Family Fuller

Grandpa and Grandma Fuller and Uncle Fletcher were in town last weekend and both Colin and Holden (as well as us) had a great time. The boys were very well behaved and had lots of energy. We went out to get pizza on Thursday night and Colin was teasing Fletcher about what he likes on his pizza (butterflies, bugs, beer, etc) when it eventually devolved into potty talk and “poop on your pizza”. We told Colin not to say poop so he replies “Uncle Fletcher do you like that brown stuff that comes out of your butt and smells bad and goes into the toilet on your pizza?” Nice.

Friday we took a little stroll around the Pike Place Market and then went to the aquarium. The boys had a great time there. That night we went out to Snappy Dragon for a great Chinese meal. Saturday we took a ride on the Bainbridge ferry and then played at the baseball field for awhile that afternoon. Colin loved playing baseball with Daddy and Uncle Fletcher, which is good because Colin needs a little practice running. Saturday night we got a babysitter and enjoyed a beer out and then dinner at Le Gourmand. Dinner was great, lasted 3 hours and was lots of fun. The family left Sunday - it seemed to go very fast. Chuck had to go to London on Monday, so after so much family fun all weekend it seemed a little slow this week.

Holden has been doing pretty well over the past few weeks, aside from the vaccine fever (which also causes a minor measles rash). He loves balls - and carries a football or baseball all over the house with him. He says “dada”, “dah = dog”, “ma”, “mo = more” and “ba = ball” - beyond that he babbles all the time. He does lots of signs, but he tends to have a sign of the day and does that for everything. He does signs for again, more, eat, apple - which means all fruit of any type, and today he made up his own sign for open which was swinging his arms way behind him.

Although he doesn’t speak very much he understands everything we are talking about. Chuck and I were talking about getting bagels for breakfast and he overheard us, made the eat sign and went to his high chair. He also overheard me telling my mom how we were trying to get Colin to hop on one foot and all of a sudden Holden is picking up his one foot trying to balance. He also tells us when he pooped in his diaper and the other day he went to the diaper bag to get a new diaper.

Sorry no pictures on this one - I will try to download them tomorrow.

Now for a few tidbits:

We have been somewhat off our game when it comes to posting, sorry about that. If you haven’t checked Flickr recently, we’ve got all of the December pictures up there, including many from our trip to New York. Here’s one of my favorites:

Our trip back east was a lot of fun, a bit on the crazy side, and a bit rough on the immune system. Some of the highlights:

- We took the kids to the city to see the Radio City Music Hall Christmas show. I believe it was a first for all of us, and the kids (mostly) enjoyed it, although our nephew Curt lost it by the end. Colin was mesmerized by most of it, but he refused to wear the 3-D glasses they handed out, and thus missed one of the legitimately cooler portions of the show.

- Christmas morning was an absolute whirlwind - Jess and I could barely catch our breath as all of the kids 3 and older tore through every present in a matter of minutes. Unavoidable at this age I suppose, but we’re all hoping to reach a slightly more sane tempo in the future. Probably won’t happen.

- Colin and Curt had a blast together, and bonded over a mutual love of superheroes. Curt has progressed beyond Spiderman to include Power Rangers, but Colin is still firmly in the Spidey camp.

- There were a lot of pennies in this pool (it was a fundraiser, I believe they said there was over $1M worth)

- First class is the only way to fly. Thanks to American Airlines miles and my Dad’s generosity, we were able to fly it both ways. On both flights the 4th seat in our row opened up, which meant we had another 1st class seat for Holden coming and going. Colin was incredibly good on both flights (thanks buddy).

- I came down with chills and a fever the second we got home, and was laid up for the entire weekend after we got back - sweet!

All in all a fun trip. We’re trying to figure out our summer travel plans now, which should be the next major Fuller family journey, but we’ve got some smaller trips on the horizon as well - look out, we might be descending on your locale any day now (insert evil laugh)…

Lastly, our February resolution is to be more diligent about posting…promise.

Sorry, it has been awhile since we posted. No excuse really - aside from the two kids, holidays and sicknesses.

We are back from a great trip to New York for Christmas, aside from the fact that everyone was sick. Colin and his cousins had a great time playing together. We got plenty of pictures and lots of hilarious Curt and Colin videos. The pictures are posted: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chuckfuller/

We might have to wait a bit on the video.

Holdey-Boldy (as we call him) is doing great - already over 10 months. Still cruising around. Standing up in his crib. Babbling a bit of Mama, Dada and Hi. The boy loves his carbs. We made the mistake of giving him some pasta and there is no turning back now. He also just had beef last night for the first time and loved that too - you should be happy to hear that Mom and Ed.

Colin seems to be growing up so fast to me. The way he speaks now and everything he can remember just astounds me. Over Christmas he would be missing for awhile and I would find him watching “Hairspray” with Grace and Lily. Once we got back he did something in the kitchen and goes “Hallelujah” (really more like “Hal-e-ooh-yah”) - I said “where did you learn that” and he replied “Grace and Lily’s movie. I also learned to dance.” Nice. He is very into Spiderman at the moment although I don’t think he has every really seen Spiderman in anything. He also loves trains and Thomas. Santa was very kind to him so now he has trains all over the place. Of course his little brother is into everything and that is driving Colin a bit mad.

There is a lot more to post about Christmas but I will let Chuck tackle a bit more of that.

Happy New Year to all. I will try my best to post more in 2008!

I know it’s a bit late, but we wanted to give a rundown on our oh-so-well timed vacation back east to see Grandma and Grandpa, and to visit Block Island. The background story is that we were in the midst of trying to sell our house before moving back to Seattle, so you could say it would have made more sense to focus on, say, wrapping things up in Ann Arbor. But why do that when you can leave yourself just a few days after an extended vacation to do it!

So anyway, we actually signed the sales contract to sell our house on Thursday, June 28th, which happened to be the day we were leaving…well, here’s the day-to-day summary:

Thu, 6.28: After signing the contract, we hit the road with an eye toward stopping somewhere between Ann Arbor and Uncle Ben’s house in PA. As if we didn’t hate the PA Turnpike already, we had no luck finding a place to stay. There’s a huge no-man’s land for services in the middle of the state, so we ended up pushing it way too far, driving the boys crazy, until we managed to find a HoJo’s (that’s right, a HoJo’s) just a couple of hours from Ben’s house. They didn’t take dogs, but we managed to sneak Sevi in (sorry HoJo’s, hope there wasn’t too much dog hair).

Fri, 6.29: Arrived around midday (we took our time, including a stop at Circuit City) at Ben and Kristen’s horse farm. Spent the day relaxing with them, as Ben and Colin bonded over their common love of tractors. Colin had a first, as he puke-burped for the first time - I guess it took him by surprise, because the puke just shot right out - and yet he seemed completely unfazed.

Sat, 6.30: Off to New York to see G’Ma and G’Pa, and of course we ran into epic traffic on the George Washington Bridge. Luckily Colin was very excited about the fact that the bridge was named after George Washington, so that kept it from being a complete disaster. Anyway, after sitting there for over an hour waiting to get into NY, we finally arrived in Tarrytown. Joyous reunion and some great food from the grill, and everyone was happy.

Sun, 7.1: Got to visit with the Chaney’s! Of course we were late getting into the city to meet them at the Museum of Natural History, but they were, of course, very understanding (doesn’t hurt that they have their own son now). It was our first time meeting Corbin, their new addition; unfortunately Colin’s only care was the purchase of a soft pretzel, which overrode all other concerns from a meet and greet standpoint. And even worse, the 1st (yes, 1st) soft pretzel we got was not very good - quite stale in fact. However, the sight of the solar system display which dominates the entrance into the museum quickly dispelled the trauma of the pretzel - Colin was, if you’ll forgive me, in heaven. And Holden seemed pretty hooked in as well - he was quiet throughout the whole visit, and seemed fascinated by everything. We even managed to get a great 2nd pretzel, so the whole day turned out to be a success. As always great to see the Chaney’s, especially now that they’ve grown to 3. Love you guys.

Mon, 7.2: We were unnecessarily stressed out about the travel time to the Block Island ferry, mostly because our past experiences with Holden and Colin in the car implied about double the normal travel time. But they were great, we flew up there, and had some time to kill in Point Judith, which was fine. It was a gorgeous day, and so great to get to the house - Calum (sp?) (contractor extraordinaire) came over to fix a couple of things and brought his daughter Rory. Colin tried forever to get her to play with him - he rolled out all of his tricks, from toys to coloring books and numerous pleas of “it’s fun!!” I don’t think she ever relented. But Colin was assuaged by a killer spaghetti dinner courtesy of Grandma.

Tue, 7.3: Fireworks night on Block Island! Colin and Holden both stayed up to watch the show, with Colin providing color commentary on which planets and rockets the various fireworks looked like. I have to say I was impressed with the performance when it was all said and done. But we did have a moment of letdown early on when we thought what turned out to be some of the locals shooting off bottle rockets was the whole shebang. Luckily they were nothing compared to the real show, but they did provide some entertainment as we watched Block Island’s finest race back and forth trying to arrest these rogue fireworks users.

