season's first kayak trip & hiking the Highline Trail

Two weekends ago, Jason, Zoralee, and I got away for a one night camping trip in Glacier Park. We finally left our house mid-day on Friday, and by the time we found a campsight and got ourselves situated, we were all three pooped. Activity One was a giant family nap. Hard core, aren't we? I started fearing that what people told us about "everything changing once you have children" just might have an element of truth to it. Aaaack. La la la la la [plugging ears].

When we woke up refreshed, we were ready to wet down the kayak in Lake McDonald. Jason strapped Zoralee onto his back in the ergo carrier, and we hauled the kayak through the campground to the lake. We had to stop about fifty times for me to switch hands. Hefty thing, that.

Zoralee was NOT a fan of her nifty, shiny, new infant life jacket.

In fact, we eventually abandoned it because it doesn't fit well at all. It squeezes her head really badly, so we need to find a different style. I wore my lifevest and had her in the ergo-carrier on my front. If that's illegal, then I'm just kidding. Jason did all the rowing and a little fishing. Zoralee wriggled around and eventually fell asleep. I watched the water and sky in motion against the stillness of the mountains. (I love beauty, Jason loves practicality, and Zoralee loved escaping from the life jacket trauma enough to sleep.)

a couple of Jason's shots:We all know that food is one of the best parts of camping. Somehow I totally failed this trip. I skimped on meal-quality food but brought dark chocolate in several forms, including but not limited to hot chocolate, chocolate cookies, truffles, and Snickers bars. Once we figured this out, we were already in our campsight and set up. I must've been smoking crack walking through the grocery store earlier that day. Well, appropriately enough, here we are drinking hot chocolate beside the campfire (and Zoralee getting her first taste).

shots of setting up for a timed photo absolutely crack me up

* * *

The next day was my re-introduction to the act of a whole day hike, after a year and a half of abstaining due to pregnancy and infant owning. It was 11.6 miles from Logan Pass (the top of the road system through the Park) to The Loop through frickin' fantastic country. You lose roughly 2,000 feet of elevation, so there's overall more downhill than up. There is a rustic chalet about 7.5 miles in, where we stopped for an hour long break. Otherwise, we stopped briefly to snack, to give Zoralee pottytunities or change her diaper, and to fix my broken shoelace. Not counting breaks, it took us about 5 hours. We saw mountain goats, bighorn sheep, deer, marmots, ground squirrels, bugs, bees, birds, and a bazillion wild flowers. It was gorgeous.

Zoralee looked and looked all around, and when she got bored of the beauty, fell asleep. She preferred to be on my back rather than on Jason, so part way through we switched it up; he carried his pack on his back and mine on his front so that I could just carry Z. I nursed her and gave her pottytunities along the trail whenever she got fussy. She got a lot of attention from other hikers in her white sun bonnet. In a lot of spots, the trail wasn't wide enough for traffic to walk both directions, so people would let us pass or vice versa, and when we'd passed each other, they'd see Zoralee and get really startled. "Oh my heavens! There's a little one back there!" That was fun. We should've acted surprised too and started swatting at her like she was a giant insect. Next time.

I feel pretty out of shape for endurance walking, but man, the scenery was out of this world. One of those paradoxical experiences where you're wondering why in tarnation you like to do this activity but then two minutes later are living that Rocky Mountain high old John Denver sang about and can't imagine being elsewhere. (Unless it's at a Mexican restaurant. Hiking always makes me crave Mexican.)

at the Chalet

campground camping with baby

Just after the family reunion a few weeks ago, I wrote some stuff down about our first time campground camping with a baby have been wanting to get it blogged. It's rather informational and perhaps a little dry. I myself enjoy reading blogs that meld people's experiences with helpful chatter about what worked and didn't, so I suppose this is a bit of a payback to the blog universe.

Zoralee and I spent five days at the old rustic Bitterroot Lions Campground near Marion, Montana. We stayed in a tent for three nights and then were joined by Jason and stayed in our pickup camper the fourth night. Various family members were nearby in RVs and tents.

Z's first successful sneak out

Baby Paraphernalia: though I tried to be selective, I felt like we brought a LOT of stuff, which rather depressed me when I looked over the pile. It was only a few toys, as our regular life items are always more interesting to her. Flashlights, water bottles, drivers' licenses, and straps on bags kept her entertained, as well as the new surroundings and people. Her clothes all fit into a small bag since they're so tiny. We brought much more bedding than we would've for backpacking. Her cloth diapers did take up space, and then there were the other devices. A friend had just given us a stroller, and strolling turned out to be a nice way for other people to spend time with Zor, particularly when she was tired or needed some quiet space away from the crowd. The ergo-carrier sling was worth its weight in gold.

