Slug Juice

Well, it's my turn to update the blog, and I've been a slow panda, so here we are a month later.

First off, we moved into our new place in North Bellingham area. It's weird living this close to the mall and the major shopping section of town, but convenient when a late night run for kitty-litter or extra cream cheese is in order. The condo's still kind of a disaster, since we spent the first ten days not even living in it (I'll get to that momentarily), but we're slowly unpacking boxes and figuring out what stuff we actually want/need. It's been amusing to have our three cats all back under one roof again. Rei is still our little oddball and instigator of much kitty wrestling on the stairs.

Now, the reason we didn't live in our new place for 10 whole days was because we were house-sitting/nannying for the Userys in the Ferndale 3rd ward. They have two boys, 10 and 12 years old, as well as an older daughter, who is 18. Normally I think their daughter, Charly, would have been able to handle things, but she's in high school and the two boys have varying school schedules, soccer practices and games, etc. so it was not feasible for her to watch them the whole time. It meant Lyzz and I were up far earlier in the mornings than we've been for quite some time (7am as opposed to our usual 8-8:30 am). Dexter, the 10 year-old, and Josh, the 12 year-old, were easy to handle and basically did all the chores, homework, and other things they needed to without coercion. The whole experience was really kind of a look into the future for us, and I think it overwhelmed us both a little to be taking on such a hectic schedule all of a sudden, as opposed to it just happening organically as our little guy grows up.

Along the lines of our little guy, Mal is continuing to be healthy and normal thus far. Lyzz is getting more and more pregnant looking (finally), but without the lower back destroying pregnancy waddle. We had to take a 5 week long class about birth and parenting that the Tech College runs. It was basically an evening where we picked up flyers and informational pamphlets, and then saw a few short videos about car seats, breastfeeding, medical procedures (like epidurals, joy!), and ways to calm a baby (loudly "Shush"-ing in their ear is apparently extremely effective though unsettling to witness). I suspect one of the highlights of the class for both of us was another couple's Bernese Mt. Dog who waited in the car during class but ran around with us afterward. We're totally getting one of those somewhere down the road.

As Mal's due date draws near, I'm getting more and more excited about the whole "daddy" thing, though randomly have moments of "Who said this was okay?!?". Mostly I'm looking forward to the adventure of raising a little person. The part that's freaked out is me wondering how I can screw things up. Part of what's really making Mal's arrival "real" is the collection of stuff in his bedroom upstairs. We painted it a nice light green color, officially called "Christopher Robin's Swing", and now have a crib, changing table, millions of baby wipes, a pile of diapers, and more clothes for the kid than Lyzz and I own combined. It'll be a neat baby room. Apparently, boy baby stuff is officially jungle themed this year, so we have a lot of lions, monkeys, giraffes, frogs, etc. on clothes and other things. My favorite Mal-thing is the hoodie towel with a little monster face on the hood.

Lyzz continues to find ways to keep busy, and look beautiful, while I drive around three counties selling cable and internet services. She's been reorganizing our things, working on a photo album, finding last minute baby things, chasing the cats around the house, drawing, etc. Oh! I may have gotten Lyzz a paying job designing a logo for a company called Puppy Stairs. I knocked on a customer's door on Camano Island and ended up talking about Lyzz's artwork and such with the lady. She showed me her pamphlets and info pages for her business, which sells to customers all across the USA, and said they might be looking to redesign their logos and such. She liked a few pictures I had downloaded to my work phone, so she told me to have Lyzz email her. SWEETNESS!

Yesterday evening we spent the night with my family at WWU's Ryan Stiles show for Family Week, which is when the parents of students come visit and do cool things around campus with their kids. The place was packed, so when Lyzz raised her hand to volunteer for one game we didn't really think much would happen, but sure enough she got called up to do "Moving People" on stage. The game somehow involved racing mutant slugs and ended with one guy getting attacked by his giant slug while the other smeared speedster slug juice all over his face. Yeah....

Counting down in 8.....

