We ride to OREGON!

Look at this climbing baby!

I feel like a warrior. After packing and packing and cleaning and packing some more, I feel like Xena, but without the warrior-princess getup. Instead I get to wear baby food covered comfy clothes. I prefer my outfit - WAY less chafing. Packing and cleaning with a vertically inclined baby in the house is I.M.P.O.S.S.I.B.L.E! We had everything packed up and in the front room in boxes, and Little J decided to climb to the very top of the stack. Over and over and over again. My heart skipped lots of beats that day. After we moved all the boxes to the storage unit, Little J came and sat on the couch, pointed at where the boxes used to be and said, "Uh!". He was pretty sad that they were gone. So, he decided to climb on the camp chairs instead.

We have almost everything packed, except for the essentials - computer (duh!), changing table, couches, bed, and the diaper genie. Little J likes all the open space and has been exploring all the empty closets. We like playing peek-a-boo in them. It's been nice to slowly move into the storage unit and not have to do it all in one fell swoop.

It's dangerous to go alone. Take this
string with you.

We're leaving on the 31st to drive to Oregon with nothing but the essentials packed into our Subie. It'll be an intense game of Tetris to fit everything in the back, but I think everything'll fit.

Moving has created a kind of existential crisis in my mind! All of our earthly possessions are packed in a 10' x 15' storage locker! All our lives are in there. All of Little J's baby clothes, our bikes, our bed, our furniture. It's like we've just shrunk our lives to fit into this tiny space. But then I got to thinking. Is it really our lives in there? That's assuming that our lives are defined by what we own. I don't want to make that assumption. I think we're more defined by how and what we do, not what we own. That made me feel better about leaving all of our stuff in a corrugated metal shack.

I need some advice. It's a 12-hour drive to Sisters, Oregon from here, and we're trying to decide if we should drive there at night. Little J HATES his carseat like a cat hates a spray bottle. I'm afraid driving there during the day would mean lots of tears from the small one, and lots of frustration from the big ones. But, I don't want to get to Oregon at 7am, and then be a peanut butter brain for the rest of the day. Thoughts? Thanks.

More time outside

Hi Internet!

Little J and I have been spending a lot of time outside. Every time we get the chance, we go to the pool, the lake, or the mountains. Three's a beach nearby and we go and sit in the sand. Little J eats the sand, but I'm not convinced it's that tasty. We go to the pool and float around. He's COMPLETELY TERRIFIED of the water unless he's in a floaty thing. Picture how a baby sloth hangs on to his mom - that's how Little J was hanging on to me.

We also go hiking up in the mountains! We took a road up to the top of Butterfield Canyon near the copper mine, and it was beautiful. The road was terrifsome. That's a mix of terrifying and awesome. It was definitely one-lane and all the corners were blind. And on one side was a steep drop-off to your certain death and the other side was another cliff going straight up. I used a lot of adrenaline to get up the hill.

  

I know he doesn't look thrilled with his situation, but
he was having fun, I swear!

We got up to the top and I put Little J in the backpack and off we went. The path was somewhat level and really beautiful. There were lots of gorgeous views of the south end of the Salt Lake Valley. We were going to hike for longer, but hiking with a baby by yourself in the wilderness in bear season makes you jumpy. You know that feeling you get while you're hiking and you feel like some big carnivore is watching you? Yeah, I definitely felt like that. I had made lots of plans on how to defend myself from cougars, bears, etc while we were walking back.

So I loaded him back in the car and down the hill we went. We braved the terrifsome road again, and made it home unscathed.

If Little J is ever fussy, all I have to do is take him outside, and it's like he's a completely different baby. He calms down immediately and I can just tell that he's soaking in everything around him. I tell him about the birds and butterflies and he seems to care. I love that he has an "off" switch like that and I hope he keeps it that way.

Also, in other news, we're moving to Oregon at the end of this month. Who knew that was going to happen? Definitely not me. I'm excited for this next portion of our lives.

Wilderness (ish)

We went camping. It was awesome. I could just end this post there, but then what would I do with myself for the next 20 minutes while Little J is sleeping? Clean? Yeah, right.

We went up Provo Canyon a bit to Big Springs Park and then walked up the trail a little ways to a nice little camp spot. We went with some friends which made it even more fun. We made a fire, set up camp and made some s'mores. Little J loved it. He really likes being outside and he got to spend all evening on a nice blanket outside, looking at a fire. He got absolutely filthy though! We need to get that boy some shoes, because his white socks were (and still are, after a trip through the laundry) a nice sooty black.

