Category: E.

Raspberries and Lavender

The beach condo my family stayed out was on the Olympic peninsula and about 10 minutes away from the small town of Sequim. It’s a great little town. Because it’s in the rainshadow of the mountains it receives a lot less rain that the surrounding areas. The climate is great for growing things, especially lavender.

While we were in Sequim we stopped by Graysmarsh Farm to pick some raspberries and buy some lavender. E had a fun time roaming up and down and rows and eating handfuls of raspberries.

E examines the raspberries.

When he got bored with the berries he entertained himself with some of the handy sticks lying around.

Everyone enjoyed feeding E berries and he was more than happy to keep eating and eating and eating them.
(During the next 24 hours he had four poopy diapers. It was insane.)

I had never seen such huge raspberries before. They were incredible.

We ended up with two big buckets of berries. We ate one of them and then froze the rest.

By the time we were finished everyone was tired and E was tired AND grimy. But everyone had had a good time.

Besides berries, the farm also grows lavender. Because they don’t have a fancy gift shop their prices on bulk lavender were a lot better than some of the other local farms ($15 for a gallon bag instead of $25 at other places). If you’re interested in visiting the farm they have a website with details on their growing schedule.

At the Dinosaur Museum

These are some of my favorite pictures from our visit to the local dinosaur museum last weekend.

E and his friend L thought these fish were great.

The huge water/sand table was also a big hit.

I thought E looked pretty cute in his oversized smock.

E was terrified/fascinated but this model shark.

Even after we had moved on to the next display E kept wandering back to stare at the shark. I think he wanted to make sure it wasn’t going anywhere.

It’s a pretty decent little museum. E was too little to get anything out of the actual dinosaur skeletons they have, but he really liked the water table and this sand pit where the kids brush sand away to uncover fake fossils. If you’re local and you want to meet up there, let me know. My membership gets guests in for 50% off. I’ll hook you up.

We came. We saw. We ate hot dogs.

It’s strange to think about how this was E just a year ago. He’s such an active part of our lives now but I can’t remember him doing a lot back then.

Anyway, the weekend was nice. N had the day off on Friday and so we went to the local dinosaur museum with our friends Earl and Judi and their kids. Then on Saturday we had lunch downtown with my friend Amber and in the evening we went over Earl and Judi’s house for a barbecue and to watch their city’s fireworks display. They live just up the hill from the launch site and so the view was great.

E hates loud noises and so at first he was really freaked out by the fireworks. But after a while he got used to them and enjoyed them a bit.

Part of the big finish.

Kids setting off fireworks in the street.

Swinging in the hammock was more E’s speed.

The weekend was great but I didn’t get anything done around the house (funny how that happens quite frequently around here). We fly to Seattle on Friday morning and there’s quite a list of things I need to do before we leave. It’s going to be a busy week but I’m looking forward to this trip.

Lucky Girl

It started with the haircut.

I like E’s hair on the longer side but lately it’s been threatening to enter mullet territory so this morning on the way to the gym we stopped at this place that specializes in kids’ haircuts. I was bracing myself for the worst: the first time E had his haircut he cried and almost fell out of the little car he was seated in, the second time he really freaked out and repeatedly tried to to stand up.

But this time E was a dream. He was excited to sit in a little car and watch an Elmo video and graciously condescended to let the stylist snip away at his hair. He didn’t cry once, even when the stylist trimmed around his ears with the clippers. I felt so proud of him. He suddenly seemed a lot older. (By the way, if you go to the local Cookie Cutters ask for Weston. He’s great.)

The beginnings of a toddler mullet–it had to go.

The long suffering customer.

The dapper young gentleman.

After the haircut the rest of the day was a dream. We went to the gym and E went into daycare without fussing. I worked out on the stair machine and read a good book. Then we went home and we ate lunch. E went down for a nap and I folded laundry and watched an episode of Primeval. When E got up we went to the store to run some errands. As we were leaving the store it started pouring rain–it was coming down in sheets. I hadn’t brought an umbrella so I bought one at the store and gathering my bags and holding E I ran out to the car. E thought the rain was super funny and even though my pants and shoes got soaked I was laughing too.

N was already home when we got home and was doing the dishes. E and I played the piano (i.e. he sat on my lap and banged away at the keyboard) for a while and then I fed E dinner. It was N’s turn to make dinner and so he made a delicious kimchi jjigae. While the soup was simmering I did some stuff for work and then we ate and watched a tv show. And then I went to bed.

I know it sounds like a fairly uneventful day. Nothing really newsworthy happened. But all day long I was struck over and over by how blessed I am. I’m writing this down as a reminder to myself for the occasional days when everything seems to be going wrong and I wallow in self-pity: I’m blessed with a wonderful family to love and who loves me. I enjoy a standard of living that 98% of the world can only dream about. I have a healthy body as does my family. I have the means of working for my own satisfaction and to help my family. And I have enough income that if I need to buy a $12 umbrella I can do so without worrying about if I’ll be able to pay my other bills.

Pretty awesome stuff.

How about you? Is there something that you’re especially grateful for today?

