Every time a new child comes into a family, a parent’s love gets bigger.

While we have been a family in our hearts, today we became a forever family officially.
T became our daughter.

Happy Birthday Kai James!

OK OK. so that was like 3 months ago but... well you've heard it all before. busy, busy, busy... you can thank the jury services office for this particular update because i have been on hold with them for an hour. that plus a movie for the kids lets mommy multitask...kai's 1st birthday was celebrated at the oakland zoo on 9/11 (his birthday was 9/10). it was a beautiful day (if not a little warm) and what started out as a party that was to last a couple of hours turned into an all day affair and we closed down the zoo (woot woot! we're a real bunch of party animals! get it! yuk yuk). no one else booked our party spot after us so we could stay as long as we wanted (apparently no one likes to party on 9/11...). we had a blast! for those of you who have not been, the oakland zoo has rides for the kids. one of the benefits of having a birthday party at the zoo is that you can buy unlimited ride wrist bands (which you can't do any other time, even if you're a member) so the kids got to ride the rides for hours! they LOVED it! we did walk around and look at animals too. the above picture is riding the train. the picture below is one of the wallaroos you can see from the train. pretty cool...here's hana and charlotte riding the cars and below is kai's first real ride on the carosel (he rode one at disneyland, while i was wearing him, when he was 3 months old but i don't think it counts). it's was a lot more fun than the picture suggests. hard to get an action shot where everyone looks good... here, hana is complaining because the ride is coming to a close and she wants to ride the panda next but is trying to negotiate not exiting and entering the ride again (there's really no line). this led to one of many "them's the rules..." talks...kai's birthday cake was vanilla with whipped cream and fresh strawberries. the outer frosting, done up like a lion was vanilla butter cream. he also had his own "baby cake" which he (eventually tore into on his own... you'll see).unfortunatley, kai has so much fun frolicing around the zoo, he was totally conked out by the time we got to lunch and cake time. so we sang to him as he slept!but in true walker pettigrew fashion, the boy loves a good song and will wake up from a dead sleep for a good one. at the time, happy birthday and the alphabet song were his favorites. (now it's wheels on the bus and the itsy bitsy spider. when he's upset, hana sings twinkle twinkle little star to him, which he seems to like). so by the end of the happy birthday song, he popped an eye open. and then he got to eat his cake.
so on the date of his first birthday, kai was not yet walking. oh he was physically capable of walking, (he accidentally took steps at 10 months) he just didn't see the point because he was a lightening fast crawler. he took steps but not on purpose. it's as if he would look down and go, "i'm walking, wait... i don't walk" and then would slowly and carefully lower himself to the floor. that is until he was 14 months old. then he started walking across the room and hasn't really looked back.

he says several words now: bottle, mommy, daddy, cat, dog, ball, no, yeah, all done,"what's this/that?", nana (for ms. leona and for hana)... he signs help, more, all done and milk . he mimics sounds and there are other words that he has assigned to things but i don't understand them yet (although i think he calls bailey the cat "ba-ba" with a particular inflection). he seems to understand a lot and doesn't feel the need to express himself because we always seem to guess what he wants. for example, if he starts fussing, we'll say and sign, "you want more?" and he'll smile. which means "yes... don't hide it divide it!". but if he's all done then he'll continue to fuss until we say and sign "all done". the only other thing he usually wants is milk. and i'm not exaggerating when i say that he drinks a gallon of milk every 2 days. he doesn't care for juice, he doesn't drink water. just milk. of any kind (except soy - which gives him a wicked bad diaper rash). milk milk milk... the dentist remarked that he has "nice strong enamel!" no doubt. i have the bite marks to prove it. and about that... on his first birthday, he had 4 teeth... barely. and until a couple of days ago, he only had 4 teeth. 2 top teeth poked through about 2 days ago bringing the grand total to 6. despite the lack of teeth, he is much more of a biter than hana was (in fact, that's how he "weaned himself" when he was 9 months old whereas hana weaned because i got pregnant and the milk changed flavor...). the dr. says his teeth are big (which will be particularly uncomfortable for him), and when he's cutting teeth, he's particuarly mischeivious.

in general, kai likes banging things, throwing things, balls, trucks/cars and puzzles. he doesn't solve the puzzles so much as walk around with the animal pieces and say "what's this?" for his birthday, he got these trucks from grandma peggy and grandpa al that he loves. they play music, and rumble and issue commands like "take that dirt away". he also enjoys putting any and everything in his mouth, particularly if there is a razor sharp edge or an electrical current running through it. he, of course, also likes to do whatever his sister is doing. we did a month of swim lessons with him when the weather was warmer and he loves the water. his favorite book is "bears day out" and he has ripped it to shreds... and we have dutifully taped it back together. but he loves books and board books are among his favorite toys. he wears size 24months/2T and at his 1st year check up, he was 23lb (60%tile) and 31" long (90%tile).

