Our Oldest Daughter is Eight.

Eight years ago yesterday, Elizabeth gave birth to Sonora. In some ways, it seems longer than that; in other ways, it feels shorter. Either way, our lives have been enriched by having her in them. One of her major birthday wishes this year was that she get to visit her cousin Kadee in Richland, so that's what we did. We had a party there. It was fun, it was silly, and it was Harry Potter themed (thank you Vanessa and Goodwill for the costumes).

Sonora has read the first four HP books and would very much like to read them all, but Elizabeth and I think it best to have her wait a while, perhaps a couple of years, before letting her read the next few books. Adolescence, I think, will come soon enough without us helping it along. Still, there really is something magical, adventurous, and child-like in the first few HP books. As we drove the two-and-a-half hours home, Sonora and Rowyn watched the first HP movie (one of her birthday presents) for the first time. Sonora couldn't help pumping her fists with excitement when Harry caught the snitch, and she cowered anxiously during some of the frightening scenes (I couldn't see Rowyn in the rearview mirror, so I'm not sure what her reactions were). Elizabeth and I are glad for the sense of adventure, magic, and discovery these and other stories bring into our kids' lives.

Here's a thank you Trudie and Basilios (Trudie's husband) for letting us crash at their house and have a party there. Basilios, Adam, Jocelyn, and Kadee were enthusiastic participants in the Hogwarts revelry, and that helped make the party fun and memorable. Oh, and the cake tasted superb.

Here are some photos:

Bellatrix and Harry: Reconciled at last.

A happy Hermione and Harry

Here we have Severus (with his picnic blanket cape and biting-dinosaur wand), a very serious Sirius, Bellatrix (with more fitting hair than earlier), Hagrid in braids, Harry, Hermione, Rowyn Unicorn-Face, a muggle toddler, a stray pumpkin from Hagrid's garden, and an un-winged dwarf hippogriff.

Elizabeth baked the cake at home and packed it up with our other gear, and then she constructed it at Trudie's house. It was a rich chocolate cake with a whole-cherry filling and a whipped-cream/cream cheese frosting. Delicious. Sonora's wand was a last-minute addition; I ripped it from a sage brush plant behind Trudie's house. I'll make her a better one soon.

"We used to have such happy times together, before we were grown up."

This is a quote from a book I'm reading--The Lost Summer of Loisa May Alcott. The author quotes Alcott at the beginning of each chapter. This quote dug into me like a sliver. I've been thinking along these lines for several years now. There is such a sadness that comes with adulthood. Friendships dissipate. Magic disappears. An awareness of the awfulness of some people rises, but at the same time, so does an empathetic realization that awful people had awful things done to them, that they are complex, hurting, problematic, confused people. So I can't even hate the subjects of my disgust. People fight. Love fades. Spouses cheat and justify and defend themselves. Children suffer and learn and incorporate the imperfections of their elders.

There was a time when I played in a willow patch. We hewed out hallways and rooms with machetes. Our ceiling was the sky, and leafy stalks were our walls.

Now that willow patch is mostly dead and dry. The stalks seem so finite, and not at all encompassing.

This is more of a nuts and bolts entry. I'm not expecting this post to be enlightening or even interesting, but I'm feeling an urge to blog, and I also know I need to record a few things that have happened this summer. I virtually never write in my journal anymore, so this is the place, I guess.

Amaya turned a year old in mid-July. Right around that time, I was putting her to bed and she was lying, belly-down, on my chest. As she relaxed there, drifting away from wakefulness, I noticed with some sadness that she no longer fit in that space between the bottom of my chin--where she had nuzzled her head--and the top of my leg. Previously, her whole body had fit on my trunk. I could cradle her whole self there in a warm, protective embrace. Now she's too big. Her legs dangle down. She doesn't fit right. What made me sad was the realization that she'll only get older. She'll only keep growing. Last night, I took over the nighttime routine with Amaya. We're night weaning her, and this is the easiest way. A couple of times when I tried comforting her in the night by rubbing her belly and back, she pushed away my hands, swatted at them as if they were mere annoyances. In some ways, she's already beginning to separate from us.

Sonora has become an avid reader. In a few months, a she threw a switch and went from sounding out words laboriously to reading book after book with relative fluency. It had a lot to do with Elizabeth doing sight-word drills with Sonora, but still the transformation has been stunning and fun. Sonora has read most every children's book in our house at least once (we have quite a few, perhaps 50) and she is plowing through the local library collection.

In the same vein, Rowyn has become a puzzle maniac. She'll do two to seven puzzles per day. Luckily, she hasn't bored of doing the same puzzles over and over. We only have about fifteen puzzles in her ability level (20-50 piecers), but she just takes them out each day and goes to it. It's cute how she sits splayed-legged on the floor and ponders each piece before placing it. Sometimes she'll get out several puzzles and sort of roam from one to the other throughout the day. This is annoying because it litters the limited floorspace with puzzle pieces and her obstacle of a body, but mostly I'm excited by this new development.

A brief sketch of the happenings of the summer: We went to Utah and spent time with Elizabeth's family. It was fun. The kids hung out with cousins, grandparents, and aunts and uncles. Elizabeth and I talked and connected with her siblings and their spouses and kids. I went mountain biking (thanks, Bryant), running (thanks Howard), rock climbing (thanks Kaleb) and hiking (thanks Brad). On our way back home, the trusty white Eagle Summit Corey and Vanessa gave us eight years ago finally mostly died. It limped home and is still limping, but it's only being employed on on an as-needed basis. We don't really have the money to buy anything else or to fix the Eagle, so on the days I don't bike, I think I'll use the Eagle as a commuter car for work until it fully dies.

