Creature Bug

4

Can you tell I've run out of steam on Addie's weekly photos? Here it is, what? Thursday? Good grief, Charlie Brown.

It has been so much fun doing it, but I'll be happy when I don't have to stage photos anymore. It's good timing too, since the little miss is moving moving moving. Thanks to Grandma Nancy's persistence, Addie took FOUR steps today. I don't practice with her at all. As far as I'm concerned, Addie can wait another, oh, five months before she starts walking. That's okay with me.

I don't think I have five months, though.

I came home on Tuesday to these lovely sunflowers sitting at my kitchen sink courtesy of Sarah. She's so super fab like that.

Addie didn't care about the sunflowers. She was all about the vase. It's super fun to make noises into empty vases. Super fun and super funny.

And not just vases, any kind of big cup will do.

And when the cup isn't exciting, there's always the lid.

Only three more weeks until my little sweetie pie turns one. I've been collecting ideas for her birthday party, and I'm hoping it'll be super sweet and easy to pull off. After all, super sweet and easy is exactly the kind of girl Adelynn is.

Roadtrip Day 2: Rollercoasters

The final days of summer are keeping me away from the computer these days. I am fully aware that Sydney and I start school in just over two weeks. I'm not ready to give up the days of hanging out at the creek quite yet.

Nevertheless, I'm bound and determined to recap our roadtrip. Onward with Day 2!

*

Even though I've written about it before, one of the things I still find extraordinary about Sydney is her love for rollercoasters and all rides that fit into the "thrilling" category. You would not suspect this of her if you met her. She's a fairly mellow kid, and tends toward the cautious rather than adventurous. Certainly if you gave her a personality trait based on her food preferences, you wouldn't match her up as an adrenaline junkie. Indeed, she lives almost entirely on oatmeal and pbj sandwiches--the peanut butter consumed only out of obligation for her need for protein.

And yet.

She's a thrill ride loving girl.

After we decided to spend a couple days in California before heading to Reno, I found myself Googling "Six Flags." Low and behold, there's a Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo. We had planned on staying at a hotel in San Francisco, but once we discovered the Six Flags location, we ended up staying in Vallejo instead. Portland is a great many things, but home to a world-class roller coaster theme park it is not. So if traveling a bit off the beaten path to get some thrills is in order, we'll take it.

We had hoped that Sydney would be tall enough to ride all of the rollercoasters--in fact, once you hit 48" you have to pay the adult price ticket--but there were still a handful of coasters that Sydney couldn't go on.

Disappointed? Yes.

Made up for it by riding some rides multiple times? Yes.

She rode the swings all by herself since neither Jason nor I were inclined to voluntarily be flung in circles more than a dozen times. I love rollercoasters, but not spinny rides. I got nauseated just watching Syd on the swings. But as soon as she finished the first time, she got back in the line. The very short line.

No doubt Sydney would have loved to go on the new SkyScreamer ride, but it wasn't open the day we went. Next time.

Her favorite ride was Roar (pictured above), which I didn't have to chance to get on. She also had a lot of love for the Hammerhead Shark.

She made me promise to get a video of it so that she could show everyone. I dutifully got video footage, but at the end of the day the thing she really wished I had gotten more video of?

The dolphin show.

Oh, mercy. My girl is now fool crazy in love with dolphins. I'll have to upload the video at some point so you can hear her squealing in delight as the dolphins did their tricks. It's the happiest sound ever. Someday, she told me, I want to swim with the dolphins. This particular Six Flags has that opportunity (for $125), so maybe someday. After years of saving up birthday money, perhaps.

It was a fun day, and I think we probably could have spent two days at the park if we were so inclined. There are a lot of animal shows that we didn't see, and lots of rides that we didn't even look at because we were there solely for the big kid rides.

Well, mostly big kid rides.

What's not to love about a end-of-the-day viking ship ride that swings back and forth?

If you're thinking about taking a trip to Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, here are a few things I learned from our brief trip:

• We stayed at the Best Western Plus, which is within walking distance of the park. It was nice enough, had a pool, a fine breakfast, and it saved us the $15 Six Flags parking fee. Also? They sold park tickets cheaper than any other deal I found.
• Obviously, theme park food is always going to be expensive, but the park food seemed more expensive than I was expecting. More expensive than Disneyland.
• Unless the line is short, don't ride Pandemonium. The line moves ridiculously slow because only four people can go on the ride at a time. Boo.
• You can buy a FlashPass (similar to Disney's Fastpass), but according to park employees it's not worth the cost.
• If you go to the sea animal shows, be aware that if you sit up front you will get wet. As in, they make sure the orca goes up to the edge of the tank and splashes the audience. There's no getting around it. We happily enjoyed the show from a safe distance back.

