One.

It was almost 365 days ago that I recounted the most joyous occasion that has come to pass in my 27.45 years.

Life is anything but ordinary with this little girl in it:

I had a total of 28 hours to spend in Portland this past weekend to help her more-or-less blow out ONE very special birthday candle. I was more grateful than ever for Daylight Savings Time to afford me one more hour to soak up her sweetness.

She hollered at me for a good five minutes upon becoming reacquainted with me, as this cruel evil auntie had selfishly spent 2 months away from Her Adorableness. Not by choice, but at the unfortunate hand of teaching a night class on Friday evenings, leaves me very short weekends in which to travel to and from the hometown.

She got over it and we became the best of friends once again.

The last time I'd seen Muffin Bear she had just started to eat real people food and sit at the table with us in her high chair. She had also become more vocal but mostly just rambled on in a language unique to her.

This time I was waddling behind her holding her tiny clenched fists to ensure she didn't take a nasty spill on the hardwood, as she navigated around by her new gift of mobility on foot. After a couple laps this way around the kitchen island, she stopped for a moment, looked back at me, and kindly straightened her hands from my grip and pushed them away.

She would do it herself. PS. This was on Saturday and she had just started walking on Wednesday.

It's amazing how one small action can make you feel so proud and joyful, but simultaneously makes you want to curl up in a ball and cry uncontrollably. She is growing up too fast and is already gaining her independence! How much we already have in common (good luck parents :D ). If this is just the first year, how quickly will the first eighteen going to go? Which would then make me...oh, phew, Aunties don't age, just parents.

Thank goodness the holiday season is rapidly approaching so I can absorb myself in her presence for uninterrupted days on end.

Towards the end of her party, my brother said some very touching words in prayer about the change Olivia has made in his life and how she is continuing to teach him how to be a father. I too am amazed that this little 20 pound ham has transformed my heart which is so full of love for her. She makes me want to do better just to open up her world and show her the possibilities.

Oh, my love. You are the absolute BEST thing in life.

The Gateway.

I feel like a cliche.

According to me, and debatable by others, 27 is officially the gateway age to your late twenties. "Gateways" are never good. Marijuana is the gateway drug and apparently if you smoke that, before you know it, you'll find yourself in a trailer cooking meth wondering what happened to your bicuspids and why your face has potholes in it.

Needless to say, I've always been told to stay away from gateways. Apparently, time and I have a little dilemma on our hands.

[I've never been here, but it is the gateway of the west. Maybe the exception?]

I've never had a birthday before where I was thinking, wow, 30 is in your very real future. Not that 30 is that old (this statement is simply made out of courtesy to my 30+ friends; 30 is indeed "old" to the twenty-something). But luckily, when I reach 30, I'll think that they are my best years. And the same for 40. And apparently 50. We progressively either get better at life or we say life gets better in order to cope with our mortality.

Not sure if the chicken or the egg comes first here. I'll get back to you in 3 years.

So what does this non-mainstream milestone mean? I'm not sure.

Last year on the eve of my twenty-sixth, I got inked. This was something I contemplated over for a long while as it'd be on my body, well, forever. What could I possibly want on me FOR-EV-ER? Most people don't know and do it anyway only to be reminded on their 70th birthday when they're married to Lucy that they love Mary, thanks to the heart with her name inked on it on their not-so-raging bicep. Think twice about names, folks. Unless it's your own or kin you can't divorce.

Instead of permanently burning my skin with someone's name, my sign (apparently these change too?), or chinese symbol for "peace," I decided to get a reminder.

There's only one thing I feel really strongly about and that is simply, to do everything.

Going to the places that fascinate me, eating the food that makes my mouth water and doing it all with the fantastic people I am lucky enough to have as a part of my story. So I appropriately tattooed the phrase "Experience the World" on my leg/ankle region. In Greek. Because Greece kind of changed my life. (Yes, I've been there and this cannot and shall not be compared to the Chinese symbol comment I previously made).

So to get me out of my twenties-are-going-by-incredibly-too-fast-funk, I decided to recap the year and see what I did. Did I experience the world this last year?

I did Cabo. Vegas round 6? Road tripped to Crater Lake on a whim. Participated in Sundance the sequel. Annual Newport Seafood & Wine Fest. Then I relocated to Seattle.

As long as I can look down on every passing birthday and know that I indeed have not become b-o-r-i-n-g and that I haven't fallen out of love with life, I guess I'm okay and 30 isn't so scary.

And tomorrow? Tomorrow I leave for Barbados to see my mom.

HappyThankYouMorePlease

I moved to Seattle just a few short weeks ago, but today Portland required my attendance.

My one and only big brother turned 30. My family wasn't expecting me as I excused my presence with the obligation of my first day of work the next day. Everyone understood, of course. But for me, work doesn't come first. My family does. And if that means driving 350 miles in a day, I'm at the wheel. Especially when I have my good friend to accompany me one way of the trip.