Wed, 7.4: Attended the Block Island 4th Parade, which was…entertaining. Lots of local flavor, shall we say. That night it might as well have been Halloween, because the adults were spooked out. Jess, my parents and I sat down to tackle a game of Scrabble, and about halfway through Dad looks over to the front door with a startled expression and says “I just saw someone go out the front door.” My Dad is not someone to jump at shadows, so everyone was appropriately freaked out. Then Jess went upstairs to check on the kids, just in case, and found the doors which had been closed wide open…

Thu, 7.5: Following the ghostly 4th of July, we had a much more mellow Thursday, as Michael and Joanie (my uncle and aunt for those who don’t know them) came out to the island for lunch (they live near Boston). They brought Colin some great presents, and it was great to catch up with them. For some reason my Dad decided to start talking about Fletch’s friends and created a mix and match of them that was pretty impressive to hear. This was our first ice cream free day (we just can’t hang with my older brother Lawrence, who never misses a day).

Fri, 7.6: Tried to see some animals after trying a new lunch place downtown, but it was just too hot for the llamas and camels and kangaroos (there’s a hotel that keeps a menagerie on the island). Dad provided the quote of the week [PG-13 warning - we try to keep this family friendly, but I have to include this] I did some work helping Fletch get Dad’s new computer set up to access the Fuller Asset Management technical resources, and one of the things we were doing was addressing all of the spam in Dad’s inbox. So I’m looking at his email and I say “Yeah, it’s a bit of a shock to look at your business email and see a message from Fletch, Fletch, Lawrence, Fletch and then one that has “huge erection!!!” in the subject line”…to which my Dad instantly and innocently replies, “I know, I get one of those every day.”

Sat, 7.7: Still anxiously waiting to hear about the home inspection on our house in Ann Arbor, so we occupied our morning at a great park that’s near our house. We hit downtown and found lighthouses everywhere - even bought an amazing barber pole lighthouse bird feeder that Colin would bring to bed with him if we let him. He also picked out John Adams from a thumbnail sketch on a book spine from a few feet away. I made the mistake of running up Beacon Hill (but I did make it back!), and we hit the beach for the first time (we’re bad, but kids this young at the beach are difficult).

Sun, 7.8: Colin decided to wake me up at 5AM - thanks! Tried to head downtown to walk around, but everyone was wiped out early. Had a great dinner at the Harborside, so that place is back in the mix, and watched the 2nd half of Gone With The Wind.

Mon, 7.9: Trauma day for Colin, as he took a nose dive down the front steps and landed squarely on the bridge of his nose. As per the usual, I was about three feet away and couldn’t do a thing to stop it. It was a gusher, and I was shaking as I tried to calm him down, blood getting everywhere (including the new porch - sorry G’ma and G’pa!). We managed to soothe him with a visit to the Southeast Lighthouse, followed by some truly great french fries at the Oar (he deserved them). Our frustration with the home selling process mounts as we wait to find out how much more money we’re out for repairs…but we did have good news on securing our rental place in Seattle, which is a load off. I made a cheesecake for the first time, which would have come out perfectly had it not been for some intervention on taking it out of the pan - I’ll name no names.

Tue, 7.10: TICK DAY. Absolutely miserable day. Changed Colin’s diaper and found at least 15+ tiny ticks attached to his groin area, right where he’d been sitting in the yard the previous evening. Unfortunately I’d been out there with Holden, and he and I both had one as well. But clearly Colin was the huge concern. Essentially it was pure stress the entire day. Thankfully it was the one day of the month that a vet was on the island, so I was able to make sure Sevi was dosed and wasn’t going to carry any of the wee beasties home with her. Somehow Jess and I still managed to have a date night and went out for a really incredible late dinner at the Manisses. [as a tick update, all were painfully removed from everyone, and Jess practiced some preventative/peace of mind medicine by getting both the boys a round of antibiotics - so far so good as far as lyme disease is concerned].

Wed, 7.11: Only thing to do after such a stressful day is nothing, and few better places to do nothing than Block Island. While the day was a wash, we did have a rousing game of Trivial Pursuit with my parents. Jess managed to misread the answer to a question about a 1927 silent movie so that she thought it was titled “Gerald Ford” (huh?). And my Dad is truly the best person you can play this game with - every question he reads is preceded by “Oh this is easy,” or “You’ll never get this!” And since he was asking questions for my Mom, he naturally provided hints to her at regular intervals, which is ironic since she needs the least help of any of us. Crowned it all off at the end of the game, when Mom needed to roll a 4 to reach the center and mercifully end the game, and her 2 prompted him to declare “Well, only got half of what you needed.” Perfect.

