Groucho's family

Happy New Year

2010-01-01T13:45:00.000-08:00

Hola. Matthew rappin' atcha for a change. Well wishes for a healthy & prosperous 2010!

We spent most of the week in Orange County with Aunt Amy & Uncle Bill. A nice warm break from Portland over the New Year holiday. Flew down Tuesday morning, returned that Friday, Jan 1, 2010. Lucy traveled well. We all had a great time.

I took a lot of photos.

We'll start with our first night there & Lucy's best-friend for the trip: Lotus the cat.

That first night, Lotus did wind up taking a swipe at Lulu—but after that, it was an amazing display of kitty / excited little kid love. While a sane cat would run and hide from an enthusiastic, enamored 3-year-old; Lotus would come & perch on the arm of the sofa next to Lulu, indulge her in not-quite-right cat toy play, abide her gentle pat pats. Adorable!

Melissa has a cute video (or two) of Lucy play play playing with Lotus.

Lucy mostly called Amy & Bill's house "Kitty House" or "Cat House." Very cute. (And here is hoping we don't get in trouble for taking a child on vacataion to a 'Cat House.')

Not to rub it in like: this was the morning of December 31. We went to the pool & there was not a cloud in the sky. Oh, was it snowing / raining / cold & dark where you were? Drag!

Little warm shallow pool. Goofball had fun splashing around.

I only really went off the rails with my photo taking (would shutter buggery sound off color?) when we went to Laguna Beach. Very scenic, bustling, touristy, artsy town on the coast. Being tourists ourselves, we started by eating ice cream. Lucy got blue bubble gum flavor.

Lucy is really fond of her great uncle Bill. It is sweet. She wanted him to pick her up & carry her several times. Lulu seldom wants that from anyone other than mom & dad.

Lucy's best "say cheese" smile. She's really giving that smile her all!

Swinging. Wherever we go there must be swinging. (Lucy's lips are blue from the bubble gum ice cream, FYI.)

And we all walked down along the water's edge with Lucy. Uncle Bill, then mom, then dad.

Here is Lucy on the beach with her aunt Amy.

I just love these last three photos of my beautiful ladies.

For Deborah, although she doesn't deserve it.

2009-12-14T08:55:00.001-08:00

Fine, here's your much-nagged-for blog update. But seriously, when's the last time YOU updated your blog? Oh, right, you don't even have one. So...

Kidding. I just don't have a ton to say these days. I'm reading a lot, but kind of goofy books I don't think most would enjoy so not really fodder for recommendation (Terry Pratchett's Discworld series...hilarious, if you're in the mood for goofy "fantasy"-ish fun). Lucy's...Lucy (daycare on Friday):

Just another variation on a theme. Maybe she's got a future as an extravagant mask-maker or makeup artist? She's having a big developmental period these days (although some may think the paint explosion above belies that statement a little...). Talking in 3 word groups, actually climbed the stairs holding the railing -- as opposed to our hands or crawling up them -- for the first time ever yesterday. Doing somewhat better eating at the table with utensils. Still sleeping HORRIBLY.

My friend Hank is getting married in Vietnam in a few weeks; unfortunately they weren't able to get a visa to come to the US so we won't get to meet Thao for a while yet.

Matthew's getting ready to do another series of his encaustic paintings; they should be stunning. Working on getting an etsy store set up for his vinyl wall decals. He's also building up quite a following for his TwitterArt (tw1tt3rart)...hundreds of people from all over the world are following (and leaving comments in languages he's left trying to decipher using Google, to limited success).

Mom's coming down for the first half of Lucy's winter break, then we're off to Amy and Bill's in Orange County for a few days. So that should be fun.

Mah Jhong with the girls this weekend, I think this is going to be my time to shine and I'll probably win the big bucks ($5)...watch out, ladies!

OK. You're updated. Happy, Deborah?

Stuck on you

2009-11-30T13:32:00.001-08:00

Lucy's entered a new (flattering, tiring, sweet, exhausting) phase of her development/attachment. Recently, she just can't get enough touching. She wants to be on someone -- preferably me, but in a pinch, anyone -- ALL THE TIME. She's very demanding about it. "Mama, chair. Chair!!" when I'm required to sit on the couch with her. Or "Up-up-up!" to be carried. And if I try to ignore the up-up-up and make her walk on her own, she does this little hurry-up move and gets in front of me so that I either have to walk over her, stop, or pick her up. And when I do give in and carry her; she most often gets a little "handsy" if I'm not wearing a turtleneck. We've started co-sleeping many nights, and in our king bed I put a pillow or two lengthwise down the bed to us so that she isn't literally sleeping on my head. It usually does the trick, but last night I woke up with her down near the bottom of the bed, both arms wrapped around one of my legs. I don't remember that it's always been this way; I'm pretty sure it's something that's popped up over the past few months.

