Last weekend we went to Winteruption in Vancouver. I’ve never seen the boy have so much fun. He was jammin’ in his back pack all day long. It was cold and rainy so we found an indoor stage and let him run around. He, of course, charmed the pants off all the ladies. Damn I love that kid. I’ve been feeling a little low lately for no reason that I can put my finger on. But when I nuzzle the nape of his little neck in the mornings I can find the happy in every day.
So hows about an E-boy update, eh? Today he can officially be called a toddler. After about a month of two steps here, four steps there, today he took off and can walk as far as he likes as long as nothing trips him up. It’s so cute to see him walk around all proud of himself. This month his vocabulary has exploded. He seems to learn a new word every day and is parroting like crazy. Words he says all the time are: Mama, Dada, Yaya, Clo Clo (Chloe dog), baba (bottle), ball, apple, go (this he says when he wants to go outside, when he sees us putting on our coats, and when he wants to get out of the car), tree, quack oh! and he tells the dogs no when they bark by wagging a finger at them and saying nununununu. Words he sometimes says are: car, boat, wawa (water), key (turkey), poop, pee (me: "mommy needs to go pee", E "peeeeee"), cheese, duck.
He has become a boundary tester extrodinaire. So much so that YaYa says he acts more like he’s two. He’s started throwing temper tantrums for no reason, seemingly mostly just to see how we’ll react. I’ll catch him looking out the side of his eyes to see what face I’m making when he’s face down on the floor screaming. It’s pretty funny. Last night he was up approximately 4.5 million times between the hours of 7:30 and 10 because of a stuffy nose and in an attempt to get him to stay asleep Kent and I took him out of his crib and let him sleep between us. I started singing Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird because when I sing he stays still, and I thought it was doing the trick until I got to the end of the song and he sat up with a huge smile on his face and started clapping. I couldn’t hold back a chuckle. He does things like that every day, little things that make me realize he really does get most of what goes on around him.
He’s just so much fun to be around right now even as he’s spending so much time testing me.
Living with my mom means having an extra pair of hands around and it’s unbelievably helpful. Because we’ve got that right on hand I’ve been able to work more (still from home) and spend a little more time to myself. When anticipating all that extra time I never thought about how I might miss my little guy, but man after a day downstairs in the basement working all I want to do is wrap my arms around him. He’s just so edible.
That fact, along with this (congratulations Sawyers!!), makes me ache to have another baby even though rationally I know we’re not quite ready. I think I will be soon though which is part of the reason I’m glad E decided he was ready to stop nursing. I suppose I did help things along by giving him a bottle about a half hour before bed in an attempt to help him sleep for a longer stretch in the night. But it was all him from there. He just became less and less interested in nursing and asking for a bottle more and more. All of this happened in the last month and since my pediatrician confirmed that he did not need to nurse for nutritional reasons I didn’t force the issue. It was just a couple of weeks ago that I offered him a breast and he just wasn’t interested at all. I was ready and it had been coming for a while so I had recently taken a picture of his face while he was nursing because I knew I was going to miss it. And I was right. Mostly I miss the several times during the day when he was completely still and content to snuggle into me. He does take a bottle once or twice a day, but I’m about to get rid of those too. He never asks for one until he sees an empty bottle lying around.
So that’s your regularly scheduled Ellis update coincidentally on his 13 month birthday. I’m not sure if I’m going to continue the monthly letters in there traditional form. I do want to record this year of his life in detail since it’s going to bring so many changes so I’ll think of something to replace it if I decide to discontinue them.
We found this little cove yesterday on an exploration trip around town. If I thought I could get away with it I’d live in a tent on this little beach for the rest of my life. It was breathtaking. The more I see of this place the more convinced I am that it is the most beautiful in North America if not the world.
Ellis weaned himself a few weeks ago (although no one has told my boobs yet, every time I check I still get milk) and I’m dying to go get my nose pierced again even though it’s like $50 that I don’t have to spend I think I might do it.
(OK so that one was kind of lame but there’s another one up at the other site. Email me for the link if you haven’t already.)
Does something happen to whatever free time you once had after your kid turns one? I swear it’s getting nearly impossible to sit down and write for a few minutes. Maybe it’s that so much of my free time has been going to exploring my new town.
