Brief Update

With the help of a few friends Mike managed to pack all of our stuff in the truck in just two days.
Several people came by to help load, help with babies as we worked away. Carl and Jim spent hours helping Mike load the big furniture, and Keith, Dorthe and Maya spent all of Tuesday helping us out. Thank you guys-- we couldn't have done it without you.

We sucessfully made the drive last night from Charleston to Downingtown PA. It was a long night but the boys slept for most of the time. It was eerie to see the cities at night as we made our way up the country-- D.C., Baltimore, and Wilmington. The drive went well, and we arrived on the doorstep of Mike's sister at 5:30 AM-- tired but THRILLED to have the drive completed.
After packing up the car we took one last trip to the Goodwill store down the street to make a donation. It was about a 2 minute drive. As we pulled into the parking lot James piped up: "Are we in Connecticut?!". Uuumm. No, buddy. Not even close.
We also heard word as we began the drive that my oldest sister Marilois went into labor. Check my middle sister Elizabeth's blog to see the photos.
We will continue to update about our move and supply photos of the new house when we arrive in Bloomfield, CT (on July 2nd).

Mother's little helpers

Solstice frog chorus

We came home Sunday evening from the Fitts after an afternoon of grilling,watching the Dutch team lose their semifinal to Russia in the Euro 2008, and big thunderstorms, to an extra loud chorus of frogs behind our house.

Beautiful. Though our little neighborhood is very Pleasantville, we have an amazing variety of wildlife because we back up to a lot of undeveloped land and a big county park. There are a pair of wood storks that we have seen since early spring and now four young hawks that hunt over our block almost every day. Also- egrets, herons, osprey, and cow birds. And ducks.
We had a great time with the Fitts on Sunday- they have a primo back porch/lounge for hanging out and watching a game.

Adventures of the frisbee family

We are only a week away from our move north! Some stuff is already packed up but every day we pack a few more boxes. I found some old photo albums and in the recent vein of posting old pictures I offer up these two bits of evidence from a , lets say, less structured period of my life. At one point, following a season of working in Denali, I found myself traveling from Seattle to Charleston in a 1977 Dodge van and the company of four good friends and one tight fitting grey unitard. Hilarity ensued. We often took breaks to stretch or just check out some scenery and our usual activity was frisbee to loosen up; not that we were an uptight group. Anyway, it didn't take much convincing for me to do a superman change into the unitard whenever we came across particularly interesting road signs. Exhibits A and B-

What's going on here right now

A blur of activities around these parts as we plan on leaving for CT in 2 weeks. James and Will are doing well in their own ways. James likes to have his towel wrapped up like this after bath.
The body pose.

Natural.


Mom's kimchi. Very good.


Willy antics. He is getting really funny in the last week; giving big fake smiles and headbanging and lots of standing up...

Old Photos

Recently, my friend Anne posted some great photos from highschool on her blog. Photos of us when we are young and awkward are always good clean fun and maybe become more so when we have our own kids and watch them develop. I would posit that when you begin with this:


things can only get less awkward. It did prompt me to dig up some of my favorite old photos, and while I have a few choice pictures from that adolescent/post adolescent period, I thought I would post some plain old favorites to begin-

This is my Mom, photographed by my Dad who must have started working for Eastman Kodak in NY by this time. She looks about 20- maybe they were just dating at this point? The car is a 1938 Buick Special 4-door sedan, according to my brief research. I thought it was his only brand new car but he would have been too young... it could be the neighbors even. The joke was always whether he was more interested in the car or the girl in the picture.

They did get married of course- and this is what their sons got up to eventually:



I don't know who tied him up, but that is my brother Jim in the glasses tied to the pole in our basement in NJ. This was before my time- that is Bill and Dor (you can just see her striped coveralls behind the pole) crawling around in the background. It seems like Tom would have been in on this, though I imagine it was my Dad that actually took the picture. I have had this framed on my desk for 15 years. I love the composition, the sand filled weights, the dehumidifier, the painted poles, and the other kids in the background painfully oblivious to Jim's plight as he struggles/tries to avoid the photographer's aim. This may seem excessively cruel to the non-Maier but trust me we all had moments like this; they just weren't all captured on film. The two brothers in that picture were eventually responsible for locking yours truly out in the February cold in his underwear. I truly forget why.

Again in NJ, in front of our hexagonal mailbox (and one of Larry's many Saabs) on Arnold Court; this is me in my brother Larry's Navy flight gear. A lot of Darth Vader sound effects in that face mask. I always had the very coolest visions of piloting my own Tie-fighter (or occasionally an X-wing) in this gear.

