Monthly Archive for March, 2008

The Great Northwest Adventure: Part 2

Published on 3/31/2008. 1 Comment Tags: , .

Let’s see…we got our rental car and headed away from the airport to Briana’s house. Cameron was none too pleased to be in his car seat and he let us know it for most of the 45 minute drive. After getting to Bri’s house and settling in we decided to take advantage of the nice weather and go for a walk on a trail that bordered Lake Washington.

Cam and I turned in early that night (8:30) since it had been a LONG day of travel.

The next day we went to downtown Seattle to visit Pike Place Market and REI. It was sunny but quite windy and chilly next to the water.

We stayed in that evening to visit and watch our adorable babies play together. Cameron is quite the ladies man and wasn’t at all shy about grabbing Isabella’s butt or trying to take her hat! At one point he even tried to roll over on top of her. Isabella’s daddy gave him a stern lecture about his actions but I think they are still friends! RJ, being a little more docile than the rambunctious older babies seemed to sit back and take it all in. I’m sure he was taking notes on their rowdy behavior so he can pull out these tricks in the upcoming weeks! Watch out Mom and Dad!

On Monday we visited some stores in downtown Edmonds and had yummy Mexican food for lunch. Here is Cam at the restaurant. It still kind of freaks me out that he’s old enough to sit in a high chair at a restaurant!

Looking at this picture you would never guess that a mere 20 minutes later Mr. Cam had pooped out of the back of his diaper forcing me to change him on the floor of the restroom. I think it should be a state law that baby change stations are available in every restroom!

After lunch we headed to the shore of the Puget Sound. The weather was beautiful and we even saw an otter swim up the shore!



Monday night we headed to Ballard for dinner and to see the locks and fish ladder. No fish were to be seen though. Bummer! We did have cupcakes for dessert! Cameron wanted to taste it but I decided that chocolate cake and frosting probably wasn’t an appropriate first food for him!

We visited a friends of Jennifer’s in Issiqua on Tuesday. This journey took us into the foothills which was pretty cool! Here is the view from her front door. Nice!

Of course we were leaving at rush hour which made our 25 minute drive more like an hour. Have I mentioned that Cameron HATES his car seat? Yeah…this is him on the drive home that evening. Poor baby. He was so upset but there really just isn’t much that can be done for him when we’re on the highway.

We left for the airport bright and early the next morning. The flights home were great and Cam slept for almost the entire second flight. I’m SO proud of how well he did on the planes! I think he cried for maybe five minutes total over the course of all four flights. The longest he cried at one time was probably less than a minute. So, Mr. Important Business Man in seat 47-D you can just kiss my…well, you can just shut it! The next time you want to call your wife and gripe about sitting next to a baby you should try being a little more subtle. I’m sure the 60 seconds that he cried on a 3 hour flight was way more annoying than your 15 minute super important phone call that had to be made as soon as the wheels touched down. Don’t worry, you talked loudly enough that I’m sure even the cool kids in the first twenty rows of the plane now understand about your important conference calls and contingency plans, blah, blah, blah. Air travel brings out the best in everyone, no?

We had a great time with our friends and loved visiting a new part of the country. I can’t wait to visit Seattle again with Jason and Lily. I think they will really love it as much as I did!

P.S. Brian and Jennifer, I anxiously await my copy of the Great Northwest Adventure documentary that Brian worked so hard on filiming during trip! He must have hundreds of hours of footage though so I will understand if the editing process takes quite some time.

Sorry Cameron…

Published on 3/29/2008. 4 Comments Tags: , .

…I can’t resist!

6 Months!

Published on 3/28/2008. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Cameron is 6 months old today! I really cannot believe how quickly these past 6 months have gone. I mean, it’s half a year that just flew by! Six months ago he was a squishy little newborn only about 8 hours old and now he’s a little dude with his own personality. He has two teeth (and has used them a couple of times…OUCH!) and is getting darn close to crawling although he can get about any place he wants to go by rolling. I’m especially proud that we have been nursing for 6 months!! That first night in the hospital while Cam was nursing for about the third straight hour I really wondered why I was putting myself through it. After nursing didn’t work out with Lily she was formula fed and is perfectly fine and healthy and smarter than I can even believe. Why not just do the same thing with Cameron? I’m glad that I pushed those thoughts away and stuck it out because I really do love it! Yes, pumping at work SUCKS sometimes but it’s only a small part of my day and it is the reason Cam has only had mama milk for his first six months! He will have his 6 month checkup on Monday and we’re planning to start giving him some solid foods next weekend. I know he is ready to start eating solid foods since he shows a BIG interest in watching us eat, but I’m a little sad about moving on to this next step with him. I’m sure I’ll get over feeling sad once I see how much he enjoys food though.