Thu, 7.12: Had a great final full day on the island - took Colin up to the north lighthouse to throw some rocks in the ocean, then came back and watched Holden while Jess went shopping. I later took Colin up to the beach near the Coast Guard station (which, for some reason, I’d never visited), where we had 100% success flying a kite and throwing more rocks. Wrapped up the day with a great dinner at the Beachhead and a last trip to the ice cream parlor, where Colin kept yelling “Grandpa” at the top of his lungs every time Dad went to get napkins, or water, or whatever else he had to run back and forth to get (so this happened about 7 or 8 times). Also swung by the SE light one more time for Colin, and he summed it up as we were making our way home, “It’s a fun day Mommy.”

Fri, 7.13: Headed back to Tarrytown on the 11am ferry, to meet up with the Arizona Fullers as they prepped for their time on the Block.

Sat, 7.14: Lazy day with almost the whole Fuller clan, went out to an adult dinner at the Stone Barn restaurant in Pocantico Hills - amazing. Truly. Although Martha Stewart jumped ahead of us as we were waiting for our table, and it took an interminable amount of time to get the meal going (everybody ate lightly during the day, so to a man/woman we were starving). It was quite an experience, although I don’t think I ordered as well as I could have - just have to go back!

That’s basically it - great couple of weeks, lots of quality time with the grandparents, and loads of driving, but it was all worth it. I think we’re locking down our reservation for 4th of July next year - can’t wait, although next year I’ll be sure to have the vacation review up a little quicker.

You can check out all of the vacation photos here.

The proverbial cat is out of the bag now, so for anyone who reads the blog and doesn’t know, we’re moving from Ann Arbor (back) to Seattle. I flew out there the last couple of days of May for one of those day-long interview loops (after having three phone interviews the day before) with Atlas, and I suppose I did a decent job of talking about myself incessantly, because they gave me the job. Needless to say, I was quite psyched, since it’s a bit of a different story looking for a new job when you’re the sole breadwinner for a family of four (plus a dog). Even better, they’re helping us move, so we’ve finally reached that phase of our lives where we don’t have to pack everything up ourselves in a U-Haul (no, you haul it, thank you).

So we’re bidding farewell to A2, and despite everything Jess will tell you the contrary, it’s somewhat bittersweet for me as well. I loved living within a reasonable (10 hours) driving distance from my parents, and I loved being able to easily get to Jess’ parent’s house up north. That being said, most of me is very happy to be heading west. I think it’s going to be great career-wise, and I also think it’ll be fascinating watching Colin take in this new place.

As for the specifics, I’m starting work on July 23rd, a week after we get back from Block Island, so it’ll be a very fast driving adventure for Sevi and me that following weekend. Jess and the kids will follow us out at a date TBD. Much about living arrangements and other logistics are up in the air, pending some serious discussion and forethought. Oh yeah, and we have to sell our house in Michigan, but that should be a piece of cake, right???

We’d be remiss if we didn’t publicly say a tremendous, huge, heartfelt thank you to everyone who has been so helpful throughout these first few weeks as we grew from a three person family to a four person family. Thanks to Jen and Dave Frisvold for taking care of Colin the night Jess went into labor and for bringing over a great dinner this past week, thanks to Nana (Jess’s Mom) for being such a tremendous help during that first week after Holden arrived (and dealing with a somewhat trying first grandson as he made the adjustment to being a big brother), thanks to the Jordan’s, Berry’s and McKenna’s for also taking some of the burden off of Jess by bringing over incredible meals, and to Grandma Sheila and Aunt Christine for finding time to help out Jess this past week. We can’t ever repay you all, but know that we appreciate everything so much - THANK YOU!

Bit of a hiatus there, but I’m sure all of our huge audience is off enjoying turkey weekend. But here’s a big Thanksgiving weekend post to provide grandparents and friends with their holiday Colin fix.

We spent Thanksgiving day with Jess’ Dad and the extended family. I believe the final tally was around 15, so it was a good crowd (and growing every year). Colin got plenty of time to play with his cousins, especially Jacqueline, who went out of her way to help Colin learn the finer points of dancing to her favorite CD (along with cousin Jack). As you can probably guess from the pictures, he likes Jacqueline (he always likes the older women, what can I say). Reminiscent of his wedding-like pose with another girl from this summer - watch out for this kid.

