February

Oh yeah, just watch it happen-- I'm getting this blog caught up to less than six months ago.

February saw some happy times and some very stressful times. Happy times included a few more days in CA with a trip to the Exploratorium, always a treat. Got to celebrate Abram's birthday with him a little early and then flew with Dad out to visit Lauritz and Michelle and meet cousin Maggie.

That part was all good. Trouble started when the snows came and basically wreaked havoc on our plans. Maggie's blessing had to be canceled because nobody could get flights into the area, which meant as well that nobody could get flights out. Dad managed to make it home during a break in the weather but it took O and I an extra week to get out. Did not help that during that week he got croup and we had to take him to the ER at 1am. Lauritz was the kindest sweetest brother and drove us an hour there int he middle of a blizzard, stayed with us while O sat through two hours of breathing therapy, and then drove us home. While there Andrew found out my flight had been canceled which meant I got to come home and spend hours on the phone trying to get another one. Finally did but then O was sick-- croup turned into a sinus infection. Might have been a few more weather cancellations in there or something.

Finally got to the airport and had to wait at the gate for an hour because it started to snow again, then had to wait an hour on the plane to take off, then missed connecting flight home. Had to carry O, stroller, and carry-on bags up stairs at JFK after waiting in snow to get carry-on bags unloaded from plane. Got chest pains from being stressed, pregnant, and having to carry a s***load of stuff on my own. Managed to recover from chest pains and get in line to find out the next flight they had me on was the next day at night. Held it together long enough to ask for a hotel voucher because no way pregnant me and my one year old were sleeping in JFK all night. Made it to hotel after a few more chest pains and some very kind aid from a passing flight attendant. Was able to recover somewhat with the help of room service and a few sobbing sessions on the phone with Andrew and Dad.

Got on the flight the next day and had to wait three hours on the tarmac before take-off. Thank you to Lynn and Debbie (Andrew's boss and his wife who were on the same flight) managed to keep my sanity during the wait. O was an angel thanks to some angels who I am sure were speaking to him and letting him know I really needed help. That, and a couple doses of Triaminic and whatever else the dr gave us. Finally finally made it home to Andrew. Had missed Valentine's Day with him but nothing was sweeter than getting to be with him again. Don't think we even did anything the rest of the month other than just be happy to be together again. Photos here.

The boy likes himself some futbol

In honour of Barcelona holding onto their La Liga title (which looks pretty likely after Valladolid's own goal and Pedro finishing off Messi's assist), here's Oliver watching Barca get kicked out of the CL in what was possibly the worst match I've ever had the misfortune of seeing:

Teeny tiny television....but really great parenting.

Apologies

As it turns out, "the moderator" of our blog was supposed to approve all the comments before they could be posted. Said moderator wasn't aware that this duty existed, so I'm just now barely seeing all the comments from like July of last year. I'm so sorry for depriving you all of my pithy responses. And here I was thinking that no-one had ever even seen these posts. You've renewed my faith in technology and narcissism.

To make it up to you, here's a semi-recent video of Oliver doing his thing. If he wants to eat, he has to perform.

In the meantime, if you promise to keep making more comments, I promise to make fun of them.

January

Soooooo, January. O and I were lucky enough to get to spend the whole month in California with Dad and Abram. Andrew had to get back to work (sucker) but was able to stay around long enough to celebrate O's birthday and see him start to walk.

The big feature of the month was O's first birthday. Without any of his little friends around, he was stuck partying with his parents, Papa Petersen, and Uncle Abram. We started the festivities at the Randall Museum in San Francisco. Heard of it? Probably not unless you grew up in the city and loved spending Saturday afternoons in a room full of handicapped wildlife. The Randall is a little children's museum with a room full of rescued wildlife that can't be released back into the wild because of various handicaps. We always loved it for the ferrets that you could play with and the owls that were free to fly around the room. Downstairs is a model train room that really just makes you feel like you're in some train enthusiast's basement where he has slowly gone nuts over the years. As a kid you think it's great, as a parent you want to hug your child closer and protect him from the man grinning at you as he plays with his trains.

The rest of the party was pretty standard. Cake, some pretty sad decorations, and presents that took O a while to figure out. The cake was a mystery to O at first but once he caught the vision, it took hours to bring down that sugar high.

Other highlights of the month include getting to see the new Academy of Sciences building. I've been reading articles about it for months and while I was sad to see the old building go, I was curious what Mr. Renzo Piano could do with it. I was quite pleased and really really longed to live in SF again just to take O there every weekend. They kept all the best parts of the old building including the albino alligator and the taxidermy rooms, and upgraded everything else. I heart SF.