I haven't done ALL the attachment reading, or if I read it I didn't retain it...I hope it's a good thing. I hope -- and think -- it means she knows what she wants and is secure enough to "ask" (i.e. demand) it of us.

So, that's where we are. In other news, she FINALLY learned how to get down the stairs...still not walking, but learned to turn around and scoot down backwards. I think this newfound freedom to roam will be a huge help in her development. More and more language coming our way -- a few real sentences, too ("I need help." "I want ..."). Overall, just extraordinarily sweet and joyous. We're so lucky.

Peril? Puke? HILARIOUS!!

2009-11-17T15:38:00.000-08:00

We're getting a handle Lucy's sense of humor...there isn't a lot that makes her laugh out loud, but when she does...well, that might be the best thing that's ever happened in my world. So far we've identified three laugh-out-loud things:

1. That video of a kitten puking we posted before -- still fantastic!

2. A 30 second segment of Dora where a baby jaguar falls over the edge of a waterfall -- hysterical!

3. A scene in the movie "Up" where they're getting blown about in a storm and things fall off the mantle and crash around and they're in danger of plummeting from the sky. FUNNIEST THING SHE'S EVER SEEN. Giggles, squeals, spits milk if she's drinking.

We've got to get a better video to share...until then, though: washing her hair with a scrub brush at daycare.

Skram

2009-11-02T10:39:00.001-08:00

Have I told you lately how cool my brother is (well, "brothers are," but you'll have to wait a while before you get the Ben profile). My youngest is Jacob -- or, a nice professional grown-up sounding "Jacob" to the rest of you; I get to take advantage of the grandfather clause and he'll always be "AJ" to me. He designs and builds his furnitere line at http://www.skramfurniture.com/; beautiful striking pieces. He's been getting some nice press recently; most recently a snippet in the London Financial Times. A nice picture overview of his stuff on a single page (on his site you can view by type and collection) is here.

Above are some gorgeous vases, below is...actually, I will let you look first and try to see it. Maybe it's just me, but when I see this photo it takes a few seconds for my brain to re-arrange appropriately so I can see what I'm looking at.

An optical illusion chair. Again, maybe just for me. I guess it takes a little time for my head to get out of straight lines and into an artier space.

And this credenza...that wood. I just want to pet it.

You're pretty awesome, my brother(s).

Halloween 2009

2009-11-01T07:20:00.000-08:00

This was Lucy's first time trick-or-treating. We thought the little ballerina would look cute holding some flowers in a photo. She thought it would be better to rip the flowers up & throw them everywhere. Oh, Lucy. You'll see above (right side) that I caught the last flower in flight as Lucy hurled it. Little ballerina of destruction…

Here the trick-or-treat gang is, getting ready to hit the neighborhood. I pity the fool who doesn't have a treat ready. This crew looks like they've got some pretty vicious tricks in store. For example, Lucy might rip up their flowers like a little flower-shredding ballerina-maniac.

Knock knock.

…and they're off.

A dance move?

Even though it was Lucy's first trick-or-treating, she got right in the spirit of it. Candy? Great! Dogs & cats? Even better! Lucy wanted to go into everyone's house to meet their pets.

Breaking News

2009-10-18T18:31:00.000-07:00

News Flash: Lucy is still pretty.

I probably didn't need to, but I added some Photoshop to make this picture a little more artistic looking. Blurred background, some 'watercolor' filter. You should be able to click this photo to open a larger version.

FYI: This shot was taken about 1 second after she stopped picking her nose with her big toe. She is looking down angelically at said toe, possibly contemplating a satisfying nose-pick, gazing on what treasures she has extracted from her nostril. That is Lucy: a fine blend of adorable & gross.

Melissa thinks I should write more words with this post; about my life, my hopes, and my dreams. I can't imagine that is what you want to see when you could be looking at more pictures of Lucy but here goes:

I am 5' 10" and have been for some time.
I hope to have some nachos for dinner.
That is also my dream (nachos).

