Malcolm at Two

Sometimes it's hard to believe that Malcolm is two already as I revel in his cuteness. Other times, of course, I'm just counting down the days until he's a less annoying age.

One of the cute moments - giving Gareth a hug

I decided we should actually be social and invite some people to our house for Malcolm's birthday. Nothing big, just some snacks and brownies. There are a couple other families with almost-two-year-olds on our street, so we invited them, as well as a couple who moved in a few months ago (she happens to be my second cousin's husband's cousin...or something like that). I didn't remember to take pictures, but Malcolm pretty much just ate the frosting off his brownie this year and then wanted to get back to the important food: the strawberries. The kids played and the adults talked. I think the little party went well and the kids seemed to have fun playing. I was surprised at how well the two year olds all got along, and the 3.5 year olds enjoyed playing with Gareth.

Here's a bit of Malcolm at two:

• He loves to scream. If he's happy/excited, he screams. If he's angry, he screams. Loud, high-pitched, ear-piercing shrieks. Some days my ears ache by the end of the day. Thanks for the hearing loss, kid.
• Cars and balls are some of his favorite toys, though he also adores stuffed animals.
• He likes to read. I started trying to be more consistent about reading him a bedtime story and usually he seems to enjoy it. He has also started requesting books to "read" while we're driving in the car. Gareth reads in the car all the time, so Malcolm must follow suit I guess.

  

  Wishing he were ready to read this book

• When he decides to speak, rather than scream, he's quite good at using phrases. He started using phrases earlier than Gareth did. Some common ones are: "Where's uh ball?", "Izza [insert item name here - poop, ball, shoe, etc]", and "Dee dah doo" or something like that. It means "I got you" but is very similar to his "peek-a-boo". 
• He will name items he doesn't know the real name for by who he sees using them. So if we're doing laundry, a shirt of Ryan's will be "izza daddy" and something of Gareth's will be "izza dehs". There are lots of things that are daddy in our house - the speaker, the shower, various clothes, the drumset/sticks, the computer.
• He loves going downstairs because then he can sneak in some banging on daddy's drumset.
• He loves being outside and will often request to go out, rain or shine.
• He loves dogs and cats and is also terrified of them. Every time he sees a dog he desperately wants to touch it, but if it so much as twitches he starts screaming in terror. If a cat is out while we're walking he will try to stay close to it, but if it moves suddenly then he'll run and hide behind me and scream.

I forgot to take him to his 2-year appointment so had to reschedule for a few months from now. I guess scheduling an appointment the week of finals wasn't such a great idea. I pretty much mentally skipped from "prep Malcolm's party" to "study for chemistry final". But this way I can get him and Gareth done all at once, so it actually worked out okay. So, growth stats will come in a few months. One last picture - discovering the marble run:

Little Musician

Malcolm found the recorder while digging through some stored toys the yesterday. We brought it upstairs while waiting for Gareth to finish getting ready for school and he immediately walked over to my music stand and said, "elp! elp!". So I opened up my orchestra folder and pulled out some music for him to play. The result was very cute, though as soon as I tried to take a picture he stopped looking at the music.

He played on the recorder for a bit and when he paused I asked him if he had played the music. "Yeah", then it was back to playing. This morning the recorder wasn't at hand, so he treated us to a piece played on the toy screwdriver instead, with him humming the pitches he thought it should be making while holding it in his mouth like a recorder.

Dino Day at the Burke

I was able to take Gareth to the Dino Day at the Burke Museum a couple weekends ago, courtesy of the membership my brother and sister-in-law gave us for Christmas. I could've taken him regardless, I guess, but I probably wouldn't have even known about it otherwise and membership gets you in an hour early, which made it so the timing worked out for us to get there and be back in time for Ryan to still make his drum lesson.

This was an outing for just Gareth and myself - Malcolm stayed home with Ryan - and it was so refreshing to get out and do something with just Gareth. No worries about him losing himself, or melting down because of hunger/exhaustion, or needing to take a break for a diaper change. And I could focus entirely on him and what he was wanting to do and telling me. It was so nice that I actually experienced a twinge of regret; if we hadn't had Malcolm we could do this kind of stuff with Gareth so much more often! But that didn't last long, and it'll be just a couple more years and then outings like this will be much easier with Malcolm along. Until then I'm hoping that Ryan and I can take him out one on one for things like this a little more often.

