Community Birth Drop-in Groups

The following is the schedule of the Community Birth & Family Center drop-in groups for parents and babies:

The Sprag Building
2517 Eastlake Ave. E., Suite 102
Seattle, WA 98102

First Weeks
Birth to 12 Weeks
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays
12-2p

Next Months
3 to 6 Months
Tuesdays and Wednesdays
9:30-11:30a

Sitters & Rollers
6 to 9 Months
First Monday of each Month
12-2p

Crawlers & Cruisers
9 to 12 Months
Second Monday of each Month
12-2p

Let's Talk About Sleep
Any Age
Third Monday of each Month
12-2p

"First Foods," Quarterly Seminar

Seattle First Baptist Church, Capitol Hill

$20, registration required; to register, contact Ann Keppler

Any age, but geared for parents getting ready or beginning table foods

Back to Work

For the first time in more than a year, I'm back at work for a few days.

A Carousel Ride

Woodland Park Zoo, Saturday

Changing Table with a View

Time with Papi

Sharing a Tradition

Imogen dressed up for Northwest Folklife, Friday

Pretty in Pink

As a teenager, I was enchanted by the scene in Pretty in Pink where Molly Ringwald's character makes her own prom dress from two dresses.

The other day, I had fun with a small project in that spirit. I took one hand-me down dress from Mina, cut a paint stain off the skirt, added the border from another of Mina's dresses and then sewed on a tea cup from some fabric I had.

Happy Birthday Imogen May!

Imogen is so much more than I dared to dream possible and I am forever transformed by her birth.

She has made a mother out of me and it's the honor and privilege of my life.

More Mayfair Photos

Kendall (10 mos.); Me, Karin and Imogen; the Kids' Parade

The Perfect Nest

My friend and Addie's Mama, Laura, is celebrating her transformation into motherhood (in part) with a lovely new tattoo.

The image was given to her on a Mother's Day card by Addie's Papa. Laura had been in search of the perfect nest.

It Takes a Village

Imogen and I were apart for the first time yesterday from about 9:30am to 5pm. Our delightful friend Linda who lives just down the hill offered to take Immy for two hours in the morning to give me time to clean and relieve some household stress. I've never sent Immy off before, so this was a big deal.

At the time I expected Imogen home, Linda called to report that Imogen was doing great and announced that she was keeping her until 4. I knew experienced-mom Linda was helping me, so I bit the bullet, and after an "are you sure?," I agreed. I hadn't gotten as much done as I would have liked earlier and a nap did sound nice, so it was settled. At 4, Linda called and said Immy had been asleep since 2:40. We let her finish her nap and then Linda drove her up the hill.

Thank you Linda, Angela, Harrison and Savanna Mary for your loving care and all the work you did to take care of Immy.

Imogen's been clingy, which isn't wonderful, but it makes me feel needed after a big day for both of us. Rather than feel like she doesn't need me because she did so well, as I'm apt to do, I believe it's my very consistency and love that gave her the confidence to do this.

Pictures, in reverse chronology: nap time, Immy (12 mos. on Sunday) and Savanna (8 mos.) playing, bye bye Immy, in the car

Mankind is a Mystery

Maybe in order to understand mankind, we have to look at the word itself: "Mankind." Basically, it's made up of two separate words, "mank" and "ind." What do these words mean? It's a mystery, and that's why so is mankind.

Jack Handy

Pushin' Me Pram

Today

My Little Pony

Today at Mayfair, Madrona

The "pony handler" is Baltazar's Dad, Jules

Alki: By and By

Imogen, 11.75 mos., Friday, Alki Beach, -3.8 ft. tide

An Image in May

Thursday, Emma Schmitz Overlook, Beach Drive, West Seattle

Madrona Mayfair

Parade, Face Painting, a Real Fire Truck, Bouncy House, Pony Rides, Carnival Games, Balloons: Things that make it great to be a child, and they are all at Mayfair!

Mayfair is on Saturday May 19th from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm! There is an all-neighborhood parade down 34th Avenue led by Deano the Clown. (Everyone will gather in Al Larkins Park at 34th & Pike at 10:00 am where plenty of crepe paper will be available to decorate bikes, trikes and strollers.) Then the fun continues at the Madrona Playfield!!!

