Snow in Houston!

This is Mark writing. Perhaps it made the national news that we got SNOW IN TEXAS! It seems to happen about once every five years. We got a little dusting around our first Christmas here in 2004. This time, we got some more, and it even lasted through the night. It's melted by now, but we sure had fun with Ben. He took a really long nap, so we just had a few minutes in the snow before it got dark. We've been reading Ezra Jack Keats' Snowy Day - a fun kids book - so Ben already had some idea of what to do. We made snow angels, then built a snowman. He was pretty scrawny, but it was fun. I actually had to have Katherine school me on how to get a big snowball started.

At one point in the evening, the snowman fell over. Ben commented that he was taking a nap and perhaps he'd like a biddy (pacifier). This morning, he immediately wanted to go see the snowman so I carried him out there in his pajamas to say hello. It appeared a dog had peed on the snowman's head - some lovely yellow streaks. Katherine moved him back to his waking position and he's actually not melted yet. Fun stuff!





This is about as much as we ever get here.




Snow angels with mommy


The blind leading the blind


Isn't he handsome?




You can't play in the snow without some hot cocoa afterward.

IT'S EMPTY!!!

Yup, that's it! The very last box in our storage locker. And now, it has made its way to our house where it will be unpacked shortly. Can you believe it's taken fourteen months to fully recover from Hurricane Ike. Incidentally, 2009 was the slowest hurricane season in memory. There were only nine named storms, and I don't think any of them threatened the gulf coast or Florida. We still have 9 days left in the official hurricane season though.

When we told the folks at the desk we were done with the locker, they mentioned a lot of people have been emptying out recently and asked if our usage was from Ike damage. So I guess 14 months is about what it takes.

Does anyone need any moving boxes?

Chef Benjamin

Hi friends. This is Mark writing. I've been meaning to write for a while about all of Ben's culinary endeavors. Man, this boy really loves to be in the kitchen! We still make "cheesy eggs" almost every morning. He can rattle off all the ingredients we'll need anytime you ask. On the weekends he wants to make waffles. "How about frozen waffles Ben?" "No, I want to MAKE waffles!" He and Katherine make muffins most weekends too. This is great because they make pretty healthy ones with things like oatmeal and zucchini and not too much sugar. And these make great snacks throughout the week. He and I usually whip up something on Monday afternoons to take to our bible study. Often it's just break-and-bake cookies but he has fun still. We recently had a great time as a family assembling potstickers. That's something I didn't imagine three years ago. I really like this about Ben, and it truly is a blast to see him having so much fun. But sometimes it tries my patience, especially when I'm trying to make something unfamiliar or delicate. For example, I was trying to make empanadas a few weeks ago. If you've never done that, it involves puff pastry which is really awesome stuff, but has to be handled gingerly. That was a bad idea to have a 2 year old involved. So here's some pictures of us in the kitchen, and a few bonus ones. Enjoy!

Ben and Katherine making muffins. You can tell he's very proud of his work:




Transferring some lettuce:


Helping at the stove (okay, mostly just watching):




Oopsy


Contemplating jack-o-lantern design


The finished piece:

Pat is a ...

GIRL!!!!!!!!!!

Can you believe it??!!! We are absolutely giddy with excitement. It also seems much more real that we're really going to have another baby. I (Mark) have found it hard to get too attached when it's just a little human, rather than a little boy or girl. WOOHOO!!!!

Patricia or Patrick?

Wednesday, if he/she cooperates, we could find out Pat's gender.

While we are hoping for a girl, the Griffith clan reproductive history indicates Pat will be a boy. And, no, I don't have a "motherly instinct" regarding gender. And if I did, I'd probably be wrong. I was SURE Ben was a girl until we found out otherwise.

Any guesses out there?

"It's Cold! It's Cold!"