Also managed to hit up the MOMA, another absolute favorite of mine. Always come away feeling so inspired by modern art especially when I've started my trip with a stop at Zachary's. Muir Woods and Muir Beach. Zachary's again. SF Zoo followed by a trip to Pollyanna's. Shopping, walking and eating in Berkeley. These are a few of my favorite things (all of which we managed to do during our trip). Photos here.

December

Let's see... December. Does anything really happen then? I guess we did a few things, saw a few people, ate a little food, participated in some great American consumerism, and then tried to recover from it all.

Actually the real thing we had to recover from was our trip home. We had gone to the pediatrician and asked him for a sedative for O's flight-- he gave us valium. We figured we'd use that as a last resort but after getting only an hour of sleep before heading to the airport three hours before our flight in a vain effort to secure a bassinet for O, we gave in. Honestly all I remember from that flight is that by the time we landed in SLC we were explaining pitifully to everyone around us that we had given O valium but had been traveling for twenty-four hours and didn't know what else we could do. He was just squirming and fussing and slept I believe a total of on hour the whole trip. No no no fun. Found out later that valium just kind of lowers inhibitions but doesn't necessarily put babies to sleep. Basically O felt no qualms about letting his emotions all out.

But we made it home and got to enjoy time with family and friends. We stayed in Salt Lake for Christmas and then headed to St. George for some Benson Family Time. We were lucky enough to get Abram and Arin and Dad to Utah but missed Lauritz and Michelle-- they had some excuse about having a baby or something. I was quite grateful for the sacrifices everyone made to be there especially since it always seems that Christmas is the time to throw everyone we love in one place and then try to spend enough time with everyone with whom all you want to do is spend more and more time. There's something sadistic about it-- like putting a diabetic in a candy shop once a year.

St. George was fantastic because it let us focus on visiting with just one side of the family. There was hiking, nightly family fiestas, the big family photo, and of course, family germ sharing. New Year's Eve I came down with some really nasty cold. It stuck around until we got to California and broke down and had a doctor come out to the house. A house call-- yes, they still do that if you have our insurance. Did I mention that in order to get to Dad's we had to drive through Bakersfield? We stayed the night there and thankfully had to leave early enough in the morning that fog covered the whole city and we didn't have to see a thing.

Here are our best photos from December. Enjoy.

November

So, yes, we've been terrible about blogging and now I'm just doing a bunch of catch up writing. I've had a few people request more photos or at least updates on how our Christmas tour went and so I'm just going to do a couple of posts breaking down the past few months.

November was pretty mild. Started off the month by celebrating O's best friend's birthday and then we had our anniversary and Thanksgiving to celebrate. A friend of ours offered to watch O so we could go to dinner and celebrate our seven years together in peace. I was almost to the dessert course before I remembered that we had a little boy waiting for us-- it was just such bliss to eat a very nicely done steak with the luxury of time to actually chew instead of having to choke it down as fast as I can so that I'm free to entertain little O. Thank you, Fernanda and Andres.

And then there was our Thanksgiving feast. We celebrated it on Sunday with a few friends, a couple roasted chickens, and some turkey running around somewhere having been spared his fate on our table. Andrew did fantastic roasted chicken and, despite his doubts about my stuffing from scratch, actually acknowledged that it ended up being ok to not do Stovetop. Homemade spiced nuts, rolls, beans with fennel, and Michelle's pies topped the meal. It was odd how much fennel we ended up using this year. On a side note, Andrew was in charge of the camera and took precisely ten photos of the food (eight of them of the chickens, which did look beautiful) and five photos of O.

Here's a link to our best photos from November. I can't remember why but I didn't have a best photos of September album on Picasa so I put it up here-- if anyone still cares. I know I've published those photos before on FB but I think Dad is still having a hard time figuring out social networking so this link is for him.

Bag - Cat = Baby

I don't know who knows and who doesn't at this point so I thought I'd make a formal announcement. Our fantastic awesome blog probably isn't on anyone's regular rotation, and if it is I feel real bad since the last post was in September, so don't know who this will actually reach. But just thought I'd inform all interested parties that our family of three will be growing by 3.33% (give or take) in the beginning of August. It's a decision that may only be regarded as dangerously reckless, but we're rolling the dice that the difficult first couple of years will pay dividends as they grow up together.


But really, can you imagine any kid cuter than this?:




New baby has his/her work cut out for them. That's all I'm saying.