Roughhousing

Elizabeth and Suzanne do little rough-and-tumble puppy-style wrestling from time to time. They both seem to enjoy it. A couple of days ago, Suzanne forgot herself and bit her sister hard on the back. Teeth didn't break skin, but Elizabeth go a nasty welt that subsided into a mark.

Tree lighting

Last weekend we went to Grandma's for dinner and to put up her Christmas tree. We had a good time, and Grandma got some much-needed Suzanne-hugging time.

Happy First Birthday, Suzanne!

Suzanne's first (really second, I guess) birthday was a subdued but enjoyable affair. I had to work that day and Barb was babysitting Jasper, so we had dinner with Jasper and his dad Matt. Suzanne loved her gift, a little stuffed dog (she is nutso for dogs and cats), and everyone loved the applesauce cake. Unfortunately, Grandma (our only invited guest) wasn't feeling well and could be present in spirit only.

The picture below is of the two sisters on birthday morning, wearing Christas stockings as Santa hats.

Camp Creek

In late July we went on a family camping trip to Camp Creek Camground on Mt. Hood. It was nice, having just us. Camping is friends is great, but camping without friends is also great.

I stumbled across this picture tonight, and it brought back memories of the trip and the summer. Nice.

The Ruins

Tragedy struck today, as the Larrison family gingerbread house was destroyed in a freak accident only moments before it was completed. As of this writing, the family of four remains gingerbread homeless.

The saga begins on Saturday, when Elizabeth Rose gets a bee in her bonnet to build a gingerbread house. The little girl and her daddy investigate on the internet, and the pictures produced by the search engine do nothing but fan the flames of the preschooler's imagination, meanwhile scaring her daddy with the daunting nature of the task.

After a trip to the store for ground ginger and cloves (?) and Brer Rabbit-brand molasses, the father/daughter pair spend a long time and create a huge mess mixing up the gingerbread dough. They place it in the fridge overnight.

Seven a.m. Sunday morning: "Daddy, Daddy, wake up, Daddy!" This is normal. What isn't normal is that Elizabeth does not say, "Let's watch movies." Instead, she cries, "Let's decorate the gingerbread house!"

The dough is step one. Step two is rolling it flat (1/8" thick), and cutting it into shapes according to the cardboard forms you cut the night before. Those gingerbread parts go in the oven. When they've baked and adequately cooled, it's time to mix the "glue" (three egg whites, half a teaspoon of cream of tartar [whatever that is] and, most importantly, one pound of powdered sugar).

Now comes the heartache. Elizabeth and her daddy decorate the various walls of the house by drizzling sugarglue on them and affixing gummi bears, peppermints, candy canes, and the like. But while Daddy is holding the house together while the glue dries, a situation arises involving a crying baby, a crying big girl, and a cut lip. It is a situation that calls for two parents.

There is but one choice. Daddy abandons the gingerbread house knowing full well the consequences: a slow slide into collapse and ruination.

The picture tells the rest of the tale, except for this: it is still delicious.

The Darndest Things

I wish I was spending more time recording the way Elizabeth talks. It's incredible! A couple of recent examples:

Joey was worried that Elizabeth's top was going to fall over, as it was wobbling. She said, "Don't worry. It's stable. It has a flat base." Remember folks, she's three and a half!

Showing me her treasure map, which included a fabulous depiction of a lighthouse, she said, "See this line? It indicates water." Indicates!

Recently Barb replaced an ancient dried flower arrangement. At first she didn't want me to give Elizabeth even one flower from the arrangement, as it would cause a mess of desiccated floral bits. The next day, Barb had given Elizabeth the entire arrangement. Such is parenting.

Anyway, last night Elizabeth decided that some of the flowers were "wishing flowers" and she made up this incantation: "Wishing flower/tall and tame/come to my name" after which came the wish. Awesome!

Plus, Suzanne indicates she wants food by going, "Mmmmmm. Mmmm. Mmmmmmmmmm!" Cute as all get out.

Joey's Car Seat

 

Safety-minded Elizabeth decided that Joey also needed a car seat in order to ride in the van.

Suzanne Walks!

The Big Baby took her first steps today at Grandma's. Barb and I were there to bear witness. Unfortunately for her, Elizabeth was in the bedroom watching Caillou, and missed the historic event.

Elizabeth's Playground

Like most (all?) kids, Elizabeth loves to make art. (Although, she doesn't think of herself as an artist. Tonight she told me she's "almost" an artist.) Lately, she's been working on this project started with a 2x4 scrap. Barb has allowed her to use screws, nails, and pins (!) in addition to her usual paint, glue, whatever. Elizabeth loves using her wooden toy hammer to drive the nails -- it works like a champ.

