Happy Birthday Papoose-wa!

Yesterday was Nathanael's two-month mark, so to commemorate the occasion, we watched a movie that he wasn't at all interested in! (We also played with him.) As a sidebar, we watched The Court Jester with Danny Kaye--what a hoot! It's a 50's musical comedy and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

But back to Nathanael. We had such a fun time laughing with him yesterday. He lights up our home. Here are a few sweet smiles I was able to capture.
Here is the lastest upload from my camera. It includes quite a range of photos, from me riding a bike at the science center to a cherry picker truck painted giraffe-style. Of course there are also pictures of Nathanael not a few! (I have now posted the links to pictures on the side bar at the top of the blog. They are separated by subject instead of date.)
Lastly, to explain the title of my post, ever since Nathanael was born I have been giving him nicknames. Not the suggested Nate-dogg and Nathan, but more unusual names such as Bubsie and Papoose-wa. I call him Nathanael too of course, but for a few weeks whatever quasi-random combination of syllables came out of my mouth was his name. (Now my favorites have solidified and I'm out of the highly productive stage.)

At first I felt a little guilty about this, we spent all this energy finding the perfect name to give our son, and then I don't even use it! But now I realize that is just one part of being a mom: I get to let my personality dictate the fun parts of life a bit. And the fact that I call him by nicknames about 70% of the time doesn't mean I don't love him. Quite the opposite in fact. I love to be called by endearing nicknames and so I call Nathanael silly names to show him my affection.

Well I started this post on Thursday, but now it is early in the wee hours of Friday. Little Bubsie is finally asleep after an unusually vigorous crying spell, so it's time that mom went to bed!

Seattle

Well, we find ourselves in the buzzing metropolis of Seattle for the summer and we have already had several adventures! The first of which was the day we arrived--we found our building using our excellent navigation skills and then realized that we didn't have a key or even know where to pick one up! It also happened to be a Saturday late in the afternoon, so there weren't a lot of people hanging out in offices, waiting to assist us.

Fortunately, Michael is brilliant and found us a house key. It was only then that we realized that our seemingly excellent navigation skills were not-so-excellent: I had been waiting for him for over an hour in the lobby of the wrong building!

Since then, we have been much more successful at navigation and have found our way to church, the grocery store, a friends' house, and the Pacific Science Center, which we visited last Saturday. We have also visited the Seattle Public Library and the Pike Place Market. As we have walked around the city we have enjoyed the various pigs hanging out on the street corners. Here are two of my favorites













I have also recently been playing around with Picasa and created a web album of Nathanael's first pictures, through his 7-week birthday. Enjoy!