On the Blog Again...

So last summer I took an unexpected break from blogging for a couple overwhelmingly busy months (as if I have any other kind).

After the summer was over and the fall routine settled in again, I sat down to write my "sorry I was MIA all summer" post. Then it dawned on me: no one - not friends, family, or distant readers - had commented about the fact that I disappeared for months. I thought about this for a while and realized that Facebook was sufficient for keeping loved ones up to date and my blogging life had probably reached its natural end. I decided to write a final post and call it good, but that post just wouldn't come.

For some reason, people have recently started asking me what happened to the blog and it got me thinking about why I started it in the first place. Certainly not for the fame and glory and money (although if anyone wants to offer me that, I won't refuse). Mainly it's a diary of our life. I realized that so much of the boys' first few years were documented, while Miren's first year will soon be fuzzied by mommy amnesia.

So I'm back - even if it's just to satisfy my own navel-gazing and family journaling needs.

With that in mind, here are a few of the most important moments of our last year...

We got the world's coolest bike. And despite my tricycle past, I can actually ride it:

Took a trip to Mackinac Island with my parents:

In front of the Mackinac Bridge.

Held Miren's Dedication:

Celebrated Robbie's 30th Birthday:

Had one family reunion or family party after another:

Celebrating Grandma Marion's 80th Birthday

We remodeled our only (and incredibly tiny) bathroom, forcing us to travel to our neighbor's empty bathroom (they were in Europe) every night for bathtime for months. Our children decided that most of the trips needed to be done naked, which our neighbors doubtless appreciated:

The crappy "Before" picture.

The equally crappy "After" picture.

Fionn started his first year of preschool:

  

 

Emerson made huge gains in all areas and got a wonderful kindergarten placement for next year. I pushed for more testing in the fall and - as I suspected all along - he qualified for autism spectrum services. More on that later:

The handsome man himself.

Miren learned how to do all the important baby things:

Miren also learned that her smile could help her get away with pretty much anything:

Once mobile, she quickly dispelled the myth that at least one out of three kids is bound to be easy:

Miren enjoys her first Popsicle.

I celebrated my 30th Birthday. It was not quite as exciting as Robbie's :) :

We lost our beloved "Mama:"

Mama meets newborn Emerson for the first time.

Fionn earned the title "World's Best Big Brother:"

Fionn shares his Valentine's sucker.

We enjoyed visiting friends and drinking good beer in Wisconsin:

Fionn enjoys the view of Milwaukee from his "bubble" in Discovery World.

We decided to rip up our entire yard and fill it full of edible plants and perennial flowers (pics coming).

The boys got to go on their first fishing trip thanks to dad and papa:

I continued to slog through grad school classes and finally decided the focus of my ministry will be the environment:

I started a Michigan chapter of Kidical Mass (kidicalmass.org):

The kids help me run the booth at "Bike Bash."

Families setting off on our first ride.

And in general we had some crazy fun:

Miren's first Easter egg hunt.

April Fool's Parade

Robbie brought the boys some wrestling masks from Mexico.

Christmas chaos.

Feel more caught up than you ever needed to be? Good. Now hopefully I'll write again before next year.

Miren's Birth Video

As if the pictures and long blog post weren't enough, I made a video too. :)

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!


You will see my butt if you watch this video. There is no blood and nothing pornographic, but there is my butt. I thought a long time about whether I was ok with sharing this and decided that it's important to let people see what a natural homebirth looks like if they are interested.

Plus it's not nearly as bad as when I gave birth to Emerson and Robbie uploaded our entire camera onto photobucket without editing out any of the nipple, crotch, or otherwise gory pictures first. Then he proceeded to send the link to our ENTIRE email list - including my classmates, neighbors, church friends, family members...well, you get the idea. Luckily I realized it and deleted the pictures before everyone saw them, but enough people saw them to permanently strip me of my dignity. Hence, I present you with my butt.

Playlist for the Planet

I've been putting all my extra time and attention toward a new project, so while I play catch up, here is another playlist to share. We are on day one of experimenting with getting rid of the television to save energy and time (aka I don't think TV is evil incarnate), so youtube and internet tv are our only choice.

Pray for us.




(If you have any nature/environmental videos your kids like, please share!)

What Can They See?

One of the biggest questions I get about the boys and OCA is: what can they see? The short answer is that each person with albinism has varying vision, but generally it's like a low-resolution digital picture.

The longer, much better answer is in this video presentation by NOAH. I'm SO glad this is finally available in a form I can share because the information and pictures are invaluable! It's a little long, but if you want to get the general idea quickly, fast forward to the part that shows visual representations of what a person with 20/20 vision sees compared to what someone with 20/100 or 20/200 vision sees. Emerson's vision at this point is about 20/300 - 20/400 and Fionn is around 20/100 - 20/200.

Baby Smiles

I seem to be on a video kick this week, so here's some gratuitous baby videos. You might want to turn down the sound so you don't have to hear our obnoxious voices.

Albinism in the News

Harry's law featured an entire episode about people with albinism from Tanzania seeking refuge in the US due to the killings. This is just a chopped up clip, but the whole show is available online:



A clip from an MNBC documentary about the issue:

Models with Albinism

Fionn Again

Fionn has no trouble commanding equal attention in our house, but I feel like I often ignore him on the blog. So here is a gratuitous video of him just being cute (you might want to turn the volume off because my "baby talk voice" in the background approaches "dog whistle" pitches):


(The stuff on his face are the remnants of breakfast - not a strange growth)

I wanted to post a video of Fionn's new version of crawling - sort of a scootch and army crawl hybrid - but my camera is broken. The dog knocked it off the table and now the shutter won't work. My first thought was "Yay! Nikon D40 here I come!" But my house renovation budget quickly disagreed with that. So now I'm in the land of Denial, hoping it will magically fix itself or that Robbie's plan to rip it apart will prove fruitful. Or that one of my friends will have a digital camera lying around that they've been dying to give away...eh? eh?