Little House Today

If you were a fan of Little House on the Prairie, check out Weekend Today on Saturday between 4:05 and 6:00 am on channel 5 in the Seattle area. They will visit the set and interview the original cast members.

New York, 1939

Helen Levitt

His Name is Today

We are guilty of many errors and many faults, but our worst crime is abandoning the children, neglecting the foundation of life. Many of the things we need can wait. The child cannot. Right now is the time his bones are being formed, his blood is being made and his senses are being developed.

To him we cannot answer "Tomorrow." His name is "Today."

Gabriela Mistral, 1948

From the World Health Organization website

Congratulations Jason and Ashley

Saturday in Redmond

Visit with Grandma Sarah

Sunday in Edmonds

In Dreamy Land

Friday after Seward Park outing

Big Girls at the Playground

Last Tuesday, Sanislo Elementary playground

C-Section Deaths

Young Teachers Connected By Birth, Death

In a heartbreaking coincidence, two young teachers from the same South Jersey school gave birth at the same hospital and died only days apart.

Valerie Scythes and Melissa Farah both taught at Avon Elementary school in Barrington.

Both women were pregnant and died 15 days apart in March and April after delivering by cesarean section at Underwood Memorial Hospital in Woodbury, Gloucester County.

Scythes, 35, died on March 28 and Farah, 28, died on April 12.

An autopsy on Melissa Farah revealed she died due to bleeding and anemia.

A preliminary autopsy on Valerie Scythes did not reveal a specific cause of death.

CBS; Full Story

Baby Food Donations Needed

Northwest Harvest is out of baby food and turning needy families away. They are most in need of baby food and formula. They will also take diapers and baby wipes. Food and supply donations can be made at 711 Cherry St. in Seattle and monetary donations can be made online at: https://www.northwestharvest.org/donate.html.

Happy Birthday T. Berry

Eighty-nine years ago today, Thomas Berry Brazelton's mother gave birth to him.

Families need families. Parents need to
be parented. Grandparents, aunts, and uncles are back in fashion because they
are necessary. Stresses on many families are out of proportion to anything two
parents can handle.

From Touchpoints, 1992

Our Puppy

Niles, 9 years

Our Kitty

Gaea, nearly 12 years

Our Bunnies

Poppy and Giacomo

Uncle Caveman

When I was a kid my favorite relative was Uncle Caveman. After school we'd all go play in his cave, and every once in a while he would eat one of us. It wasn't until later that I found out that Uncle Caveman was a bear.

Jack Handy

A Stokke Good Luck

Before & After

One of my greatest thrift-shop finds of all times happened today. Imogen was whiny and couldn't sleep after many tries, so I took her to the Burien Goodwill to get out of the house after a rough morning. I'd been looking for a high chair or booster seat to solve a space problem in our kitchen and had found nothing. Until today that is: I found a Stokke Tripp Trapp high chair for $2.99! It was covered in at least 100 stickers, but I spent about three hours over the day cleaning it up and making a new seat belt for it. The high-chair find made up for an otherwise exhausting day as a mummy.

This Song's for You

West Seattle Farmer's Market

Exposing Ourselves to Art

Imogen and I went to the Grand Reopening of SAM on Saturday night and then again with Papi the next morning. I appreciated how engaged Immy was in the art. There is a nice family room that was perfect for taking a break. It overlooks the Lusty Lady of all things, whose marquee read "Welcome Back SAM" on one side and "Hammer Away Big Guy" on the other. What also made this fun thing even more special was running into Forks artist and mother of my special friend Jocelyn, Sally Milici, on Saturday night and then Port Angeles artist Jack Datisman on Sunday morning! I didn't see anyone I know from Seattle.

Blog Search Engine

Here is Google's beta Blog Search engine.

Help Along the Way

I want to give a big "holla" to all the people--in addition to our family and friends of course--that have helped us find our way in these last many months. I could just keep having babies (so to speak) to stay in touch with these amazing people:

Sandy Szalay, ARNP, CCE, Childbirth Instructor and Doula
Pam Jordan, PhD, RN, Associate Professor, Family and Child Nursing, UW
Peter Brandon, MD, OB, Expert Baby Turner, Swedish Ballard
Rose Yates, RN, Labor and Delivery Nurse, Family Childbirth Center, Swedish Ballard
David Springer, MD, Pediatrician, Wallingford Pediatrics
Ann Keppler, RN, MN, Infant and Maternal Health Specialist

A Museum of Itself

I visited View Ridge Elementary school yesterday and went inside for the first time since 1978 when I went to part of 2nd grade there. The most striking thing was that practically nothing was different! The school is a near museum of itself 29 years ago including the burlap-covered display boards hung high in the Assembly room and most of the furnishings. It was the Assembly room where we ate lunch, the library and my classroom that I remember most and they looked sort of the same as they did in my brain.