So the count down has officially begun, and I am freaking out about it. However, since I know that babies never arrive on time, I've decided to count down til I'm officially full term, November 13th. Which is in 8 weeks exactly. And the things going through my mind right now are, "Who the hell deicided it was okay for Sam and I to have a kid??", "YAY MAL'S ALMOST HERE!", "Oh man I cannot WAIT until I don't have a little person kicking me all the time,", etc. The thoughts and emotions are very random and different. Fears of every kind are swimming through my head and it's really hard to keep them all under control. Will he like me? Will I be a good mother? Again, who let Sam and I have a KID?! But things are definitely looking up.

Sam's job is going well, and we just signed lease stuff for the condo we're moving into on Oct. 4th. Happy birthday Sam! You get a new apartment! Yay! Lol. The current tennant is moving out on the 30th, and then we'll spend the 1st and 2nd doing the walk-through and painting the baby and master bedroom, and then finally we'll move in on Monday the 4th!

We are really lucky to have such great parents/inlaws to let us stay in their house for the entire summer. Mary and Kim are great. And I have to admit, although I loathed coming here, I think it's been a really good experience for all of us. I've finally been able to learn how they work, how such and odd family can possible work without really much communication. They're a fantastic family, and what I've learned is this; they communicate usually only when it's really necessary. This tactic is something my family has never heard of. We are always up in each others business and trying to know whats going on with everyone. While some of us have tried to escape this very annoying family trait we have, most of us are still stuck there. For me, living here with Mary and Kim and seeing how their family works close up has really helped me realize how unspoken communication is just as important as when it's spoken. They're not a very talky bunch, unless you get Kim started on something he's really interested in, but other than that they're really mellow.

Although I really think Mal has helped a lot with bridging gaps between me and Sam's parents. The excitement and terror of being first time parents has really helped us reach a little bit more to Mary and Kim in their advice, and Mary is SO EXCITED to have a grandchild. She's not an extroverted person, at least not around family, but the little things we've done together for Mal has really opened my eyes to what a wonderful woman my mother in law is. I've even learned a little cooking! Kim is still hard to read, but I get the feeling that when Mal is actually here, he'll show a little more excitement. Mal is going to have absolutely wonderful Grandparents.

On a sillier note, Yume looks like an Albino Ewok right now. She has a sore the size of a quarter on the back of her head from a food allergy. Switching the food to one that has no corn has helped alot and it's starting to heal, but she keeps scratching the scabs off and then they bleed and then it's just a vicious cycle. So to help the healing along, I made a hood for her out of one of my socks to keep her from scratching so much at it. It seems to be working. I'll be glad when she's all better. I don't enjoy making my cat.... Oh no wait, yes I do. When Sam gave me the idea to use a sock as the hood last night at like 1:30am, we could not stop laughing when we actually put it on her. We were tired, yes, but Yume was so not happy about the entire situation it was just too funny. And Miyuki seems to be mocking Yume ever time they passed each other. Oh kitties, I love you.

So Mal is growing strong, we start the birthing and parenting classes on Monday, we have our condo to move into in October, and living here at the Hancock's has been a real blessing all around. Life is good, and I'm excited for the adventures that await us.

Finished Quilt

So it's been a while since we last posted anything. Sam's job is going okay. He's still looking for something a little more stable. We hope for the best! Other than that, I've had some abdominal pains from Malcolm, got our little Rei home for a week before we needed to find another place for her to stay until October, and the most exciting news of all...

I FINISHED MALCOLM'S QUILT! First one I've ever made! ^_^ My mother-in-law, Mary, helped a lot. She's much more experienced in quilt making than I am.


The best part is, there's a bumper to match! ^_^ Making Mal's first crib set is loads of fun. I can't wait till he gets here! He'll have a nice warm blanket to come home in. I definitely think I've found a new love. Making quilts is loads of fun. Especially baby blankets. I may have to do that for Christmas presents for the boys/girls this year. Blankets for all!

Oh, and we're headed to Weird Al's concert at the Lynden Fair on Tuesday! Thanks Mary!

Anatomy Ultrasound...

IT'S A BOY!!!

Malcolm Flynn Hancock. Ain't he cuuuuute? Oh yeah, this kids gonna be the cutest guy ever. I mean with parents like Sam and I, how could he be anything but?