Happy Half Birthday Little Man!

The Great Northwest Adventure: The Outbound Flights

Published on 3/27/2008. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

Cameron and I just returned from a 4 day trip to the Seattle area to visit with some friends! Some people would think I was crazy to embark on a journey that would take me about 2,000 miles from home and involved four planes and nearly 18 hours on planes or in airports with just me and my almost 6 month old son. Alone. I’ll admit that there were a few days leading up to the trip that I wondered how I ever thought this was a good idea. But, now that we’ve had our adventure I can definitely say that it was a GREAT idea and we had a GREAT time!

The adventure started last Friday night at around 11:30 when our phone rang disturbing us from our slumber. Our flight was scheduled to depart at 7:15 on Saturday morning and head to the Twin Cities before catching our connecting flight to Seattle. Mother Nature had different plans and the flight to MN was cancelled. Instead, we were being flown to Seattle via Los Angeles. Not only did this mean more time in the air we also had to switch airlines in LA from Northwest to Alaska Air. AND, the departing flight was leaving 15 minutes earlier than our original MN flight. SUPER! Now we had to leave by 4:45 to get to the airport on time.

We did make it to the airport on time but had to endure waiting in the check-in line since my pre-printed boarding pass was no longer valid for my new flights. We finally got the bags checked and said our goodbyes to Jason and Lily and headed to the gate. They were already boarding the plane when we got there so we didn’t have any time to wait. I was able to trade seats and have a window seat rather than the middle seat that was assigned to me. I preferred the window for a couple of reasons. First, I would only have a neighbor on one side which was a benefit for nursing purposes. I’m very comfortable nursing in public but airplane seats are nice and cozy and I hoped to minimize the number of times I had to nurse Cam just inches away from a strangers arm. Second, if Cam was asleep I didn’t want to have to get up to let my neighbors exit the row. So, I was glad when the guy with the window seat was agreeable to trade with me.

About that nice neighbor guy…I’m guessing that he was mid-20’s, he was not an obese person but definitely not small. He has probably been labeled as husky at some point in his life. He wore an old baseball cap and had some of the bushiest side burns I’ve ever seen that accompanied his long-ish unkempt hair and the three days of stubble on his face. Shortly after the plane took off I noticed that he was reading Dwell magazine. This surprised me since I had pegged him to be more of an outdoorsy hunter type of guy. I guess I based this assumption partly on the fact that he had placed his water bottle spitoon in the seat back in front of him! Yeah, lucky me got to sit next to Spitty McSkoal for almost 4 hours. So, I was shocked but not entirely surprised to look over later in the flight and find that he was perusing a bullet catalog….like, bullets and other various gun related equipment. I guess if you’re in the business of guns this would be an interesting read. Maybe?

Anyway, the flight was easy and Cam was a champ sleeping for well over an hour. We landed at LAX and had to walk FOREVER to find the Alaska Air gate. This little trek involved another pass through security and a visit to the bathroom hauling all of my gear (Cam in a sling, diaper bag and purse across my shoulders, pushing a stroller with a back pack, blankie and stuffed dog in it with a car seat perched on top), and quickly grabbing food at Burger King before getting on another plane. Luckily there were empty seats on the flight and when I asked to be placed next to one of them the gate attendant was happy to accommodate! I got to take Cam’s car seat on board with me and it was AWESOME having the extra room! Cameron hates his car seat (as Jennifer and Brian can attest to!) but he was pretty happy in it during the flight. He even slept for an hour which gave me time to finish the movie I had started on the last flight. Yay for me actually getting to watch a movie!

We finally arrived in Seattle a full two hours later than our original agenda and met up with Jennifer. While we waited for our bags we had a fun celebrity sighting! Ken Jennings of Jeopardy fame came walking past us on his way to the bathroom. Jennifer readied her camera to snap his picture when he came past again but just barely missed the shot. Too bad!

