Pink Pony

After her pony ride on Sunday, Immy came home and did some art. She made several deliberate, small strokes with her oil crayon and then handed me her paper and said "I draw a horse."

Roger a Nice Man

In 1977, my sister and I rode on the carousel at the Clallam County Fair with our friend Roger. I was six and Kelly was five. In 2003, my niece Elizabeth--at three--continued the tradition of riding with Roger, and this year Imogen joined in the fun by having him accompany her on a real pony ride at the fair. On the way home from the fair, Immy told me "Roger a nice man Mama." I said "He sure is."

BabyLegs Giveaway

From the BabyLegs website, click on "Community" in the top menu to upload and enter your photo(s).

In celebration of BabyLegs becoming a dot com, we are running a (Polka) dot com giveaway. All photos submitted in the month of August have a chance to win a free pair of Polka Dot BabyLegs. We will select 50 photos at random. You will be contacted via email if your photo is selected. -www.babylegs.com

Friday at the Fair

The Cat's Pajamas

Today

The Olympic Spark

Imogen has been so inspired by the Olympics. Simon and I were audience to an incredible gymnastic floor routine the other night. The balance beam routines impressed Immy too. She looked at the TV, gasped "oh!" and ran for her step stool.

A Child of the Pacific Northwest

The inspiration for Imogen's name came when we heard of the photographer Imogen Cunningham during my pregnancy. Simon and I knew instantly that if the baby was a girl, Imogen would almost certainly be her name.

I checked out Imogen Cunningham's photography collections from the library and studied her story online, so I knew she had lived in Seattle, but I was shocked to discover today that she also once lived in Port Angeles:

[She was born in Portland in 1883.] As a child, she and her family lived at the Puget Sound Cooperative Colony, a short-lived Utopian community in Port Angeles. In 1889, the family moved to...Seattle. -HistoryLink.org

'Brella

Saturday

Beau'iful Dancerina

This $.99 Ralph Lauren "dancerina" skirt* came complete with here-to-fore unknown ballet moves!

Saturday

*Prairie skirts were introduced to fashion by Ralph Lauren in his fall 1978 Western-themed collection. -Wikipedia

Two Girls Bathing

We Help Mommy

Eight-and-three-quarters year old cousin YaYa gets Imogen into and out of the car and car seat. She is an amazing help!

Friday

Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child

HEAR John Gottman's lecture Raising an Emotionally Intelligent Child, recorded at Town Hall in Seattle on March 5, 2008, in RealAudio, MP3, Pod or RSS (about 1 hour).

Classy and Fabulous

A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.

Coco Chanel

Cool Summer Nights

The Best Time Of The Day

Cool summer nights.

Windows open.

Lamps burning.

Fruit in the bowl.

And your head on my shoulder.

These the happiest moments in the day.

Next to the early morning hours,

of course. And the time

just before lunch.

And the afternoon, and

early evening hours.

But I do love

these summer nights.

Even more, I think,

than those other times.

The work finished for the day.

And no one who can reach us now.

Or ever.

Raymond Carver

Weekend America

Bill Radke is out as the co-host of NPR's Weekend America, replaced by his protégé John Moe.

Ouch! That smarts!

On his blog, John Moe wrote that Bill Radke recommended him not only to Weekend America, where he was first a fill-in for Bill and then a regular co-host, but also earlier to Seattle's KUOW station where Bill hosted the popular syndicated show Rewind.

For me it was great to have John Moe fill the void Bill Radke left in Seattle when he went to Los Angeles. I do remember being struck at first by how much John sounded like Bill--maybe too much for NPR to justify paying them both.

Sunny Farms

Sunny Farms Country Store, Sequim
Sunday

Water Works

Sunday

Barnstorm

In 1975, when I was five, my family of origin became part of the back-to-the-land movement, moving to rural Sappho, Washington from Seattle. For the first year, while we built, my parents rented the only other house on the road we were building on. The house had a big barn with a hay loft and stables. It was a fun place to play and explore for me and Kelly. There was a rope swing from the loft and a barn owl that lived in the rafters.

Years later, another local family--the Colemans--bought the house and property. Sean Coleman was a classmate of my sister's. He's also the daddy of Immy's preschool classmate Cash. When I posted the pictures below of me and Simon at 5, I was reminded that the photo of me was taken by my dad in the "Pirnkie House," as we called it after the original owners. I e-mailed it to Sean's wife with a note that we had lived in the same house. I was delighted to get an e-mail back from Sean with a picture of the barn attached. Sadly, the barn is now completely gone. Sean wrote that a storm blew the roof off and his parents put a metal roof on to try and save it. The picture was taken after the Colemans sold the property.

Maybe it was my early love for this barn that inspired our barn wedding 20 years later.

