you can click on each image for a brief description.

1. uhaul trailer. check.
2. oil change. check.
3. new battery and a positive terminal cable. check.
4. clutch adjustment. check.
5. fix broken emergency brake. check.
6. fill dangerously low rear axle gearbox with gear oil. check.

it's not as quite as far a drive as our last trip. but it's still pretty far for a '65 ford galaxie 500.

but really, what could possibly go wrong?

could this be related to our next Really Big Adventure? maybe :-)

we'll be off the grid for a few days, so wish us luck for safe travels!

and, of course, kris and odin will be traveling safely in the tdi.

oh, and the fluid on the ground is from a leaky oil pan plug. been meaning to fix that for awhile...

sure, npr might be reporting that nasal irrigation is making a comeback ( was it ever previously popular in The West? ) as a cold and allergy remedy; but still, the thought of shoving a neti pot up my nose and flushing my sinuses with warm salt water seemed a bit odd and new agey.

but i was willing to try anything after years of suffering from allergic rhinitis, where springtime inevitably heralds the onset of rivers of "thick and purulent secretions", sinuses the size of texas, allergic shiners and eustachian tube dysfunction. and if this little pot and some salt water could help me kick my seasonal addiction to intranasal decongestants, well, all the better then.

while i fully prepared for an unpleasant experience, it's really not that bad. quite pleasing actually, or at least as pleasing as pouring warm salt water up your nose can be. and! it! works! at least for a short time. maybe i'm an outlier and my IgE mediated allergy response system is a perfectly perfect storm, but the relief only lasts for an hour or two. which makes me wonder: a. is it socially acceptable to walk around in public with a neti pot? and b. is there an upper limit to how much saline you can safely flush through your sinuses?

and apparently i'm not alone. ucsd researchers concluded that "...nasal irrigation is effective in improving symptoms and the health status of patients with sinonasal disease.." and the fine folks at the university of wisconsin school of medicine concluded that "...resulted in improvement in the symptoms of chronic sinusitis in over 70% of subjects..". still not convinced? other research has shown that "participants with chronic sinonasal symptoms reported improved [quality of life] and frequent, satisfying use of [ hypertonic saline nasal irrigation ]." but i must admit, i don't think i've been able to replicate the spiritual and meditative benefits reported by a study performed on yoga students.

there was a day, not so long ago, when getting shoes on odin was - at least according to him - a traumatic and tortuous event.

but now it's all about the shoes.

and when he's not greeting us in the morning at his bedroom door with his shoes in hand ( after he wakes up and grabs his shoes, he stands at his door, knocking, while saying "knock. knock" ), he's spending great amounts of time and energy trying to put on our shoes and run around the house.

someday he might be needlessly embarrassed to know he enjoyed wearing his mother's shoes, but for now he's just pleased as punch to show me just how quickly he can get up and down the stairs (!) with them on.

"this crowd has gone deadly silent, a cinderella story outta nowhere."

i figure since tiger woods was already a recognized child prodigy by the age of 3 that we had better get odin familiarized with the game of golf sooner rather than later so that if he has natural talent we could always say that we saw his innate ability well before then.

or maybe we just thought that the process of stacking a golf ball on a tee and whacking away with a golf club were fun ways to help develop his eye-hand coordination.

he was remarkably adept at putting the ball on the tee and - this will not come as a surprise to anyone who has seen me play the game - he can already hit the ball farther than his father.

odin and his mamma were drawing on the sidewalk and wanted to show me their creations; he walked over to the the classic five pointed star and said "staarrrrr".

"yes, that's right odin! it's a star! congratulations!"

pleased with his accomplishment he then walked over to a somewhat abstract drawing of a sun and said "staaarrrr?"

