Jane Update

Jane turned 18 months old last month, and it seems like awhile since I've said much about her.  So here's a blog post all about what's going on with her lately and what she's learning and doing.

Jane loves to share our cereal.
Or pretty much anything we are eating.

In early July her language skills exploded and she learned a bunch of new words and about a million animal sounds all in one week.  We found a video on Youtube where they do a little animal sounds song, and she went crazy for it and started doing all the sounds with the song.  Now she knows the song better than I do.  A couple of days ago I was trying to sing it for her while changing her diaper, and I kept forgetting what came next.  Jane would fill me in.  It was scary.  I'd sing, "The cow goes moo, moo moo moo, and the... uh..." and Jane would say, "qack qack!!" which is literally what comes next in the song.  Brilliant.

Jane massacres a nectarine

Speaking of videos, Jane could care less about TV, but she goes nuts for youtube music videos.  Favorites include The Wiggles, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Sesame Street, and Ok Go.  You know who Ok Go is, right?  A rock band?  Let's just say Jane's tastes are eclectic.  They have a video with a ton of dogs running around that Jane is absolutely mesmerized by.  She yells "woof woof!" at the dogs intermittently.  The first time we watched it she giggled and giggled and giggled through the whole thing.  I now have a playlist on youtube called "songs my baby likes" and it pretty much rocks.

In July Jane also had swim lessons, which were pretty much parents holding their kids in different positions in the water and singing songs.  But Jane loved it.  And I found out that the little curls at the base of her neck are still curly even when sopping wet!  Like, just-came-out-of-the-water wet, and she's got ringlets.

Jane loves to sit in this chair and peruse her library
When I took this picture she was saying, "Moo!"

Jane also continues to love books and reading.  She loves to grab a book and come plop down in my lap and insist that I read to her that second.  She especially loves books with animals so she can tell me what sounds they make.  Jane has also started to get the knack of puzzles and loves to move objects from one container to another (one favorite container is my lap).  She also loves going outside and can now literally help me water the plants with her tiny watering can, which is adorable.  She still plays hide-and-go-seek, except now she runs out from behind objects at full speed and throws herself against my legs when I find her.

Last week, Jane started calling me mommy... consistently.  Because she was calling me "Daddy" pretty often before that.  But at some point she realized that I should be called "Momma" all the time, and now she comes up and says it in a whimpery voices while wrapping her arms around my legs, or when I walk into a room, or when she's saying bye to me.  So, yeah, I am pretty much putty in her hands right now.  Also, yesterday she started saying, "Oh no!" in a really concerned, sad voice whenever she drops something on the floor.

In Daddy news, Michael had a birthday last month.  He is passionate about movies right now, so I spent the months before his birthday stockpiling several movies for him, and on his birthday I hid them all around the house and made him do a scavenger hunt to find them.

I don't think I've seen him so excited on a birthday before.  That was pretty fun.

We've also been busy with lots of company recently, which has been fun for Jane to meet so many new people.  Her game plan is to pretend she's shy for the first 15 minutes, and then run around screaming like a crazy wild baby and fling herself into her ball pit like it's home base.  It's hilarious after you get over the initial shock.

Jane's friend Cannon - two months older than her.

Sharing her farm animal puzzle.

 Ok that's all the details I can think of right now.  I have a bunch of cute videos of her doing baby stuff, but I think I'll put them on her "Days with Jane" blog in a few days for grandparents who are interested (you know who you are).

How I found 86 unheard voice messages

For months now people have been telling me, "I left you a message," and I often think huh, it wasn't on our machine.  It happened often enough that we realized there must be a real technical problem but we didn't know why or how to fix it or even how to tell people.  Our house phone used to take messages but it hasn't shown us a message in several months and so we've just been trying to call people back if we missed their call.

Michael told me one day, "It's Comcast's fault, they're not giving us our messages."  That was confusing to me, because our house phone had the voice message system, not the Comcast service.  And as I thought about that some more, I wondered, "Or does it?"

So I called Comcast's technical support line, which just confused me with their automated system.  I got discouraged and hung up and several hours later thought, "Well, how do most people get their messages?  They call their own number."

So I called our house number, and Comcast started this whole, "Welcome to your Voice Mail Box.  To set up your Voice Mail Box, please press one."  On and on, I went through setting up a password and listening to all of their disclaimers and blah blah blah, and finally I heard, "You have now set up your Voice Mail Box. [long pause] You have eighty six unheard voice messages."

It was like even the automated lady couldn't believe it.  I got a sick feeling in my stomach when I heard that.  86?  86!

Then I learned two incredibly lame things about Comcast's Voice Mail system:
1. They don't tell you the date and time that the message was left.
2. You have to listen to the entire message before you can delete it or do anything.  There is no button you can press while listening to skip it or delete it.

For having 86 messages, these two incredibly lame things were going to make it all very painful.

The second message was from my Dad, and started with, "I would say this is Grandpa Ross calling, but not yet."  That was the second moment that made my stomach drop to the floor.  Not yet Grandpa?  As in before Jane was born??  Just so you know, everyone, Jane is turning 18 months old this month.  Yeah.

