Happy New Year

I am wandering around half asleep this afternoon - it feels like one of those days on which we set the clocks back. I guess this is from going to bed at 11.30pm!! I almost made it till midnight. Frost stayed up till 1.30am after going out to a party at Carrie and John's house (of Petra fame) but I was surprised he did not fall asleep when we returned earlier.

I could not resist posting this picture of Wren's birthday cake (birthday was a couple of weeks ago). Mum sent it to me and I have only now been dealing with my inbox. It was going to be an excavator but became a bulldozer due to Technical Difficulties.



Happy New Year everyone and may the poor get richer, the racoons less voracious, calories less fattorific, heart defects less serious and the weather less weathery. Oh, and how about some world peace and discount airfares to Australia while we are at it.

2008 Guidelines for the Management of Adults With CHD

For parents of children with CHD's only (you won't be interested otherwise). I found this November 7th publication on guidelines for management of adult patients with CHD's. I know some of the issues have been discussed at our group before. It is a PDF file you would have to download.

Cardiology/American Heart Association Task Force on Practice Guidelines:
Executive Summary: A Report of the American College of ACC/AHA
2008 Guidelines for the Management of Adults With Congenital Heart Disease.

It outlines management issues for CHDs including patients with Shones and many issues associated with LVOT obstruction, criteria for valve replacement and issues with bicuspid aortic valves.

LOOK LOOK

Wren's word of the day yesterday was "look look". Everything was "look look!!!!" We went on a walk around the block (seeing the windswept streets and fallen branches after snow and wind-storm) and these are his most memorable comments:

"Look look!!! I got two trees. I carry them. " [walking along holding a bunch of twigs]
"Look look, I find yucky email!!" [finding a scrap of wet paper stuck to the sidewalk]
"look look, I find rock! [holding up a single small pebble from the hundreds in a rock pathway.]

red goblens and nurty chicks

I had a birthday a few days ago. I am now 42 years old. That means I am old enough to write a 'biography' and reflect on my life and my children as if from a grizzled height.

What brought me to this point of reflection was cleaning the basement. Our basement, as with all basements, hides its share of secrets. Among the piles of role-playing books and high-school diaries I found some writing and pictures I did when I was 6. We were learning phonetics and my handwriting is a bit wonky so I shall type it out for you. Here is my collection of short stories.

The red goblens who were all cheeky
by Shannon in 1974, Age 6
a little rabbit was hoping along the banck of a
river one day in the sun wen the rat famile came out of there
holl. what has been going on sied one of
the rats. it sied in a book that the red goblens are back.

what what red goblens? yes.

the rat family ran away. so
the raddit went on hoping down
the river banck. soon he came to the toun where
the red goblens were.

evry body was shouting. he asked a
frog what it was about.
he sied the red godlens had been cilld.
good.

the end.

Chapter 2: The Three little chics (who were nurty)
One day a muther hen had three babys. there
names were peter jon and richid.

one of the chicks sied mummy can we go away?
no, mummy said. but as thay were nurty thay floo away.

the end.

Chapter 3: The Cowboy West
by Shannon 1974
one day in the west there lived a cowboy
he was a bad one. he went into a shop
and said give me a hen.

the man said no I have none.
so he locked him in.

I must tell you his name, well it
was Joey the Cowboy but Joey
had forgotten to take the key with him.
he drop it on the window sill. it dropt
and the man got out and shot him.
-------------------------------------------------

Editorial
As you can see I was quite concerned with issues of social justice, violence and civil disobedience. My favorite is the story of those goblens. I think I could write a similar story now (without the gruesome ending) involving two small goblens who are all cheeky too. I also like the part where the bad Cowboy Joey demands his price: a hen! We are planning to get a hen too, maybe two hens, in the garden this spring.

The whole discovery of stuff in the basement and some ensuing conversations about nostalgia with G (of early gay-boyfriend fame) has made me remember happiness as in the present. Its about intensity in the now not about the underlying conditions. Of course, I can say that because Wren has been sleeping till 6am recently and I am no longer chronically exhausted.

Here I am in 1995, dressed up at a club, exhausted because its 3am. I am including it because it was in the box of memorabilia I discovered in the basement and I like it because it defies the image of myself as Only Mummy which has been on the ascendant in recent years. Even as I type my mouse cable is tangled in a sprig of thyme a child harvested on our walk and Wren's drawings of robots have overwhelmed my desk (and caused all my pens to walk off).