"well, yes, that is the sun which is a special kind of star."

we both paused wondering how much more detail he wanted; after taking the briefest of moments to absorb this fact, he excitedly pointed to the sky and exclaimed "light! light!"

odin, standing on the sidewalk, watching the big, yellow bus, listening to the chatter of the children in between the claps of thunder, feeling the patter of the spring rain on his hands and face.

and with impeccable timing off in the distance he can just make out the siren of a firetruck ( when he hears something he recognizes but can't see, he often will cup his hand to his ear and say "hear. hear." ) just like he has on his new boots that are perfect for stomping in mud puddles ( he picked out the boots himself by pointing to them, exclaiming - "fyrtruck! whoooowhoooowhooowhooo" ).

i wasn't sure how much patience odin would have for finger painting ( for the most part he doesn't like stuff that sticks to his fingers and hands ) but we thought we'd give it a try today and, surprisingly, he took right to it and immediately began gingerly dabbing his fingers in the paint as he said the color's name ( "reeeeddd", "booo", "geeeeen", "puple", "ornge" ) and then brushed his fingers deliberately on the paper.

if you look closely and for long enough you will clearly see blue water and a green, grassy shore with hills and a "sailor's delight" sunset. or is that a "sailor's take warning" sunrise.

i asked him to clarify his artistic intent, but he refused saying that he liked to have each viewer come to his or her own conclusion.

odin has graduated from his old preemie play group to a new one that's much more structured around "exploring sensory input through play" as a mechanism to help prevent sensory integration dysfunction. while we have been working on his purported proprioception issues, we don't have any strong indication that he has any problems integrating his sensory information other than maybe the The Vision ( Motor ) Thing, which may or may not be "real".

but it certainly can't hurt to be a little proactive since odin is at a higher risk for the dysfunction and each week we'll be working on a specific sense. and while the "special" senses ( sight, hearing, taste and smell ) are usually what come to mind first, it's important for us to work on the "near body" senses - proprioception and equilibrioception which is sensed through the vestibular system; the vestibular system is of particular importance because it provides odin with input about his movement and orientation in space, but it's also involved in visual system development, auditory system functioning, muscle tone, posture, attention, learning and memory. and unfortunately this very basic and important system is quite vulnerable to insult from extremely prematurity.

while proprioception exercises focus primarily on walking on uneven terrain and up and down steep inclines ( preferably with weights ), vestibular activities include swinging, rocking, bouncing/jumping, dancing, skipping, running, hopping, jumping rope and rough and tumble play.

swinging is a particlarly effective exercise, so we thought we'd put him in the big kid swing for the first time today, to test his sense of balance while swinging without the aid of the toddler seat. supposedly, even the innocuous looking swing can cause changes in brain chemistry that last 12-14 hours after only 15 minutes of play and can last up to 2-4 days.

not only did he not fall out of the swing and not show any of the "warning signs" of a stressed vestibular system, he seemed rather bored by it and was far more interested in the girls who were winding up their swings and spinning in rapid circles.

over the years, i've developed the theory that the world is divided between those that think that cilantro tastes like soap and those that do. the former group, of which i am a member, can not in anyway understand why anyone would want to eat soap and the latter group often thinks the other group is daft for thinking their beloved garnishment tastes awful.

after years of informal surveys, i had become convinced that about 40-50% of the general population falls into the "cilantro sucks and it tastes like soap" category and at first glance it looks like the stats at ihatecilantro support my theory. but unfortunately the chart really indicates that only 42% of the website members ( the vast majority of whom presumably already hate cilantro ) think it tastes like soap, leaving the question open as to what percentage of the population thinks cilantro tastes lovely and not even remotely close to doll hair or stink bugs.

clearly, more research is needed. [ via ]

i tried to explain to odin that while easter is an important christian holiday where people celebrate the resurrection of jesus, that particular tradition didn't have much to do with why he and all his cousins were about to run around the yard trying to find easter eggs filled with candy.

so, i rambled on about eastre, who was the teutonic goddess of dawn, spring and fertility, and how the first sunday after the first full moon succeeding the vernal equinox was also sacred to her, and this pagan holiday was given her name - eastre.