Then I spent the next 40 minutes listening to messages, and writing down who each one was from and what they were for.

I heard two messages that my mom left last October when she had a stroke.  Her voice was slurred and she sounded fatigued.  That was gut drop moment number 3, remembering that and hearing how ill she was.  I heard Michael's brother and his family call on my birthday, in April, and sing me Happy Birthday.  I missed that.  That was moment number 4.

It was AWFUL.  Like here's a soundtrack of important moments from the last year that you MISSED and never acknowledged!  But the most awful part was when I got to message number 82.  There were some weird beeps, and then I heard a computer voice say something about, "xml application" and "200 input errors."  Then the phone started beeping the way it does when it's off the hook.  The call was disconnected.   So I called the voice message system back, and it said, "You have 88 unheard voice messages."

WHAT?

And you CAN'T SKIP or DELETE EARLY.  You have to listen to every single one, all the way.

I started back with number one, number two from my dad, got all the way to mom's stroke in October (about number 20) and then hung up and called Michael and complained about the whole damn situation.

Then he says, "Oh, you can just log in and see everything online and delete them that way."

Facepalm.

So I did.  It took me about two minutes to delete everything and listen to the last six messages.  (This is an hour after I had started the whole process).  Sigh.  But I noticed something: the first time I listened to all the messages, I felt so awful about missing everything and wanted to apologize to everyone.  The second time, I wanted to kill you all for ever calling me.  =)  But!  Luckily it's all over now, and we have hopefully fixed the problem and we should be getting your messages now.  I am sorry, though, if you called us in the last - eighteen months! - and didn't hear back.  Really sorry.

Here are some interesting numbers for you (since my sister says we are weird and OCD in our family about counting things):
52 of the messages were for me
9 were for Michael
23 were for the household/both of us
2 were hang-up calls
10 were from my mom
1 was a wrong number
36 were from family members
8 were from friends
20 were from church members
21 were business related
3 were work-related
We got 3 messages for Christmas
and 1 on my birthday


p.s. It's not that we haven't gotten any messages in the last 18 months.  Our house phone took messages a lot during Jane's first 12-14 months or so.  I think the house phone got unplugged a few months ago and that screwed up the setting that had message answering turned on, so the majority of the messages we didn't receive have been more recent.  But it does seem to have missed messages intermittently for as long as we've had the phone.  Grr.

Portland Day 5: Quick, before we have to leave

Our last day in Portland we went back downtown to do as much as we could before it was time to go.  Portland has a lot of restaurants that provide sustainably grown, local, organic foods, so I had a list of a few restaurants I was hoping to visit.  At lunchtime we ate at Chef Naoko, the tiniest, most delicious Japanese restaurant, and then we headed to the Portland Art Museum for an hour or so.  When we came out of the museum we walked around in some beautiful areas downtown and took some pictures:

This is Jane flirting with a scary hoodlum near us who
was smiling and making googly-eyes at her.

After this we stopped at Portland's beautiful public library so that I could print off our boarding passes for the next day.  They have lovely, huge arched windows and the trees outside were just starting to get gorgeous green leaves.

(This is not my photo)

We got back in the car and drove up to the Pittock Mansion which sits right above Portland.  Jane fell asleep on the way, so Michael stayed in the car with her while I ran inside the mansion to get in on the very last tour before they closed for the day.

When I got back to the car Jane was just waking up, so we all walked around the grounds for a little while so Michael could see the beautiful views of the city.

(Again, not my photo)

After that we went to the delicious Farm Cafe where I had the best rhubarb crumble I've ever had.  Yummm.  Jane ate cheerios and watched Tangled on our ipod, how very unprogressive of her. =)

The next day we flew home.  We tried to plan our morning trip to the airport so that it was during Jane's nap and she could sleep in the car, but she didn't fall asleep until just before we had to park.  We tried leaving her in the car seat while we made our way to the gate so that she could sleep a little longer, which I never thought would work, but she somehow stayed asleep EVEN WHEN A JET FLEW RIGHT OVERHEAD.  Michael and I just looked at each other in shock.  Of course, when we set the carseat on the ground so we could check our bags, then she wakes up.  So she slept for a total of, hmm, 10 minutes or so?

Luckily, I was the third person on the plane so I was able to choose our seats right behind the bulkhead.  JACKPOT!  Check it out:

Walking room!  Jane unloaded the diaper bag and threw all her little toys on the floor and was able to move around (corralled by Michael's leg that you see in the photo), and she generally had a great time.  Amazing for practically no sleep.  Success!  It was a nice finishing touch to our trip.

We didn't do as much as we thought we would, but we still had a great time as a little family just doing things together.  What fun!

Portland Day 4: Washington Park

Washington Park is a huge park adjacent to downtown Portland (uphill) that has miles and miles of hiking trails, a Children's Museum, the Oregon Zoo, the Portland Japanese Garden, a Forestry Discovery Museum, an International Rose Test Garden, an arboretum, an amphitheater, a railway, a children's park, and I'm sure some other stuff I don't know about.  We probably could have spent several days discovering this park, but we only had a few hours in between Jane's naps to see a few things.