Let's take a look at this weekend.

It started off with an AM phone chat with my mom over coffee about her upcoming move to Barbados. I wanted to solidify my visit before her departure. So my ticket to visit her for TWO WHOLE WEEKS has been booked for June. I could not be more excited.

After the chat and a run, I headed to the train station to pick up one of my oldest (in tenure, not in age) girlfriends who had hopped on the Amtrak on Saturday morning for a 24 hour trip to come see my new home and give me some decorating tips. She has outstanding taste and happens to make her living off her talents and interests as an interior designer. We didn't get much done on that front, but we did manage to watch about 1.5 of our favorite movies. Except she didn't make it through the first one:

"I didn't even see Pippi make it to land."

[One of my favorite quotes of the weekend]

Her, my other oldest friend that lives up here, and I, have more laughs in a 2 hour span than the funny bone ever intended or thought the body could allow.

Sunday was my brother's 30th birthday. His lovely wife had planned a little surprise family get-together for that evening. I threw both my mom and dad off course on Sunday morning phone calls that consisted of a faux plan of the day that included spring cleaning and prepping for my first day of classes tomorrow at my new job. In reality, I was headed to "Tubs," my brother's very favorite sammy place that happens to now be down the street from me and then hitting I-5 South to make it in time for birthday festivities.

When I pulled up to my brother's, I was giddy just as the sight of seeing the cars of my family members. I'm a sucker for family get-togethers and really love having us all in the same space, even if just for a little while. My brother was oh-so surprised for his Tub's sandwich... and to see his little sister of course. I was equally excited to see my 30 year old brother and the face of my very favorite person in the world that belongs to a certain 5-month old.

Simply can't get ENOUGH of my niece. I marvel at her every action. She grabs. She drools. She talks (in her very own language). She fixates. She smiles. She cries. This last part has been dubbed "pulling a Teela" as I apparently did this a lot as a child when my mom was out of my peripheral.

She is incredible and makes my heart fill with an uncontrollable amount of love.

As we continually make this vertical climb on the age ladder (the next rung seemingly quicker than the previous years), if we're lucky, we come to take nothing for granted. Not the five-minute phone call to say hello, not the thought of knowing you have a handful of spectacular people in your world that would literally drop anything they were doing for you. Like buying a last minute $50 train ticket to see your friend for 24 hours.

I've realized that I have people in my life that it excites me to be in the company of and am indebted to be apart of their story. People that you want to take little pieces of and place them in your heart for safekeeping. Their wonder is awe-inspiring and you wish that you could elongate these moments and move horizontally instead. One of these people is my big bro. He's my one and only sibling, the one who completely understands my history as he lived by my side underneath our blanket forts we systematically constructed over the Nintendo/Sega and created the silly games that only children can imagine up. Like slithering across the living room floor in a given path while trying to elude ones self from the alarm system. Alarm censor light blinks=You're not winning. Or agreeing to help me make Kool Aid without the supervision of the parents on Sunday mornings and not ratting me out when more of it ends up on the floor giving it a nice sticky pink glow, rather than the destination of the pitcher.

We've celebrated many birthdays together and today his daughter got to help him blow out his birthday candles. Drooling, blowing air, they both extinguish flames and our signature birthday cake from Helen Bernhard's is just as sweet if not sweeter.

Driving back to Seattle at day's end with the joy of the last couple hours I got to spend with my family was evident. It wasn't until I noticed my face getting sore that I realized I had been smiling for the past hour.

Oh, and now I have this to play with.

[iPad!]

I guess in the true nature of a younger child, I get presents on my brother's birthday too.

[Blog Title Credit: Josh Radnor, star of CBS' "How I Met Your Mother" & writer/director of "HappyThankYouMorePlease." Premiered at Sundance 2010, hopefully coming to DVD/BluRay soon.]

The world made a little space today.

It may seem odd to question the significance of being present at a birth as this is the most thrilling of moments, but I contemplate everything and I've never experienced such a moment.

I was the youngest in my family. Obviously, my parents had been on the planet long before I and since I was the youngest, I never experienced the birth of a younger sibling. My cousins were born either before me, when I was too young to really know what was going on, and when I was old enough, they were out of state. But today, I was old enough and sitting in that waiting room right down the hall, holding my breath to ensure I’d hear the beautiful screams of our little girl, my niece, when she was ready to join us.

We arrived at 6pm Friday evening. She arrived at 2:16pm Saturday afternoon and trust, not a minute sooner (That is the very short version to a long laborious process). Her mother, by the way, is a rock star. What she endured and the duration of which, was simply incredible. She brought it.