The Happy Birthday to Me day
I had a very happy birthday a few days after Christmas. The kids and Joshua bought me a Yule Log from Whole Foods. Frost chose it because it had a couple of mushrooms made of meringue and everyone knows how I enjoy mushrooms. The motif is invading our lives! Here are a couple of pictures of the cake being lit and extinguished.


I made sure Joshua touched the cake to the plate after I started to cut it and wished for Wren's heart to do well and not need surgery until he is at least 7. Apparently many Americans are not aware that the birthday person gets a wish when he or she cuts the cake but the wish is lost if you actually touch the knife to the plate. Another tradition is that you have to blow all the candles out in one breath to get your wish (do you have to do that in the USA as well?). I think I sacrificed that wish because Wren was 'helping'.

During the morning Tara and Fred were kind enough to have Frost over for an extended playdate while I went to the Korean Spa for some birthday bathing. I spent a lot of time resting in the dark heat of the sand room listening to the waves and it is all 'free' on your birthday. I hope to go again in a few weeks.

Christmas pictures
I shall also include a few Christmas pictures. You can see Frost admiring the Christmas pud which he has lit after it was doused in brandy.


I hid some quarters and dimes in it and while neither child ate a great deal they both enjoyed the money. Wren kept yelling I SEE IT while hunting through Joshua's pud. The following pictures are for Mum. Here are the little Playmobil 'guys' she gave Frost all set up in their new fort.

Chrit-mus!

Wren gave me the best present by sleeping in until 6am this morning. This was after Frost woke at 3.30am crying with "a very sore foot, underneath". We diagnosed this as growing pains not a cramp and he ended the night in our bed.

Many presents have been had. Frost says that "there are way too many Playmobil guys!" This is due to the massive box of Playmobil "guys" (confederates, native americans and civil war dudes in their fort) which Mum bought for him from eBay while she was here.

He is a bit overwhelmed.

Wren loves his Elmo who shouts ($3 from Value Village) his Wiggles Big Red Car and Frost's wobble board.

I have just whipped up the Brandy Butter and we are listening to carols. Joshua thinks that the Cambridge Choir is singing "Osama, Osama, Osama in Excelsius." I explained it was H-O-S-A-N-N-A. The tofurky roast and vegetables will be another hour so I am going to gift myself with a shower, cup of tea and some Elizabeth George.

Christmas Eve

We had a very Christmassy Day today. It started off with the last pocket in the Advent Calendar for Wren. I made him one this year filled with a few Playmobil animal sets and a bit of Candy (don't do that again if the Calendar is to be opened at Breakfast). Today he received a mother fox. You can see him opening it and checking all the empty boxes in case he left some candy in there. When I made it I hadn't realized how much foliage there is in a Playmobil set. This is one bushy advent forest!



After that we had a few disasters. I made gingerbread but found out, half way through, that there was no ground ginger. I had to adapt and grate fresh ginger. Then Wren decided to dump molasses and eat it or dump flour and eat it or... you get the picture.

Afterwards we had kippers for breakfast. YES KIPPERS. I love kippers and bought them at the British Pantry in Redmond yesterday. They were marked 99p but I paid $5. It was worth every cent. I sang this nursery rhyme to Wren and he demanded more and more and more kipper.

"Sing to your daddy oh, my little babby
Sing to your daddy oh, my little one.
You shall have a fishy, in a little dishy
You shall have a fishy when the boat comes in."

"More Fishy" he said.

Those Nutcrackers are Ornaments!
Then there was the next disaster. The nutcracker soldier we were using to crack hazelnuts broke in half. Actually, he became wonky, wobbled and then lost his head and an arm. Frost and I deduced that those painted soldier nutcrackers are ornaments not real nutcrackers. It was doing a lousy job cracking nuts anyway. I shall have to buy the family a nutcracker now. We are really keen on doing it and have two bags of nuts in shells!

Bath bombs explode
I took down another craft from a few days before - the bath fizzies we had made from witchhazel, citric acid and baking soda. They smelled great but had subsided into a large pancake instead of being nice egg-shapes. They still work so its not so bad but I don't understand what we did wrong.

Thankfully, Lauren and Ruben invited us over for a fabulous Christmas Eve Mexican dinner with more food than I could even sample. They even made their own tortillas and tamales. Wren and I ate a lot and Wren found his vocation as a rock musician playing Rock Band.


Snow Update
Still snowing this morning but its now turned to rain. The snow is slushy but still covers the street. I expect this thaw to continue tomorrow if it doesn't cool down considerably. Frost spent much of the day having snowball fights with Alexander and our neighbour, Elias. Here is a movie from a few days ago showing Josh and Wren sledding at Dahl field.

