was great to see the little omnivorous man eating some mommy and daddy food and enjoying it.

White Chanukah

The snow is falling here in Seattle, and it doesn't appear to be letting up. It's almost at the level of our deck in the backyard, and rising. I guess we will be having a white Channukah tonight! The library was actually closed today (shocking, usually they expect you to brave the treacherous roads or else use precious vacation time), so I am able to stay home with Scoot and Zachary and cozify.

Cozification means different things to different people. To me, it's staying in my PJs all day(including fuzzy socks), reading (at least during Little Man's nap time), and baking. For Scoot, it's not putting in contacts, playing Xbox, and participating in Facebook's Wordscraper, a Scrabble-like game. For Zachary, cozification means carrying various odds and ends around the house, such as the ladder to his pirate ship, plastic cups, his key, and/or one sock. Cozification also involves snuggling to keep warm, of course!

Since Chanukah starts this evening at sundown, we are thinking of making potato latkes, even though they stink up the house. Other Chanukah delicacies that I have never made before are called sufganiyot, or jelly doughnuts. These involve yeast, rising twice, and even more stinky oil frying. So instead, I made the next best thing: sufganiyot cupcakes.



Happy Chanukah!

Annie ooh

I've mentioned before that one of Zachary's favorite toys is a magnetized refrigerator 'radio', with a button to cycle through songs and a dial to choose between "classics" and a few other genres of original and arranged music. This week, Zachary discovered the dial, and is exploring songs beyond the ABC's and Old MacDonald. His favorite by far is a song called "Annie Ooh", where the happy face of LED bulbs is mirrored by his own smile and laughter at the lyrics. Here's a somewhat tame reaction I grabbed today:



The little man is 500 days old today - incredible how the time flies! He and I had a nice day running a few errands in between the earlier snow flurries this week and tonight's impending winter storm (which the National Weather Service has incidentally created a narrated powerpoint deck for, no less. That they felt the need to define what a blizzard is was my favorite part). He was especially happy at the bank, walking around and smiling up at everyone while I deposited checks -- he only made one run for it around a corner, but the teller was too amused to mind me having to momentarily duck out mid-transaction. The two of us also tried for a Costco run, but alas, that winter storm warning had everyone in the area raiding the store for supplies, and we turned around before we were even able to make it to the parking lot.

Talk to your food

Sometimes Zachary just has so much to say - I wonder what's actually on his mind and what he thinks he's communicating. Or maybe he just likes the noises he's able to verbalize with his mouth? Anyway, he was particularly talky during dinner tonight, and we captured these two fab videos in between fistfuls of messy but tasty blueberries.





More iciness on the roads tonight, so our intended date night had to unfortunately be scrapped. Even just driving a few blocks up the street for food supplies, there looked to be sheriffs assisting a car spun out in a ditch right outside the grocery store -- fun times. Tomorrow night a big winter storm is supposed to blow in; blow being the key word, with heavy winds expected in the late evening. We're concerned about losing power for the third year in a row. One of these days I'll actually succumb and pick up a generator, but for now, we'll just have to hope for a bit of luck with the gusty wind and all of our area's electric lines right up against trees...

Snow day

We had such a nice rest of mima and papa's visit - the only unfortunate part was that Zachary was indeed sick, and then Meh and I were, and apparently mima and papa got home from their flight and had it as well. We're so glad Zachary got to spend time with all of his grandparents in the past month. Meh has also prepped our decorations for Chanukah, and Zachary loves to watch a spinning dreidl. You can almost see his inner struggle every time we spin the top as to whether he should grab it or let it spin some more.



Yesterday it didn't snow during the day (and just a bit in the evening), yet the local schools were worried enough to do a preemptive school closure based on the forecast alone. But today we woke up to weather that actually justified schools being closed (though in the distance, I hear plenty of happily screaming students that made the trek to the junior high behind our house, likely for the superior hill sledding it offers). Yup, an inch or two of snow and more freezing weather means it's a snowy and icy wonderland. We're of course grounded to the house with all of the treacherous hills around here and likely poor driving conditions. This didn't stop us from introducing Zachary to snow (as well as heavy coats, hats, gloves, and when the gloves wouldn't stay on, paper clips sealing the ends of his extra long sleeved coat). He had a great time walking around in it and hearing it crunch under his feet, though I couldn't get him to take any interest in the decent snowballs I was able to make from it. He did get his own first winter driving experience, as his little mechanized schoolbus just spun its wheels on the snowy/icy porch when he walked over to it and pushed the button.

Anyway, here's one small step for Zachary-kind:

Shore leave

Mima and papa (poppa? popa? there's been some debate over the spelling, though we think we've settled on papa) came to visit for the long weekend! We've been having a wonderful time, though Zachary has at times been fighting teething, a cold, and maybe something else, leading to an extremely sad/angry first afternoon and evening with his grandparents. They actually didn't even get to see him for a few hours - first he was at class with mommy, so the three of us went out to lunch at one of our favorite restaurants and introduced papa to their always tasty tomato soup and grilled cheese. Then we came home from the restaurant and Zachary was taking his afternoon nap. And when he finally woke up, he was very unhappy for most of the afternoon and evening.

Nonetheless, mima and papa wanted us to get away for a night - so the next night (with only 24 hours of orientation, no less!), the two of us waved goodbye and headed out for an overnight trip to a lovely lodge/spa about a half hour east of the city, while mima and papa stayed and played with a very happy little man. We didn't really have any worries about the three of them having a great time together -- the morning and day had been really nice, with lots of laughing and giggling. We were more concerned with the weather forecast, which was calling for the rare Seattle snow followed by crazy cold temperatures.