hana is still doing her swim lessons by the way, for another few weeks. she is nervous about dunking her head in the water but if i had it to do over again, i would have dunked her sooner. live and learn....

little miss hana is becoming the charasmatic little girl. she is very tall (wears size 6 clothes... and has outgrown all of her hand-me down donors, which means we have to actually buy clothes for her.) and very bright. people often mistake her for being older which sometimes puts undo pressure on her since she is not yet 4, but she looks like she's 5 or 6. at preschool with ms. leona, she keeps pace with kids a year older than her and she is writing her letters now. she LOVES books, disney princesses, hello kitty and watching movies. she is also a TOTAL night owl. which means that even though she goes to bed between 8:30 and 9:00 p.m. every night, she is frequently up past 10:00. sigh. but she generally stays up talking or singing to herself or playing with stuffed animals, or "reading" books to herself.

so consider yourself updated. i will try to add more pictures as time allows... so i say that to say, see you in 2011! LOL!

Visiting Uncle Pootie

Hana and Kai visited their Uncle Pootie at his cool job where he gets to play with airplanes all day.

This was Kai's first time meeting Uncle Pootie.

Hana was in full Diva mode. Here she is posing with Daddy.

Here's Hana, the camera hog, seemingly pushing Mommy aside for this shot.

The aquarium

the daycare where the kids go went on a field trip to the preschool and jon and i were one of several parent chaparones. the aquarium has one of those water tunnel thingies. here briefly are some of hana's highlights...

kidlet update...

OK... i know that you all think that i'm a bad blogger and that i don't really care if you all know what's happening with the kids. not true. the reality is that in order to update the blog i need two hands free and i need free time. unfortunately, most of the time when those two instances occur, i am asleep. i have not yet figured out how to be productive while i'm asleep so there you are. but it's one thing to be able to write stuff... let alone download pictures. so who knows when this is actually going to get posted.


ok it's 8 weeks after paragraph one... see what i mean? i'll cut to the chase. here are some pictures from summer vacation at dillon beach, which also coincided with my birthday. we went with jen and the twins, nad, paul and cole. we rented a house for a few days. it was awesome! cold but good. funny thing about that... in the bay area, people go to the beach because it's fun, but in l.a. where i grew up, people go the beach because it's hot!


on my birthday, we drove to the hog island oyster farm situated right on tomales bay. there you can buy a bag of oysters, get a shucking lesson and go to town. the last time i had a raw oyster was in 1989 right after my high school graduation... and i couldn't get it down. i tried them again on this day and i. fell. in. LOVE!!!!! in the picture, you can see that hana and cole actually tried an oyster too. cole couldn't get his down, but liked it. hana started out saying that she just wanted the oyster liquor (or "the juice" as she calls it) . but after having that, she decided she wanted to eat the rest of the oyster. so here she is eating her first oyster. she said it was good and had a big smile. but she didn't want any more which was OK by me!

running around hog island oyster company, while we feasted on oysters and beer. i braided hana's hair after a day at the beach because between the dryness in the air, the wind, and the sand, the tangles were pretty unreasonable. so braided prevented some intenst battles over daily grooming. she liked it!

the day after my birthday, we drove down to the point reyes light house. it was pretty cool and the kids had a great time. they seemed to be really intersted in it. there were 366 stairsdown to the light house (and therefore back out again) and hana did all of them by herself! i did them all while wearing kai. here we are, with nadia, right before the climb back up.

ok this is not a vacation picture. just a cute picture of kai at a sunday night dinner at jen's house. kai is 9 months old in this picture.

back to vacation... the first day at dillon beach. there was a sand bern that the kids LOVED. the vegetation made for good hiding places. the slope was fun for them to run and jump down. we have a bajillion cool pictures of them here.

this was kai's first trip to the beach. he really, REALLY enjoys sand. he ate it by the shovel full. oh, we tried hard to prevent it but we were no match for his desire for it's salty goodness. note the sand mustache.

just after taking a big bite of sand... he was frustratingly quick with that. he had sandy diapers for days after returning from the beach... but probably a very clean colon!

sigh... hana looks so grown up here. she's not so much a toddler. she's a full blown kid now. where does the time go!




so the quick run down of what they're doing:

hana is 3.5 and keeps us on our toes. she's very clever and VERY funny. she's as tall as a 1st grader practically. she wears size 5 in girls and size 11.5 shoes. she can write her name and identifies every letter of the alphabet and counts to 20. she's working on writing all of the letters and numbers and she's doing great. she's doing work that kids that are starting kindergarten in the fall are doing. she is becoming more and more of a night owl each day. i think when she can read, she will be a voracious one. she loves books and story time and "reads" books to herself all of the time. i think we will survive the bedtime wars by her learning how to read and reading books at bedtime by herself. until then, we'll just have to "supernanny" it.

