Five minutes of sun in February

In February, we had five precious minutes of sun. Malcolm and I ran outside to play. I was encouraging him to walk, but he was more interested in hugging the tree-that's my baby!

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New Things Malcolm Can Do

This kid is really growing up before my eyes, and honestly I am not really sure that I am ready for it, but on the other hand it is a lot of fun. He is over his ear infection now-Amen-and life can go back to normal.

He now can say five words, although he doesn't say "dada" as much as he used to. Malcolm can say "mama,""baba," "dada" "uh-oh" and now he can also say "hi." The "hi" bit is pretty darn cute I have to admit.

He also has started doing this thing where he vigorously shakes his head no when he does not want to eat something or do something, but sometimes he does it just for fun. That is pretty cute too.

What do you all think of his new African clothes? He is our budding little Obama!

Gifts Arrive from Africa for the King of Portland

A FRIEND IS BORN IN KENYA

Here is a picture of Baby Earlyn. She is the daughter of our friend Nancy Njambi in Kenya. Nancy tells me that Earlyn would make a great wife for Malcolm someday! Anyway, the picture is too sweet, and we don't have a lot of pictures of our Kenyan family on here so I thought that I would add it.

This kid is really a toddler now

This kid really is a toddler now. He is walking like crazy! I can't believe it! What happened to my cuddly little newborn? My baby is gone and now I have a child. We actually walked together a lot today while we were waiting for a friend to meet us at a coffeeshop. We just walked up and down the sidewalk, and each person that we passed smiled at us as Malcolm toddled along on one of the first spring like days in Portland this year.

Have I mentioned I absolutely can not wait for summer-fun times in the park and in and by large bodies of water. We need to get the Bunyolis to the ocean again, and I have to find some way to do more camping with Boo.

If you can hear me God-please send us spring so this toddler and I can play! Thank you. Amen.

The Preparation for the Birthday Bash Pictures

Here are the pictures that show the family preparation for the birthday bash. The slide show fades kind of slowly so stick it out through all the pictures. The same is true of the party pictures.

Enjoy! We certainly did.

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Malcolm's First Birthday Bash

I am going to post more bithday pictures and more preparation pictures soon. This was an all-weekend, all family event. Boo is the center of everything, but I have to admit I had fun. I had not enjoyed putting together a theme party and gathering people together in many, many moons!

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After the haircut with his wagon

Malcolm's First Haircut

Our brave boy in the barber's chair.

The latest Malcolm Stats

I took Malcolm to the doctor for his well baby visit today. Here are the latest stats. Our bouncy bundle of joy is now 11 1/2 month 31 1/2 inches long, and weighs almost 28 lbs-that is about 12.6 kilos for our friends in the metric system.

He is getting his one year old molars and that is why he has been cranky as cranky can be lately. Unfortunately, he also has a yeast infection and dry skin behind his ear. He is like his mama-a sensitive skin guy. So if any of you mommies out there have different recipes for soothing skin treatments for my maby lamb let me know. The doctor recommended browned flour which I am getting ready to cook up right now since he is sleeping. Poor guy had a hard day.

Since my car died in the recent snow storm we had to take the bus and in the case had to take Portland's slowest line. Then he had to get examined, have two shots and have his blood tested for anemia and lead. All of that with two huge teeth pushing through!

When we he wakes up though we have more adventures waiting for us. I am planning on taking him to get his first haircut.

Playtime with Daddy

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Martin Luther King Day 2007

Today is Martin Luther King, and I have a lot on my mind. In church today the pastor mentioned how extraordinary it is that forty years later we continue to celebrate the life of a man who himself only lived for thirty-nine years. She talked about how important it was for him to have a strong love of self in order be able to overcome all the injustices he would have to face, and to be able to resist the constant barrage of voices telling him that he would not be able to do anything, that he was lesser, than he was not a worthy human.

I thought about that a lot, and about how we could be able to arm Malcolm for life in this crazy world. Geoffrey is always wanting me to emphasize Malcolm's lineage. He wants to make sure that I am able to tell Malcolm want clan his comes from, and that he understands himself as simultaneously Kenyan and American. While this is a difficult feat to me because the lines of heritage seem so broad and complex that I wonder if I shall ever be able to understand them, I agree completely with their importance.