After Utah, I went to a conference in Philadelphia, which was the first time I had ever been back East. I enjoyed the city and liked exploring and familiarizing myself with the many vital historical sites. I went jogging several times after midnight because it was rather hot there and because the local time was three hours ahead of Pacific Time, to which I'm now adjusted. Shortly after returning from Philly, as part of a team of nine men, I attempted to climb Mt. Rainier, the most heavily glaciated mountain in the lower 48. We made it to Camp Muir at 10,000 feet, but the weather soured. We camped and hoped, but ended up coming back down the next day rather than risk a dangerous ascent. The views were beautiful, however, and the experience was worthwhile. The hike to Muir was a long, exhausting climb up seemingly endless snow and glacial fields. The men I went with, including my brother-in-law Corey and my friend from the mid-90's Harwood, were pleasant, supportive of each other, well-prepared, and enjoyable to be around.

Then I spent a week revising this young adult novel I've been working on for two years. I wanted to change a few things, but a few turned into many. I put at least 30 hours that week into revisions. I'm waiting to hear back from a handful of query letters I sent out. I hope hope hope a decent-sized publishing house buys this book, that many people read it, enjoy it, think about it, and discuss it. I've greatly enjoyed my journey with Lahora (the novel's protagonist).

While I'm going through that process (querying, waiting to hear back, tweaking my query, sending it out again, sending out the manuscript and waiting to hear back, etc.), I think I'll be turning back to nonfiction and writing a memoir. The house I grew up in, the one that most feels like "home" to me, blew up a few weeks ago. A gas leak. And I've been sort of melancholy since then. A place can hold memories. It can be a bank of experiences and just knowing that these places are around can be comforting. A major one for me was this home. And it's gone. I think I'll write as a way of holding on to the memories that flew out into the world in a flaming ball. Plus that will help keep me occupied while I pursue publication of Kissing the Lion, the YA fantasy I mentioned above.

Hailish Homonyms

A few weeks ago, Elizabeth began teaching Sonora about homonyms. The concept really caught on and several times per day since then, Sonora has been noting words that sound the same, but have different meanings. Elizabeth was keeping a running list on the fridge for Sonora, but the list outgrew its piece of paper. It's been fun experiencing with her the joy of discovering homonyms, especially when it leads to unintentional puns.

Today, Sonora was listening to the audiobook version of Because of Winn-Dixie. The woman reading the book employs an exaggerated southern accent, such that a word like "spell" is pronounced "spay-uhl." When Sonora got to the point in the book that describes how 14-year-old Litmus volunteered to fight for the South in the Civil war and then discovered that war isn't a romantic adventure, but is an awful hell, she ran in to tell Elizabeth she had discovered another homonym.

"Mom," she said, "there are two types of hail. There's the hail that falls from the sky, and then there's war. It's also hail."

Three Children

You know, I never really believed people when they claimed having a third kid made things disproportionately harder. The claim seemed sort of self indulgent in a pity-me sort of way. But I'm finding it to be true. It's not something I can really put my finger on, either. It's almost as if that third child brought with her a time-devouring salve and smeared it on every aspect of our lives.

Let me backpedal a bit, though. I don't mean to blame our baby for all this. She exceeds my idea of an angelic kid. She almost never cries. She smiles at almost anyone and then smiles more when they return the grin. She is happy to be held, happy to sit, happy when her sisters play with her, happy when the cat sits near her, happy...most of the time. She likes most of the foods we've recently begun introducing her to (just tonight, Elizabeth cheered her fondness for avocados: "Yay, we're three for three!" Apparently, it is important to Elizabeth that our kids like avocados). And so forth and so on. It's not as if she is an unpleasant addition to our family. But an addition she is.

The third car seat makes both passenger cars feel cramped, especially if we drive for more than 15 minutes. Rowyn has just stopped taking naps, but it doesn't really matter, because Amaya still naps a few times a day, which makes any excursion hectic for Elizabeth, who is always aware of when she needs to be home to get the baby to sleep. At night, the bedtime routine takes three hours. We start getting Amaya ready for bed just before six. Rowyn needs to be asleep at seven. Sonora usually falls asleep between 8 and 8:30. And before all that, we've got to cook dinner and eat. So our evenings are a fairly frenzied race from the time I get home from work until all the kids are asleep. There isn't a lot of gown-up time for Elizabeth or me because we're usually cleaning up the house, catching up on work or other errands, and preparing for bed ourselves so that we can get a reasonable amount of sleep.

And this last point--sleep--has been the real killer. This is the area in which Amaya is less than superb. She wakes up often (sometimes every hour) throughout the night, and rarely sleeps past 5:30 in the morning. Rowyn has been waking up three to four times a night, sometimes screaming and thrashing about making all kinds of weird irrational demands. If she wakes in one of these fits, it takes at least an hour to get her calmed down and another half an hour to get her back to sleep. Sonora is a super champ sleeper these days, but the other two are making up the difference. Elizabeth and I are both night people who enjoy sleeping in. But we've had to amend our ways and we are enjoying life a little bit less because of it. When one of us does take some "me" time by staying up late, we invariably sleep far too little and spend the whole next day grouchy (Elizabeth), groggy and stupid (me), or both.

There are other ways our lives have been complicated by having a third child (by American standards, our house is quite small for a family of five), but I'm beginning to feel like a spoiled brat as I think about poor me with a really great wife and three wonderful healthy kids living together with plenty of food to eat in a warm, dry house with electricity and running water. So I'm going to stop complaining now.

I promised a friend I'd post a recent picture of our family on this blog. Problem is, we don't take that many pictures of ourselves (by today's standards). If Elizabeth and I didn't have sisters and sisters-in-law who love photography, we would have rather few quality photos of any of us. Below are a few photos we've snapped over the last couple of months.

I'm not quite sure what was going on in the photo below, but I'm guessing Sonora was behind it. She builds forts, beds, hideouts, unicorn traps, etc. all day long all throughout the house.

Besides avocados, Amaya is fond of several other foods, including rice noodles.

