Shannon Phillips

Sam snapped this picture of Robin eating a bite of apple last night:

Nanita sent two pictures from her recent visit—the first one she calls “Train Guys” because it’s hilarious how Robin is standing around just like one of the men:

And the second is from inside the train:

Sam and I took Robin to the beach over the Labor Day weekend, and we got some pictures of him there:

It’s hard to notice changes in his development, as it’s happening so gradually now, but he’s definitely taller and his face is becoming less babyish. He plays with other children at the park for longer periods and in more complicated games (he likes to do something resembling tag, although he’ll change his mind abruptly about who is “It”). He bestows hugs and kisses freely on everyone who crosses his path. He tries to pull up his own pants, sometimes when he’s already wearing pants. He also likes to tromp around wearing Sam’s or my shoes.

He enjoys playing in the bath, but hates to get his hair wet, and was terrified of the surf when we brought him too far down the beach. He likes to be read storybooks every day: he’ll most often bring us Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are or Crazy Hair by Neil Gaiman, but he also likes That’s Not My Dragon, a Pat the Bunny type textured book. He sings and dances to recorded music, but he doesn’t like it when Sam or I sing; I find this highly weird and can’t wait until he can talk well enough to explain it to me.

His main focus in play still consists of taking things out of containers and putting them back into different containers. He also very much likes pouring liquids from one container to another. He’s also fascinated by electronics and loves to push buttons of any sort, especially elevator buttons. He loves escalators too and would ride them endlessly as far as I can tell. He still loves Sesame Street and his favorite movie is The Jungle Book. He’s getting pickier about food, preferring pasta and rice to vegetable dishes—some days he doesn’t eat much at all, and other days he finds something he likes and wolfs it down. He seems to get enough variety that I’m satisfied.

And I think that’s pretty much the State of the Robin!

We had a great time in Nevada celebrating Robin’s second birthday with Nonna, Pappy, the Anti-Sara, Nanita, Marqueño, and Great-Grandparents Elsie, Betty, and Wayne. I took lots of good pictures…and then somehow I lost my camera.

My mom sent me a couple of shots, though. Here, just on the edges of the picture, you can see the outskirts of the giant pile of presents that was brought for Robin. You can’t really see many of them, but you can see that he was happy and enthusiastic about investigating his gifts:

And here’s a shot of the Phillips menfolk, all together:

Mostly since we’ve gotten back we’ve been wrestling with the 203k process for our house. It’s unbelievably complicated and stressful. I wouldn’t recommend these loans, except that there really is no better way (at least for people who aren’t very skilled in construction work) to buy an older house and fix it up. DIY really wouldn’t be sufficient here—in fact part of the problem with the house is that it has suffered somebody else’s DIY efforts, all of which need to be ripped out and redone. And since lending standards have tightened, no bank would fund a conventional loan on a house in this shape anyway. So the 203k program is the only recourse for people like me who love older homes, but aren’t rich enough to buy one that somebody else has already renovated and is looking to “flip.”

Here is just one little part of the story: because these loans are funded through HUD, we are required to hire a HUD consultant in addition to our contractor. The HUD consultant basically gets paid for sitting around with his thumb up his butt for weeks, until the very last moment when he decides to throw a spanner in the works by insisting that our planned repairs will not satisfy HUD’s requirements. He says we have to get a very expensive soil engineer out to inspect the house’s foundation. This obviously causes more delay. Finally when the foundation inspection is complete, the soil engineer basically says “Well, yes, there’s some foundation cracking, which you would find in all older houses. It’s not about to fall down or anything.” HUD consultant insists that we repair the cracks. This adds $35,000 to the proposed scope of work. Sam and I weep and gnash our our teeth.

I don’t even have the stamina to recount all the other crap we’ve been dealing with in trying to close on the house. Suffice it to say that what started out as a $131,000 home that needed $25,000 worth of work is now a $131,000 home that needs $110,000 worth of work.

Obviously with each increase in cost Sam and I have been re-evaluating our commitment to this house. But the truth is that even a $250,000 home in this area is a very good deal (a one-bedroom condo in downtown Oakland goes for $375,000): and after all the work is done, it will be a lovely older home meticulously renovated, with the surface bits done to our exact taste.

There are still lots of things that can go wrong. The appraisal could come in low, requiring us to renegotiate the purchase price with the sellers. Also, the delays caused by the HUD consultant are going to force us to ask for an extension on the closing date: the sellers could refuse. Unexpected fees (like the soil engineer) are piling up, eating into our savings and making me worry about our ability to manage the closing costs. So, this thing is by no means a done deal and every day brings a new storm of stress. This is why I’ve been dodging questions about the house: I don’t really want to talk about it. I’ll let you know if something final happens, one way or the other.

Robin is such a big boy now, I can hardly believe it. Just look at him clambering up these monkey bars:

Here’s a close-up:

Yes, I did give him a rather unfortunate haircut. Don’t worry, it’ll grow out, and he doesn’t mind.

I finally goaded Sam into transferring the eight hundred and twenty-nine photos he had stored on his camera over to the computer. Here’s some of my favorites.

This is from a Memorial Day picnic we had in a little park by the bay. I think Robin has a fried chicken crumb on his chin.

This is from Mother’s Day, when Robin was wearing his sailor suit. I promise you that .003 seconds from the time this picture was taken, he’d pulled off the hat and dropped it on the floor.