I'll share more intimate details like that in my next post, too. Boy! Are you in for a treat! —Matthew

Bath Time

2009-10-14T20:58:00.000-07:00

Lucy went through a period of hating baths not all that long ago. It was bubble bath that brought her back around to enjoying the tub. But now every night she demands a bubble bath. And she wants it to be an hour long bath with more and more bubbles every time.

Here she is having fun in the bubbles…

"Cheese"

"Water from the top?"

"YAAAAH!!!"

According to Yo Gabba Gabba "Bath time is splashy time, its splashy fun time." This seems to be accurate.

Midwest & books

2009-10-12T05:03:00.000-07:00

Hi from the midwest; as Matthew said below (or was it on Facebook, or Twitter, or skywritten with an airplane or scrawled in wet cement...so many media outlets these days, hard to keep track) -- I'm in St. Louis for the week for work. Just woke from a so-so night's sleep...disappointing. I'm ALONE in a huge bed, no crying kiddo, no snoring dogs or husbands. And yet I toss and turn. Well, I expect it to get better -- can't let this opportunity go to waste. In other words: hello, artificial sleep aids! Anyone want to come say hi?

And ... well, I have nothing at all intersting to say, but the blog is very photo heavy these days and so I wanted to at least pretend that I still know how to use my words. In some way other than losing repeated Scrabble games to Law Mommy.

Lucy is in her new daycare room; she had to transition at the beginning of September to the next class up. It was rough. Remember the transition from home to daycare, this time last year? The non-stop tears for 8 hours/day, for NINE weeks? Well, she's getting better. Week 1 was horrible, week 2 was good because they had one of her old familiar teachers subbing in there, week 3 was mixed, but the end of week 4 -- awesome. Good sweet happy girl. God, I love her.

I've been reading a lot on my beloved Kindle. Some silly crap (spy books, mysteries), some recommendations to pass along. Agnes and the Hitman -- light, sharp, sexy, entertaining, credit to Law Mommy for recommending it. All the Steig Larsson "the girl who..." books...there are two of the trilogy published so far; the third any day now. Ultimately mysteries, but incredibly engaging and engrossing. Just a bit into Audrey Niffenegger's lastest, Her Fearful Symmetry (LOVE the title) but like it very much so far. Also, re-read one of my old favorites, Good Omens, hilarious and by one and a half of my favorite authors (not totally in love with Terry Pratchett yet but I think I could become so -- halfway through the first Diskworld novel). It's given rise to a strange but, I think, ultimately irrestible compulsion to re-read all the old Sandman graphic novels. So I'll have to hit Powells to start re-collecting those...had them all at one point, but got rid of them. Moral of this story: never throw anything away.

What are you reading?

And on that note, out into the midwestern wilds to find coffee and work.

Pumpkin Patch

2009-10-10T21:46:00.000-07:00

We went with Kurt & Sarah & Francis to the Pumpkin Patch on Sauvie Island this morning.

Birthday Season Redux

2009-10-04T16:36:00.000-07:00

(Hi. This is Matthew, rappin' atcha. So don't imagine the narration in Melissa's voice, OK? And keep your expectations low as far as the, uh, "word putting together" is I guess what you'd call it)

I just downloaded the last 4 weeks of photos of the camera. All about Lucy? What a surprise.

Lucy had a fun belated 3rd birthday — belated because she was sick sick sick on Sept 10th. Here she is with a present from Grandpa Norman & Grandma Judith:

Play ice-cream cones & cupcakes! Lucy loves them. She is all about cupcakes these days, so she was pretty excited about them.

…And to use them as telephones & hats &c. She had fun ripping open the packages & the whole birthday present experience.

…As evidenced here. Grandma Bobbi came to visit & brought Lu gifts. Here Lucy is vocalizing her excitement. Presents? YAAAAAAAYYYYY!!!!!

The next photos are from the Vancouver Farmer's Market — it is held every Sunday. We'll be going less once the weather turns, but we have gone quite a few times this summer. Lucy loves it. Balloon. Swings. Hawaiian ice. Dogs & people & music.

This picture really captures how much Lucy loves balloons. We were just shopping at Trader Joe's today & the woman who filled up Lucy's balloon — actually her second balloon of the trip — said "I wish that a balloon could make me that happy." Lucy was ebullient over the prospect of trading her yellow balloon for a blue balloon, clapping and cheering.