It was already snowing when we headed out, though thankfully it wasn't sticking. The snow got a bit heavier as we approached the lodge - Washington's mountainous geography can make for some dramatic weather changes in less than five minutes of travel. But we arrived without incident and got settled in to our warm and cozy room with a large wood burning fireplace, which overlooked the falls. It started snowing a bit heavier and actually sticking, but when we checked in with mima and papa, it wasn't nearly as heavy back at home.

Dinner was incredible; the restaurant there has a giant cozy fireplace, and somehow we were the only ones seated in front of it. We were actually sitting at the exact table where Meh had 'proposed back' to me six and a half years ago. Some carrollers came around, and Meh asked if they had any Chanukah songs - they were all excited to respond yes, pulled out their carrolling books (of course this was the one piece they didn't have memorized :) and did a really nice arrangement of "Oh Chanukah".

The room was super cozy -- they even had a "menu" of specialized pillows you could request complimentarily (is that a word?). We got a down-filled full body pillow and a lavendar buckwheat pillow. Again, cozy. I successfully managed to start the fire without lighting the rest of the room or myself (savor the minor triumphs), and we had such a nice relaxing evening. Breakfast the next morning was amazing as well -- the restaurant served tableside hot chocolate, with super fancy chocolate, whole milk, and vanilla all heated in copper pots on the spot, before being poured into a large ceramic pot and mixed with a molinillo (Mexican chocolate frothing whisk -- talk about a specialized kitchen appliance). And yes, Meh did get to enjoy their 'honey from heaven' when she asked for honey on her biscuits, drizzled from a dizzying height above the table. (The server said usually they use a step stool to stand even higher.) Thanks so much to mima and papa for giving Meh and me such a wonderful opportunity for husband and wife time!

We returned home to a once more happy Zachary, playing with mima and papa. We had a hard time getting him to even look up and acknowledge our presence; he's quite taken at the moment with his brand new animatronic Tickle-Me Elmo "Extreme". (Who knew Sesame Street could get extreme?)

Stair Master

Zachary has conquered the art of climbing stairs! It's so cute to watch as he approaches the stairs, looks back at us, then walks/crawls up the stairs one by one, occasionally grabbing onto the railing as a break. Going down them still isn't something that interests him; even the single "step" down from our wood-burning stove's base to the ground is often enough to strand him there, where he whines until we come and help him down.



Of course with the stairs now an area of interest, we installed a gate at the top of the stairs. I only afterwards noticed the bold print on the gate's safety label saying "not for use on stairs." Ah well, it's more of a general barrier than something for him to actively push on, so until he masters (or at least shows an interest in) descent, we should be okay just keeping him supervised on the rare occasions when he's in the upstairs hallway. He's much more interested in going into upstairs rooms and closing the door behind him anyway.

New vocalizations in the past few days -- the "w" and "y" sounds have become increasingly fun for Zachary to say. He likes to say "wawa" and "aya" and hear you repeat it, but "wocka" is his favorite; is he training to be the next Fozzie Bear? Zachary has also started repeating the word 'cookie' and 'cracker' (more or less accurately) when mommy says it. Yup, he's definitely our son!

Mad about cookies

This weekend, Meh had the excellent idea to host a cookie party. I'd never heard of such a thing, but the concept is brilliant -- you and your friends all bake a bunch of cookies, then bring them all to the party and exchange recipes and cookies. Everyone got to enjoy Meh's baked goods (as well as those of our friends), so what's not to like?

Zachary apparently disagreed though; while he was happy (and seemingly all recovered from being sick earlier in the week) all morning long, as we approached the cookie party, he wouldn't go down for his afternoon nap, and spent the rest of the afternoon and evening angry and needing to be held and entertained by us. Fear not, we both managed to sneak in a cookie here and there. (Meh even offered one to Zachary; he took it and fed it to her, I suspect without too much complaint on her part?) I'm hoping this is just the tail of his earlier sickness and that he'll be a happier little man again soon.

Blanket statement

First of all, a very grateful thank you to everyone who has expressed their condolences for Korby. It's been a hard beginning of the week, as I keep finding myself doing and seeing things that remind me of Korby. Zachary too seems to know something has happened; he walks around saying 'ah ah' and sniffing, and at one point Meh said he was shaking Korby's kennel door. The house is just very quiet, and food is far too safe on counters.

Zachary's actually been even a bit more out of sorts than that; he developed a low-grade fever that lasted for several days and kept him quite unhappy. We thought it might be related to his teething (Meh said she could see some of his rear molars starting to come through today), but after a doctor visit, it was diagnosed as likely roseola. Sure enough, today the fever broke and now he's mister rash. Still uncomfortable, and I was sorry that Meh had to deal with him being so unhappy for the past two days. When Zachary is uncomfortable, he loves to snuggle with a soft blanket (no, he doesn't appear to have a particular "favorite blanket" or anything like that) -- he'll carry it around, then put it on the floor and throw himself onto it, occasionally covering himself with it. Meh caught this video of the phenomenon today:



On the developmental side, Meh and he were cleaning up yesterday from the day's playtime activities, and he actually started putting items into a box (usually he's pretty focused on taking them out) -- in this case, his blocks into their container. When he ran out of blocks, he started trying to stuff his books into the box as well. Hooray for mister clean up! When the blocks are actually out, he still isn't really interested in stacking them, though he continues to enjoy knocking them down when grown-ups try. Here's a video we caught of him and grandma this weekend: