The Big Doughnut

Because of the lovely weather we've been so lucky to have on the weekends this month, we've been spending lots of time at a beautiful park by our house that has two of Jack's favorite things -- a view of the space needle and a big doughnut (or a sculpture of a big doughnut). He named the sculpture himself but I've always thought of it as a big doughnut too. For some reason though, he will absolutely not sit in the doughnut.. he likes it better from a distance.. so mostly we walk around the park. Jack really wants to jump in the pond there because it's full of colorful fish.





THere are also lots of great trees to climb:



Unrelated to all this, jack got a hair cut. This is the pre-haircut photo.. we were a little shocked at first but got used to it quickly.

la hermanita

I am half way through my pregnancy (theoretically) so I went to my last ultrasound (i hope) where they measure all the organs and look at the brain. Basically, out of the almost infinite number of abnormalities, it seems the ultraound rules out about 8. I felt mixed about getting it.. but in the end, I decided it's better to have more information than less (in this case).

We found out the gender: we are having a girl.

I was a little shocked. For some reason, I saw myself as a mom of boys. Last December during the time when I could not know whether I was pregnant or not, I recall walking down the street and all of a sudden feeling like I needed to start thinking about girl names because I was going to have a girl. It was a strong feeling. But a few months later, I went to a vedic astrologer (long story) who was fairly certain it was a boy so I questioned my intuition and decided I just had no idea. In any case, I felt very surprised when the tech told me.

So little J will have a little sister. Crazy.

Tenacious J

Jack is asserting his will more often and he has very particular requests. He wants to have 3 binkies when he sleeps, if there are 5 things on the table, he only wants the one that will cause the most damage, when I unload the groceries he can always tell which box has the cookies even though he hasn't seen the picture.. and he just wants THAT box. He points at things and says THIS! so I've realized I need to get better at naming.. it's hard to explain the concept of demonstrative pronouns. If he doesn't get EXACTLY what he wants, he stomps one foot and says I WANT IT!

He also like to do the opposite of what I want to do. If I want to go uphill, he wants to go down, if I want to go away from the street, he wants to go towards it. One thing that is consistent is he always wants to be outside... at all times. I sometimes wonder if he doesn't like our house but then I think that's projection.

I don't really like the phrase terrible two's. I am glad that Jack is on track developmentally.. I'm glad he's becoming his own little person. I heard someone call this period "the tenacious two's" and I think that's a little more fair. He's so much more engaging than he used to be and that is a lot of fun for us.

Spring makes everything more fun anyway...
Here is Jack and his favorite cat, pumpkin. Every time he sees pumpkin he says "pumpkin kitty gentle?'



we got lots of great tulips this year: