theparkerfamily.org

  • how i met your mother: date shirt (special 2nd anniversary edition)

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    dear sparklet,

    this is the sixth in a series of letters to baby sparklet about how mommy and daddy met and woo-ed each other.

    today is mommy and daddy’s second wedding anniversary, but (as you you’ve probably noticed by the time you are old enough to read) we’re not very good at celebrating these things.

    on our very first anniversary, we were supposed to go camping in Delaware, but bailed at the last minute and instead had dinner at a roadside mexican restaurant somewhere out route 50.

    this year, we were going to go to our favorite restaurant (Acadiana) but it turns out the whole place was rented out for some kind of event. so instead, tonight i put on my “date shirt,” took mommy out for BBQ at the site of one of our earliest dates, and we’ll save Acadiana for next week.

    (which is kinda funny, because that’s exactly what happened to mommy and daddy last year, too.)

    which reminds me …

    a long, long time ago, your mommy and daddy were just two nervous people who were trying to figure out how to talk to each other. which, i’m sure, must seem *really* strange to you by now.

    before we were dating, your mommy asked me to come over to a dinner party she was having at the house she shared with Auntie Melissa.

    it turns out that one of her previously invited friends couldn’t make it (thank you, Gannon!) and since mommy was looking for an excuse to ask daddy out, it seemed like a good idea at the time to invite me in his place.

    unfortunately, i looked like a mess. i hadn’t cut my hair in about two years (so i guess i didn’t look all that different then i do now) and hadn’t bought any “impress a girl” clothes in in that time either.

    naturally, i did what any boy in my situation would do — i turned to a female friend to bail me out.

    Emmy and i setup a time to get my hair cut (by about 9 inches) and she even tagged along for moral support. in fact, your mommy ended up coming, too … i think mainly because mommy wanted to make sure that daddy and Emmy didn’t develop a “thing” before she could have her dinner party.

    the following weekend, right before the party, Emmy and I took an emergency trip to Friendship Heights (the Gap) and she helped me find something that looked nice, but not *too* nice.

    the shirt we bought? it’s daddy’s “date shirt” (which you can see in the photo above).

    dinner was great. Uncle Cole and Aunt Skye were there, and the four of us talked for hours, and then I stayed behind to help mommy with the dishes.

    By the time we were done eating, talking, cleaning and talking, it was 6 am the next morning. Not wanting to end the the “evening” quite yet, we walked down to the Alexandria waterfront, and then had breakfast at Table Talk (which is still one of our favorite’s).

    At that point, I knew your mommy was something special … and had a feeling that your mommy and i had a nice future ahead of us. i didn’t know quite how long it would take, but I knew she would be worth the wait.

    love,
    daddy (& mommy)

    UPDATE: no Acadiana for us quite yet…! the restaurant called to confirm our reservation as we were sitting in the labor and delivery room, waiting for you to be born.

    so, instead, we “formally” celebrated our anniversary with you in our laps, eating mommy’s favorite pizza (goat cheese and bacon) from our long-time favorite pizza place (Listrani’s).

    and while it certainly wasn’t what we were expecting, it was a perfect way to celebrate none-the-less.

  • loose ends

    livingroom
    the lady sparkler and I have been crossing things off our list, dilligently trying to get everything resolved so we can relax with some peace and quite before sparklet arrives…

    and then we realized neither of us really has an interest in relaxing.

    case and point: things were winding down this weekend (I finished off the kitchen, and found places for those “last few items” without a place to live — she washed two and a half tons of baby clothes) when we spontaneously decided to rearrange the living room.

    nominally, the problem was nominally getting rid of a DVD cabinet that we forgot had (non-safety) glass doors, but the lack of quality television programming (I actually watched a William & Mary football game I was so bored) might have had something to do with it.

    so, we moved things around, and made space for a new chair that we are waiting to be delivered. the sofa now looks into the kitchen (which is a little weird) but the new setup is a much more economical use of space.

    the real “win” however is that I added something else to the todo list, because taking down the cabinet pulled up some of the wall paint, which will need to be patched and repaired.

    whew.