Elizabeth kept the older two busy for hours transforming one of our front windows into "stained glass." I hope when we eventually clean the artwork away, the glue truly is water soluble.

The Newest Addition

When we were gearing up for Rowyn's birth at home, I was nervous. It was to be our maiden voyage into dangerous new territory, and it took me several months (and one movie) to adjust to the idea. Things went really well, dreamily even, so I had no objections to having our third baby at home; in fact, I have become a quiet advocate of at-home child birth, so good was our experience with Rowyn.

This delivery, while it went well, didn't go as smoothly as the previous one. Part of the reason for this is that the pregnancy in general was more challenging. Elizabeth was having heavier than normal contractions months too early. She had to be on partial bed rest for a while. Then the contractions stopped altogether, no Braxton Hicks contractions, nothing. As the delivery date drew nearer, the contractions started again. Several nights right around the baby's due date, Elizabeth would have regular contractions for a few hours. "This is it," she would think, and her adrenaline would rise. She would get up and start preparing for the baby or would just clean the kitchen or bathroom. One night, determined not to have another false start, she went for a walk at 3:00 a.m., striding alone along the gravel streets of our town hoping to get that baby out. But the contractions stopped.

She wouldn't have been all that anxious except that her parents, sister, and sister's three kids were coming, and, while she was very glad for them to come visit us, she didn't want to have the baby while they were here. Our house is very small and a home birth would have been rather uncomfortable for her with everyone there. If she didn't have the baby until after they were gone, it would have made the momentous visit sort of anti-climactic for them.

Her family left from Utah the morning of July 15th to come visit us. It is about a twelve hour drive. Elizabeth's contractions also started early that morning, but this time they didn't stop. At around nine in the morning, we loaded the kids into the stroller and walked around town, being sure to go up the steepest, longest hills we could find, starting with the one right next to our house. By the time we got near the top of that hill, Elizabeth's contractions were intense enough for her to have to stop and breathe through them before continuing. "I think it's working," she said. We kept walking for about an hour, going up that hill three more times, and then Elizabeth could tell labor was starting and it wasn't going to stop until she had the baby.

She called our midwife in Spokane and described her contractions and the midwife confirmed that the baby was on her way. Because the drive is so long from Spokane, she called a colleague in Moscow, Idaho to see if she could come over in case the baby came early.

Elizabeth had all the birth supplies neatly bundled and organized in boxes and bins in our closet. I popped a bag of soft towels into the oven to sterilize them and warm them for the baby. The contractions were pretty intense and painful now and I suggested that Elizabeth get in the hot tub. The problem was that it was mid July and a 98 degree hot tub doesn't sound very refreshing when it is 95 degrees and very sunny outside. I devised a sort of sun shade out of the hot tub cover to make the heat a little less intense and she climbed in. Even being as hot as it was, she said it was much, much better to have her contractions in the water.

A friend of ours who lives at the top of the same hill Elizabeth had been marching up earlier that day came down and got Rowyn and Sonora, who love going to her house. This was a relief, as it allowed me to focus solely on Elizabeth and allowed her to focus on having the baby. The midwife from Moscow arrived around the same time and checked in with Elizabeth, who was doing okay but feeling a little hot. She began standing up between contractions to cool off. Margaret, our midwife from Spokane, arrived a few minutes later and suggested we add some cold water to the hot tub, which was a good idea.

Soon, two more midwives in training arrived, so we had a grand total of four midwives on hand.

When Elizabeth got the urge to push, she climbed out of the hot tub and came inside, which was no small feat since her contractions were heavy, painful, and coming every two minutes. Just inside the front door, she had to kneel on the floor when one of them hit. We got her into the bedroom after that, and she labored the rest of the time in there.

Up to this point, things had been progressing well. Elizabeth was a little frightened because she hadn't done as much mental, emotional, or physical preparation as she had with the other two deliveries, and I think that as the pain increased, so did a nagging doubt that she was somehow not ready for this. To add to her fears, the baby was posterior and didn't seem to want to come out very quickly. "Is everything okay?" Elizabeth asked a few times in between pushing.

The baby's heartbeat was okay and things looked fine, though the baby seemed reluctant to make her exit. At times, I felt a little useless. Except for a brief stint lying on the bed, Elizabeth labored for the most part kneeling on the floor at the end of the bed while resting her upper body on the bed. The two midwives in training sat on the floor on either side of her while Margaret moved about coaching, examining, and guiding things. I stayed near Elizabeth's head. I asked her how I could help, but there wasn't much to do: a sip of water; a cold towel; a neck rub. With all the midwives and birth supplies scattered about, there wasn't a lot of room for me. Which was fine, because I'm not much of a birth expert, but I like to at least feel as if I'm contributing to the effort.

The pushing became more insistent and Elizabeth could feel the baby sort of crown with each push, but then when the contraction would end, the baby would retreat back in side her. This happened again and again. "Is everything okay?" She repeated. She was becoming anxious. Something didn't feel right.

Finally, the baby's head was out. "We've got a cord here." One of the midwives in training said.

"What's wrong?" Elizabeth asked.

"The cord's around the baby's neck." I was afraid. Cords around necks are not good.

But with another push and several pairs of nimble hands, the cord was unwrapped and the baby was out. She was fairly bloody, which hadn't been the case with the other two. Margaret said it was because the placenta had been so close to the cervix, which we had known all along.

Elizabeth, still knelling on the floor at the end of the bed, held our new baby to her bare chest for a few moments and then we cut the cord. The midwives wrapped up the baby in some of the warm towels and handed her to me while they attended to Elizabeth.

It's always a shock to see the color of a newly-born baby. That grayish-blue skin tone, though I know it's normal, causes me a little worry each time. She was crying--raspy, chokey, quiet, lamb-like--so I knew she was getting oxygen. Slowly, her body changed color, starting from her core and radiating outward. Her head was the last part of her to redden up. She looked kind of weird for a while with the bottom half of her face reddish and the top half bluish.

