Finding Balance in San Francisco

Ella Rose is here!

We're so excited and proud to announce the birth of our niece and cousin, Ella Rose Fulton. She was born in San Francisco last night, July 23, 2008 at 7:07pm, weighing in at 9lbs., 2 oz. and 20 inches long.

Mom Sarah and baby are doing well.

Quinn and I went to visit her this morning at the hospital, and she's a gorgeous, healthy baby girl. Below is my brother, Rick (in grey) with the new babe and the Mighty Quinn. Quinn later climbed in bed with the Fulton crew.  Rick is a proud daddy.

Ella is already surrounded by friends and family.  With Rick and Sarah, below, is Sarah's good friend Heather.

While we were there, my nephew Charlie came in to meet his sister for the first time.  These shots taken just moments after he set eyes on her for the first time.

We wish Rick, Sarah and Charlie a hearty congratulations and welcome with open arms Baby Ella Rose into the world.  We look forward to growing and changing with the gorgeous new darling over the years.

My parents were watching our boys and Charlie last night when Ella made her arrival.  When they heard the great news, they  poured the boys some juice and said that they were going to have a toast to Charlie's new sister.  They did "cheers" and raised their glasses high...

and Quinn said: "Where is the toast?"

Shasta's on the mend

Our sweet Black Lab, Shasta Moon, tore her ACL in April and had the $5K surgery to fix it last Monday. Dogs (and people, I believe- see Tiger Woods) need to have surgery to fix a torn or snapped ACL- it's not one of those things that can heal on its own.

Unfortunate that she tore her ACL in the first place (though it's apparently the most common injury for larger dogs), but very fortunate that she tore it while on a walk with our licensed, insured dog walker, whose insurance is going to mercifully cover it.  Dodged a bullet there. We have some friends who had to forego their honeymoon so that their dog could get the ACL surgery.

For the first 7 days she had a softish cast on her back right leg.  On Monday I was able to cut that cast off so she's now left with a shaved and stapled back right leg. The staples go for about 8 inches down the inside of her leg by her knee.  She'll get those out next week at the specialist vet's office over in Mill Valley.

It's a relatively involved recovery.  She's on various anitbiotic, anti-inflammatory, anti-pain and light sedative meds and we ice her knee once or twice a day. From day one post surgery they wanted us to walk her on a leash for 5-10 minutes 2 or 3 times a day, which we've been doing. Next week the walks will go up to 1o-15 minute leashed walks, then after that 15-20 and then 20-25.  She's got that red harness on because she absolutely cannot take off and run- we need to keep her pretty mellow (not always an easy trick with an enthusiastic, 75 pound dog).  It's an 8 week recovery process.

Another silver lining to the whole process is that our prince of a neighbor, Dave, is letting Shasta stay with him in his garden apartment.  This makes my life a whole heck of a lot easier because the boys love to sit on Shasta's back and "ride" her and they can be rambunctious with her in general.  She's also not allowed to jump up on anything higher than 2 feet, which our bed is and is supposed to try to avoid stairs, which we have.

I can't help but think of all of the kids in the world whose lives would be greatly improved by but can't possibly afford a $5K surgery, and marvel at what a lucky dog we have.  She's been sweet as sugar through it all- maybe somehow in some way she's grateful that we're doing everything we can to fix her hurt leg.  I wonder what percent of dogs in the world would get to have the ACL surgery... it has to be relatively low, methinks.

A tip of the hat to the daddies

Happy Father's Day to all the daddies, daddies-to-be and daddies that have gone before us deserving of praise.  There are of course some daddies out there undeserving of praise (e.g., Marvin Gaye's killer/father), so I'd like to net them out of the praise-giving extravaganza.

Daddies sometimes get a certain amount of grief (not that I'm admitting anything, but...) and it seems like a good idea to stop and sing daddy praises.

Why the grief?  I was perusing this NYT article earlier today and  according to the article,

Any way you measure it, [social scientists] say, women do about twice as much around the house as men.

The lopsided ratio holds true however you construct and deconstruct a family and it doesn't matter much who brings home the paycheck (man, woman, both). “Working class, middle class, upper class, it stays at two to one,” says Sampson Lee Blair, an associate professor of sociology at the University at Buffalo who studies the division of labor in families.

Housework, in this context, is defined as things like cooking, cleaning, yardwork and home repairs. Child care is a whole separate category — one that is even more skewed.  Where the housework ratio is two to one, the wife-to-husband ratio for child care in the United States is close to five to one. As with housework, that ratio does not change as much as you would expect when you account for who brings home a paycheck.

The article goes on (and on) to try to understand the deeper rooted reasons for the housework/childcare inequity, and then highlights various parents who are striving for "equal parenting," with mixed success. The lopsided ratio is deeply ingrained in our society, for whatever reason.

So, bottom line, daddies receive a certain amount of grief stemming from all of this household division of labor imbalance.

