Just Powers

AFSCME Convention 2010, originally uploaded by Justpowers.

Our family is in Boston this week for the 2010 AFSCME Convention. Well, Mike is in Boston for it, we are just along for the ride, enjoying the adventure of a new city, seeing old friends and hanging out with Grammy and Grampy.

Traveling is always a mix of fun and stress, especially when kids are involved. So far we have had far more fun than stress. This picture was taken in our first few minutes in our hotel room that has an amazing view of Boston Harbor. It is incredibly similar to the photo I took of Emma in our hotel room at the 2008 AFSCME Convention in San Francisco.

We have already seen the Swan Boats and the Make Way for Duckling statues, hung out in Boston Common and had lunch at Faneuil Hall. We are here till Friday, with big plans to storm the museums - Children’s, Science, and the Aquarium - with a boat ride and trip to the Harbor Islands somewhere in there. Oh and a little train named Thomas happens to be visiting the Boston suburbs this week too, so we will also be making a trip out there to visit with him.

We are going to be wrecked when we finally get home. Wrecked but happy and with lots of stories to tell.

Emma and EJ discuss what might be lurking in the hole in the tree. Or maybe they are just sharing ways to drive their parents crazy.

As a result of Mike’s obsession mad skillz with the internets, he scored us four tickets to yesterday’s White House Easter Egg Roll. Since Emma “hearts” Sasha and Malia, and Mike and I *heart* their dad and mom, we were all really excited to hang out at their house for a couple of hours.

Emma talked about going to “Sasha and Malia’s house” for a week before we went, and seemed to have a good time once we were there - although I think she felt there had been a bit of false advertising, since we never actually went INTO the house itself. She did get to ride Metro, meet Curious George, and show off her new Ladybug dress.

William’s adventures were a little more low key, but he still got some good stories. First he got to freak out the Secret Service guy who reached into the stroller to check it out and got the shock of his life when the “doll” started moving. Then he got to nurse on the grounds of the White House. Really, there can’t be too many people in the world who can say that, right?

William James Carvalho joined us on Thursday, March 19, 2009 at 5:32 pm. He weighed 7 pounds 3 ounces and was 19 3/4 inches long. Like his sister, his labor was uneventful if pretty short - 6 hours of very light contractions that allowed me to drive myself to the hospital, ending with the doctor breaking my water which brought on 40 minutes of very very hard labor before Will entered the world in one push. We had the most amazing nurse in the world who made the whole experience the polar opposite of our experience delivering Emma.

One week later, we are all doing great. Emma is going through what seems like a pretty typical 2 year-old adjustment period, requiring extra patience and love from us, Will is sleeping and eating and doing everything else newborns do (no prediction here about his temperament, lest I jinx it), and Mike and I are just beginning to figure out how to juggle it all.

Last week, for our third anniversary, a box of flowers showed up at my door. As I walked up the steps towards them, I ran through the list of people who could have sent them to me. Included in that list was Mike - my partner of six years, three of them government-sanctioned.

For whatever reason, Mike and I have never been overly romantic in the traditional sense of the word, but however it is that we show each other that we care seems to have worked so far. Mike will randomly buy me gifts that he knows I will like and occasionally will pick up a bouquet of flowers at the grocery store, but I am pretty sure he has never sent me flowers - oh wait, there was that plant arrangement he sent to my office for my first Mother’s Day. That was very cool, and I have even managed NOT to kill it yet.

So, he has only sent me foliage of some sort one other time. This is not something that bothers me or that I find myself ever even thinking about. However, when I walked up those stairs and saw that box of flowers, and ran through the list of possible senders, I found myself thinking, “Oh please let them be from Mike.” When I opened the card, and they were from him, I cried enough that Emma asked “Mommy so happy?”

I felt like Meg Ryan at the very end of “You’ve Got Mail” when she is standing in a garden in Central Park waiting to meet the person she has spent the entire movie emailing and IMing with anonymously, and who she has convinced herself could be “Mr. Right.” As Tom Hanks rounds the corner, she realizes that her anonymous Mr. Right is actually a very real person she has known for a while, and who she has become best friends with. As they embrace and the music swells, she says “I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so badly.”

