Two weeks to preview Soren's book, Volume 2

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's nearly 7:30 p.m. on this holiday and Soren is fast asleep and Jeff and I and his parents are relaxing with full bellies. We ate a delicious dinner OUT, perhaps the best part of which there is no sticky kitchen to clean up and NO dishes to wash. This makes MY holiday.

Will post pictures soon, but wanted to give y'all the opportunity to preview the first third of my newest photo book creation: S' ing Around With Soren, Volume 2 (3-7 months old).
Volume 3 (7-12 months old) is in the works. Yes, all the photos portray him in an activity beginning with "S." It's a great way to cull hundreds of photos of our cutie, and the books are super gifts for the relatives (if you received Volume 1, Volume 2 is coming your way...).

For the next two weeks (until Dec. 7), you can click through the book's pages here. Start by clicking on the banner that says "Preview" on the book's cover. Enjoy!

Returned from Jill's adopted hometown, Portland

So we spent four nights in Portland last week, returning home Sunday night. As always, it was good to get out of town, and we really owed my sister Jill a visit. She's been making the four-hour drive to visit us quite often since Soren was born, and we had yet to make the reverse trip. We experimented with taking the train down (and then we got a ride back with Sierra, a Seattle friend who joined us for two nights).

We are by no means regular Amtrak riders (it had been about five years since my last jaunt), but it was a great mode of transportation for an energetic, walking toddler. I chased Soren up and down the length of the 9-car train for what felt like the entire 3-1/2-hour journey. One of the conductors was kind enough to let him try on her hat!
But the friendly face at the final destination was worth it. Here's Auntie Jilly with her sweet nephew. She knitted that hat for him! The short story on Jill's career track is that she graduated from nursing school at the end of August, passed her certification exam at the end of September, interviewed for her dream job that week, and was hired and working by mid-October. She's an emergency room nurse at Providence St. Vincent and is part of a new-nurse training program, so she shadows a mentor during the day for her first three months -- before she starts a night shift on her own. We're very proud of her.
On our first full day, Jill had a playdate all lined up for us with the nephew of a nursing school classmate. Kimary (her parents liked both the names Kim and Mary) and Oscar met us at the park and we watched the ducks, shared a snack, chased a ball, etc. The next evening we took Kimary up on her very gracious offer to sit with Soren after he'd fallen asleep, and we gals went out to a wine bar for drinks and dessert. How adult!
Yes, Soren would rather push the stroller than sit in it himself. Jill's backpack got a ride down this sidewalk. Look at that grin!
This is the only good photo that was taken of Jill's 600-square-foot apartment, but it wasn't as crowded/noisy as I had feared. Soren slept in a borrowed Pack-n-Play that we screened in with a nearby closet door and a hanging sarong, and we would go whisper in the kitchen for 10 minutes and then he would be asleep and we would bang pots, talk normally, etc. Soren slept just like he does at home; a good lesson for me that he doesn't need tiptoeing around as much as we do. (Yes, those are Tweety Bird slippers Soren is trying on for size!)
This is the entrance to Jill's classic apartment building in a very walkable part of southeast Portland: near the Belmont and Hawthorne street districts. And very close to a Stumptown Coffee bar (a Portland original), which served the best cup of drip French Roast coffee I've ever had!
Happily, I was able to connect and have lunch with my sophomore college roommate, Karin, who is a surgical resident at the same university hospital where Jill just graduated from. We hadn't seen each other in over 10 years, but we both exclaimed, "You look the same!" Except that she's pregnant and due in a month (doesn't she look great?) and I have a Soren-appendage. Otherwise, exactly the same.
And here's the happy Testerman trio on the Portland waterfront (thus Soren's bollard seat). We browsed the Saturday crafts market and ate a picnic lunch. It was colder than it looks, but we are a hardy Northwest lot.
Here's our friend Sierra, who was the Seattle driver who joined us for her weekend off. We three women were all friends way back in elementary school. How wonderful that we still are!
We also attended a family-friendly contra dance one evening, took the MAX light rail to the Children's Museum (see Soren's account), introduced Jill to IKEA, went Goodwill shopping for new jeans for me (Jill and Sierra ordered me to throw out my old ones!), and generally had a good time.

I'll sign off with these shots of us on one of the pedestrian bridges that crosses the Willamette River. Portland really is a beautiful (and to my mind, manageable) city, and I'm sure we'll be visiting Jill lots more.