And that's all well and good- the societal imbalance is what it is, after all.  But you can still be a good daddy (even a great daddy) if you don't split the housework and childcare 50/50, so today I want to stop to thank the daddies for what they do.  As study after study proves, life with daddy is more balanced, more fun, more relaxed and more full of love that life without daddy.

We were shooting baskets at the gym earlier today, and each time one of the boys made a shot the first thing they did was to look over to see if daddy was watching.

Our daddy, like many good daddies, is a role model, a steady hand in a sometimes unsteady world, an underlying rock of stability.  Thank you for that.  We all blossom and grow with that unwavering foundation.

And so.... a tip of the hat to the good daddies out there.

Despite some setbacks, Fun at Bay Meadows

Last week, 2 bad things happened:

(1) My good friend Sunny's husband Torben, who was deported last August ran into yet another bureaucratic hurdle, making it unlikely that he'll get home before their first anniversary on May 4th.

The heartless, mean spirited lady interviewing Torben first aggressively accused him of having a criminal record in England.  When she was inevitably proven wrong, she openly told him how irked she was that his interview had been scheduled so "quickly"- (not that 8 months is setting any kind of land speed record) and began to demand all kinds of irrelevant paperwork that had not been previously requested.  Needless to say, they've already submitted thousands of pages of documentation, and she has absolutely everything she needs at this point.  This woman, the very last step in a very long chain of red tape, has evidently decided, for reasons all her own, to make a point of making it as difficult for Torben and Sunny as possible.

There should be a special place in hell for bureaucrats on a power trip.

(2) Republicans in the Senate blocked the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, inexplicably.  At MomsRising's urging, I sent John McCain my resume. Senator McCain,who didn’t even come to vote, insultingly said that instead of legislation allowing women to fight for equal pay, they simply need "education and training."

I am frustrated and saddened by both of those things, and sadly both are out of my control.  So instead of worrying about setbacks, I took the kids to Bay Meadows yesterday to watch the horses run like the wind. 

And boy did we have fun.  My dad was able to get Turf Club passes out of some friend, and we had a lovely afternoon cheering the horses from a luxurious table right by the window.  Bay Meadows is scheduled to close its doors forever in 2 weeks.  Sigh.  We had a good last run yesterday though.

Yesterday morning, Quinn got ahold of a pair of my sunglasses... and so I'll end this post with my sweet fly:

Welcome to the world, Zak!

Zachery Grant Vivolo was born at 5:39am on leap year, weighing in at 5 lbs. 12 oz. 

Congratulations Heido and Joe!!  Sunny and I were on hand to toast Zak's arrival.

Heido looks so lovely, to say nothing of the babe-  hard to believe they'd just gone through the birth process 4 hours before.

Good Times in Cabo!

How different our sun-drenched week in Mexico was from this furious, wild storm we're now having in San Francisco!  Three cheers for beach vacations.

Ai ai ai!  We sure had fun in Mexico last week.

Back in the US of A

Just got back last night from a fun filled week in Mexico.

Is it possible to beat Holiday Madness?

Last year, December nearly sent me over the edge.  It literally took me until February to recover.

So this year, in a bold attempt to beat the Holiday Madness, I vowed to be more organized, more prepared, more efficient.  Hand-in-hand with my frenetic December 2006, I'd gotten my "turn" to host various parties out of the way for the next couple of years, so I was really feeling like a balanced, even December was attainable, realistic even.

For the most part, I'd been feeling particularly smug until right about now.  I'd ordered our holiday cards in late November, shopped for and wrapped 90% of the presents we're giving, and yesterday my husband and I shipped off the final box of out-of-town relatives' presents.   I've baked, shopped for, prepared and delivered gift baskets for Quinn's pre-school and Jordan's daycare teachers and staff.  Our Christmas tree is up and decorated.  I've got our dog lined up to be taken care of while we're on vacation.

... but ...

Ryan is currently bringing his mom home from the airport, and our house is a mess.  I just realized that I haven't actually bought Ryan anything for Christmas or his birthday (Dec. 28th), and after I'd written, addressed and sent the Christmas cards I'd ordered I realized that we needed about 40 more if I want to avoid having our holiday cards become a divisive issue.  So I'll have a frantic batch of cards to address and send at the last minute, which is nice.  I'll also be hosting Christmas day breakfast for 10 people and I haven't done a shred of preparation.  I don't even have an idea of what I'm going to serve or what I can/need to delegate.  Bills need to be paid, laundry needs to be done, and I left Ryan with a car that was almost on empty.

Oh dear.  The garage door just opened and here I am writing a blog entry instead of whirling around the house picking things up.  Ryan's mom will arrive and instead of finding a balanced, zen home what she'll see is the madwoman I thought I left in 2006.

My question is this:  is it indeed possible to beat Holiday Madness? Will something always rear its ugly head and force me back behind the 8 ball?

I guess we'll see next year.

A few more photos

Del Mar Thanksgiving- Photos

we just walked in the door from a fun, family-filled Thanksgiving in San Diego. And, just like that, we're off to pose for my parents' Christmas picture.  Let the holidays continue!