After collecting our bags our next mission was getting the rental car. Apparently we don’t know how to read airport signs so we ended up making a couple of completely unnecessary trips in the elevator with all of our stuff (now a suitcase and hammock bag in addition to the aforementioned gear). Eventually and without too much fuss we loaded our babies and gear into our Rav4 and headed to our next adventure…

The Long and Short of it

Published on 3/20/2008. 6 Comments Tags: , .

***ATTENTION WOMEN’S CLOTHING INDUSTRY***

The women’s clothing industry is on my list. Not that I really have a LIST but if I did…

I’m on the tall side at 5′8″ but I am by no means a giant. I am deeply, deeply bothered by the lack of clothing sizes for women…especially when compared to the options for men.

Men can purchase jeans in a seemingly infinite number of sizes to find the perfect match for both their waist and their height. The same holds true for other kinds of pants AND shirts for men. Women, however, are forced to choose from a finite number of sizes, usually S, M, L and XL with an occasional XS option provided as well. If we’re REALLY lucky we will have short and/or tall options as well.

I usually fall squarly into the Medium category for tops. However, the sleeves on long sleeved shirts are always too short and I end up pulling them up around my elbows in a desperate attempt to hide the fact that my clothes don’t fit! The 3/4 sleeve may be my salvation but sometimes a girl just wants a long sleeved shirt! I’ve been thrilled that longer shirts seem to be the style lately since I can now find tops that don’t leave me tugging at them in an effort to cover my post-pregnancy belly.

Dress/pants sizing is another conspiracy handed down from the women’s clothing industry. We must choose from sizes generally ranging from 0 – 14 (even numbers only). By my count that’s only about 8 sizes that are supposed to clothe an entire population of women of varying shapes and sizes. Why are men’s pants sized by the number of inches around the waist rather than some arbitrary number that seems to have no consistency across brands or even in the same store!

My bigger beef is that lack of length options in womens pants. Most pants are Regular length but on occasion a Short or Tall can be found. So, we have three options for length ladies! Once again, not only do men get to select the perfect waist size but they can select the perfect inseam as well. Guys get to choose 34X32, 34X36, 34X38, 34X30 and on and on and on. Why does the world recognizes that not all men who have a 34″ waist have the same inseam while expecting that all women who wear a size 8 are the same height? I will admit that a number of stores tend to offer a fairly wide range of sizes in the jeans category including short and tall options. My question is why can’t this same sizing scheme be rolled out to other varieties of pants? What really gets me going is when I’m browsing through a rack and see a plethora of Short length mixed in with the Regular length but not a Tall to be found. HOO BOY!

Being the fashion maven cheap skate that I am I often shop at Old Navy. I know, I know it’s the pinnacle of high fashion. Whatever! There are two Old Navys in my town so it is easily accessible and the selection is sufficiently large that I feel I have some say in what I wear but there are not so many options that I feel overwhelmed (which is why I HATE department stores, by the way….they intimidate me). Perhaps my clothing woes would be eased if I would fork over a little more money for my tall or long sizes but that hardly seems fair! I want cheap clothes that fit me and I want them now!

I’m a reasonable person but I’ve had it up to my abnormally long legs and arms with the clothing options for women! What bugs you about clothing sizing/choices?

It’s Official…

Published on 3/19/2008. 3 Comments Tags: .

…we’re old responsible grownups with a family! Last night we purchased our first MINIVAN! All of you nay-sayers can just bite your tongues with your comments about how LAME minivans are. It. is. AWESOME! I’m hoping that this is a vehicle that we keep for awhile. We’ve had kind of a revolving door with vehicles over the last few years that started with the Wrangler in 2004. That was traded in on the Focus in 2006 since we needed a more sensible family car. We said goodbye to the Focus last night when we traded it in on the minivan. Jason seems to be handling the move to being classified as a ‘minivaner’ pretty well. I think it would have been a little harder on him if we had traded the Wrangler for a minivan so it’s probably good that we had the Focus to create somewhat of a buffer.

Anyway, there are 12 cup holders in this beast (why that is a selling point I don’t know, but the salesman was sure to point that out) and the kids are sure to stay comfortable no matter the weather since they have their own climate controlled zone in the back of the van. Fancy! Now all we need is the ubiquitous “Honor Student” bumper sticker but I guess that will have to wait a few years!