I'm thinking we'll go back to Six Flags again next summer. It's only a day's drive away, and the park really does have stuff for all ages. Plus, Sydney cannot wait to show Jules the dolphins.

Dolphins and rollercoasters: that's what Sydney calls perfection.

Roadtrip Day 1: Trees of Mystery

When we were planning our trip to Reno, Jason casually suggested that we take a detour from our route and spend a couple days in San Francisco.

Although Jason likes traveling, he's not really a huge fan of road trips, so I was quite surprised he had thought of such a wonderful idea without any begging from me. Before he changed his mind, I posted our plans on Facebook, which is my equivalent to having him sign a contract.

You can't back out now, buddy. I Facebooked our plans.

Oh yeah. Commitment comes by way of status postings.

When we started talking about San Francisco, we thought we better take a drive through the Redwoods (to show Sydney), and then, well golly gee, there's a Six Flags just an hour east of San Fran, and oh my goodness gracious, could I please please please meet up with a longtime blog friend in San Francisco?

And what was initially going to be a "spend a night in SF" turned into "spend 2 nights in SF, go to Six Flags, meet with Nikki, and wander around the piers of SF."

It was fabulous.

Since it's a long drive from here to SF--especially since we were taking a long detour by going along the California coastline rather than the direct route down I-5--we headed out at 3:30 am. We were sleepy, yes, but when traveling with kids, sometimes it's best to go during the hours that they are most likely to sleep.

By breakfast time, we had already driven through Oregon and were in Crescent City, a town I've visited many times on account of having family there. After a hearty McD's breakfast, we were off to the Trees of Mystery.

Sydney did an American Folklore unit in her music class, so she was quite familiar with the friendly characters greeting us off Highway 101: Paul Bunyan and his beloved blue ox Babe. Paul and Sydney chatted for awhile (truly, they did. there's a guy (inside Paul?) who operates a mic and chats up all the tourists who wander by), then we headed out to see the mysterious trees.

Ronald Reagan is misquoted as saying, "If you've seen one redwood, you've seen them all."

That wasn't exactly what he said, but for whatever reason, he wasn't really a fan of the redwoods.

As for myself, I could fill a whole memory card in my camera with redwood photos.

They are amazing trees.

They are so tall. And so big around. It's awe inspiring to stand next to a tree that's been around for hundreds--some even more than 1000--years old. Many years ago, I went camping in the Redwood National Park, and it was an unforgettable experience.

Sydney wanted me to take her picture on top of this huge stump. It was one impressive stump.

This tree formation is called a Cathedral Tree; it forms like this naturally when the center tree dies and other trees grow up off the root. According to a plaque at the tree, people get married there, although I did a quick Google image search and couldn't find any traditional wedding pictures at the Cathedral Tree. So. Who knows.

A family tree! Can you spot the other trees growing up off the branches of the main tree?

At the end of the trail, we took a gondola ride up through the redwoods. (By the way, Gretchen: the SkyTrail lift was manufactured in Grand Junction, a little fact that made me think of you as I was floating over the tops of the trees.)

Sydney loved it, and I pretended to love it, although I kept imagining the cable snapping and our little cart plummeting to the earth below.

Yes, I have an active imagination and have seen too many movies. (Speaking of movies, there's some great footage of the redwoods in The Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which Jason and I saw last weekend and really enjoyed. The plot and dialogue isn't anything spectacular, but the cgi is AMAZING.)

Eventually we wandered out of the Trees of Mystery, and got back on the road headed to Vallejo.

Our day of traveling would have been considerably shorter if we hadn't taken the time to explore the redwoods, but I'm so glad we did.

I suppose as a native PacNWer, loving trees is in my DNA. But I think even a non-tree hugger would marvel at redwoods and be thankful that long ago California decided to protect these majestic trees.

Tomorrow's photos: Six Flags!