  • baby size me

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    so, it turns out that baby sparklet’s still growing, and growing, and growing. and while I was under the impression that she’d run out of space eventually, that seems not to be the case.

    the week started off with a baby center email comparing her to the size of a cantelope, which marked a sharpe departure from salad vegetables (peppers, onions) into the “melon” arena.

    even tho we knew the melons were coming eventually, it unfortunately served as another reminder of my grotesque weight at birth (10 lbs, 8 oz) (10 lbs, 10 oz … sorry Mom) which I am sure the lady sparkler has been tying hard to push out of her consiousness.

    there was some good “size” news at the end of the week, during the lady sparkler’s cnow-weekly checkup. for the first time ever, the doctor described sparklet as “normal” sized, instead of the usual (and vaguely menacing sounding) “above average.”

    the doctor also seemed pretty cheesed about how the baby was oriented — head down, booty at 10 o’clock, and feets jammed nicely into the opposing rib cage.

    no word yet if baby momma is equally cheesed, especially about the “feet in the ribs” part.

  • U2 @ FedEx Field

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    there are times when i love my wife, and then there are times when i love my wife. tonight, i love my wife.

    the lady sparkler has wanted to see U2 since she was twelve, and when they announced the were coming to DC — er, suburban Maryland — earlier this spring, absolutely nothing was going to stop her from being there.

    fast forward eight pregnant months later, i gave her every chance humanly possible to back out if she felt like she needed to. heck, *i* even tried to convince her that she needed to.

    but she was undeterred.

    based off our last horrific fedex field experience (real madrid v
    dc united) we left a gazillion hours early, and were in the parking lot by 5 pm for a 7 o’clock curtain.

    if there were seats farther away from the stage (and speakers) I’m not sure where they were, but that was definately by design. we also got tickets on the club level, so the lady sparkler was hanging out in cushy seats in the lobby for the two hours before the show.

    … or should I say the three hours before U2 came on stage, because we made if it through about 10 minutes of the opening act (“Muse”) before retreating to the cushy seats. their music was hard to describe, but Bono later said “I’ve never heard three people make so much noise.”

    the main event itself was incredible.

    a lot of the reviews i’ve read about the tour has focused on the giii-normous spaceship stage thing, and argued that it overwhelmed the show … but from where we were sitting (opposite endzone, three sections up) it was the perfect extension of the ant-sized band, and brought the show into our living room.

    the band spanned just about the whole breadth of their catalogue (25 years worth, shockingly) and the audience vibe was great (considering we were in DC). there was a decent amount of politics — Bono introduced his band as a “cabinet,” referred to himself as U2’s “well-turned-out” Speaker of House, and praised Bush for his work in Africa (?) not-once-but-twice.

    a couple of interesting tweaks to the show through the stage’s media boards … they turned “Sunday Bloody Sunday” into a song supporting Iran’s so-called Green Revolution, and “Walk On” into a song for imprisoned Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

    my beloved was over the moon through out. she came in without hoping for a particular song for fear of being let down, but came out with all of her favorites checked off — “city of blinding lights”, “ultraviolet (light my way)”, and “with or without you” — none of which did i think she had a chance in hell of hearing.

    (fwiw, one i heard them plow through “where the streets have no name” i decided that i could die happy…)

    but the big takeaway? the Edge is every inch responsible for the band’s musical success. Adam Clayton plodded on his bass guitar, Larry Mullen Jr hit some things (including a bongo) and Bono pranced around the stage … but the Edge drove the show the whole evening long.

