A Hike At Watershed Park

A couple of weekends ago it was sunny for the first time in what felt like months, and we spent most of the weekend outside. It was fantastic, especially after the winter we’ve had.  I know, there are a lot of places where it’s WINTER, with lots of snow and all. But the GREY here, ya’ll, is oppressive.  I mean, really, exhausting.  So anyway, it is lovely to see the sunshine, and we have been taking full advantage!

We went over to Watershed Park for a little hike, and had a really fun time.  Jack was thrilled with being able to run wild and free.

The park is really pretty, with rolling hills and a little stream that you can walk down to.

In the middle of the park there is a veeeeery strange area.  It may have been a drainage basin at one point?  But it’s got this crazy peace sign in it.  It’s hard to explain, and is incredibly strange, but somehow fits in that little corner of the world.

We had a really nice hike, and look forward to this summer and all the sunny days to come…

The Aquarium

When Elaine was here we went to the Aquarium for the afternoon. We hadn’t been in about a year, so it was a very different experience with an almost 2 year-old.  Jack really liked touching the starfish, he thought that was pretty great.

He also really liked the octopus.  And the “big fish”!

He talked about the big fish for at least 3 weeks after we were there.

I think I like the big room where you can just sit and watch the fish swim by.

We could have sat in there for hours.

Jack was totally into it, and we love the aquarium!

Children’s Museum

Our PEPS outing in March was to the Bellevue Children’s Museum. We have a membership, thanks to my parents, and had been one time before. All the kids had a wonderful time, running around playing in the water, shooting scarves through tubes, and playing with the giant light-bright.  They were so cute, and it was really fun to see everyone.

A Day in the Snow

On one of the days that Elaine was here, we went up to the pass at Snoqualmie to play in the snow.

Jack had a really good time.  He threw snowballs,

made a snowman,

and ate chili in the lodge.  There were a lot of people out on the mountain on skis and snowboards.  There was also a class of small children taking ski lessons, and Jack was enthralled.  He stood and watched them all sliding around, practicing on skis, and it looked like he wanted to try it so much.  I think that next season we’ll need to sign him up for a couple of days of ski lessons!  We had a great time in the cold and snow.

A Visit From Nana

On the day after we got back from Hawaii, John had to leave for a week for work.  What timing!  When I took John to the airport, I picked up Elaine at the same time.  She got to stay for two weeks, and just had a blast playing with Jack.

He really took to her, and woke up wanting to “play with Nana”.  They played with Play-doh, and colored pictures, and read Dr. Seuss books over, and over, and over.  They became best buddies, and it was so sad when she had to leave.  Come back and visit soon, Nana!

Some Weeks are Harder than Others

Most of the time, I like my job. But there are some weeks that really make me question the whole idea of working full-time with a toddler.  The work-life balance is precarious at the best of times, and when he’s sick, those scales really have to tip toward home, which makes it very hard to be as responsive as I would like to be at work. Which then makes me feel guilty because I would like to think about nothing except making Jack feel better when he’s feeling bad. It’s a vicious cycle.

On Superbowl Sunday Jack woke up from his nap with a fever, and he was feeling pretty terrible. That kid is usually a mile-a-minute, running around the house, can’t even sit still to Skype kind of a child. But when he’s sick, he really slooooows down.  It’s about the only time that I get to snuggle with him, so I actually will just soak that up and hold him as much as possible.  But anyway, back to the week…

Since we were leaving on Saturday for a week of vacation, I knew it was going to be a super-busy week at work. It always is before you go away – because I just don’t want to come back to a to-do list that I could have gotten out of the way ahead of time.  But Jack’s cold had different plans.  On Sunday night John and I sat down with our respective calendars and looked at what meetings we absolutely HAD to be at, and worked out a plan for trading Jack duty for Monday.  That afternoon while I was watching Jack he decided he wasn’t going to to sleep unless I was holding him, so we had a little naptime together.  Monday night he still wasn’t feeling better, so we pulled out our calendars for Tuesday.  And on Tuesday night we did the same thing, because he still wasn’t back to normal.  On Tuesday night/Wednesday morning, his fever broke and he decided he wanted to eat and play for the first time in 3 days, which was a great thing, but unfortunately it happened at 1 in the morning!  So we spent some quality time together when I would have preferred to be sleeping.  Thankfully he had a great day at home on Wednesday, and we all had a solid night of sleep that night, so Thursday life was back to normal.  But what a rough week, and every time I felt sorry for myself I would just remind myself that Jack was fina probably feeling even worse.  I am so glad that he’s back to 100% finally!

Falling Down…

Today my cell phone buzzed, and my heart dropped because it was Jack’s school calling. That’s an awful feeling – my mind instantly goes to the worst case scenario of what could have happened to my baby! I love that school, because the first thing they always say is “Jack is fine”, which is so comforting. But, my poor baby did have a little incident today…he tripped and fell face-first into a bookcase, resulting in a big red bump, a lot of crying, and a bloody nose. Oh no!

When I picked him up he looked even worse than just the bump on his face, because he had also used a green marker to decorate his cheek and chin. His teacher had tried to wash it off, but not all of it was gone, so it looked like a bruise.  I wanted to scoop him up and smother him in kisses the instant I saw him! He’s a wiggly little boy, who was totally over the fall by that point, and he really didn’t need all that momma love, so instead I went ahead and brought him home, fed him, and gave him a very soapy bath.