Lucy wanted yellow & red ice. The two-spooned approach served her well. Amazingly, this is a "small."

Grandma Bobbi & Lucy — the second time on the swings. With a balloon! Good times.

Homeward bound… a good visit with Grandma Bobbi.

Lucy hasn't mastered the word "Grandma" yet — but as soon as Bobbi came in the door on this visit, Lucy exclaimed "BobBEEE!" So that, apparently, is what Lucy is going to call her Grandma Bobbi. It is very cute.

In further Lucy news, she seems to have gotten over the hump with adjusting to the new class room. By the middle of last week she was participating, napping, eating OK, getting into the swing of Coral Reef — getting used to her new teachers & friends.

She's a tiny racist

2009-09-24T19:48:00.000-07:00

So I realized today as we were leaving school that Lulu might be just a little bit of a racist. Every Asian woman we passed, she called "Kai Lan." Seriously, like four or five times. Happily she didn't enunciate well, so I don't think people realized she was calling them all a bobble-headed Chinese cartoon, but I did (and I must admit I thought it was really funny). It's a compliment -- she likes Kai Lan!

Birthday season

2009-09-11T11:03:00.001-07:00

Happy happy to all my people: Mom on the 9th, Lulu on the 10th, Matthew today. I'm lucky, very lucky, to have you all in my life. Kind of a crummy one this year; Lulu sick, Matthew home with her all week and surely bored with kids TV at this point (I heard him murmuring "oh, Ming Ming! Again with the feathers?! You scamp! You're a wonder pet, indeed!" So maybe "bored" isn't quite the right word...).

Love you all.

From PDX to the OC & back again: a tale of phlegm, cutness, and natural disasters

2009-09-08T14:46:00.000-07:00

Hola. Matthew rappin' atcha for a change. Sup peeps?

I'm home with Lucy today while she is on the mend from a cold. We just had a not-so-successful trip to Southern California - Lucy, Melissa, and me - over the labor day weekend. But even with Lucy getting sick, we had some fun. It was good to see the family and - during the stretches that Lu wasn't miserable - she had fun meeting people, being a goof, and playing with the cats.

Lucy was starting to get sick before we went down, but it didn't seem like her little cough would amount to much. We had a good flight down.

Aside from being an adorable goof (pictured above), she wanted to look endlessly at the "A Year in Kid Believe" picture book that the people at the Stringer Center printed out. The pix in the last post are a very few of the hundreds of pictures that they assembled into a spiral-bound, probably-60-page picture book of the whole class, teachers, friends, and family over the last year.

More entertaining than I expected, Lucy spent hours going through the book and pointing out her friends and teachers and the special guest appearances from Mommy, Daddy, and Grandma Bobbi. And Lucy is friggin' obsessed with a picture of a former teacher, Kim, and Kim's baby. Even though meeting Kim's baby apparently was a pretty freaky experience for Lucy (in one of the Kim's baby pix, you can see Lucy frantically signing "All done!") - she wanted to see the picture dozens of times.

After flipping away from Kim's baby page for the 55th time...

"Kim?" Lucy asks, "Baby?"
"Seriously?" we reply, "Haven't we looked at that enough yet?"
"Kim!" She insists "Kim! Baby! Now!"
"Oh my God Lucy!" we moan, "You're killing us, kid!"

After a pleasant trip down and a nice reunion with (Lucy's) great-aunt and great-uncle Amy and Bill and her uncle Joe and friends of the family Miles, Christopher, and Mary Anne (I'm so bad w/ names - we discussed how she and her two sisters have alike-sounding names that now I can't quite recall any of them), fun meeting of the family cats Lotus, Kia, and Bently* (fun for Lucy, not the cats), we had a lovely dinner in the warm So Cal evening.

Lucy continued being adorable through dinner.

But that night the horror of the common childhood illness kicked in. She was up a lot all through the night coughing & feverish & crying. The family (sweet hearts they are) claimed they heard hardly a peep - but it seemed to me like her plaintive wails resounded quite effectively through their open-floor-plan, all-stone-floored house. I tried to sleep in on a sofa in the opposite corner of the house for a while & could hear every whimper.

So, change of plans: we moved up our return trip by a day and a half, checked into a hotel for that last night, and even made an urgent-care visit with Lu. Made sure she didn't have an ear infection or anything else serious. They tested her for the swine flu, too. Nothing serious. Just a cold or bug of some kind.

