Well, I just read yet another opinion column weighing in with Ann Landers: printed holiday letters are tacky. So, I thought, time to start writing our annual letter! Annual? Ummmm, well, hmmm. Yes, I know, you didn't hear from us last year. I wasn't feeling good. Morning sickness. I guess that's a good lead-in to our biggest and best news of the year:
Oliver was born on April 11, 2000 at about 6:40 am. He was 7 lbs 10 oz. He was born at home; this part was planned. The surprise was that Newell Ann's labor lasted just under 3 hours (in contrast with her first labor, a hospital birth, which lasted 30 hours) so we didn't call the midwives in time. Newell Ann did all the work, Van caught the baby, and the midwives arrived shortly after. Clara was awake and with us through the whole labor and birth. She had gone to all the midwife appointments, and we had read books and talked a lot about birth, so she understood what was happening and was thrilled about the birth of her baby brother, as were her parents.
Alphabet soup
Newell Ann can write the following letters after her name: BA, MA, PhC, and ABD. (Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts, Ph.D. Candidate, All But Dissertation). All this to say, I'm still not done yet, but I'm working on it. I joke that my plan is two babies, a PhD, and a job. I have slowed down a lot since Clara was born so I can have some time with my kids while they're still young. Teaching has also taken up a lot of my time. Last year I taught Classical Chinese, and I will teach this again next academic year. (Classical Chinese is in Asia what Greek and Latin are in the West.) I am finished taking classes, and this year I'm working at home on my dissertation. In my precious little free time, I am an active advocate for planned homebirth and educating parents about the advantages and health benefits of nursing.
Van can also write some letters after his name: he is now VanEmery-dot-com! Find him on the web at www.vanemery.com. He left the Navy in April, 1999, and went to work for GTE, now Verizon (that's ver -EYE-zun). He works in Information Technology; a layperson's description of his job is that he works with the hardware that makes the internet go. After a year and a half on the operations side as a data tech, he is now a sales engineer for data and video network infrastructure. He says that the best things about the new position are being able to do complete design work, and having more hours to spend with the family. Van also got a chance to see some old Navy buddies at the 1990 USNA reunion in Annapolis in September. A good time was had by all!Clara was three in August, and does everything a 3 year-old should do including being sweet, loving and helpful and also whining and throwing the occasional tantrum. She is a good traveler, and a wonderful hiker. She loves reading stories, playing train and blocks, and playing with animals, especially our two big dogs. She also loves her "Baby Brother" and is usually (but not always) very loving and sweet with him.
Clara is now potty-trained. Van is looking over my shoulder telling me not to put this in the Christmas letter, but I can honestly say that when it finally happened, the sense of relief and accomplishment was every bit as great as when I completed my 220 page MA thesis and received my degree. A true milestone.
Oliver is a very easy, happy baby. Unlike Clara, he did not start crawling at 5.5 months and will almost certainly not be walking at nine months! We are overjoyed!! He is very mobile now. He progressed from lurching along on his belly (kind of a breast stroke) to an actual crawl the day after Thanksgiving, and is now pulling up on furniture. We have asked him to postpone walking until St. Patrick's day, but he is very aggressive in learning those new skills and may not listen to us.
Family news
Here's where we tell you about all the expensive vacations we've been taking to exotic locations, and the luxury remodel and addition to our house. Well, maybe next year.This year, we took our first family vacation at the end of June, when Oliver was 10 weeks old: two nights of tent camping in the west Cascades. We did a lot of hiking, and that part was awesome. Clara is a great hiker, and since it was berry season, we were able to lure her along for almost 3 miles: walk a little further and get another berry, oooh, look, there are lots of salmonberries up here! Come on! Oliver just rode along in the sling, looking around or sleeping. And how was the tent camping? This being a "Happy Holidays" letter, we'll spare you the details, except to say that we decided to wait until next summer before doing it again. Later in the summer, we spent a few nights up at Mount Baker, then a night down at Mt. Rainier; in both cases we were wise enough to leave the tent at home and stay in a cabin with a kitchenette.
At the end of the summer, we had the old and uncleanable windows on our house replaced with sparkling new energy-efficient windows. When they pulled the window off the bathroom they discovered...dry rot!! And ants !!! Turns out the ants were just moisture ants, the kind that live on rotten wood. So, being in our bathroom was kind of like living in the forest...in a decomposing log. We hadn't planned on it, but it was clear that that we really had no choice but to repair the problem. So just as the weather turned chilly, we hired contractors who came in, ripped out all the old fixtures, drywall, rotten framing (fortunately it turned out that the dryrot problem wasn't very serious) etc. For over two weeks, no shower, and we had to use the toilet at the other end of the house in the unheated garage. It was a long two weeks, during which the whole family was hit by stomach flu. We managed to survive, and now have a lovely new bathroom, no decaying wood, and no ants.
Our biggest family news, aside from Oliver, is that after eight years of being way out west on our own, we now have relatives in the area. Newell Ann's cousins Shanna and Trevor moved out here from Texas at the beginning of November. It has been really great to have family at our house for Thanksgiving and again at Christmas this year.
And by the way, this isn't a late Christmas letter; Chinese New Year isn't until January 24th!