    SET LIST: no line on the horizon · magnificent · get on your boots · mysterious ways · i still haven’t found what i’m looking for / stand by me · elevation · your blue room · beautiful day · blackbird / new year’s day · stuck in a moment · breathe · city of blinding lights · vertigo · you know i’ll go crazy … tonight · sunday bloody sunday · mlk / walk on · one · amazing grace / where the streets have no name · ultraviolet (light my way) · with or with out you · moment of surrender

  • the end is near

    [Kitchen, Washington, DC]
    ECPA20090927_0128, originally uploaded by [ecpark].
    i hesitate to say anything — because i don’t want to jinx things — but it looks like end is near as far as home construction goes.while the lady sparklet was preoccupied with baby-shower weekend, i (pretty much) finished off the kitchen … which needed to be repainted after the great fuse box / kitchen cabinet catastrophe of 2009.

    so, if we run down the list of major baby to-dos: we’ve fixed our fuse box, prepped the nursery, redid the hall closet, and got a roof rack for the car. last up is hanging the replacement cabinet in the kitchen … which i already test fitted to make sure that i could actually write this post.

    you know, it’s crazy … but it looks like we need to pick out a name, and run through that last list stuff we need to purchase post-baby shower.

    speaking of the shower, it sounds like everyone had a blast. i’ll see if i can liberate some pictures/details from those who were there (i spent the afternoon slamming bloody marys with a friend who was similarly displaced).

    (UPDATE: i just posted pictures of the shower…)

    crazy.

    Explore the Photo Set:
    repainted kitchen, washington, dc

  • crib in 30 seconds

    Crib arrived. The box was bigger than the car, meaning yet again the new roof rack saved our bacon … though we looked a bit like the proverbial ant carrying off the proverbial watermelon. Watch a thirty second time-lapse of the assembly, and there’s a (static) photo on Flickr.

    In unrelated news, i’m suddenly feeling like this all is really happening …

  • jojo / einstein

    [Jojo / Einstein, Washington, DC]
    ECPA20090922_0120, originally uploaded by [ecpark].

  • fun with letters

    [Fun with Letters, Nursery, Washington, DC]
    ECPA20090921_0114, originally uploaded by [ecpark].
    in a vain attempt to move the baby name conversation forward, the lady sparkler and i are moving from the academic to the visual.

    we’d already been planning on the stereotypical “put the baby’s name on the wall in big letters” thing, but without a name picked out … we bought enough letters to do all three.

    … and have been playing with the letters ever since.

    you’d be amazed the words that you can make out of the nine letters we bought: ikea, kale, kill, kilt, leak, l33t, like, tail, etc. and that doesn’t even include the actual names.

    oh, and i didn’t get a picture of sparkler’s favorite so far: “eek.”

  • photos: national zoo

    [National Zoo, Washington, DC]
    ECPA20090919_0087, originally uploaded by [ecpark].
    quick trip through the zoo. the last time we went, i got *really* great pictures, and then proceeded to have my camera stolen at the bar afterwards. no where near as good pictures this time, but at least we all came home in one piece.
    Explore the Photo Set:
    photos: national zoo, washington, dc

  • the name game

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    after months and months, the lady sparkler and i have finally narrowed down the potential names to just three, and we’ve started to “crowdsource” them — mostly to check for any negative pop-culture allusions that we might have missed, but also to make sure we aren’t ignoring one of our own rules for baby names.

    it’s technically possible that we’ll come up with something thats not on the list, but that’s unlikely … it’s been 8 weeks since we added anything new, and we certainly won’t be adding anything once labor starts. if it’s not on the list before, we aren’t sure being sleep-deprived/overly-hormonal will help avoid naming mistakes that will haunt baby sparklet for decades.

    we don’t have a leading candidate (which is actually a bit maddening) and both seem to have a new favorite each week. but, here they are, listed in the order that we thought of them (the oldest one’s first).

    feel free to share your thoughts.