Mark here. When we went outside this morning about 8:30am, Benjamin most accurately expressed how we all felt. He ran around in circles, yelling over and over, "It's cold! It's cold! It's cold!" Katherine and I were a little more reserved, limiting our displays to a few deep breaths of the cold air and a sigh of pleasure.

It's that most wonderful day in Houston, when your first breath of outside air tells you that fall is probably here to stay. It's the first time the air bites your lungs just the tiniest bit on its way in. That little bite reminds us that we've got 6 months of gorgeous weather ahead. It's been an uncommonly hot summer, and unusually long. June is normally hot, but tolerable. Then the pain really gets going in July and August. September and October are when the length of the summer beats Houstonians into submission. This year, June was crazy, crazy hot. So you can understand why today's cool morning was very, very welcome, even more so than in the past.

3 Month Profile

I think this picture was actually taken around week 14.5, but it's pretty close to the 3-month mark. Definitely think I'm bigger at 3 months this time around, and this afternoon a neighbor asked me if I was expecting based on the size of my belly --- it's the first time someone has asked based on how I look.

More updates coming soon (hopefully!)...

Meet Pat

First --- thank you to everyone for the kind words and congratulations via blog posts, emails and phone calls. I'm so sorry to not have responded (yet) to a single one. As was with Ben, the first trimester was not an easy one --- and to add on top of nauseousness and fatigue, trying to keep up with a two year old, and an extremely busy time at work ... well, anything "extra" had to sit by the wayside.

BUT... I am now on the brink of the second trimester (already?!), and hope is in sight. While things at work will likely pick up again to a frantic pace in the next couple of weeks, it seems less daunting now, particularly because I don't feel like I'm constantly going to throw up. And while being full time is hard in many ways (more on that later), it is easier to get my job done (as it was never really fitting for part-time).

My energy is getting stronger every day (as in right now, Ben is napping, and I only used half of his nap time for a nap myself!). So I look forward to re-emerging in the world socially and catching up with all of you who I have been so out of touch with. Thanks for your patience.

So let me tell you about Pat. Where to begin? Perhaps the name? Mark and I are fond of prenatal names. We think it's more fun to assign a name than to just keep referring to the baby as, well, "the baby." Benjamin was Ziggy for the first 40 weeks of his existence. Pulled from "zygote", which apparently is only a state that lasts a short while.

This time, we couldn't come up with anything related to embryo or fetus, or anything like that. And we wanted to name it something gender-neutral. So, for anyone who ever watched Saturday Night Live --- yes, that is where we got the name Pat. No, I don't hope this child turns out to look or be anything the Pat from SNL. And I think even calling it Pat grossed out Mark a bit at first. But it's stuck. So for the last couple of months, this baby has been known as Pat.

We took a one month profile, and I had every intention of blogging a monthly pregnancy update, as we did with Benjamin. But, as should be expected with the second child, things just didn't go as planned. And now I'm almost complete with the first trimester, and this is the first mention Pat gets --- beyond a pregnancy test picture and due date announcement. I am a second child myself, and don't think of myself as scarred for the lack of entries in my baby book, or the smaller quantities of pictures of my babyhood... So I imagine Pat will fare okay as well.

Pat's actual due date is April 1. I think he/she is going to have a sense of humor. We're both hoping that Pat is NOT actually born on the due date (if you remember, Benjamin was a due date birth), as I can imagine years of:
"It's my birthday."
"Ha ha, not it's not, April fools!"

