babes in toyland

behold the toy box:

today, two lovely little girls (ages 4 and 1) joined summer and me for an hour in the afternoon. naturally, upon entering our home, the older girl went straight for the toys. i directed her to the box beneath an end table, and eyes wide with excitement, she dumped the toys in a pile on the living room floor. she paused. a quizzical look. and then: "this is just trash and junk."

touche.

i can see how the empty yogurt containers, plastic spoons, random game pieces, assorted lids, pens, broken glasses, torn pictures, gift tags, old flashlights, (yes, those are birth control blister packs), kitchen utensils, lotion bottles, expired credit cards, toothbrushes, nail clippers and nasal aspirators may not appear to be your average children's toys, but in my defense, summer likes to play with trash and junk. we tried to curb the interest at first, but eventually just gave in to her carnal desires.

i guess it's true what they say, "one pre-schooler's junk is some baby's treasure."

movin on up

as posted earlier, we have just recently re-entered the world of the two-car-family. while this development brings with it much rejoicing (hooray for not leaving in the midst of fixing dinner to pick up bryan from the bus!), we have also had a few challenges. namely, the car seat shuffle.

in many homes, this in-and-out of the child safety seat is not a problem because the wife takes one car as her "primary" and the husband the other. whomever chauffeurs the kids around most likely has all the car seats in his or her vehicle.

however, bryan decided that he wanted to get a manual transmission on the new car. however, for at least a few more years, the civic is to be my primary mode of transportation (seeing as how the accord may die any day now). yes, i can drive a stick shift (phew!), but no, i do not feel comfortable driving it around bellevue and seattle (and parts of duvall) where hills reach +20% grade. i mean, i've just barely gotten over my fear of freeways!

anyhoo, at the end of the day we decided i was driving one car as much as the other, and we ought to just invest a bit earlier than usual in summer's convertible seat to keep one seat in the accord and the other in the civic.

summer loves her cushy new chair. she sho is spoilt.

Anatomy of a wedding photo

Ever look back on a large group wedding photo and wonder who some of the people are? Before you lump the complete strangers into the "Unidentified Inlaws" bucket, I would suggest adding another classification: interlopers. Case in point? My cousin Jake.

Before I dive into the details, I need to share some context for the uninitiated. The Salt Lake Temple is a remarkable piece of wedding machinery. On a given Saturday, dozens of newly weds stream out of the edifice, each trailed by one or more photographers (and several dozen relatives with their own cameras). Given the finite number of prime group photo shot locations around the temple, several wedding parties typically queue in front of a good photo spot, waiting while a preceeding party is photographed.

The boredom of such moments is all but overwhelming. To cope, we dared Jake to pose in another wedding party's photo. He hesitated momentarily, but once the kitty hit $30, he was all in. Here is the sequence of events:

Jake makes his entry. Notice that he's one of the first ones in the photo.
Plenty of time for the crowd to spot this intruder.

Jake positions himself between different nuclear family groups.
Each family suspects he belongs to the other.

Jake feels smug as he blends in to the crowd.

With this caper fresh in mind, I recommend you carefully review any group wedding photos in your collection.

bite me

i went to retrieve summer from her nap this afternoon, and this is what i found:

hmm...maybe someone should have invested in a rail guard.

(ps - long lost message to kristine hanson: those are paint chips).

all's fair

glory be! summer is still going strong here in the pacific northwest. our bonus week of sunshine 'tis a gift that we did not squander. my parents were in town (lucky, lucky), and we played much the same as when kenny and emmelie were here.

adding to the sunny northwest experience, the puyallup fair was in full swing this week, so we decided to head on down. state fairs figure prominently in my family history, and we have been to many, but all agreed that none were quite as good as the puyallup.

summer looks skeptical of her portrait:

roberto the magnificent!

behind us is the largest cow we've ever seen.
jabba the cow.

a day old calf and her mum.

mom and dad wander the fairgrounds with their
newly aquired (what a great deal!) fair backpacks.

at the end of the day, summer had had too much cheese.

crawfish boil

cindy has wanted a down south crawfish boil as her pre-wedding night feast since she was a little girl. alas, fifteen years later, her wedding approaches and a truly unfortunate hurricane blows all the little crawfish away. what are the odds?

not to be deterred, her family rallied and decided to proceed with some minor adjustments: shrimp it is! and who doesn't like eating their dinner off of newspapers?

double, double, toil and trouble

is there something in my teeth?

bryan's dad, mike, explaining how to properly consume the delicacies.

summer enjoys her first crawfish - er, shrimp - boil.

