now blogging at kunitzarchives.wordpress.com

reminder – i’ve retired this stayathomedan blog – since i am no longer staying at home.  in fact i am technically homeless at the moment.  check out kunitzarchives.wordpress.com for my new blog.

meet the new blog. same as the old blog.

I really feel like we’re suddenly sprinting towards the finish line.  In two weeks we move out of our house in Virginia, and in four weeks we’ll be in France.

If you don’t read anything else in this blog post, readers of this blog may want to know that I am retiring my “stay at home dan” blog with this post.  I have started a new blog, “Kunitz Archives,” which will be maintained jointly by both me and Danielle.  My posts will be long, dry, and droll; Danielle’s will be cheerful and saucy.  (Just like in real life!) 

We thought that this might be a good way to keep in touch with people while we are abroad, and to keep a journal of our adventures.  So keep kunitzarchives.wordpress.com bookmarked.

Along with the Kunitz Archives Blog, I’m also maintaining a website with our photos, and a YouTube page with home movies.  I’ve also been compiling some of our favorite recipes, and have added quite a few of Danielle’s favorites recently, so that we don’t have to travel with them and can reference them easily from the computer.  There won’t be any new movies for a little while because my video camera is on a slow boat headed towards France.

So I’ve imported all my blog posts from “stay at home dan” over to the “kunitz archives” blog and will only be blogging there from now on, not that I have much time to blog these days.  Friends and family are suddenly realizing that they don’t have much time to see us and our calendar is filling up.  Sonya and Malcolm are hosting a party for the Newseum crowd right before we leave (this graphic is Libby’s responsibility from the Evite.)  I’ve had some final farewells – drinks with some of the gang from work, and Robert, Elena, and Alex stopping by today before heading out of town.  Matt is flying in next weekend, and Patrice and Zachary after that.   So that’s all great, but leaves us feeling a little melancholy about soon not seeing our friends as often as we like.  Fortunately quite a few sound very serious about visiting us in Paris.

Rachel continues to eat and sleep and grow at an alarming rate.  She turned two months old a couple days ago and I documented it with this photo.  We continue to have the “who does she look like?” conversation – and have finally decided that she has Danielle’s ears.  So we know who the mother is at least. 

And so as not to leave Joseph out of the post, here is a photo of him as well.  It probably does not need an explanation, but I’ll just say that that is diaper rash ointment, and he wasn’t supposed to be playing with it.

and au revoir

Other than an eighth grade trip to Washington, the first time I really spent any significant time in DC was the summer of 1990 when I had an internship at WJLA.  One day early that summer I was walking out of the TV station and I was hit by a smell that I had never smelled before.  It was very strong and very distinctive, and I was very intrigued.  There is a big park at Connecticut and Tilden where I was walking, with lots of bushes and trees, and I couldn’t tell where it was coming from.  I didn’t love the smell, but I liked it and I was taken with it.  I was walking with my friend Tige, and I asked him if he smelled it and he said he thought he did, but he didn’t seem to take much notice of it.

Every day for a few weeks I noticed that smell, but I never figured out what it was.  It was a fun summer for me – working at a TV station and living in a big city - and I think that smell probably contributed to a sense of wonder and a feeling that I was somewhere new and exciting.

I moved back here for good in the spring of 1994 and have basically spent my entire adult life in this area.  Every summer I have noticed that smell, and every year when I smell it for the first time it stops me in my tracks and think to myself that I really have to identify it before I leave.  And I have always been thinking about leaving.  I’ve lived all over this area and I notice it in different pockets.  I have spent a long time standing on the bridge on Connecticut Ave where it crosses Rock Creek Park looking down at the trees below where the smell was particularly strong.  And driving around Northern Virginia I will often notice it during that short stretch around early June when it appears to be in bloom.

I finally found the tree when I moved to Dupont – there is one at the corner of 15th and P a block from my condo.  A few years ago I snipped a clipping from it and brought it home, but didn’t know what to do with it.  This year when I quit my job our plan all along was to seriously consider moving or traveling while the kids are little and it will be less disruptive to them.  So when I smelled it again – this was the first week of June and I was standing outside the Crate and Barrel in Alexandria where I had gone to buy Danielle a replacement for one of her favorite glasses that I accidentally broke - I became obsessed. 

