6 months on Mother's Day

Keet is Six Months old today, and on Mother's Day! We've had a nice day so far. It's been raining, and this morning it was even snowing a little. Spring has been slow to arrive, and although all the snow is melted, the leaves are just now opening on the birch trees. Last weekend was beautiful, but this weekend it is cold again.
Keet in our Backyard. May 3, 2009.

School is over, but work is never done. We are trying to fill two positions in the Theatre department, and have been bringing up candidates for the jobs (director and costume designer) all week. It's not over yet. Plus, there's much to do assuming we'll have a new Film Major in the fall. The screenings of Chronic Town went very well, as did the show opening for Da-ka. We both got lots of press coverage for our events, and there was a great spread about Da-ka in the Juneau papers.

Speaking of candidates, Da-ka officially got his job as Assistant Professor of Native Arts at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Tenure track! I'm so proud of him. Of course they couldn't have picked a better candidate. This means that we are staying in Fairbanks for the long forseeable future. We thought we were, but its good to know that for a fact.

While Da-ka was out of town last week, and I was doing the Chronic Town screenings, I was pumping milk as much as possible, and sort of got tapped out! I had no choice but to start the boy on more solids. Here's a video of his first real spoon experience. It's the silver spoon mom gave him and the bowl Denny apparently made upwards of 30 years ago. It was mailed to Da-ka from Mary, Denny's first wife who had it, found out that Da-ka got the assistant professorship on Facebook, and mailed him the bowl. Now Keet gets to eat out of it.






Here's a photo of Keet's first day at the playground. May 8, 2009. There must have been 15 kids on the merry-go-round!

Keet has been practicing gateando, crawling. He'll move from sitting, to folding forward onto his belly, to rolling onto his back. He's a bid mor cautious on the hard floor than the bed (smart baby), but can scoot around on the floor quite a ways while he chases after his slippery toys.