in Portland . . .

Well . . . I guess I'm not a very good blogger so far. I've been remiss. Actually what I've been is busy, getting down to Portland with a car full of dogs and diapers to visit with my family for a week, and wrangling an 18 month-old on my own (Daddy is up in Seattle at work and Grammy and Grandpa both work full-time) - whew! I cannot imagine how single parents do it. Kudos to all of you who take this on alone, and may you be able to count on the village to lend you a hand.

My daughter is testing, testing testing me. She wants to get up on the chair and stand on it. She wants to take the sidewalk chalk and put it in her mouth. She wants to eat her book (seriously rip chunks off of it and chew them and swallow them). She wants to run with a stick down a hill. She wants to get down and walk BY HERSELF and not hold my hand. She wants to talk about her vagina with my parents' friends (thanks to my efforts to teach her the correct names of her body parts). She wants to drink my beer at a restaurant and will start shrieking when I offer her some "delicious juice" instead. Actually, I know she's not testing me - she's just trying to live her young life and figure things out and learn about cause and effect. And I am in a surprisingly good place with her right now. Now that she's talking we are having something of a dialogue, and she remembers what I say and says it back to me.

Right now we are talking about "sad" and "happy," and she's trying to understand. These are big concepts. I told her that Mr. Potato Head looked sad yesterday because he was laying down on the floor (where she had thrown him) face down with his eyes in his mouth hole and his tongue in his ear hole. I was just making mindless conversation, but she really picked up on the "sad" and she went over to Mr. Potato Head and pointed and said, "Sad!" Then she went over to the sleeping dog and pointed at her and said "Sad!" Good job, Mama. I can't just go tossing words around anymore, I see. Now she understands that people/creatures who are sleeping or in some kind of position of repose are sad, so I've got to try and figure out how to explain sad in a different way. I'm excited that we're beginning to talk about feelings now, though, so I don't have to use the word "Owie" all the time to get a message across. I found myself telling her the other day that if she didn't put her bottom down into her carseat (she was at the time arching her back and screaming as I was trying to get her into the car) it would give Mama an owie. Talk about your manipulation of language. But you know what? That worked.

I miss Portland very much, but I've lived in Seattle for two years now and it's becoming home to me more and more. Everyone always says Portland is a smaller Seattle, but I'm not exactly sure that's so. Portland is a more concerned Seattle, I think. People who live here are more invested somehow - more proactive about the future of where they live. Not to say that I haven't met plenty of Seattleites who love where they live - I have. I just think that Portlanders are more interested (and historically have been more interested) in creating the place that they love, and Seattleites have a beautiful city with some great things going on (and some not-so-great things), and they just love it, albeit a bit more passively. How's that? I'll think some more on this and get back to you. I'm a bit distracted right now since the baby just woke up from her nap and is crying for me.

I will say that I always appreciate the no sales tax aspect of P-Town and also the full-service gas stations. And you know what? Gas costs less here than in Seattle! What's up with that? Why do I need to get out of my car and fiddle with all of that and get my hands all nasty and pay more money on top of it?

BUT, Seattle has the foot ferry. It has Alki Beach and the Space Needle and a few more brown people than Portland, perhaps. That I like. And Seattle has my husband and my baby and a bunch of new friends and the life we are creating for ourselves there. I am attached to the city I grew up in, it's true. But I am more attached now to the nest we have built in Seattle, and to dreams of the future with my family there.