It’s amazing how resilient toddlers are – we could all take a page from their book!

Friends

It is so cute to me to watch Jack discover that he’s his own person, and that other people are fun to be around.  He still is mostly in the parallel play phase, but he’s recently been asking for his friends Leo and Kiki when we are on our way to his school in the morning.  He says “Elo”, and he can say “Kiki” very well! When we got to his school on Tuesday, after being gone for 3 days, he and Leo were just smiling and giggling at each other as soon as we walked through the door.  Apparently they just play and play with each other all day long.  His teacher told me they have to be separated at naptime sometimes because they won’t let each other get to sleep because they are giggling so much.  It’s so funny!

I’ve been friends with Christa since we were in the 5th grade, which was a long time ago! Her son is about a year and a half older than Jack. We got to see them over Thanksgiving when we were in Florida, and Barrett and Jack got to play together.

There is just something really special about seeing our kids playing together.  There’s no one that knows you better than your family, but Christa comes close in my case! I hope that we have many other opportunities to get them together for fun.

I have many dear friends who are a very special part of my life, who I have fun with, get support from, and appreciate so much. I hope that Jack has the opportunity to have many dear friends over the course of his life, too.

Children’s Museum of Seattle

On the tuesday after Christmas we took a trip over to Seattle Center and went to the Children’s museum.  Allison had bought a Groupon for admission, and this was a perfect opportunity to use it. I have a feeling that we will be going back often.  Jack had a blast, and it was a great rainy afternoon activity.

They had a “fire truck” and a “bus” that the kids could pretend to drive.

Jack would have stayed at those all afternoon, running back and forth from one to the other.

There was a little grocery store where the kids could get a cart, put “food” in it, and go through the checkout.  There was a construction room, complete with hardhats!

There was a hands-on waterfall where the kids could play with toys in the water.  There was a room with levers and cranks and tubes to experiment with.  There was a “cave” you could walk through to see bats on your way to a tent, where you could pretend you were camping. There was a boat, and a room set up to look like an african home.

There was a room that was full of books and fun places to sit and read them.

Overall, it was a totally fun place, and Jack was beside himself the whole time.

Jack and Reid Turn One!

Jack turned one on June 29^th. Unfortunately, he got sick around the 25^th and still wasn’t feeling that great on his big day. But he managed to have a great birthday anyway.  He got lots of presents, and his Grandmama and Grandaddy came into town, so he got super great attention from them as well.  Our friends James and Lida have a little boy, Reid, who turned one on the 3^rd of July, so we decided to have a party together.  It was at our house, and we had a red, white, blue and 1 theme. Here’s the rundown!

Hall of pictures: Lida and I both picked out 12 pictures of each of the boys, one of each month they’ve been alive.  I put them on ribbon and hung them chronologically. We also gathered up photos of the two of them together, and hung those up.

Time capsule: Instead of presents, we asked everyone to bring something that represents 2010 or 2011 for a time capsule. The boys will open them on their 21^st birthdays. We got some fun stuff!  Lots
of people brought magazines and other printed materials. James brought them both a Playboy!  Our friends who work at Redhook Brewery brought them t-shirts, and we put a Sounders scarf in
Jack’s.  My mom brought them both all the National Parks Quarters that were minted in 2010.  I think it will be a really neat thing to look through in 2031. Wow that sounds like a long time from now.

Banners, balloons, and bubbles: I spent quite some time making banners to hang around the house. I cut them all out, and glued the small ones to the large ones.  I wasn’t sure how to attach them to the ribbon, and Lida had the brilliant idea to use a hole punch and string the ribbon through. It worked beautifully.  We also bought red, blue, and silver star-shaped balloons to put around the house. We attached little bags of animal crackers to them, and sent them home with all the kids that came as party favors.  Of course we ended up with a couple of extras, and Jack has had an amazing time
playing with them.  Finally, I bought this really fun bubble machine. One of Jack’s favorite things are bubbles. That might have even been his first word! He loves to point at them and say “bubbuh”. The bubble machine spits out a ton of bubbles. We set it up on the deck, and let it rip.

 

 

Food: Lida was in charge of the food and she did a great job. We had BBQ pork and chicken to make sandwiches, baked beans, chips, corn on the cob, and sandwiches for the kids. We used cookie cutters to make the sandwiches into stars and “1”s.

Cakes: I took a cake decorating class a couple of months ago with my PEPS girls, and I was anxious to test my skills!  I made a vanilla cake with banana filling, a chocolate cake with raspberry filling, and two smash cakes. I was pretty excited about the giant cupcake mold I had bought for the smash cakes, but to be honest, you couldn’t really tell that’s what it was supposed to be.  I think they turned
out really well.  Turns out, I could have made ONE cake for the adults, and ONE cake for the two kids to share.  Jack took about 1.5 bites of his.  Reid, on the other hand, LOVED his cake. He
sat in the high chair eating it forever! It was so cute, he was covered in cake and icing. Thank goodness for bibs.

It was a total zoo at our house while everyone was there, but I think everyone had a good time.  All day I was just walking around in disbelief that it had been a year since that beautiful baby came into
the world.  He’s so special to me, and I really wanted to make that a special party. It’s been a long, crazy, eye opening year, one which I wouldn’t trade for anything, but that I’m very glad is over at the same time.  Happy birthday to my sweet baby boy!