Kindergarten

I did it. I finally got Gareth's Kindergarten admission/registration papers in the mail. Apparently we could have turned those in back in October, which seems a bit ridiculous to me. The deadline for people to apply for a non-attendance area school was in the first week of March. Gareth will be going to our neighborhood school, so that didn't apply to us, but the principal at his school still encouraged getting the papers in earlier rather than later (probably so they could have a good idea how many out of area kids they could accept). So I was feeling rather horrible about not having the papers in. But you have to take or send them in to the central office, which is downtown, rather than just taking them to your area school. To mail them in meant I needed to photocopy his birth certificate and two bills as proof of address and my driver's license and that's what really took me forever. But I finally did it and hopefully I didn't forget anything and will get some confirmation that he's good to go in the next couple of weeks. It feels very strange to realize that the next 18 years of our life we'll be tied to the school calendar and become extremely familiar with the layout and feel of those buildings. 18 years. I think I've gained a better understanding for why parents celebrate their last child finishing elementary and then middle and then high school or any given milestones within those schools. 18 years sounds like forever.

Doula Decision

I first heard of doulas before I was married, if I recall correctly. Some roommates were watching one of those getting ready for baby kind of shows and I caught a few minutes of it and the particular couple they were following had a doula. I didn't think much of it at the time.

Using a doula didn't even cross my mind when I was expecting Gareth. I didn't know anyone else who had used one, still didn't even know what they were, really, and certainly couldn't have afforded one even if I had wanted one. But it was far more on my mind this time around. I knew even before I was pregnant that I would want this labor and delivery to be drastically different from my previous one. And this time I actually knew some people who used doulas and one who is training to be a doula. I'm not much better-read this pregnancy than last time around, but did take the time to read one book (one more than I bothered with last time) that was recommended by a friend. The book is actually for the birth partner or doula, but I found it very informative for myself as well. Ryan is dutifully trying to work his way through the couple of chapters I told him were most important to read. At the beginning of this pregnancy I went so far as to do a quick Google search for Seattle doulas, primarily curious to know how ridiculously expensive they were here. And just about died when I saw some of the charges. Doulas often charge $1000 to attend your birth, some charge well over that (I've been told that some charge as much as $2000), and some a little less ($750 or so). I quickly put any budding idea of using a doula out of my head, seeing as they aren't covered by insurance and are not considered a qualified FSA expense. Besides, Ryan would be there as my support person, so why pay someone to do that job?


As Ryan has been working his way through the book, and as I've been re-reading the same chapters in the book, we both started to realize that this could be rather difficult to do on our own. While I'm not the type of person to feel a failure and hate myself if I end up with an epidural, I'd definitely prefer to forego that option this time around. Sometimes I'm very doubtful I can withstand the pain, but I'm also incredibly stubborn, so it'll basically be a battle between my stubbornness and the pain. Though second births are supposed to be faster, I feel we have nothing to judge by since I was induced last time around. This birth could actually take longer than Gareth's without the pitocin to force things faster. I started to be concerned about Ryan getting tired being the only support person, especially if things take a while. If he's alone then it would be difficult for him to take a break to eat or rest or just emotionally/mentally recharge himself, and then he wouldn't be able to help me as well. Then I was talking with another co-op parent and she told me that they used a doula who wasn't certified yet, but who was working toward certification with DONA. Their doula charged them much less than a certified doula would, and in return they wrote a review for her after the birth. She urged me to consider something similar as they had found having a doula very helpful and sent me contact information for the doula they'd used who might know others working on certification. I still put the idea off for quite a while as I just wasn't sure how necessary a doula would be, plus the idea of paying someone to come support your birth seemed a little strange to me. I wasn't sure I wanted a stranger in my hospital room.


A couple of weeks ago I finally decided that it couldn't hurt to contact the doula my friend had used. May as well see what I could find (if anything at this late time) and talk with some people and then we'd be able to make a more informed decision about the whole thing. Within a week we were meeting with a woman working toward doula certification. Ideally, we would have met with a couple more, but as I'm nearing my due date we really don't have lots of time. The first woman we met with I felt very comfortable with and, while she's only attended four births so far, she seems very knowledgeable and amenable to supporting us in whatever we decide to do - one of the births the woman decided to get an epidural, others they made it without medication, and this doula seemed pleased with both decisions. The other woman who contacted us couldn't meet until this next week and the first woman was meeting with someone else due around the same time as me this past weekend (a doula can't be on-call for two births around the same time, for obvious reasons). If we wanted to use a doula and wanted to use her, we could miss out by waiting to meet with our second contact. So we opted to make the decision whether we'd use her as a doula or not use a doula at all. In the end, I felt more comfortable knowing that we'd have someone there with us to remind us of various labor options rather than having Ryan frantically searching through the book we're reading, trying to remember all the stuff we'd read but forgotten. We looked at our budget and figured out where the money would come from and decided to go ahead with it. I'm rather excited about our decision, partly just to see how we end up feeling about the birth this time around (hopefully better than last time) and how we end up feeling about the whole doula thing afterwards. Without knowing what will happen, I feel it could definitely be worth the cost. 

