Along with strawberry season came a baby named Jackson. As of Thursday morning, the queen of the mountain only kid at the Small Red House is now also the omnipotent ringleader eldest of three over at Family Hack. We hear everyone's doing great and we wish them the very best!
Our friends at nurtureblog have a new daughter! Congrats to mother, father and big brother N :)
Read more...someone in the Small Red House just had a birthday. well, not "just" exactly: a full weekend of gigs kept a certain parent from hitting the blogs for a full two days after the Ides of March this year. and not "in the SRH" exactly either: she's was at her mama's for her actual birthdate this year, so the Small Red House will mark the occasion next weekend. apparently, scallops and linguine are to be on the menu, but the jury's still out on dessert, although her stepmom and i have a sneaking suspicion it'll involve hamantaschen one way or another.
yes indeedy.
seven long years.
seven tall years.
seven gummy, toothy, toothless, and now even a little toothy-again years.
seven years of Snugli and stroller, car seat and booster, streamers and training wheels, playgrounds and farm, sneakers but mostly sandals and "Princess Shoes".
seven years of one cuddly, careworn "jam-jams" after another in endless succession.
seven years with two families through eight houses (or more?) in four states - small wonder she's so fascinated by geography!
seven years of car rides, bike rides, scooter rides, car rides, shoulder rides, wave-riding, car rides, ice skates, metro rides, car rides, strolls, even a flight or two. and lest we forget, car rides.
seven years of laughing, farming, singing (whether or not anyone is listening), doctor-ing, bossing, hugging, de-tangling, chatting. and now reading!
a few (unforgettable) years of diapers, a few years of crawling, many years of steps and runs and leaps, and seven altogether of dancing.
seven years of jamming with dad, cooking with dad, walking with dad, joking with dad, reading with dad (from english to german to english again), tickling with dad, all-around hanging with dad. all that and more with dad, and all the same (I'm sure) and more with mama.
piled together thus, all these parts of speech come in a bunch, as if the past were ready-made. to tell the full story of how this baby became a toddler, became a child and now a girl, would require an ode, which i fear would bore all but myself. (not to mention the impropriety of posting someone else's tale on the public Intarwebz.) suffice it to say, we've all grown a lot in the last seven years. she's done it in the most recognizable ways, but through those remarkable changes, i mark my own growth and that of all those around her. she's taught me a lot about living, and i stagger at the amount in store.
with all that schmaltz, let me say:
happy birthday, khymi, my firstborn daughter. may every seven years be as full of joy, love, and learning as these past. l'chaim and cead mile failte, küçük hanım.
...which means this is the last time y'all're gonna have to hear about it, but here goes: today was swearing in, so now I really and truly am a lawyer. whatever shall I do with all my newly bestowed power? I guess just the same sort of government counsel-ing I'd been doing anyway, just without the obligatory disclaimers about direct supervision by a licensed member of the Maryland bar &c. &c. (wink, nudge), as if I wouldn't be under direct supervision at this fledgling stage anyway.
to the Maryland State Board of Law Examiners, what I would like to know is this: why do you make us get up at butt o'clock and drive to Annapolis on a frigid day for just a few minutes of recitation and signature? just because some of us couldn't be bothered to attend the all-afternoon pomp-and-circumstance affair full of all the same pseudo-graduation speeches we've heard already (noble profession, blah blah, fight for rights, blah blah, ethics, blah blah, here we go gathering nuts and may)? I guess it's a small price to pay, considering I was much happier skipping all that and going to khymi's christmas musical down in charlottesville.
and hey, some of us were given a whole day of administrative leave for the swearing-in, so I guess I shouldn't complain. anyway, this was the scene at 10:15am today:
I had some time to think about the last year, driving home today from bringing Khymi to meet her mom. The holidays are over and she'll be there for another month or so. I looked around and really noticed the bare trees and brown grass, and thought about where I began 2007. My friend and bandmate Jim died a year ago, and sometimes I feel like it still hasn't really hit us--I look around the room at a rehearsal, and even though we're a big group, I think, is this it? It was a strange way to begin the year. What a year it was.
In 2007, I finished my AmeriCorps year, went back to college, started an internship, moved out of Baltimore, got married and officially became a stepmom. Jacob started and finished a spring internship, found a job, graduated from law school, moved in with me, studied for the bar exam, moved here, took the bar, got married, started a new job and passed the bar.
This might sound weird, but I'm hoping for an uneventful 2008.