Whenever Kent had I used to talk about moving somewhere we would inevitably end up arguing because I wanted to live in a beach town and he wanted to live in a mountain town. Bellingham is both. It’s officially at sea level and ends at the Pacific bay, but our house is on a mountain so we pretty much live on a giant mountain which juts straight out of the water. It’s crazy beautiful. Here are just a few examples. Everything in these photos is within a 3 to 10 minutes walking distance from our front door with the exception of the pictures of the water which is a 5 minute drive. I am in such heaven.
Holy shit it’s been too long since I’ve been able to sit down and write something. There are piles of boxes in the garage, my computer is on a wobbly little table, comcast sucks but this town; this town is amazing.
I don’t remember what I’ve said or haven’t about our move so forgive me if I repeat myself. It was back in October the last time we went to Vancouver. My mom found a cheap enough flight to Seattle that both Kent and I were able to go (and E of course) then drive the two hours into Vancouver from there. On the drive we just happened to pull of to get coffee (there is an espresso stand on every single corner here) in the town of Bellingham. It was so cute that we drove into it a little before heading back to the freeway. I remember driving past a beautiful old cemetery on a hill and seeing a family taking pictures of their kids dressed in their Halloween costumes against the backdrop of those tombstones. I pretty well sold right then. I even said "ooohhh I want to live here!"
Since my second time in Vancouver I have harbored a not so secret desire to live there. It’s truly a unique blend of nature and metropolitan. It’s vibrant and busy yet the people are still very friendly. I knew that if I could just get Kent back there, he would be on board the Northwest train and together we could make this move happen. But housing prices are laughable, almost as bad as California, and virtually none of the apartments will accept pets. Add to that the fact that even though it is one of the least menacing cities I have every been to, it’s still an urban place, and we would have had to deal with all of the crapola that comes along with it. Not to mention the logistics of Kent finding a job in Canada while living in Texas, getting a visa for the whole family, etc. etc. was going to take a really long time. So while we were visiting we decided to look for places and jobs in Seattle to Bellingham. It was the perfect time to move. Ellis is still young enough that he probably won’t even remember every living in Texas, we don’t own a house, and really, I just felt like if we didn’t make the move now we never would and I would be stuck in Texas for the rest of my life. And we all know how I feel about that.
It turned out that Kent didn’t have to find a new job after all because his boss recognized his value to the company and is allowing him to work from home. Still, they felt the need for another IT person to fill his chair in Dallas. This means that he’s taken a pay cut, while taking on an employee. Maybe one day I’ll be able to expound on the topic of Kent’s work. But not today. So we settled on Bellingham because it’s adorable and because it’s "trail city USA". Everyone here either mountain bikes or hikes avidly. It’s so beautiful it would be a crime NOT to get out there and enjoy it. It’s a two hour train ride to either Vancouver or Seattle if we feel the need to see a big city.
How does one find a place to live in a town that’s 2500 miles away? Why by getting help from one’s mommy of course! CanaMa has been living on her retirement money for the last year and fighting hard to get a job in Canada. Which wasn’t easy. So she made the very difficult decision to leave the city she really loves and move in with us in Bellingham. That way we could split the rent and bills and afford a bigger place. Oh, and there’s this perk too. And so she found us a beautiful house in Whatcom falls park where the mossy trees are in our front and back yard, and a few of the millions of trails are a short walk down the road.
The cold air is invigorating and the smell of moss and dirt feeds my soul. I have never been one to enjoy exercise but have found myself wanting to hike just a little longer, if only to be out in the forest. I’ve taken a few pictures but they’re on the other computer so I’ll have to update later. I’ve never lived in a small town before and I was a little reticent at first. Then last weekend we took the train to Vancouver. When we walked into the train station it was strange because 1. it was clean 2. there weren’t any scary people staring at me 3. it didn’t smell of urine 4. the Amtrak ticket guy said "hey, you must be Kent and Kathryn" 5. we had a lovely coffee in the adorable coffee shop right there in the station.
Wow, that was a long one. You still here? There is much more I want to write about, but my time appears to be up according to the squeaks coming through the baby toddler monitor. I’ll be back tomorrow, and True Confessions Tuesday will re-appear next week. It’s good to be back.
