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Build me my own house...

I've now heard this story in three forms, so since it's been such a keeper, I'll share what I've picked up with all of you, our trusty readers. Apparently, Emily, the industrious, independent dynamo she is, decided to come down yesterday morning and fix herself some breakfast. She grabbed a bowl from the dishwasher, got the milk from the fridge, and poured herself a bowl of milk. She was getting her favorite cereal, "Koala Cereal", kind of like coco-crisps, but organic, and was going to pur that into the bowl next, but Sara came down then and asked her where she got the bowl.

Emily said she got it from the dishwasher, but upon inspection, Sara realized the dishwasher had yet to be run, so her bowl was dirty. So Sara explained this to Emily, and proceeded to dump out the milk, and presumably wash the bowl or get a new one or something, that part I'm not sure of. I didn't get the sense that this process caused any problems from Emily. You now, kids can get fretted when their best laid plans are thwarted. But anyway, Sara explained that maybe we can start leaving a clean bowl down where Emily can reach it, so she knows it's clean and can still do all that she had planned.

Emily's response to this was "Well, maybe you can build me my own house, then I can put things wherever I want!"

Good stuff.

Season's Greetings!

2007 has been a travel-filled year for the Grahams! Sara, Emily, and Annabel got to tag along with Sean on two business trips to Pasadena. But don't worry, it wasn't all business - we managed to fit in a day at Disneyland each trip, plus visiting family and friends we have in the LA area. We also spent a few fun days in San Diego where Sean graduated from Animation school! We spent a weekend on Cape Cod, a weekend in Maine, and a couple weeks in Michigan. We also travelled (in a huge snowstorm) to Philadelphia for our annual busdriver St. Patty's Day reunion.

Sara has been having a great time finding her niche in the community. She has returned to volunteering at the Pregnancy Care Center, spending a few hours a week answering phones, sorting clothes, and teaching infant care to the moms-to-be. She has also joined a wonderful playgroup/parenting support system that keeps her and the girls busy around town. In any spare time, Sara works on one of her three home business: helping people shop for safer, non-toxic personal care and household products, making soy candles, and selling Usborne children's books.

Sean finished his coursework for animationmentor.com, the online anima

tion school he's been attending the past couple years and singled himself out by wearing a huge Mickey Mouse top hat at his summer graduation. He is now polishing up his demo reel - a DVD with clips of different work he's done, including the short film he did as a final project - in hopes of getting an animation position and is serving as a student mentor at his new alma mater. He's also still working full time for Raytheon in Pasadena and has made several business trips there, to Maine, to Chicago, and to Washington DC.

Emily, who has started telling us she's four (almost - her birthday is in February) is an incredibly opinionated, articulate, dramatic little lady. She just LOVES every kind of animal - stuffed or real, horses, dogs, cats, guinea pigs (all of which we conveniently have here for her), even dinosaurs. In fact, we have made many trips to Boston to visit T-Rex at the Museum of Science. Emily say she LOVES T-Rex "because he's big and strong and he can handle anything!" She really enjoys going to school and is doing really well both writing her name and beginning to identify letters and their sounds. She still rides Max, her Nana's horse, whenever she can and with more and more autonomy. Miraculously, Emily shows no signs (other than her scar) of the head trauma she suffered last year.

Annabel celebrated her first birthday in October and almost immediately after that really started using sign language to express her wants to us. Her two most-used signs are milk and O (for Cheerios - which she does with both hands over her head as if signaling a touchdown). She is not walking yet, but crawls super fast, gets into everything she can reach, and does pull up holding onto furniture or people. Annabel especially loves Emily and just lights up when she sees her big sister. Annabel also loves music and starts dancing whenever she hears a beat. She is our little peanut, small for her age, and she seems to be more sensitive to new foods, but in general she's a very happy little girl!

We wish you Happy Holidays and a Wonderful New Year!
Sara, Sean, Emily & Annabel
sara@grahamworld.com (Sara)
sgraham481@yahoo.com (Sean)
www.grahamworld.com

Christmas Toys for the Girls - A letter to the gift-buyers in our life

Hi!

