Now We Are Five

Now we are five. With the arrival of baby Sonoma, our family feels complete.

March 11, the morning after Sonoma’s birth. We stayed at the hospital barely 24 hours. I was eager to leave earlier, but the staff talked us into staying for a full night and day. Our friends Brooke and Caspar were awesome enough to take the boys for those 24 hours, and invited us to spend the first night after our release from the hospital at their house, too.

March 13: Sonoma at 3 days old.

March 24: Sonoma at 2 weeks old.

March 30: Dinner at Chez Panisse. We took 3 week old Sonoma with us, leaving the boys home with a babysitter, and went out for a fancy dinner to celebrate. Some months earlier Seth had asked me what I wanted for my birthday and I said “something sparkly”, so I got something sparkly: the necklace shown in the photo, with three gems to represent our three children.

March 30: Seth’s aunt Patty came to visit. She and my sister-in-law Stefie visited in March and met the new baby.

April 9: Moby and Arlo goofing around. They play really nicely together, both at home and at day care.

April 27: Our new normal.

April 12: Zoe, Arlo, and Katie were three best friends in the two year old classroom at day care. In late July Arlo graduated to the three year old classroom; Zoe and Katie will follow in early August. Arlo has had a somewhat hard time adjusting. The second week in his new classroom he didn’t want to go to school in the mornings. But his old teacher thought it would be good for him to move up before the bossy girls so he could gain some independence and maybe show them around in more of a leadership role.

April 18: We went camping at Sanborn County Park. The kids had a great time riding around in the wheel barrow. Hazel and family spent the afternoon with us but didn’t stay for the night. This was Sonoma’s first night in a tent! The boys had a fabulous time, as they always do with camping.

April 19

May 5: Rather than maternity leave, I had a maternity part-time. I started with Tesla half way through my pregnancy. A lot of the nice California laws on state-paid leave don’t apply to employees who have been with their employers for less than 12 month. Rather than negotiating a full leave, I negotiated flexible part-time. Tesla paid me a set reduced salary and I worked as much or as little as I chose. In practice that meant about 17 hours in the week when Sonoma was 6 weeks old, and around 30 hours by the time she was four months old and a standard California maternity leave would be ending. The work was a mix of working from home (as in this photo of a morning WebEx and phone call), going to work in the afternoons while Sonoma stayed with a part-time nanny, and attending morning meetings with Sonoma.

May 9: Social smiling at 2 months old!

May 10: The three kids with their grandpa Jozef, and his wife Laura. Jozef and Laura flew in from Texas to visit us for a day, take a road trip, and spend a day or two with Laura’s family in Los Angeles.

May 19: Arlo is… guess how old?

May 21: The three kids are really pretty sweet together. The boys are wonderful brothers to their sister.

May 25: We’ve only been to Bear Valley twice since Sonoma was born. Here’s Seth reading to Moby, Nick, and Max on the first of those two weekends.

June 6-7: Our second Bear Valley visit of the year was with Greg & Amy and their kids, and Heidi & Noah and their kids. Among other things, we played in Bear Valley Lake. Greg bought an inexpensive canoe that we keep up there. (Photos by Heidi Guetschow)

June 21: We drove to Eureka for Dick and Kathy’s 25th wedding anniversary party. We had a few extra stops due to Sonoma, making what could have been a 6 hour drive closer to 10 hours. The boys, on the other hand, are expert car travelers.

June 27: Sonoma found her feet! I remember when Moby found his foot… and about two weeks later he found his other foot. She found both at once!

June 28: Arlo has been super sweet with Sonoma. At least a couple times each day he comes up to her, makes wide-eyed big-mouthed grins at her like he’s seen us do, and in a sing-song voice repeats: “Hey Tonoma… hey Tonoma… hey Tonoma.” And Sonoma giggles and coos.

July 4: It turns out LOTS of people go to the beach on the 4th of July. The parking lot at the first state beach we went to was full so we parked maybe half a mile away along a road off the highway, only to find out that at high tide the lagoon rises high enough to cut off beach access to non-swimmers. At the second beach we tried a car happened to be pulling out of the otherwise-full parking lot and we were glad to snag a spot. The boys had a fantastic time first playing at the edge of the waves, and later after changing into dry clothes burying each other in the sand.

---

This post is duplicated on my old blog.