Quick Links: Our trip to South Africa | Dave’s 40th in Naramata | Tau 12-18 months | Thanksgiving on the Central Coast | Video Clips at You Tube |The Days of Christmas

I see skies of blue and clouds of white, The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night, And I think to myself, what a wonderful world. - Louis Armstrong

Dear friends and family,

Hello, and how are you? Twelve months ago today we were preparing to visit South Africa with three-month old Tau! A year later, we have no idea where the time has gone.

We spent the month of January with Sue’s family in Pretoria and Durban (see pics). During our time there we visited two game reserves, enjoyed some good restaurants and did quite a bit of shopping, but with a nursing baby found that we couldn’t get in as much as we had in previous trips. Still, we were glad to have the opportunity to introduce Tau to his grandparents and it found it hard to come home. And strangely, the trip made it poignant this year to watch Tau grow, knowing that our families don’t get to see him change every day as we do.

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Sometime back I promised we’d post the pictures our friend Vix Pierce took of us at La Jolla Shores beach. Well, most of you should have received your Christmas parcels by now, so I thought I’d post a few of the best on Flickr.

Click here to view the pictures as a slideshow.

Enjoy! 

Today marks the beginning of ten delicious days off! We’ve traveled quite a bit this year, so I don’t have much vacation time due, but my company strongly encouraged staff to take time off between Christmas and New Year, paid or unpaid. Didn’t need to ask me twice!

We considered booking last-minute flights to Canada but felt strongly that we needed some down time. So we’re spending the holidays at home — just the three of us — getting lots of rest and catching up on home projects. Tau will spend a couple hours in daycare each day next week to allow Dave to get some touch-up painting and gardening done. He’ll also try to get in a few rides this next week. I’d hoped to go to yoga each day but recently pulled a rib muscle (coughing) and twisting myself into a pretzel seems to make it worse for some reason. So, I’ll have to settle for taking a nice, long walk each day. Photos, cards and memorabilia for Tau’s baby book have been piling up in the guest closet all year. Time to get that started (if not DONE), and I really ought to get stuck into the chores I’ve been putting off for weeks: Cleaning out the fridge, tidying kitchen cupboards, purging our filing cabinet.

(It occurs to me that this is exactly the kind of post Maggie Mason warns against in her book No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog!)

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It’s one thing to have a child. To see him stand on his own feet, walk on his own legs. There, right in front of you, the result of growth and nurture and time, the work of your hands.

And then comes Christmas and home he comes bearing little gifts: A wreath made by pressing wet-with-paint hands in a ring and finished with a bow; a playdough dove, flaky red and shedding glitter. Two sealed gifts on the mantel, one wrapped in Pokemon Christmas paper, the other in a plain envelope decorated in crayon. To: Mom and Dad. Love, Tau.

Merry Christmas to us!

That’s Español for three elves a dancing!

Seems everyone’s being elfed this Christmas — they filling your Inbox yet? I got one from my brother Andy, and couldn’t resist elf-ing the three of us.

Check us groove:
Dave, Sue and Tau

To create your own elf, go to http://www.elfyourself.com

Moments of bliss come without warning in small packages.

Yesterday I received a small cardboard box at work. No sender on the shipping label and no hint as to what it might be. Turns out the Asian company that does our translation work loves us and sent each of the writers they work with a selection of yummy Godiva chocolates.

Dave and I never buy nice chocolate for ourselves. Wine, yes. Food, of course. Coffee, OK. These are all necessities. But good chocolate seems extravagant.

Once the Tau noises stopped upstairs last night, we curled up in front of an episode of Nip Tuck with some red wine, a small bowl of ice cream and the lovely chocolates. Dark cherry liquor literally burst in my mouth. 

Makes verifying installation guides translated into five different languages much more palatable throughout the year!

Brag, brag , brag, brag! So while the Pacific Northwest and those “back east” are under snow, we’re whining about a little frost.

It’s COLD! Thirty-nine Fahrenheit this morning (that’s three Celcius for those of you sweating it out around the pool back in the old country). And it’s been overcast the last couple days, which makes us grumpy and confuses Tau because he can’t see the “moo” (moon) when he gets out of daycare.

But I must say, it is pretty. My friend Declan has a couple nice pics posted on his blog. San Diego County – a regular winter wonderland!

(Not too bad - I might have to rethink my position on this one.)

Driving home in the slow lane from Henry’s Marketplace yesterday, sun streaming in the window, when a big black SUV roars right up past me, screeches to a halt at the lights with a bright red rudolph nose smug on the tip of the hood, foam antlers wobbling on the windows.