And that night we actually stayed in a really wonderful hotel & Lucy managed to rally enough for some smiles and laughs. Here she is looking down from our window at a very cool kids' water feature - a bunch of timed water jets & sprayers & sprinklers & other contraptions.

We put on our swim suits and ran around in the water park a little. If she'd been healthy, she would have been bonkers for the sprinklers & sprayers. As it was, she was happy to have dad carry her around & investigate the various ways to get wet.

The hotel was full, so they actually opened up a room for us they keep on reserve - a special suite (identified on the room sign as a "sweet") that was quite wonderful. Spacious & luxurious. And somehow Lucy managed to sleep like a log all through the night. A welcome contrast to the previous largely-sleepless night.

On our flight back I snapped a few really neat photos of the California wild fires. Amazing that natural disaster can look so graceful - beautiful even - from 35,000 feet up.

We recently upgraded from a digital point-and-click to a mid-entry-level Nikon SLR and wow... I really like this camera! It does a beautiful job just with its auto settings - and I am just enamored of the amount of data that a 10.3 Megapixel camera captures. I've always loved taking snapshots out of airplane windows and this camera really takes that to the next level. The following side-by-sides show the whole picture + a screen resolution full-size detail. (Click the images to open the larger versions)

OK... Lucy is now done with my blogging so I'm signing off. L8R, MCH

A year in Kid Believe

2009-09-02T20:48:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is Lucy's last day in her beloved Kid Believe daycare room, with the teachers she loves more than anything else. Very sad. Very apprehensive -- her and me -- about the move to her new room. We'll miss our friends and teachers a lot. Amazing: over the last 12 months, Lucy learned to walk, dance, talk, play with baby dolls, identify TONS of colors, paint and color and draw every day, eat at a table, clear her own plate, drink from a cup. Thanks so much, Kid Believe -- you've been SUCH an important part of our lives. Lucy loves you all. They had a last-day party today and gave me a year's worth of pictures they took. The careful observer might notice a theme (the kid's a friggin' slob!).

Pajama Party with teachers Amanda, Darcie, Kristin, and Erin

Snacking, lounging on the wall with Luc, Sophia, Suiyao and some kid I don't know

Got a little somethin' on her nose, I think.

Wiggling and tickling with Caroline

Nope, it's still there. Wipe a little lower, down around your chin.

No, that's making it worse. And oh, you've got a little smudge on your foot too.

She be jammin'

Oh, hey, you got most of it off but you missed a spot.

Snow. Obviously.

Tunneling.

God, she's pretty.

Celebrating Tet with watercolors.

Hey! Not filthy!

This is my favorite picture of all. Lucy, running on the track, yelling her little lungs out. I love this kid.

Baby me

2009-09-01T10:22:00.000-07:00

Looks like I'm about the age Lucy is now.

My aunt found this old picture of me. Don't I look like I'm manically trying to scalp my poor blond doll by hand -- that tooth-gritting grin, that death-grip on her hair? Which makes the setting quite appropriate, since it seems like I'm in some kind of prison cell: white walls, bed with sheet but no blanket, stark blinding lighting against plain white walls...

Play date?

2009-08-30T21:21:00.000-07:00

I don't think anyone is in the area (Laura, sometimes?) but just in case: we're having a long weekend trip with Lucy to S. Cal. this coming weekend...any bloggy buddies nearby and want to play? We'll be in Laguna Niguel. I have no idea where that is.

Smile

2009-08-26T23:25:00.000-07:00

Lucy & Melissa 8.23.09

(post by Matthew) (Hi! How are you?)

2009-08-19T18:36:00.001-07:00

Sleep is not much better. But let's not dwell on it.

On the bright side, I offer you this: relief from the insipid kids music we all suffer through in the car. Oh my god, before Lulu began to broaden her musical horizons, the Dora, the Dora, the endless Dora, almost drove us insane (ha, a pun!). No, seriously. Friggin' insane.

Then we discovered and grew to like Barenaked Ladies "Snacktime." Really good stuff -- good for the kid, amusing to the parent. I bet even older kids will like it. Here's one of our favorites, the "ribbit song" (Pollywog in a Bog).

Or this, "Nine" to us (789):

We also really like They Might Be Giants' "No" -- especially "balloon" (Where Do They Make Balloons?):

Try it -- you'll like it.

Here we are, again.