A seat at the table

E has always been kind of a late mover: he crawled late and walked late and it wasn’t until this last week that he really figured out how to climb up on chairs. But now that he’s figured it out he LOVES siting in the chairs at the dining table. Unfortunately he’s not always aware of where the edge of the seat is and we’ve had quite a few spills. But he’s getting the hang of it.


E’s First Trip to the Zoo

We’ve been having some pretty unusual (for Utah) weather lately: we’ve had rain and/or a thunderstorm almost every day for the last week and a half. I’ve kind of enjoyed it but it has put a damper on taking E around outside.

So when the weather was nice on Friday and Miranda called about going to the zoo we jumped at the chance. Jan, her boys, and my mom and Steven also thought it sounded like fun and they ended up coming too. Half of Salt Lake also showed up; it was super crowded.

But it was really fun. For E the highlights were attending the bird show (I highly recommend it.) and riding the carousel and little train.

E and me on the carousel and my brother Steven in the background.
E LOVED it and cried when it was time to get off.

Us on the train ride. I know he looks terrified, but he was just startled by some overgrown branches that whipped out at us. He actually really enjoyed the ride and kept saying “choo, choo!”

After a while E zonked out in his stroller.

It was a fun day but was definitely a bit of an outing. The zoo is kind of far from our house to go regularly but I’d like to take E back at least one more time this summer when N can come with us.

E is on strike

For over a week now E has refused to drink any soy milk and I don’t know why. (In case you didn’t know, E has serious food allergies to several things including cow’s milk which is why he drinks soy.) For the last several months he has been taking a bottle of soy milk before his nap and one before bed time but over the last few weeks he’s been drinking less and less of his bottles.

Then about a week ago he just quit cold turkey. He doesn’t want anything to do with the soy milk. If I pop the bottle in his mouth he’ll fill his mouth up and then let the milk dribble out the corners of his mouth and down his neck. He thinks it’s hilarious (but predictably, I disagree).

I’ve tried putting it in a sippy cup but as soon as he tastes what it is he spits it back out. I’ve also tried a couple different brands of soy milk and even chocolate soy milk but it doesn’t make a difference. It’s pretty frustrating. He’s been drinking soy formula/milk for eight months. What changed? What’s going on inside his wee little brain? His behavior is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

I worry that because he can’t have other calcium-rich foods like yogurt or cheese he’s not getting enough calcium but he does takes a couple of those gummy calcium vitamins a day which should help. I don’t want to overreact but I just don’t what to do. Should I just let it slide for a while or if I should call his pediatrician to see what he says?

Meh. What do you think? Any ideas?

Fun was had (eventually)

I had been wanting to take E to the local pool for a while now. I decided to take him yesterday because school gets out today and I figured it would be better to go when it wasn’t super crowded–you know, in case he freaked out. Which he did.

I honestly thought he would really like it. E loves taking baths. Anytime I turn on the water in the laundry sink that we use for his baths (it is super deep so he still fits) he runs into the room and hopefully starts tossing his bath toys into the sink. When he realizes that no, we aren’t taking a bath right now, he usually has a mini tantrum.

Anyway, the whole experience started out poorly. E was totally freaked out by the swim diaper. He did not want to wear it and kept trying to take it off. I changed him at home because E hates public restrooms (he is afraid of loud toilets) and so I figured the less time spent in the locker room the better. But, novice that I am, I forgot that swim diapers don’t really absorb anything: they’re just there to catch poop. So when we’re walking through the lobby and E slips and trips on some water on the floor I was first annoyed at someone having split something and not having cleaned it up but then very quickly the annoyance turned to embarrassment as I realized that E had probably um, made the water himself. But they were very nice about it. (Lesson learned–change into swim diaper at the pool.)

E was fascinated by the pool and the people in it but the fascination quickly turned to horror when it became apparent that, surprise, surprise, we were going in the water. The pool includes a little toddler section where the water’s only 6-12 inches deep and there are two small water slides. My friend Kristin and her little boy were meeting us at the pool and were already in the water when we arrived. As soon as I carried E into the water he started freaking out. He was terrified. When I sat down in the water he scrambled around in my lap trying to climb up me so the water wouldn’t touch any part of him. I was seriously thinking that we might have to leave. But little by little we splashed around and he got more and more comfortable in the water. After 15 minutes or so he was okay sitting in the water by himself and even going down the water slide on his stomach.

We ended up staying for about an hour and a half and E cried and cried when we left. I loved swimming when I was a kid and I’d like him to be comfortable in the water so I think I’m going to try and take him to the pool maybe once every other week or so. Hopefully next time we’ll skip all the histrionics and go right to the fun part.

My Little Theiving Magpie


E is fascinated by our toiletries. And he’s tall enough now that if I forget to push everything back at least six inches from the edge of the bathroom counter there is no guarantee that it will be there the next time I need it. I’ve gotten out of the shower only to discover that my deodorant, moisturizer, or hairbrush is missing and then I have to wrap my towel around myself and go on an impromptu scavenger hunt.

I’ve been keeping this hair creme in the cabinet but yesterday I left it on the counter. As you can see, the container is super shiny. You should have seen E’s eyes light up when he saw it this morning. He clutched it to his chest and carried it around as if it were the most precious thing in the world. I guess at that moment, it was.