And the little one said...

Alton sleeps in his own room now, but in the morning he usually wakes up early (around 6 or so) and so I'll put him in our bed with me to nurse and *hopefully* fall back asleep for a little while. That's what happened this morning at 5:30a.m., when Andy got up to go to work, and Alton was in our bed alternately nursing and flopping around like a little fish trying to get comfortable. We kept changing positions for about an hour and a half and just as I was about to give up the ghost and get us both up for the day, he fell asleep. I stealthily slithered away from him and crunched myself on one side of the bed and also fell asleep for a little while. I woke up and tried to rearrange myself into a more comfortable position, but had to freeze again when Alton started wiggling in his sleep...from his side...to his back...to his stomach. He rolled pretty close to me and the contortion that I was in was no longer conducive to sleep, so instead I got up and made coffee and snapped this pic of the little man. With the whole big bed to himself, he reminds me of the Sesame Street "Five Bears in the Bed" song, where the little one keeps asking everyone to roll over until they all fall off the bed and then...he's lonely!

The Ride - by Andy

As Katie pointed out in the previous blog, I chose to bike to work the day after our big snow. I got all bundled up in about 4 layers, including a huge insulated jacket from work. I figured biking in the snow would be tough - there's snow, ice, cold and potentially drivers that are out of control. All this coupled with the fact that I would be riding at 5:30 in the morning when it is dark. None of it phased me. I had to complete at least one ride in the snow. So I packed my regular backpack goodies consisting of work clothes for the day, my lunch, a towel for my locker at work and a few extras for this day: mail to drop off down the street and 3 library books to return (the library is about 3/4 of the way to work). I scooted out into the street towards the mail box and muttered to myself, "this is gonna be fun." Sarcastically, of course. As I traveled down Minter Bridge Road, the main cross street to ours, I realized that the street itself is shaped a lot like the back of a spoon: the road rises in the middle. And therefore, about two blocks down this street, Accident #1 happened. My tires decided to slowly drift out from underneath me. As I saw the inevitable crash, I turned my back wheel out to lay the bike down (similar to how they do with motorcycles in the movies). I hit the ground sliding and stopped after about 20 feet. There was nobody else on the road so I just picked myself up and continued on. From this, I learned a very important lesson: Although the center of the road may look safer, it's actually in the snow on the side of the street that you get the most traction. Here I would try to remain for the rest of the trip. I tootled along at a blustery 11 mph and concentrated oh-so-hard at the road in front of me. I found that if my attention wandered, the odds of hitting a small bump that would send one of my tires sliding out from underneath me was high. At my halfway point (3 miles from home), I turn onto what is essentially the main drag between work and home. I expected to see some better clearing in the street (not necessarily plowed streets, just those nicely dried out tracks from numerous cars going down the road), but what I found was actually more snow than any other street of the ride. Apparently people were avoiding this street. I traveled on and made it to the library (about 4.5 miles from home and 1.5 miles to work). As I turned in to the driveway (oh-so-slowly, I could see the ice), I learned another important lesson: you don't turn your bike when you're riding on ice. You stop, turn the bike and continue riding straight. At this point, along came #2. I took the turn as wide and slow as I could, but the bike started to slide on the ice again. I put a foot down to help stay upright, but my foot went sliding along with it. So down I went again. I returned the books and made it to work. The ride got slightly easier as I neared work because the streets are busier (as if that's a good thing) and more snow was melted.

The ride home was less eventful and I even hit a break neck speed of 16mph! I went down one more time once I hit the spoon-shaped Minter Bridge Road and therefore banished myself to the sidewalk on the wrong side of the road, where the best traction-forming snow was. I made it home and made Katie take a picture of me.

The ride overall was a good one. For my three crashes, there was a countless number of close calls and none of them thankfully involved cars. I can now say I rode in the snow and I can make the educated choice not to. Especially not without the right equipment (my tires are mostly slick with only a few slits cut in them for traction. The snow quickly filled these slots and essentially turned my tires into racing slicks). The only casualty of the whole trip was my $10 side mirror that cracked during crash #3. Bummer. Below are pics of me in all my glory. I made it!

And for those of you concerned, I always have a front light, two rear lights and my cell phone for emergencies. :)

Note from Katie: Andy has been riding his bike to work most days since September. To date, he has ridden more than 600 miles to and from work and saved hundreds in gas money!

This Week I'm Loving...

...the snow, of course! Here are some before/after shots of our snowstorm and the Nerve enjoying herself. She really liked the snow and romped in it in the backyard several times yesterday.
Here is the backyard when we first got up in the morning yesterday.

Here it is this morning, one day later.

Nerve and the falling snow yesterday morning.

Minerva Snowface

You can really see the progression of snow with Andy's license plate.
Morning...

...afternoon...

...end of day!

Andy actually got up and rode his bike to work this morning. If you have a chance, email him and tell him to BE CAREFUL on the ride home!!!
Click to see larger and check out the solid layer of snow on top of our patio table. Probably should have brought that inside, hmm.

Snow and snow and snow...

So we started taking pictures right when we saw the snow. Now, some 5 hours later, there's even MORE snow as it has not let up all day. So some more pics were needed.

BBQ.

Backyard.

Our Street.

The view from our bedroom.

The truck.

Fun stuff. We'll post more as our winter continues.

Winter Wonderland: Baby's First Snow!