Anyway, at Dino Day they have bunches of fossils set out for people to look at and scientists there to talk about them and answer questions. Even being there an hour early it was quite crowded around these tables, so Gareth and I only looked at a few before heading over to the cases where they have crystals so he could admire those for a bit. Then we headed downstairs where they had a "dig pit" set up:

The kids got to "dig up" a fish fossil. I can never remember the names, sorry. It was entertaining to watch how they'd just brush the dirt in whatever direction, often covering up a portion that they'd just finished uncovering in their effort to unearth a different section.

They also had the mammoth tusk that was recently found at South Lake Union there on display. There was a line for that and Gareth didn't want to wait, so we never did get to see it up close, though I saw it from a few feet away. It's still mostly encased in plaster because it needs to be able to dry. But I thought it was pretty cool that they had it out for people to see, and cool to be able to see it, even if it was from a bit of a distance.

I had hoped we'd get around to the tusk before we had to leave, but Gareth got very engrossed in the dress-up area and playing dinosaur, so we spent our last half hour or so there.

Balloon Love

Malcolm got a balloon when we bought new shoes the other day, and refused to let it go. He kept it in his hand while eating lunch, napping, going to pick up Gareth, playing on the playground (kinda hard to play and explore with one hand holding a balloon), going to the grocery store, and eating dinner. Occasionally, if you really, really needed him to, he'd switch it from one hand to another. But he would not let go of it for anything - I had to pry it out of his hands before putting him in bed. About 8.5 hours he held that thing, and would've loved to take it to bed with him.

Anyway, I had to wake him from his nap so we could pick up Gareth and at that time was shocked to see him still clutching the balloon. He didn't wake up when I went in, so I was able to get a couple pictures of him sleeping with the balloon in his hand.

This balloon wouldn't float by the next day, but just a couple days later Gareth went to a birthday party and the mom gave Malcolm one of the birthday balloons. That balloon is still floating almost two weeks later - and Malcolm is napping with it in hand as I type.

I Considered Medical School for a Few Days

Yup, I did. Never considered it before as an option for me. I've never been a fan of blood and everyone just always made the assumption that that rules out being a doctor for you. And then Ryan was talking about how I could totally do med. school if I wanted to and he wondered if aversion to blood is something people can get over. And suddenly the idea opened up as an actual possibility.

I asked my pediatrician friend if she knew anyone who'd become accustomed to the sight of blood. Turns out, she fainted the first time she saw a video of an IV being put in - and now she's done them tons of times. So her answer was that you totally can overcome aversions like that.

The first thing to throw me off the idea was needing to do physics for the MCAT. Except that's such a stupid reason. It's not like I'm not good at this school thing - I could totally do physics if I wanted to.

So in mid-January I found myself seriously considering medical school for a week or so. It's fun to think that I could totally do it if I wanted to and that Ryan would be 100% supportive (and he said if I did med. school we'd move wherever I got a job when done and he'd just find whatever job he could).

But I don't think I will. At this point the pros just don't outweigh the cons, and it's not like it's something I feel passionately about. Sure, I'd likely have a pretty stellar salary at the end of it all (far more than I'd make as a dietitian), but the reality is that doing prerequisites would likely take quite a bit longer than they already will and then I'd still have four years of medical school plus however many years for internship or residency ahead of me. We'd likely be hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt by the end of it, Gareth would be almost done with high school (yikes!), and it's not like you get to choose where you go for residency (even Ryan didn't seem too fond of this aspect). Besides, I think it'd maybe be a bit crazy to only apply to one school for the medical school part of things also (I can't think of anyone I know who's done med. school and done this), and since Ryan likes his job here and I like living here, I'd like to stay here. Giving up all those years and going into major debt just doesn't seem worth it for something that I'm not passionate about doing. Maybe if I'd considered the idea eight to ten years ago, but for where we are now, it doesn't make sense.