    Kate Elizabeth Parker

    this one is the very first name that went on the list, maybe a month into the process. we aren’t a huge fan of the longer name (katherine) so it’s really just kate. for a long time, it was the prototypical name (ie. “we need a strong name, like ‘kate’”) before we added it formally.

    popularity — ranked 243rd (1978), 139th (2008). origins — Greek, meaning “pure” (Kate, Katherine); Hebrew, meaning “consecrated to God” (Elizabeth).

    pros — Title character from Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew; Evangeline Lilly’s character on “Lost”; actress Kate Beckinsdale (Underworld, Serendipity). added gravitas — Katherine the Great; designer Kate Spade; three of Henry VIII’s six wives. curiosity — Kate Winslet (of Titanic fame) is actually Kate Elizabeth Winslet by birth.

    cons — “Jon and Kate plus Eight”; Kate Moss; Kate Hudson.

    literary — Kate Chopin. music — Kate Nash; Kate Bush; Katy Perry; Kate Earl; Kate “Songbird of the South” Smith.

    googling “Kate Parker” — 41,200 hits, including a wedding planner, a couple photographers, a florist, and lots of 18th century geneology references.

    in short — fun-loving rock/movie diva.

    Elizabeth Anne Parker (“Ellie”)

    we came at this name sorta backwards. we loved the nickname “Ellie” but didn’t like any of the names it’s usually attached to (Eleanor, Elena) so we hemmed, hawed and came up with Elizabeth instead. which is also convenient, because we aren’t a real big fan of Elizabeth’s “actual” nicknames either, such as Liz, Lizzy, Beth, Betsy, etc.

    popularity — ranked 14th (1978), 9th (2008). origins — Hebrew, meaning “consecrated to God” (Elizabeth); Hebrew, meaning “gift of God’s favour” (Anne).

    pros — The wife in Pixar’s Up is named “Ellie”; Jodie Foster’s character from Contact; there’s a 2005 movie called Ellie Parker, with the title character played by Naomi Watts. added gravitas — Queen Elizabeth (I & II); Elizabeth Ann Seton (the first canonized American saint); Empress Elizabeth of Russia; the mother of John the Baptist. curiosity — “Elizabeth Anne” is the name of the girl that Tommy Lee Jones left behind in Men in Black; also, “Ellie” was the asteroid’s nickname in Deep Impact.

    cons — The large, flakey wooly mammoth in Ice Age 2 (voiced by Queen Latifa) is called “Ellie”; “Elly” was the name of the dumb blonde from “The Beverly Hillbillies.”

    literary — Elizabeth is the protagonist of Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice; Elizabeth Barret Browning (poet). music — “Goodnight, Elisabeth” by Counting Crows; Folk musician Elizabeth Cotten; Ellie Greenwich of the 60’s “girl groups” the Ronettes, the Shangri-Las.

    googling “Elizabeth Parker” — 125,000 hits, including an artist, poet, composer, jeweler, and lots of facebook entries.

    in short — holier-than-thou, daddy’s little angel.

    Allison Grace Parker (“Allie”)

    we aren’t really sure where Allison came from, but *everybody* seems to love the middle name Grace. seriously, no one really seams to bite when we say “Allison Parker” but say “Allison Grace” or just “Allie” and suddenly it’s the best name ever.

    popularity — ranked 75th (1978), 32nd (2008). origins — Germanic, meaning “of noble birth” (Allison); Latin, meaning “a blessing” (Grace).

    pros — Jane Curtin’s character from TV’s “Kate and Allie”; Rachel McAdams character from The Notebook; Jessica Biel’s character in I’ll Be Home for Christmas; Allison Janney (“West Wing”). added gravitas — Not much, though Allison Taylor was the fictional President of the USA in the television series “24.”

    cons — A character on “Melrose Place,” played by Courtney Thorne-Smith, appears to have been an alcoholic; Tropical Storm Allison struck Houston in 2001, killing 41; our child will be the farthest thing from “grace”-ful; nickname (“Allie”) confusion with dirty city sidestreets (“Alley”).

    literary — None. music — “Allison” is a song by the Pixies from their 1990 album Bossanova; Alison Krauss; Allison Crowe; Alison Goldfrapp (of rock duo Goldfrapp).

    googling “Allison Parker” — 66,100 hits. mostly personal social media profiles, results from sports competitions, and a “famous” Australian endurance motorcycle rider.

    in short — everywoman, or the smart/pretty girl next door.