Less than Twelve Parsecs

We couldn't ask for anything better. We are all safe, healthy, and happy together over the winter holidays. We are cherishing every moment: playing board games, building structures, reading books, scootering around the neighborhood, and ordering Chipotle whenever we feel too lazy to cook! After a ridiculous amount of computer time due to virtual schooling and work-from-home for the last five months, both kids and parents having less screen-time every day is a blessing. We get to play with our Silkie chickens, do more gardening in the front yard and backyard, or just walk around the neighborhood hunting for Christmas lights.  Fae gets so excited about spotting new lights on a house that her tiny body shakes all over with emotion. She points at them in the pointiest pointy kind of way. I mean really, really pointing: from the tip of her toe all the way to the nail of her pointing finger tip! She even inhale-grunts for emphasis. Then, after the many shouts of awe fade away, she resu...

Advance Note: This post is for self reference later on, and maybe story telling purposes. I may have gotten lucky, or I might have done the right things with the right caretakers. But it worked, I am ecstatic, so writing down what happened.   For a little while this August we had a rougher time. Rougher than "just" a global pandemic and working from home with school-age kids and a 9 months-old baby to care for. Surprising baseline, right?  Now, we are doing veeeery well - thank you for asking! Grandma Tammy is visiting and things are smooth and happy. But the ill-fated conjunction of many things at once over a few weeks, combined with longer-term reduced self-care due to baby and pandemic times, triggered the surprisingly painful episode in today's blog post. How did it start? In short, Greg was taken out of commission due to surgery (he's fine now!) for over two weeks. He was strongly forbidden from lifting the baby, plus extremely tired and lying down for many days...

Fae has an interesting relationship with our Roomba ( Giskard ). She is a bit afraid of it, but also somewhat excited when it is running while keeping her distance. But she absolutely loves messing with it while it's belly up for cleaning or repairs. So much so that it's hard to get her to stop so that Roomba can resume cleaning. Here are some examples of her work Inspecting the insides to see what needs to be done. Some duplos are nearby. Getting a better view of what needs to be done Fae quickly bangs the cleaning brushes together for reasons known only to her Contemplating what to do with Roomba's middle wheel

[go to the bottom of this post to get the full book! ] We call them The Silkies. The Tener Silkies, that is, because they are definitely part of the family. They are an ancient breed of chickens  of Asian descent, first introduced in Europe  by the Dutch as: the wondrous cross-breed between a rabbit and a chicken! It turns out that this is quite a believable description because they are absolutely fuzzy and soft, quite like a bunny. Note: The original version of this post had the phrasing "bunny rabbit" but Mara pointed out that "rabbit" is redundant because all bunnies are rabbits. Elena pointed out that "bunny rabbit" is more artistic. I will just have to write this again, in case you didn't realize how extremely huggable they are. Fuzzy and soft, they feel all over like a silky-soft fur - the poofy head, the poofy tail, chest and back and wings are all soft fuzziness. I'd say they're even softer than you would imagine from my paltry descrip...

Well, Fae just took five steps this evening. Full-on steps, no question about it, each little one with a slight hesitation but then pushing confidently forward. They weren't big; she advanced just about a foot forward overall, but that was a huge leap forward in her life and that's what matters. The motivation? She did it because she needed - definitely, absolutely needed - to grab Gaius's enticing Outfoxed board game . Because it had four "choking hazard" pieces on it and thus it was essential for her to get at them and bat her little hands all over the board. Anyway, this is big. She turned nine months of age only a week ago. If you know your baby milestones, this is quite the earliest end of the spectrum - walking is more like a twelve months thing. Mara and Gaius were both right on the curve: walking when they turned one year old. Fae is doing her own thing though. Greg keeps joking that he's gonna Call the Baby Police on her and ask them to pull her over ...

It's hard for me to write about things that hurt. I wrote multiple posts about rough life moments, but they never seem good enough to honor the memory of the one who is missing. So I bottle them up, a hidden journal close to my heart, too fragile to be seen by others' eyes. This post won't be good enough, by far. But it's time to share it, and move on. You might have noticed that we've stopped being responsive to texts/emails/missed calls for multiple weeks this summer. Happy blog posts were put on hold. That's because we have been grieving by day, and searching night, after night, after night. Willow is missing. She's been a happy nighttime-indoor / daytime-outdoor cat for the past 8 years of our lives, she's spent the past 12+ years as part of our family. Willow was pretty much our first "child" and the reason we started using this blog more. We had adopted her as a 3-months-old white fluff ball, with angel looks but devilish behavior. I'...