theparkerfamily.org

Tag: Sparklet

  • rooftop fireworks

    [Fireworks, Washington, DC.]
    ECPA20090705_2131, originally uploaded by [ecpark].
    it’s a bit of a tradition in D.C. to clamor up to your rooftop (if you have one) to watch the fireworks on the Fourth. the lady sparkler and i had never been, but decided to give it a go this year … thinking that it was probably our last year to do something illegal (before baby sparklet arrives).

    i always assumed that the best show was from the mall, but i think the rest of the fireworks (they come from all around us, including Columbia Heights, Crestwood, Silver Spring and over by the National Cathedral) were even more fun.

    Explore the Photo Set:
    Rooftop Fireworks, Washington, DC

  • snacks

    I walked into the kitchen this morning, and the lady sparkler was rummaging through the refridgerator with three or four ziplock bags filled with food on the counter.

    “oh, you’re packing a lunch?” I ask surprised, because I’ve never known her to do such a thing.

    she stares back with pout-y face.

    “no,” she says sheepishly.  “these are just my snacks.”

    “your snacks?” I say, before I can engage my brain enough to tell my mouth to shut the heck up.  “all of that?!?”

    “well, the bread is for toast for breakfast.  I’ll have the carrots as a snack around 10:30.  i’ll get a sandwich for lunch, and then the blueberries are for after … maybe around 2:30,” she says.

    “I get hungry.”

    so, I back my way out of the conversation by saying how great it is that she has a plan, and how cute her little array of baggies are … when she let’s it rip:

    “oh, and shut up.  if it’s not this, then it’s sugar … and then there will be a whole lot more of me to love.”

  • sleep

    funny thing happened last night:  I rolled over and went back to sleep.

    as i have been whining about for months, ever since baby sparklet became a twinkle in the lady sparkler’s eyes, I’ve been sleeping like crap.  

    And while she is the one getting up to pee every three hours, i’m the light sleeper who is awake for 45 minutes after she crawls back in bed (the last 35 of those minutes listening to my beloved snore contentedly.)

    so, last night at 2am when emily the cat emitted a huge shreak, I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter, and prepared to be up … forever.

    when I made it to the hallway, there was a rather startled (perturbed?) cat who had fallen asleep in front of the air conditioner intake.  the system obviously came on during the middle of her sleep cycle, and she was less than pleased at the disturbance.

    however, emily-the-cat-going-senile is not news … me patting her on the head for ten minutes while she calmed down, and then going *immediatley* back to sleep is the real story.

    four months ago, something as benign as movement would have (or more specifically, *did* have) me up for 45 minutes.  trauma (with the associated adreline rush) would have me up for two hours, minimum.

    but this time?  trauma.  10 minutes of head patting. back to sleep before my head hit the pillow.  

    I’m finally ready to be a father.

  • the five rules of baby names

    []
    photo.jpg, originally uploaded by [ecpark].
    there has been a lot of talk about baby names, now that we know the gender of baby sparklet.  

    we have our favorites, but are very much in the “exploratory” stage of the naming process … and we are still adding as many names to the list as we are removing.

    before last week, we had only discussed one rule of baby naming: 

    • the “last name” test —  each first name has a last name, and it’s got to match.  with a last name like “Parker,” that means the first name needs be something from the same Anglo school … and while “Mariella” is a beautiful name, “Mariella Parker” is just crazy.

    originally, the lady sparkler and i thought that one rule would guide us home, but now that we have spent some serious time talking about names, we have a couple new rules to add to the collection:

    • the “CEO” test — sure we want the baby to have a cute name worthy of babydom, but will it look rediculous on business cards in twenty years?  for some reason “Kaylee” comes to mind.
    • the “elementary school” test — will the child be able to spell her name by the start of school?  will the teacher be able to call her name without a phoenetic guidebook?  I think “Nevaeh” manages to fail both at once, as I can’t spell or say without serious assistance.
    • the “gift shop magnet” test — while personally i hate those personalized rainbow magnets you find in gift shops, I fervently believe sparklet should have the ability to find her name if she’s looking.  this means no bizzaro names (“Estrella”, “Willow”) and no bizzaro spellings (“Nataly”, “Madisyn”).
    • the “place in the family” test — if history (or the lady sparkler) is any indication, baby sparklet will be a force of nature … and likely the alpha dog of the household.  as a result, we can’t use any flowery names (“Lily”, “Emma”, “Ashley”) that are ultimately better suited for a second baby sparklet.

