Just Powers

Taking turns from Justpowers on Vimeo.

I took this video back in January and never got a chance to put it up. I remembered it the other day and decided the cute factor far outweighed how late I am sharing it with you.

I met a FellowMom today. I like to think that I am pretty outgoing and make friends easily, but honestly I have found the task of making new mom friends to be a little daunting. So when I connected via email and a local moms Yahoo list with the mom of two kids who attend the same day care as Emma, I was excited to meet her. We agreed that we might meet today when we picked our kids up.

I arrived at daycare and met FellowMom. She seemed very nice and her kids are great, which is always a good sign, although I, like a dork, was as nervous as the first time I asked Mike if he wanted to get together sometime. We exchanged pleasantries and when our kids got restless we made the “Well, I guess I gotta run” face and got in our cars to go home.

On the way home I was in a left turn lane at a stoplight - with an arrow that must be further away than normal or something, cause I have almost missed the light more than once - and when the arrow turned green the person in front of me didn’t move.

“Argh-I-hate-everyone-why-can’t-anyone-drive-can’t-they-see-the-light-changed-what-
the-heck-are-they-waiting-for-oh-wait-this-is-the-light-I-always-miss-maybe-I-will-just-
give-this-slacker-a-little-horn-action-and-then-they-will-finally-move-their-butt” I thought. I tapped lightly on the horn once or twice and the driver waved in the mirror and started to turn.

As we turned, I looked a little more closely and realized…well you know exactly where this is going. The driver was FellowMom.

Beautiful. Just beautiful. Way to go Jen.

And I wonder why I have trouble meeting people.

Jumping for Cherry Blossoms from Justpowers on Vimeo.

Emma, her friend EJ, his mom Bridget and I all went down to the Jefferson Memorial yesterday to see the cherry blossoms in full bloom. Despite the freezing cold wind whipping off the Tidal Basin all four of us stayed in pretty good spirits and were even able to find a sunny spot among the blooms to practice jumping.

Just for fun I went back to our pictures from last year’s blossoms - here’s Emma then. Big shout out to our friend Jack and his mommy Kate who went with us last year and moved away not long after. We miss them lots.

I found out recently via Just Up the Pike that the folks behind Arlington Cinema ‘n Drafthouse are opening a new venue in late Summer 2008, two minutes from me, in the movie theater at the Wheaton Mall. A night spot? Within walking distance of my house? Yippeeee!!

Montgomery Cinema ‘n Drafthouse promises first run movies, live music and comedy, sporting events and family friendly entertainment. The coolest part about the Drafthouses (besides the now incredibly close-proximity to moi) is that you watch the movies/comedy/sports/families in a restaurant setting. I saw The Business of Being Born at the theater in Arlington and had a great time eating dinner and drinking a couple of beers while I watched.

Now I definitely need to line up a regular babysitter, and maybe even keep her/him on retainer for a couple of nights a month!

I wrote a few days ago about how excited we are in our house at the outcome of the Iowa caucus. What I didn’t write about is all the other things that have happened around here in the last week.

On Sunday Mike and I won our Fantasy Football league championship - for the second year in a row. Sweeet! Seeing as it is also only our second year playing fantasy football, we were pretty psyched. Of course now no one in our league is speaking to us, so maybe we would have been better off throwing the game.

On Monday we bought a new car. We got the Mazda5 in Redskin Red (ok, the dealership calls it “copper red”. Whatever.) and we are in love with it. It is zippy and has zoom zoom and doesn’t make me feel like a soccer mom. Not that there is anything wrong with that, it’s just not where I am at this point in my life - give me a few years though. You had to be a contortionist to get Emma into her car seat with our old car. Now I don’t even have to bend over. W00t!

On Thursday…well, everyone knows what happened on Thursday.

On Saturday Emma turned 13 months old.