I'm very impressed by the fact that she's actually making something -- it's a playground that she's sculpting here -- not just randomly driving nails and turning screws and spraying glue. And she works on it not every day, but consistently, adding a bit here and there as new material comes her way.

The Joey Show! Episode 2

This is a pretty funny one.

Click this link if you prefer to see this larger size on YouTube.

Suzanne and Sherry

Grandma, too, has made inroads with Suzanne. The clingy, shy baby had a great time in late September hanging out with Grandma and Daddy at Grandma's place. After a slow start, she moved from Daddy's lap to Grandma's and spent a good 45 minutes playing and cooing in perfect baby Zen happiness.

Access to Grandma's cell phone didn't hurt, either.

Suzanne and Frank

 

Grandpa Frank had some success in holding the very Mommy-dependent Suzanne.

For those of you troubled by our baby's clinginess, let me just say that Elizabeth was the same way, but the attachment parenting method Barb and I use (per Barb) has resulted in a pre-schooler (i.e., Elizabeth Rose) who is incredibly independent.

The idea is that the "attached" child becomes so secure that her parents will be there for her, that when older she doesn't feel insecure about being away from Mom and Dad. Barb saw this in action last Wednesday when she went to pre-school with Elizabeth and Elizabeth paid her almost no mind. She (Elizabeth) was too busy playing with her friends. Whereas other kids cling to their parents when their parents are the teacher's aide.

I'm pretty sure attachment parenting works.

Elizabeth's World

 

Falloween

Fall is here with a vengeance. It's been pouring rain for the last two days, the volunteer pumpkins in the backyard are turning orange, and Barb and the girls even broke out the first of the Halloween decorations this weekend.

Most of the photos in this blog are mine, but this series was taken by Barb, and they're great.

Light

Photography is all about light. I'll often go snapcrazy with the camera not because the girls are in some sort of exotic locale (we take vacations in places like McMinnville and Depoe Bay, for goodness sake), but because the light is gorgeous.

As in these photos. Suzanne is at the dining table of the rental in Depoe Bay, facing the windows that look out on the ocean over which the light traveled to illuminate the room.

This Place is a Circus!

A couple of weekends ago we woke up already having cabin fever. The rain had just started, and we knew it wouldn't stop for many months. So we went to the circus!

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey was in town, as were the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals representatives who stood beside the ticket lines holding pictures of baby elephants being trained. Ah well, it's not the '70s anymore. And that's probably a good thing.

The circus was pretty good. Smaller than I remembered it from the last time I went (in Syracuse, in the '70s, when it may have been the same size but I sure was smaller).

Elizabeth claimed to have "loved!" it, but during the show itself she was clearly bored, lolling on my lap like one about to pass out. Suzanne liked it while she was awake, and otherwise demonstrated the amazing baby-ability to sleep despite earsplitting music and sound effects.

Barb and I both probably liked it best. It was cheesy, but the performers were pretty amazing (except for the painfully unfunny clowns -- who didn't even wear clown makeup!). The worst part was the price: tickets were palatable, but cotton candy at $10, $5.25 for a small soda, etc. made me feel bad. We didn't buy anything other than the tickets, but we saw lots of folks who probably dropped well over $100 for their day at the circus.

There's a sucker born every minute.

The Busy Zoo

 

Uncle Scott got this awesome toy for Elizabeth. She didn't take to it for about six months, for some reason. Now it's not only an old favorite, but one of Joey's regular sleeping spots.

Suzanne recently discovered it, and loves it as much if not more than Elizabeth ever did.

Company Picnic, 2011

I'm jumping all over the place in terms of chronology. This post is about mid-August, the post below (Tigger) is from mid-September. Such is blogging, I suppose.

Anyway, in August we went to Hagg Lake for the ole VAEA picnic. It was pretty fun. Thank goodness I wasn't the only one to bring beers.

Elizabeth enjoyed herself, especially as there was lots of candy disgorged by pinatas that she fastidiously collected and then methodically ate. As you can see, her tongue turned blue from candy-ingestion.


Plus, we went swimming and hiking and had a lot of fun.


I suppose there's no point in mentioning the clown decapitation.

Thank You, Aunt Teresa

The other day we came home from a day out-and-about, to find a package that turned out to be from Aunt Teresa. Inside, among other things, was a Tigger costume and a baby abacus.

Who gets a Tigger costume, complete with padded belly, out of nowhere, for free!?

In the immortal words of Yakov Smirnoff: "What a country!"

Best. Slide. Ever.

I really like the design of this slide at Oxbow Park.  It is so much safer than conventional slides, and doubles the fun!

It seems that if good design always won out, this particular piece of playground equipment would be altogether unremarkable.

As it is, this if the first time I've ever seen one.

Elizabeth likes raw corn

'Nuff said.

First Day of School!?