I went back there with scissors and a camera, but couldn’t find it.  So I drove back to 15th and P and snapped off a small branch from the one there, took it and home and photographed it.  I then dove into some futile late night web surfing and learned a lot quickly about how to identify trees but kept hitting dead ends.  My parents were visiting and my mom suggested I contact a family friend who knows a lot about plants.  I emailed her the photo and within two days she had identified it:  a Chinese Chestnut. 

I googled around and read descriptions of it and looked up pictures and that is definitely it.  So now I feel kind of like Inigo Montoya at the end of Princess Bride after he kills the six-fingered man, when he is asked what he is going to do next.  He shrugs and says I’ve been in the revenge business so long, I don’t know what to do now.  I am leaving DC with no clear mission, but with a burden lifted and looking for new challenges.

Keeping a blog of my final months here has been an interesting experience.  I haven’t thought too much about an audience or who is reading it, but think of it as a journal – primarily for me and for Joseph to read down the road about the fun things we did when I took a little time off from work.  But when we decided to move to France, I became sensitive to the fact the people do read this, and we hadn’t yet told everybody about our move.  Most importanly, Danielle hadn’t yet told everyone at work – so I decided to hold off on the blogging.  That – and we’ve been extra-busy with Rachel and with packing.

Our to-do list is pages long – US and French passports and visas, birth certificates and livret de famille, shipping things freight to France, donating a garage-full of furniture to charity, packing a house-full of furniture for storage, dealing with the cars, insurance, address changes, final doctors’ appointments, condo managment, sorting and organizing files and computers, and so on.  And we’re trying to have fun with Joseph and Rachel, get out every day, and see friends and family as much as possible before leaving.

I kept a log of everything I did with Joseph this year, and I certainly don’t have any regrets about not getting to anything before leaving.  We hit a few dozen monuments, parks, museums, and forts.  And that doesn’t include the playgrounds. 

I do find myself thinking about what I’d like to do when we come back to visit.  This would be my ideal one-day agenda:

• Walk by my first apartment in Rosslyn, let the kids run around Iwo Jima Memorial, enjoy the views of DC.  Maybe grab lunch at Petite Cafe and eat outside.
• Head to the Mall for a quick hit at some of the highlights:  the Building Zone at the Building Museum, the Newseum, maybe the Sculpture Gardens, Jefferson Memorial and the Tidal Basin.
• Go to Dupont and walk through the old neighborhood.  If we can unload the kids, dinner at Sushi Taro – where we went the night we got engaged – and then walk up 14th St. and stop in a bar or two, especially the Black Cat - scene of our sort-of first date.

A second day would have to include Del Ray and Lebanese Taverna.

I’ve been gearing up mentally to leave all year, and I am excited and ready to go.  It seems that we keep having the conversation with friends about our decision being bold, or risky, or intimidating.  But I really feel that the alternative would have been riskier – this is the perfect opportunity to do something exciting and different, and if we don’t take it now it might be a long time before we have another good window.

Travelling with kids will be tiring, but we’re fortunate that they are both very good natured.  I’d say Joseph was a 6.5 on the easy baby scale, and as Danielle says Rachel is making him look bad.  She is at least a 9.  She is not yet two months old and she is almost sleeping through the night, napping well during the day, feeding well, packing on the pounds, smiling, looking alert, cooing.  We had a brief rough stretch about a month ago that I think we tied to dairy in Danielle’s diet, and once we got past that things have been relatively easy.  We’ve had a couple nights recently when she slept from 9pm-ish to around 6 or so – it isn’t consistent yet but we can see the light at the end of the sleep deprivation tunnel.

Joseph isn’t nearly as disturbed by the moving turmoil as one would expect.  His dresser and chair were hauled away by movers taking stuff to charity, leaving him with an almost empty room.  Our dining room table is gone.  Some of his favorite toys and stuffed animals that he sleeps with have mysteriously disappeared as boxes stack up in the basement.  But he has barely missed a beat – he has gotten really into drawing and coloring, still obsessed with trucks and planes and trains, and talking more than ever.  Pretty soon he’ll have the longest plane ride of his life, and a whole new language to master.