and it just so happened that eastre's symbols were the hare and the egg, which represent fertility and rebirth, for reasons that are far too complicated to explain to a toddler. but regardless, the custom of an easter egg hunt began as a way to celebrate eostre's egg laying hares who were believed to leave their symbolic signs of rebirth atop tall grasses and under low bushes.

i think, though, that once he discovered there was candy inside each egg that the rest of the story didn't matter much.

maybe by next easter i'll have a good explanation for how all this relates to the traditional easter egg roll.

happy easter from odin and us!

a tambourine, owl and sidewalk chalk might not be the most traditional easter gifts, but odin loved them nonetheless.

and maybe next year he'll understand that his easter basket is very special since it was handmade by his mamma who wove in a whole a lot of tender loving care while making it.

wowza. it's crazy how long i've been planning on doing something with google maps and the postcard project. and i don't really have a good excuse for procrastinating since long ago dawn endico ( and here ) pointed me to her gmap projects which make it ridiculously easy to create your own. hi. ho.

so, go on over to the postcard project/google maps mashup and help me solve our familial travelling salesman problem :-)

we live in the kind of city where you can go to the playground on a warm and sunny saturday afternoon only to find it entirely devoid of laughing, playing children.

where, oh where, have all the toddlers gone?

oh well, odin and i had fun, even if i never did get him to crawl through the tunnel. he sure did have fun watching me trying to entice him to the other side.

the emptiest playground has the tallest and steepest hill that odin has ever climbed.

and we climbed up, up, up and ran down, down, down the hill over and over and over with hardly a fall, which is such a stupendous accomplishment.

i offered him my hand the first time we were going down the hill, but he said, "nope." and started running, never looking back.

just as we were about to run down The Steepest Hill for the umpteenth time some Big Kids arrived and started playing basketball. and we all know how much odin loves basketball. so he raced down the hill even quicker than usual and hung back for a bit while he sized them up, before getting his dodgeball and offering to play with them.

they weren't too keen on the idea, but i thought it was mighty brave of him to ask.

the emptiest playground must not always be empty since we happened upon an abandoned football while running across the football field.

i would have liked to have let him play with it, but i was taught that american sports are played with the hands and using your feet is for commies. so i scolded him and told him we'd learn about real football later. joking!

making easter eggs is something of an odd tradition and it's even odder when you think that there's an easter bunny involved. and egg laying bunny? what's that all about? according to wikipedia:

"German Protestants wanted to retain the Catholic custom of eating colored eggs for Easter, but did not want to introduce their children to the Catholic rite of fasting. Eggs were forbidden to Catholics during the fast of Lent, which was the reason for the abundance of eggs at Easter time.

The idea of an egg-laying rabbit came to the United States in the 18th century. German immigrants in the Pennsylvania Dutch area told their children about the "Osterhase" (also: "Oschter Haws"). "Hase" means "hare", not rabbit, and in Northwest European folklore the "Easter Bunny" indeed is a hare, not a rabbit."

in addition to climbing mountains thanks to his developing sense of proprioception, we're very pleased to see that odin is now confident enough with his edge detection/depth perception abilities that he now walks up and down stairs on his his own without dropping down on his hands and knees and crawling!

and he even does it on particularly tricky stairs that are uniformly colored ( making it more difficult to detect the edge ) with all manner of "false" looking edges. up until just a day or two ago, these steps would have completely stymied our intrepid adventurer.

auntie m has been a big supporter of the postcard project, sending us cards from boston, massachusetts, london, england, washington, d.c. and freeport, maine in addition to this one from our childhood hometown of machias, maine which you can see is quite lovely in autumn ( as is the rest of new england.

maybe auntie m can help subsidize odin's travel budget so we can fulfill our obligation to visit all the postcard project places in one grand tour :-)