Eight and a half inches!!!

No, I am not a porn star. That is how much snow accumulation we have on the deck outside the kitchen - on the benches I scraped clean on Saturday. There was at least 3 inches of snow on them before I scraped it up for the first snow-in-the-sensory-table experiment. I saw this confirmed on the news this morning where 9.5 inches of snow are on the ground in North Seattle!

I am hoping to leave the house today to do a bit of pre-Christmas food buying (we don't have the tofurky yet!) and I am sure the shops will be swamped once it thaws. Frost is also hoping to get a few more Christmas presents (for Wren, Daddy and a couple of friends). Still, we won't be going more than a few miles from home with the chains on.

Here is a picture of Wren and I measuring snow depth after breakfast. I am still in my PJs and Wren has snow on his bottom.


If you want to follow our exciting weather I recommend this link.

More and more and more snow

This is our neighborhood covered in snow. We are heading off for a walk in the morning around 9.30am but it felt as if we were in the mountains. All the trees were snow covered and there were very few people about.

Now, this evening, its been snowing pretty heavily for hours and we had about 5" overnight. Since I moved to Seattle we have had only a few inches of snow each year. This storm has been giving us snow, ice, serious cold and icicles for a week and telling you about our daily sledding is getting boring. Here are Frost and Elias at the small hill in a nearby park [top] and Frost and Joshua [below].

Although he enjoyed the park, Frost liked to go down the steepest stree hill over a snow ramp. He was giving me nightmares - flying about 3 feet up into the air and crashing downhill. He shouted "that was AWESOME" so many times that Wren has started doing it. I can see him having a career in snowboarding. He just loved the ramps and was getting a lot of positive feedback from adults 'guarding' the routes. I am not encouraging him and banned head first jumps after his first success in aiming straight up the steepest part.


Our neighborhood was pretty snowbound today. The main roads are somewhat passable but cars were sliding backwards down the hill on 75th and most people out there had AWD and/or chains on. The snow was deep enough to make walking difficult and had a thin crust of ice on top from some periods of freezing rain. There was no new snow in the morning but it started up again this afternoon and we have had another 2-3" already.

Frost is still loving it and Wren enjoys making snowmen in his sensory table. We cut down tiny carrots for the noses and he had peppercorn eyes. I hope we are able to make a big snowman in the back yard tomorrow. The crunchy snow crust made it hard to roll balls of it today. Wren was not as happy going out, even in his stroller. He was cold (he had gloves on but they became wet) and didn't like the crunching noise of the ice-crusted snow. It was hard to push him through the snow too - it was 5" deep in some places.


He has a lollipop for compensation.

Gingerbread Houses

This morning we made the gingerbread house. I assembled it with Wren while Frost was still asleep although if I had known how easy it would be I would have waited for him. Typically, I spend an hour mixing the royal icing and then propping the house up as it leans and sags. It takes hours to dry and even then is at risk of catastrophe. I have tried many different "kits" and have made my own from scratch but it has always been the same experience UNTIL THIS YEAR! I must always buy this kit (but can't recall where I got it). Its by "Create a Treat." Mum, do you remember? It is different in that it has a base and the icing is mixed and comes in a bag you snip and use straight away. It was ready to decorate in 15 minutes.

Predictably, the candy and decorating was the part that Frost and Wren liked best. Here they are decorating their own sides.

Frost's side is on the right. He was careful to make the colors of the candy left-right symmetrical. Wren liked to squeeze his own icing / frosting onto the house and was very careful to put candy in each dollop. I put it on the roof for him.




After we had used all the candy Wren checked the box in case there was any more.

Here is the final gingerbread house. It is the most beautiful one we have ever made.
All the candy came with it! The boys also decorated the piece at the front and we ate it for Tea Party today. Well, honestly I ate the gingerbread and they ate the candy.


More Snow
We have had about 2" of snow this evening and Frost and I had a great hour of twilight and early dark sledding at the hill in Dahl field. It is going to be superb sledding tomorrow. Snow is still falling and we are very excited.

Ice-storm? Blizzard?

When I went out to fetch the newspaper this morning the local weather station in Bryant was reading 15 degrees. This is Seattle?

It is a clear dry day today but the forecast is for an ice-storm, wind-storm, blizzard combo starting tonight.

I think it is time to get my errands run today and to leave the chains on.

How are my other Seattle friends doing with all this?