I wrote most of this blog post last week, but I have been having some major computer problems.  Our two main desktops are now in my parents’ basement – I did a 24-hour trip to upstate New York to drop off some valuables with them that we didn’t want in a storage facility.  My other laptop is on a boat going to France.  The one we’re left with is a brand new laptop that was supposed to be the workhorse in the arsenal, but we’re having huge problems with it.  So blogging will continue to be a little slow for the immediate future.

Bon Voyage

back online

We had a huge storm blow through here yesterday, knocking out power for about 24 hours.  It just came back on.  The winds took down a tree in our neighbor’s yard and dropped it right on to our car, blocking the street and our driveway completely.  Our car was not damaged, and neighbors helped cut up the tree and move the pieces out of the road.  My parents were on their way to visit us and also got hit by a tree that fell on their car as they drove down the GW Parkway.  There was no damage to their car either and no one was hurt.

American Horticultural Society at River Farm

Rachel is three weeks old today.  She spends so much time eating and sleeping, I barely have any pictures of her with her eyes open.  I tried to get some today and the photo shoot didn’t go too well, but here are two that I thought were funny.

Danielle and I had to do errands today that took us in different directions.  She took Rachel and went into DC for the morning, and I had to go south past Old Town.  I wanted to find something fun to do with Joseph while I was down there, and on a whim decided to go to River Farm, a large historic home with nice gardens on the Potomac, about half way between Old Town and Mount Vernon.  It is also the home for the American Horticultural Society.

Danielle and I had been there once before, and we had walked from the house down to the Potomac to see the nice views from the river.  This time with Joseph I walked along some nice paths through the gardens, and stumbled upon a children’s garden with tunnels (he LOVES tunnels) and a boat that he climbed on, and many plants and sculptures that are labelled and kid-friendly.  It was a real find, and lots of fun.

Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera today.  But we were sorting through some things in the basement yesterday and I snapped a couple cute pictures of Joseph.  We bought this skunk costume at Halloween last year, but he didn’t want to wear it at the time.  We stumbled upon it yesterday and he was happy to oblige this time around.

what holiday?

I was very pleased to discover on Friday that it was Memorial Day weekend this weekend – not that I am pleased about Memorial Day, but pleased that I didn’t know about it.  Renee asked me if we had any plans for the holiday and I had no idea what she talking about.  I mentioned this to Danielle and she was also blissfully unaware.  We ended up meeting the Stetzers at Gravelly Point for a picnic, where I spent too much time running after Joseph in the heat trying to keep him from kicking his ball into the water.

Joseph’s fever lasted less than a day, but his runny nose lingered and we cancelled our play dates for the rest of the week last week.  We drove out to Great Falls on Thursday and had a nice time walking a short stretch of the trails and watching the falls.

Rachel had her first bath recently and tolerated it fairly well – she’s actually had a couple now.  We think that she is starting to fill out a little and I am very curious to hear what the doctors report about her weight at next week’s checkup.

The meals keep rolling in and the visits keep coming – a scheduled one from Alisa, a bonus lunch from Sonya and Libby, Eric stopped by to admire Rachel and play with Joseph a little, and we enjoyed an awesome dinner from Lynne and Harland.

The lack of sleep is catching up with us a little.  When we first came back from the hospital we had a family outing every day to a playground, play date, park, or errand.  Recently we’ve been dividing and conquering a bit more.  Danielle is taking Rachel for long walks around the neighborhood in the early morning while I handle Joseph’s morning routine.  I’ve had more solo excursions with just Joseph in the last week too. 

Yesterday he didn’t nap so I took him to the bank with me in the afternoon.  I had to make some account changes so we had to go and sit in the officey area where the desks are, and Joseph sat patiently in his stroller drinking water and eating snacks.  At one point he looked up and saw a man answering the phone at a desk next to us, and he announced very loudly to me, “man working!”  Then he looked around and saw another one across the aisle and said, “‘nother man!”  The he looked right at the guy I had been talking to for the previous 10 minutes and pointed at him and said, “‘nother man!”  I thought it was really funny, and even more amusing was that the guy who was helping me didn’t blink or acknowledge Joseph at all.