About this time, I gave her back to Elizabeth, who was sitting up at the head of the bed, her arms and legs trembling heavily. She took the baby in her arms and coaxed her to nurse. She didn't latch immediately, but soon she did, much to Elizabeth's relief. Although we knew the baby would be okay if she couldn't nurse right away, it is comforting to know right away that she will be able get the nourishment she needs to stay alive and grow.

She weighed eight pounds, four ounces, though she pooped out a whole bunch of meconium over the next hour, which probably brought her weight down a bit. The midwives finished up the examinations and the charting, cleaned up, drank some diet Coke, set up an appointment for the following day, and then left.

For me, this is the time when the home birth route is really great. We were already home. Elizabeth lay in bed. Our friend brought the girls home. I got some food ready. We proceeded at our own pace in our own home.

Elizabeth's family would be arriving in a few hours, so I finished getting their beds ready. When they called to report where they were, I didn't say anything about the birth. Elizabeth wanted to surprise them. They pulled in a little after 10:00 p.m., tired and disheveled. Had they touched Elizabeth's belly, they would have known something was up. Instead of feeling like a melon, it now felt like half-empty water balloon. But no one felt her belly. When they were near our bedroom, I said, "Come look at this; there is something in our room." I shined a dim flashlight at the spot on our bed where the baby was sleeping.

It took a second to register. "Oh my. Is that? The baby. You had the baby." Then they were laughing and hugging and congratulating Elizabeth and me.

The next few days, we hung out with the family. Mom Porter took over the kitchen and cooked everyone some great food. Dad Porter helped me dig though our flagstone patio to find the sewer cleanout, diagnose a problem with one of our cars, and get the refrigerator running more efficiently. Aleta and her kids kept our children well occupied. Elizabeth and I enjoyed their company as well as that of Amaya Juniper Lee, which is the name we settled on for our new baby.

It's been two and a half weeks since Amaya was born. Sonora, Rowyn, Amaya, Elizabeth, and I just went on an hour long walk. Elizabeth and I held hands and talked about what a pleasant postpartum experience we've had so far. Elizabeth is recovering well, and Amaya is growing strong and chubby. She's put on about a pound and a half. She is like Sonora in that she is very alert, constantly staring at stuff, already craning her neck to get a better view of whatever those dark little eyes are seeing. But she is also like Rowyn in that she sleeps pretty well. Except for a few feedings, she sleeps through the night, and takes about three naps throughout the day.

Rowyn and Sonora haven't shown any ill will toward her so far. They seem to like her when they remember she's there.

The timing of the birth was great. I had been finished with school for about two weeks, which allowed me some time to help prepare for the birth. Since then, I've been able to take Rowyn and Sonora most of the time and do a fair amount of house work and cooking. Actually, I haven't done much cooking because the people at our church provided us with so many dinners. Even though I was home and could have cooked, it was really nice to have people do this for us. Also, several days people have taken Sonora and Rowyn for the better part of the day, which allows Elizabeth and me to nap, clean up, or just recenter ourselves. We have really appreciated the help.

Now we are starting into the next phase. I'm hoping to finish this week the current set of revisions of the novel I'm working on. Sonora starts Kindergarten in three weeks. I'm going on a Scout campout in a week and a half. In a month and a half, school starts up again for me. Life and its demands are flooding back into our lives. But the last two and a half weeks have been very pleasant. In more ways than one, Amaya has brought new life to our family.

Bulging with Life

Elizabeth's Sister Vanessa came to visit yesterday and took some photos. Thank you Vanessa. You rock (by the way, I removed one of the photos on Elizabeth's request).

Barley's and Clover's Big Day

Sonora, Rowyn and I were watching a short stop-motion video on Youtube and decided to make one of our own. We spent the rest of Saturday morning on the project. It's about--you guessed it--unicorns. Here it is.

Oh, and Sonora lost her first tooth today. When I asked her if all that blood bothered her, she said, "It tasted pretty good." We may have a unicorn-loving vampire on our hands.

Pregnancy

Most any of who might still be checking this blog likely know that we are pregnant and that our little fetus is of the feminine persuasion. So we'll have three girls, a small pack of sisters, which should fit comfortably into our extended family dynamics: Elizabeth has seven sisters and I have four. In both our families, sisterness is something special, at least it is most of the time.

So our current tasks concerning the pregnancy are: find a name for the baby, and keep the baby inside until it is fully developed. We still haven't settled on a name, and we are developing a bad track record in this regard. It took us until a week after she was born to finally arrive at Rowyn's name. But worrying about baby names has been slowly supplanted in Elizabeth's mind by worrying about all the strong contractions she's been having. Painful, frequent ones. Any time she stands up. And she still has two months to go. Bed rest isn't her thing (not that it's anybody's thing), and she and I are both hoping that this is just a phase of uterus-strengthening exercises, but it might be more than that. Time (and communication with our midwife) will tell.

Well, I hope to write more on this blog than I have the last year or so. Perhaps the new baby will provide the impetus. I've been working on a novel, and that is where most of my writing time, what little I have, has been spent of late.

Winter Break

So, Winter Break was kind of a whirlwind for us this time around.


At the beginning of the break, one of our cars broke down. It still isn't fixed. The mechanics think that the computer is bad, but they can't be sure. No junk yard in the whole nation (as far as they can tell) has a used computer for this car. A new computer costs about $500. 2009 turned out to be a very expensive year for us (several car repairs, broken collar bone, tonsillectomy, dental work, new roof on the garage, my trip to Europe, many visits to the doctor by everyone in the family, etc.), and $500 is more than we have extra. So, we are trying to decide what to do about that. We could get a small loan and buy a used car. We're going to need to buy a car any way before the baby arrives in July, a car that will fit three car seats (our old Nissan Sentra only has room for two), so we may just bite the bullet and buy another car earlier than we had hoped. The only problems with this plan are that we had hoped to sell the Sentra and keep the car that broke down. It is much more versatile and useful than the Sentra. And we really don't like the idea of a loan. For now, I'm riding my bike to and from work while the weather is mild. It's about 17 miles round trip, and most of the way I have a wide shoulder or a paved path to ride on.