I'm still having trouble grasping the reality of the fact that Elizabeth Rose is now attending pre-school. To coin a phrase: they grow up so fast!!





I considered taking her first day of pre-school off from work, but decided it wasn't a good idea to make too big a deal about it. However, Elizabeth encouraged me tonight at dinner to take a day off this week (she suggested tomorrow, I countered with Friday) to take her to school and pick her up. I might just do it.

Her summary of her first day: "School was great!" 'Nuff said.

Lily's Third Birthday!

Lily Joy was born on 9/11/08. It's nice being essentially obligated to spend 9/11 with a joyous group of children and tolerant adults, rather than focusing on the grim realities of the warfighting engendered by the terrorist attacks that preceded Lily Joy's birth by seven years.

Which is an overly complicated way of saying I had fun at Lily's birthday party. She got a playhouse for her birthday, which is pretty awesome. Also a ballet barre (cleverly made of PVC pipes, by her clever father), and a music box from us. Lots of other stuff, too (including the unitard that she is modeling in one of the photos, below).

Speaking of photos! The photos may look a bit odd because they were taken with one of these camera-phone apps that applies an old-timey filter to each picture. I really like the effect of this particular filter, although it's not ideally suited to a child's third birthday party. However, my regular phone cam stopped working and this was my only option. Turned out OK.

Clear Lake

Teresa in the water keeping an eye on Elizabeth and Riley in a floaty.

We went to a great place called Clear Lake with the Long-Loughrans a couple of weekends ago. Great, except it was a bit trashed. The beach was rife with broken glass -- kind of a nightmare with Elizabeth and her general dislike of shoes (if not clothes in general). We also visited a part of the shoreline removed from the campground where a group had set up camp, including a pooping-place that consisted of nothing but an area four feet from the trail: no pit, no nothing but poop and toilet paper on the surface of the earth for all to see and smell. It was actually kind of depressing. Even schoolkids in a Lord of the Flies-type setting know enough to dig a pit. Who just poops on the ground and leaves it there for all to see (and, at the risk of repeating myself, smell)? Savages, I guess.

But that may not be an appropriate subject for a blog about cute kids.

The campground was nice. The weather was great. The lake was Oregon-cold, but not kill-you-in-two-minutes cold. All of the adults swam at least for a minute or two, which is about all you can ask of Oregon water.

Elizabeth and Riley played beautifully together. On the beach there was a "playhouse" made of two huge stumps overturned so that their roots interlaced to form a roof over the space between the sawed-off trunks. The kids spent most of their time at the playhouse, "working" on the house with sticks that doubled as hammers, saws, screwdrivers, and paintbrushes. It was great to watch, except for the nerve-wracking times when they were on the "roof," clambering over the spiky, dessicated roots. One slip would have resulted in a nasty poke to the ribs or worse. But the kids survived relatively unscathed.

Suzanne had a good time, too. She loved watching the big kids run around. She enjoyed Charlie the dog. Plus, she really liked the beach as she is very much into sitting on the ground and running her hands through the gravel/sand/dirt/whatever. It's a blast for her, but hard work for the parent who has to constantly be on guard against her shoveling said gravel/sand/whatever into her mouth.

By the way, as of this writing Suzanne has three teeth!

Suzanne is the one appropriately dressed in this photo. Daddy is under-dressed and cold and toughing it out.

Brian and Riley: as a baby, Riley looked exactly like Brian, minus the beard.

Notice which child is wearing shoes and which child is content to run around in her footsy-pajamas.

(Clockwise, from left) Barb, Suzanne, Teresa, Charlie, and Elizabeth, after a pretty steep mile-long hike up a trail to this logging road. Elizabeth, I believe, is pretending to be a rabbit.

The Rock Pile

A year or two ago, Barb ordered up four yards of gravel for our "driveway" and the area in front of our fence. As it turned out, we probably needed two yards. So we ended up with a gravel pile that I have been constantly plotting to get rid of at no cost to myself.

Unfortunately, our neighbor kids -- and, consequently, Elizabeth -- have come to view the "rock pile" as a special place. And our neighbor mom, Jaral, has confessed that she and her brothers had both a lumber pile (?) and a dirt pile when they were growing up, and both were awesome.

So we may be stuck with the rock pile for a little while, yet.

Grandma Sherry?

Look at this lovely picture of my mom, Sharon. Oh, wait! It's actually Elizabeth Rose at Sherry's apartment, wearing Sherry's curlers!

Grandma and Elizabeth

Elizabeth Rose resembles no one so much as Grandma Sherry. I've always been struck by the similarities, but as Elizabeth has grown out of babyhood, the resemblance has become even more striking. She won't have Sherry's blonde hair (Elizabeth will definitely be a brunette), but in so many other ways she's Sherry II.

Look at these two! They're peas in a pod!