Pink Prickly Pear

It was not a lazy Sunday.

We were out the door before 9 a.m. to get Mini-Pear up to the dojo for a special training on the beach. 

I just wanted a lie-in.  Not that we get them anymore with the boy.

I think this (not so great) photo illustrates their relationship.  My quiet girl, occupied with a project; my persistent boy, after her attention.

Not that they don't have totally sweet moments.  His face lights up when he sees her.  She spent a good deal of time art directing a new toy for him.  She cut out the pieces and begged me to sew them together for her, after her attempts at gluing ended in a sticky mess.

He loves it.

"Got! Got! Got!" he shouts.  It's funny to watch him attempt to crawl around and keep a tight grip on his new softie at the same time.

LIFE is Good Roadtrip '09

I'll never be able to cram ten days into a single post.  Lists are good.

Our route? We went for speed over scenery until San Francisco (the opposite of last year's journey).   Then we cut over to drive along the Northern Californian coast and almost the entire coast of Oregon.

Weird names of places en route: Drain, Weed, Brown Material Road, Hungry Valley.  We didn't stop at any of those. 

Encounters with spring babies! 3!  Goslings, ducklings and baby chickens! Other animal encounters - cows (I didn't realize we walked though their field until it was time to head back to the car), seals (unfortunately included two very dead ones)

Number of Snickers bars consumed: six? one for each day spent driving to keep me focused on the road.  Packets of instant oatmeal consumed: ten?  one a day to keep me regular.

Migraine headaches? Two.  Damnit.

Migraine induced episode of simultaneously vomiting and shitting my brains out in a fucking truck stop?  One.  Really.  Anything more than that and I would have turned around.

Number of times I consulted my iPhone to assist in finding picnic areas, hamburgers, tampons, coffee shops, giant trees, etc. on the road?  I have no idea.  Mr. Pear calls it my Jesus Phone and now I know why. 

What did we listen to?  The last four episodes of This American Life, Feist (over and over again for the boy), four selections from the New Yorker short fiction podcast, Justice (over and over again for the girl), a Fresh Air program about dung beetles, the Clash, the Donnas, the Like Young, Bonde du Role, Underworld (never gets old for driving), the boy's incessant wailing, Gogol Bordello, Mexican Institute of Sound...

We rented a mini-van.  I...

oh God...

I miss it. 

One day, we stopped for a picnic in this coastal meadow.  We foraged wild blackberries.  With the exception of morning glories, every single flower tattooed on my arm was present in the meadow (and then some).  We sat on a very windy bluff looking over the ocean and ate hard boiled eggs, celery, carrots and hummus and strawberries. 

I think it was at this luncheon that I realized I probably should have given more thought towards food for the boy. 

We paid six dollars to drive our car through this tree.  When we finally got to the tree, we decided not to risk plugging the hole with our glorious mini-van.  Plus, the tunnel cut into the tree kind of depressed me.

I suppose that's a start.  I'll get more pics and such up when I can.  The boy, he keeps me very, very busy.  I can't believe no one has any advice regarding the chewing of walls.

We're back from our road trip...

I'll post an update and some of our 387 photos later.

In the meantime...

I know one can never sufficiently babyproof for every possible scenario, but outside of living in a gingerbread house, how does one work with a child who chews walls?

Can you tell I'm procrastinating?

(And obviously the boy who gets into everything is asleep)

Road trip + cloth diapers = glutton for punishment?

There are laundry facilities at our destination, but we won't get there until the fourth day.  I usually wash our diapers every second day, so I think I'd need to spend a little more to pad our diaper stash to last longer.  Or I could just spend that money on disposables.

I hate to think of the boy sitting in that nasty gel for hours on end.  I'd hate to buy the kind without the nasty gel and have him leak all over his carseat.  Buying more cloth diapers will be a bit more expensive than a pack of 'sposies.

I should probably just pick the answer out of a hat. 

I should have planned a little further ahead and bought gently used dipes online.

Road food?

I need ideas for our road trip.

Anyone who suggests street pizza can get stuffed.

It is the kind of morning where I take you back to bed well before 10 am.  The sound of someone's leaf blower is incessant - a nagging, continual blaring.  I feel something akin to rage welling up beneath my shoulder blades (of all places).

Downstairs, I hope scrambled eggs will accomplish what a double cappucino has not.

It is still grey here on the coast and I am glad of it.  We are to meet friends at the beach later. It will be impossibly bright by then.

Mini-Pear and I rode our bikes over to a friend's house this afternoon.  Mini-Pear is going to be cat sitting for them.  I suggested we just ride over.  She seemed a bit dubious, "Isn't there a big hill?"  There is, and I think she was more nervous about riding down it.  I was impressed that she actually rode all the way up it on our way back home.

I've missed my bike.  I don't think I realized just how much until this afternoon's jaunt through the neighborhood.  When I first moved to DC, I didn't need a car.  I used my bike pretty much everyday.  I rode from my little studio apartment with the red brick floor in Adams Morgan up to work.  There was one summer where I found myself doing a lot of night riding (spare me the David Hasselhoff jokes), sometimes with friends, sometimes just on my own.  Most of the time I didn't even have a particular destination - there was just something about pedaling along under the yellow street lights, generating my own cool breeze in the hot DC summer night.

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Have you tried an aprium yet?  I am generally skeptical of cross-bred fruits and vegetables, but I am tired of the ever available local strawberries and if I eat too many mangos my mouth gets all itchy (because mango, wouldn't you know, is apparently related to poison ivy) so I thought I'd give them a go.  They're good.  I'm having a hard time restraining myself from eating all of them.

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Mr. Pear is supposed to come downstairs and watch Weeds with me, but I think he's fallen asleep.  I don't know how he fell asleep.  Our asshole neighbors are having a loud party.  Why are they assholes?  Well, they park in my driveway for one, and for two?  They have their million dollar deck wired for sound.  And what do they play on this surely expensive system?  The radio.  That's sort of worse than playing bad music, because at least bad music just means you have your personal taste and I have mine, but listening to the radio tells me you have no ear whatsoever...

How many times can you say whoo-hoo?

Speaking of music, I can't believe how many of you had never heard the song I linked to in my last post.  Mr. Pear actually thought it was a song I'd made up...like I actually sat down and composed my own original lyrics about flatulence.

In which I feel a bit hermit-y, so I will post about my not so hermit-y boy.

The boy has a new face.  Every time he does it, he reminds me of this song.   Sorry about the earworm.

He started crawling.  I wrongly assumed this meant the end of his frustrated shout at the carpet episodes, but no...after a brief respite (we're talking an hour, tops), he was onto the next challenge.  So now he tries to pull himself up on everything and everybody.  He is not content to crawl.  Nobody else seems to get around that way.  He still shouts at the carpet, primarily when he pitches headfirst into it.

While part of me is secretly proud to have played some part in ushering this perpetually on the go, and ever striving towards M-O-R-E (!) little monster, I know that crawling is so important for developing neural pathways between both brain hemispheres.  So we're building tunnels, and playing peek-a-boo and chase and all crawling around in an effort to share the fun of wearing our knees out together...

It's okay to slow down just a little bit, even if it means not living up to his perfect (for him) name.

Otherwise, I am feeling a bit hermit-y.