We also had a pipe break. In mid December, the temperature dropped to around zero for several nights in a row. Then it warmed up above freezing for several days in a row. One morning, we lost most of our water pressure, and, after some investigation, found that a little river of water was running up from between several cracks in the flagstone patio in front of our house. I shut off the water at the street, pried up some rocks, and started digging. I won't go into details, because it really would be boring to read, but I spent about ten hours digging in heavy, sticky mud. It took me a while to find the pipe, which meant I tore up much more of the patio than I needed to. After I found it, I repaired the pipe, only to throw a shovel full of dirt (and a rock) on it, only to have the hidden rock snap the pipe in two again. When everything was finally repaired, I filled the hole back in with mud and tried my best to reassemble the stones and mortar. But there will be a large, uneven area in front of our front door until the summer heat dries out the ground and I can re-set the stones.


Not too long after that, we raced up to spend a day in Spokane with Elizabeth's sister and her family. Their house, in stark contrast to ours, is large and uncluttered. The kids sort of disappear into various rooms, and the adults can talk, which is quite refreshing. And it is always fun hanging out with Vanessa, Corey, and their kids. We had a gift exchange which I always both look forward to and dread. I look forward to it because they always give us a whole bunch of great gifts. I dread it because Elizabeth and I have to think for a long time to come up with a gift for them that they might like, and we usually end up giving them one or two gifts that, in comparison to what they give us, seem so underwhelming.


Our stay with them was short because that night, my oldest sister and her two teenage twin boys, along with my oldest brother, two of his teenage kids, and my dad, came to spend Christmas with us. Everyone except my dad drove up from Phoenix. They picked up my dad in Burley, Idaho. They stayed for a few days, and it was really fun having them here. We went sledding, walking, snipe hunting, and driving around looking at Christmas lights. The teenagers drove the little lawn tractor all over the yard and the neighborhood pulling each other in the little trailer. They also fired up the chainsaw and cut up some old limbs that we used to build a fire with. Sonora really enjoyed spending time with her Aunt Kristinia and cousin Sirrina, who became sort of surrogate mothers to her (Elizabeth was sort of missing in action most of the time due to her nearly constant pregnancy nausea). My dad, brother and I spent a lot of time bonding in the kitchen cooking together. And all of us hung out together to talk, watch movies, open gifts, and eat. It was really enjoyable to be with them.




However, the evening before they were to leave to visit my sister in Richland, Washington, our sewer backed up. And I mean backed up. Be glad I didn't take any pictures of the contents of the bathtub. After I churned up the sewage in my vain attempts to plunge loose the obstruction, it looked as if 25 people had hung their backsides over the edge of the tub and relieved themselves of a whole gut full of diarrhea. This made the bath tub and the whole house rather fragrant. We had new rules that night: No one may use the toilet; No one may run any water down any drain; and of course No one may shower (not that anyone would have wanted to). The plants got an extra portion of urine that night. And the next morning, my family members left rather expeditiously. I feel sort of sorry for the toilet of whatever gas station they first stopped at. In my quest to unplug the sewer line, I plunged and plunged, I bought a sewer snake and, after removing the toilet to better access to the pipes, tried unsuccessfully to make it reach the clog, I wormed around on my belly under the house and covered myself in dust and insulation trying to knock the clean out valve loose (though I'm sort of glad it didn't budge because I wouldn't have been able to move out of the way of the sewage that would have gushed out all over my arms, face, and body). Finally, I called Roto Rooter. The guy didn't think he'd be able to get to the clog, not without an exterior clean out valve ("And there's no way I'm going into that tiny crawl space to get to the clean out under the house"). But he tried for a while and, miracle of miracles, he knocked the blockage loose. We shelled out about $300 for his services on the night after Christmas, but at that point, $300 seemed a meager amount to pay for a functional sewer.

A few days later, I went camping with the Scouts for two day, and then a few days after that, school started again. It wasn't a particularly relaxing Christmas break, but it was a memorable one.


Just for fun, I've pasted below a little video Sonora and I made over the break. It's very silly and intentionally campy. So we did have some time to just mess around.

It's called cyberjacking

Salsa Girls

Like teenagers who have left home for the first time, our tomatoes, in boxes spread throughout the office at the back of our detached garage, are maturing off the vine. Elizabeth barely saved them from a couple of wicked cold nights. We didn't get to the peppers, and they turned into long, discolored, mushy incarnations of their previously sassy selves (sassy ones pictured above). This means salsa season is over, because now if we wanted to make a batch, we would have to buy most of our ingredients from the grocery store, which as yet seems like an awful idea to me, as garden-fresh produce is still too fresh in my memory. But I can't complain. It was a good salsa year. We made a lot of salsa, and we ate a lot of salsa, and almost all of it was very good. It was a good salsa year in another way, too: we discovered that both of our daughters really like the stuff, even when it is of about medium spiciness.
I already knew that Sonora liked salsa, but Rowyn, in her short life, has been a little pickier than Sonora. So I feared our youngest daughter would shy away from this magnificent blend of tomatoes, onions, and peppers. But last August, I gave Rowyn a corn chip lightly dipped in a batch of fresh salsa. She sucked the light red juice off, and then held the empty chip up and said, "Mo, Mo" rather emphatically. So I dipped her chip again and again she licked it clean. Then we gave her a little cup of salsa, which she dipped dry. Finally, Elizabeth gave her the whole 5-quart glass bowl--there was maybe half a cup left in the bottom--but instead of just dipping more chips in, Rowyn heaved this heavy bowl up to her mouth and began drinking the salsa juice. And this wasn't some wussy batch of salsa, either; there were a couple of jalapenos and a few other sort-of-hot peppers in the mix. I was genuinely proud of Rowyn and Sonora. These are MY girls, I thought to myself.

