Zoralee's month (three short videos at the end)

This month that Zoralee and I have been in Anchorage, she has grown right on up. Most notably and excitably, she began walking! Now, a couple weeks into it, she rarely crawls anymore. I'll hear her coming into the room and I'll watch the doorway, and it is startling just how tiny of a person comes in! She's like 1/6 the height of the walls. Tiny as a bug.

Here's the day she started walking on her own. We were at Scott and Amanda's house pretty late one evening, and without any encouragement, she just started walking. She carried Gauge's mardi gras beads around, shaking them, dropping them, and being distracted enough with them to not worry about falling.

Around that same time, she sprouted a top tooth, then a couple days later, the second top tooth. Now she's got four, and she immediately figured out she can grind them together and drive Mama to jump from the Cliffs of Insanity. I don't have any good shots of that yet. Either the teeth or me jumping.

But here she is with a still-favorite activity, looking out the window.

Sometimes it pours, in the not so fun way. While she was teething, Zoralee was sick with a bad cold, and to top things off, she fell against the kitchen table leg and ended up with a perfectly straight scratch from mid-forehead to lips. This is a couple days later, after the wound has healed, but you can still make it out.

This doesn't show the scrape, but is this the cutest dress? Thrift store. $1.99. I can finally put her in dresses, now that she can walk! She could be in them when she was lying or rolling. But the minute she started scooting and crawling, they'd bunch up beneath her. I guess that's something to consider when giving dresses as gifts to babies. Then again, there's no telling when a baby will do what.

VIDEOS:

1. Zoralee is becoming a real chatter-er too now, although not so much to other people. Just to herself or her imaginary friends. Here she is on the bed, arguing or giving a speech or ??

2. singing a duet (not sure why the ghostly hue)

3. simply walking

new facial hair-do

Jason gets bored with his facial hair in the fall. This time, just the mustache disappeared. I believe this is the most Amish he has ever gone. Brandon says he looks like a garden gnome, but just you wait - in a couple of years, it'll be all the rage. I think it's a very handsome look.


The best part was getting Zoralee's assessment. Just as the pics show, she was skeptical at first, but when she warmed up, she gave him her best kisses. Then, as she walked away, she got in one last, long stare.

us

ahoy! we come a-sailin' to the land of Blog!

Haalow! We're here - for awhile anyway. We're trying out AT&T's internet service, and we have 30 days to decide on it. We can see that the answer will probably be "no," but this'll give us some temporary access. The connection is as slow as a turtle on a glacier made of molasses, so I don't know how photo uploading will go.

This month without internet has been an eye-opener. I daresay Jason and I have rather enjoyed the lack of immediate access to every drip of information in the entire world. I actually had to call my mother on the telephone for her chocolate sauce recipe rather than google it. Not that google could, with its might and money and all-seeing eye, find the equivalent to yours, Mom. Besides, I don't know what we could give up to be on the computer more. We've been hanging with people nearly non-stop, much to our delight and occasional fatigue. (For great posts about marital disagreements on television and internet, see this link over at Rachel's blog and then this followup link. Be sure to check out the comment sections for those posts too).

On the other hand, we want to purchase plane tickets for Christmas. We want to monitor our bank account online (since we don't actually "balance" our checkbook - hey, that's real life). And email is a good way to communicate with Shelsea about the next box of hand-me-downs she wants to mail (woot!) and to learn that my grandparents, in their late 70's and early 80's, marched themselves into Verizon the other day and got cell phones.

Plus, okay, I've got a few Zoralee photos I need to share. And little by little, I'm catching up on y'all's lives too (at least those of you with an internet presence). xooox

a few folks, and us

3 mamas and 3 first babiesHere are Jannell and Cody helping Zor learn to walk, a common activity for visitors.

She's almost there! The hardwood floors don't help. bath / dishes time

around

It just isn't working for me to write a lot of text these days. For one thing, gaining internet access has been a big NO SIR-IE, BOB. Several misadventures. Frustration. I have things to say, but they're not forming into a nice coherent string of pearls, or even of costume jewelry. So, here come a few pictures that you can make up stories about.

morning light

and proud of it

Whatever it was or is, it's now faded out by the sun. Isn't this a precious statement about humankind and our bold pride in fleeting things?

being here

friends, big and small

Zoralee loves the window. She watches cars, bikers, and joggers go by, the two dogs next door, and the schoolchildren on the playground at recess. Right now she’s watching a landscape crew replace our fence. My sister made mention that this was a happy thought, Zoralee being entertained by the goings on outside, but also sad to think that her previous window experiences were so measly – a great big meadow of very little excitement.