An odd energy inspector

Halloween weekend we were visited by this geeky energy inspector. He boldly knocked on our door and asked if we were interested in a free energy audit. That's when Soren saw past the disguise and ran into Daddy's arms! The fake teeth and thick glasses really change Jeff's appearance. And since he is getting ever-better with his accents as he rehearses for his play, even people who know him well do a double-take. He fooled our neighbors in a great gag.
We've been lucky to find a great teenaged babysitter who lives just a few blocks away. Soren loves Kaila, and she has a great time with him. She comes 2-3 times a week for a couple of hours at a time. I took this picture in part because they were dressed in matching outfits!
And we'll close with a cute shot of Soren hefting a squash from our fall centerpiece and displaying one of those rare expressions where you can almost see what he'll look like as a grown-up. But he's a long way from that now, at 14-1/2 months. Thank goodness!

Lights on in The Nest

Two weeks ago (or so), a trench was dug across our backyard and lined with conduit for electrical cables connecting The Nest/Garage to our house. Going around our existing concrete patio was deemed the most direct route. Oh, well, the grass needed reseeding anyway. We're in for a major re-landscaping project after the building is finished.

Soren was fascinated for the whole day it took to dig the trench with this machine that looked like a chainsaw attached to a rototiller!
The end result is that the new building has power and thus lights. The garage has some utilitarian fluorescent tubes, but we put more care into the lighting in The Nest. We are using some of the "leftovers" from the construction of our house, such as the two exterior round lights that match four others already installed on The Roost. Our street is very dark at night, so these will come in handy as guests make their way to bed.
The weekend of Halloween, we parked our car in the garage for the first time! My parents are caretaking Matilda (our 1989 VW van) at the moment, but when she's with us, she'll live in the garage, too.
Here is a picture of Christopher, our friendly electrician, who has installed all the lighting...
...and the ceiling fan. We are big fans of fans. And can you see that the walls are painted a warm, pale yellow? The bathroom is pale blue.
Soren likes it; how about you?

PT named "Solar City of the Year"!

It's in the newspaper today: Port Townsend is "Washington Solar City of the Year," an honor accorded it by the Northwest Solar Center. It has more solar systems per capita than any other city in the state. And our house has one of them!

Jeff accepted the award at the annual conference last week on behalf of the city. His picture and some good quotes from him were in the paper. Read the article in the Peninsula Daily News here.

It's all good!

On another topic, Soren and I are preparing for a trip to Portland to visit Auntie Jill. We are taking the train down Wednesday and catching a ride back with a friend Sunday. Will probably be reporting on that adventure next...

You don't say?

Where does our little boy come up with these expressions? These were teased out of him from his "Auntie" Sierra on a recent visit.

Maybe here Soren is recalling his shock at glancing down our stairwell recently and seeing this out the window...
Yes, one of the town's feral deer--a young buck--had plopped down in our yard and there he stayed for most of the afternoon. Was he hurt, resting? We didn't bother him because he wasn't eating our garden plants. This is why a significant portion of our yard is fenced. If we catch the deer nibbling, we throw ice cubes at them. They are not cute wildlife. But that's another subject.

Soren was fascinated, to say the least.
To see what kind of animal Soren was for Halloween, see his blog post!

Autumn's bounty

The growing season has been productive here in the Pacific Northwest. Not that we grew much in our own garden, but we are loyal customers at the Port Townsend Farmers Market (sic: the apostrophe is officially missing from the name; a cowardly decision if you ask me). Two weekends ago, when Sierra was visiting, we were charmed to find Midori Farm selling the biggest leeks any of us had ever seen.
We bought two and let Soren run around with one. He literally stopped traffic in the corridor as two other shoppers joined me in whipping out their cameras and trying to capture his glee. P.S. Thanks to Kathie M. for the new knitted hat!
Later, Soren marveled at these stalks of chard that are still growing in our raised beds. We added them to a risotto we made incorporating as many local ingredients as we could: foraged chanterelle and cauliflower shrooms, pastured-pig ham from Walker Mountain Meadows Farm just to the south of us, Walla Walla sweet onions. Yum! (I just finished reading The Omnivore's Dilemma and never want to eat factory-farmed meat again...)
And I'll sign off with this picture of Soren having a ball during our county's Farm Tour in September. This was the precise moment I decided I needed a new point-and-shoot digital camera, one that fits into my fanny pack. (I'm still looking.) Again, Soren's photogenics kicked in once he was hoisted up to the wheel of this stationary old tractor at Red Dog Farm. I gave a camera-wielding out-of-state tourist my email address and he sent this adorable thumnail, but by the time I (busy mom that I am) emailed back to ask for a high-resolution version, he said he had deleted the original files. Aaaackk!! Why would anyone do this when computer memory is so cheap??? Oh, well. The moment was captured in digital minature, so at least I can share it here with you.
By the way, we signed up for a Winter CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) "share" from the above-pictured Red Dog Farm and are really looking forward to it starting around Thanksgiving. I'm sure you'll be hearing more about how we cook up all the yummy produce we receive in our weekly box.

Happy eating to you all, and make the Earth happy in your eating, too.