Thumb-Sucking

Gareth is a thumb-sucker. Thankfully, he usually only sucks his thumb at night to get himself to sleep. Though on occasion he will grab his orange blanket during the day and suck his thumb then. I've been telling him for a while now that he will need to stop sucking his thumb at some point. Little procrastinator that he is, he's always replied, "I'll stop sucking my thumb when I'm five" or something else to that effect. The other day I asked him not to suck his thumb at night since he had some cracked skin on his thumb that had been bleeding and I wanted it to actually get better. Now he's changed his response to, "But I like my orange blanket so much!". And I point out that liking his orange blanket does not require him to suck his thumb.

A couple days after asking him not to suck his thumb at night he had his first ever dentist appointment. (He did awesome, by the way. He was very excited to go and opened his mouth wide and was told that he has very clean teeth.) One thing the dentist asked us to work on was to get him to stop sucking his thumb. I told her that he only sucks it at night to get himself to sleep. Unfortunately, everything she said about how to help him stop was really more applicable to daytime thumb-suckers. Peer pressure from fellow Kindergarteners? Yeah, that'd only work if they actually knew he was sucking his thumb, which they won't because he only does it at bedtime. Sticker chart? That means I'd have to know whether he was sucking his thumb or not, which I don't because I don't stay in the room with him while he falls asleep. I'd have to rely completely on him telling me whether or not he did. And there's a chance that he wouldn't know for sure himself if he used it during the middle of the night to fall back asleep or something. About the only helpful advice she had was to just be encouraging. My guess is we'll have to retire the orange blanket to the closet at some point, but I'm definitely going to wait on that until the baby comes and Gareth's had a chance to adjust. The best part of the whole dentist visit was when she asked him if he thought he could stop sucking his thumb. He looked at her and said, "I don't know". At least the kid is honest! If any of you have advice for stopping thumb-sucking that only occurs at night, please do let me know. As I said, I'm not worrying much about it until after the baby comes, but it'd be great to have some ideas lined up!

Movie Night

We had our first family movie night last weekend, unless you count the times when Gareth was an infant and we watched "24" with him that is. I told Gareth we'd be watching a movie all together after we ate dinner. This might have been a mistake as he inhaled his dinner rather than chewing and swallowing in proper fashion. But it did mean that he was able to get pjs on while Ryan and I finished our dinner and did some quick cleanup. Not having a television yet, we didn't get to sit on our cushy couch. But that worked out okay since I'd decided to buy some special treats to go with our movie, which we wouldn't have let him eat on the couch. Gareth loves the fig bars from the bulk section at PCC, so I got a few of those along with some licorice (which he also likes, but it was more for me and my pregnancy-enhanced sweet tooth that I'm not doing so well at ignoring anymore). Gareth was a little iffy about the movie choice at first - "Despicable Me" - because it was something he hadn't seen before and he really wanted to watch a Cars movie. But I think it's safe to say he loved our selection as he made sure to get in two more viewings of it the next day before we sent the movie back. It was fun to watch him react to the movie and it's probably the slowest he's ever eaten a fig bar because he was so engrossed in the story. And it worked out nicely for us. Gareth went to bed a little late, but it was still only 8:30 by the time he was in bed, so there was plenty of time for us to get in some "Angel" (we finished Buffy a couple weeks ago) and "Mad Men" (like watching a train wreck in slow motion, but you can't look away) while enjoying some "dry" sodas (they're less sweet than typical soda) before we headed to bed. Unfortunately for Gareth, we also have movies on our queue that are just for us. I felt a little bad when he got the mail a couple days ago and was so excited to pull out a movie. He wasn't too upset about it being one he couldn't watch as he'd come up with the perfect solution: we just need to "keep this movie until he's a grown-up and then he can watch it too". Yeah, not going to happen. I think he'll get over it though.

What's In a Name?

So my due date is nearing, which is exciting but also a little scary. We've got plenty of clothes and anything left to do really won't take all that long. And we've both agreed we're definitely more mentally prepared for what to expect this time around, though it's been long enough since Gareth's infant days that how much I hate some of the early stuff will likely be a shock to remember, despite what I feel are very clear memories of how awful the newborn stage is. Probably the biggest thing left on my mental "to-do" list is to get our taxes done. (I will be thrilled next year to only have federal taxes to do; hooray for not state income taxes in WA!) Of course, I'm also probably forgetting a million things that we could be doing to prepare, but I'm pretty certain we've got most of the big things covered. Except for a name.