    I think those are all the rules, though there are one or two corollaries we are also keeping in mind:  

    • there has got to be a workable nickname (all I ever wanted in life was a nickname);
    • have to watch those initials (“Isabella Constance Parker” would have the initials “I See Pee”);
    • there will be no gender ambiguity (“Chris”, “Taylor”);
    • and no stealing names from nieces/cousins (which is a shame, because I *love* the name “Natalie”);
    • our M.O.H. won’t let us name the baby after the cat (which is also a shame, because “Emily” is my favorite name ever).

    aside from that, it’s open season.  let me know what you come up with … 

    Explore the Photo Set:
    Album: the lady sparkler, Sue and Jeremy (facebook)

  • ultrasound 2: the revenge of baby sparklet

    ECPA20090619_0002_lgnaturally, we didn’t find out that baby sparklet is a girl until yesterday morning during the ultrasound, but the dirty little secret of blogging is that i actually wrote the “it’s a girl” announcement post the night before the doctor’s appointment.

    (otherwise, it never would have been posted by 10:15 am … it takes me hours to write, and rewrite, and rewrite, and rewrite each post, so i would have had to skip work entirely on Friday and it still wouldn’t have been done until, you know, July.)

    instead, i just wrote two posts. one if it was a boy, and one if it was a girl. considering that, as parents, we won’t pick out both a boy’s name and a girl’s name, maybe the first way to embarass baby sparklet is to share what the post would have been had she been a he.

    my name would have been shannon, for the record.

    so while yesterday’s post was first, i just made it look like it address the actually appointment. sadly, that was not the case, and fwiw i feel horrible about my deception.

    my employers, however, feel much better about blogging during the work day … especially because they know how long it takes me to write anything.

    so, sparklet was awake and lively through the whole sonogram, though not overwhelmingly cooperative. we got to hear the heartbeat again, and this time we got a much better recording.

    about two minutes in, the sonogramologist (i make up words as i go along) asked if there was a bet about the gender. there wasn’t (we share the same checking account, so what’s the point) but before the doc could settle said non-existent bet, baby sparklet got shy and folded (her) legs right up.

    the waiting, and the poking and the prodding seemed to go on forever — probably even more so for both mother and baby.

    at one point, the doc called our beautiful-perfect-and-wonderfully-uncooperative baby “stubborn” to which i replied that she was obviously female, to which the lady sparkler replied that she was obviously our child.

    true ‘dat.

    so, while the doc kept it as suspenseful as she could, she let slip the female pronoun ten or twelve times before she finally managed to “motivate” baby sparklet into spreading them legs.

    the rest, as they say, is history. the world is saved from baby Aesclaypius (although i did promise that Aesclaypiana would be on our short list).

    now we just need to paint everything pink (kidding!) and come up with a wonderful, but anglo-friendly name.

  • it’s (going to be) a girl!

    photo
    well, 142 days into this thing, and we finally know the gender of our baby sparklet … she’s a girl.  and frankly, after 20 weeks of discussions, i am just glad she’s a something.the lady sparkler announced about six weeks into the pregnancy that the baby was going to be a girl.  (she never said how she knew it was a girl, but she just knew.)

    i assumed she was just playing the odds based off her ancestry … the lady sparkler is the eldest of three daughters, her mother is the eldest of three daughters, and both her grandmother and great-grandmother were the eldest of three daughters.

    that 13 girls in 5 generations.  her maternal line is obviously hostile environment for boy sperm.

    anyway, things became unbearable after i let slip that an old-wives-tale predicted that baby-mamas with girls in the pouch craved fruit, while those with boys craved meat. within two days she had “developed” a craving for anything strawberry that she could get her hands on, and it’s still going strong.