She had her first day of daycare this week. It was a half-day really, so we could ease her into it. Yeah, I know, it wasn’t to ease her into it, it was to ease me into it. She didn’t even cry when I left. By contrast, I was a mess. They do art projects and go on fieldtrips and play outside at the daycare, which will be really good for her since I seriously think she may be bored with me at home. Of course now I am going to have step up my game on the days she is with me or she is going to start asking to go to daycare every day.

Emma had her first real playdate this week too. It was with a little boy who is almost exactly her age. We went to his house and she was a little more restrained than I expected. To be fair, E. was flinging balls at her head a lot of the time, so maybe she was just figuring out how to get home alive. Neither of them have gotten to the “sharing” stage quite yet, so there was a lot of parental intervention required. We had a good time though and E. and his mom will probably be coming here in a week or two.

Emma started twirling this week. She looked up at me one morning and then started spinning around in a circle until she got dizzy and fell over. She laughed the whole time. I have no idea where she learned it (daycare?) but now when I say “Emma, twirl!” she spins and spins. It is a riot.

She continues to love music and uses her knees to bounce up and down and dance. She is a great eater and so far has not shown an aversion to particular foods that I have read so many toddlers develop. Speaking of toddlers, she has had a couple of full blown lie-on-the-floor-and-kick-your-feet type tantrums which were amazing to behold. The tantrums were short lived and luckily we were at home, but we are really hoping they aren’t signs of the “terrible twos” coming a little early.

Her only word is still “Da” for her daddy, but (terrifyingly) she seems to understand a lot of what we say. She follows simple directions like “go get your Bear” or “sit down in the bathtub”. Oddly, it seems for some reason that when we say “don’t touch the dog food” she hears “please pick up that very full bowl of dog food and dump it all over the kitchen floor”. I guess we should have her ears looked at…

I continue to be amazed at how much FUN it is to have a little person to hang out with. It’s the part of parenting that not a whole lot of people really talk about. Mike and I could sit and watch her play and dance and laugh for hours and hours, and once she starts talking? Fuhgeddaboutit.

Emma’s birthday party was last weekend. It was wonderful. Lots and lots of people, lots of food (ok WAY too much food) and at the center of it, a little girl who managed to charm everyone and stay charming until after the guests left.

While we were missing a lot of our out of town family and friends, some were able to make it (big shout out to Poppy, Lexi and Emily!) and a lot of our local family and friends were there. There aren’t many times in life when you are surrounded by a big group of people who love you. A wedding is one time, but at a wedding you are just a couple. The thing that was so amazing and surprising about this party was feeling the love of all those people, and watching them all love Emma as well.

As her mom, I am deeply moved when other people love Emma. It reminds me that I am not alone in parenting her, in guiding her and in helping her grow. It reminds me that Mike’s and my love is just the beginning of the love she can expect to feel throughout her life. Seeing other people love Emma makes me feel that my little family is connected - connected to our community of family and friends and to the larger world community.

Initially, this birthday party was to celebrate the last year and our ability to get through it. Now I realize it was more of a celebration of the future and of my family’s place in the world.

I love football. I grew up going to RFK Stadium with my dad to watch Joe Theismann, John Riggins and the rest of the Redskins make history in the 80’s. Their name and mascot appall me now, but it doesn’t temper the deep seated passion I have for my team. As a teenager, other girls I knew had posters of Shaun Cassidy or Duran Duran on their walls. I had a poster of the Hogs.

When September rolls around I am always reminded of those games with my dad and the Redskins’ heyday. As an adult I have never enjoyed football season quite as much as I did back then. Until recently. Last year Mike and I were invited by our friends Jim and Kate to join a fantasy football league, and I fell back in love with football. (To be fair, our final-big-purchase-before-the-baby-comes HD TV has helped a little too.) Just a few weeks after Emma was born we won our league’s championship. You can’t even imagine how excited I was - first a baby and now THIS?!?