He grabbed the camera about 1.3 seconds
after I took this photo. Phew!

He did great at night. We zipped our two sleeping bags together and Little J and I slept in there while Big J roughed it with a down comforter. It got into the mid-30s but I was nice and toasty. It was like sleeping next to a space heater. Big J was a bit cold all night long. Poor guy. Luckily we have a great tent that kept the chill away pretty well. Little J romped around the tent and thought it was the coolest thing since sliced bread. We played lots of peek-a-boo, and he was giggling a LOT. He got pretty tired at the end of the night and only woke up once. Boo-yah!

We made some french toast for breakfast and Little J had yogurt with a nice smoky flavor. In fact, I think all of us were a little smoky flavored by the time we left. We packed up camp and put all our gear in the back of the Subie Tetris-style and it was back to the real world. It was great to be out in the fresh air, with hummingbirds zooming around while we ate breakfast, and a nice little brook bubbling by all night long.

He's wearing two pairs of pants, socks, his
long-sleeved pajama shirt, and a hoodie.
At least he wasn't cold, right??

Man, some day we're going to live in a tree house in the wilderness and cook all our food over an open flame. Food just tastes better that way. Also, food always tastes better when you eat it outside. Don't believe me? Try it with watermelon. I guarantee you it tastes waaaay better and is waaaay juicier if you eat it outside.

The only thing I missed about not being in our apartment was access to a bath. Little J has an innate ability to get dirt EVERYWHERE (in between his fingers, up his nose, in his ears, etc.), and sometimes no amount of wipes can render him presentable. Next time we'll rig a little sun shower so we can get him clean before bed time. I have a feeling that once we get him naked (his favorite state of being) in the wilderness (his favorite place) there'll be no clothing him again, and he'll run off to become a wild baby raised by coyotes. Ah well, maybe we'll join him.

Dr. No

Well, guess what. Little J learned his first word. Wanna know what it is? Of course you do! It's, "NO!"

Since he's been crawling all over the house, he's been getting into things that he shouldn't be (potted plants, kitchen cabinets, craft supply boxes, potted plants again, the TOILET! Yuck.) we've been telling him, "No thank you!" and removing him from the situation. I think that he thinks that we're just providing a narrative to his adventure and not actually disciplining him, because now he'll do those same things and say "no" while shaking his head. It's SO adorable, yet SO frustrating. Wait, I think that sums up all of my feelings about parenting up to this point.

But, if I'm trying to give him another bite, and he's done eating, he'll also say "no", so that's what makes me think that he's grasping what the word means. I tried to capture this phenomenon on camera, but alas, Little J is not a performing baby. He does shake his head a few times though!

Aaaaaand we're back!

Hi friends! It's been a while, so I figured you would like to know what our wee little family's been up to. Here it is in a nutshell:

Well, first of all, none of us are employed at the moment. We're tried farming out Little J to day labour stuff, but so far, no one's hired him. It's probably because instead of harvesting strawberries, he'd just eat them all. Big J was laid off a while back and we've been looking for a job ever since. No such luck so far. The silver lining is that Big J can stay home all day with the rest of us, and we're having a blast. We spend a lot of time at the park, in the woods and in the car.

What a good snoozer.

We took a super awesome trip to the Northwest to visit some family and look for some jobs. Although the jobs portion of the trip was pretty much kaput, we LOVED spending time with the family. We went to the zoo, Pike's Place, the beach, and spent a lot of time playing pass-the-baby. Little J did great in the car (ish).
He got really wiggly and drives that usually took us 6 hours ended up taking us 8. But it was ok with us.

He also learned how to be mobile while we were away, and that has been wreaking a little bit of havoc with our diaper-changing routine. Now he thinks it's hilarious to flip over while I'm changing his diaper and crawl away as fast as he can. Only once has he peed while doing this; as much of a surprise to him as it was to me. It has taken me holding down his legs with my forearms and Big J making silly faces at him for me to even dream about getting a new diaper on him. I've also gotten pretty good at putting diapers on him while he's standing.

It's moments like this where I expect him to suddenly
start speaking in full sentences.