May Belle

Imogen's middle name is May in celebration of her birth month. I thought May would be in the top 1000 (or even 100 names) in America, but when I used The Baby Name Wizard I found out the girl's name May peaked in popularity in the 1880s at #61 and dropped sharply after that until it fell off in the 1960s (ranked less than 1000th in popularity). Maybe it's more common as a middle name in our country.

Like to know what other parents in Washington are naming their babies?

• 2006 Girls
• 2006 Boys

Fon Mama, Fon

To Imogen, many words begin with the letter "f." For example, "c'mon" to Imogen is pronounced "fon," as in "fon Mama, fon" when she wants me to follow her somewhere. If Immy hears a baby crying, she will say "baby fryin' Mama?" Then there's "Flifford" (the Big Red Dog) and Mama's "foffee" that I drink every morning.

Parents are People

Amy & Simon, each about 5 years

The Countess

Immy can count to 20.

Family Fun Day

City of Port Angeles Family Fun Day
Erickson Park
Saturday

Ims

Whole-grain Goodness

Bulghur: more fun to play with than to eat!
Wednesday

Happy Birthday Grandma Sarah

Simon with his Mum, England, 1979(?)

Happy Birthday Grandma Sarah
Love, Imogen

The Pop-up Game

Wednesday

Waiting for Grammy

Tuesday

A Familiar Scene

Imogen May, 2 years & 2 months
Monday

Fruit Everbearing

Because joy--oh my neighbors--can be grafted to loss and bring fruit everbearing so that though there is grieving there is never true separation.

Never a leaving.

From Miserere
By Sam Green, Waldron Island resident and first Poet Laureate of Washington State

Roots

During World War II, Imogen's late paternal great-grandmother Nancy (nickname "Bat," short for Battle Axe) worked with the Women's Land Army in England.

The Women's Land Army (WLA) was a British civilian organization created during the First and Second World Wars to work in agriculture replacing men called up to the military. Women who worked for the WLA were commonly known as Land Girls. In effect the Land Army operated to place women with farms that needed workers, the farmers being their employers. -Wikipedia

Imogen's great-grandfather Ronald, now 94, was a conscientious objector. He apparently was placed on the same farm as Nancy. They met when a friend of his whistled at Nancy and then ducked, leaving Ronald standing there when she looked up.

Of those [conscientious objectors] directed to non-combatant military service almost 7000 were allocated to the Non-Combatant Corps, set up in mid-1940; its companies worked in clothing and food stores, in transport, or any military project not requiring the handling of "material of an aggressive nature." Around 450 NCC members worked in bomb disposal; other non-combatants worked in the medical corps. Other acceptable occupations were farm work, mining, firefighting, ambulance service. -Wikipedia

They had nine children and he supported the family with the master gardener skills he learned during the war years.

True Places

Imogen at 20 months--six days before we left Seattle--pointing out Port Angeles and Seattle on the map.

It is not down in any map; true places never are.

Herman Melville

HB/JBS.40

Forty trips around the sun, and he looks better than ever...

Happy Birthday Joel!

New Words

baby measurer
debit card
Pegasus
Paddington
'raj [garage]

The Name Imogen

The name of a princess in the play 'Cymbeline' (1609) by Shakespeare. Some people believe that Shakespeare based the character Imogen's name on Innogen, the first queen of Britain, and that the name was printed incorrectly in a play document hundreds of years ago and never corrected. However, there's a good argument here for why that theory may be wrong. Wikipedia says the name was probably created by Shakespeare for the play while mentioning the possibility of the misprint.

The name Innogen may have been derived from the Gaelic inghead and would therefore mean "maiden," a meaning often assigned to Imogen. If there is no Innogen-Imogen connection, then the etymology of Imogen is Shakespearean.

The name is currently rising in popularity in England and Wales, where it was the 34th most popular name for baby girls in 2007, and in New South Wales, Australia, where the name was the 35th most popular name for baby girls in 2007. It was ranked 86th in popularity for baby girls in Scotland in 2007. -Wikipedia

Imogen is not in the top 1000 names in the United States. -The Baby Name Wizard--have you tried it?

Pronounced IM-ә-jen

Famous Imogens:

Imogen Cunningham, photographer

Imogen Heap, musician

All Aboard!

Imogen with Niles and Giacomo, Tuesday

Happy Birthday Tess

July 21: It's the birthday of Tess Gallagher, born in Port Angeles, Washington (1943). She's the author of many collections of poetry, including My Black Horse: New and Selected Poems (1995).

The Writer's Almanac

Raymond Carver and Tess Gallagher

Fresh Eggs by the Roadside

Dry Creek Farm Egg Stand, Port Angeles

Monday

A First: A Fort

Imogen's first fort, Monday

The Sports & Arts Section

Simon found Immy yesterday writing on the newspaper. We were a little, uh, surprised at what she had done. At first glance, it looked like she obliterated the faces (and gave Ian Kinsler a cigarette?). I'm sure she was simply attracted to the faces amidst the sea of gray print, and that's a good thing, right?