Now, we struggled with Gareth's name. It's a lot of pressure to come up with what your kid will be called for the rest of their life (unless they really hate it and opt to change it when they turn 18). Gareth is his name because in the end it's really the only thing we came up with that we both liked just fine, and we just sort of settled into it. We had absolutely no other names on the list. Okay, that's not entirely true, but none of them were serious considerations last time around. And they all got erased off of the list this time around for various reasons, usually because they're far too popular. We looked at the top 500 boys names the other day and it was discouraging to realize that there are really only 50 or so boys names and people just change the spelling (Jonathon, Johnathan, Johnathan, etc.) or use just the nickname (Tony rather than Anthony) or a version in a different language (Matteo rather than Matthew). The other problem we've run into is that Ryan works in a currently male-dominated field. Half the names I'd pulled out are names of managers at old jobs, or names of people on his team at his current job, or even names of tools they use at his current job. I told him he needs to switch to a female-dominated profession. And don't even mention a middle name. Last time around we just unthinkingly followed some family tradition and didn't have to come up with a middle name on our own that way. I'm still hoping that a middle name will come somewhat easily once we decide on a first name. But I'm starting to think this baby will be lucky if it has a name at all.

One Year in Seattle

It's strange to think that we've been here in Seattle for an entire year already. I was looking back over some old posts the other day and the ones from when we first moved here seemed so long ago, but at the same time it feels like the year has passed by very quickly.

When we first moved here I was very discouraged by the difficulty of finding housing (this has got to be one of the worst tasks ever) and the drastic change from Indiana. I'd put down far more roots in Indiana than I ever imagined I would or than I had anywhere else we'd lived. I'd made some awesome friends, some of whom I got to work with in the local schools. I enjoyed the work I was doing, the book group I attended, and had even grown to appreciate the general area for the most part. Moving here, I no longer had a job, had to once again find new friends, basically didn't have much to do with my life, and had to get acclimated to living in a city after getting very used to less traffic, lower costs and other things that come with a more rural area. Ryan, being a student, didn't have the time to get as attached as I did, so I don't think the move was quite as difficult for him.

I still miss my friends (and job) from Indiana, but now that we've been here for a whole year I can say it's a good fit for us and I'm glad we're here. I love the neighborhood we live in. Evidence of this being that for the first time since we've been married I was able to return to my hometown without feeling sad that I wasn't living there. I love my hometown; it's beautiful and generally awesome and I enjoyed walking down Main Street again. But when it came time to leave I was equally happy to return to our neighborhood.

In the past year we've made some good friends and acquaintances here. It's nice to have a house with a yard (even if we are just renting still). We have easy access to the city and all that comes with that, but I often forget that we technically live in the city ourselves. We've spent some of the last year discovering the area, which is always fun. Ryan enjoys his work, Gareth loves his school, and I'm enjoying having more time to play my instrument again, rather than just teach. One definite bonus to Ryan not being in school anymore is that we have more time on the weekends to spend as a family. I feel comfortable and able to be myself here and have come to love living here and the prospect of sticking around this area for the foreseeable future.

This next year will be a busy one - adding another member to our family and Gareth starting Kindergarten being among the biggest events that I can think of (and maybe me starting back to school myself?). One thing I'd like to do better at is getting out of the house, hiking, and exploring. We tend to very easily get caught up in the minutiae of our day-to-day life and not take the time to check out our area, something I regretted from our time in Virginia and Indiana. So I'm determined that this next year we'll get out hiking a lot more in the many surrounding parks and take the time to check out some places like Theo Chocolate, The Museum of Communications, and maybe even get out to some further away places such as Leavenworth, as well as checking out more of the local restaurants and maybe attending a couple of plays or concerts. There's so much to do and see around here that it would be unfortunate if we didn't take advantage of it all. Hopefully we'll follow through on such plans and you'll get to read about more outings this next year!

Light Fabrics

Can I just say how much I love Gareth being in preschool and how it gives me three hours in the afternoon most days of the week to do whatever I want? Today is a gorgeous day here: the sun is shining, birds are chirping outside my house and it's warm. In theory, I could have walked Gareth to preschool and then continued on to the quilt shop from there, but I'm glad I didn't, especially since it didn't take me anywhere near three hours to select my fabrics. I wasn't looking at my dark and medium tones while pulling out bolts, but when I put them all together after I was done collecting I'd done quite a good job. I discarded a couple and with the help of an employee added another one and I was good to go!

So there's the last of the fabric for the quilt. Except for the backing and binding of course. I'm really interesting to see how this turns out once I cut everything into 7/8" strips. For instance, that grey on the top left will have some strips that are just grey, others that throw in some red and white. Cutting everything so small will mean the quilt will potentially look like it has more variety of colors/fabrics than it really does. Time to start cutting the dark strips and get this fabric washed!