    of course, i “knew” that — in her fervency — she was dead wrong.  she was so certain it would be a girl, that i knew God would rise up and smite her … if for no other reason than the comedic value.

    in fact, she was so certain it would be a girl, that she promised lightingchickknits that if the baby turned out to be a boy, we would name him Aesculapius.

    for what it’s worth, i’m guessing that why she’s a girl, because while God likes a bit of Karma … he knew the ramifications of a male heir were truly severe.

    but, besides narrowly avoiding destroying the life of our child through name selection, today is a landmark for another reason — it is the launch of our pregnancy’s facebook and twitter strategies.

    it seems rediculous, but we actually spent a decent amount of time trying to figure out when it was “appropriate” to social market our little baby sparklet, and few issues sparked as much controversy with our friends to boot.

    I’m the end, we decided that it’s been 20 weeks now … which means that we are over halfway to having a real live baby sparklet to mortifyingly embarass.  so why not practice?

    with that in mind, here is the pregnancy so far:

    • the clothes don’t make the (wo)man — the lady sparkler, and her battles with the maternity-clothing-industrial-complex.
    • into the closet, pt 2 — the first true battle with our home renovation / nesting instincts.
    • ultrasound — baby sparklet looks great, sounds great, and is already over achieving … and we’ve got proof.
    • the longest twelve weeks — i realized early on that i had the potential do a lot of damage in the twelve weeks where i was supposed to avoid talking about the pregnancy.
    • yup, we’re pregnant — and yes, we are going to find out the gender, and yes, we are going to pick a boring, anglo-friendly name.
    • how i met your mother — the latest in a whole series of posts about how i met and married mama de baby sparklet … preserved for posterity, and mutual embarrassment each major holiday.

    and now that we have a gender, i am going to head down to the pub and lift a pint to the fact that there will be no baby Aesculapius asking me what kind of drugs we were on when we picked names.

  • how I met your mother: engagement, part 2

    (continued from part 1)

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

    immediately after the lady sparkler’s crazy Texas friends started haranguing her into haranguing me into marrying her, I thought to myself “you know, I do love her, and want to spend the rest of my life with her…”

    and so i decided to get a ring. that was December. I had the ring two weeks later.

    we were already talking about going to new York for my birthday (April) and it seemed like (at the time) my beloved’s marital haranguing might actually die down by then, at least long enough for me to propose uninterrupted.

    not so much.

    by February, i was sufficiently badgered to explain to her (in no uncertain terms) that from now on, each time she brought up engagement, i would move the “hypothetical” proposal back another month.

    by April, she had managed to add *fourteen* months to the engagement time line. so, while i hadn’t succeeded in her stifling the running of her mouth, i at least knew that a proposal was the farthest thing from her mind when we pulled into NYC’s Penn Station the second week of April.

    the same, however, couldn’t be said for me…

    I was a wreck, and constantly obsessed about the ring — where it was, and whether it had fallen out of the triple-bagged cocoon in which it was placed. to make matters worse, on the day i was going to propose (april 14th) it rained, and rained, and rained, and rained.

    i had already decided I couldn’t propose to the lady sparkler inside some silly, human-built structure because whatever we were inside could be torn down, or worse, turned into a starbucks.

    so, i decided i would do the deed in Central Park, which (obviously) wasn’t particularly rain-friendly, which meant that april 14th became april 15th, and engagement day became tax day.

    that afternoon, i marched my beloved around central park for over an hour, mostly because i couldn’t find a place to propose. i know it’s crazy, but there are a *lot* of people in new york — who knew? — and every single one of them seemed to be lounging around central park.

    before we left DC, i had asked my best friend from college (and future bridesmaid) if she had any suggestions about the whole engagement process. it turns out that her husband was such a mess when he proposed, that she was convinced (right up until she saw the ring) that he was dumping her.

    her solution? pull the ring out first.

    and, when we finally found a secluded spot, i did just that. the lady sparkler was resting for a moment on a mostly horizontal tree, when i pulled out the ring, and sat down beside her.

    she didn’t hear a single thing that i said. she was like the crow from the secret of n.i.m.h., when he sees mrs. frisbee’s medallion and says: “ooooooooooo, SPARKLY!”