2009-08-10T08:31:00.000-07:00

Damn it.

We're back in the bad sleep cycle, and it's hurting us, badly. The transition to the big girl bed has been tough, and never really had a chance to even out -- we did it, then she got horribly sick, then she got better, then she left on a vacation for 9 nights...now she's back and I hope we can beat this thing, but so far...not so much. She's figured out how to open the door to her bedroom, so at some point every night -- and on bad nights, at 4 or 5 points every night -- she comes out and wanders around. If we're in the guest bedroom near hers, she comes in and wants to climb into bed. If we're not nearby, she goes to the baby gate in the hallway and hollers and rattles the gate like she's in The Shawshank Redemption.

We don't know how to beat this. I'm not afraid (ok, I'm a little afraid -- you internets can be rough!) to say we did ultimately do modified "cry it out" when she was in her crib a few years ago, and it worked well for us. But you can't do that when they're free to roam about, I think -- she could hurt herself. It sucks.

In happier news, though, I found a new program that will let us print and bind blog into hardcover books. In the past the only software out there was incompatible with Blogger so I would have had to convert my blog to Wordpress which I'm still willing to do, but for some reason the formatting gets all screwed up (I lose paragraph breaks -- anyone know how to deal with that aside from re-inserting them all manually?). But now there's Blog2Print, which I'm very excited about. I can either use their formats and have them make the book, or I can get it as a PDF and send elsewhere if I want a fancier (like, cloth) cover. Nice! Anyone aware of other programs out there that work with Blogger?

So that's it, in a nutshell. Friggin exhausted, but able to print the blog. So...

unpacking

2009-08-06T10:43:00.000-07:00

I recently moved offices at work and ended up unpacking a box I'd packed for the prior move, two years ago, that had stayed packed and gathering dust in the corner of my old office since then. Mostly, as you would expect, crap. Dusty crap.

But I did find two of my favorite New Yorker cartoons, and although pretty much no one in the world finds these as amusing as I do except the creator and the cartoon editor, I still thought I'd share. They're on my bulletin board by my desk; I still giggle when I look at them every day.

(In case you can't read it, the caption is: "I have an imaginary friend. He's a real person -- he just isn't really my friend.")

(It occurs to me this may be inappropriate in some way to post these cartoons? I'm no IP expert...sorry, New Yorker -- you know I love you!)

More Maine Vacation

2009-07-25T18:33:00.000-07:00

If a picture really says 1,000 words then this is going to be a heft post. Quite several days worth of adventures - mostly in pictures. Starting with what we did with the blueberries Lucy didn't eat immediately...

Making blueberry muffins.

A trip to Town Beach.

A trip to Compass Harbor.

With Gigi.

And Sylvie.

Picnic at Compass Harbor.

Airplane!

Dinner at Gigi & Bumpa's.

At the town pier.

Lots of fun walking Sylvie the Corgi. Sylvie loves Lucy. Cute.

Lucy like's Gigi's friend Vicki.

Only one rainy day. Lots of toys to play with.

Heading down to Sand Beach.

Playing in the sand.

Bumpa came along, too.

Yep. Me and my Dad.

Lucy loves Ben the Maine Coon Cat.

Ben the Maine Coon Cat fears Lucy.

Gentle pat-pats?

Hell no!

Lucy shares some chocolate ice cream with Bumpa after a nice dinner.

Every day, Lucy is having more fun - more relaxed, sleeping better, getting to know her grand parents better. Tomorrow is our last day here. Then Monday - flying back from Bangor, Maine to Portland, Oregon. This will probably be our last vacation post - unless the 30 or so pictures that Lucy just took (close-ups of the floor, mostly) turn out too cool to not share.

It has been a great trip. I was anxious about it, especially the travel, but it has been really good. My parents have just so enjoyed spending ten days with Lucy. They've been out to PDX before but this has been way more 1-on-1 quality time - and it is great to see how much Lucy loves them and vice versa. Very sweet.

Goodnight moon.

My secret shame

2009-07-23T20:20:00.000-07:00

Here's mine: I am addicted to So You Think You Can Dance; it and Project Runway (if it ever comes back) are the only two reality shows I watch but oh, I love it so much. Last night my favorite dancers did this incredible dance, about cancer, to one of my favorite songs "This Woman's Work" (although wow, the Kate Bush original is so much better than the one they used). Moved me to tears. I strongly urge you to watch, if you didn't:

Blueberries!