We found out today at about 10:30am. And within the first 5 seconds of the ultrasound we see BABY JUNK! Very much a boy. He was kicking and flailing his legs around. Lemme tell ya, that kid likes to move his feet! He was sucking on his left arm and had his right arm up around his neck, just relaxing.

As soon as Sam saw exactly what the baby was, he looked at me and said, "Malcolm" and got the biggest smile on his face I've ever seen. I think that actually knowing what the baby is and having a name for them already makes it a little more real for Sam.

The ultrasound took about and hour, and it was definitely a good way to spend an hour. I mean just look at this kid! He's absolutely handsome! His cute little nose, and you can't tell by this picture, but I think he's got Sam's chin that he had to grow into. Ha ha.

One thing we were kind of worried about was if our baby would have the proper number of limbs and fingers/toes. Since my twin brother is missing his arm just below the elbow and my newest niece has a fully functioning extra toe (both birth defects) this really what was the ultra sound was about. As much as a girl would have been a nice change of pace for me, I'm honestly relieved he's a boy. I have LOADS more experience with boys. Seeing as how I have 7 nephews ranging from 10 to 2. Sam is just giddy. He really didn't care what the baby was as long as it was healthy. But, as you can see from pictures on Facebook, he has all his limbs and, so far as we can tell, proper number of digits too!

Sam first called his mom, who was at home, and she is very excited. Although I don't think she cares what the baby is, just that she's getting her first grandchild for Christmas! Then as a vast amount of texting went out to let everyone know, we also called my dad, Grandma McNab and Brenda, and of course Grammy. Oh Grammy. I love that woman. Here's the trick about Grammy, when you meet Sam you can tell right off the bat he's no ordinary guy and you may wonder why. Then you meet Kim, his dad, and then you say, well that makes sense. But where does Kim get his quirks? ...And then you meet Grammy, and everything makes sense. For example. Byron Ford has flirted with three generations of Hancock women... Grammy started it.

Today was just a really good day. We went to Sandwich Odyssey, which has the most amazing roast beef with au jus. Then we came home and washed our cars. And I accidentally sprayed myself in the butt when I dropped the hose. THAT WAS REALLY COLD! But felt really good too. So Mighty Mouse, the Blue Beetle, and the green van are all nice and clean!

We'll finish the day off with dinner with the Gardiners and The God's Must Be Crazy II. My media knowledge has gotten far more... strange... since meting Sam. I blame Kim. They're definitely good music/movies/operas/etc. but they're definitely on the strange side.

I really can't wait until December. I don't like being pregnant and I really want to see my son. ... That sounds weird. Ah well, I've got another few months to get used to the idea.

The bear necessities (Ba-dum *tish)

Well, I created this posting a few weeks ago when Lyzz and I went to the Woodland Park Zoo with some of her siblings and then forgot to finish since we hadn't loaded up the pictures yet. All that has been rectified.

We started our day fairly early and met up at Michelle's house in Mt. Vernon. Everyone traveled caravan style down to the zoo and we managed to not get totally lost in Seattle. Lyzz's oldest brother, Chris, his wife, Karima, and their little girl, Zaira were in town and basically the reason for the family zoo trip. Michelle and her boys, and Bonnie with her little girl rounded out the group. All the little kids running around just reminded me of what Lyzz and I get to look forward to in December. Tanner, Zaira, and Foster
Really, this post is mostly and excuse to put up a few pictures of the cool critters we saw that day.
Komodo Dragons, while neat, are hardly fire-breathers. Disappointing.
Meerkats are one of the newest additions to the Woodland Park Zoo. I hope there was one named Timon.


Here's an otter looking about as majestic as an otter is capable of looking.



The bird enclosure of course has a "feed the birds" option available. The birds are definitely not shy at this point.



Orangutans are allegedly a distant relative of mine (thanks, Dad). A joke that Lyzz enjoys perpetuating.



This is Simon the siamang. I know his name because I spent every week at the zoo watching him for several hours for a 300 level Behavioral Psychology class. He's slightly blind in one eye thanks to a cataract, and he can shriek like a demon.

