Halfway to baby

I am 20 weeks today, so exactly halfway to our family meeting our very special new someone! Thought a belly shot might be appreciated at this juncture. Ultrasound is a week from today, so watch this space for news on whether J and Q will expect a brother or sister...

Boy meets horse

Y and J went up to the mountains this afternoon on a boys' outing and connected with a guy who helps oversee a farm up there. They bonded and the guy offered to let J ride his tame mustang, "Cuckles," which J did happily for the better part of 45 minutes... Happy day for all concerned.

Urban Amish

On Friday a gaggle of girls around 13 years old rang our doorbell holding a clipboard. They were polling neighbors as part of a questionnaire-style game for a party they were attending and hoped we could answer some questions on their worksheet. All entertainment related stuff, mostly related to TV shows. There were about ten blanks on the page

We could fill in exactly one blank: the stage name of Miley Cyrus. Drum roll: Hannah Montana! Three cheers for me. On the question of who the new judge is on American Idol - Y did know there was a new judge (that made one of us) but not who it was. The other questions on the page read like a foreign language to us. We were entirely clueless, and thus the girls left shaking their heads and disappointed.

We, on the other hand, felt encouraged and even somewhat vindicated in our abdication in the most mindless aspects of our culture... All that lack-of-TV is really starting to pay off! "We're the urban Amish," Y said in satisfaction as they left.

"The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry..."

...and apparently of would-be campers in So Cal as well. While the fam made it to Joshua Tree yesterday in decent time and in fair weather (excitedly, as the forecast was for a greyer and colder day), alas, we had not factored in spring break. So past the college scene and calendar are we that we didn't ancipate the flocking of every rock-climbing young American would to their mecca of Joshua Tree, and their corresponding occupation of every single solitary campsite in the park. We know - we checked - not fully believing the knowledgable park ranger and pervasive "full campground" signs hanging outside each of the five campgrounds we drove through. A colleague of Y's who lives in the area was hiking in the park yeseterday and told Y that he's literally never seen the park so crowded. Kind of the opposite of how we'd envisioned the scene and experience.

We made the best of the situation by enjoying our picnic lunch and bouldering with the kids here and there on rocks, in between the various park campsites we checked out... and a full In 'N' Out burger meal on the way home, shakes and all. The kids did remarkably well in the car for the approximately nine hours of van time they logged (it's about 3 hrs 20 minutes one way, and travel through the park isn't quick either as it's pretty large). We left home at 7:45 AM and returned home around 9 PM. We especially pitied J, as he fondly remembers our fall camping episode, and we'd talked up the tent and campfire and such for several days... And, truth be told, ourselves given our enthusiasm for the trip and the 3 or so hours of prep work we'd put in getting ready to go on Friday night.

But it was a good experience in handling disappointment, particularly as a family and for Y and me to think through how we want to explain and handle such episodes to kids in a fair way that builds maturity. And we're hoping for a do-over at a closer-by campsite a couple weeks from now...

Joshua Tree

In Jan 2004, the month our NH farm "came together" (literally - since it was a modular, it was delivered in pieces and assembeld on the building site), Y and I took a long weekend trip to southern California. We rented a motorcycle and, with his childhood friend Matt, rode out to Joshua Tree from San Diego and spent a day or so out there. It was a fun and carefree time, one might say legendary, and one we often think back on fondly.

Something tells me that our upcoming weekend camping adventure at the same park will be nothing at all like that trip five years ago. Mini-van, two toddlers, new family-size tent, pregnant mom, dog... Can you say "polar opposite"? It'll be a completely different type of adventure, and we're all excited!

Chick housewarming

Last weekend the chicks made it into their new outdoor home - the completed coop. Red letter day. The first night next door neighbor Gretchen, age 7, who lives next door said they 'kept her up' at night (by which she meant that she heard them chirping for a few minutes before she fell asleep, we later found). It would be impossible for no noise to travel since their house is about 8 feet away from ours and the girls' bedroom window directly over the coop. But good news for Gretchen and sister Gwen: they are pretty quiet at night... and no rooster in the house. Phew.

Angus' plastic travel kennel that was the chicks' recent home has been borrowed by our new friends Courtney and Dave, the first people we met here in Ventura to have backyard chickens - giving us hope for suburban wannabe 'farming' (if you can call it that!) here in So Cal. They got some new chicks on Saturday and need a temporary home for their little flock till they're big enough to go into their coop. Glad we're able to put it to good use...