Sigh.

Happy Birthday - Sort Of

This past weekend we hosted all three sides of Robbie's family (mom, dad, step) for Emerson's birthday party. We decided that since the last two birthdays were snowed out and so close to Christmas, this year we were officially moving it to the half birthday mark. Except that we were in Utah in June and then swamped in July, so now that it's August it is more of a 2 3/4 birthday - but whatever. Robbie's mom was in town from Texas and about 30 other people came, so it was a fun but exhausting shindig.

Emerson acted as I feared...overwhelmed by all the people and a little clingy/crabby. He had fun hitting the pinata, opening presents, and of course eating cake, but he spent most of the time trying to climb up my leg. At one point, he gave up and just started walking away down the sidewalk. Nothing like the birthday boy leaving his own party! Luckily his two cousins retrieved him for us and he stuck around for the rest of the night.

The best part for him was getting his new kitchen set to complete all the fake food and cooking ware we bought him earlier in the summer. He LOVES to cook in it - especially since it has a million doors to open and close. And we love that it fits in the corner and only cost $10 on Craigslist. (We are total cheapskates and proud of it.)

For grandmas and aunties, here is a video of the cake. Emerson did try to blow out the candles (I explained what was going to happen that morning, but I didn't think he understood since the moment he heard the word "cake," he jumped out of bed and demanded cake for breakfast.) He couldn't quite blow hard enough to put out them out, but it was a good first try:

Albinism on YouTube

I just found this college student named Anna who has a great YouTube channel about her life with albinism. I highly recommend you check out her videos because they're funny and educational - even for people not affected by albinism!

Anna's YouTube Channel

Fat Boy Fionn VS the Carrots

Neon puke, stinky diapers, hours of puree-ing here we come.....

Get Down with Your Bad Self

Home sweet home. We had a lot of fun this weekend, but it's nice to be home again. Emerson's long days of partying finally caught up to him, so he's been passed out cold since we left the airport. There's a lot to write about, but my tired brain can't form coherent thoughts. Instead, here's some video of Emerson's first dance party at the wedding.

The moment the music started, he and his cousins were out on the dance floor. (I'll let Robbie take credit for those moves):



By the end of the night, he didn't have much energy, but his 3-yr-old cousin JoJo certainly did. And he actually has rhythm:

We're so proud

Gotta Laugh

Sometimes life hands you the unexpected and all you can do is laugh. Today I spent most of my day grudgingly working on a final paper for school due this week (yes, procrastination is my middle name). When I finally typed the last painful sentence, I was so elated I convinced Robbie that we should celebrate by walking down to Washtenaw Dairy for ice cream.

The Dairy is one of those quaint local spots that draws regular customers for decades. Every morning, old men gather to discuss how the world is going to hell in a handbasket over steaming cups of coffee and local business people rush in to buy a dozen of their amazing fresh donuts to keep the office workers happy. Every evening, residents of the Old West Side gather to eat ice cream and socialize with their neighbors on the wooden benches outside. It's usually a bustling crowd of giggling teenagers, sweaty kids in soccer uniforms, over-excited dogs and shuffling elderly couples. In short, it is a snapshot of life the way you wish it always was.

Despite the atmosphere, we usually don't linger too long since our dog and child are less than patient at this stage. So, as usual, we got our ice cream, talked with some people we knew for a bit, and then headed home with our cones in hand. We were only about 2 minutes into the walk when my cone suffered some sort of structural damage and dark chocolate ice cream immediately ran out in a stream - right onto my white tank top. It made a lovely brown trail down my enormous pregnant belly, which I proceeded to make even worse by trying to rub it away with a napkin.

There is truly no dignity in motherhood. I spent the rest of the walk home parading my brown-streaked belly for everyone to see (Robbie, bless his heart, did his best to cover me and cross the street when people approached us, but the great weather meant that every other house had a porch full of people watching us). Between laughing at myself and trying to frantically lick up the rest of the melting ice cream that continued to pour down my hands, I got home with a major stomachache and a lot of laundry.



To top off the night, my parents sent me this video from the Salt Lake City Jazz Festival which had me in fits again. The dance move at the end is truly worth watching:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDwYOouZIXA

More Videos

Ok, we've gone a tad video crazy. But we've downloaded a couple more from this past month or so. The others are under 15-18 months.

Picture Update

Rather than tell you what we've been up to lately, we'll show you in pictures. There are more pictures from each event under the "8-10 months" label.

We got a visit from "Aunty" Julia:


Emerson got to participate in his first protest:


He played with his cousins during the Jennings' family reunion:


The old "Baby Posse" got together...first Colin came to visit:


Then Demani:


Emerson enjoyed the new outfit from Grandma:


He made his first visit to an apple cider mill:


Hung out with the pumpkins:


Then we carved our family of pumpkins:


Unfortunately, the neighborhood squirrels had their way with them:


Yes, the littlest pumpkin is white on purpose :)


We took a Fall walk when the weather finally got cold:


Emerson practiced his speaking skills:


And at the end of it all...we were exhausted:

Raspberry season.

Video Proof of Rabid Baby

Ever since he started teething, Emerson has turned into a ferocious beast! This video proves his bite really is worse than his bark (also check the 6-8 months link for a few more pics):