Our rhythms here are already so different. No chickens, no horses, no wild turkeys or deer roaming through each day. No animal life, per say, to derive context from. We can only see a patch of sky, instead of the weather coming from miles away. It's ironic, since we're in Alaska, the last frontier, but we live downtown in Alaska's largest city, something we always thought would be fun to do. We can see the wilderness, to be sure. The mountains are already covered in snow, tall and wild. But at our house, we hear traffic, the voices of walking companions, and every couple of hours, the screams of playing, teasing, energetic children. We are loving to see our family and long time friends again.

Our closest neighbors are a couple that Jason went to school with before. They’ve already given us some carrots, squash, and potatoes from their greenhouse! Our kitchen window looks directly into theirs. Like the guy said, at first it’ll be awkward catching each other’s eyes, but, we’ll just waive and go about things, and pretty soon we won’t even think about it. Zoralee, in fact, has already waived at them. Jason feels he has to throw on a shirt to get a snack though, and I’ll have to be cognoscente of where in the house I am talking to myself; they’re close enough to know I’m not wearing a Bluetooth. Gets you remembering how funny it is that we all live in these house bubbles, peeking into each other’s lives through neat, silent, two by three feet squares.

the plane trip up

One week ago, I was frantically running about the house in hopes of making that day's flight out. With some extra babysitting by my folks and cutting a few corners (to where now my mom is mailing us a box of forgotten tidbits), we made it to the airport. I was one of those dreaded non-rev passengers who shows up at the very last minute with too heavy of luggage, has to repack at the counter, forgets to tell them about the baby, and has to run back to the car and get the car seat to check. I remember those inconsiderate passengers when I worked for the airline.

Mostly, Zoralee did great flying. She nursed contentedly on take offs and landings for both flights. While they were revving the big jet’s engines for take off from Seattle, her eyes got round and confused, but she kept drinking. And when we our tires hit the ground in Anchorage, everything started shaking, including her head and my boob in her mouth. Very funny. I would've shouted for everybody to come see, but for the darned seat belt sign.

She was a ball of energy the entire time, other than a small nap in the Ergo that started in the Seattle airport while we waited to board and ended while we were on the taxiway. Otherwise, she needed to be entertained. We went from one activity to another, and it was great when something lasted on the order of minutes. I was utterly exhausted and my neck and back really tight by the time we hit Anchorage, from the combination of keeping her busy and worrying she’d be a nuisance to people.

Two best parts:

David met me at the Seattle airport! He drove there from Portland, on his out-of-the-way back to Montana, just to hang for our 2 hour layover. The guard, of course, wouldn’t let me hand Z off to him while I went back for food, so we talked on cell phones from opposite sides of the security hallway, looking at each other, the guard between us, making our meal plans, because we wanted something from inside of security while I was there. When we did meet up, David chased Zoralee around while I scarfed a fish taco and fries. We wondered what could be going through Zoralee’s mind, to all of a sudden see Uncle Dave in a totally bizarre environment, and then we get on another machine and fly away.

Zoralee was the most attentive passenger during the flight attendants’ presentation. She sat on my lap, facing forward, and her little head poked out into the aisle to watch this strange lady pointing and waiving and carrying on. She must've thought, “Now this is some sign language, Mom. You need to get with the program.”

In closing, here are some great tips for flying with a kidlet that Sonja had sent me ahead of time. She had just made a long flight herself with their first baby. I followed all of them except the night flight thing, since Zoralee is - - cough, cough, ha ha ha ha ha, ohhhh man - - NOT a good sleeper.

1. Beg, plead and bat your eyelashes so you can get an open seat next to you - otherwise, plan to make quick friends with the person next to you because she'll probably kick them, grab them, or pull their hair if she's anything like Tate!
2. Unveil a brand new toy on the plane.
3. If possible and Zora's a good sleeper, schedule a night flight - I did that and Tate slept through most of it.
4. If you're still nursing, dress so you can easily nurse for comfort from ear pain and/or bring her favorite sippy.
5. Don't bring much - it's a pain to haul everything around.
6. Bring lots of snacks for you - you'll be exhausted!

last month in Montana

I just can't move on so quickly without first throwing on a few pics from our last month in Montana.

helping Grandpa to really stuff in the hunting supplies

My mom thought Z's first trip to Walmart was just hysterical.

She took pics, phone pics, video. Crazy Grandma.

a relaxing summer's evening on Flathead Lake with Kristi and Brent

Z and the wii

getting familiar with Alaska friends

This one's from more than a month ago, but I have to post it.

Jese, Nikki, Nya, and Brette, we miss you and the gang!

Seared into my memory is also the image of Justin and Alex standing by the wood stove, looking down at Zoralee and Brette on the living room side of the baby boundary. It was a precious sight, two grown men taking time to say goodbye to a couple of little boogers.

These are also from earlier in the summer,

but they come to mind when I think of Montana.

Sunday Swirl