happy halloween

A cute little devil

the pumpkin patch

There is a picture in Lucy's room of me, about two years old, standing with my mom in a pumpkin patch. Pumpkin in hand, I am clad in a faux-shearling vest, red sweatpants, and a knit cap; my mom smiles in the background behind me as we both look at the camera. There may be a fog or it may just be the effects of time on the Polaroid film, but in any case there is an aura of autumnal crispness, of cold ground and rosy cheeks, of spook and joy.

Ever since I stole that picture out of my baby book and put it in a frame for Lucy's room, I've been looking forward to re-creating that moment with my own baby girl. Last year she was too small, and hated cars too much--we didn't even attempt the drive to Sauvie Island because I knew after a screaming car ride in one direction I would be hard pressed to ever want to get back in the car to come home.

This year seemed promising, with Lucy walking and running and interested in everything, and loving boots and playing outside, so when Shaggy's parents were here we planned a trip to the Pumpkin Patch. It was a beautiful Saturday, and I think that was our first mistake--my parents called while we were still on our way to say that the line to get over the bridge started about a mile back and moved very very slowly. We were still feeling game (some of us more than others), but as the minutes dragged on, and we talked again to my parents (who had now been in the stop-and-go traffic for about 50 minutes and still hadn't made it to the farm), we abandoned course.

I was convinced that the pumpkin-hunting outfit I'd picked out for Lucy shouldn't be in vain, so we decided to check out the apple festival at Portland Nursery instead. It was crowded but fun, and there were free samples of fresh pressed apple cider, which was delicious. Lucy got to paint a mini-pumpkin and color for awhile with her Poppa.

The next day, daunted but set on my photo op, we decided to try again, but this time we thought we'd head out to Sherwood where the farm might be less crowded. It was less crowded in that there wasn't an hour-long line to get to the farm, though there was still a wait to get on the tractor-pulled wagon to take you out to the pumpkin patch. We arrived to a disappointment: the field was not filled with rows of pumpkin plants, leaves covering up pumpkin gems like a treasure hunt; instead, all the pumpkins had been trucked over from the field where they were grown, then thrown haphazardly onto a flat expanse of mowed grass and mud. Kids were milling about, trying to make a choice between nearly identical orange globes. It felt like a deconstructed shopping experience, like the farm was just a grocery store dressed up as a farm for Halloween.

 There was no room for delight, no sense of discovery; the people that seemed to be having the most fun were the day-laborers tossing the pumpkins down from the truck assembly-line style for placement on the barren field.

I know there is some sort of lesson here about not trying to recreate your own childhood, or going with the flow, or living in the moment, avoiding outsized expectations, or not designing experiences around photo opportunities. And really, Lucy didn't seem to care one way or the other, but I was really bummed out, like I had been tricked into paying $4 for a fake experience. Next year we're setting our criteria in advance:

1. Must not take more than half an hour to arrive, including time to drive and park. (I will extend this potentially to 45 minutes for something that involves hay rides and hot cider, but no more than 3 minutes can be spent fighting crowds or in stop and go traffic. 
2. Must offer the pumpkins for selection in the fields where they are grown.

I think next year we either go to Sauvie Island on a Tuesday morning or I'll just have to convince my parents to grow their own pumpkins.

friday cute shot

go, gray matter, go!

"Look, there's good evidence that mothers' brains get bigger after they have their babies."

"You mean like bloated?"

heard on the street

"I like how the cutest baby ever in the history of everything also scowls a lot. It shouldn't follow."

like her daddy when she yawns and her mama when she smiles

My niece Teagan has bright blue eyes that stare with a little smile just waiting to emerge. When she is still she looks just like baby pictures of my brother, but when she smiles her mama just lights up in her face.

a secret wrapped in a secret

Shhh shhh shhhh shhhh

The weekend before last Erin's friend Maggie organized a surprise baby shower for Erin at Rockaway Beach. Maggie convinced Erin that they were going to surprise their friend Dana with a girls weekend, and that they just happened to get a super-awesome, super-huge house right on the ocean last-minute from one of Maggie's firefighter friends.

