theparkerfamily.org

Month: May 2010

  • three ways to kill your sparklet

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    not that we were particularly in the running for “parents of the year” so far, but our application was burnished this week when we successfully went the whole weekend without killing our daughter.

    not for lack of trying, mind you.

    the weekend started with sparklet rolling through the lady sparkler’s hands, off the impromptu changing table, and onto the (fortunately well carpeted) floor. daddy took it a step further by tossing sparklet into the air — and directly into a low-hanging door frame.

    not to be out done, baby sparklet taught herself how to open a dresser drawer, and then close it on her hand.

    fortunately, sparklet barely noticed all the varied attempts on her life, and mommy has been formally introduced to the “no blood, no foul” rule.

    or is it “that which does not kill you makes you stronger?”

  • spindlers

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    spindlers, houston, texas

  • found: may

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    camera dump: may

  • swim hair

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    sparklet has two days of swimming under her rather stylish two-piece bikini (and mostly matching hat) now, and she seems to be getting the basics.

    on day one, when she got tired, she’d put her face down on the carpet … only to find that the carpet was liquid and made it sorta hard to breathe.

    by day two, she was putting her face down on purpose, trying to lick the water. i’m pretty sure this is a step forward, unless we’ve just gotten her addicted to clorine.

    oh, and check out that faux-hawk head of hair. it’s not much, but mom is SUPER excited.

  • cori

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  • asterisk

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    Well, turns out the doctor was right and sparklet hadn’t seen the worst of her virus, yet. (It took four days of vomiting on daddy to get to that point.)

    Things are finally looking up, but sparklet has developed a quirk in the last week that we hope don’t develop into a permanent asterisk at the end of her current title of “best baby ever.”

    Namely, she’s begun to see naps as a parent-sponsored means of torture. We can’t even lay her on he back without screams of bloody murder and looks of abject betrayal.

    To combat this new development, we’ve had to resort to Karl Rove-ian levels of subterfuge … including long, long walks around the neighborhood in the morning and deviously timed car trips in the afternoon.

    Before swimming yesterday, we spent 45 minutes in the parking lot of Sonic, because sparklet finally fell asleep and we we’re paralyzed with fear that twitching a solitary muscle would cause her to wake up.

    Things could be worse, obviously — our child could actually BE karl rove.

  • firsts: swimming pool

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    photo of the week // week thirty-three
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    First Swim, Houston, Texas

  • kate magoo in houston, too

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    the whole family is together for memorial day …

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    kate magoo in houston, too

  • flight to houston

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  • “i’ve got 99 problems …”

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    this is us waiting for the pediatrician … only there were so many people in line before us that we had to wait outside.

    seriously.

    baby sparklet picked up a bug last week at an impromptu play date, and it all came to a head today. she’s not sleeping and lot of congestion — basically a head cold on steroids.

    we got an appointment with the pediatrician for 4pm, and when i arrived there were 13 (thirteen!) babies and toddlers in line in front of us. i think it’s possible they might have overbooked.

    there was no place to sit — and with 13 sick babies around i wasn’t exactly prepared to drop her in the sick-baby playgroup in the middle of the waiting room.

    it took about an hour and ten minutes to even get into the back (and two hours to get in and out completely) but sparklet eventually got a clean bill of health. doctor thinks it’s just a virus, and that it just needs to work through her system, but that it’ll likely get worse before it gets better.

    meanwhile, i think we’re going to start looking a pediatricians a little farther away from downtown …

  • “mmm, feeeeeet…”

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  • guestbook: nancy

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    guestbook: nancy

  • playtable

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  • new tricks

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    photo of the week // week thirty-two
    she’s only seven months old, and i’m already becoming disoriented how quickly that baby sparklet is growing/developing/plotting-to-take-over-the-world.

    here’s a run-down from the new tricks department:

    • she just got her second tooth, and we’re pretty sure she’s working on two more.
    • we’re about ->||<- much away from calling her eye color -- blue! the lady sparkler and i swear that her eyes have changed ... but we're not sure because they look like they've just gotten deeper and bluer.
    • she’s sitting up, mostly without assistance, on a pretty regular basis.
    • while she’s been rolling-with-purpose for a bit now, she’s just now starting to master going forward (as opposed to side-to-side). she’s not yet doing an army crawl, but more like turn 10 degrees to the right, then 10 degrees to the left, then 10 degrees to the right, etc.
    • she’s gotten crazy good with the hand-eye-coordination thing, which is more than i can say for her mother or father.

    the funny thing, is i hate this sort of blog post … because it reeks of sorry-i-haven’t-posted-in-a-while-here-are-all-the-things-that-have-happened.

    the only problem is all this stuff has come in the last three of four days.

    for the record, i keep trying to sit on her head to make her slow down, but it doesn’t appear to be doing any good.

