While Mommy's Away

Within Tru's first year of life I got this supercool idea to include my sleeping infant in a film of camera gimmickry. Two years ago I remembered it and went to post it when I discovered that I lost the tape. I figured it was gone forever until just the other day Felix's grandmother had included the short on her Facebook page from a file I emailed her soon after I made it. I now present the long sought secret video that proves the supernatural:
Renae is currently enjoying a vacation in New York City. That leaves Felix and me to fend for ourselves. In seriousness, I have been looking forward to this because I don't get a lot of love when mommy is around. And then, as my luck would have it, I caught a cold. I felt well enough except that by Saturday it really hurt to talk. Playtime was a lot of me trying to communicate and respond to Felix with hand gestures and whispers, and trying to alleviate his frustrations with my lack of enthusiasm.
Sunday I felt much better and we headed to the Burke Museum at the University of Washington, where we met up with Tru's pal, Finn, and Finn's parents. We had never been there but I told Felix that there was a casting of a full mastodon fossil there that he became very excited to see. The mastodon did not disappoint... however my picture will. Very soon after this picture a very nice gentlemen told us to cease with the taking of the pictures.

We sneaked (spell check is telling me 'snuck' is not a word) in another shot. I got Felix standing next to a casting of... I guess the equivalent of an apatosaurus radius, I don't know what names they ascribe to dinosaur bones. They're probably the same, huh? We also saw an allosaurus which I got wrong and Felix got right. As we approached it I asked him what he thought it was and he pointed out that it had longer arms (longer than T-rex) and three fingers on his claw-hands so it was an allosaurus. I said "I don't know, it looks a little small for an allosaurus". I checked the little placard and Felix was right. I should have listened to him, he dreams about being an allosaurus.
Afterwards we went to lunch at Schultzy's and Felix got a hot dog he didn't eat because it had a little black on it. And after that we spent some time with sister Natalie at a park before she went to work.

Alright, I'll try to wrap this up. It is true that I got Felix a camera for his birthday and this is a picture he took with that camera. It is one of many, many pictures he has taken... with his camera... not mine. Besides, Felix is really pleased with the picture he took.
And lastly, the picture below was taken by Renae before she left. I don't know a lot about what transpired, or where the class was, or who else was there, I do know this, though; I asked Felix if I could bring that picture to work and hang it in my office and he said no.

"This is a very nice gift you and Dad got me."

Four! 4! Four years old! How did it go by so fast? He is so grown up. Here he is in his class today handing out treats to his friends and then showing the book he donated to the school in honor of his birthdays . It was the sweetest thing. Each kid said either "Happy birthday" or "Thank you" and he had to say "You're welcome" 24 times. He was concerned because his best buddy at Montessori is Jonah and the entire time Jonah was in the bathroom so he missed everything, including the song/dance Felix got to pick to do, Skip to My Lou. (See video below.)

Then, after school (while I went to Dusty's memorial service at the VFW) he went to Chuck-E-Cheese with his best friend Charlie and his family (thanks Kelly). He had a blast, got more transformers and won pirate gear (for next year's Seafair parade) and was glad to find that Natalie was waiting for him when he got home. We ordered pizza and breadsticks, his favorite meal apparently, and watched WALL-E after opening his presents. Ahh, the presents. I'm a little embarrassed at how the pile of presents this year resembled Rooney's. We'd been setting things aside for several months and then Dana still had to run out and buy Felix a...digital camera. (I'll let Dana explain that one in his next blog.) Anyway, Grandma Peggie sent some dinosaurs and a great dinosaur encyclopedia to settle all those conflicting facts in out-dated library material and Natalie got him a dinosaur book with a 3-D model he (we) can put together.

After eating 3 mini brownie cupcakes he was finally ready for bed and when I left to get Natalie to read to him he said he would just look at the stars on his ceiling (from the solar system model I got him) while he waited for Natalie, and then my little man, so sweet and polite said what is music to my ears, "This is a very nice gift you and Dad got me." What an angel. I'm just as spoiled as he is.

I know it's three weeks old but I'm finally getting around to blogging about Valentine's. This was Felix's first Valentine's Day at school and with Kelly's (Tru's good friend Charlie's mother) help he made "love bugs" rather than bringing cards. That is, of course, a tray of the love bugs in the picture. As Valentine's was celebrated at Felix's school on a Friday, I got to drop him off and pick him up. At school he made some kind of Valentine's headdress (pictured) that he had to wear for at least the rest of the day. Even when we went to Trader Joe's for our weekly shopping trip. (Felix waited very patiently to get to make that headdress and made a long beaded necklace with me at the Valentine party. He was a little shy with other moms that day but he was determined to get into one of the last spots open at that station. I was proud of his tenaciousness and patience. - added by RH 3/10/09)

Last weekend Felix visited his first art museum, the Seattle Art Museum, he liked it well enough; the lobby had Ford Taurus's in various states of a flip. I'm not sure why, anyway, Felix was amused by it. Here he is standing underneath one that is suspended from the ceiling.

As I probably mentioned before, Felix is really into dinosaurs right now. He is actually pretty adept at identifying various types of dinosaurs. Such is his love for dinosaurs that... well, here is the story: At around 5am the other morning, it's still dark and we are sleeping in bed. All of the sudden Felix exclaims, very clearly, "I'm pretending I'm an allosaurus". Because it was dark I couldn't see his eyes though I could tell he was facing me. I put my hand on him so that he knows I've heard him, he then raises his arm and has drawn his hand back with his fingers spread apart and curved as if to make a claw. I then do the same, but he didn't do anything else, as my eyes adjusted I could now see that he was still asleep. That whole scene was so cute, I almost woke Renae to tell her about it. Also, he said it so clearly I didn't even think that he might just be dreaming.

And finally, last week we lost a very dear neighbor. Dusty was 95 and lived in our neighborhood since it was built in the early 40's. (Felix and Renae regularly visited Dusty. At first Felix just feared this old man that required shouting in order to hear and always asked Felix if he was ready to play football but after some time he warmed up to him. When Dusty moved into assisted living Felix would make himself quite comfortable at his apartment and entertained a lot of the other residents. - added by RH 3/10/09)

After his death, Renae and another neighbor, Jennifer, were working on his memorial and got access to a lifetime of his photos, photos from when he was a baby in 1913, his time in WWII, the passing's of his first and then second wife, through his years in our neighborhood. He will really be missed. The below picture is from 1964, in front of his house, the house across the street from us. (This was Felix's first encounter with this part of the circle of life and it has opened up some questions for him but the hardest part for him was giving up so much of his time with me while I cared for Dusty and then helped wrap up things up after he passed. Hopefully things will settle down more now. - added by RH 3/10/09)