I understand second babies are often born early, so we may actually have a March baby instead. Which would be fun, because we'd be celebrating a birthday every month in our immediate family for four months (my birthday is in April, Mark's is in May, and Ben's is in June." My father's birthday is also late March, so it could be fun for them to share a birthday as well. I can already see the cake "HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAT (and Grandpa)". :)

We've picked a new doctor and hospital for this pregnancy, although, truthfully, I was pretty happy with Ben's birth. But my old doctor switched practices, so that part was already going to be a bit new, and I did not like a few of the hospital's policies --- which weren't a big deal for Ben's birth because everything went pretty smoothly. So we switched to a doctor our Doula recommended, who is very natural childbirth friendly, and to a new hospital --- which has more mother-friendly policies in place. It's a teaching hospital, so that's my only reservation --- particularly in regards to an epidural (if I decide/need to get one), but I can always request the attendee if I'm uncomfortable with a young squirt sticking a big needle in my spine. :)

So below is a one-month pregnancy profile, as well as our first picture of Pat. At my first doctors appointment, they did a "growth" ultrasound to determine the due date (right in line with my prediction), and I am happy to report that this was an EXTERNAL ultrasound! Not sure if it was because I was a bit further along this time (we couldn't make up our mind about what doctor to go with, so I didn't actually have my first appointment until 10 weeks), but I certainly wasn't complaining!

No second month profile. Sorry, Pat. This is just the beginning of all the things we'll have done with/for Ben that you may miss as the second-born. But you'll get a few years of us to yourselves when Ben is in college. :)

Thanks again for all the congratulations, and for your patience with my responses. We are thrilled about this pregnancy, and also trying to enjoy the relative peacefulness and fun we're having with our "only" child during this fun time in his development too. Before things get crazy again.

I hope to get Mark to take my three-month profile this afternoon, so look for a post of that very soon!

One month pregnant (really just a reference point for the future):



Let's see how Ben grows (up), while I grow (out)!



Pat's first picture:

One Year

Today (9/11) marks a very important day to many people for many reasons. But for us, today marks the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Ike. One year ago today, I wrote this post:

http://kagg.blogspot.com/2008/09/ike.html

I'm so glad we're in this year and not repeating last year!

(and no, we did not achieve our goal of having all our boxes unpacked today, but I think based on our last entry, we have a pretty good excuse. :) )

April 2010

Guatemala

Hi friends. This is Mark writing. I just returned from Guatemala last weekend and thought I'd share a little about the experience. I went with a group of people from our church here in Houston, under the auspices of the global mission organization Living Water International. If you've never heard of them, it's definitely worth some time checking out their website, www.water.cc. In short, they install water wells all over the world for people who don't have access to clean water. They are a Christian organization and their motto sums up their mission well: "Providing a cup of water in Jesus' name." I know many reading this blog are not Christians, and I sincerely thank you for indulging me in sharing a few thoughts related to my faith.

Why did I want to participate in something like this? Truth is, I've wanted to for a number of years now, but there's never been an opportunity when a mission trip has been organized at the same time as me being off from work. So when this lined up with the orchestra's break, it was an easy decision. To answer the above question, I hoped to experience being part of God's work in a focused manner, away from all the demands of regular life. I often find myself ruled by the to-do list, unable to see past whatever needs attention at the moment. This makes it difficult to discern what God might want to teach me, or how I could grow in faith, or other spiritual things. I hoped that stepping away from everything and participating in this trip might be like taking off a pair of dirty glasses, enabling me to see clearly even if just for those 8 days, but hopefully longer.

Here's a recap of all that went down. We flew down on a Friday morning and arrived in the city of Antigua by about 2pm. Antigua is where the local drilling expert lives and where they base all the operations in Guatemala. His house is set up to accommodate 12 people visiting on trips like this. It's a nice little city (used to be the capitol), nestled up in the mountains so the weather was absolutely gorgeous. We spent two days there doing touristy type things and getting to know each other. Although the group was all from our church, most of us did not know each other yet. On Sunday afternoon, we drove four hours down to the western coast (near a city called Champerico for you map lovers). We stayed in a motel there, which was decent by the local standards, but really a dump by U.S. standards. Let's just say shower shoes were pretty important. We were set to start work on the well on Monday morning, and there was a real tangible excitement the night before - knowing very little about this process except that we were likely to be very sore in 24 hours.