I debated and debated bringing the baby bathtub, because hello. Who wants to be seen bringing everything, including the kitchen sink pretty much. But it made a fine suitcase for the diapers and later a washing basin for them, and was perfect for Z's mid-camp bath. It was kind of like the ancient community Greek baths, where people walk by and stop for a chat. Only different.

Sleeping: Co-sleeping some at home was a huge plus in tenting it without being troubled by each others' presence. I laid down two Thermarest camping mats and covered them with blankets and open sleeping bags. The nights got cold, so we wore long sleeved stuff, socks, and hats. The day time was quite hot, so I had set up the tent under the shade of a big tree, and Z napped in only a diaper.

Diapers and EC: Okay, it may be nuts to stick with cloth diapering away from home, especially camping. Disposables certainly would've been more convenient and somewhat of a space saver. I am really not a martyr. But I've got our diapering system down and simply prefer it. EC really helps. As with all other outings, we did better with it than at home because I was better in tune with Zoralee's cues. I think we set a personal record; one day she had the same diaper on from 2:00 in the afternoon until 10:00 a.m. the next day, always dry. She did her business in sinks, toilets, and the woods. I had our baby bjorn potty chair for night times in the tent, which can be used for babies and adults alike. Sorry if that's too much info! Backpackers - and cabin dwellers :) - are familiar with the range of containers that can be used for night time peeing - Nalgene bottles, plastic nut jars from Costco with the extra wide mouths, etc. Anything to avoid leaving the tent and exposing them buns to the frigid night air.

I have enough diapers to last for three days when Zora is doing well with EC, so midway through the reunion I washed her diapers in the baby bathtub and hung them to dry in the sun. Worked pretty well, but the diapers were sure stiffer than when I dryer dry them.

* * *

Pickup Camper: While the camper has its obvious perks as far as amenities, sleeping in it is actually less enjoyable to me with a baby, and I think it's because of Z's stage of development. At the reunion, we kept her on the bed over the cab with us but I was nervous that she'd somehow get loose in the night and crawl to the edge. Two weekends ago, we took the camper to Glacier Park and made her a bed on the floor, but there's not much space, so she was constantly underfoot if we needed to be up and about. Plus, climbing down from the upper bed in the night to feed or comfort her on the floor was a real pain. I tweaked myself into some terribly awkward positions to lay beside her, and had to be extra stealthy in getting up once she'd fallen asleep again. In the tent, I could just let her play while I fiddled with bedding, clothes, whatever, and midnight wakings were a breeze.

Because Zoralee's just becoming mobile, having lots of people around was really helpful. When it was just the three of us, it would've been nice to have had a playpen or something to keep her confined. We were constantly evaluating if the rock she was playing with was small enough to be dangerous or if the plant life she was about to ingest was poisonous and forever moving her back onto her blanket or another safe place.

Bottom line: though camping with a baby takes much more preparation, and though for much of the time you're focused on her rather than, say, a nice book, you're still outside. Still soaking up the wind and sun and taking time to watch clouds shape themselves into dinosaurs and hoola-hoops. A very good change of pace and certainly worth it.

morning shadows from inside the tentevening shadows on the opposite wall

Zoralee on the move

Okay, this is a long post. I am sorry if it sounds like a Christmas letter in which I make my child out to be a superstar. She is, but I'm sorry if it's too obvious. Ha ha. Anyway, if you make it to the end of this post, you'll be rewarded with a booby photo...of sorts.

Just over 7 months ago now, I birthed my little Pumpin Buns. Before getting to know her, I would've guessed our offspring would be pretty chilled, of average energy levels, happy-go-lucky. I placed a whole lot more faith in general baby timetables. If you'd have said my baby might only quasi-laugh a handful of times in her first seven months of life, I'd have thought you were crazy. "But we love to laugh!" I'd have said, "And so will our baby!" Now timetables can eat my shorts. Zoralee smiles just fine, and she'll squeal and shriek with enough encouragement, but some babies have been laughing for months by now. Not Zoralee. She has other things to focus on than cheerfulness and merry-making. Namely, exercise and mobility. (?!)

From the very start (and I mean, on literal Day 1), she wanted to hold her head up. And she did it too, by George, for several seconds at a whack. We still held her head whenever she was against us, 'cuz that's what you're supposed to do with babies, but she never had that noodle neck flopping thing. I've no idea why, but I sometimes wonder if it was the way she was situated in the womb. At a couple weeks old, if you held her hands, she would try to pull herself up to a stand. I am not foolin' around.