Every year for at least the past five years, I've experienced a move, a change in relationship status, a change in occupation, or some combination of the three. Sometimes there were all three, sometimes there were multiple occurrences within a year. Not that I didn't enjoy my early twenties, but I'm finally looking forward to a year in which not one of those things is likely to happen.
Less upheaval. More stability. More baking, more movie nights, more music. More friends, more family, more working, more reading. More small-scale travel, more gardening, more neighborhood bike tourism. More walks for no reason. More celebrating friends' weddings and new babies (none for me, thanks--I'm good on life changes for now).
I guess 2008 might not be so uneventful after all, but with any luck, it'll be the right kind of uneventful. Oh, and there's going to be that whole election business. But that's part of everyone's life, not just mine. I hope we handle it well.
Happy 2008 to you and yours. I hope it's a good one for you.
Precious and dear are the milestones of youth: haircuts, reading, losing teeth, and so forth. If you're a noncustodial parent, you kind of get used to downplaying all the stuff you miss because the little time you spend together is precious in itself. But once in a while, you do get to be there for one of those milestones, and you can't help but feel a pang of sentimentalism, nostalgia, tradition, poignancy...
So anyway, after months of wiggling this one and twirling that, Khymi lost a completely unexpected tooth on a piece of cucumber. It was a Chanukah miracle! She's looking forward to being a jack-o'-lantern next Hallowe'en.
Although this was her third tooth, it was the Tooth Fairy's first visit to the Small Red House. And because tiny incisors are in high demand right now in the Tooth Fairy Aerie (or so Dad theorized the next morning), the ol' Fairy left a golden envelope with a shiny quarter and two sets of butterfly stickers. After the familiar rustling and gasping that warmed the hearts of the bleary-eyed, reminiscing grown-ups in the next room, Khymi came running in to show off the envelope. It MUST have been the Tooth Fairy, she declared, because the envelope was sealed with a butterfly sticker!
She also decided that the Tooth Fairy lives in Baltimore. You see, back when Maria was living in Baltimore, we would drive past a sign for a dentist's office that was shaped like a big white tooth. This sign fascinated Khymi because she could tell it was a dentist even though she couldn't read it yet. But as she's become more aware the Tooth Fairy's existence, what more logical place for the Tooth Fairy to live than where there's a big tooth sign?
Maybe next time the Tooth Fairy visits, we'll sniff the quarter to see if it smells like Old Bay.
If there is one professional violation that the guild of American lawyerdom cannot stand, it is UPL: Unlicensed Practice of Law. Translation: You've got to get bar certification (a very expensive and exhausting process!) if you're going to hold yourself out as qualified to give reliable legal advice or to represent someone in court. Bar authorities like to think of this as a quality control measure, a handful of cynics might call it protectionism. They can fight it out if they want.
Regardless, my fresh memories of professional responsibility class and bar lectures gave me ample cause for UPL worries when I saw the sign below next to my office door. I was proud and thrilled, sure, but I wasn't about to post it on some ol' blog for all the world -- potential clients and bar examiners alike -- to see.
UNTIL NOW.
Yes, that means I passed!
The hordes of urbancentrists might not believe it, but it is possible to have a First Real Halloween at age 26. The handing-out of candy - or, as explained previously, plastic nasties and raisins - the adorable costumed kids, the smiles and polite "Thank you"s and "Happy Halloween"s, even the glittery teens... it's all something you read about or watch on TV as a child in rural WV. I guess it's like the Rose Bowl or something. When there are four families on your 1-mile dirt road, you don't exactly beat the gravel for candy. And yes, this means that there's not much point in dressing up (except for the time I was Robin Hood at the fourth grade class pageant, but who's counting). Whoever thought it was a suburban holiday, but there you have it.
Which means that when I came home to find my lovely wife dressed as a superheroine, I was only too glad to hear that she'd gotten an extra red cape...
We hate to be Those Cat People, really, but our red cloth napkins just fit the occasion so well. Every super-pair needs a pet sidekick, right?
OMG I R SO MADD RITE NAO I SHOOTZ TEH DETH RAYZ AT YOU
First of all, a happy birthday to Susie, one of the stars of Family Hack* and Khymi's little sister!
Susie is a kid after our own hearts. Khymi informed Dad on the phone last night that, "this morning, my sister woke up and she was crying, so I just sang 'Panik' to her and she stopped crying!" Clearly, a two-year-old who has her priorities straight.
Khymi is referring to this song by Wir Sind Helden. Ever since this summer, she has decided that it fits the bill for any scenario where music is required. We're really glad she likes it so much...we just hope Mama and Papa aren't on the verge of "accidentally" running over the CD in the driveway.