I have personally witnessed the loss that my people have had which is a result of namelessness, of lack of heritage. I have seen this in so many ways which I will discuss here, but it is ironic that it should exist at all because really the whole society that we are living in now was built by our ancestors. Every building should serve a testimony to that heritage. I am unsure why it does not.

When I was younger (and for the record I would like to assert that I am still not old) I saw this as a sort of an ache-the longing of a child for their lost mother-but now I have seen that the legacy of being robbed of a rightful sense of identity is a much deeper pain. It is more like walking around wounded, and having to live with chronic pain that is so deep and yet so constant that you must learn to cope with it, release it, or ignore it.

I have seen my method as a combination of all three, but I fall into pitfalls all the time. So the question is really-how do I give Malcolm that totally strong sense of self that will be enough to guide him through the hurdles that he will face in life? I guess this is every parent's question regardless of race or culture, but it seems especially daunting to me. There are so many times when I feel so small in the face of such a big task.

Parenting has opened me up in so many ways. It has been in many ways an open invitation to play and to remember love and joy, and yet I am always worried if I am doing things well enough to do justice to the life of our little ball of wonder. If I do this wrong he may end up angry and bitter and aimless like so many in this world, and that would be unbearably tragic because Malcolm's spirit is so pure and incredibly full of life. Every day he just seems to enter the world a little more and fill it with his powerful little presence with those sparkling eyes and infectious laughter. Of course he is my little universe, but others have also noticed his specialness. Somehow when he enters a room-even one filled with other children-he stands out every takes note.

In a couple of weeks he will be turning one. I am planning a birthday party for him, and some have said that I am going a little bit overboard and that the party is more about me than Malcolm at this age. I can't help though-since the moment I held him in my arms I have wanted to share him with the world. He is so beautiful and good. I want everyone to share the joy that he brings and I want to celebrate him and his birth and first year of life. Birthing him was the most transformational thing I ever did- I want to celebrate that and honor him again with the community similar to when he was born. The day he came home from the hospital was supposed to be the day of my blessingway. Since it did not happen like that women sat in our living room in case anyone came by to disturb me or the baby-sort of keeping watch over our little family and bearing witness to his beauty. I loved having him welcomed into a community like that, and somehow I think the answer to that strong sense of self, that connectedness and maintaining his spirit is tied up in that sense of community and support. Tricky business in the midst of all of our divisions, but somehow important nonetheless. Hopefully, in the next year Malcolm can teach me how to help him keep his little light shining.

I love you little one.

This is year I have fallen completely overboard into Christmas lala land. We don't have a tree, and our budget is very tight, but I have had fun picking out stocking stuffers and small little things that I can do for my loved ones.

I was telling one of my co-workers that when the war in Afghanistan started three years ago I marched into a popular shopping mall downtown with a small group of protestors shouting "Stop your shopping, bombs are dropping!" I did not get anyone store bought gifts that year, and stayed in Portland instead of going home to see my family.

This is year is a whole other ball of wax. I have savored every moment with my husband who has been working a zillion hours for us. I put the all-Christmas all the time station on the radio and sing Christmas carols to Malcolm. Someone in the church painted a portrait of Malcolm and I as the madonna and child. I hung up the stockings, got a wreath through a local micro-enterprise project for migrant women, and have generally blissed out on Christmas.

Malcolm loves the call and respond Christmas carols. He giggles like crazy every time I say "like a lightbulb" during the Rudolph the Rednose Reindeer song. He also generally put up with having his picture taken on Santa's lap.

When I asked Geoffrey if we should send a picture of Malcolm and "Baba Christmas" to our family in Kenya, he responded "Sure, but they will just think he is sitting on some white guy." It was very funny.

The question is now- how do I give my little one a wonderful Christmas every year while emphasizing tolerance and the roots of the holiday which are really about hope and peace and love and not techie toys that we can't afford anyway?

Well you all can test me next year when Malcolm is old enough to get some things about Christmas-will it be a spirtual time of giving and togetherness or will this activist mama fall into the globalization trap?

Stay tuned....

And now back to decking the halls

The Many Moods of Malcolm

In Search of the Great Pumpkin

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Lactivism

This week a breastfeeding mama was kicked off an airplane for breastfeeding her child without covering herself with a blanket. This is an outlandish act! Fortunately a petition has been circulating nationwide which has gathered more than 20,000 signatures and Delta has already vowed to train their employees on the benefits of breastfeeding. There is currently a Breastfeeding Promotion Act before Congress. Please sign this petition to show your support.

