Rusharound

River had some pithy statements for all of us at the Thanksgiving dinner.  Just before he carved threw the turkey.

Three days ago we celebrated Thanksgiving at Sarah’s parents house in Massachusetts.  It also included a first-ever iChat with my grandmother in California, thanks to a little work by my cousin Lindsey, her laptop, and my grandmother’s speedy wireless internet.  (Yes, that bears repeating: my grandmother has a fast wireless internet connection at her house.)

Chalk up another win for the gizmo, and the way gadgets help bring people together. It’s no secret that I love the gizmo.  Wireless?  Handsfree?  Battery operated?  Bring it on – especially if it helps communicate in more frequent, richer ways.

I should also disclose that I sometimes abuse technology – tech-free dinners take more discipline than I should need.  And sometimes more discipline than I have.

But it’s true that few things in my life (distinguishing here from the people in my life) offer as much bliss as a good gizmo.  Here are my top four:

1. iPhone (6 pages of apps!  Books!  Slingbox!  Podcasts!)
2. MacBook (2 year old 2.2Ghz – the black one.  Parallels! Quicksilver! VNC! TimeMachine!)
3. Verizon Mifi (Wireless internet I can share anywhere (except my office, but that’s another story.))
4. The “cloud” (Remember the Milk, Gmail(s) Google Reader! SugarSync! Mobile Me! CMS websites! Twitter!)

Of course having technology isn’t the point.  Using technology it should be the point.  I saw a illustration of this when I did a “tweet cloud” which analyzes the words I tweeted most often last year.

I hope I use technology to promote goodness (Canditto anyone?) and never to promote techno isolation. (Did anyone see this New Yorker cover at Halloween?)

So keep me honest friends, family and wayward blog readers.  Hold me back if I ever take this stuff to the, errr, e-xtreme.

This week’s Sunday Props goes to a little guy who’s deserved it many times, but can’t yet read this anyway. You probably already know who I’m talking about.

It’s been a big weekend for River – he’s become a proficient nighttime sleeper (more on this in a moment), learned how to transition from lying down to sitting, and even pulled himself up. (Andddd yes, I just finished installing the cabinet locks in the kitchen). So River’s been busy exploring and learning, often with a dribble of slime out his nose and evidence of the last meal on his pants. He is of course, unfazed by this (handy for sailing and camping). More surprising is his disregard for the wooden blocks he lays on, crawls across and frequently sits on without complaint. I remind myself of this when he does cry – if he can handle those discomforts without a whimper, imagine what it takes to make him cry.

We’ve been doing exactly that this week as we took the scary and long-postponed leap into sleep training. We did the requisite reading, counselor hiring, worst-case-scenario forecasting and even some last minute postponing – but on Thursday we finally initiated a new go-to-sleep tradition and put a sobbing River in his crib and walked out.

Twenty minutes later, he stopped crying.

That’s it. Where’s the training part, you ask? The quadratic equation of kid slumberdom? It turns out there wasn’t much too it – the two nights since have gotten easier and better. And last night was so good I don’t want to jinx it by telling you the details.

So those are some of the big milestones, but there are plenty of smaller ones, too. And if you’re still reading at this point you must have an appetite for minutiae. River makes some of the cutest sounds; sometimes when he’s on the changing table he makes barely audible Bah Bah noises. They are so soft most of the noise comes just from his lips separating. Throughout the day he says Dah Dah and Mah Mah – often without any regard to which of us is in the room, but we congratulate him when fate delivers him the correct one at the right time. Other moments his exclamations vary in tone with the kind of animation of an old friend telling a favorite story. Such was the tone (and perhaps true back story) during today’s return from the afternoon adventure when River held Mr. Waffles next to his face and debriefed the stuffed animal on his fascinating trip.

In between the sounds, River’s developed some satisfying habits such as opening a particular cabinet and pulling out a particular bag to play with and suck on. He loves pushing his yellow truck back and forth and so gingerly knocking down the block towers I’ve made, I sometimes wonder if he’s actually practicing for a regional Jenga tournament. Throughout all of this, he has the wonderful attribute of bring quick to smile – it usually only takes a smile from someone else or the sight of anything unusual, like his dad with a Cheerio stuck to his nose. For this especially, Sarah and I are extraordinarily grateful. It will be many years before he will appreciate how much of our energy and kindness is the grownup reflection of the laughs he fills us with.