  • video: goalie training

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiDJehqyz9Y

  • out: columbia heights civic plaza fountains

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    out: civic plaza fountains, columbia heights, washington, dc

  • guestbook: emily

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    guestbook

  • bouncy

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  • thank heaven for little girls

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    i was walking around the neighborhood today, trying to get baby sparklet to take a nap, when i passed a stressed out mom dealing with three boys on bicycles.

    one of the boys was babbling about how his bike was a rocketship, and how he was having a really hard time making sure it didn’t explode.

    i smiled, inwardly, thanking heaven for little girls.

    half a block later, i see a 6 year-old girl in a fancy pink fairy dress, pell-melling down the hill at full speed, oblivious to the traffic, screaming:

    i … am … SUPER PINKY!!!!!

    now *that’s* more like it.

  • firsts: swing

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    picnic w/ fleishman hillard, washington, dc

  • your seat isn’t bolted to the floor

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    well, koons screwed up again … they had told us that our plates and registration would be mailed to us, only to find out that a “new” law (effective 2002) requires us to get the car inspected first.

    their incompetence doesn’t leave us with much time to dilly-dally — our temporary plates expire in two days — so i got to spend an otherwise glorious saturday afternoon at the dmv.

    favorite part: while i was waiting in the dmv office, a woman came in and started screaming at the guy behind the desk.

    woman: “i don’t understand why you won’t inspect my car!”

    manager: “ma’am, your seat isn’t bolted to the floor. whoever gets behind that wheel is going to get hurt as soon as they have to use the brakes. we can’t be liable for that.”

    woman: “brakes? but i don’t drive the car *that* often.”

    all of a sudden, the manager was *very* interested in helping me with my situation.

    turns out that hybrids don’t have most of the usual “stuff” that emits (catalytic converters, gas vapor recovery systems) so there isn’t a need to check to see if it’s working.

    the manager took as much time as he humanly possibly could explaining all this to me, glancing every couple of seconds to see if angry lady had left yet.

    then, he handed me an emissions sticker that doesn’t expire until 2017.

    woman: “2017?!? must be nice to not have to see these @#&%$ for that long.”

    or, you could just bolt your seat to the floor. whichever.

  • firsts: saturday market

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    photo of the week // week thirty-one

  • addiction … it’s a cry for help.

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  • video: the need to baby proof

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9RAALySsQw

    i think it’s safe to say that baby sparklet is upwardly mobile now.

  • careful the lessons you teach

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    not twenty-four hours after i showed sparklet how to play in a fountain — there was a little spraying water feature in the u.s. botanic garden — baby decided to show daddy that she mastered the concept, and could apply it elsewhere.

    elsewhere, of course, being a not-so-amused-emily-the-cat’s drinking fountain.

  • out: children’s garden @ u.s. botanic garden

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    photo of the week // week thirty

    took the day off from work to spend a little quality time with baby sparklet. we’ve been out straight between weddings and funerals — not to mention sick — and there was this little nagging voice in the back of my head saying that maybe it was about time for some father-daughter bonding.

    … so of course this is the day that sparklet wakes up early, and then refuses to nap more than 20 minutes at a time the rest of the day.

    she’s been teething since mid-April with one tooth well on it’s way in, and another two or three ready to pop through. of course, this has futzed up both her sleep schedule and her eating schedule, so cute beloved sparklet hasn’t been quite as cute this last little bit.

    dodging rain, not to mention repetitive expressions of “i-should-probably-have-slept-longer,” we went down to the National Mall for most of the day. a little napping in the garden behind the castle, a little tummy time on the grass in front of the Hirschorn, and a little plant destruction in the botanic gardens.

    we’re still working with baby on the basics of “gentle” — a term our cat emily would like her to pick up sooner rather than later — and sparklet just couldn’t seem to touch anything in the garden without destroying it.

    wonder where she gets that from.