When I say I was proud of them, I'm not exaggerating. I felt the same swelling in my chest when Rowyn gulped down the last of the salsa as when Sonora learned to ride a bike or when she hiked the whole 3.5 mile long Kamiak Butte trail without any assistance. I didn't know I felt so strongly about salsa until that moment, but now that I think about it, this saucy stuff has been with me my whole life. Even in the late 70s early 80s, a decade before most of the U.S. had discovered its now favorite condiment, my family and I were eating salsa. We would put it on tacos and enchiladas, dip corn chips, Frito's, Wheat Thins, saltine crackers, and vegetables in it, and yes, sometimes some of us would even drink a little bit of it.

Every summer my dad, with the help of my mom and some of the kids, would hack away at onions, tomatoes, and chillies. We would throw it all in a big pot and we would can it up, though it never tasted as good after being canned as before. In the winter, though, a can of that salsa tasted like a warm morning. Even my grandma liked to make salsa, though she favored a sweetened green salsa with a tomatillo/shredded zucchini base. Salsa was so important to my parents that they spent an unthinkable amount of time dicing and then drying heaps of salsa ingredients. Their thought was that they could give this as gifts to their children-who were by then mostly all grown up--because dried salsa would be more portable than canned and could be taken with a person in an emergency. That way, even if there was some natural or personal disaster, my parents' children wouldn't be without their salsa.

Perhaps one of the reasons Elizabeth and I get along so well with our in-laws has its roots in salsa, for hers is also a family of salsa connoisseurs. In fact, the recipe I use (with adaptations) comes from the family recipe book Elizabeth's mom put together for her kids several years ago. On more than one occasion, I've experienced a pleasant sense of home-ness while crammed in together with the sisters and Mom Porter in her kitchen chopping salsa vegetables together, and then again a few hours later when we devour together that whole gallon of salsa.

And I guess that is it, that is why I was so happy when I realized that not only Sonora but also Rowyn loves this stuff. It felt like a solid confirmation of heritage: I am my parents' son and my grandparents' grandkid. And these two little tomato-faced girls are ours, not just biologically, but, perhaps more importantly, they are our kids culturally. I won't be putting together bags of dried salsa for them, but when they leave home as young adults, I hope they take with them positive, strengthening associations of home. I hope that they will grow tomatoes and peppers and onions and chop them up together into a medley that will remind them that they belong.

Great Wife

I just want to give a shout-out to Elizabeth for being super great this summer. When I came home from a youth activity with a snapped clavicle on the second day of my summer break, she had a TV tray all set up next to the living room recliner, where I was ordered by the doctor to sleep. On it were a bottle of water, pain medication, remote controls for the TV, etc., and some books and magazines. Several times each day, she would ask me if I needed anything, if I was doing okay. She would lovingly scold me when I would try to do things I shouldn't have been doing and patiently endured my high levels of "I'm broken, what should I do?" anxiety. In one such moment of high anxiety, she even helped me fashion a very uncomfortable figure 8 brace out of some climbing gear and a messenger bag strap.


When I ditched her and went to Europe with some of my siblings and parents, she was happy I had the opportunity to travel and has never begrudged me the trip; she was just glad I brought home some German chocolate.


For my birthday, she asked me what I wanted to do. I said I wanted the family to go on a bike ride and have a picnic at the half way point. I wanted to see how my collarbone would fare while riding, and I have this dream of us being a family that does lots of biking together. She was glad to come along and even held back from mentioning that the time I had chosen was stupid because it bridged Rowyn's nap time. She was even mostly calm when Rowyn shrieked like a child possessed by a demon for the second half of the ride.


When I got my tonsillectomy, she again prepared the TV tray for me out by the recliner (I was supposed to sleep sitting up a little bit so that I wouldn't choke on my blood). But this time, in addition to the books and magazines, she also presented me with a fistfull of DVDs and a bouquet of hydrating/nourishing drinks. Throughout the week, she made several soups that were blended smooth so I could eat them. Not only was she able to make soups using produce from our garden, but they really were good, and all of them could be eaten warm or cold. And again, she stopped me from doing things that the doctor said could cause blood to start gushing in my throat.


I just wish I were better at taking care of her when she is down. I feel as if our relationship is pretty balanced in most ways, but she has got me completely beat in the area of taking care of people who are sick or hurt (and celebrating birthdays; she's really good at that, too, whereas I suck at it). My excuse is that I come from a family which has sort of a fend-for-yourself mentality. And that attitude seems to be pretty deeply ingrained in me. I'm usually extra helpful for a few hours after she has gotten hurt or fallen ill, and then I sort of drift off into a weird non-helpful mode. This ineptitude of mine is really frustrating to her, and, frankly, also to me.


It was very pleasant this summer to have someone anticipating my needs when I couldn't take care of myself. Some day, I hope, I will learn to do the same for her when she is in need.

-ectomy

Up until a week ago, when I had my tonsils scooped out of my throat while I was unconscious, I was sort of proud of having really, really big tonsils. I would show them to people and they were virtually always impressed. "Wow," they would say. "Those really are big." I would nod and say something final, like "Yep. They've been big since I was a little kid."

When I was six, my family doc told me I had the tonsils of a thirteen-year-old. As a short, skinny "late bloomer"--I wrestled in the 75 pound weight class in eight grade and I only had to worry once about not making weight--I held onto those words well past my thirteenth birthday. When I was fourteen, I imagined I must have tonsils the size of someone in his twenties. This was consoling. I didn't really start growing toward my current height of 6' 2" until the summer before my senior year in high school. There wasn't much that was impressive about me: I was smaller than average, had below-average grades, didn't have any discernible musical talents, didn't have a car, didn't play on any of the sports teams, and wasn't stunningly attractive. I was "cute," in the way little brothers are cute. So, my tonsils were one of my only real assets, and I would show them off in times of insecurity.

