Big Sister Sydney

Like every child who has a little brother, Sydney sometimes gets annoyed with Sam. She wants everything in her room to be off-limits to him (oh, except for those times when she doesn't, and she is secretly delighted that he likes to play babies with her, and loves the Barbie Dreamhouse).
Sometimes, though, her maternal instinct is amazing. Last night, I needed to run out so Mike put the kids to bed. As he was laying in Sam's bed, waiting for the two of them to finish brushing teeth and join him for bedtime books, he got annoyed with Sydney for taking so long. After threatening to take a book away if she did not hurry (this is a huge punishment in our house), she came in with tears in her eyes and said, "But daddy, I had to brush Sam's teeth first!" That just warms my heart. I hope 30 years from now, I can picture her helping him brush his teeth as well as I can today. (OK, this might be a good time to point out to Michael that most 2 year-olds do not brush their own teeth, but I think he figured that out all by himself.)
Sydney and Sam have become very good friends, and I am so grateful. They play together all the time, and now that Sydney is learning how to put more complex Thomas train sets together, she is all the more Sam's hero. There are some days that I don't want them to grow up...

Sam the Builder

As you may know, Sam is totally infatuated with construction. Somewhere around 18 months old, his love of construction trucks began. Even before he turned 2, his favorite books were the realistic construction books you find in the children's nonfiction section at the library.

Then we moved into a new development neighborhood. Sam was, and still is, in heaven. Incredibly, on the day after we moved into our house, a giant digger arrived to break ground on the house next door. On that first day, we met the driver of the digger, whose name is John Cotton. After that, Sam began asking us 5-10 times per day, "Where John Cotton? Is John Cotton working? Is John Cotton home now? When John Cotton be back? John Cotton dig new house now?" John Cotton is his hero. Sam's room overlooks the construction next door, and he will spend nearly an hour in the morning sometimes watching.



His favorite activity, though, is building his own houses. He will build with anything he can-- blocks, books, boxes... but especially, the "building materials" he accumulates in the garage. These consist of the leftover pieces to our garage shelving units, pipes, boards, packing styrofoam, and anything else he can talk us out of. God help us if he ever catches us throwing away useful materials!

Our Move to Seattle

Inspired by our close friends, Joe and Stephanie Welsh, who just moved to Shanghai and started a blog (two, actually: www.swelsh73@blogspot.com and www.joewelshohiooregonshanghai.blogspot.com) to document their adventures and keep us all informed, I've decided to start one for the Trzupek family. We're not in China, but we are definitely on an adventure, having lived in Portland for 10 years and now getting accustomed to saying that we live in Seattle. (I still look for Portland on the departure boards at the airport... and on my last flight in, I got confused trying to determine which part of Lake Vancouver we were flying in over. I think Mike was greatly relieved to find that we actually made it to SeaTac.)

To make a long story short, in January, an old friend of Michael's (now working as a private consultant and doing some work for Microsoft) recommended him for a job. Michael was recruited, and we were both convinced that it was an opportunity we couldn't pass up.

Shortly thereafter, I reluctantly told my boss I was leaving. Before the day was out, we had crafted a job where I am working part-time from home. Logistically, it's a dream: I work half-time, over 3 short days.

I spend far more time with the kids than I used to, when our schedules meant dragging kids out of bed at 6:30 in order to get them out the door (with breakfast in hand more often than I'd like to recall...) by 7:15. Now, I am typically propped up in bed reading Dr Suess or Tonka books at 7:15. And the kids beg for homemade cream of wheat or scrambled eggs for breakfast when we finally make it downstairs. Now that's a good trade. Working from home has its challenges, but we'll get to those later.

In May, we moved into our new home in Northwest Redmond, an area we carefully triangulated for its combination of commute time for Mike (it takes him about 8 minutes to get home on a typical evening), great public school district, and relative ease of getting in to downtown. (What we did NOT get was an easy trip to Portland; while a GPS might tell you it will take 3 hours, our friends Chris and Jean or Val and Matt will breathe deeply and recall their 5 1/2 hour drives.) We moved into a brand-new house in a new development, which is proving to be wonderful. We've met lots of neighbors already, many of whom have young children, and all of whom seem to be eager to make friends.

Our house is great-- since it is new, we don't have a long list of maintenance items to work through this time! And we have lots of room, including plenty of guest space in the basement (hint, hint).

Compared with our house in Portland, though, we have a pretty small backyard. I had a hard time accepting the small yards here at first, but this house makes it a lot easier: our backyard is framed by an environmentally protected forest. We love the view from our kitchen and living room, and occasionally we get to watch the deer or rabbits grazing in the mornings.

For anyone interested (bored?) enough to keep reading, look for future posts about Sam's total infatuation with construction, Michael's newfound love of XBox, and Sydney's upcoming first day of Kindergarten!