OK, I know this is early to be thinking about Christmas, but I have been so I thought I'd share.
First, the disclaimer: please know that we have loved, and will continue to love, and appreciate everything you choose to get for the girls.

Recently I've been sorting the toys we currently have trying to cut down the vast numbers of stuffed animals, determine what's safe to have in Annabel's realm (as she is crawling and putting everything into her mouth), and knowing we have birthdays and Christmas coming up in the next few months to add to the stash. Plus, I've been plagued with the things I'm learning about bad chemicals, residues, etc. in plastics and synthetic materials in general. And then there are all the toy recalls lately...

There's actually a website, http://HealthyToys.org, that has a database of toys that have been tested for toxic chemicals. You can search for the test results of a particular toy to find out its safety rating. You can also use your cell phone by texting "healthytoys [toy name]" to 41411 and the rating will be returned to you.

So, I am hoping/planning to try to phase out our plastics and instead shop for natural toys, preferably made in the US or Germany (where manufacturing standards are well regulated) or by a group adhering to fair trade ethical standards. To that end, we (well actually Santa - shhhh) will be getting the girls a wooden play kitchen (handmade here in New England by an at-home-business family) and some "supplies" to fill it for Christmas. Annabel's birthday gift will include a wood and organic cotton teething baby. Some of Em's dinosaur figures will be replaced by wooden friends, just as a couple examples.

If you're interested in help us out in this endeavour, we'd love it! I do know that wooden toys are often more expensive than their plastic counterparts, but this is definitely a quality over quantity issue, so please don't think we're hoping you'd spend any more. I'd much rather have one great toy then many things that may eventually get lost or broken, chewed by dogs, or just exponentially increase the numbers of toys we have.

I got a message about "Green Toys for the Holidays" which is in keeping with what we're striving for. It's at http://www.coopamerica.org/emails/canews/20071120 in case you'd like more ideas. Plus, there was a great article in this month's Mothering Magazine about nontoxic plastics and a shopping guide for natural holiday gifts in case you want to check that out.

I also got a message about the Teachers Resisting Unhealthy Children's Entertainment (TRUCE) "Toy Action Guide". It is described as "an invaluable resource for anyone concerned about the commercialization of children's play. It contains information on how to select toys that promote positive play and reduce the influence of harmful toys on children. The guide also includes tips for making toys more environmentally friendly; resources for anyone with concerns about the toy recalls; and suggestions for 'Shoe Box Gifts,' an alternative gift idea that promotes play around themes with common objects often found around the house." You can download it at http://www.truceteachers.org/toyguides/T_Guide_web_07.pdf

This might be a little different way of shopping, so I'll list a couple websites we've been browsing to give you some ideas:

http://www.threesisterstoys.com/ (use code MDCMOM for free shipping)

http://www.novanatural.com/

http://www.padilly.com/

http://www.forsmallhands.com/

http://www.atoygarden.com/

http://www.rosiehippo.com/

http://www.magiccabin.com/

http://www.oompa.com/

http://www.hazelnutkids.com/

http://www.woodenwagon.com/

http://www.mahardrygoods.com/ (great felt and knit foods!)

Again, just some thoughts.

Emily Update and General Catchup - Sept 2005

Emily makes sure all the flowers smell ok before planting.

Hope this finds you well and enjoying fall. Some of you have heard parts of this already so I’m sorry for any repetition, but it’s been a long time since I’ve sent an update, so I wanted to make sure everyone was covered.

I’ll start with some details about our upcoming visit to Michigan. We’ll be arriving on Oct. 7 and staying till the 11th. We are thinking about having an “Ann Arbor day” on Friday (10/7), so if anyone in that area would like to meet up for lunch, dinner, or anything in between, let us know. Saturday we’ll have to be watching the Michigan game – I’m seeing that we’re playing Minnesota at 1:00 – though we have not yet decided where. I’m sure my parents wouldn’t mind us taking over their house if anyone wants to come over there to join us… Sean and I will be at my friend Tracy’s wedding Saturday night, so any Emily visits during that time will have to be cleared with my mom. I think Sunday evening is being set aside as extended-family-dinner time, though again, I’m sure my parents wouldn’t mind if others dropped in to see us. As far as I know, any other time, including all day Monday, is still open. Any takers? Feel free to e-mail or call. As usual, we’re going to try our darndest to see as many of our long-lost friends and family as possible. However, if we miss anyone, we will be back for the holidays – Christmas in Massachusetts and New Years in Michigan!