    interestingly enough, to this day, she has no idea what *she* said either. (for the record, it was: “oh. my. god. are you, like, serious?”)

    i have what i said written down somewhere, but it was exactly what you would expect: “love, blah, blah, blah, so happy, blah, blah, life together, blah blah.” she replied, “yes, yes. oh my god, yes.” which — i would surmise — is just about as good of a response as you can get.

    speaking of which, on our way out of central park we ran into the back of another boy proposing to another girl, and it looked like he had arranged for a photographer and her parents to join in the festivities.

    unfortunately, she looked abjectly horrified. yeeeesh. at least *we* lived happily ever after.

    PHOTO: tulips, new york, new york.

  • how I met your mother: engagement, Texas-style

    dear sparklet,

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

    there are some stories that get better with age … and then there are stories that start out really $&#% funny, and stay really $&@#% funny.

    I hope this is the latter.

    a few years into the relationship, we made the honest mistake of going to Texas. sure, the lady sparkler’s parents were great, and her sisters were awesome … but her friends? lunatics.

    apparently, something in the water down there causes people to think that 18 months of dating is the maximum allowable before some kind of engagement is necessary, beit of the voluntary or shotgun variety.

    the sparklers, being a bit past that “threshold” had apparently tripped some kind of Texas state-wide alert system, where friends hold waves of rolling interventions to make sure “everything’s alright” and that the boy doesn’t have any “problems” that needed to be addressed (likely by overwhelming displays of machismo, or belt buckles, or both).

    by the end of the year, after a couple of months of interventions, the lady sparkler was in a tizzy … and her occasional, badly disguised, open-ended questions about an engagement timeline started getting more and more pointed (and more and more badly disguised).

    each time she would tizzy, we would talk … and each time we’d agree that *we* needed to have a timeline that worked for *us,* even if it was at odds with the posse was forming along the Rio Grande.

    I should pause.

    sure, Texans are ten-gallon-hat-sized-crazy for thinking 18 months of dating is suitable for long-term mate selection (which leads to all sorts of redneck/missing teeth/social Darwinist jokes which I will forgo due to likely readership demographics) …

    … but it is possible that my people (from the opposite side of the “war of northern aggression”) just might fall off the other end of the commitment scale. I have friends that dated for 8 years before the topic of marriage even came up, or (worse yet) were engaged for 5+ years before deciding whether they should actually tie the knot.

    so, from my worldview, i thought that I was being carefree to the point of reckless abandonment by thinking of proposing to a woman I had been dating for *only* two years. yet, all the while, the great state of Texas was negotiating with Chuck Norris to come shift my worldview for me.

    I digress …

    by February, my beloved had become as subtle as a three year old in the aisle of a toy store … and I was started to dig in, solely as a matter on principle. by the 27th time the issue was raised in those three months, I sat my beloved down, and we talked. it went something like this:

    me: “you know i love you. and i want you to know that you can propose to me anytime you like …”

    the lady sparkler: “ummmm.”

    me: “no, seriously. I know how much you want to get engaged… so you are welcome to go ring shopping, pick out something nice for me, and then get down on one knee and propose. I promise I’ll wear the ring everyday.”

    her: “uhhhhhh.”

    me: “what’s wrong, sweetie?”

    her: “I think I’d prefer if you proposed to me.”

    me: “interesting. okay, here’s the deal. let’s say we have a date for the hypothetical engagement, let’s call it X.”

    her: “is X soon?”

    me: “well, interesting that you mentioned that … each time you ask when it is, or suggest that X should be coming sooner, the hypothtical engagement date becomes X + 1 month.”

    her: “so, when is X then?”

    me: “i’m not sure, but it’s now TWO months later than it was three minutes ago.”

    of course, I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I had bought an engagement ring two months earlier and was just waiting for her to shut her yap about it, so it could be a surprise.

    continued …

    PHOTO: Statue, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York.