*

As soon as Zoralee was happy to lay on her stomach, say, around three months, she started maintaining the superman position for long stretches of time. Abdomen to the floor, arms and legs held outstretched and off the ground. This is hard to do as an adult! Of course, sucking one's toes is too. Zoralee didn't spend a whole lot of time rolling over. Some time, yes. But once she'd get onto her belly, she would push her arms down in a half push-up and hold. Downward dog, I think it is, in yoga terms.

Around six months, she started crawling and experimenting with standing pretty much within the same few days. My first indication that the crawling stage was going to pass quickly was when she crawled off our bed at nap time, waaay before I knew she could make that kind of forward progress. I had gone in to check on her and found an empty bed. I let loose with an explicative, and my eyes scoured the dimness to find her laying on the floor, chewing on the bassinet leg. You can bet I kicked myself good over that one. "Anticipate the next stage, oh Mother Of A Learning Baby!" My heart was pounding and hands shaking for 1/2 hour.

*

Within a day or two of that, I watched her pull herself up inside the bassinet. Alrighty then! There went the bassinet, because I was paranoid she could somehow lift a leg up and whip herself over the edge. So, over the last few weeks as she has been coordinating opposite legs and arms (rather than scooching or haphazardly going forward), in the standing arena, she is letting go of the table edge with one hand. She also uses vertical edges to get herself up, like a door. I'm seeing rock-climbing in her future.

*

Now her bed is a Thermarest camping mat on the floor. This works great, because I can co-sleep to get her down for naps and night time. Then I get into our bed, which we're fixing to take off the box and just have as a plain mattress on the floor for even better transitioning. When Zoralee wakes from a nap, she crawls off her mat and around the room looking for something to play with. We bought a baby monitor a few weeks ago, and it's handy.

Other fun Zoralee factoids:

• She bounces to music, and if there is no music, plain old rhythm'll do. Like, if you hit a pot with a spoon, because you're honestly trying to get food off the spoon, that's rhythm, and bouncing will ensue.

• She still fights sleep like the dickens, but three times now she has been content to lay down beside me without nursing and fall asleep. I nearly woke her back up to bestow upon her high praises and show her that this is exactly how she can love to mommy every day. She hates to lay still for a diaper change. Hates getting dressed or undressed.

• Z doesn't particularly love getting into her ergo-carrier, but once she's in, she is quite content and comfortable. I use it daily for outside chores around the place, inside while I'm cooking or cleaning, and whenever we go on walks or to public places, so pretty much all the time. She falls asleep in that a lot.

• Just today I discovered that she likes yerba mate tea. Can you beleive that? Jason says yerba mate tastes like it was made by letting water steep in a concoction of barnyard substances - hay, animal excrement, etc. I admit it's an acquired taste, and I wouldn't have imagined a baby who has tried such sweet delectables as strawberries (wee bits at a time to make sure of no allergies), pineapple, and chocolate to be okay with such a flavor. But she got really excited and kept wanting more tastes. As though this child needs any additional sources of energy. Jimminies.

Perhaps I'll end there for now. Anybody still reading this, besides our mothers and Rachel? Okay then, here is your reward:

a footstool booby

signs

Keeping on the lookout for signs from heaven isn't the hard part. It's when you get a sign, like a spider pointing at a specific word, that you really have to kick in with the question asking.

gardening is hard....ening

Well dagshnabit, a flock of pygmy grasshoppers has decimated our beet crop and our three variety of lettuces. First they got the claytonia, a very fragile lettuce, and we thought that's all they cared for. But a few days later, it was the black seeded simpson, and now they're working on the butterleaf. It's discouraging. I did re-plant beets, but the grasshoppers must lay in waiting, salivating, because they're attacking them as soon as they spring up. We were so looking forward to beets! Maybe ours wouldn't have been ready in time anyway though. I saw gigantic beets at the farmer's market last week, with greens that looked like bushes. They must've been, oh, roughly 3,000 times the size of ours.

The hopper population is of plague proportions. Don't try that sentence with numb lips. Our best defense against them seems to be keeping the garden area wet, but who wants to run the sprinkler 24 hours a day in one spot? Something seems wrong about that. The grasshoppers sometimes catch a northernly breeze, flying across the lawn in swarms, and we will lean on our hoes with weathered arms and watch the bugs with old farmer eyes and say bitterly under our breath, "Good riddance." And then we'll look down at our two remaining cabbage plants and five elephant garlics and say, "Looks like we'll be having a lot of cabbage and garlic. Or, wait. Looks like we'll be having a week's worth of cabbage and garlic."