Coops and cuts

We saw my mom off on Thursday after a lovely though short visit and now are enjoying a slow weekend here which is actually quite nice... I'm behind on work and Y is trying to finish off the chicken coop he spent the better part of last weekend building so we can get the chicks out of the dining room (in Angus' travel crate).

Several were interested to see Q's new haircut so I'm including a photo of it, and I'm throwing one in of the coop as it currently stands too for good measure.

Mud girl

My mom is in town for a few days this week - hooray! - and yesterday we went to the beach for a bit before dinner to play. When it comes to getting wet and/or dirty, Q has the opposite tendencies to her brother... she loves it. Evidence:

Upon returning home and stripping her down, Q got her first ever hair cut (my affectionate nickname for her prior was 'mop head') which was almost a literal wrestling match. I knew it would be, which is why we hadn't cut it previously. Y held her head while she writhed in her high chair and my adept, experienced mom snipped away. Results are tres cute.

A marvelous matriarch

1) 1/06: Frances & baby J; 2) 11/06: Frances' 97th birthday at the farm

When Y and I made front page news in mid-2004 by our buying our NH land and closing its longstanding spring, we received an odd phone call. It was from an elderly woman who'd read about us in the paper and began querying Y about his last name. It turned out that it was her maiden name, and she wondered about Y's family history. She was, we discovered, the younger sister of Y's paternal grandfather... his great aunt Frances. She lived just up the road from us, about three miles away, and we'd lived in the area for three years without knowing it.

That call began our relationship with dear Aunt Frances, whom we visited bi-weekly and came to love dearly. She died yesterday in her sleep in her bed at age 99 - just 9 months shy of her 100th birthday.

How much Aunt Frances added to our lives in the nearly 5 years we knew her! She was a warm, generous-spirited, conversational woman, and we always enjoyed our time with her. Her mind was sharp and her memory keen, and we always came away from time with her having learned something new. We met her friends and enjoyed getting to know her children, Y's cousins. Frances delighted greatly in our children and marveled in their new developments as they grew. They returned her love and always enjoyed seeing her.

More than once I heard Aunt Frances say she didn't know why the Lord had kept her around so long, that she never expected to live into her 10th decade. She said she was ready to go... and now she has gone on to be with Him. We will miss her dearly.

4/08: Frances with baby Q

Playgroup pals

In Rollinsford the kids and I were part of a stellar local playgroup - cool interesting women who all had kids around the same age (at the time, 2 1/2 yrs and younger; J was one of the oldest). It developed gradually over 18 months or so, and by the time we left I was very sad to leave such a fun and dynamic group. This photo was taken in June '08 a few weeks before our move.

The playgroups here tend to be playground-based, which is nice since it's fair and mild outside virtually the whole year, and who doesn't like to be outdoors with your kids? But on the other hands, it's not ideal with toddlers as moms spend most of the time chasing their kids. Leaving Q unattended for even a minute at a playground is downright dangerous, so it's not an optimal connecting time for me with other moms.

So I started a playgroup among the moms I know here who have kids around the same age as mine, and almost all the ones I approached seemed very keen. We're meeting on Thursday mornings and started last week at my house; this morning was our second day. I like the women, to the degree I know them, and I'm pleased about it. It's great to get back into this type of thing after a hiatus of eight months, though things operate a good bit differently now that kids the tots are older, more mobile, and more willful. This morning for instance we had an episode in which a little girl Q's age intentionally sought to ram her with a baby stroller- repeatedly. Hmmm, haven't navigated scenes of this type too much yet...

Recent events and outings

On Saturday Y and several of his colleagues went to a large gun show being held down at the Ventura fairground. It was apparently a pretty large scale event, and Y felt more at home and among 'his type' among the crowd and vendors than is his normal experience in suburban CA life.

On Sunday I went to a baby shower for Lori, our next-door neighbor and the wife of our California Highway Patrol ("Sargent Bob"), whose baby girl -their first - is due in four weeks' time. Many women from the neighborhood were there, and it was a fun time. To boot, I got my first foray into So Cal baby shower games, none of which I'd seen before in my dozens of northeast showers.

Then last night Y and I drove up to Santa Barbara to join our friends Andrea and Thomas in attending the Banff Film Festival at UCSB. We attended this festival at least four times when it came to Portsmouth in years past, so it was cool to reconnect out here and watch some fun films focused on outdoor sports. We managed to squeeze in a short and tasty dinner at Andrea and Thomas' house - prepared completely by them, so added luxury for us! - which made the whole evening all the more enjoyable and worthwhile.