Our Front Door

This is our front door.  I took off all the stuff on it to sand it down.  We're going to paint it to get ready to move.  The realtor says our place will fetch a higher price if it's freshly painted.  We don't have a new place to move to yet, and can't sell our place until we have one lined up, but that's just a detail and a matter of time.

Anyway, we're not putting the stuff back on the door and I felt I needed to document it.  When Taoski and I moved in here, we were a family of two.  We will be moving out a family of three.

Top left are baby pictures taken of our son, James, at the hospital he was born.  The doctor, nurse and I were the first people to see him.  I was in the delivery room when old 12-12 (he was born December 12) was born.  He had dark hair when he was born.  It's lightened over the years.  The nurse took that picture.  It's not on the hard drive anywhere and it will likely be destroyed and gone, but I've captured a picture of the picture.

Next to James is his Grandma Hall.

On the other side is another hospital picture taken of 12-12.

Just below and to the right is a picture of our family taken at Oxnard by Grandma Hall in the summer, 2012.  This is the one of the first pictures where is seemed to me James understood and appreciated that the three of us are a family and it's right for us to have pictures taken of us together on occasion.

The center is a picture of me and the youngster at Gil the Fish Gundersen's, perhaps 2010.  James was still in his pacifier phase.

Just above that one is me with Taoster and our masseuses.  We saw them for massages every day for the week or two that we were in Zhengzhou 郑州 in 2007 visiting her parents.  Like other workers in China, these girls had numbers, not names, and their numbers were 21 and 105.  We were decadent back then and may have increased our time in purgatory as a result of this indulgence.

At the bottom center and left are certificates he received this summer.  One is for completion of Science Camp-- Planet Patrol at California Science Center at USC.  The other is for completion of Bible Study at A Child's Garden/ Church of our Savior Episcopal Church in San Gabriel (but to my chagrin feels like San Marino).

How far 12-12 has come in a matter of a few months.  We went to a birthday party at one of his school friends' today.  He played with 5-6 boys-- running, climbing hills, chasing, playing t-ball--and watching it from the outside you'd think he's them his whole life.  In fact, he met them when he started at the Child's Garden a couple months ago.