Like everyone else, our fantasy season started this week. We drafted Tony Romo and Vince Young, Willie Parker and Laurence Maroney, and I even grabbed the Skins’ Santana Moss. Like the Redskins, we will be working hard to recreate the Championships of prior seasons - maybe Mike and I can even get our own little dynasty going. I wonder if we should rename our team The Hogs…

Update: I noted above that I drafted Tony Romo. As I watched his first game of the season tonight, I got upset. Like on the verge of tears. Why? Because he is a Dallas Cowboy. And I am a Redskins fan. When I drafted him I forgot how important it is to like the players on your team — let alone not hate them — since you are going to have root for them all season. It’s in my blood to hate the Cowboys with every fiber of my being, so how the hell can I enjoy my fantasy season if I cry every time he makes a touchdown? Cheering for the Cowboys makes me throw up a little in my mouth. I think I’ll have to figure out a trade, even if I have to beg someone to take him.

Update to the update: Romo got 52 points for me tonight. Ahem. I guess I’ll be hanging on to him for now.

So Skye has been here almost 24 hours. In that time, I have come to the conclusion that life is just better with dogs, lots of dogs, of all colors, sizes and kinds. Skye is a true joy. He is gentle, good natured and affectionate, if a little shy upon first meeting someone new. When Moose met him, both dogs wagged their tails. For those of you who know Moose, you will understand the miracle that represents.

The only slight challenge has been the cats. Skye doesn’t understand why they don’t just come up and say hi like Moose did, and they don’t understand why he won’t just leave them the hell alone. They have established a mutual understanding though – they won’t hiss if he won’t bark, so all is well.

My New Year’s resolution this year was to “get my house in order”. It seemed like an appropriate goal to share with the entire family when asked at Christmas dinner, and yet is just amorphous enough that I won’t feel guilty at the end of the year if I don’t quite hit the target. Not like, say, “lose 70 pounds” or “remember every birthday of everyone I know”, both completely unreasonable although nice to daydream about.

So here is my first attempt at getting my house in order — keeping everyone here up to date on what has been happening in my life recently. In no particular order, here goes (oh yeah, and you have to read to the end to find out what this photo is all about):

• Mike and I went on an amazing vacation a few weeks ago to the Virgin Islands. We stayed at Maho Bay on St. John for most of the trip and can’t recommend it enough. It was gorgeous and peaceful and everything you would want in a vacation. Some of our photos are here and here.
• My last day of work at EchoDitto was last Tuesday. Also, coincidentally, the same day Chris Bell won the Democratic primary in Texas and became the nominee in the race for Governor in November. The Bell campaign was my favorite client while I worked at EchoDitto, so I guess it is fitting that their win should come on my last day there.
• It looks like I will be starting a new job next week as the Domestic Program Administrator at Adoptions Together, an adoption agency in Silver Spring. I will be responsible, in part, for the domestic program’s database of birth mothers and adoptive families, working with foster families and maybe even the occasional infant discharge from the hospital. No, Mom, this doesn’t mean I am adopting a baby — just because I work there, doesn’t mean I get to take one home. Besides being part of a great team of people and doing work that really makes a difference in people’s lives, the thing I am probably the most excited about is working closely with my friend Kate, who is the social worker there.
• Mike is at the incomparable South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin until tomorrow. He seems to be mostly staying away from the grackles, eating lots of migas and burning the candle at both ends.
• As spring arrives in DC (82 degrees yesterday — insane for March) I am overcome with the desire to garden my little heart out. I will let you know how that turns out. The first year in a new garden is always challenging, since you are never quite sure what greenery will pop up next. It has been so warm here the last couple days that I have been tempted to start planting, but I know it is just a fluke and we will probably get at least one more cold snap before it is safe to expose new buds to the elements.
• And finally — I clearly have too much idle time on my hands — last week I came across a dog named Skye (see photo above) who spoke to me through the internets saying “Foster me! I can’t stand the kennel for one more second!”. Who am I to ignore such messages? So of course I contacted Homeward Trails, the rescue league working with him, had a home visit on Sunday and it looks as though Skye will arrive this Thursday. We really really have no intention of adopting him, but would like to help him find a permanent home, so let me know if you might be interested. I will let you know what Moose thinks after Skye arrives.