Markets and Mayhem

For some reason, the last two days have seemed much more chaotic than normal. It might be watching Congress flub the bailout (I say flub not because the plan was worth passing - what do I know?, but because by not passing it they seemed to have made things worse by lowering investor confidence.) and taking extra time yesterday to review all of our investments and make some carefully thought out changes. It might be that I have a tough class ahead to teach this week and I am as of 1:30 on Tues still not prepared. It might be that we're trying out a new schedule with Jake at school and while he seemed to love it, now he's protesting. It might be some emergency phone calls I've needed to have this week for one of the nonprofit boards I'm on. And it might be that watching Abby now requires gymnastics to keep up with her as she tries to pick up everything she sees and stand up against every vertical surface!

In any case, I'm tired already and it's only Tuesday. Wish me luck getting through this week!

Abby is Crawling!

I don't have good pix yet, but yesterday morning I put her on one side of the den and walked out of the room for 20 seconds. When I came back, she was on the other side, sitting up, happily cooing to Didi, Jake's favorite teddy bear, who is normally off limits to her. Boy did she look happy!

She repeated her trick throughout the day with huge smiles and has been clearly enjoying the mobility and access to so many things. Yesterday she even starting pulling herself up to a near standing position on the furniture. We've scrambled, putting up gates and getting the pack and play set up so we can put her in it when we leave the room.

She's also signing like a madwoman. She does "more" and "milk" whenever she's hungry!

For Some Election Fun...

click here to try the Match - O- Matic!

A Must-Read for West Wing Fans

This is priceless!
Aaron Sorkin Conjures a Meeting of Obama and Bartlet

"And... I'm gonna be forty."

Harry: When?
Sally: Someday.
Harry: In eight years.
Sally: But it's there. It's just sitting there, like some big dead end. And it's not the same for men. Charlie Chaplin had kids when he was 73.
Harry: Yeah, but he was too old to pick them up.

Well, it's here. In 2 days, I will be officially middle-aged. If I live to be 80, given my family's history, I will feel very lucky. So this is at best a half way mark. Kind of serious stuff!

My main concern of the last decade was having kids before it was too late. I wanted two, and now I have a matched set and they are absolutely beautiful, inside and out. My family is my center and my joy. That is a triumph, given where I was at age 33, an overworked, single New Yorker, cleaning death dust from my apartment. Finding Mike when I did was the key to all if it. He and I had the same vision, from the very beginning.

The first few years were a whirlwind. Buying a house, getting married, having Jake. And then upending our life to create a strong base for the kind of family life we wanted. We planned it all out. My Manhattan achievement-oriented friends were kind of shocked at our exodus, and admitted they wished they had the chutspah to do it too (money was not the barrier, believe me, for any of them).

And as for our grand Virginia experiment, well, it's been three years and it doesn't feel all that experimental anymore. In fact, you know it's not when you kind of wish it were time to move again because the closets would all get cleaned out. But we're not going anywhere. And honestly, I've never before felt as part of a community as I do here (thanks mostly to our amazing moms' club. You wonderful women know who you are!!!).

I have a little box full of index cards I made when I lived in Brooklyn. At around age 30, following instructions from a little book with a blue cover, I sat in a cute French cafe around the corner from my apartment, sipped cafe au lait and brainstormed all the things I wanted to do in life. Then I drew a crayon picture of a sun rising over mountains and a little wandering river/lake and pasted it on the box. Prophetic, huh?

Last year I looked through the cards and realized I had had very short-term thinking. I have accomplished nearly every one of my goals from age 30.

So, I guess that's what being 40 really means to me - it's about time to fill up that box with some new cards!

Apple Picking

I've been trying to do special Sunday morning things with the kids. Last week, Jake and I went to the lake beach alone and had a blast in the 85 degree weather. It was absolutely perfect - warm, breezy, the water cool at first but quite comfy after a few minutes, and he and I spent a fantastic morning playing with his floatie fish, tossing around a very wet nerf football, and digging a vast and complex network of irrigation tunnels.

Just one week later and I'm so glad we did the beach when we did. It was 55 degrees this morning and sunny but very crisp. Jake, Abby and I went to Carter's Mountain Orchard to do some apple picking. Jake had been wanting to go for some time so he was ecstatic. Add a few apple cider donuts, some kids to talk to, and some new technology to explore (we used a very long and heavy apple picker to get our Galas from the tops of the trees) and it turned into a great outing for him. Abby wasn't so happy to be in her stroller most of the time, but perked up when we shared tiny pieces of the donuts with her.