So, it was fun to consider something as an option that I'd never considered for myself before. It's cool to realize that I could totally do it if I wanted to and good to know that it's not something I'll regret not trying. For now I'm still on the dietitian track - but keeping options open to other things that might come along and interest me. I might even dabble in programming this summer, just to see if it's a viable "oh, crap, I failed O-Chem" backup plan. :)

Scheherazade at Benaroya

It's currently looking like there will be a quarter-sized hole on the blog. Unfortunately, Christmas and New Year's got caught up in that because I haven't had a chance to upload pictures yet. But at some point I'll get that done and go back and add those posts.

I should probably be studying right now, but I needed to do some listening for clarinet stuff and am sitting and doing that. In a minute I'll be listening to Ponchielli's Il Convegno, which I'll be playing with the Northwest Clarinet Choir in about a month, but right now I'm listening to the recording of our second Benaroya Hall concert.

Back in mid-January we had our second and final Benaroya Hall concert for this season (I'm hoping we'll do some concerts there again next season). I got a sitter for the kids so that Ryan could come and we could go out for drinks/dinner afterward. I also had a lot of friends and acquaintances come to this concert, so that was a lot of fun (and a bit nerve-wracking) to know that people I knew were in the audience. We didn't sell quite as many tickets this time around, but still sold the entire floor of the hall - you had to look really hard to find an empty seat.

This was a big concert for me because we were playing Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, which has a big second clarinet solo. Plus we were playing Strauss' One Thousand and One Nights, which has a really interesting second clarinet part. There's a whole section where the 2nd is the only person in the orchestra playing some arpeggiated bits under everything. Of course that section is also the part where you have to transpose from A to C. Fun, fun. It's actually a super-fun part to play, just a bit more stressful when that minor third transposition isn't something you do all that often (this is the first time I've ever had to do it in all my years of playing). We also played Ravel's Sheherazade, which had a couple of exposed bits for the clarinets. So it was the kind of concert where if you screw up people are going to know it. I never used to get nervous for concerts, but since I'm not practicing nearly as much these days I've found that I'm more likely to end up nervous about performances. I was definitely nervous for this concert.

Anyway, the concert went really well. I was a bit disappointed with myself for not spacing some things quite right in the Rimsky-Korsakov, which means that you get the sense that I tied a couple repeated notes together, even though I didn't. But I was mostly worrying about my breath during that whole passage (if you breathe in the wrong spot it's very noticeable and breathing often gets a bit off when you're nervous) and that turned out well, plus my tone sounded pretty good and intonation was good as well (thanks to my teacher lending me an extra A clarinet he has - mine has some serious intonation issues these days and really just needs to be replaced). But overall the orchestra did a stellar job and the audience enjoyed it. I'm glad we had our October concert at Benaroya as well because everyone in the orchestra seemed much more at ease with the venue this time around. It would be awesome if we could do at least a couple concerts there every year, but for this year we're done at Benaroya and will be back at UW for our last two concerts.

New Year's Gingerbread House

Gareth really wanted to make a gingerbread house this year. And because I'm me I couldn't just go out and buy some kit. We had to make the gingerbread ourselves. Not a big deal, because we always make gingerbread cookies anyway. However, with all that happens around Christmas I knew there'd be no way it'd get made before Christmas. So it became a New Year's activity instead, which works out pretty well since New Year's is a pretty lame holiday.

We started a few days ahead of time, mixed our dough and baked our gingerbread house shapes, based on measurements from templates seen online. We kept to a nice, basic house this year. The house pieces seemed crispy enough, so we left them overnight to cool. I was worried about that because things tend to soften overnight here. Our gingerbread pieces did exactly that, but I had no idea what I could possibly do to prevent it (next year I might try to bake them even longer and make them on the extra crispy side), so figured it'd either work okay or else totally flop when we tried to put the pieces together.

The next evening I mixed up some royal icing (way more than we needed), and Gareth and I attempted to put the house together. To my great surprise, it managed not to collapse in on itself. We left our little house overnight so the frosting could dry. To my even greater surprise, the thing was still standing the next morning.

So, New Year's Eve we picked up some candies from the bulk candy section and used our extra frosting (still more than we needed) to apply some candy decor on the house.

Gareth had fun with it, and I think it made for a fun activity in the latter end of the break, so it's probably one we'll repeat next year.