Yes, it was on these hallowed grounds that I learned the Kookaburra Song, got a Dorothy Hamill haircut, accidentally wore my mom's nylons to school instead of my tights and once used the boys' bathroom--which had no stall doors--by mistake in an emergency. I only spent a couple months there, but when we left to go back to Forks, Mrs. Stanley gave me a brand-new copy of Little House on the Prairie.

Library and South Exterior

4½

Little Al turned 4½ yesterday!

Happy Half Mr. White!

Happy Birthday Grampaw

We love you!

I've said that

From "Fear," by Raymond Carver:

Fear of waking up to find you gone.
Fear of not loving and fear of not loving enough.
Fear that what I love will prove lethal to those I love.
Fear of death.
Fear of living too long.
Fear of death.

I've said that.

In Rem's Playhaas

Central Library, Monday, 11 mos.

Monument to the Unknown

This was also published in this morning's Seattle Times:

Monument to the unknown

The parishioners of Holy Rosary Church in West Seattle lost an usher this week. I didn't know Charlie Chong, other than to occasionally pass the collection plate back to him ["Populist not afraid to speak his mind," Local News, April 27]. But I always wanted to tell him something: I think Seattle lost its soul in 1996 when it elected developer Paul Schell mayor rather than Charlie Chong.

In the years that followed his defeat, we have watched this city begin to disappear: neighborhoods fractured from astronomical housing prices, a school system in disarray, a lack of leadership on transportation and any number of issues facing us, and a general insistence upon rudderless rehashing and re-processing of minutia instead of facing our problems.

Would we have been better off with the common sense of Chong? Would he have been so eager to accommodate developers? Would he have fumbled, the way Schell did, with the WTO? Would there even have been a WTO during a Chong administration? Or a Mardi Gras riot? There is no way to know; maybe there would have been no difference. My guess is that, in a city with a strong mayor's office, like Seattle's, we would have a different city had Chong been at the helm.

He represented the best of Seattle. We need more like him. With Mr. Chong's passing this week goes an icon of the smaller, more humane vision of Seattle that could have been.

Thank you, sir; give my regards to Emmett Watson.

— Jim Sander, Seattle

Backlash Against McMenamins

Around the turn of the century, I sat on a committee to study the feasibility of the "old" Cooper School building on Delridge in West Seattle. Several on the committee envisioned selling the surplus school to McMenamins to open a brew pub inn and theatre akin to The Kennedy School in Portland, Oregon. We contacted the McMenamins and had them come up to Seattle to check out the building. They were enthusiastic. Eventually the idea and a few others were offered to the community in a vote the UN should have observed where 100 voters decided to turn the building into artists' lofts, which it is today.

What struck me about the backlash against McMenamins then and now--I read this morning that the proposed McMenamins at Saint Edward State Park in Kenmore, Washington is dead--is that the Seattle area still has a streak of the puritanism that fueled prohibition around here in the early part of the 1900s.

I liked this letter to the Editor of The Seattle Times this morning:

Tavern off the green

I read with great regret that the McMenamins proposal has been withdrawn ["Brewery says it is dropping plan for pub in St. Edward State Park," Local News, April 28]. It looks like a law change by the city of Kenmore has killed the deal.

This is very unfortunate. This was a one-time chance to save the building and now it has passed us by. The city of Kenmore decided that the selling of alcohol was not to be allowed in parks. If anyone from the city had bothered to look at other McMenamins properties, they might have changed their minds.

McMenamins is a great company with a long history of taking care of and preserving buildings just like this one. It would have given the building a purpose and the ability to make money, thus protecting it from further decay.

There are no other proposals I have heard of that would raise the $10 million or so needed to fix the building and to keep it up and running.

Right now the building is closed and not open to the public. This is the only thing that will continue. The hotel would have been a showpiece for the entire area.

Shame on you, city of Kenmore.

— Duane Hansen, Kirkland