The trip was a ton of fun. Afterwards, we headed to Dick's Drive-in and had some ridiculously cheap burgers (good though) and hung out for a little while with the rest of the Ashinhurst family. All in all, it was a neat trip. I've always enjoyed the zoo in the past, ever since I was a kid running around the San Francisco zoo, and now Lyzz and I are contemplating a membership. We'll see.

A new beginning, but one that is remarkably familiar

So, I'll try to keep this fairly concise since I'm due in to work tomorrow morning at 8am and it's nearly an hour drive to La Conner (yuck). I've been working at Wave cable/broadband now for a whole week, and to no one's surprise, it's almost the same thing that I was doing with Comcast for the last year and a half. I knock on doors and try to get people to add services or become new customers. It's pretty simple and not particularly exciting, though today I spent my afternoon on Blue Heron Dr. in Bow, WA looking across the bay towards Bellingham. It was beautiful. I also sold two telephones (Ka-ching! $100!), so that's always good.

Aside from work being work, life is treating us pretty well, all things considered. Although I understand how weird Lyzz feels staying at my parents' place for a while, it's kinda comforting to be back in the place I called home before I set out into the "real world" to be a "grown up" nearly a decade ago. In my near decade venturing forth into the wilds, I have come to realize that growing up pretty much sucks. Having to think about things like car insurance, medical insurance, car payments, cell phone bills, rent, gas money, power bills, grocery shopping, and all that is really not very exciting or interesting. Thank goodness for Lyzz. She keeps us both excited about life and its mysteries and adventures, while I keep us grounded when stress starts to catch up with us (or at least I hope that I manage that). Lucky for both of us, we're soon going to have a little reminder of what it means to be a kid again.

July 14th draws closer and I'm getting more and more impatient to know the gender of our bundle of joy. I honestly don't have a preference, but I do just really want to know what this new person is, that way I can decide whether to steal my little sister's old Barbies or root around in my closet and see how many old GI Joes I have left. Some people may think that getting gender neutral toys is important for teaching our child to be a balanced person or something like that (aka "wuss"), but I think that a little socially reinforced stereotypes of gender roles can be useful in showing a child how things are not. If my little girl wants the GI Joes and the BB gun, that's fine with me. And if my son wants to cook food, learn to sew, and all the other "girly" things that have been the social standard for generations then I have no problem with that. So long as it's their choice. I've spent 17+ years now doing something that I really love, Dungeons and Dragons, despite the fact that it has a less than stellar public image. We're not all basement dwelling mouth breathers who live on Cheetos and Mt. Dew (Dr. Pepper is way better), some of us are as "normal" as can be expected when the term has no real definition. I'm aware of what it's like to be seen as a little bit of an oddball, so I have no qualms about my child/children following their own interests and supporting them in their endeavors.

I'm not quite sure how I got onto the subject of my nerdiness, but I think my point has something to do with acceptance....or maybe it was about playing dinosaurs in the front yard with my kid. Whichever. I'll have fun.

Move, Oregon, and other things....

So the move went smoothly. And as with most moves, there are a few things we can't find. A box probably got mislabeled and now resides in the garage instead of being in our room. But we'll find everything when we move into our own place. Right? Well that's the hope anyways. I don't think we'd be too happy if we had to buy Sam a new pair of nice black shoes.

Living with the in-laws has been.... different. Their family works so differently than mine it's hard to get a grip on what's supposed to happen, and what exactly is going on from day to day. On days that Sam and I aren't running to Bellingham for something, I usually just sit in our room drawing, planning out paintings, facebook, updating everyone on things, or just watching TV. Maybe I'll go through Twilight Princess again, or take my chances at Super Mario Bros. Wii. Other than that, Sam's been going to work, or today he's got a job interview, and I'll have more on that later. And other than my car insurance going up by $60 just because we moved to Ferndale, life here has been pretty simple. We occasionally hear the coyotes howling, that was awesome, or the wind howls so loudly it scares me awake. Sam's used to it though since this was his room in high school. The kitties don't seem to mind it too much, although Miyuki refuses to go downstairs. She's a bit of a chicken. Yume is our more adventurous kitty, and she seems to like the extra space to find even more awkward places to sprawl out on and be a spaz. Rei is not with us at the moment. Brendan and Brian are watching her until Friday or Saturday. Mary didn't want all three cats here (and honestly she hasn't really been able to tell that there are two cats). Luckily we did find someone else to watch Rei temporarily, James Stewart. I think that's Matt Stewart's little brother, and if my memory serves me right, he just got married about a year ago? Something like that. Well he lives in Burlington and has two cats already, but he and his wife have graciously agreed to keep Rei until the end of July. Which is nice. That gives us time to save money and either find a new place to live, or find another temporary home for Rei. And no, we are not getting rid of her. That would break Sam's heart. She's very much Sam's little kitty.