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    out: children’s garden @ u.s. botanic garden

  • “hello, i’m with the bakery inspection service and i’m going to need some free samples.”

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  • sarah and kurt’s wedding

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    sarah and kurt’s wedding

  • firsts: horsie, highchair

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    a couple of firsts for baby sparklet while we’re down in historic colonial williamsburg for a friend’s wedding:

    • first horse — she seemed amused, but didn’t really get that it was an animal. i think it was just too big, and didn’t move quickly enough. she probably thought it was a hairy sofa.
    • first high chair — part of growing so rediculously fast is that at six months she’s outgrown her infant car seat, but isn’t old enough to sit-up on her own … so we wedged her in there with a sparkly pillow, natch.

    it probably goes without saying, but for what it’s worth the wedding isn’t a “destination” wedding — the colonial equivalent of a disney wedding package or something. the bride and I both had the great fortune to grow up in Williamsburg, surrounded by the odd million of tourists each season.

    although, the notion of people paying extra to get married in knickers and a bonnet is really to delicious to *not* try and make money off of it.

  • circa de mayo

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    circa de mayo

  • the zoo

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    the zoo

  • diversity at the conservancy

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    … comes down to which color Prius you own.

  • champions league

    dear lord baby jesus.

    tottenham hotspur (click here if you don’t know what that means) just beat somebody. and that somebody (manchester city) spent over $190m on players this season BEFORE THEY EVEN PLAYED THEIR FIRST GAME.

    and now they’ve won the right to compete next year against the top teams in europe, to decide who is the best club of the continent.

    considering that, less than a year ago, i thought they were going to be dropped to the minor leagues — that’s pretty @#%@ing awesome.

    (i’m really sorry if you don’t know what any of that meant.)

  • guestbook: jenny alex

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  • propaganda

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    i can’t decide if this looks like an old-school soviet propaganda poster (“defend our babies!”) or the cover photo of sparklet’s latest CD (her take on the joshua tree, maybe).

    either way, i hope sparklet is a benevolent dictator/cult icon.

  • “squirrel!!”

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    on the flight back from manchester, with a small nod to “up!“

  • sydney and the citros

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    sydney and the citros, worcester, massachusettes

  • rye beach, n.h.

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    there are just about 1,000 things that the lady sparkler and i love about new england — family, seafood, what passes up there for a “hot” day — but near the top is the coast.

    we spent many most of our trips up her out on a boat of some kind or other, and even when we were landlocked there was always a trip to petey’s (on the water) for seafood.

    and so, on the way out of town, we stop at petey’s for a little take out seafood … and ate it on the hood of our rental car while baby sparklet slept in the back seat.

    if it gets much better than this, i’m a little nervous to see what that looks like.

  • week twenty-nine

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    photo of the week // week twenty-nine

  • cousins

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    i was raised in a family where both my parents were only children, so we used to joke that we had a family reunion every night for dinner.

    it’s not until i was much older that i realized how deep our family was on paul and gloria’s side, and during this trip sparklet must have met 15 new cousins this weekend. we didn’t even make it to the front door before we “lost” the baby, and sparklet made the rounds for about three solid hours before she made it back to me again (for 20 minutes, before she was gone another two hours).

    in the meantime, we got to see/meet/laugh with some of our new (and old) favorite people in the world — there was a real magic in the air. things went so well, that we already have our first reunion in i-don’t-know-how-many-years planned for this August … which, poetically enough, is when we promised paul and gloria we’d come and see them this year.

    leave it to those two to bring the family together even after they are gone themselves.

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    new hampshire // may

  • superbaby!

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  • aunt gloria

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    three weeks later, and we find ourselves back in new hampshire … mourning the loss of the person who got us through the last funeral.

    it’s poetic for my godmother gloria to move on less than a month after she lost her husband of 65 years — broken heart, of course — and i have to admit, i only thought that sort of thing only happened in the movies.

    but that ignores all the plans that she had made for the coming months, and implies that she was the type to rollover — something we all know is simply not the case.

    for every great thing i could say about paul, there is a parallel for gloria — the open doors, the family, stuffing us with food, always being there whether you asked or not.

    this week, it was much the same story.

    sparklet met a dozen of the most wonderful people that she may not have met otherwise … and was positively beaming the whole trip as she jumped from cousin to cousin to cousin.

    and, i think the thing that mattered most to gloria was family, so it’s fitting that the very last thing she ever did was bring us all together.