Even into adulthood, my tonsils had remained an asset. Sometimes, if I liked someone and thought they were good friend material, I would tilt back my head, or, as the case may be, squat down frog-like and tilt back my head, and open my mouth and perform a sort of exaggerated, prolonged yawn while they inspected the large bulbs of lymph tissue at the back of my mouth. They would usually peer in cautiously, move their heads right and left pigeon-like, and then their eyes would widen, and they would say "Golly, those really are big."

But now they are gone. A lot of people get their tonsils out because of frequent infections, tonsillitis and the like, but I haven't had much trouble in that area. I used to get yearly bouts of strep throat, but that ended when I was about 19. For the most part, my tonsils treated me pretty well. We had a relationship of mutual respect. Except, of course, that they sort of obstructed my airway all the time, made it hard for me to swallow sometimes (and sometimes got food stuck in them that formed these funky-smelling little white balls that I would cough up about once a month--I called them "pearls," but Elizabeth didn't agree), made me snore with ever-increasingl intensity, and caused me to breathe badly while I slept. But I didn't really fault them for this. It wasn't like they were being malicious. They were just being their big selves. It's just that they were standing right in the doorway of a rather important passage.

So I went to my local family doc and asked him about them. He said, "Those are pretty big. They should come out." He didn't really hmm and haw about it like he does about most everything else. And then I went in for a consult with the Ear, Nose and Throat doc. He said, "You should probably have those removed. Having a tonsillectomy will likely help you snore less or not at all, and will probably make you breathe better at night." In the back of my mind, I kept asking myself Why, for the last three decades, when they look in my mouth and smash my tongue with a giant Popsicle stick, did other doctors not immediately exclaim, "Let's cut those things out of there!" But there was no use asking such a question now.

Because of my marvelously loud snoring, Elizabeth and I have been sleeping farther and farther apart. She was wearing earplugs, which helped, but I was waking the baby up and, even with Elizabeth wearing earplugs, my snoring was loud enough to keep her, and sometimes the baby, from going back to sleep. Besides wanting my wife not to rue the moment I entered the bedroom, I was also hoping that a tonsillectomy would help me sleep better, which would cause me to wake up with energy and vigor in the morning, which would in turn cause me to have more motivation, stamina, insight, and talent. So, I went in for the surgery.

Things went pretty well in the hospital. About seven different women in scrubs made rotating visits. I couldn't keep straight who was from the lab, who was from the pharmacy, who was just an assistant, who was my nurse now, who would be my nurse later, who would be my nurse during surgery, who was my nurse anesthetist who would be shoving a tube down my throat, etc. But they were all friendly and didn't mind that I had confused one for another and forgotten their names. Finally, one of these women pumped some stuff into my IV line and told me, "Teenagers love this stuff. They always ask me if it is for sale somewhere. But it's not for sale. For some reason, they just laugh and laugh and laugh." I asked her what this stuff was for and she said, "to help you feel okay about surgery." I thought that it was probably a little late not to be okay with surgery, but didn't tell her this. Instead, I let the artificial feeling of euphoria invade my body and enjoyed the gurney ride down the hallway, though I didn't feel any uncontrollable urges to giggle. I remember greeting my doc, all decked out in surgical scrubs, and then my pre-surgery memories stop.

When I came to, or rather, when my brain began coherently recording memories again after I came to, I was chatting it up in German with a nurse from Germany. She had been in the U.S. for the last twenty years, but I must have recognized her accent and we played get-to-know-you in German in the recovery room. When she departed she told me my German was good, which pleased me, but the ironic thing is that it couldn't have been that good because MY UVULA IS MISSING.

You see, to roll the German "R" properly, one needs to get the uvula and other loose soft-palate materials jumping around in the back of one's throat. It's not like the Spanish R, which is rolled with the tip of the tongue on the hard palate.

I made the discovery of the snipped uvula a couple of days after my surgery. My curiosity got the best of me and I wanted to see what this bundle of horrible pain looked like (this has been painful, very painful, and nauseating, but enough bellyaching), so, standing before a mirror, I gingerly spread my mouth wider and wider until I could see back there. Sure enough, my big, fluted, fleshy tonsils were gone, replaced by white scabs over inflamed red throat skin. But to my astonishment, the white scabs continued above my tonsil-holes, up along my soft palate right up to where my uvula used to hang. Now it just forms a rather shallow V.

I didn't realize it until then, but I was also sort of fond of my uvula. It fit. It dangled there between my giant tonsils sort of like the buddy who is always brought along as the third wheel because he is good at helping the conversation along at awkward moments. Actually, more often than not, it didn't hang freely, but was sort of stuck to one tonsil or the other. But my uvula was never a problem. I had never even thought of cutting it off; it looked so harmless and good-natured. And apparently, besides my uvula, my doctor felt like digging out some of my soft palate as well. Unexpectedly losing some extra skin while I was anesthetized was sort of shocking and a little dismaying.

In a way, I feel as if I've been circumcised again, and, once again, nobody asked me if that was okay. It's not okay, just so you know.

I've been doing a little research and, apparently, uvulectomies (a word I never knew existed) and trimming off a little extra soft palate tissue are often done to try to help people with sleep apnea. When I had my consult with the ENT doc, I mentioned that I stop breathing at regular intervals throughout the night and could possibly have sleep apnea, so maybe he took that as the green light. I'm not sure. I have an appointment with him in a couple of days and I'm going to ask.