You should have seen Erin's face when she walked into the kitchen after dinner to five crouching figures in the dark, screaming "Surprise!". I think she almost fell down the stairs. (But probably not really, I'm sure we wouldn't let that happen.) Fortunately, her pregnant bladder seemed to hold up. At first Erin had trouble processing what was happening, then she figured it out: "It was a secret wrapped in a secret!"

Surprise!

One of the activities that Maggie and Dana had organized was a baby food tasting event, where we had to taste unlabeled jars of baby food and guess the ingredients.  Some were pretty gross. I did terribly, tending toward the exotic: for one jar, I guessed tamarind where I should have guessed apricot.

Maggie, Dana, and Erin tally the points.

Molly clenched the win with Pear and Mango, a flavor she guessed spot on. She attributed her win to time spent as the taste-testing older sister to four rather than her current status as a mother, and her advice for future game players is: One ingredient for texture, one for taste.

Molly wins the grand prize Booty Pop. Congratulations, Geoffrey!

There was a four-way tie for second place, so to determine the next level winners we had to move on to part two of the challenge:Which Candy Bar is Melted in this Diaper? A baby shower isn't really complete without some in-depth discussion of upcoming baby poo, and while it was more implied in this case than explicitly discussed, there were plenty of poop jokes to be heard. As this is a family blog, none of the funniest ones can be published here.

Insert your own caption, there are lots of good possibilities.

And, Maggie even scored a personal Karaoke kit. Everybody took a turn. The program somehow scored your performance as you went along, and cut you off if your score dropped too low. It was hard to tell what the scores were based on, though enthusiasm and high octave singing seemed to be a hit: Emily got the highest score of the evening with her spirited rendition of Material Girl.

So that was the secret wrapped in a secret. But Emily and I discovered the biggest secret of all: Leaving your baby behind to go to the beach with a bunch of girls is totally awesome.

Thank you, Shaggy!

Thanks, Maggie! You sure do know how to throw a surprise party.

Awww, shucks.

what celebrity do YOU look like?

Go here, look at images 1 and 2. Is that my baby? Slightly older, slightly more boy?

Guess that's what happens when you Google "other babies that look like Lucy". Go figure.

Also, I think maybe I need to buy those wool pajamas.

words, 15 months

spoken*

tiger
fish
bath
again
truck
moon

sky (with arms up, as in 'reach for the sky!')

park

cat

car

baby

hot

cracker

Nana

go
ball
eye
no
baa baa
mine
out
down
up
hi
dog
Mama
uh-oh
Dada


signed*

book
bird

all done
please
fan
water
food
more
milk


one hit wonders**

pumpkin

spices

flower

doctor

*In rough order of appearance, most recent on top. Words added since the last list in blue.
 **Words we awesomely got her to say once. As of two days ago, tiger was moved from a one-hit-wonder to the regular list!

goodbye, Gramme and Grandpa (for now)

Gramme and Grandpa fly back to Virginia today after nine fun-filled days with their youngest grandbaby. Many of those days were spent while Mama was at work and Daddy was at school, so I didn't get a lot of pictures. I am particularly fond of this one, though Gramme is trying to convince me that this doesn't fully capture the spirit of their visit.

But I am unconvinced.  Look at the matching outfits! Look at the grandparents' smiles!

friday cute shot

waiting in the car line for Sauvie Island

heard on the street

"What if the next one is a dud?"

friday cute shot

what Lucy is reading now

 For the last several weeks, Lucy has been all about books, all the time.

It started out with a song book that she liked to read only with Nana, and then a big book of colors that she liked to read only with Papa, and then it exploded from there. Now it's all books, all the time. She wants Goodnight Moon and Goodnight Gorilla and Hop on Pop, she'll turn the pages of the song book until you get to the one she wants, then once you start singing that one she'll turn the page and request another.

She can point to the red strawberry and the blue shoes, she touches the dog's nose and the cat's whiskers, and she can find the bunny on every page. Sometimes when she gets to the end of a book she gets really angry that there are no more pages to turn.  She brings her daddy a book to read to her in bed first thing in the morning, and the other day I caught her reading a book to her baby doll on the fireplace hearth.

As a book lover myself, I am glad to see her so voracious. The first week that Lucy was in daycare, one of the aunties said, "She sure does like to chew on books!" I'm glad she's finally found another use for them, even when I'm tired of singing the first two lines of 'Pop goes the Weasel' for the 35th time.