kai is 11 months old now... where did the time go! just yesterday he had us under seige as he
cried out his colic for months on end. he is a very easy going baby like hana was, but also very different. he's just begun standing on his own (but only when he doesn't know he's doing it). ms. ashley, ms. leona's assistant, said that he was jumping in the crib today without holding on to anything. he didn't know he was doing it at the time. kai is also tall for his age... he's quickly out growing 12-18 month clothes. he says is name and he says mommy and daddy, but not when we're around. i guess he figures he only needs to use those when we're not there. he does sign things. his first sign was "help" (help me out of my high chair, help me get my "kramer", help me get some more food...). he also signs "milk", "cereal", "more" and "all done". i predict he will be walking soon but we'll see!

family portrait

this family portrait was taken at a wedding for friends leah and stuart. it's one of the rare shots of us all together. also, kai's outfit is the first one that i have purchased for him since i realized the day before this event that he actually didn't have anything to wear!

camera strike!

ok, when i promised that i would have pictures of thanksgiving, i was apparantly lying. i know we brought the camera, but evidently, it never made it out of the bag... mostly because hana has been on a camera strike, but also because it's a lot to keep track of when your thanksgiving dinner involves 30+ people. but these pictures are from november so this will have to do.

kai is now 2 months old and he's pretty alert. and by alert i mean he really doesn't sleep all that much during the day. which of course means that i spend my days doing whatever it takes to make him happy. which of course means holding him all day and/or enduring his crying for every minute that i'm not holding him. in retrospect, i have learned that this is colic. however, in the moment i did not recognize it as such because i always thought that colicky babies were inconsolable even when you were holding them. apparently, colicky merely refers to those babies who cry 1.5 to 3 hours per day for at least 3 days a week. well kai could do that daily so he definately qualifies. i'm not sure what that would have changed for me, at the time because i knew that i was doing everything for him that could be done and i concluded that he was just very, very particular. it was definately exhausting and it is probably one of the reasons i got back to running so quickly.

of couse, he wasn't always crying. there were many people who remarked that he was the happiest and most peaceable baby they'd seen. and i would agree that when he wasn't crying, or asleep (which at the time, he had to do on my lap or while i was wearing him in order for him to have any substaintial daytime napping), he was definately happy and full of easy smiles. in fact, his first smile was at 2 weeks (which is fairly early since most babies smile between 4-6 weeks). but perhaps that was a survival instinct because it was those memories i could draw upon when he was screaming his head off because i had the audacity to set him down to use the bathroom.

despite his 2 colds that he's suffered up this point, he contined to gain about an ounce a day. his pediatrician says that i have some supercharged milk because while i was concerned about how infrequently he was nursing when he was sick, dr. bean reminded me that his growth was either at the top, or actually off the charts "so he's doing great!"

it is also around this time that he starts to outgrow his 3-6 month clothing, despite the fact that i continue to cram him into them. some outfits were just so cute and he hardly got to wear them. fortunately, i have not had to buy any clothes for him (except the halloween costumes) because everything was either a baby gift or one of the many, many, many, fine hand-me-downs from jack, cole or tony.

hana has been flirting with potty training but not really committed as of yet. she's trying to make sense of grandma kay moving in and worries that she sometimes doesn't feel well. she continues to be totally enamored with her baby brother, and loves to cuddle him and make him smile. he has a special extra wide smile that he only flashes for his sister and it's pretty cool to see.

she has also been on a bit of a camera strike for the last several months. it could be because there are literally thousands of pictures taken of her first two years of life, but i dunno, i think it's cause she's almost 3. in the series of pictures below, hana has decided that she will only cooperate with the picture of her and baby kai if cinderella can be the focus of it. sigh.
this first one was candid and she didn't know the picture was being taken. after we convince her to allow us to take another picture with kai, she insists on getting cinderella and having her be the subject of the picture...

oh we try several tricks to get her out of the frame...

... including putting her down so low that she can eventually be cropped out. but hana's on to us. she wants to see each shot after it's taken (damn digital cameras!)...

when i insist that i want a picture of her and kai and no cinderella this time, she channels her inner norma ray and decides to go back on the camera strike and refuses to cooperate. and so it goes... (this is the "what-EVER" pose)

an early november shot of kai wearing one of the 3-6 month outfits that he's outgrown but is so cute i can't resist cramming him in it one more time. note how short the legs are on this long-sleeved long-legged outfit...