Welcome our new fishie!

An impulse buy based on some faulty information has led to a new member of our family: Badgely Fiscka the beta. It was a rough first week, he wouldn't eat and we found out his water was too cold and his tank is too small. J lived in fear that the poor fellow would die and leave us to explain death to our two year-old (who picked out Badgely specifically). But we've learned what we need to care for him properly and he's adjusted to his new surroundings; he's now eating three enthusiastic meals a day and is very active in his (still too small) tank. Blowing lots of happy fishie bubbles. We've all really been delighted by him and have fallen in love. He will be getting a larger, more efficient tank in a couple weeks and maybe some live food later today. With proper care, and assuming he was not sick when we got him, he should live at least a few years and up to eight.

Welcome Badgely!

Auntie Seff & Deneer

One of our best friends, Stephanie, and her 18 month old son, Demir, came to visit for a long weekend, to our great delight! We think she brought the rain down from PDX with her, so we weren't able to do a lot of activities or see many of the sights we would have liked. But really, with three toddlers on three different nap schedules, we probably wouldn't have been able to do all that much anyway!


The children all got along well, B took to calling them her "best friends!" right away and would ask where they were whenever they left her sight. On Sunday we were able to have a fun outing; we filled ourselves up with Stack's pancakes and then headed north to the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito. A very neat children's museum with different areas (toddler, art, waves, etc) spread out into various buildings on a former military base. All three kids loved it, especially the huge playground. The adults got pretty worn out by the end, but that's to be expected with such outings.



All in all it was a wonderful visit and we welcome them ANY time they want to visit again. Next time bring St. Cupcakes instead of rain though, Steph.

Book recommendations.

Anyone who has ever been to our home knows that we have a lot of books. Like a lot of books, more than you would think. In fact, when we moved down here our moving costs were way over the estimation because of the weight of our books! So we want to clear our shelves, but a lot of the books we're holding on to are ones that we have read individually and want the other person to read. Since we are in the unique situation of both finishing our current reads at about the same time we decided to take the opportunity to jump start the process by each picking a book for the other to read. Who will like the other's book more? Will we discover that our interests are more or less alike than we thought? Of course this will be a bit of a contest, because everything is when you come down to it, right?

For J, T has picked Bel Canto by Ann Patchett; an interesting and haunting tale of a group of strangers held hostage in a political struggle by a misfit band of rebels. Lighter than you might think and with some good twists and turns, you'll feel for the captors as much as the hostages early in the story.

For T, J has chosen Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer; the true story of an idealistic young loner who ventures into the Alaskan wild never to be seen alive again. What motivated the intelligent, affluent young man to denounce home, family and fortune for a life in society's fringes? Ooh, intrigue.

If you want to donate to Haiti...

There are many appropriate channels to donate to the relief of the millions of earthquake victims in Haiti, but we would like to share one of our favorite charities and present it as an option to donate if you are planning to. ONE DROP is a foundation which concerns itself with the preservation of clean water and with helping impoverished and undeveloped nations have access to clean water. They have announced that they will be teaming up with another organization, Oxfam-Québec:

"...to assist in the reconstruction and rehabilitation efforts that will be taking place during the next few months in Haiti. In May, ONE DROP will set up a project to enable the population of the capital’s neighbouring zones to have access to water. Needless to say, the affected populations’ access to water is already a major issue.

Concerning all the work to be done during the emergency-response stage, ONE DROP has the utmost confidence in Oxfam-Québec, its main partner for projects in developing countries. Oxfam-Québec has been active in Haiti for many years now and is a member of the Humanitarian Coalition, a network of Canadian non-governmental organizations that have chosen to unite their efforts to respond in the best way possible to humanitarian crises."

To donate to ONE DROP Project Haiti click here.

A message from the founder of ONE DROP, Guy Laliberte:

A good big sis.

Recently B has been taking a lot of pride in her role as big sister. She's trying to help C do things (like forward rolls and building block towers), she likes to help us take care of him (especially making shampoo mohawks with his hair at bath time). But her special big sister super power is making him happy when he is sad. She will do a little dance, make a funny face, sing a song, or find a toy. This comes in handy a lot since C is regularly getting bonks and bruises as his favorite activities currently include running everywhere, climbing on everything and jumping off and over anything that doesn't move.

One evening we were leaving Barnes & Noble and a little girl, maybe three or four years old, was crying and very upset (if we had to take a guess we would say it was some sort of a power struggle with the mom) but B reacted with lightening, superhero speed and found a stuffed animal in one of the bins and walked up to the little girl, handed her the toy and said "here ya go. You don't have to be sad anymore."

After we left she told us "I a GOOD big sister! I make people happy."

We've never been so proud of our daughter. (Or of ourselves, after all we are raising her so we get the credit when she turns out to be a stellar human being. Right?)

**J thinks its super funny to act out the mom's reaction over her child being given a toy by a well-meaning, sweet little two year old. We wonder if she ended up buying it or not.