latest happenings

A few cool things have happened in the last couple of weeks, so I'll tell you about them.
1. I wrote an email to a community list serve asking if anyone would stand behind me regarding an issue I had with our local parks. The issues were: at one park, parents had to go down a very steep hill to get to the park, and then back up again to get out. It was slippery in the morning when the ground was dewey, and very difficult to do if you had a double stroller, and kids, and baggage. It was hard enough with one kid! The other issue was that the other local park had no sidewalk access to it, so a kid of walking age would have to walk in the street.
I just emailed the group to see if anyone else cared about this, before approaching the city about it. However, someone from the group forwarded my email to the city. I had city personnel emailing and calling me that afternoon. The very next day, I met with some managers from recreation and parks department. They heard my concerns, saw the ludicrious hill that I was talking about, and agreed that something needed to be done. So right now, they are doing some measurements, and looking into pre-fabricated ramps to see if they can't get some respite for poor caregivers out there who want to bring their kids to the park! Its very exciting. I hope they call it the "Veronica Greenwell cares about her community Ramp!" After they get info on cost of the ramp, then they'll present to the mayor and get a timeline for completion! It is very, very exciting!!! =)

2. This weekend I spent 10 whole hours away from Clark on both Saturday and Sunday. This was our longest separation to date. The reason was to attend a training by the organization DONA, Doulas of North America. I was trained to become a doula! A Doula is a labor support person who helps a mom and her partner through labor. I was really taking it to get more info to help the parents who take my Bradley classes, but now I want to attend births. I may have to wait a year or so, until baby Joy is big enough to not have me at her/his beck and call. But its something I am really looking forward to! I may offer my services to the parents in my current class, they will be giving birth in October.

3. Tom has been working on our garden and its beautiful. =)

4. Clark is learning a new word about every other day. This weekend, while I was gone, Tom taught him to say "spoon" and now when asked what a rooster says, he replies, "cock-a" so its an excellent start! He can follow some directions such as, "go get your shoes" and he'll bring a pair of his shoes to put on. He can "go get mommy's shoes" and he'll bring me two shoes, sometimes mine, sometimes Toms, but usually a pair. We are working on "get mommy's blue shoes" to get him to bring my sneekers. He knows that if he brings shoes, he might get to go outside. Its one way he tells us he wants to go out there. He also knows that we put bug lotion on him before going outside, so now he will bring shoes and point at the lotion indicating OUTSIDE!!!
He has been putting himself to sleep by singing and talking in his crib, its pretty cute. We have been giving him lots of balloons lately - they just happen to have them wherever we are shopping. Balloons are his favorite thing right now. So one day he played with the balloon all day long. When I put him to bed that night, I heard him exclaiming, "babooo, baboooo" (balloon, balloon). It was so cute.
He's simply a wonderful kid, he's got tons of energy which we burn off on walks, in parks, and mostly outside. I'm kind of dreading keeping him indoors this winter - but with a newborn, it will just have to be his new reality. I'm sure we'll make some outings, but not nearly as many as we have been. We'll have to limit museum visits and metro rides to reduce risk of RSV to Joy.

I'm enjoying this pregnancy and not worrying, whining or freaking out as I did last time. It is really nice. I'm looking forward to the third trimester and giving birth at one point. We just got mom's plane ticket out for January 7th and look forward to seeing her then!

The end!