  • the clothes don’t make the (wo)man

    photo
    well, another weekend, another closet redone. this time mine (I hate being left out) and on the cheap (spent $39 on wood, saw-ed and installed myself).

    i have this pathological need to be doing stuff now, which i understand is probably a flavor of nesting … only coming from the more-militant-yet-somehow-less-productive wing.

    but the real news comes from the lady sparkler, who is showing enough (understatement!) to start considering actual maternity clothes instead of continuing to accessorize her regular jeans with rubber-band-as-belt-buckle.

    unfortunately, part of said awakening is finding out how much of a pain it is to shop for her new situation. truth be told, she hated shopping for regular clothes, so I guess no one was expecting her to suddenly hit a clothes-buying stride now that she is, er, buying for two.

    honestly, she’s a clotheshorse in her new found state, and looks great in everything she’s brought home. however, she’s begun complaining that certain clothes that lack definition (mommy mumu’s as it were) make her feel like she’s smuggling a watermelon out of the produce aisle.

    I’m sure I don’t know what that means, but I’m equally sure that she is sticking to a-lines and tailored-style clothes from here on out. (personally, I’m guessing that the maternity industry keeps some mumu’s on hand just to make sure the more expensive, tailored clothes fly off the shelves faster.)

    all that said, other than clothes and me pretending to be useful, we’re really just biding time until we know the gender.

    next sonogram is june 19th, and baby sparklet be well past the point where we can stare uncomfortably at his/her/its lower regions and make some sort of guess … provided, of course, that sparklet isn’t being bashful.

    16 days.

    PHOTO: recovery dinner from the weekend that was @ the heights, columbia heights, washington, dc.

  • how i met your mother: the first dates

    []
    dear sparklet,

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

    it’s pretty difficult to pick out one event that would qualify as a first date.

    the first thing we did together outside of work was go to Ben’s Chili Bowl. however, it was for lunch, and bridesmaid Mel was nice enough to chaperon that little event.  i am pretty sure those two things disqualify Ben’s from the “first date” competition.

    (that was also my first hot dog is several years, and i can still remember how my stomach ached after that was all over…)

    several weeks later, the lady sparkler and i went for a hike in Shenandoah national park … and barely survived. we made the mistake of hiking down (to some waterfalls on hazel mountain) instead of up.

    hiking downhill seemed like a good idea for the first six miles, and proved to be easy enough that we kept going farther than we had planned. we were having a great time talking, laughing, and poking t.l.s. with a stick (well, that last part was mostly me…)

    unfortunately, the six miles back uphill to the car sucked most of the will to live out of our poor, frail, out-of-shape, trying-to-impress-each-other-with-our-outdoorsyness bodies.

    we stayed on the trail two hours longer than we had planned, which meant what had been planned as a day event now required dinner, which was a first for us.

    and so, our first dinner date (however accidental) was at a ruby tuesday’s in warrenton on the way back to DC. to this very day, the sonora chicken pasta i had that night is just about my favorite comfort food on the planet.

    now, i was mostly a vegetarian when i met the lady sparkler … i did eat some meat (almost all of it was chicken), i never cooked any dead animals at home, and never ate meat more than once or twice a month (i guess you could say that i was a social carnivore.)

    so it was much to my surprise that after our hike, i found us talking about barbecue — which is not something I talk about much, so i’m guessing the lady sparkler must have brought up.

    to keep up with the conversation, i found myself telling her that she should come up to Glover Park to try the ribs at Rockland’s, regardless of the fact that i had no earthly idea what they tasted like and would probably faint watching someone eat them.

    she thought it sounded great.

    so, while i had successfully arranged our first “alone” date back in DC, i had also managed to create a rather awkward situation. whatever meat i was eating at the time, i can assure you that it wasn’t anything that looked like it was once alive, much less slaughtered, cooked over an open flame, and hacked into little strips.

    that next weekend, we met at Rocklands, and ordered at the counter.  me: a cute little array of sides (coleslaw, mac and cheese, potato salad).  my future wife: a huge slab of meat.

    and so, i watched my wife-to-be pack away half a rack of ribs.

    when finished, she proceeded to suck the marrow from the bones, and then lick her fingers clean. i kissed goodbye whatever vegetarian tendencies i had, right then and there.

    and the rest, as they say, is history.