The world made a little space today (yesterday now). Enough for 7 pound-7 ounces of joy to squeeze into and make her own. And in the process, forever changing the lives of those who awaited and welcomed her.

It is an indescribable excitement that I, or anyone for that matter, feels about the birth of a baby that is apart of their family or part of someone’s family whom they are close to. These last 9 months have been an extreme test of patience (which I have little of anyway but the teaching thing is slowly but surely helping), awaiting the arrival of my niece. Of course I filled this time buying her cute outfits and accessories which I would one day get to dress her in and books that I still can’t wait to read to her and help her sound out those tough words in. We’ll succeed together.

Seeing that full head of dark hair and that perfect blend of skin to make an olive complexion, I could not and did not try to hold back any tears. Here she was minutes ago a bump in a belly whose heart beat was our joyous music, and now here she was making the cutest sneezes, a noise much sweeter than anything I’ve ever heard before and sucking her oh-so-tiny thumb.

Staring at this little creation in my brother’s arms as he looks at her with adoration, steals my complete breath, takes all the moisture out of my mouth and I shed relentless tears that I won’t fight back. Here is the person who’s foot of the bed I snuck into on nights where the shadows scared me on my walls or a nightmare startled me awake, holding his very own daughter. He’s the one I always resented for being overprotective or too “nosey” about where I was and who I was with, now holding his own little girl. How lucky she will be to have someone who cares for her more than anything else on this Earth. And on those days when she is frustrated and doesn’t understand the loving place it comes from, I can’t wait to talk her through it. I know he’ll make space when she too thinks that there are monsters in her closet.

I’m so excited to get to know her. I wonder what kind of ice-cream she’ll pick when I take her to Baskin Robbins or what her favorite movie will be. I wonder what colors she’ll want to decorate her first big girl room in and which Disney character she will run to hug on her first trip to Disneyland. Oh, the places she’ll go.

In closing, I happen to be reading ‘To Kill a Mockingbird” right now. For some reason, every book I seem to pick up, conveniently fits right into my life at that moment. And for this moment particularly, “To Kill a Mockingbird” has touched me.

“Jem” I asked, “what’s a mixed child?”

“Half white, half colored. They’re real sad.”

“Sad, how come?”

“They don’t belong anywhere. Colored folks won’t have ‘em cause they're half white; white folks won’t have ‘em cause they’re colored so they’re in betweens. They don’t belong anywhere.”

There is nothing more beautiful than the blend of these two colors in her skin. She’s blessed with the absolute best of both worlds and I will always tell her that. I’m sure the world will too.

The world has made a space for you and that is with us and in our hearts forever. There is nowhere else you're supposed to be.

You belong right here, Olivia.

Scavenger Hunting

I enjoy scavenger hunts. Give me a clue that requires me to use off-the-wall random knowledge I've acquired to take me to the prize and I’m all thrills. I like scavenger hunts when there is a foreseeable end; in two hours tops, it’s over.

My brother and I (him in the middle and I on the right) used to craft scavenger hunts around the house; one of many of our made-up games that we created to amuse ourselves. This along with stair ball and slither-on-the-carpet-around-the-living-room-and-not-get-caught-by-the-light-on-the-alarm (okay this one didn’t have an “official” title), were a few of my favorites.

For our house-hunts (not to be confused with HDTV’s popular hit ‘House Hunters’), we would make the other sit in their room until all the clues we had thought up were spread out amongst the house. We’d get real creative with clues like, “Mom says we can’t have these til after dinner,” that led us to the teddy bear cookie jar. Whoever completed their scavenger hunt in less time, won. And usually at the final destination, there was some type of prize. Maybe a lego piece or something else that would bring relative joy to a 10 year old.

These were what I considered to be good times. You figure it out in minutes, go to the next destination and before you know it, success! You win.

Suck it scavenger hunt.

The house suddenly became the world and I realized that these clues could take me anywhere. That in itself is incredibly overwhelming. What if I misread these clues? If the “hint” was to take a left at the fork and I took a right and ended up in Norway but was supposed to be in Nepal* (yeah, right)...will another path form? It’s not as easy as backtracking from mom and dad’s room to the living room. And if I do misstep, are there two possible right answers or can we increase the odds and say there are infinite directions that lead to awesomeness?

I realize I am overanalyzing. I do this often. This time my excuse is that a new year of my life looms just days before me. I am about to hop on the slide that will take me into the latter years of my twenties and that in a sense is terrifying. Not because I feel “old” (okay maybe a little) but because I haven’t figured it out. Unlike my brother’s clues, they are very well hidden.

"All you have to do is pay attention; lessons always arrive when you are ready, and if you can read the signs, you will learn everything you need to know in order to take the next step." -Paolo Coelho

Sweet. I'm all ears.

*Devoted blog readers (all two of you), please remind me I wrote this when I send you a postcard from Nepal.