Hi Folks,

It has been some time. Let’s get right into it.

Everyone is still healthy and doing well. Amelia’s vocabulary feels boundless, and every day it feels like she expresses a new thought or makes a new connection. She loves to do what we do, and go where we go.

Likes: Thomas the Tank Engine, Pete the Cat, Top Gear/The Grand Tour, “baby coffee” (steamed milk from a coffee place), walks, and playing “get you” (where one of us chases the other around the house).

Dislikes: naps, bugs, and things she thinks could be bugs. 

Especially during winter, life with a toddler feels like a choice between being bored and being uncomfortable. Boring: sitting on the couch all day. Uncomfortable: putting on all the rain gear, getting muddy, dealing with having to go to the potty away from home, etc. I’ve been trying to make a conscious effort to lean more into the uncomfortable bits, because they do usually end up being more fun. And they’re not boring. 

For us this means doing things like going for walks, even if it is raining; going biking, even if it is cold (and also raining); and going to places like museums, even if it means sometimes having an accident because we’re still figuring out potty training.

But it also means learning to be honest with myself about when I’m tired, and consciously choosing the boring thing on those days. 

Speaking of museums, as things have started to open up a bit, we’ve been making some outings to local museums. All of them have been doing timed entry which has made it possible to enjoy while also respecting the current physical distancing guidelines. Places we’ve been so far:

• The Museum of Flight. Amelia had very strong opinions on which of the airplanes were daddy airplanes, which were mommy airplanes, and which were baby airplanes.
• The Seattle Art Museum
• The Burke Museum (a natural history museum on the UW campus). Amelia learned the word “dinosaur”. 
• The Bellevue Arts Museum

If you’re in the greater Seattle area, I think the Bellevue Arts Museum is really worth visiting to see both Piotr Szyhalski’s COVID-19: Labor Camp Report (on display until July 4th) and Yellow No. 5 (until April 18th). Both are very topical. And of all the places we’ve been, BAM had the best enforcement of timed entry and physical distancing. We visited on a Saturday morning and it felt like we were the only people there.
 

As for myself, any time that has not been filled with Amelia, work, or chores, I’ve been trying to burn though my reading backlog. Most recently, I’ve read “In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action” by Vicky Osterweil, and “The Revolt of The Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium” by Martin Gurri. Although I didn’t plan my reading backlog this way, both were interesting because of the wildly different interpretations they offer of the political events over the last few years. I won’t use this space to discuss which I feel is more accurate, but I feel more enriched for having read both. 

I think that will do for now. 

I hope that you and your loved ones are all doing well. Hang in there, it looks like we’re coming up on the end. Hopefully I will see you all in person soon enough. 

Cheers,

Aleks