First Words

I imagine someone out there has studied the deep intricacies of first words and how they divulge personality. We don't have any such insights but have loved to find out what Nathan's first words are...

"Light"- though a fascination for most babies, Nathan has yet to outgrow his. While sitting at the kitchen table he will oftentimes stare up at the light fixture over the table. We point up to it and say "light!" and sure enough one day he did too.

"Sasha"- this one came out second but it quickly superseded the first. Jason's folks have an adorable golden lab named Sasha. A few weeks ago we were up to visit and Nathan found a new best friend. He says her name many times a day with the utmost fondness. It worked like magic on our last car trip up to Portland. If he was getting grumpy, we'd just ask him about Sasha and in a cute little high pitched voice he'd start jabbering...

He did, of course, learn Da and Ma even earlier. But perhaps the most unique sounds he's learned so far are those near and dear to his two doctor parents - the lung, heart and stomach sounds. :-) We can't say it was really intentional. He has a kids book of anatomy and we just started making sounds for some of the "systems". He loves them!

We're more and more amazed every day at the incredible gift children are. We hope you share in our joy while reading our stories.

The Last Great White Rocker

Most of you are well aware of our constant stream of house projects over the last couple years. We (either ourselves or contracted) re-tiled our bathroom and replaced the fixtures, replumbed the entire house, replaced two large portions of exterior walls with dry rot (and one window casing), refinished the hardwood floors, painted and rewired the baby room, completely renovated the basement apartment - including gutting the kitchen cabinets, scraping ancient wallpaper, rewiring, re-framing the downstairs bedroom, sheetrocking, adding a built in closet, replacing two old windows, adding an egress window, redesigning the kitchen... Truly amazing when you look back at it all.

Our latest project was partially gutting the "finished" downstairs bathroom. Come to find out, the shower (installed when the house was built in the 40's) did not have a shower pan. It was simply a concrete slab at the bottom with tiled walls. For 60-something years it had done the job... until about a month ago. "We have some bad news - the bathroom is flooded!" Our sweet friends who are living there right now had noticed some water leaking in the weeks leading up to that, but it had been an intermittent problem. Now we had no choice - the shower had to go. So much for being "finished". Now the bathroom has a spacious combo tub/shower with all new plumbing, a built-in set of cabinets and drawers, several new walls and nice new trim (again). (The posted pictures are the original and the "finished" version. The most recent will be added soon.)

You might be scratching your head and wondering how a surgery resident, a stay-at-home pregnant mom with no prior home-renovation experience and an energetic toddler can manage such a thing... Well, we have a secret friend.




Good contractors are really hard to find. But if you ever find one, you know you have left the wild and scary world of bidders and may indeed get a project finished. Our secret friend is William Crawford who calls himself "the last great white rocker". I'll explain. We were very fortunate to find William when we were in the midst of the apartment remodel and needed some help getting the walls up. In time, we were able to get on his schedule to work on our "little" project. He did an incredible job and didn't even charge extra for all our questions. Sheetrocking is usually hired out to immigrant workers these days. William is the only white guy he knows that doing it. Hence, he gets a good chuckle out of his self ascribed nickname.

After doing the walls, we found out that he could install counter tops. Next, he somehow offered his services to paint the outside of our house. And many times along the way when we were in a pinch, we'd just call William. So when we got the call that the bathroom had flooded and we were four hours away, we knew who could man the job.

The Lord surprises us all with special people in our lives, and William is one of those for us. We've suggested he might even consider just adding an extra room onto our house, so he can come and stay anytime. Perhaps he'll take us up on it one of these days...

First Haircut

I'm not sure I ever saw myself as the do-it-yourself haircutter... But residency has a way of necessitating learning new skills - there are few places open late at night to get a haircut. After at least a year of trial and error with Jason (with only one session ending in a buzz cut), we finally have it down. Our favorite haircut spot is on the back porch - minimal mess. Though fairly bald for a long time, Nathan now has enough hair to get his cut too! These are a couple of pictures from Nathan's first haircut day.

The Cowboy

It's never easy to get out the door with a little one in a clean outfit and in a good mood at five o'clock in the evening, but we knew it would be worth it. Dressed in a cowboy ensemble, Nathan rode with a "stone cold" stare in the back seat as we nosed our way to church (he much prefers to play in the front seat with the car parked). Only shortly after we arrived did the excitement take hold. Nathan was elated to be in a big crowd with lots of people, especially lots of other kids.

It's hard to believe we took in the entire spectacle without consuming a single piece of candy. Nathan was quite content to just be in the midst of it all. Though a little too young for most of the activities, Nathan found the petting zoo to be a highlight.
His favorites were the rabbit and the guinea pig. He also got to "go fish" (after which we said thank you and returned all the candy). Probably won't be returning too much candy in the future, but we savored the crispness of fall and the cheer of the festival. A delightful time for all!