A break from our usual subject

I thought you'd enjoy this brief interlude from our daily toddler bulletin. Here a picture of my mom fulfilling her "teenage dream of being a Park Ranger." She's a volunteer at a local natural preserve in Las Cruces.

It's nice to see someone spending her day not in the company of Elmo. (I like Elmo, actually, but I find he can be a little relentless in his cheer, you know?)

I'll be hiding in my bed under the covers with my eyes closed

Audrey has become a bit obsessed about the videos we took of her at the hospital, and during her first few days at home. I figure that this is reasonably wholesome viewing. She especially likes the one in which our dearly departed cat, Neko, meets the baby for the first time and then stalks off in a fury.


When the afternoons get long-- particularly on those days like today when Audrey declines a nap-- I sometimes try to con her into playing games like "Amuse yourself quietly while Mom reads a magazine" or "Find Mom under the blanket on the living room floor."

She is so not falling for this. While I was reading my book on the couch she walked up to me, wagged her finger and said sternly, "No book!"

Fortunately the little imp is now snoring sweetly on the baby monitor and Scott and I are sitting down for a little t.v. And no, we are not watching Neko Meets the Baby. It's nice to just sit here and not having anyone (no matter how much I love her, and I do) commanding me to sit down in a tiny Ikea chair at a tiny Ikea table and put the farm animal puzzle together.

Back at Drumlin

Barns, exhibits, gardens... who needs it? Sitting together in the gravel is simply the best.

Egg sorting with Bethiah at the hen house.

What say we sort a few dozen more of these jumbo extra large, then break for lunch?

Getting right up to the fence to see the baby goats and sheep shearing. Today was "Woolapalooza" at the farm. They shear the old fashioned way with a great big pair of scissors (or "shears" I guess you'd call them). We watched while a couple of annoyed but basically cooperative sheep were relieved of their winter dreadlocks.

We ditched the stroller. Better for pebble gathering. Audrey took a hand from Ruth and Rebecca.

After all the recreating, Audrey fell asleep in the car on the way home and uncharacteristically stayed asleep for a full hour when the car came to a stop in the driveway. That's one tired egg sorter.

Spin, spin, spin, spin!

Note to self: do not start this game with Audrey right after a meal.


Scott's been away this week in Hawaii for work (I know, I know-- isn't it terrible?) so Audrey wants to be with him all the time. While he was gone she looked for him under the bed and in the closets, and thought that he must be in every passing car that we saw. She missed him bad. I missed him bad. Welcome home, Scott. And if you have to leave us again, bring more Kona coffee with you.

Oh, and I'm just going to answer the question you are surely shouting out loud right now: why didn't Kris and Audrey go to Hawaii, too? Well, because it kind of had to be a short trip and it's a long (horrifically long) flight from Boston and if I'm spending that long on a plane with a toddler, I'm staying where I land for at least three weeks. Maybe we'll swing it another time. Here's one of the cool things Scott took a picture of while he was in Volcano National Park on the Big Island:

TXT: Mom says "time for nap." LOL!!

There are few things more enchanting to Audrey than phones. She prefers a real one, but sometimes she sits down to make some calls on her play phone. More than once she has called one of Scott's clients when he gave her his phone to play with, thinking he had the phone on some sort of super kiddie-proof lock down. Think again, my friend.

The artist at work

This is a collaborative piece Audrey and I did with her first box of crayons. You can see, in the upper right, evidence of her pointillist style-- a clear departure from my more traditional squiggely lines. She likes to slam the crayon tip down on the page, making bold points of color, occasionally nibbling a little non-toxic crayon wax. Today I scraped blue and purple off her teeth.

Vacation Part II: Salt Lake

Here's a travel quiz: You are in Tucson, about to board a plane to Salt Lake where you will almost surely spend the night at the airport because it's snowing in your final destination, Boston. Oh, and your toddler is coming unglued because she is 1) sick, 2) teething, 3) flying on very little nighttime sleep and no naps for five days. And you happen to be from Salt Lake, where you have great friends you have not seen in a long time. What do you do?

You cancel your flight, that's what!

Boy are we glad we did. What would have been the crappiest, longest layover of our lives turned into a lovely visit in Salt Lake with Kate, Molly, Myron, Malon and Mike. The first four in that last provided great company, food and lodgings to us (and when you travel with a toddler you don't take any of that for granted) and the last one, Mike, gave us a tour of the gorgeous new library in Salt Lake.

Great to see you, everyone. Thank you! We will be back. And your rooms are ready at Hacienda Willcox whenever you want them. We are a cat-free establishment now...

Butterflies

!


Great exhibit of butterflies at the Tucson Botanical Gardens. A small, humid greenhouse so densely packed with huge butterflies that you had to watch your step, and have a volunteer brush them off your sleeves on the way out...

Audrey pointed and said, "Birds!" Which sounds like "Boooods!"

Vacation Part 1: Tucson

My dad's family, L to R, back row: Joyce, Uncle Greg, Dad, Janna, Uncle John, Aunt Kris (the original Kris), Scott and Audrey. Front row: Uncle Sergio, Aunt Carol, me, Tom, and Inga. We were gathered at the home of a friend who took this photo, and the sunset a few minutes later over Tucson was quite something.

We spotted this tiny car-- a real car-- in the parking lot of Jerry Bob's restaurant in Tucson. Audrey dug it. The salsa with my breakfast burrito at Jerry Bob's was excellent.

Pa Skip and Auntie Janna spend some time with Audie. She chewed on her fingers a lot because she was cutting four new molars. Ouch. Lot of gum-shredding fun that was.

Smokin.