dig in!

summer doll

summer came in as second most beautiful at cindy's wedding:

Cindy Heart Peter

Behold the happy couple. As a faithful reader of WheelerWonderland, please enjoy these exclusive photos of Cindy's wedding, which union took place on Saturday. For those of you who don't know (or couldn't tell from the resemblance in the photos), Cindy is my sister. She married this nice Peter Sutton chap (who comes complete with a genuine South African accent). Congrats!

summer's first band-aid

yes, we like to document all the important milestones. i'm not going to reveal how this particular accident happened. mainly because it was idiot mommy's fault, and i'd like to save just a little bit of face here. but let's just say the injury was on top of the fingers, and thus, in a very precarious place to bandage.

summer has since recovered and is doing well. unfortunately, i can't say the same for the bandages. minutes after painstakingly applying an ingenious double bandage on both the thumb and the forefinger, the thumb's wrap became a casualty. not having yet learned my lesson, i reapplied said bandage, and only moments later, both bandages were lost to the baby "i-have-eight-teeth" powers that be.

so summer was confined to her highchair and force-fed kix until the bleeding subsided.

maybe we should invest in one of those plastic cones they put around animals' heads so they don't bite the stitches.

solitaire

aha! during a scheduled import of what images were left on my camera, i found the only picture in my possession from last week's activities:


this is summer and me at snoqualmie falls in (where else?) snoqualmie, washington. i'd like to thank the teenage tourists from china who were kind enough to take the photo as my charges, aforementioned lovebirds kenny and emmelie, were gallivanting (albeit illegally--gasp!) on the riverbed: emmelie trying in vain to convince kenny to attempt some death defying feats (i.e, swim across the raging river), and kenny rebuffing her efforts whilst scolding, "come down off that boulder!" ah, marriage, what a blessed event.

much ado

this past week saw the wheeler clan entertaining my brother, kenny, and his fiancee, emmelie. unfortunately, the two lovebirds stole away with the pictures from the many varied festivities, so all will have to wait for photo representation of our good times until they send some to us (which, at the beginning of the semester, could be weeks).

but here's the low-down anyway:

--mariner's baseball game
--evergreen state fair
--weird al yankovic concert
--snoqualmie falls
--blackberry picking
--space needle
--science fiction museum
--experience music project
--duvall farmer's market
--pike place market

and of course, family staples of eating out, watching tv/movies, and playing games.

hosting those two has made me come to realize how old and tired i am. we changed many a plan because i wanted to stay home and take a nap. luckily, dealing with an engaged couple is rather straightforward as all they really want to do is spend time alone together. they happily obliged my nap requests and wandered around our quaint town whilst summer and i enjoyed some zzzzs.

vulcanology redux

There is an art and science to touring the Pacific Northwest with any degree of success. We learned this via the school of hard knocks last September during our first attempt to visit Mount Saint Helens. For those of you who refuse to click on my links, all we really saw was a dense wall of fog.

The key take away lesson is that you need to cram all of your sight seeing into the short but splendid summer months. Last year, Emily's brother Matt visited a little late in the season. This year, however, Emily's brother Ken has caught us in the Pacific Northwest prime. In addition, we now take weather reports more seriously since it's generally more convenient to go fog watching from the comfort of my living room. Fortunately, yesterday's weather prediction was nothing but clear skies. As you might expect, the trip was a bit more rewarding.

family expansion

For those of you wishing that we'd post something other than baby photos (hi Scott), today is your lucky day. For everyone else, be patient, and I'll indulge you later today.

Emily and I have always had a bit of a contrarian bent. For example, when it was cool to dabble (or bet the farm, in most cases) in the real estate bonanza of the last 5 years, we avoided it like the plague. For us, however, swimming upstream against the American zeitgeist is really just a matter of timing. Case in point: America's new found fondness for the Honda Civic.

When we ditched the 4Runner back in in November, Americans still weren't blushing at the sight of gas prices, but we knew the near future held a much smaller car for us. Imagine our dismay when we started visiting dealers and discovered the severe Civic famine. Even large dealers had anywhere from 0 to 2 models on hand. Bummer.

Naturally, the more sleazy salesmen tried to convince us that our needs would be better met by one of the larger (and much more plentiful) cars on the lot. I, on the other hand, was ready to cast away my long standing Honda brand loyalty in favor of a Mazda, but Emily was steadfast. Just as I was ready to turn my back on Honda, a dealer searched their incoming inventory one more time and discovered they would be receiving a perfectly configured car in another month.