2009-07-21T11:47:00.001-07:00

Lucy put exactly one blueberry in her berry pail - then promptly removed it & ate it. All the rest went straight in her mouth. Fresh Maine blueberries? Yum! Apparently one of the best years for them in a while: lots of spring & summer rain. There were so many of them - so ripe & so sweet!

Good for eating right off the bush? Yes!

Good for eating out of the pail? Yes indeed! That too.

Will Bumpa give Lucy some berries to eat? You bet!

Lucy scans the remaining acres & acres of ripe blueberry bushes. Can she eat them all? No, but she can try. My little girl is going to be pooping blue!

An empty pail & a full belly... but when we get home & make blueberry muffins, Lucy still manages to devour a muffin or two. Visiting Gigi & Bumpa is one exciting new experience after another. New things to see and do - and lots of good stuff to eat. (Blueberry pancakes tomorrow!)

Lucy's Big Maine Trip 2009

2009-07-20T18:11:00.000-07:00

We made it to Maine! Took 2 trips to the airport - the first red-eye was delayed & we wouldn't have been able to make our connections so we went a day later than we'd planned - but we made it. The trip itself was kind of rough. I didn't sleep, Lucy got about a half a night's sleep - but the fun began as soon as we got to Bar Harbor.

My folks were, of course, very excited to see Lucy. And Lucy got into the spirit of things amazingly well. She has met "Gigi" and "Bumpa"* a few times and is just incredibly comfortable with them - running around to find them when they leave the room ("Bumpa? Where are you?"), climbing up on the sofa to give them a snuggle, being ever so happy and expressive with them.

On our first day, we went to Glen Mary - a wading pool about a block from my parents' house. Here is Lucy dashing excitedly to the water & wading with Gigi.

My folks prepared for Lucy just perfectly: lots of art supplies, toys, DVR recordings of her favorite shows. Here are Lucy & Gigi drawing.

The highlight of the day was an after dinner stroll down through Bar Harbor (high tourist season, very crowded) and getting cups of delicious hand made peach ice cream and eating it on the grass at Agamont Park. Lucy was jubilant. Exclaming "yum" and rolling in the grass, running around with a big grin on her face, laughing it up.

On the way back from ice cream we stopped at Albert Meadow for a little exploration of the shore, the rocks, the balancing boulder, there. Fun throwing rocks into the water, climbing about with a little help from dad, waving to Gigi up on the grass.

Here is Lucy on her little-girl guest bed exploring some of the great toys that Gigi & Bumpa got for her. She didn't sleep in her little bed, though, because Dad was ready to sleep before Lucy was on our first night here - so Lucy slept in the big bed with Dad. Somehow my chainsaw-loud snoring doesn't wake her up. Took a while for baby girl to get to sleep in a strange place, but I think she caught up on all her sleep last night.

Today, the big excitement was a trip to Echo Lake beach. Swimming, digging in the sand, having a picnic, saying hello to some very friendly ducks. Lucy did great. She is getting so comfortable in the water! We had a lot of fun.

This evening we made an after-dinner trip through town and bought Lucy some balloons, bubbles, a ball, and a book (and a rubber centipede that doesn't fit into the things-that-start-with-B category, but Lucy fell in love with the weird thing, so we brought it home). On the way home, we walked through the Village Green where a big band was just getting started playing in the Town Gazebo - some quaint - and we bumped into Jennifer Judd-McGee (I think she's hyphenated her last name - apologies if that is wrong). Great to see her & her kids.

Here is Lucy relaxing with an episode of Dora the Explorer - just like she is doing right now beside me as I write. Going to be bed time soon (just after 10pm here, just after 7 back home on the left coast - no clue how she is going to adjust to the time change - so we're just going to go with the flow)... she is being very sweet and happy and having a better time than I could have hoped. A wonderful trip so far.

We're looking forward to another Bar Harbor day tomorrow: relaxing, adventuring, eating, napping. Going to blow up balloons, blow some bubbles, play with the ball, and read the book we got, I imagine (cute book: it is a Bar Harbor themed board book). I think my parents' friend Alexis is coming for dinner so Lucy will get to meet her - and if the weather is good: more swimming.

*"Gigi" and "Bumpa" are the grandma & grandpa names for my parents. Others might call them "Sandy" and "Burt." Being their son, I'd just call 'em Mom & Dad. Or M'am and Sir...