Here are three from the park:

And these are from when we went to see the steam trains at Tilden park:

We weren’t going nearly as fast as Robin’s expression in that last picture would seem to indicate.

And we were back in Tilden park last weekend for the wedding, but we both forgot our cameras. It was a really nice time though, and extra fun for me because it happened to be my birthday—and here was all this food, music, and friends already gathered together!

I wish I’d gotten a picture of my peach pie. It looked pretty, and it was very well received. I guess I’ll just have to make another one!

Robin wore his sailor suit for Mother’s Day, and garnered many compliments. We had a nice brunch and then went to see the “Treasures of Bhutan” exhibit at the Asian Art Museum…we stopped at that playground on the way so Robin could stretch his legs.

The latest news on the toddler front is that Robin has taken to grabbing our toes while shrieking “tikka tikka tikka!” (tickle tickle tickle!) I think he’s decided that what goes around comes around, Mommy!

On the housing front, we’ve put in another offer. The house we’re going for now is actually in Martinez, which is north of Oakland: it’s a really nice town. Technically I guess it’s a city, but it very much has the same feel as the college towns I grew up in. It has a Main Street lined with mom-and-pop stores. It has bungalow neighborhoods filled with trees. It has a creek that runs through the middle of town. It seems like a really nice place to raise kids; the sort of place you wouldn’t mind turning them out of doors with an admonition to be back by supper.

Martinez is mostly known in the Bay Area for the beaver controversy that gripped the city two years ago. Basically, a pair of beavers made a dam in the creek downtown, creating a potential flood hazard. The city government wanted to trap and remove the beavers—or just shoot them—but the people of Martinez were having none of it. After a series of protests and “an emotional city council meeting,” the city of Martinez decided instead to install an expensive water flow device around the beavers’ dam.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Martinez was also the home of famous naturalist John Muir. It also claims to be the birthplace of the martini.

These facts, taken together, tell me all I need to know about the people of Martinez. They are a soft-hearted and thoroughly impractical folk who love nature and gin. I feel we’d fit in well.

Okay, you people don’t really care about pictures of pie. You want pictures of little boy! Luckily Sam just uploaded dozens of them to his Flickr account.

Here’s Robin in close-up:

Here he is running around and being a goofball:

Here he is on the slide:

Look at that soft baby skin:

And we’ll leave you with this:

There, that should hold you people for a while.

We went to the beach last weekend; Robin looooooved it. He loved all the space to run and all the stuff to see. Sam flew his kite:

and Robin ran around like a maniac:

Sam has lots more pictures up on his Flickr account.

I guess the big news on the child-development front is that Robin is now fully weaned. Again, it just sort of happened. He crawled into my lap one night and fell asleep right there, without nursing. The next night he dropped off again without needing to nurse. So just like that, he was weaned.

No news on the house-hunting front. We’re still waiting for a response to our offer from the sellers and their bank. If we move to Oakland we’re going to have make time to come back to the beach!

This one is really sweet:

Nanita took these pictures of Robin while she was here—Robin at the top of the slide:

and Robin at the bottom:

Remember when I wrote a while back about how we can kind of identify what sort of overarching developmental projects Robin’s working on? Currently, he seems really focused on interactive games. He initiates all sorts of games now, all the time. I took that video of him playing peek-a-boo with us a couple months ago because it was so cute and surprising: now he plays peek-a-boo every time he gets near a curtain. He plays ball with me at the park, and chasing games (“I’m gonna get you!”) delight him. There are certain ritualized gestures he uses to initiate a simplified game of Simon Says without the verbal cues: it mostly just involves him making exaggerated gestures and us imitating them, which is highly amusing to him.

I think what he likes about all these games is a) the predictability; the idea that certain actions on his part will always prompt certain corresponding reactions from us, and b) the acknowledgment through gesture and action that a shared understanding exists between us, that something has been communicated.

His verbal skills are developing too, but he’s still far more fluid in gesture-based communication. He knows now that I’m “mama” and Sam is “dada,” and sometimes he’ll say “mama” or “dada” when he wants our attention, but more often he’ll just tug on our clothing or climb up on top of us. If he wants to be picked up he’ll pat my lap; if he wants to go to the park, he’ll climb into his stroller or bring me his shoes. If he wants to watch a Sesame Street video he’ll bring me his Elmo doll, and if he’s hungry he’ll bring me his empty plate. I know that it’s possible to develop all sorts of specific “baby signs;” about six months ago I was trying to formally teach him some of them, but he wasn’t ready, and now it just seems unnecessary since his own gestural vocabulary is already so expansive.

He also will often say “yeah!” in response to a question, although I’m not quite convinced that he understands it as a real word of affirmation/agreement, rather than just “a sound you make when somebody has addressed you with a rising inflection in their tone.” He doesn’t say “no.” If he doesn’t like something he finds it much simpler and clearer to howl loudly in protest.

The last thing I’ve noticed about Robin’s games is that he’s even started initiating them with other children at the park; I’ve seen him playing peek-a-boo or chasing games with other kids. This is a big step from the side-by-side parallel play that used to (and often still does) characterize his time in the sandbox. Of course he’s especially fascinated by older boys and it’s a little bit heartbreaking when he’ll try to toddle into a rowdy game of tag, offering his ball to the bigger kids: then I have to intervene and save him from himself. Playing ball with Mommy obviously isn’t as cool, but it’s something he’ll have to be satisfied with until he gets bigger himself!