[ see the postcard project slideshow and visit "postcards from budapest" for the current postcard project address. ]

some might remember that we've been working on developing odin's sense of proprioception ( as well his edge detection/depth perception abilities ).

proprioception, or sense of where your body is in space, is something that many of us take for granted and not a lot is known about how the "6th sense" develops, but recently researchers found a relationship between neurons, muscle fibers and a special family of "calcium permeable ion channels" that seems to indicate that a single neuron can fine-tune motor activity.

so, i can't help but imagine all those neurons and mucle cells and ion channels working in more perfect harmony as odin climbed a very steep hill for the very first time without ever stumbling or asking for mamma or pops to lend a helping hand!

apparently according to odin's rules of toddlerdom, happiness is playing with an endless supply of toy cars and running around the house and stomping on pillows with your grandfather.

it's best if you repeat the process for hours and hours and hours.

since yellowstone national park spans wyoming, montana and idaho , the postcard project judges are happy that kelly ( also known as *milly* ) pointed out that these bison are grazing in montana.

a long time ago in a universe far, far away, kris and i slept in sleeping bags under the a nightime sky in yellowstone that was filled with an impossible number of stars. and the next day i was nearly gored by a bison when he ( she? ) didn't care for me bounding up beside him so that kris could get a picture of the both of us.

many thanks to kelly for inviting us for an epicurean adventure where the buffalo roam. we'll pass on the buffalo chips though :-)

[ see the postcard project slideshow and visit "postcards from budapest" for the current postcard project address. ]

but we're still definitely not in the market for this monstrosity.

i'm not exactly sure why but this photo seems to accentuate that there's very little "babyness" left and odin really is a Big Boy getting ready to take on the world.

he always wants to be outside running around so i think it's going to be a very active summer.

ayuh! shore 'nuff, odin's cousin ( and aunt and uncle ) sent greetings from the twin city of the French seaside resort of mimizan - old orchard beach.

[ see the postcard project slideshow and visit "postcards from budapest" for the current postcard project address. ]

after a year of The Sleep Routine where we could bet money on odin falling asleep by 7 p.m. and sleeping until 7 a.m. the following morning we've suddenly and inexplicably found ourselves with a toddler who absolutely, positively does not want to go to sleep before 9 p.m.

fine, you say, maybe his sleep patterns are changing as he gets older. and i might agree, but as you can see, he's still giving us the Thousand Yard Stare at dinner time which means he really is tired. but he doesn't want to sleep. and then we miss The Window of Opportunity and then he's overtired and, well, we all know how pleasant overtired toddlers can be.

i blame daylight savings time since this new behavior started when we changed the clocks ahead an hour. of course, he doesn't know what time it is, but maybe the bright daylight might be messing with his sleep cues? and his new preferred bedtime is suspiciously close to when the sun goes down. then again, he naps during the day and is seemingly unaffected by daylight.

so, is anyone else seeing nightime sleep patterns change with the additional daylight during the evening?

when i initially promised to try and visit every location from which we received a postcard project postcard, i really had no idea how many different countries would end up on the list.

since the magazine trifecta is in effect, i think it'd be perfect if national geographic could sponsor us to travel around the world, taking lots of pictures of course!

vicki sent this card from kuala lumpur, malasia which is home to the petronas twin towers.

[ see the postcard project slideshow and visit "postcards from budapest" for the current postcard project address. ]

the postcard project judges had to give this one some thought. it's clearly a photo of a sunset somewhere along the western michigan lakeshore. but the postmark is clearly from the "second city". but after some discussions amongst themselves they decided that the picture trumps the postmark, so it's officially categorized as coming from "west michigan lakeshore".

proving just how mixed up all the cards have become, uncle matt and anutie deb sent this one a whole month before we came home from the nicu!

i remember being slightly jealous of them being able to run along the beach and watch beautiful sunsets.

[ see the postcard project slideshow and visit "postcards from budapest" for the current postcard project address. ]