7, 6, 5 & scooting around

In just one month, Miss Addiekins is going to be one years old.

Wow.

Considering I'm not a "time flies" kind of person, the past year seemed to go by awfully quickly, don't you think?

All right, how about a little catching up on Addie's numbers.

When I took this photo, I mentally crossed off taking Addie's #7 picture. Except you'll notice that there aren't actually seven kids in the picture. Not sure what I was thinking...maybe because there are usually seven little kids scrambling around (and then the two older boys make up the nine Family Farm cousins).

So, I doodled in a favorite literary friend of ours. Mo Willems fans will recognize him. (Hi Pigeon!)

Oh, and the masks are from my parents. They got them in Scotland (or somewhere in the UK) when they visited my sister in June.

Would you believe me if I told you we planned our Six Flags trip just so we could get this photo?

Maybe you would, considering I did make all the cousins dress up as nativity scene characters.

Truthfully, however, it was just a happy accident. Six at Six Flags. It was as if Addie dreamed of it in her sleep and it came true.

Last photo, courtesy of our garden produce and catching us *finally* up to date:

Squash! Zucchini! And a cucumber! Which I don't think is technically summer squash, but Adelynn would not let go of that cucumber without a fight.

I'm not fighting over a cucumber.

A tomato or a green pepper? Absolutely. But not a cucumber.

At eleven months old, Addie is very mobile, though not walking. She's a fabulous eater, a terrible sleeper, a loud squawker, quick to smile and wave, and thinks it's hilarious when she bites my shoulder. She has a quirky way of crawling around. Actually, she doesn't crawl. She scoots. And she spins. And then she scoots some more. We like to call her Scooter McGavin (ala Happy Gilmore). Or sometimes Baby Hunchback of Notre Dame. I doubt she'll appreciate that moniker when she gets older, so maybe we'll just stick with Scooter.

Here's a brief clip of her scooting around in some streetside courtyard in San Francisco. (You'll notice that as soon as I mention I'm taking a movie, Sydney scrambles into the scene. Drama Queen, much?)

Tomorrow, pictures from our road trip!

1800 miles later

Firstly, I want to say thank you from the bottom of my heart for all your support. The comments both here and at Facebook, the emails, the phone calls...it made me feel very loved and thankful for each of you. Parenting is hard hard work, and what do people do if they don't have a community of others to hold onto? I needed you, and you were there. Thank you.

Secondly, I didn't really intend to go two weeks without an update. But we went on vacation, you see.

I forgot to tell you.

Major roadtrip to Trees of Mystery and Six Flags and San Francisco, and then over to Reno, Nevada with a side excursion to Lake Tahoe.

From the Redwood Forests to the Tahoe waters, this roadtrip was made for you and me. Okay, not really for you, but that song is stuck in my head.

It was a grand and glorious vacation, although it wasn't quite perfect because we were missing one very important person from our trip. Yes, Jules stayed home with grandparents. We decided that she would have had a really hard time in the car and keeping her away from the food at the amusement park would have killed us. Plus, she needed some individual attention and Sydney needed some individual attention, and so we did the road trip and Jules did days at the zoo, and rides in grandpa's dump truck, and play time with cousins, and a birthday party. It was what it was, and even though I took lots of pictures (which eventually I'll share here), we intentionally didn't take a family photo since Jules wouldn't have been in it.

And speaking of Jules, today I got the results back on her blood work.

The results?

She's perfectly healthy.

No food allergies, no lead poisoning, no high thyroid or low thyroid. Of course, this is good news in that she's healthy and, technically, she can eat whatever she wants.

So. That's that.

Nevertheless, I'm not convinced that food isn't still affecting her in some way. We're still going to do the gluten free/dairy free diet for a few months and see how it goes. Already we've noticed that her emotional intensity has lowered somewhat. And we're starting to see more of the old Jules, who admittedly is still a spirited kid, but we can do spirited. Between the diet and homeopathic remedies, and twice weekly visits to the naturopath, I think we're making progress. Jules is a smart kid, and she has quite an awareness about her emotional state that belies that fact that she is only four. When I ask her how she's feeling, she says she's feeling better. "Sometimes I get angry, but I'm not angry as before. I don't know exactly how I'm feeling, but I think I'm better."

Oh, my sweet girl. She's trying. And we're trying.

And one way or the other, we'll get there.