We love you Tyla! Elijah and I made a video for you.
Uncle Dean and Aunt Sandy
A couple weeks ago, we had a great visit from Uncle Dean and Aunt Sandy. They came out a few years back with Mom and Dad for a week, but that was before we had our house and they had to rent a place to stay. This time we were able to be much better hosts and give them an actual guest room.
Thankfully the weather cooperated pretty well and we were able to go to Gas Works Park and the Ballard Locks on Sunday afternoon. It was great to see them again and introduce them to Elijah!
Five Years
Hey God, it’s me. Five years ago on this day, Tyla and I stood before you and promised our lives to each other. Just checking in to say that it’s all going well! Thank you for bringing us together!
Family Photos
While Mom and Dad were here, we tossed Dad the camera and took another crack at some family photos. This time we headed to Meydenbauer Park. Thanks for the help Mom and Dad!
And I’m pretty sure that Tyla needs to make this one her Facebook profile picture:
Log Boom Park
We had some gorgeous weather while Mom and Dad were visiting which made it convenient and fun to spend a lot of time at various parks in the area. Elijah loved playing on the different equipment and we loved sitting in the sunshine. One of the parks we visited was Log Boom Park and I thought I’d share some of the photos from that trip:
Kids’ Music
Elijah loves music. He especially likes to listen to it in the car and when each song ends, he immediately makes the sign for “more.” Finding kids music that doesn’t make my head explode is a challenge, but we’ve locked onto a couple good singers so far.
- Caspar Babypants – This is Chris Ballew who is/was the lead singer for Presidents of the United States. He lives in the Seattle area and now spends most of his time writing music for kids. He does lots of small, free shows which Tyla really enjoys attending. One of our favorite albums is his cover of a bunch of Beatles songs that have a fun kids message to them. I love the idea that Elijah and I are both enjoying listening to the same guy as we grow up!
- Raffi – This is more traditional kids music, but he has a good voice and does a good job with his songs.
What else is out there? What albums do you fire up when your kids want music? I’m especially looking for ones that adults don’t mind!
Elijah’s Vocabulary
There are so many times during the day when I stare at Elijah and wonder what he’s thinking. He jabbers all the time, but what is he telling us? He picked up some baby sign language pretty early on (“more”, “all done”, “milk”) but now he’s building up his verbal vocabulary too. Here’s a list of what he has under his belt so far:
| no | apple | cracker |
| thank you | juice | water |
| two | hi | car |
| truck | tractor | trash |
| diaper | bye bye | uh oh |
| oh no | shoes | cheese |
| slide | ball | keys |
| eye | Jesus | What’s that? |
| tree | Ike |
In fairness, some of these words are only distinguishable in context by Tyla and I but others are decipherable by the general public.
The list of words he understands is much bigger. I’m always talking to him, and sometimes I’m amazed at the complicated instructions he can actually follow. For example, one day I said, “Can you please pick up this piece of paper and throw it into the trash can?” I turned my back not expecting him to do it and when I looked again, he was toddling over to the trash can across the room. One of our favorites is that he understand “May I please have a hug?” Sometimes he’ll say “No”, but that’s fine because it just makes the hugs more enjoyable.
Point Defiance Zoo
Over Christmas break, we took a trip down to the Point Defiance Zoo. It’s farther away than Woodland Park but Elijah and I had never been there and it had been a long time for Tyla. Unfortunately the day we picked turned out to be extremely cold (well for Seattle anyway) so we didn’t stay super long, but we did enjoy ourselves. It was nice having an aquarium right inside the same park so that we could spend time inside. Elijah was interested in some of the animals but the best part was the big slide on the playground.
Normally I’d carry our big Canon dSLR on a trip like this, but I decided to only use our new Lumia Icon phones and see how that worked. I was extremely impressed! I missed not having the depth of field options to work with, but the photo quality was more than passable. The Icon takes 43 megapixel images which is kind of silly, but the point is that there is a lot of detail there so you can crop the photo and sort of get an analog to an optical zoom. The Icon also saves images in both JPEG and DNG (a RAW format) which made it nice for editing later in Lightroom. While none of the photos turned out spectacular, I didn’t regret leaving the dSLR at home this time.
Note that with this new website platform, you can now click on any image to view it full screen.
Christmas Ornament for 2014
Every year we get one new ornament that commemorates some part of the year. I forgot to write about it this year, but that’s kind of fitting because we forgot to BUY it too! We had meant to pick one up on our family trip down to Portland but ended up buying it from Etsy later in the year.
You can view our previous ornaments here, here, here, and here. It’s fun to have a tree that tells the story of our family!
Thankful
Thanksgiving seems like a good time to give an update on our Little Man who isn’t so little anymore. Elijah is now 17 months old. When he’s awake, he’s jabbering almost non-stop. We can’t understand 99% of what he’s saying but that doesn’t deter him. We can pick out a few words like woof, car, quack, daddy, etc. His best one is probably “thank you.” He’s really gotten the hang of this and even says it at the appropriate times. For example, if you take him to the grocery store, he says thank you every time the bagger puts a bag in our cart.
He walks quite fast now and can almost keep up a normal/slow adult pace for brief periods. He stops not because he gets tired, but because there are so many interesting things to see. Every plane that crossed the sky requires him to stop and point. We live in the normal landing pattern for SeaTac so this happens every few minutes.
He still hasn’t slept through the night and only has slept for more than 4 hours straight a couple times in his life. We go through periods where he wakes up between 5 and 5:30. Nighttime has probably been the toughest part of being a parent for me. I’m awesome at sleeping so I don’t know who he inherited this from.
Coming home is a treat for me as Elijah now recognizes the sound of the garage door and usually comes running to the door to great me with a big smile! I love you, Little Man! And I love you too, Tyla. We’re raising an awesome kid!