We started at the Children's Museum.  There's a similar place here in Salt Lake, but Jane has never been before, and she absolutely LOVED it.  For the first time we weren't herding her around, telling her she couldn't touch things, or go places.  She could go anywhere!  And play with anything!  We could have spent the whole day there.  This is her with a little Jane-sized shopping cart:

After playing at the children's museum we took a bus to another part of the park where they have a lot of gardens.  We decided to go to the Japanese gardens, which was high enough to have a view of downtown Portland and Mt. Hood behind it.  (That's where we took the photo I put on the blog of me with Mt. Hood behind.)

The Japanese gardens were much bigger than the Chinese garden we had seen the day before and I don't think we saw even half of it.

Washington Park was the hardest day for us, mostly because there was just so much to do and not enough time.  Poor Jane slept for only a few minutes in the car on the way back to the hotel.  So once we got back we decided to take Jane to the pool for the first time ever!

Her swimsuit has ruffles!

Jane pretty much clung to Mommy the entire time, but she relaxed after awhile and thought Daddy was really funny when he went under the water and blew bubbles!  We went over to the hot tub and let Jane dangle her feet in the warm water, and she LOVED that.  Plus, the little curls on the back of her neck scrunched right up and everyone there thought she was adorable!  We already knew that, but the curls help. =)

Portland Day 3: Exploring

Day 3 we decided to take advantage of Portland's excellent light rail system.  I wish we had something as extensive and convenient here in Utah.  There was a stop just a minute from our hotel and we just rode it right downtown.  Jane thought the train was pretty cool, but she was not crazy about when it stopped and started if she was not safely in her parent's lap.

Our first stop was Powell's Bookstore, the "largest independent new and used bookstore in the world,"  or what my co-worker referred to as "Mecca for bibliophiles."  It is quite dazzling to walk through, taking up several floors and I think almost a whole block of downtown Portland. 

 

Jane picked up a pop-up book about monsters eating silly things, and didn't put it down again.  Well, we did wrestle it out of her hands to pay for it, which she was not happy about.

 

After this we stopped at bakery to pick up some yummy baked goods for lunch, and afterward went back to our hotel for Jane's afternoon nap.  When she woke up, we were back on the train, headed downtown to the Lan Su Chinese Gardens.  Portland has tons of parks and gardens, and we had quite a few on our list that we wanted to try to visit.

We probably horsed around a little more than people should do in such a beautiful place.

We had dinner at a nearby Chinese restaurant and then took the train home to put Jane to bed.  It didn't seem like we did much, but we were pooped!

Portland Day 2: The Coast

We really wanted to drive out to see the Oregon coast and some of the cities along the coastline.  Day 2 was supposed to be the rainiest day while we were there, so we decided that since we would spend more time in the car than out of it, that we'd use that day to go to the coast.  I think it worked pretty well.

Our first stop was Cannon Beach, which was stunning and really, really windy.  And really cold.  The rain stopped right as we got there, so we were able to walk around for a few minutes before it came back.  But basically, we came, we saw, we ran back to the car.  After taking some beautiful photos!

Jane, for one, thought the chilling wind and rain was absolutely AWESOME, hilarious, the best thing ever.  She was super happy in all of our photos and even though she clung to us, still thought everything was great fun.  What a great person to have around!

She and I also talked beforehand and agreed that we should wear matching shirts that day.  Just kidding, it was a coincidence.  

Chilly!  Windy!

But happy!

After leaving Cannon Beach we headed north for Astoria.  All along the way we kept seeing markers for the Lewis and Clark trail and there was even a Lewis and Clark national park, but we didn't have time to see it.  Astoria is the oldest settlement on the West Coast, founded in 1811, so this year they are celebrating their 200th anniversary!  Astoria's other claim to fame is that it's where the Goonies was filmed... but we didn't go see that house, either.

One notable moment we did have in Astoria was when we drove up the steepest street I've ever driven up!  As I drove towards it I was like "Are you sure that's a street??  It looks more like a wall!"  Michael said yes and so I just sped up that thing but it was honestly terrifying.  I almost had a heart attack.  Fun!

We also went to the George Flavel House Museum, a beautiful Queen Anne Victorian home that was owned by an influential captain.  They had a children's room full of Victorian toys, where I think Jane had the most fun she'd had all day.  I know, it seems impossible after her awesome freezing-windy beach experience, but somehow it just got better!  She cried when we finally had to take her away because we were all starving.  

After getting some grub, we drove up to the Astoria Column, designed after Trajan's Column (right, Art History friends?) depicting historical scenes from the area.  It's also the highest point in Astoria and had some gorgeous views of the surrounding rivers and green countryside.

That's Washington behind me.

If you are crazy, you can run up to the top of the column, which Michael couldn't pass up.  I honestly thing he ran.  Maybe the first 2/3.  But if you do make it to the top without having a heart attack, you are rewarded with some of the most beautiful views around.  

Astoria

After this we made the trip back to Portland.  It would be nice to spend more time in this area some day and see all that it has to offer, but for us it was a great day trip!