Well worth the wait.

summer goes to the beach

some photos of our dip in lake crescent:

 

summer is just too cute in her scandalous 'kini.

 

 

descending into the lake (she looks a little skeptical).

 

ps:  speaking of the vampires, if you ever wondered what they might look like

with their crystal-bright, sun-reflective skin, i think i may have a close representation.

 

monkey see, monkey do.

again with the cold water.  why do we torture her so?

another cute 'kini-clad shot.  i just can't resist.

summer rides a ferry

go west, young man

Wishing to capitalize on the finite supply of sunny weekends in the Pacific Northwest, I loaded the girls in the car on Friday afternoon and headed as far west as I could. After making a layover in Port Angeles that night (thank you, Hotwire), we resumed our journey in the morning and eventually found ourselves hiking the shores of Rialto beach.

Much to our chagrin, the area immediately surrounding the trail head was shrouded in a thick fog. Pity the overwhelming majority of families who refused to venture more than a couple hundred yards from the parking lot. Roughly a mile up the beach, the sun was out again.

For those readers who have never experienced a northwestern beach, you should cast away any notions of nap inducing warmth, refreshing water, and beaches of perfectly silky sand. However, what these beaches lack in traditional accoutrements, they more then make up for in raw, rugged beauty.

After the beach, we headed towards Forks. Frankly, we were somewhat disappointed by the lack of vampire related tourist attractions (if confused, see here). I guess not everyone wants to cash in on the fame imparted by best sellers.

Following Forks, Emily vetoed my Hoh Rain Forest aspirations and plotted a course for one of the most photographed features of Olympic National Park: Marymere falls. Turns out the honor of "most photographed" has more to do with accessibility from major road than scenic grandeur.

Fortunately, in the neighboring environs, we discovered the East Beach of Crescent Lake. By this time of day, the tourists had fled and the natives were enjoying the local swimming hole. It was a good reminder that the average American in no way resembles the average inhabitant of Seattle's East Side.

Having gone as far west as we could in one day, it was time to turn eastward. Remarkably (given how much she loved her Yellowstone excursion), Summer was rather well behaved on the trip home. And yes, she may have inherited an affinity for ferry rides.

Rialto Beach.  La Push, Washington.

 

Emily and Summer experiencing the beach.

 

Summer discovers sand.  And eats it.

 

The creature from Alien?  No, just seaweed.

While she may love ferries, we learned on our trip that Summer hates cold water.

trapped

summer wheeler. public enemy number one.

on the move

oh yes, summer is crawling. granted, she still needs quite a bit of improvement in her form. i.e., her patented crawl with one leg and walk with the other shown in the first photo is proving to be rather inefficient. and we won't be entering her in any diaper derbys quite yet as she crawls v..e..r..y slowly, cautiously sliding one knee across the floor and then the other.

even though she's only been "mobile" for a few days, her injury incidence has already gone up like 400%. something tells me those bumps and bruises will be a mainstay for a few more years.

i guess ben got it right: it hurts to grow up.

teaching tranquility

so i went to the pediatrician today for summer’s nine month check-up and also because i was sure there was some malicious illness corrupting my baby. when my doctor asked me if i had any concerns, i was quick on the draw: what’s with all this screaming?! ALL THE TIME. ALL DAY LONG. now i knew our daughter was a screamer from the get go, but this? this is intense.

ear infection? nope. teething pains? nope. broken bones? nada. well, surely this can’t be normal; give her some medication that will make this wretched disease wither!

uh, that would be a no. americans are big on the miracle drugs, but sadly, we haven’t invented a cure for “asserting control” or “finding one’s voice” quite yet. so until we do, all across the world, babies from eight to ten months will be screaming their lungs out just because they have discovered that they can. and those with advanced abilities, like our dear summer, will be screaming louder and longer than most.

the antidote the good doc gives me? remain calm. what?!?! me? calm? firstly, as a general rule, people with pointy hair are not “calm,” and furthermore, i practically fly off the handle when bryan takes huge bites out of 8 oz. cheese blocks -- not really the paragon of serenity.

(though lest i villainize myself too unfairly, in relationship to summer, my patience capacity has far exceeded what even i had expected. still, her power is increasing and so must mine.)

before leaving our appointment, i asked my pediatrician if i could teach her not to scream. oh yes, he said, teach by example (sheesh. like i’ve never heard that before): she screams, i respond calmly (if at all), and in a few months (or many, many long years), we should have most of the kinks worked out.

until then, i’ll be drinking lots of chamomile tea and searching diligently for my inner zen.