Now we're back home and doing some adventuring. We got a baby backpack (not one for the baby to carry, one to carry the baby in) and Little J loves going for walks. We got an Osprey Poco Plus, and it's AWESOME! For those of you looking to get a backpack, make sure to include this one in your line-up. Check it out here. Although he has a tendency to snooze while in it.

Since Little J is mobile now, we've started baby-proofing our home. We moved our knife set from ground level to the countertop and we're having to vacuum a lot more often. It's incredible that after you sweep, vacuum and then mop, your child still finds that one piece of icky stuff on the ground and puts it in their mouth. I've been following Little J around the house, making sure he doesn't ingest anything dangerous. Speaking of that, I found one of my little pearl earrings in his diaper the other day. Apparently he ate it and it passed through his system just fine. Oops. I'm a little reticent to wear it again, even after thoroughly cleaning it.

We're making some big life decisions right now. We want to live in one place for a long time to raise our children, and we're deciding where that's going to be. That's kind of a big deal. If you know where that's supposed to be, please clue us in. Thanks.

"Wait, Mr. Brown moos? I thought only cows mooed."

Send in the wipes!

Please direct your attention to his mouth
and hands.

Well, it happened. Little J made his first mess. I was working on a project on the computer and he was on the ground, playing with my makeup bag (his new favorite toy). I looked over and he was waving my mascara around in the air, and when I looked over again, he had unscrewed it, poked himself in the face with it, and gotten it all over his hands and his book. I was astounded! I had no idea he knew how to unscrew things! So, like a good mom, I didn't clean him up immediately, but instead took a picture. His tongue wasn't black, so I don't think he ate any. But then again, he did kind of have that smug, cat-who-ate-the-canary look on his face.

After wiping him all up, I gave him the mascara again to see if it was just a fluke that he had gotten it unscrewed. It wasn't. He's also learned to pull the caps off of pens. Sure it makes a lot of messes, but I love to see him learn like crazy.

The inventor of baby wipes should get a Nobel prize. I love them. We go through MANY MANY wipes a day because, like me, Little J is a lap-feeder. He gets food in his hair, armpits, nose, etc.

I'd love to hear about your baby's (or yours, I don't judge) messy moments!

Food, Glorious Food!

So Little J has been eating lots of solid (that word is misleading in this context) food lately and he really seems to have been liking it, until about a week ago. I swear, babies wait until you get into a rhythm and then *BAM* they decide to completely change their behavior.

Here he is looking very pleased with
his ability to control his mother.

I wanted to make sure he was eating SUPER good-for-you food so I was making all of his baby food - peas, carrots, squash, avocados, yams, etc., but now he won't even look at it. You know what he will eat? Baby food from the store. Here I am, slaving away over my mini food processor, and Little J just turns his nose up at it. I'm not going to give up yet though. I'll still puree lots of stuff for him until he gets more teeth and is able to eat table food.

For a while, all he wanted to eat was blueberry greek yogurt and avocados. I tried giving him avocados again the other day and he barfed. Nice. I even bought one of those mesh baggies you put food in and they just gum it and get the mushy bits out, but he lost interest in it after about five minutes.

But through all of this confusing not-eating-a-rama-lama-thing, he seems to be no worse for wear. He still poops a lot and is still a happy, giggly baby. In fact, this morning, every time I made an 'O' face at him, he could NOT stop laughing. And that made me laugh, and my laughing made Little J laugh even more, and we were a mess of giggles.

Yes, that is Desitin he's playing with. No, he does not
prefer to play with baby toys. 

He is SO close to crawling. I haven't really been encouraging him to crawl because that means I have to baby-proof my home, and I have a LOT to do there. He'll get up on his hands and knees and rock and he'll scoot himself backward, but the forward thing is really mystifying him. I think today we'll spend some quality time together on the floor sorting this thing out.

Now that he's a lot more mobile, he spends a lot more time smacking his head into stuff. I put him on the floor the other day in front of the vacuum so he could make friends with it (he's still terrified of it), and he started to pull himself up on it. As I'm sure you know, vacuums aren't made to withstand full-frontal baby lunges, so it toppled over and Little J ended up on top of it, spread-eagle. He looked pretty confused about how he got in that position, and then decided he was NOT ok with it and let me know that via ear-piercing squeals and screams.

The only thing he's successfully (read: without whacking his head or falling over) pulled himself up on is the coffee table. I think he has a somewhat permanent bruise on the left side of his head, but at least he's learning!