I am sorry to be so unabashedly political on the Blog, but how else will be able to make things better for our children?

http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/momsrising/signUp.jsp?key=1772&t=petition.dwt

Malcolm is doing great on numerous front, although I feel sort beaten up by the last month. It seemed like I worked non-stop and hardly saw my precious boy wonder during the weeks leading up to the election. Then of course I collapsed in exhaustion and got sick. The good news is that we won everything. Having been raised by a socialist feminist type (love ya mom!) I am not accustomed to winning on Election Day so seeing my candidates win and the school levy pass with 59% was like witnessing a miracle. Now I can see my Bugaboo again.

Malcolm is getting pretty good at standing which means that walking is not far off. I am not quite ready for that! He loves his drum and can really beat out a rhythm for a nine month ( I absolutely can't believe he is that old-one is right around the corner!). He eats almost everything now, but is still nursing. This guy is really a breast man. He will nurse until he is at least two I imagine.

I am putting together a little slide show of our pumpkin patch trip so I will post that on here soon!

This fall has been hectic, but we have still managed to have fun even in the midst of the chaos. Grandma came to town and we all went on a trip to the pumpkin patch. It is really astonishing to me how incredibly playful Malcolm is these days. He had a blast crawling on the pumpkins, riding on our shoulders through the corn maze and sleeping in the wagon while we had a picnic lunch. You could not ask for a more perfect day!

He had a cold on Hallooween so we did not really get to take him out, but we did have fun dressing him up as a puppy and watching him crawl around.

He has five teeth now and two more are coming in on the top. He looks like a one year old and he is doing many of the things they are . It is hard to convince people that he is only nine months old.

It is still hard to believe just how much I am in love with him. Since becoming a mama my priorities have completely changed. I am just so much less focused on my career and so much more focused on my family and personal life. It is like I just discovered the rest of the world and I want to relish every second. It sounds like the king is waking up. I will write more soon!

First Words

It's Official! His first word is "Baba" which means Daddy in Kiswahili, but he also says "Umama" for mama especially when he wants milk. Malcolm is really getting active. He follows us to other rooms, and he is eating mostly grown up food now. He doesn't like babyfood much now except applesauce, but he loves rice, soup, and fruit.

He is also our little musician. We have an African instrument called a "zeze" that I brought back from Kenya years ago thjat he loves, and of course he loves our drums. Everyone in church was laughing today because I stood him up on my legs so he could see the choir and then he started jumping up and down and waving his arms around to the music he was so excited.

Here are some pictures of him at the zoo in September.

Still Growing

Malcolm is doing so many things that I am in just in awe. It is like an explosion of growth. He is so curious and explorative. He is crawling up a storm, but he really likes to stand up. Today at his baby playgroup he stood up, leaned on a crate and actually walked pushing it for three steps before falling down. I wanted to jump up and down and declare it a miracle, but no one really seemed to notice. Everyone thought it was very ordinary. It is funny to me how people think that all these things are normal and I am astonished as if seeing a magical act. The reality is that it is both ordinary and completely miraculous. How great it is in the midst of all life's stress that we can stop to notice these miracles.

The other thing is Malcolm is so interested in life that he seems to have forgotten all about the bliss of sleeping. He only took one nap the whole day, but then in the evening we want to visit some of our Kenyan friends. With all that Kiswahili swirling around and so many children playing Malcolm just could not stop.

When we came back he seemed to think that a whistle I found was the funniest thing in the world. He started making a funny sound that was like "att, att, att" and laughing. This is all very exciting, he just grows and grows and grows.

More pictures from the wedding in North Carolina

Here are more pictures of Malcolm with me in North Carolina. I was very budy playing the matron of honor role so Malcolm had many opportunities to make new friends. Thankfully, I have been with a really social child. That is helpful since he gets carted to so many meetings. Harry, who is in one of the pictures was one of the best men (there were two) and he really fell in love with Malcolm. He wanted to hold him all the time!

Strangely, I have no pictures of Lola (the bride) holding Malcolm. I am sure that on the day I was too afraid of the potential of drool or poop ending up on the wedding dress, but we could have captured the picture at other times.

I have been very busy lately and have not had a lot of time to write inspirationally. Anyone have any inspiration to share?