Here's Jake, among the Galas.

Jake and Abby, sharing the fruits of our labor:

We took turns playing worm:

The Red Delicious were closer to the ground and much easier to pick:

This is my Montessori child finding himself a "work" at the orchard. He figured out how to get the wagon sides all down and then worked to get them to all stay up again. Very patiently.

And this is my not-yet Montessori child wondering how in the world you eat a gourd!

At home, we had homemade apple juice, bread with apple butter, and made our special baked apple pancake recipe, one of Jake's favorites. I got this from a bed and breakfast cookbook and highly recommend it!

Baked Apple Pancake

2 Tbs butter

2 apples, peeled, cored and sliced ( we used 4 small ones)

1/2 c. brown sugar (we use a brown sugar and splenda blend)

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 c. flour (we used whole wheat pastry flour)

1/2 c milk ( we used soy milk)

2 eggs

a pinch salt

Melt the 2 TBS butter in a 9" pie plate. Mix apple slices, sugar, cinnamon and butter in a bowl. In another bowl, combine the flour, milk, eggs and salt. Pour into prepared pie plate. Place apple slices flat on top of the batter. Bake for 15 minutes at 425 degrees. Serve immediately.

I told Jake we ate so many apples for lunch that he might turn into an apple during his nap. He said, no that would never happen, but after a moment told me that after he dies, an apple tree might grow out of him!

Abby's First Doll

Abby got her first dolly from Grandma Fran last week. She took one look at it and didn't let it go the rest of the day. She kept smiling at it, laughing to it, and swinging it around. She didn't even want to let go of Dolly to eat dinner!

The next day was not as intense, but she still played with it a great deal. In the last few pix below, she's also wearing one of her cute new outfits from Grandma too. Thanks, Grandma Fran!

Abby Likes Her Jumperoo

Abby got a new Jumperoo from a friend last week. I've never seen her smile so big, so continuously. It's a hit!

Why...

...would a conservative vote for Obama? See this, an interesting and most unexpected post:

http://qurl.com/r518d.

(and thanks to Bob M. for posting it on Facebook)

Abby is 8 Months Old!

And she is happy about it!!

Life is good. She likes finger food (does a great pincer grasp on her puffs now) and still adores her bottles, which she sometimes holds herself (but has trouble getting it high enough unless she's reclining).

She likes playing on the floor and will do so for hours, reaching and rolling and then sitting up in new places to check out the scenery. She goes up on all fours and rocks but has not crawled yet.

She babbles much of the day, mostly "da da" and "puh, puh" sounds. I have heard her say something that sounded just like "Hi Jake" to Jake and "Hi Teddy" to a teddy bear. She makes the sign for milk while drinking her bottle and has started to seem to be asking for milk with it at times!

She loves company and crowds. She and I have several face touching games and she'll try them with strange children with no hesitation. (At playgroup today 2 year old Rudy was mighty offended by her trying to grasp his nose!)

She loves her aquarium crib toy and will put herself to sleep while watching her "fishies" several times a day. She is generally a very good sleeper, though some days she just refuses to nap and stays up nearly all day!

She is becoming more aware, and thus more skittish, of new people and when tired or scared, she will reach her whole body out to grab onto me. She loves Jake and Daddy and me and will beam at any of us at a moment's notice. She loves her babysitter too and reaches for her when she sees her.

She is still a very big girl, and wears a dizzying multitude of sizes - yesterday her pants were 9 months and her top was 18 months. Many of her 12 month clothes are too small.

For a full belly laugh, all you have to do is blow kisses into her belly or play peekaboo with a stuffed animal. It gets her every time.

In short, she is a very happy 8 month old!

A Nice Photo from Grandma L's Visit

Sept 11, Then and Today

I wanted to write a post on 9/11, but was down at Duke teaching all day and didn't have a chance.

So here, belatedly, are some of my thoughts...