So Oregon. The Hancock's (plus Amy's boyfriend Enoch) went on a trip Memorial Day Weekend to Pacific City, Oregon. It's pretty much an annual event now. Not the place so much as meeting up with the Nielsen's. Richard and Kaylene are long time friends of Mary and Kim from way back in California, and their kids are around the same age of the Hancocks, their kids range from 23-17. And they've been friends forever. Enoch and I were kind of in the same boat. We both had no idea what to expect. While he's never met them, I had never been around them for more than a few hours. But things turned out really fun and really cool. Definitely exhausting, but really fun. And I don't think we were too Caucasian for Enoch. Ha ha. And yes he was worried about that. There was this huge sandy hill (Haystack) blocking our total view of the ocean, but that's okay, we could still see the Gray Whale that was chilling out around Haystack for the first 3 days. That was amazing. Sadly we didn't get any good pictures of it. But it was amazing. we would see his spout, and then his little dorsal fin, and then sometimes his tail. My theory is that the rocks at the bottom of the cove are smooth, so whales come and like to rub their bellies on them. Orcas do it in the Sound and in the Islands. It really cool. So we hiked down to the beach and saw all the HUGE sea anemones that when they were closed and out of the water looked like giant boogers. Gross.


We also got some really good landscape shots too from the beach


From the top of Haystack




And from the deck of the rental house


Again, sadly we didn't get any good pictures of the Gray Whale. But it was definitely a great Family Vacation.

Back to Sam's job interview today. We finally got a hold of the motel owners, and they already filled the position, but neglected to call us. Jerks. We still haven't heard back from the government internship, which we probably wont for another month or so, but we did get a call from Sam's co-"manager" Chris Tull about a job opportunity that he thought Sam would be interested in. It's still selling Cable services, but it's for another cable company called Wave. They work in more rural areas than Comcast does, and the perks of this job sound really good. $1300/mo salary + commission, after a year you ear paid time off, medical and dental benefits, and all he has to do is sell. No more of this managing garbage that doesn't ever pan out, although with this company I bet being a manager wouldn't be so bad. Oh, and Sam gets paid on the sale and the install because he'll be able to do it himself. He'll use their trucks and equipment, so we might be able to go back down to one car instead of two. Yay for lowering bills! And since Sam has been doing the whole selling cable stuff for the past year and a half, and doing it well, we're thinking he's definitely got this one in the bag. Yay for w-2 jobs with reliable income that I can budget! Finally!

On the baby side of things, we have another visit with Dr. Mora on the 10th, probably to discuss my blood tests and such. Make sure I'm still healthy for the baby. And in july sometime will be the gender ultra sound! I'm really not patient enough to wait until the baby comes to find out the gender, because then we get all the ambiguous gender gifts and that's just annoying. Sam doesn't show it much, but I can tell he's getting giddier and giddier every day. And the look on his face when we go in for ultrasounds is so great. He's really excited to be a dad. And while I'm kind of excited, I think I'm still at the point of, "Really? What the hell am I doing?!" I'm sure that feeling wont ever completely go away, and honestly I don't think it should. I think all parents should never be to over confident about parenting, because ever kid is different and you can't treat them all the same. And every one of them is going to throw a wrench into your little I'm-A-Great-Parent Plan. So Sam and I have decided to at least never let a small part of the "what are we doing?!" get to far away from us. Because as my sister Michelle says, "That feeling never goes away, Tanner is 10, and I still feel that way."

All in all it's been a pretty good few weeks. Lets just hope this streak continues.