Little Vizzini

We can’t decide if we have an easy baby or not.  For the first week she was extremely easy, unprecedented from what we can tell.  She slept for long stretches and ate well. 

After about a week she started to wake up a lot more, with more grunting and squirming and spitting up.  We had a couple days earlier this week where she just seemed very uncomfortable and we had to hold her a lot, rock her, let her suck on our finger, move her around in different positions.  This went on for hours at a time, or more.  Danielle was up much of the night a couple times.  We had pretty much decided that the honeymoon was over, and we might have a bumpy road ahead. 

However, today she was an absolute dream.  She slept basically all day – with the exception of two feedings late morning and one mid-afternoon.  Danielle spent much of the day at home with Rachel relaxing and catching up on things around the house.

We really can’t decide who Rachel looks like.  When we first saw her we had a couple different theories, but now just 12 days later we just don’t see either one of us in her, or any immediate family members.  We both think she looks a little like Vizzini, the character played by Wallace Shawn in The Princess Bride.  But that isn’t too flattering, and she’s a lot cuter.

Joseph and I were out most the day at music class and a playground, and then after his nap doing errands and swinging by Gravelly Point to watch airplanes take off.  On the way home from Gravelly Point he was unusually needy and clingy and whimpery in a very pathetic and fragile way.  I also noticed that his eyes were watering quite a bit, though he wasn’t crying.  It was weird.  When we got home he was even worse, and then I realized that he was feeling really warm so we took his temperature and sure enough he had a fever of 100.4.

Jess stopped by with dinner and while she visited Joseph sat on the couch clinging to me and looking very much not himself.

We gave him chicken soup for dinner and a generous dose of Tylenol and I managed to coax some laughs and smiles out of him, though he was still out of sorts.  He crashed hard and hasn’t made a peep since he went down.  Last time he had something like this – months ago – he kicked it in less than a day.  I’m hopeful that happens again.

National Arboretum

I went climbing this evening for the first time since Rachel was born, which I think is a good indication that we’ve adjusted to life with the baby and we’re getting back to business as usual.  Although I guess that is easy to say when dinner keeps arriving at your door every other day and you don’t have to worry about shopping or cooking.  This past week we’ve had some nice visits and great meals dropped off by Susan, Ivy, and Sonya and Malcolm – leaving us with a full refrigerator of leftovers.

I’ve been reading and enjoying A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson, about his experience hiking the Appalachian Trail.  It is funny and interesting, but includes many depressing statistics about the thousands of species of trees, plants, birds, and other mammals that have become extinct in the last hundred years or so.  With that in mind it was nice to go to the National Arboretum this morning, which was one of the last things on my list of major destinations in the DC area that I wanted to see after leaving my job.

The Arboretum is over 400 acres of trees, shrubs, gardens, and trails, and it is just a couple miles from the Capitol.  I’ve driven by it many times but never realized how big and how nice it is.  It’d be a great place for walking or running if you had more time.  With a two year old and an infant we weren’t able to cover too much ground.

Rachel slept the entire time in a pouch that Danielle was wearing.  Joseph tore around the trails with plenty of energy.  In the background of this picture you can see some old columns that were part of the U.S. Capitol for a long time, and were moved to the Arboretum when an extension to the Capitol was built in the 1950’s.

It was a gorgeous day – high 60’s, sunny, breezy.  I was grateful to be unemployed and outside.  It was so nice I went back out with Joseph this afternoon for a long stretch at a playground.

 

happy baby

We’re enjoying a nice weekend with visits from my parents and Lisa and Marc.  Joseph is obsessed with “Uncle Marc’s pickup truck” and is getting loads of attention.  He isn’t napping much these days, which is cutting into my afternoons when I usually sit in front of the computer catching up on news and email, and blogging.

Marc got this picture of Lisa with the baby yesterday which might be the best one of her yet.