The plague of hoppers has occured over the last couple weeks, and we're not hearing similar sentiments from other gardeners in the area. It is probably because we are surrounded by dry pasture land. Now today, we just discovered that our gate must've come open, because a deer ate our sugar snap pea plants down to 4 inch stalks of nothingness.

There is a time for admiring wildlife and a time for wanting to ring its neck.

After our first round of tomatoes sprouted but then died horrid deaths due to us purchasing "daylight" bulbs instead of "plant and aquarium" bulbs, we planted a bunch more maybe 6 weeks ago. Well, I am happy to report that those are healthy plants, ready to be transplanted into the garden. And actually, the seed success rate was such that we should have plenty of tomatoes. Should. Should. But not a lot else in the garden has gone as it "should." Our three mature tomato plants from Jese and Nikki are so far unscathed by critters. And our one zucchini plant and two winter squash plants are continuing to grow.

I also planted corn and carrots a couple of weeks ago, hoping for a late, hot summer. Yeah, I know the saying about corn, that it should be "knee high by the 4th of July." Well, ours was knee high...to a grasshopper, which, believe me, I had plenty of to measure by.

chicken down

A stray dog got one of our hens.
Booooo.

It happened within hours of us leaving for the family reunion. The neighbor kids saw two unfamiliar dogs in the area, so they ran over here in time to see one of them with a chicken in its mouth, dead. Just then the dogs' owner was driving through, hollering out the window for them. She felt so bad about the chicken and left her information in case we wanted her to replace it.

We'll never be able to replace that specific chicken, lady.

Okay, maybe we will. We still can't tell our hens apart much by looks - they are just too stinkin' similar - but some of them stand out by behavior. You know about Flight Risk, whom Jason chased with rocks and a stick to get her into the coop not long ago. She's the least sociable and usually the last one in at night. There are also two hens who stick together and like to graze and explore far past where everybody else is willing to go. There's another who Jason thinks has trouble seeing or flying. She seems to be lowest gal in the pecking order, and always roosts on the bottom rung at night while the others squish onto the top two rungs together. It's pretty sad. We think it's she who is laying eggs on the floor beneath the laying boxes. She also occasionally bumps into things, making us suspect blindness. Finally, our friendliest hen was one of the slowest to mature; we knew her first by her approachability, and also more recently by her short, pale pink waddles and combs. She greets us before anybody else does, follows us the farthest, and walks boldly up to the dogs to see what's going on. Heck, I'm going to go ahead and name her Friendly Bird right now.

So, which hen got killed? Well, our worst fear was that it was Friendly Bird. There's the pet lover in us, valuing human qualities. We could just see her running up to the stray dog and squawking out a hearty, "Welcome to the neighborhood!" Then, CHOMP. When Jason got home from work mid-week, he went to see which hen it was, and it was indeed one of the two or three least mature. We were so sad. But again, by looks alone, he couldn't tell precisely who. As time has gone on, it's clear that Friendly Bird is still here! None of the others I described above seem to be gone either, so we must've lost one of our lesser known hens.

* * * *

In other chicken news, Six Dolla' Roo is gaining confidence. Whereas before, he was a bit of a pansy rooster, he now attacks people's legs from behind while they're walking away. It's actually a little funny if you know it's coming. He was de-taloned, so it doesn't hurt. He flies into your legs and flaps about, and when you turn around and look at him, he just stands there looking back.

reunionizing with the family

The great gift of family life is to be intimately acquainted with people

you might never even introduce yourself to, had life not done it for you.

~Kendall Hailey

The lack of emotional security of our American young people is due, I believe,

to their isolation from the larger family unit. No two people - no mere father and mother -

as I have often said, are enough to provide emotional security for a child. He needs to feel himself one

in a world of kinfolk, persons of variety in age and temperament, and yet allied to himself by

an indissoluble bond which he cannot break if he could, for nature has welded him into it before he was born.

~Pearl S. Buck

If you don't believe in ghosts, you've never been to a family reunion.

~Ashleigh Brilliant

* * *

These three quotes were rattling around in my head during our family reunion last week. (I'd been searching for good quotes for a craft project I submitted for our auction.) Together, they sum up an extended family: a bunch of people you might not otherwise have befriended and yet whose existence informs your perceptions of yourself, your ancestors, your progeny. I studied quietly those cousins of my mom who were all raised together and were obvious influences on each other, wondering how a whole generation can love reading and pass books back and forth to each other by the sackful. My grandfather's siblings still have identical hand gestures and expressions after decades of living in different states.