But the damage is done. He's not going to sew anything back on (and I don't get to keep my tonsils in formaldehyde either--I had to sign a release saying I agree to this). Perhaps my new and improved mouth/throat will work wonders for me. Apparently I snore no more, not even a little bit, which keeps things peaceful in bed. I have yet to reap the rewards of extra energy, motivation, talent, and insight, but it's only been a week. Maybe those will come. And, after a few more times waking up to discover that I have not unexpectedly lost a little body part while I was unconscious, I'll probably feel safe again. And the pain will eventually go away.

I'm going to miss my tonsils, and my uvula, and my soft palate tissue, and I will have to find new ways to show my friends I love them and make myself feel special, but eventually, I am sure, I'll be glad to have had my elective tonsillectomy and my involuntary uvulectomy. It was all just useless tissue anyway, right?

Lee European Vacation

So, at the end of last year, when my parents, siblings, sibling-in-law and I planned our final route for our European vacation , one of the concerns was that we were trying to go to too many places in the two weeks--the last two weeks of July--we had available. We had seven countries--Germany, Switzerland, France, Spain, Italy, Slovenia, and Austria--on the agenda. When we got to Europe and mentioned our plans to any European, the response was almost universally one of horror, for Europeans (including my brother-in-law Basilios) generally like to vacation for several weeks in one spot and really relax and savor the local culture. In addition to worries about trying to do too much, I also worried that seven of us might not all get along traveling together in a small RV. But I think everybody enjoyed the trip. I know I did. Below I'll do a skeleton sketch of some of the places we visited. Sorry about the many photos. I had over 1000 to choose from, and the thirty or so here seem to me like a pathetically small sampling (I really wish Blogger would come up with an easier way to build posts with photos and words).

We started our journey in Munich, Germany, and then spent a day driving along the Romantic Road, which is basically a series of towns and castles that preserve a middle-ages flair.
















Next, we picked up my sister Trudie and her husband Basilios and headed for Switzerland, where we visited Zurich and Zermatt. Zurich had good food and a relaxing atmosphere.








































Zermatt is a little town at the bottom of Switzerland. It is so deep into the Alps that no roads go beyond it; Zermatt is a dead-end town, but a really cool one. It is the leaping-off point for people who want to climb the Matterhorn and a tourist destination for people like us who just want to see the Matterhorn. My sisters Trudie and Kristinia and my brother Clinton and I took a cog-wheel train up to the top of the Gornergrat, where we had terrific views of the surrounding mountaintops and glacier fields. We hiked back down, which was a little more strenuous and took a little longer than we had anticipated (we were all pretty sore for a few days afterward), but hiking through the Alps was one of the highlights of the trip.



































































After that, we decided that, since we were there, we should catch some Tour de France action. So we stopped in at Bourg Saint Maurice, which was the start of one of the legs of the race. It was too crowded to see the starting line of that day's leg but we got to see all the cyclists getting ready and appreciated the tremendous effort that goes into this race. We also got to see Lance (swoon) leave his team's bus and ride down to the starting line.















From there, we journeyed to Barcelona, Spain. At first, the heat was stifling, and the traffic, with hundreds of motorized scooters aggressively swarming like wasps between cars, was stressful. But we soon adjusted to the heat and began taking the public transit instead of driving the unwieldy RV, and when we started playing in the Mediterranean, we started to really like Barcelona. One side note: all of the males on the trip were injured except Basilios. My dad had recently tripped and messed up his knee. Two weeks before the trip, I broke my collarbone diving for a catch while playing ultimate Frisbee, and two days before the trip Clinton sliced his hand wide open (notice the blue surgical glove he is wearing to keep from getting his hand wet--it didn't work). So Basilios was the only male who could enjoy the water injury-free, and he did enjoy it, diving under the waves like a giddy seal.
In the city, we visited the Picaso Musuem, which shows the evolution of his artistic vision from his days as a student through his cubist works. We also toured the masterpiece of Gaudi--an influential modernist architect--La Sagrada Familia, an astounding building, and walked around the Gothic Quarter (narrow, medieval-feeling streets packed with little shops, musuems, and a few old churches), and down Las Ramblas (a main pedestrian boulevard that is lined with little shops. Strangely, many of these temporary shops were pet stores). Barcelona is a city I wouldn't mind returning to.




















On our way to Verona, Italy, we stopped for a day on the beach near the French Riviera town of Frejus. This stop was definitely too short. The weather, sand, and water were nearly perfect. We were sad to leave. We lived it up while we could, dancing at the campground discoteque, going swimming in the Mediterranean at midnight, and going swimming again in the morning.
































In Verona, we watched Verdi's Aida in a Roman arena, built in 30 A.D. While the opera went sort of late (it ended at 1:30 a.m.), the experience of listening to and watching this well-performed masterpiece in a 2000-year-old venue with great acoustics was well worth it.














Venice was next on our list, and while the town was overrun with tourists like us, it was still impressive. The floor mosaics on the church floors were one of many artistic flourishes that struck me. Venice is very photogenic. Basilios, whose father is Greek, was able to point out many of the Byzantine influences throughout the city. Although everyone knows it is a problem, it was still sad to see the Adriatic Sea lapping at the tops of the last barriers that stand between the city and a flooded ruin.











































For various reasons, I don't have photos of our journey through Slovenia (a green, hilly, quiet country, where we stopped in at Izola and waded into the Adriatic Sea) and Austria, where we visited Graz and Vienna. In Vienna, I missed Elizabeth the most. We had been there nine years earlier as adventurous, backpacking newlyweds, and memories of us together flashed their way back into my consciousness. She and I will have to go back in the near future. As with most of our other stops, we only got a tiny taste of Vienna, and of all the places we visited, I think this is the city where I would have most liked to spend more time.

Even though the trip was rushed, and we weren't able to stay anywhere as long as we would have liked, I'm glad we went, and I'm glad we were able to see so many sites, eat so many different types of food, smell so many different smells, speak (0r try to speak) so many different languages, and swim in different bodies of water. It was a memorable trip that will give each of us different choices of places we might visit in any future trips.