*Bonus: Family Hack is Khymi's mom and stepdad's resource blog for families on the go--check it out!
What a Woche! It was our third actual week in the Small Red House (only 1.5 months after moving in!), and there was a long-not-seen cousin visiting before she left for a life in Japan. And there was the darling daughter, being her usual exuberant self. And the wedding. And we put together IKEA furniture and bought bookshelves out of a law school library. And you were there, and you, and you...
It was all we could do last night to just make a (very, very late) home-cooked meal of tofu-zucchini koftas and chappatis. After a bite or two, we looked up at each other and exhaled. There we were, at last, together in our house. We'd gotten through it all, even if we never got around to sweeping the floors.
The moment was made all the sweeter by our local public radio station, which was playing a special show of Doc Watson and Jean Ritchie. I recall many a childhood afternoon spent in the den, singing along with Hazel Dickens begging for "black waters, black waters / no more in my land," and here was Jean not only singing it herself, but talking about Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, the burnt swath of Appalachia lost to mountaintop removal, and the rally she attended at the UN recently, as an old lady. And her voice, like a coal-mine canary, Appalachian without shying from conventional prettiness, soulful without tearing at her own chest. So much like Doc's gentlemanly baritone, with its Carolina drawl and lack of pretension, latter-day Dixiephilic or otherwise. I got that catch in my throat like when I listen to Paul Robeson or Pete Seeger or Lotte Lenya or Johnny Cash. It's not because of any outstanding heroism on their part, per se, but because they are Big People. To hear their voices is like to walk beneath a centuries-old spruce: it dwarfs you with its majesty, humbles you with its tireless patience, and saddens you to think of its waning lifespan. These human beings possess enormous knowledge and love for mankind. Who in this world of record contracts and bohemian self-promoters will carry on when they go?
And so I put down my chappati, this small thing made with flour and hands, looked at the one I love, and sighed. What a joy is life in late summer!
I guess it's traditional now in our culture to celebrate the end of bachelorhood with some big, booze- and misogyny-soaked Hormone Bash. As if the Community of Like Chromosomes is bidding you farewell forever, or throwing a preemptive wake, or something. I dunno. I don't get it. (Maybe it's the appeal of people coming out of cakes?)
Once again, we have to be the low-key, nontraditional ones. If you'd like to throw a Small Red House-inspired Bachelor Party, here are two proposed itineraries, tested by experience:
1. Drive to Baltimore with fiancé/e, brother- and cousin-in-law-to-be. Eat delicious pizza in Fells Point. While fiancé/e is in class, walk around Federal Hill and go to Zeba Lounge for fleecing huka, hummus, and hot dolmades. End with Korean barbecue together, admiring the Korean beer posters and the waitresses' tonging skills.
2. Go out for family-style Chinese food with, uh, the family. Come home, put the daughter to bed. Drink a glass of cheap red wine, watch a short Netflix DVD, check email, go to bed early.
PROS: It's much cheaper, easier to plan, less embarrassing, and you're not drunk or hung-over on the wedding day. Also nobody jumps out of a cake!
CONS: Stories about the bachelor party may disappoint co-workers. Also nobody jumps out of a cake!
In keeping with the DIY nature of our wedding process (and life together in general), we decided the best way to keep our friends and families posted on any new developments would be (of course) to start a blog. Jacob? Maria? New internet projects? You don't say.
We went to get our marriage license today. Our parents and numerous others who got married in the 1970s and 1980s have asked us about the blood test. I'm happy to report that there was no bloodshed; we just had to swear we were of consenting age, not related, and that we'd never been married before, and that was that.
The next order of business is kind of an awkward one, I'm afraid. Once we had announced to all of our friends and family that we were getting married, and that we didn't really go in for the whole wedding gift thing, let alone big registries at fancy department stores, someone in my family (who shall remain nameless) offered this novel piece of advice regarding wedding gifts: "If you don't tell people what you want, they will buy you things you don't want."
Well, we'd be lying if we said there aren't things we want. Since we moved into our house, we've actually found ourselves saying to each other, "Someday when we have the money, we should get _______." Those blanks have all formed a modest wishlist, which we've put on Amazon.com (link to the right).
And all the wedding etiquette things say stuff like, "Don't inform your guests about your registry in the invitations. Inform them in the shower announcements." Invitations? Shower? None of those here. So here it is on the blog.
So, if you are the wedding gift sort, and are wondering if there's something we've been wishing for, we'd be happy and grateful to receive any one of those things. If you're not...no biggie. Honestly. We don't expect anything from anybody besides sharing in our happiness.