Which got me thinking in a bah-humbuggy kinda way about the things I dislike about Christmas. Dislike, not hate. My mother always told me, “Hate’s a strong word!” So, OK, strongly dislike.

1. Red Nosed Reindeer kits for cars. Just for that, I’m gonna make it number one on the list. An indignity to fine autmobiles everywhere, not to mention Santa’s hardest working reindeer. It’s like seeing a German Shepherd wearing bunny ears at Easter. And you just know the very together soccer mom peering over the steering wheel is wearing her favorite Christmas sweater and that she only has one item left to buy off her holiday shopping list.
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At daycare, we fill out a daily sheet when we drop Tau off in the mornings — how long he slept, what time he last ate, any new injuries or medication. When we pick him up in the evenings, they have written down everything he did that day — what and when he ate, how many diapers wet and filled, and when and for how long he slept. It’s the little comments that always make us smirk: “Spinach for lunch: Tau threw it all on the floor!”

You can imagine the pride when we saw the comment above a couple weeks back. Some parents would be horrified that they weren’t there for this milestone but we figure he’d already walked a few steps at home before this, and we’ve certainly watched his walking improve in the weeks since. Today, on the phone to my friend Imke in Germany, I watched as he walked the length of the living room. And they tell us at daycare that he now walks all the way out to the playground!

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Tau woke at 5 a.m. this morning. Slept beautifully all night but woke before dawn, and since I was “on” last night (Dave and I trade off each night), I went through to see if I could coax him back to sleep. We snuggled in the rocking chair, he nuzzled into my chest, we patted and kissed Lion to sleep, and I nearly drifted off several times. But little man was eyes wide open.

After half an hour in the dark, I started telling myself the lie — it always seems plausible: Maybe he’ll go down if I snuggle him between Dave and I in our bed.

This NEVER works.

Actually, it SELDOM works. Sometimes Dave can strong arm him into lying still and catnapping for 15 minutes in our bed. And sometimes, if you have enough books and give him both alarm clocks to play with, he will sit still enough for us to doze, each with a hand on one limb under the covers to stop him crawling away. But most times when we try the baby-in-our-bed thing, he becomes a one-boy-version of the US troops storming Baghdad — that is to say, no peace in the land and everything in his path is devastated.

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From time to time I read the blog of a woman called Tertia Albertyn — a mom of two toddlers who works in marketing for IBM in Cape Town. Tertia began blogging at So Close to document her painful journey through infertility and loss to the birth of her beautiful twins and life beyond. Her story was featured recently on the South African current-events show, Carte Blanche (think Sixty Minutes but slicker and edgier).

Some time back, Tertia wrote about her sister Melanie Novitzkas, a doula-in-training who started a charity so worthwhile that I wanted to tell you all about it.

As part of her training, Melanie volunteers at one of the state hospitals that provide vital medical care to uninsured South Africans. Seeing women give birth — in many cases prematurely and with awful complications — only to be discharged almost immediately with no one to care for them post partum prompted Melanie to start Bosom Buddies. This group of volunteers visits patients in the maternity unit at Melanie’s hospital to distribute care packages containing basics for both mom and baby — hand-knitted blankets, diapers, onesies and hats for the babes; sanitary pads, toiletries and homemade cookies to treat the moms. Mothers recovering from still births receive care packages minus the baby items.

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I had the idea to post something each day for the twelve days leading up to Christmas. Here goes.

This past year, our company moved into a shiny new building. It’s all slate grey cubes and nice blue and burgundy walls that match the abstract art. Very corporate.

Just after Thanksgiving, someone suggested holding a cubicle decorating contest for the holidays. HR got the ball rolling with a very tastefully confectioned Candy Cane Lane. The cheer spread very slowly from that end of the cube farm and stopped just short of the Tech Pubs aisle. Whew! Some took it to the limit — like the folks who balanced a 6-foot inflatable rotating snow globe on top of an empty cube.  Or the row with Christmas trees made of geekware (install CDs, empty pop cans, PERL programming books) on each cube face.

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Peachy Canyon Winery, Paso Robles

Thanksgiving 2006 was spent — just the three of us — in San Luis Obispo County, a 3-hour drive north of Los Angeles. Having woken at 4 a.m. on Saturday, we sped through LA before heading towards Santa Monica and then through Ventura — well worth the extra time to meander through these two towns. Headed into Santa Barbara for some breakfast, shopping and wine purchases at Cellar 205, a co-op winery in downtown SB that my crazy sister-in-law Linda told us about. Highly recommended is the Oreana 2004 Pinot Noir (Santa Barbara).

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