Cousins

Just a quick picture post today. I am tired and ready to go to sleep.

Milo got to meet his two cousins, Gareth and Trevor, for the first time last week. They all seemed to get along well. Hard to tell, though, since only one of them is verbal yet. But here are some pictures of the boys together:

Gareth wanted to show Milo his truck. Milo lacked enthusiasm, unfortunately.

Trevor found a tasty treat - Milo's arm!

Gareth and his two little protege (no idea how to get the accent on that e, sorry). He only dropped Trevor twice, not too bad.

And my sister Miriam with her three nephews. Finally, all of us. It was so nice for us all to be back together at the home we grew up in, in the backyard where we got into so many scrapes.

Heat wave!

Seattle is in the midst of a two-day heat wave. We got all the way up into the balmy 80s today. I hope no old people die.

Life is full, in a wonderful way. My oldest sister and her family are visiting, and my aunt arrived on Wednesday. Jorge has started a rowing class out on the lake, which taxes his coordation-challenged body, but he is enjoying it. While he rows, I go walking around the lake. Today everyone in the park was cheerful and quick with a friendly greeting, backing up my theory that the miserable aloofness we suffer at the hands of Seattlites is due to the crummy weather.

I also reconnected with two old friends from high school over the last week, one of whom is pregnant. It was kind of fun to play the role of wise maternal advisor, and not have to feel guilty about having not much to talk about apart from pregnancy and motherhood.

This weekend promises to bring even more fun - the Seattle Cheese Festival is on (I have been anxiously awaiting this event for months,) and tomorrow we are taking my nephew out to ride a train in the mountains. He is crazy about just about anything with wheels, so it will be fun to see his reaction.

As for Milo, we are figuring things out. He is getting a bit more fun and interesting every day, and we're getting better at understanding his needs. He likes to be held most of the time, but slowly he's getting able to entertain himself for short periods. He likes the usual baby things: eating, bathtime, and spraying people with bodily fluids. He's also a big fan of sucking. Turns out his father's nose is the perfect size and shape to be a pacifier:

Milo's first Mariners game!

My sister Joy arrived yesterday, husband and two sons in tow, to visit. The house is a zoo, with babies everywhere, burp cloths strewn around the living room, small toys dangerously littering the floor, just waiting to be stepped on...it's a big, fun mess.

Today, Mother's Day, we celebrated with a trip to the baseball game. In my family we are all Mariners fans, regardless of how abysmal they may be playing in any given year. There are few things I enjoy more than camping out in the cheap seats in outfield with a group of friends, chatting over beer and hot dogs.

Today they were giving away free baseball hats for the kids, and very generously gave Milo one too, even though he didn't buy a seat for the game! Since it doesn't fit his puny head, of course, I kept it as his first Mother's Day gift to me. My husband's gift was watching the baby this morning while I slept an extra two hours! (He does that pretty often, though).

Oh, and the best thing? The M's actually won for a change!

Here's the gang - three sisters, two husbands, and three munchkins, along with some more pictures from the day:

No longer a helper

This is a little story about my friend Amy. Amy is my sister's best friend, and has known me since I was a bump in my mom's belly.

A couple years ago, my sister and Amy cooked a nice big holiday meal for friends and family. My father wrote an e-mail to his family in England, describing the lovely meal that Miriam made, and all the effort she had gone to. When Amy pointed out that her contribution had gone unacknowledged, dad sent a follow-up e-mail, that simply said: "And Amy helped."

Since then, Amy's been jokingly called "the helper" in our family.

Well, she finally graduated. Last week Amy called and invited me to a chili cookoff that her husband's workplace was having. Much to our surprise, Amy's "Drunken Chipotle Chili" won the top honors (and a $200 prize!) So now we have all been forced to admit that Amy is not just a helper anymore, she's a top chef.

Milo's first visitor

Jorge's mom came to visit last week. It was nice to have some good home-cooked Colombian food!

Life with baby is going pretty well. We are lucky, in that Milo seems to have been born knowing the difference between night and day. During the day he naps on and off, but at night he pretty much just wakes up to eat, then starts his day around 6:30 AM. We haven't really experienced the severe sleep deprivation that people warned us about.

He has his fussy times, usually around 8 each night. Despite my mother-in-law's best efforts to apply some sort of reason to these night-time meltdowns, as far as I can tell, it seems to just have something to do with him being a baby, and tired, and that being what tired babies do. It never lasts more than an hour or so, and then he crashes and goes to sleep for the night.

While Dora was here we took a couple trips downtown to see the sights, and spent one day in the Skagit Valley for the annual Tulip Festival.