As someone who lived in NYC for over 13 years and was still living there in 2001, I'll always remember 9/11 very viscerally. I was lucky enough to be out of town that day, and returned two days later to my apartment in Brooklyn , which was across the water from the world trade center. Walking in, I discovered I had left the windows in my top floor apartment open and everything I owned was covered in a layer of yellow/gray powder. It looked like what you'd find in an urn. Needless to say, I did a thorough cleaning. Now my nest was back to normal. But the problem persisted whenever I went outside. There were flyers on people's doors about people missing, candles lit everywhere in memoriam for dead loved ones, and a hugely increased police presence in my Italian American neighborhood, which bordered a neighborhood full of fabulous Middle Eastern food shops. All of a sudden, those shop owners and their families were being viewed with suspicion. The police kept going up and down the streets, and one shop owner closed his shop after being threatened by some overzealous Americans. Overnight, I was living in a funereal police state. It was unreal. About that time, I met Mike and we both agreed, me quite readily, that we did not see living in NYC as the path for our future. I wanted out, and fast. I was also becoming very impatient to start the family life I knew I wanted and truthfully, NYC was not the place to do it for me. So, 9/11 was not the reason, but was a good catalyst for a lot of really critical personal decisions in my life. I didn't want to wait for the next emergency. I wanted to start living the life I wanted, and now.

Fast forward 7 years and here I am, living as far from multi-ethnic Brooklyn as I could possibly be, with an adoring husband, two beautiful children, in a place where I can leave home without locking the door and know that nothing will happen. Lulled into a false sense of security? Actually, I think not. I've been to NYC and San Francisco and Washington, DC and many other places since 2001, have probably taken over 100 airplanes and ridden over 500 subways since then, and I have to say, the world seems pretty safe right now to me. The first month in NY every time a plane was heard over your head, everyone on the street looked up apprehensively, but that no longer happens. I know we have a lot of people working on terrorism that help make that so, but I also know how easy it is to harm people on the subway, on any day, at any time, and the fact that this has not happened, NOT EVEN ONCE, since 9/11 gives me pause. I think we are MUCH MUCH more terrorized by the notion of people hating us than we are in danger of experiencing their hate first hand.

Cynically, I think it has been good government policy for the last 7 years to keep the fear level up, to help legitimize decisions that were made for other reasons. And then optimistically, I think we should all feel a great that 9/11 was seven whole years ago and nothing like it has happened since on American soil. I can tell you my friends who made it out of smoke-filled buildings in downtown Manhattan on that day to discover they couldn't see their hands in front of their faces would never have believed it would turn out this way. I didn't either.

But it has. Perhaps all we have to fear is fear itself. I do hope so.

Matt Damon on Palin

Ok, this one is just funny. You have to stay in until he starts talking about dinosaurs...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anxkrm9uEJk

Steinem on Palin

She still has it. Almost 40 years after chronicling her stint as a playboy bunny, Gloria Steinem comes out solid and convincing on what is wrong with Sarah Palin. Read her LA Times editorial, Wrong Woman, Wrong Message here.

And thanks to Jane C., one of my most wonderfully unabashedly woman supporting friends, for sending this to me. Jane was the program director of my junior year living in Strasbourg, France, and has helped many a young woman figure out how to make the most of life's opportunities. She's down (way!) south recovering from Gustav, and I wish her the very best.

Abby and Jake

Pretty Girl

MY First Day of School

I survived my first day back at Duke yesterday. Had a great time, actually. I found a new hotel that has a pool and managed to swim both Wed night and Thurs morning, which was great for my back. Yesterday, I spent the whole day with staff from CASE, hired a research assistant, got keys to my new office, met with my teaching assistant, had wonderful meals, and made the trip back so fast I got to stop and shop a bit at Short Pump. I got home about 11pm totally and completely exhausted, but I had a great day. Jake and Abby and Mike seemed to have had a great day too, with lots of help from Tara! Now I can rest up and get ready to do it all again next week, when my class starts!

And now we're all excited - Grandma Lynne arrives this afternoon!

The End of Summer

OK, it's official. I ran into traffic on the way to and from the gym this morning at 6:15am! The impatient nasty tailgating kind. Not what you normally find around the lake during our lazy summers. And I saw Melissa putting Aiden on the schoolbus on my way home. So cute.

It's now 8:15 and Jake is off to his first early morning of school and Abby's downstairs playing with Tara. I leave for my first trip to Duke tomorrow. I don't even know if I have any dress pants that fit me. My head is swimming with to-dos.

Yep, summer's over.