We were on the road to the site by 6:15am. The village where we were drilling was called "La Surena." When we pulled in with a van and a truck hauling a funky looking trailer (the drill rig), the kids came out and looked inquisitively but cautiously. This was actually very rewarding, in that by the end of the process, they were running out to greet us when we arrived in the morning. We had been warned that the next few days would be hard work, but it was even more difficult than I expected. That first day we hauled dozens of 20lb pipes, a few 50 pounders, mixed hundreds of gallons of mud, hauled 50lb bags of mud mix, used shovels to move a very large mound of sand when the first hole failed, and moved a VERY heavy drill rig by hand, in mud, to the new hole location. Conditions were rough - heat and humidity about like Houston's and mud absolutely everywhere. After being splashed in the face and mouth with muddy water, we joked about how all the diarrhea bugs were excited to get to work. We were very fortunate to have shade at the site for at least half the day.

I'll write another post about the specifics of the drilling process, so I'll skip those details here. We spent the next two days drilling and developing the well so that the water was clean and flowed freely. Each day was a whole lot of hard work, but was extremely rewarding. It was very encouraging that our second hole seemed to be a good one and by the end of the third day we were treated to a wonderful sight. By this point we were using compressed air to flush out the well and get things flowing. We could see tons of water coming out the end of the attached tube at 100 gallons/minute, clear as can be. Our leader even drank some at that point. This was a very special moment for me - all that hard work coming to fruition, knowing what that water was going to mean for the people in the village, and feeling that I'd contributed to the Bible's instruction to meet people's physical needs. I confess I shed a few tears just watching water flowing out of a pipe.

The final day in the village, we finished up the well by putting on the hand operated pump and participated in a dedication ceremony. It was a little sad to go. We'd gotten to know some of the folks there including some of the men that helped with the well, and lots of kids who had an amazing amount of energy. We rotated in and out of positions with the drilling, so during the "off-shift" we'd often play football or frisbee with the kids. There was one particular boy who tugged on the heartstrings. He was about 8 years old, but couldn't speak. Not that I could have understood his Spanish even if he could, but sad nonetheless. When trying to get someone's attention, he would do this odd sounding yell. He was my long distance frisbee partner. The other kids were content to throw the frisbee short distances, but he liked to throw across the entire yard - a good 75 feet.

That afternoon we drove four hours back to the wonderfully cool town of Antigua. We spent Friday doing tourist things, then flew back early Saturday morning. My alarm went off at 2:50am. Yikes!

Now that the trip is over, what did I learn? There's been a pretty big emotional load to sort through, but there's one thing that sticks out. It comes from this experience being somewhat of a microcosm of spiritual life in general, particularly in how our team developed and worked together. Many principles in the Bible came to life in this way, particularly unity, the individual parts working together harmoniously much like in our human bodies, and the notion of being consumed by seeking God and working tirelessly for his goals rather than our own. It would have been pretty cool just to see these concepts played out in a clear manner as we did - in a way like "practicing" the way we should live. But the thing I'll really hang on to is the immense, indescribable joy that came from living this way. I simply hope that taste of joy, which was so overwhelming and wonderful, will lead me to live like that as everyday life continues.

Here's a few photos. We haven't shared all the photos yet, so I don't have any with me in them. Hopefully soon.

A nice shot of Antigua set among the mountains.



Mixing up some mud, not too dirty yet.


Nice shot of the drill rig.


They had some nasty looking turkeys there. The locals fed us lunch each day we were there, and I was thankful to not see one of these on the table.


I really like this picture taken in Antigua.

Weekend with Grandpa

We had a fun-packed weekend with Grandpa (yes, this is post is a few days delayed).

On Saturday, we went to check out the Bellaire Pool. I had heard it was great for small children, and we were certainly not disappointed!

The biggest hit was the "big duck" slide into the pool. This section of the pool was only 2' deep.





Ben also liked the turtles painted on the floor of the pool.


Ben also had a lot of fun leaping off the edge of the deeper part of the pool into grandpa's arms. We had to work on "toes at the edge" before jumping, because he sort of just falls forward into the pool.




