Category: Uncategorized (Page 29 of 40)

Here are some moments from the past days, taken while D was on the mend.

Our first root veggie harvest!

We are patiently waiting for summer to arrive here in the old Northwest. The heat is still on and a light jacket is still required outside. The roses are happy but the beet greens in the garden have rotted from the extra damp.

This picture, taken 2 weekends ago, (yep, in June), says it all.

On second thought, maybe this one says it all…

Jeff built Dashiell a picnic table, just his size. He was so excited for D to try it out that we had to use it inside, before it was completely finished.

(Actually usually I don’t mind the wet weather. Having the right clothes helps–we usually just get outside anyway. But you can’t do that so much when it’s pouring, or when you’re sick).

Here are some more snaps of playing outside when we got a break, and better shots of the new table.

And D has been sick a lot lately. Right now he has a virus and its symptoms come and go. On Monday, when I picked him up early from school (since he had vomited during nap time), the teachers said: he seems to feel fine! That’s him alright. He wants to party all the time; happy despite it all, looking for his next adventure (“bus? bus? me go, bus?”). Yesterday, staying home from school and being only mildly sick by then, he ran around the house and played with his trains, his new ride-on race car, and practiced his new jumping skill. And naturally he asked to drive the car (done) and go on the bus.

So yesterday afternoon, when we were waiting patiently to see the PA-C and he was being such a good sport despite it being the end of a long day, I told him we could ride the bus after the doctor visit. I told him we’d go pick up Daddy (who is his co bus rider-in-crime thanks to his monthly pass) and then I’d drive them to the bus. Sure enough, when we arrived home, he refused to budge from his car seat. “Daddy? bus?” Yep, ok. So we fetched Daddy, consulted the phone for the schedule, waited on a bench at a bus stop (so exciting) and finally boarded the bus.

Oh the excitement!

Here is a video I took on my phone while we waited to see the PA-C. As you can see, he’s ready to ditch the doc and get to the bus…

….everybody loves the sunshine.

(thanks Lisa, for coaxing me to eat when my teeth hurt!).

In his party duds…off to celebrate Jeff’s friend’s 2000th book sale!

In an attempt to bring a little sparkle to an otherwise glum-weather holiday weekend, we embarked on an exciting voyage…

…a short train ride into the big city.

Turns out this is an extremely relaxing undertaking. You simply purchase your ticket at a computer kiosk, board, and settle into a hushed car.

The contrast with air travel could not be more stark.

Here is a short chronicle of our fun.

Last weekend we had a small party in the yard with Jannine and Peter, who were in from the east coast…Peter’s sister came down from Olympia, and all the kids had a grand time together. The weather was perfect and the food from Hoda’s delicious (and easy!).

When D really started walking (some would call it running), we sent iPhone videos to all the Grandmas of the “walking tour” that Dashiell performed, being now free to roam and explore in each room downstairs.

Here is a variation on that theme, this time as the masked jammie bandit.

Beverly–this one’s for you!

Our Dashiell is a busy little boy and most things don’t interest him for very long, as you might imagine. So I was surprised by him last week when I introduced a pencil to his life.

Now he wants 2 pencils–one in each hand! And all marks made must then be erased. What fun!

Discovering the use of the pencil has gotten him interested in crayons again, which up until now have not held much mystique (except when using the bathtub crayons, on everything except the bathtub!)

Check it out here if you cannot see the video embedded.

Over the last few years, since we moved into this house, we’ve been talking about making a small raised garden bed in which to grow veggies. It always seemed like too large of a project, until I read a “recipe” for a raised bed in Sunset magazine. After reading it, I still thought it was too big of a project…but Jeff felt sure he could buy all the materials and construct it in 1 day.

And we did!

Jeff did all the heavy lifting and I just did the end bits: planting our starts. Broccoli, kale, and beets went into the raised bed (we’d already planted containers with contain carrots, parsley, cilantro, and cabbage).

So, for a while now, Dashiell has been singing the last word in a phrase of a song he knows, especially if the last word is drawn out, over a held note. He likes to croon!

He first really started doing this when I’d play the Robert Glasper Experiment’s fascinating cover of Sade’s “Cherish the Day” (which you can listen to here). Dash will now sing the end of almost every phrase, but he especially likes the long notes on “If you were mine….If you were mine….I wouldn’t want to gooooo….to heeeeaven.”

And now he has extended this skill to spoken sentences in the books we read. He will read along by speaking the last word in the sentence (of a book he knows). Sometimes he doesn’t even have to hear it a million times–he knows by the 2nd or 3rd hearing. When we read Sleepy Kittens at night, he will fill in the last word on nearly every page. Same for Sweet Dreams, Mimi, which we read before napping.

And just this weekend, he added a new item to his repertoire…