Anyway, it was a huge feast, of which Colin ate almost nothing. He was terrible while we were sitting down to eat, which meant that I got to have half of my meal with him sitting on my lap sucking his thumb. Eventually he was enticed to his own seat with the promise of a roll, and he did manage to knock that out (what a surprise). Thus he maintained his steady diet of sugars, in the form of breads, starches, and the occasional bit of candy - we’re so proud of ourselves as parents.

No trip to Grandpa’s house for Thanksgiving would be complete without a hayride of course, so several of us piled in for a ride up and down their dirt road - mostly fun, apart from the clingy smell of diesel fumes, but Colin really enjoyed it (weren’t sure that was going to be the case).

Part of the reason the crowd swelled so much this year was that Jess’ brother Ben and his girlfriend Kristen made the trip out to Michigan for the holiday. Colin is a big fan of both Ben and Kristen - with Ben, it’s the tractor connection; Colin loves them, Ben loves them (and owns various types of heavy equipment for his work), so it’s not exactly a hard sell (as you can see) to get Colin to want to spend time with them.

With Kristen, it’s the attention - she’s really great with Colin, and he always responds well to a lot of dedicated attention (what a surprise - don’t forget the older women thing either). Colin got to spend time with her up north this summer, and she literally taught him the word “Fun”, so she’ll forever be associated with it in his mind. On the way back from having breakfast with them yesterday, while we were telling him about how they were going to fly back to Pennsylvania, he got somewhat sad and mentioned that he wanted to fly there to see them. Sure it’ll happen sometime soon buddy.

All around a pretty solid holiday, but C-man and I were definitely down for the count a bit after so much running around and eating (I think I torqued my knee playing touch football - god I’m old).

Picture pages, picture pages (am I dating myself here?) - Jess posted quite a few vacation pics, but you can never get enough, especially if they’re Colin pics. Without further ado:

We did a lot of driving, thankfully Colin doesn’t have much trouble chilling out (I wouldn’t either if I got to sit in a reclining car lazy boy)…

We made a pit stop in Boston to see my aunt, uncle and grandad, and also checked out the aquarium - is there a kid alive who wouldn’t like an aquarium?

Grandad giving grandson a boost to “press a button”:

The weather on Block Island was outstanding, but we did have one day of rain - that wasn’t going to stop little C…

This doesn’t happen very much any more - if you’re one of the seemingly numerous friends who’s expecting, remember to enjoy it while it lasts (thank you ocean air)

I think there’s actually a possibility he could have stayed longer -

Pre-10-hour-drive, getting in some final quality time with ‘gandma’

We are almost 2 weeks in to our vacation. We drove to New York, then up to Boston then to Block Island where we are currently. We have been on Block Island almost 10 days ( we leave tomorrow) - weather has been beautiful and we have had a good time. Relaxed mostly, but also hit the beach a bit, went to the play ground, shopping and of course, eating, eating, eating.

Colin has been a big hit around here and has learned all kinds of new things, such as his now frequently yelled “Go Yankees!” or “Come on Yankees” - imagine that one with a semi-disgusted tone of voice in the “come on.” He has also been chasing butterflies and flying a kite. We discovered his love of the symphony one night when he spent a hour watching one on PBS. He keeps talking about the violin, cello “che-oo” and the flute. He has been very busy building towers with blocks. He attempts to put blocks on that no adult in their right mind would think would balance but by some miracle they stay up.

Colin has been come very demanding of Grandma - she always needs to come with us (well he likes everyone to come everywhere with him.) While we sit on the porch he tells every one which seat to sit in…it is pretty funny.

We are heading back to New York for the weekend and then back to Michigan on Sunday. Colin did really well in the car on the way here - before we even got to the Ohio border on the way he did say “Done the highway” - but seemed to forget about it after that. Hopefully he will be just as good on the way back.

Once we get back I have to prepare for Colin’s second birthday in a couple weeks. I can’t believe he is almost 2.

Here are a couple of recent Colin pics. We went up north to my parent’s house last weekend. My brother and his girlfriend Kristin were there (we were meeting her for the first time) and of course Colin won his way into their hearts. Hey was saying their names right away, saying he wanted to kiss Kristin and entertaining them with all of his words and little cute things like “chips and salsa.” He is talking about “Uncle Ben” as I write this.

Nana also bought him this elaborate sprinkler/pond thing that I was calling the Bellagio. You can see him standing naked next to it the in this picture.

In the photo below Chuck was just about to rip off the ugly wood from our front door and colin wanted to help him by climbing the ladder.

Colin has been funny as ever… he just found my keys and told me we should “Drive car to sun” - I told him it would be a bit far and hot.