Swimming laps with Grandpa:




On Sunday morning, we went to the zoo. Ben was very excited about this. On the schedule, we noticed that the elephants were scheduled to receive a bath --- that's what Ben and Grandpa are watching below. He still talks about wanting to go to the zoo to see the elephants take another bath.


Ben also got to ride the carousal twice. First, he rode a panda with mommy, and then a gorilla with Grandpa.




Brushing a goat at the petting zoo. He wanted to brush each goat with each type of brush!



Every evening during Grandpa's visit, we went to the park after dinner. Ben walked/rode to the park in his push trike.





Ben was especially into the swings. He liked playing "bonk" with Grandpa and me, which is a game where you pretend to get kicked by Ben during his upswing. As you can see from Grandpa's flailing arms, it's a bit tiring.





Finally, we stopped in the library to do puzzles and read books. Ben is very particular about choosing the right puzzle, and deciding whether to do the puzzle at a table, or on the floor. And if he chooses floor, he then has to choose a particular animal to sit on to do the puzzle. The choice below was a dinosaur puzzle sitting on the cat. :)

Games with Ben and a visit with Grandpa

Mark is in Guatemala this week on a mission trip with the organization Living Water (perhaps he'll blog about this trip on his return)? So Grandpa Howard generously offered to come and help me out with Benjamin for a few days! The pictures below are from his visit so far --- and he's only been here a couple of days. (btw, yes I am blogging this at 6 AM --- I woke up unable to sleep any more --- I'm sure by the time everyone else wakes up, I'll be tired again) :)

GAMES

A popular game in our house is "Night, night (insert name)." What I love about this game, is that it is different for every person. These are games invented with/by Benjamin.

The first game is "Night, night little baby." I don't have pictures of this one, but it consists of tucking Benjamin under the covers in our bed, saying "night, night little baby." His response is "Goo Gaa."

The next game invented is "Night, night daddy." This game is anything but restful. It involves Mark lying on his back in the middle of our bed. Ben stands up on Mark's belly or rib cage, and then leaps off and lands on his butt on the bed besides Mark. Sometimes he leaps straight up and lands back on Mark. Ben LOVES this game, but it makes me nervous that he is going to get hurt (although, realistically, it's more often Mark that gets hurt), so I often have to leave when they play this game, or I sit there gasping. :)

Benjamin originally tried to request "Night, night Mommy" to get me to play the game above, but I've insisted that this is a Daddy-only game. So, instead, he gave a new name and a new twist to a game we already play...

Ben's always enjoyed being surprised, so one of the games we often play is where I hide, Ben tries to find me, and as he approaches, I jump out and shout "Boo." Yes, I know, not a typical game for a two-year old, but this one's a daredevil.

So Night, night mommy is this game. But now, he likes to tell me where to hide. He then leaves me in my hiding spot, goes to our room, climbs on the bed, then comes back to find me. Once I shout "boo," I ask him where I am supposed to hide next, and follow him to my next location.

The newest game is "Night, night Grandpa." This involves Grandpa pretending to take a nap on the couch, with Benjamin "sneaking up" (which in reality, is just walking up) to Grandpa and shouting "boo", to which Grandpa shrieks. We've learned that Ben does NOT like Grandpa to be the one to shout boo. This is a one-sided only game.

And finally, another popular game in our house: Baby launch (pictured below). Here, you grab Ben by his thighs, he straightens his body, and you "launch" him into the middle of the bed.

And finally, a few more recent pictures:

Grandpa doing puzzles with Ben:

Ben in his new "Blue Elephant" T-shirt from Aunt Sarah (we love it, thank you Sarah!). He's eating a prune in this picture --- he's a little backed up... :)

Up next: pictures from our trip to the pool yesterday.

Okay, time to try to catch a few more minutes of sleep before monkey-boy wakes up...