My bouquet started out with most of the buds closed tight but with lush beautiful green leaves. When Mike came home that night he was concerned that they didn’t look more colorful, like the picture had looked when he ordered them. One week later, this is what they look like. They are stunning and I love them.

Thanks Mike. I love you, too.

There is a huge slide at our local park. It is of the corkscrew variety and to get to the top a child has to climb up many stairs. We let Emma go down the slide but only when both Mike and I are present so that one of us can help her at the top and one can help her at the bottom. I never let her go up there when I am at the park alone with her.

This weekend we were at the park and Emma made a beeline for the slide. She got to the top of the stairs and launched herself down the slide on her belly before you can say “overprotective-first-time-parents”. On the way down, she laughed and laughed. By the time Mike and I had started breathing again, she was back at the top doing it all over again.

This is going to take some getting used to.

To celebrate Leap Day, Emma and I went in to the city with Mike via Metro and went to the National Geographic Museum just around the corner from his office on 15th Street between L and M. They have a special exhibit on frogs right now (running until May 11!) and were having extra-special froggy goodness today. Get it? Leap day, frogs…?

Admission was free and the place was surprisingly appropriate for different ages. I wasn’t sure Emma would enjoy herself very much, but it was one of those “have-to-get-out-of-the-house-or-die” days, so I took a chance. As you can tell by the photo, the giant photos of frogs were the highlight of her day - and certainly more fun than the ACTUAL frogs. Luckily there were enough pictures to keep her fascinated for a good hour.

The exhibit is in a small area, but they do a great job of packing in lots of information. The tanks with the live frogs are large and fun to look at. Most of the frogs were of the camouflaging sort, so there was no way Emma could even find them. The tiny dart poison frogs (which look plastic until they start to move) and the huge pollywogs got her attention though. There is one kiosk that creates a chorus of frog sounds when you press on the large buttons and in the middle of the floor are more pictures of frogs along with measurements to show you how far they can jump - and encouraging words to see if you can match it. Emma hasn’t quite perfected her leap yet, but had a lot of fun watching other kids try.

It can be tough to make a museum or exhibit appeal to the under-1 crowd and the over-5 crowd (and everyone in between) all at the same time, but National Geographic succeeded with this one I think. At one point I saw a mother holding her approximately 9 month old son up to the dart poison frogs, and as he laughed his head off, her just about 4 year old was talking to her about how many frogs there were in the tank. Pretty impressive.

After the museum we joined Mike for lunch at the National Education Association cafeteria just around the corner at 16th and M. The NEA cafeteria is open to all, has a great selection of affordable food, and a wonderful open seating area in an atrium where no one can hear, for example, a tired little girl complaining when she is finished with lunch. Just don’t get me started on the fact that the cafeteria is non-union …oh well, I guess nothing is perfect.

Happy Leap Day!

I know I have been a complete slacker about getting pictures from the last month - huge apologies to out-of-town family and friends who have been waiting (especially Aunt Emily and Aunt Lexi, who both called me on my slackeryness - sorry guys!!). Here are all the pix from the last month or so. Each picture you see links to a set on flickr.

Emma’s first birthday. “The Artsy Caterpillar” picture was a complete mistake, but I like the way it turned out.

Emma’s first Christmas in New Jersey with Poppy, Nonnie, Aunt Lexi and Great Gram. During most of these pictures she was pretty sick, only we didn’t know it yet. Of course now that we look back at them, we can see it. She was up every 45 minutes that night - teething we think. Or maybe she was just mad she had to sleep and couldn’t play with the Cheetah?

Christmas Eve. Actually this picture isn’t from Christmas Eve, it was our Holiday card picture. But I love it, so I included it here. In most of the pictures in this set and in the next set from Christmas Day, Emma was, again, sick. Christmas Eve she was up until 4, throwing up every 15 minutes. Christmas Night she only threw up once before passing out. She still hung in with us throughout the day without complaining. What a trooper.

Santa came! Even though she was sick, she really got into opening gifts. She actually played with each of her presents and seemed to genuinely enjoy each one. The little gray dress with the pink shirt is one of the cutest things I have seen her in.

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.