Finally, still probably my favorite car- the 1971 Ford Pinto- in Kermit green.



Notice the red gas cap from a junkyard- I lost that thing all the time. I'm pretty sure Scott Phillips took this while we were driving in Roswell. Sometimes I remember people's cars from high school more than important personal details. John Sabol had a blue CJ-7 and than inherited his Dad's sweet Datsun 280Z (also blue). Casey Schaeffer had a light green 80s Honda Accord, Tom Schultz occasionally drove an orange Karmann Ghia. Camille had a brand new red Pontiac. Charlie had his Mom's Toyota 'minivan', I'm pretty sure Scott and Virginia both drove Oldsmobile Cutlasses and my neighbor Jeff Myers ('Jabo') drove a brown Mazda RX-7. Anne, did you drive a blue Accord station wagon?

First call to Poison Control

What a day it has been-- first let me say-- everyone is absolutely fine.

A friend and her son came over for a play date this AM-- in the midst of our playing my friend handed her son a big bottle of generic Acetaminophen that was sitting on a shelf to shake like maraca. No big deal-- our boys have certainly held a child-proof bottle of meds before. In this case, however, my friends kid was just kind of shaking it about and then put it down. She took it from a high shelf and I guess (given the later results) that it was not snapped closed properly. They left about an hour later, and with both boys playing on the floor I took the cushion off the high chair to brush off the bits of Cheerio and cracker I'd been seeing lurking in the crevices. A few seconds later I looked down to see Willy sitting with an open bottle of Acetaminophen with a handful of pills on the floor around him. Hmmmm. Not good. I checked out his mouth, and couldn't see anything. No bits and pieces seemed to be around his mouth-- no powder, nothing.
I tried to think as logically as possible as I looked under the sofa to make sure no pills were in the open environment. First, I thought, okay if he had this in his mouth for any period of time and was sucking on it-- we would know. He would be making a face, trying to spit it out, something like that. This is the kid that barely eats the meat-veg mix-- he would not silently eat something bitter and foul, right. Then I reminded myself that Will is not much on the 'swallowing food' thing. He will eat completely mashed baby food, but our few forays into small bits of apple and cheese have turned into gag-able moments. So, with this reasoning in mind I thought if he'd tried to get a grown-up size pill down I would have heard the gagging.

Of course thinking logically is one thing, and being worried about the little bug sitting in front of you is another. So, I called Mike to get some reassurance. He was thinking along the exact lines as I was, but still I wondered 'what if'. So, after calling Mike I tried to google, something like "baby eat Acetaminophen signs and symptoms", but didn't get much.

So, thinking of cousin Michael and the fireplace incident, I called Poison Control. They were great, of course-- really helpful and reassuring. They told me if Will had 3.5 pills or more it would be toxic based on his weight. They asked questions like, "is it possible to tell from the container how many are missing"... uummm.. the reason it was on the shelf in the first place is that we take it a lot-- and it is a bottle of 500, so that wouldn't work. The most helpful thing they did was tell me what signs and symptoms he might experience if he'd ingested the pills. Vomiting, stomach upset, lethargy. Ever since the incident he had been playing happily, and I really got the sense that he'd not had any-- but home alone with no car I was most frightened of what my possibilities might be in an emergency-- Mike was at least 30 minutes away by car. I couldn't think of a friend closer in driving distance than that. I resolved to call 911 if Will showed any symptoms.

By this time it was approaching nap time, and the poison control lady said to feed him his regular bottle, put him down for a nap, but keep an eye on him. He fell asleep, and she called mid-nap and told me to go wake him up to make sure all was well. It is nearly physically impossible for me to wake up a sleeping baby. About that time I heard him coughing-- did I mention they both have a cough and runny nose-- and he was also hitting a sort of mid-nap crying spell. At that point he was crying and coughing, so much so that he gagged and spit up a bit. Uugh. Of all the days to gag yourself coughing-- please not on the one day I am monitoring you for poisons, buddy! As I got him all cleaned up it was clear he was not vomiting-- but that this was just a weird coincidence, but still I was TOTALLY FREAKED OUT, so I called Mike for about the 5th time and he decided to come home. The heat index was 106 Fahrenheit, so he was ready to call it a day. As I played with Will awaiting Mike's return I felt again that he had not had anything, but that at this point was just a tired baby with a bad cough. But what a day.

Beetlejuice

One of the vegetables that we have a bit of trouble integrating into our diets is the very healthy and powerful beet. Recently, however, we found that it makes a great juice if you add a couple of apples to sweeten it it. Will was very enthusiastic about trying Dad's concoction.