Thanks buddy. You make us feel very lucky.

It was four years ago yesterday that Sarah and I hopped onto the Vespa, waved good bye to our nearest friends and sped off into the darkness for the first time as Mr. and Mrs. Hambleton.  Yesterday Sarah and I celebrated in decidedly other ways, treating each other to favorite little meals, a sleep consultation (for River), and other minor decadents.

Thanks to Sarah’s parents for the cake and the donated babysitting service, to my parents for the sleep consultation, white noise generator and everything else, and to Nana for the special phone call.  Thanks for celebrating us with us.

If you know us, you probably know that we haven’t quite figured out the best way to get River to sleep at night. (And if this is news to you, then I’ll spare you the details. Just take my word for it.)

But now we have a plan and sometime next week we will put it to action. But we need your help.

Among the recommendations we’ve heard is that we should have a single soothing phrase to use when R4 wakes up prematurely. The phrase can be anything we want, but we have to stick with it.

Sarah likes “ShShShShSh River” or something like that. I’m partial to a secret code phrase like “Albondigas” [I’m told that’s ‘meatball’ in Spanish] or some silly phrase from the Muppets (MahNahMaNa, anyone?)

What phrase should we use? Remember, we are going to use it repeatedly and continually for many months (years?), in the middle of the night when we’d prefer to be sleeping, so choose wisely. (Hoss, Brian and Lenny, I’m talking to you.)

Hit up the comments area, please everyone?

Hi.

Every now and then my good friends out there in the internets nudge me when I haven’t been posting enough.  Truth is, I had hoped that frequent tweeting would suffice, but I guess that’s like serving heavy appetizers at a wedding.  People expect full size dinner plates.  With meat.   So for you starving guests, I serve this, an update. Read the rest of this entry »

Try and imagine this.

All three Hambletons were in the car, returning from a our friends’ terrific wedding in Burlington, Vermont.  (Yay Kim and Mike!) While cruising along I-89, I noticed something funny in the mirror – a pickup truck we’d just passed looked like it was dragging something behind it … at 65MPH. I slowed our car down to let it pass and confirmed it: part of the ride-on mower in the truck’s bed had fallen out and was sashaying along the ground behind it, tethered by a single piece of webbing.  Very dangerous – and the driver was oblivious.  I donned my imaginary superhero cape and sped up so I could make eye contact with the driver.  When our windows were aligned, I rolled mine down and started waving profusely.

And my wedding ring flew off.

At 75MPH.

In the rain.

It bounced once before disappearing someplace into the highway’s unmowed, grassy median.

I said a four letter word, hit the brakes, and against my wife’s advice, parked the car on the right shoulder and started looking for my ring.  (Well, first there was the small issue of crossing I-89’s two lanes of traffic wearing ankle-twisting-clogs, but I don’t want to dwell on the near-deathy-part of the story.)

Anyway, I searched the median for a couple of minutes, occasionally looking up and realizing that my family was sitting in a car on the side of the highway and I’m only feet away from blurring-fast-cars.  As I put my head down one last time to find something shiny in the gravel and grassy median, it occurred to me that searching this way for a store-bought momento — one that represents the long life we are to have together — was really stupid.

I called off the search – no ring.

So if you happen to notice the pale, empty part of my ring finger, please don’t start any rumors.

Many of you know that we have a soft spot for Mystic, CT.  (Which is why we plan to move there very soon).  The truth is, we’d move just about anywhere to be with the crew that lives down there, and we’re really lucky that such great people have all congregated in such a beautiful spot.

Last weekend, Anna and Brian reminded us of all the Mystic goodness when we visited for the weekend with lots of other great friends.  They opened their home to us (and many other toddlers and their parents), let us make our messes, play, and, oh yes, eat.

In addition to their gracious hosting, Anna shared more of her professional talents with us, by taking these great pictures of River and Sarah.  It’s not her first time doing this, in fact, it’s part of her newish (and quickly successful) photography business.

We can hardly wait until we can be closer neighbors and play together more often!