Helping Mommy peel the wallpaper

Now, for what’s been taking up our time… No, it’s not all Emily, though she is keeping us on our toes literally now. She didn’t actually take her first steps till she was about 15 months old, but by the time she was about 16½ months she was ready to walk everywhere unassisted, and has pretty much been running ever since. At almost 19 months-old now, she learns new words daily, repeats EVERYTHING she hears, and comprehends things that just amaze us. Some of her current favorite activities include identifying animals and their sounds and doing those big wooden puzzles. Emily’s class recently moved up to the next room at daycare (all the children move up together in the fall, just like in regular school). She seems to be adjusting fine, and is even falling into the routine of napping when all the other kids sleep after lunch (she rarely slept in her previous room).

Speaking of Emily sleeping, most of my “free” time (read: Emily sleeping time) lately has been spent doing things around the house. We finally finished all our kitchen projects – we now have new cabinets, counters, floors, and recessed lighting, and we painted. We tore the old nasty flooring out of our master bathroom and have painted and put down a new floor. Later this week, we will install a shiny new sink, light fixture, and baseboards to finish putting that room back together. Yesterday I started removing the ugly wallpaper border from our main bathroom. Once that’s done, I’ll repaint and finish up by getting a matching shower curtain, towels, etc. Sean did a ton of work landscaping the area in front of our house and, once our sod is delivered on Saturday, that will finally be done, too. The place is looking really great… just in time to sell. We hope to put our house on the market the end of this month and see what happens. We had a realtor out last month who astounded us with what she thinks we can get for our place ($525,000), so we figure that that would give us enough money to buy a place here in Pasadena which would cut out our hour commute saving us gas money and sanity. We looked at some houses in Pasadena last weekend and were pleasantly surprised to find that we could actually get a decent sized (for out here) house with a bit of a yard for a mere $600,000 - $700,000. That’s a lot of money, but it seems like even more when I think of it in terms of being almost ¾ of a million… Such an overrated place, LA… We’ll let you know when we find our dream place, or at least the place we’ll call home for the next couple years.

Amazing what you find in San Fransisco: A ladybug poses on a stick for Emily's amusement.

Anyway, beyond all the house and Emily stuff, Sean is starting his second semester in AnimationMentor.com. In his words, it “basically amounts to a degree program in advanced character animation, developed by animators from Pixar (Toy Story, Monsters Inc, Bugs Life...) and ILM (Star Wars) to essentially prepare me for a career change in the next two years to become a character animator at a film studio. Not sure where or whatever, but that's the plan. It's really intense, and time consuming, but it's just a total blast to do!” I am also considering taking a class at UCLA this semester to finish my Certificate program in Astronautical Engineering, but I am kinda waiting to see what happens with my work situation. Which takes me to my biggest concern lately – the new NASA administrator has announced big funding cuts to all centers, including JPL. So, since JPL’s money is being cut, they are taking back some of the work they contracted to us so they don’t have to lay off their own people. This greatly affects my department since we rely solely on JPL for our work (not many people have satellites to fly…), but Sean’s department has a lot of web work from other, non-JPL areas, so they are fine. The result is that unless we can grab some work from somewhere else, our four person navigation team is losing one guy 9/30 and probably another by mid October. I’m one of the two that will remain, possibly even “the last one standing” depending on who I talk to, but even that is not completely reassuring since the work that we have left is flying TOPEX, which is limping into its 14th year in orbit. So, basically, if TOPEX dies, so does our nav team. Not the most fun situation, but the good news is that in addition to being able to move back to Pasadena, selling our house should leave us with enough money to cover us if I am out of work for a while.

