My parents have returned. They spent a week in Tofino (a resort in BC Canada) and then popped into our lives on Saturday. Sunday, we headed to REI to get rid of our pesky dividend. Wayne and Sara fared very well. The heat wave continued so we decided to go to a non-air-conditioned museum. The Burke Museum had an exhibition of the best wildlife photography in 10 years. We saw some amazing photos. Sara was very good, playing with her toy posse, pretending to be a frog or a bird, and pretending to go to sleep.
Mom has taken over the household. She shopped and made dinner 2 days in a row.
July 23, 2006
The best summer sequel
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July 21, 2006
Bite of Seattle
I tried to get 7 different people to come with me. Granted, I was calling only the night before. The excuses were pretty good, going on a cruise to Alaska, helping set up a nephew’s wedding, and Vacation Bible School. It turned out going alone with Sara was delightful.
The event: 25th anniversary of Bite of Seattle at the Seattle Center (i.e. lots of food)
The intention: Arrive at 11am (opening), stay for maybe 2 hrs
Reality: Arrival at 11:30 and stayed till almost 4pm
The food: Delightful
The play: Topnotch
The dilemma: Heat. hot, hot, hot for Seattle.
It’s fun to go to a festival that is just about food instead of a festival that includes food. If I were to name my hobbies, they would be reading, walking, photography, hiking, but high up there is food. I enjoy eating out. I read restaurant reviews. I like cooking. I like reading cook books. The only magazines I get are about cooking.
We started with lemonade at Dish D’lish. Sara thought that sitting on the grass in shade listening to music drinking lemonade was the end. She protested when I wanted to get more food. She got her plastic dogs and played with them in the grass.
I finally convince Sara to wander over to the crepe stand for a nutella crepe. Chocolate, crepe, and powdered sugar; no brainer as a kid food. My child just wanted the powdered sugar and would not even take a bite. With initial hunger abated, we sat and listened to music.
Next we went for a Sara favorite, curly fries. She finished them up. Sara guided us to the steps by Key Arena. There was an area of shade. Sara played with her dogs for 45 minutes. I just sat and enjoyed the day. I made some phone calls on cell phone. Sara found a stone that rolled very well. Her dogs would run away from me and then back.
Eventually, I mobilized us again. We had cherry lemonade from the Dahlia Lounge. I was tempted to get their doughnuts, but resisted. I was pursuing Hawaiian shaved ice. Eventually, I found it and we had cherry flavor. Sara ran around the grass more. I lay in the grass and just looked up at the sky. Turning into a lazy summer day.
We went to the restrooms and Sara discovered a bronze slug statue the size of a small sheep dog. Sara then proceeded to “ride” the slug for the next 20 minutes. I sat in a ‘hand’ shaped seat and waited. Sara looked like she was ready for a nap at this point.
But then we discovered “the ramp”. It was a handicap ramp about 200 yards down near the Key Arena stairs (original play area). Sara ran up and down. She was so good. She would get to the bottom and then turn around and run back to me (reassuring to a mother who is slowing down w/ pregnancy). This continued for another 20 minutes. So much for the nap…I got to stare at Tom Douglas’s feast. For $10 you could get crab cake, hanger steak w/ syrah sauce, pork shoulder w/ tomatillo salsa, snap peas w/ mint and ginger, corn salad w/ blueberries, and chocolate cherry cupcakes. I realized I hadn’t had a substantial food yet, just sugar.
So we ate more. Guess what Sara wanted? Cupcake. We got two. Unusually, Sara ate the whole thing. Guess what she wanted next? Mommy’s cupcake. I made her wait until I was done with my food. They she turned her attention to my snap peas. She only wanted the peas inside. She ignored the core (normally her favorite). As reward, she got to share my cupcake. We both decided it was time to go home. Sara proceeded to conk out and I followed suit when we got home.
Now we’re vegging in our basement because it’s the coolest level of the house and watching Nemo.
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July 20, 2006
Summer Sara
Tuesdays are always my days of possibility. If I plan the day right, I have half a day where I don’t have to work. Lately, Sara and I have been having lazy mornings with a couple of chores before I head to work. Sometimes I’ll have to go to a doctor’s appointment or something.
I’ve been meaning to write more about Sara. A lot has changed since my “State of Sara address” in Jan. Sara continues to grow and change. I’m often surprised how she can seem so big and still so small at the same time. Sara is still sporting her trademark curls and sparkly blue eyes. Just now, she’s pulling one of her Shirley Temple curls. Mostly her hair is light brown with blond highlights (is that auburn?). She is slowly getting the concept that there’s a sister coming. She loves to play ’stole Mommy’s nose’. She’s expanded the game to include “got Mommy’s baby”!
Right now she’s watching her favorite TV show “Caillou”. She often watches TV while Wayne and I take showers. She used to watch Zoboomafoo and Elmo. Now it’s Caillou and Dragontales. When Justin and Skylar were here, they would often gather on our bed to watch TV with Sara in the morning. It was kind of sweet.
Sara has a toy posse. She found an old purse she got from the consignment store and populates it with 2 plastic dogs, 2 dinosaurs (’dinos’), 4 trains, red race car, and a small yellow truck. She’s toted this ensemble with her to Baker Mountain, friend’s houses, and the bath (minus trains). With summer, we’ve started playing on the deck more often. She will gather multitudes of plastic tupperware, gets her own water from the sink (only a few spills), and plays with posse. Sara started pedaling her red tricycle yesterday. She insisted on ‘wearing her helmet’. Trains are a hit since we’ve been temporarily gifted with a massive Brio set from our friends. We had good friends over who brought Maya (4-3/4 yo) and Anja (10yo) and the trains entertained them. They built a huge track that covered the entire living room floor (see flickr for photos)
Sara has moved from a few words to chatterbox status. I’ve moved to interpreter status. Most of the time, she’s clear to others. She’ll say “Mommy, doing?” She hasn’t added questioning words yet. I calculated that she said ‘Poppa’ 18 times in 30 seconds. Poppa is quite popular right now. She calls our neighbor Erica, ‘Eric’.
Summer fun
Summer is bumping along. I was kind of stressed at the beginning of May thinking about everything we were going to do. We had something planned for every weekend in May, June, July, and half of August. Initially, I found that a little overwhelming. The summer has been planned around the idea of taking little to no vacation time. We had our first camping trip at Gold Basin campground in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest with our church. After 2 years without camping, it was nice to stage our equipment and prove we can still do it just fine.
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July 13, 2006
First Post!
Well after some setbacks with some database corruption, I was finally able to get the new blog back online. It should be faster and better. Let me know if you have problems!
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July 9, 2006
Bye Bye Linux!
So wootens.net is going down this week to be replaced by a new OS-X based server. The mail server will go from sendmail to postfix (with new authenticated SMTP service) and the webserver will go from trusty old Moveable Type to Wordpress (everyone else seems to be doing it, so we decided to jump in the bandwagon). The transition should be seemless, but down time maybe a couple of hours during the switch over.
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