Grandma (in white) and her three living sistersGrandpa and Zora

Aunt Nadine (Grandpa's sister) and me

That second quote is so relateable. One of the biggest joys of having a kid is introducing her to the greater family. Little Zoralee has gotten a year's worth of loving and manhandling over the past weeks. Wow. Whether she was perched at the table in her Sassy Seat for a meal or furthering her crawling skills on the lawn or being strolled or carried about, she elicited a "Heeeey Zoooraaa!" from every passerby, usually in a voice two octaves above normal pitch.

And now for some pics, although oddly enough, I didn't take many. Or, I didn't take many that were of people other than Zoralee. Fine. I am smitten.

the auction mid-week, featuring homemade and regional itemsgames

And now, some of my favorite Zoralee-centered moments:

When my dad made announcements at mealtimes, speaking loudly about when group photographs would be taken or where the sign up sheet was for sweeping the dining room or riding horses, Zoralee turned to him and grinned. Sometimes she talked back, sure as sure can be that Grandpa was addressing her individually. This ritual turned into quite a crowd pleaser.

It is especially endearing to see my brothers and boy cousins with Zoralee, protecting her from the wild animals and also small gravel bits that might make their way into her mouth. I dunno; you sort of expect the girls to sidle up to a baby (sorry about the stereotype, but hey), so when the guys just want to sit in her presence and watch her try to crawl - that's, as my aunt Lavonne said, "sweet and precious."

Zoralee and I (and I'm sure everybody) would reach a point every day of over-crowding, a limit to our sociability. One day, when she was waaay beyond that point, I took her back to the tent and we laid down to nurse. I thought she'd be konked out in 30 seconds, by the way she looked. She tends to break out in a rash on her face when she's overly tired, and this was the worst I'd ever seen it. But, after nursing, she looked up at me with love, and giddily cood her appreciation for being taken to a quiet place. She then proceeded to crawl around the tent for an hour soaking up the sound of nothing. It was perfect.

I've mentioned before that Zora is a mover. A wiggler. A squirmer. But one evening, for inexplicable reasons, she sat upon the grass very contentedly for twenty minutes, simply watching. She strained her neck to watch birds fly past, and I followed her gaze to a bee buzzing from clover to clover.

By mid-reunion, Zoralee looked like a real camper, with mosquito bites and random scratches and scrapes to her face and body, and filthy fingernails. I was so proud of her! A real outdoor girl. There's something about dirty fingernails that gets me high on life. Here's her first morning waking up in the tent.

This is getting long, so I'll wrap it up with a couple of other favorite moments, having nothing to do with Zoralee:

One day, I was in the main lodge playing cards with a group of the old timers. There were between 35 and 60 years between me and them. Two of my second cousins, who are young and trendy, came in to say goodbye to everybody. She is a gorgeous, professional dancer with wild hair and supermodel sunglasses. He is the handsome sporty type, with a fantastic build and spikey hair. As they walked out with hips swaggering like the show people they are, they both held up the peace sign and said, "Peace! Peace!" over their shoulders. It stood in delightful juxtaposition to this table full of old people sitting on wooden benches, their cards spread across a plastic tablecloth in a game of "Hand and Foot."

Playing music is just about as important to this family as eating. We ain't professionals, but we do love to play together. If somebody is sitting still for more than a few minutes, they are sure to pick up an instrument and commence, and passersbys will likely join in. It's great having the cousins come over, because we introduce each other to new songs and bands. And then we get to hear Grandpa Gene's old timey classics like "Deep Ellum Blues" and "Mama Don't Allow No Guitar Playin' Around Here." The best is when the non-musician audience isn't particularly paying attention and you can jam and experiment with no pressure to perform.

Zoralee and Aunt Melody dancing to the music

A group that was still around after the reunion played softball on July 4th. We had a real hoot, bad-mouthing each other and combining and twisting softball and baseball rules from around the country. It stank that two of our youngest players got injured within 10 minutes, but they recovered well. Softball was a big part of my growing up years, and it's weird how common of a sport it is in my extended family too, kids and adults alike.

If you must see more, my sister, Rachel, posted a bunch of totally different pics from our reunion on her blog at this link.

an old cartoon of Rachel's

Rachel drew this cartoon at the tender age of 8, and I thought it would be fun to post in light of her recent post about Cam. Did you know they met in Hawaii?! I found this tonight in the 6th issue of the "Special Delivery Paper," a weekly collection of stories and pictures we made for our parents for a couple of years during childhood.

It's a little hard to see. A woman is drowning and is saved by a man. She first says, "Help me" then "Oh, thank you" then "Oh, my hero." The intense final dialogue has the woman saying "Hawaii is great" and the man responding with, "I know."