Ok, so technically Alton has seen it snow before, but he was like two months old and there were barely a few puny flakes. Today it has been snowing since we got up at 8am and still going strong. We decided to take the little guy out for a few minutes into the front yard to see him experience the cold white stuff for the first time. This snow is like perfect movie snow: fluffy and pristine, the flakes are a nice size for you to see as they fall from the sky, but not so large that they are big icy lumps. It's coming down slowly enough for you to get a good look at all the soft, innocuous flakes eddying around one another, but quickly enough that any footprints are quickly covered up with evenly distributed, cottony snow that makes a quiet crunching sound under your feet as you walk around.
In order to take Alton out of doors in this lacy loveliness, we had to get him appropriately attired. But Californians that we are, we have acquired good winter jackets for the family and nothing else. No snow pants or snow boots, and Alton's mittens are a thin handknitted affair that Mama made him to match his hat. I have some snow gloves, but Andy goes out bareheaded and barefooted unless I call after him to come inside and put some shoes on his frozen feet. Alton started out with fleece overalls and a long sleeved shirt, then we added another pair of pants, another pair of socks with the overalls tucked into them, hard-soled shoes that didn't quite fit on his feet with the two pairs of socks, the knitted hat and mittens and his new winter jacket from Nonna and Papa with the fleece liner, down-filled outer, and hood. Gown up!
Our foray was just out to our driveway and front lawn, and at one point I set Alton down so that he was sitting on my shoes as he reached forward between his legs to touch the snow on the ground. Since he can't walk or stand without support yet, he still orients himself in the world from a seated position, so even though I was holding him to stand up or perching him on my knee to look at the snow, he had to see it for himself by plopping down on his bottom and smacking it around a little. We think he had a good time.

Snowy driveway and street

Touching the snow in Mama's hand

Preparing to walk in the snow

Sitting on Mama's shoes

Hmm, snow.

Yay snow!

Peering at the snow...

...he buries his hand in it...

...then realizes this stuff is stinkin' cold!

Snowy good time!



I just remembered I'm really cold.

Frozen baby eyelashes

Time to go inside

Now the "gloves" are off...or should we say mittens?

One Tooth Wonder offers you his mitten

Perched in the living room against a snowy tableau

SNOW!!!

For the first time since we moved to Hillsboro, we have big, fat, real SNOW!! It's Sunday morning and we were taking our time waking up, considering taking Alton to the pool as he giggled and clambered all over us. I got up to take Minerva out and glanced out the bedroom blinds in passing and had to do a double-take because it was snowing! Large white flakes were coming down in a hurry, and the light blanket of whiteness visible on neighbors' roofs and cars was getting thicker before your eyes. The weather reports had been forecasting snow-worthy temperatures and possible snow over the weekend, but Friday was rainy and Saturday drizzly without a single flurry. I checked outside during a middle-of-the-night baby trip but saw only a thin layer of frost, so wasn't expecting much when we got up this morning.

Alton was very interested in it! When we opened the blinds this morning he was laughing and looking outside, kind of going, "huh?" Then we set him on the ground with his hands clinging to the windowsill and he looked up over his head out the window and stared at the snow, which was coming down harder then, and tried to reach his hand up to the glass to grab at the snowflakes.

Snow is not a big deal in many parts of the country, and Hillsboro/Portland area usually gets about once per winter where the snow actually sticks instead of just melting as soon as it hits the ground. This happened several times when we first arrived in Hillsboro--we would get rain, then sleet, then hail, then snow, then rain, then a little more snow all in one storm. But the temp was fluctuating high enough to melt the snow bits. Here we have our first real snow-angel-making, curl-up-on-the-couch-with-a-cup-of-cocoa, let's-not-go-anywhere-today SNOW. As native Californians, can you tell we're excited? It goes without saying that Portland completely shuts down when it snows--the city allegedly has no snowplows at all, so there is no way to clear the streets other than some salting. We'll post more pics when I go outside to make a snow angel/snowman/snowball/snowsomething.

The front of our house. The wind was coming from the left, hence the snow-less part of driveway next to the truck.


Our back yard. The concrete pad still stays "warm" enough to melt the snow.


You don't think this means no more BBQing do you? Bring it on!


This is what we saw this morning from our bedroom window when we woke up. WOW! Click on the picture and you can see the snow coming down!


Alton watching the snow very intently.



AJ and the Nerve having a great time watching Daddy in the snow instead of them.

This Week I'm Loving...

...that Christmas is coming! We have enjoyed several days of cold, sunny weather (although now it's raining) and there are tree farms everywhere up here. You have to try not to do a u-cut-em. A far cry from Oakland, where we went to Target for our trees and slim pickings at that. We are not getting a tree this year, however (too much travel and too hard to baby-proof), so we are making do with an ornament display on top of the piano and Christmas cookies to eat. We can't wait for Baby's First Christmas!
Alton and Katie enjoying the chilly swings at the park.

Baby at Home

Fun pictures of Alton on Saturday morning.

Our little engineer trying to figure out how to pop the hinge on his baby gate.

Giving up on the hinge and trying to shake the gate free.

Gazing out the front window...

...and mashing his face on it.

Alton, look out! There's a demon with glowing eyes behind you!

Some GQ looks



Striking a pose with Dada...

...and Mama.


His new favorite thing is to tilt his head to the side and put it on his shoulder and smile at you. Extra points if you do it back to him.

Bye-bye!