Whoa, that was sort of a downer, so I’ll end with something infinitely more exciting – I’ve attached some pictures of Emily for your viewing pleasure! There are a couple shots of her “helping” us get the house ready and one from our recent trip up to Berkeley where we found a ladybug in the park. Fun times…

Home Improvements, Piggies, Words, and other new things

I figured it was well past time for another update, so here goes… We are keeping busy, as usual. Rather than the satellite navigation I was doing full time before, I have been working on designing new satellite missions since that is stuff that I can do at home (Emily is in daycare, allowing me to be in the office, only 3 days a week). Sean is starting an online grad school-like program where he will be learning the art of computer animation. So, he is hoping to get a job animating characters for movies or video games or something when he graduates in January 2007.

We are finally getting some real work done on our house (we’ve only lived there for almost 2 years…). We got the horribly ugly, covered with overgrown bushes, chain-link fence pulled out of our back yard and had it replaced with a block wall. Our yard looks so much bigger, brighter, and cleaner now! We also got our kitchen cabinets and counters replaced a couple weeks ago. We are still waiting on the electric work to be finished – we have just one working outlet in the whole kitchen, but it is so much more functional now, not to mention prettier! We also decided to pull out the sink and tile (three layers of it, as we found) in our bathroom and are in the process of painting and redoing all that. We seem to be on a roll now, so hopefully we can tackle the beige and pink striped wall paper in our room next.

Emily is continuing to talk up a storm, only now we are beginning to understand what she is saying. Her first word was “uh oh”, but her vocabulary seems to increase exponentially, and includes “mommy”, “daddy”, “Wally”, “dog”, “birdie” (which also refers to planes, or anything else flying), “more”, “no”, and many other words that I can’t think of right now. Her current favorite phrase is “Hi baby!” said not only to babies, but to any person in sight. She has also started walking without holding on to anything. She’ll go back and forth between Sean and me, but that’s about the extent so far. At her (belated) 15-month checkup Tuesday, they said Emily is 50th percentile in weight, but 90th in height and head circumference – our tall, skinny, brainy little lady! I’ve attached the latest picture I have on my computer – taken last month when Em was visiting work with Daddy.

As for our other “babies”, Wally and Alpha are still hanging in there. They are both very interested in our new guinea pigs (3-month-old sisters named Lucy & Squeakers who we got in April), but we keep reminding them that they can’t eat the piggies. Emily is also very interested in the piggies and loves when she gets to pet and/or hold them.

I guess that’s the big news for now. We hope to see you soon – we’re trying to get back to MI this summer, though we haven’t made any plans yet. Otherwise our guest room is available if anyone wants to visit…

Pics from Em's 1st B-Day

Getting ritght into it. Emily wasted no time diving right in, the classic 1st Birthday picture, cake everywhere and a happy baby.

There any cake hiding UNDER the plate?

Now this is what I call a hunk o' cake!

Nap time.

Emily B-Day, Update March, 2005

As Emily’s first birthday has come and gone (as has yet another month – where does the time go?) I thought it was high time to send out another update. Most importantly, through a concerted group effort, we have three new galleries of pictures on our website, http://www.grahamworld.com/. They are mostly from the last two months, but are not inclusive (i.e. the Boston pix have not made it up yet).

Speaking of Boston, we had a great time at our annual Busdrivers’ St. Patty’s Day trip! Emily really enjoyed spending time with the five other kids (all age 3 or younger), and I think watching the older ones has encouraged her to grow up even faster. Emily is now very interested in walking holding on to our fingers, and she stood without holding onto anything last weekend. I’m sure walking alone is not far off…

Emily also seems to be saying words with purpose now, rather than just babbling. Her first phrase was “Uh oh!”, which she exclaims when she drops food off her tray (which we try to teach her is a “no no”, not an “uh oh”), or when a toy or something falls on the floor. Her current favorite word is “baby” which she says whenever she sees a real baby, a picture of a baby, or her own reflection, or even sometimes when playing with random toys. She also says “Wow!”, though I don’t think she really knows what it means. Dada & Mama are also said a lot, though not necessarily in reference to us.

Those are the highlights today (every day is something new – I could go on and on). We’ll try to get more pix up online – my parents brought a bunch of disks when they came out recently, and I think I’ve finally figured out how to get the ones from our digital camera online.

Hope you had a great Easter! Our guest room is always open if you want to visit sunny CA (it was in the 80s today)!