Home again home again

Here we are, home again.  Part of me wants to recount, day by day, Perrin's Summer Tour 2013 to you because each day of it was wonderful and magical--in big heavy handed ways and tiny ways.  But for some reason I think that would be a little sad for me, not to mention tedious to read. It is hard to switch gears in your heart and head from full family immersion back to family of three life.  I feel back in the stride of things now though, after one weepy--I miss my family why would we ever stay so far away from all of them I love love them--day.

The gist of the whole trip was introducing Perrin to our families.  It was indescribably FULL feeling to see them together.  It felt so right to see her with her extended family that it begs the question, Is it wrong to keep her away from them?  This is not a reasonable question to ask oneself I have decided.  

 

There was a moment on our trip while we were staying at my parent's house that Perrin had woken up in the night crying.  It was about 2:30am and I found myself standing in my childhood bedroom holding my daughter to me while I rocked back and forth, staring up at the glowing star stickers on the ceiling that I had placed there years ago.  I still don't know what that moment meant, but it was captured in my mind like a snap shot.  It made me feel a million miles away from my childhood self, my Martinsville self, but it was also a beautiful full circle moment. 

We got a special kick out of seeing Perrin with her cousin Solaris for the first time.  Since they are just months apart in age, we couldn't wait to see how they would react to each other.  After an initial bonk on the head with a snack cup, Sol took to Perrin pretty darn well I would say.  She even feed Perrin her own pumpernickel rye slice.

 They were darling together.  We miss you sweet Sol!  Perrin also got to meet her cousin Brendan and a few second cousins.  Everyone loved everyone.  It was a big hippie fest.

 

By the way, Perrin just turned 1 this past week. Happy birthday to my girl.  Here she is with her new piano from Aunt Tara and Uncle Jeff.  I love this picture as she is playing the piano just like Tori Amos.

 

 

Cherry Blossom Festival...Kind Of

We went to a "Cherry Blossom Festival" in downtown Denver today.  Contrary to its name, there was not an actual cherry blossom in sight.  There was a lot of touristy Japanese stuff though.  I was hoping for a little more true Japanese culture, but we still had a really nice time.  Perrin had her first udon and seemed to like it!

The food was really yummy, which was enhanced by my nostalgia for my time in Japan.  I had beef and veggie udon, and some mochi!!  I like mochi.  I was hoping to run across some Totoro loot, or some kind of studio Gibli treasure, but no such luck.  The whole thing felt more geared toward people who just wanted to be out on a pretty Saturday afternoon and be touristy.  

After the festival, we walked around downtown until we realized we were walking toward ice cream.  Really when you think about it, aren't we all always just walking toward ice cream?...Wait...what was I talking about?

So there was this adorable ice cream shop in the Highlands that looked like a giant old fashioned metal milk canister.

I had some caramel banana gelato.  So good.  I love that Perrin is too young to know when I am not sharing equally with her.  I mean she is a baby--what does she care--steamed carrots/ caramel banana gelato--whatever.  

Above is Perrin being super safe--holding onto the train handle while in a backpack worn by someone holding the train handle.  Good girl.  The stuffed deer strapped to the pack was just today dubbed, "Enrique."  I am not sure why the deer is Hispanic, but isn't that pretty presumptuous of me?  What makes me think that Enrique is white?  

~

Going to this festival made me think of my time in Japan about a million years ago...another life...  I thought it would be fun to indulge and show off some of my pictures from that time.  Enjoy your Sunday all!

 

 

 

Babies are hard.

One of the things about having a baby (and maybe this is true for a child of any age...oh dear god) that stands out to me as a new parent is just the way in which you can never relax.  Maybe I should speak for myself, but I imagine this is fairly prevalent feeling among parents.  To be honest, I don't know how we do it--live as though walking on egg shells for so long.  Obviously it can be done--Perrin is getting ready to turn one and we continue to carry on, and the current world population is over 7 billion people--so people are managing.  But sometimes, especially when I am over tired and Perrin is in a grumpy mood, I just don't see how we do it.

When she is napping or sleeping at night, I am trying to be quiet and constantly listening for her--even when I am not consciously doing so.  When she is awake and playing or eating you are on edge watching for dangerous things that could go in her mouth, things that can be pulled down or over--always with the looming threat of the cry or at least emergence of the grumpkin. 

I frequently find myself thinking, "Why did no one warn me that I would feel uptight and not be able to relax--for years?"  But why would they?  No sense giving a parent-to-be more to worry about when there is not one thing they can do to make it not so. I have always considered myself a laid-back person; and I still try to put up that front.  But man, this business is not for the faint of heart.

~

For Joseph's first Father's Day we ate some breakfast out at The Fat Frog Cafe, then went to the Botanic Gardens in the big city.  Perrin was pretty antsy at the restaurant since she was missing her nap, but it did enable us to eat a Nutella crepe, so bring it on baby.

The Denver Botanic Gardens are so beautiful.  Just walking through the air filled with all those flower smells does your soul good.  

It rained a bit which gave us the opportunity to seek shelter in a sweet little gazebo with an ice cream cone.  Perrin stayed in a pretty good mood all day, but napped surprisingly little.  I guess flowers are just too exciting.  The Gardens also have a wonderful children's area--sort of a mini garden with a built stream for wading and some play areas.  

So happy late Father's Day to you Joseph.  You two make quite a pair.  My favorite pair.  

Leeks

We just got back from a big day celebrating our 5th wedding anniversary, going to the theater.  The musical was good, yea yea, let me tell you about the pizza we ate before the show. It was from Lucky Pie downtown, a sort of sexy cool little pizza place.  The pizza was called Freak A Leek.  It had leek, goat cheese, mozzarella, and bacon on a thin crust.  Wow, leeks.  Who knew.  And leeks with goat cheese was magic.  I took really small bites to make it last longer, while I looked at Joseph sitting across from me and considered knocking him out and hiding his slumped body under the table while I devoured his slices.  I am already plotting another trip there...maybe I can use my upcoming birthday to get close to that leek pie again.


I found a baby tunnel at the Goodwill last week.  Now that P can crawl we busted it out.  She hasn't crawled through it, but likes to sit at one end and peer through at you on the other.  Both cats also like the tunnel.

I love how in the above picture you can see Perrin in the background craned around in her highchair watching the cats.  She is thrilled just watching them lay curled up motionless on the couch, so Puck getting ready to attack Simon in the tunnel is riveting business. 


Merry sent us some great books for Perrin the other day.  The series is called...

We have Baby mix me a drink, Baby make me breakfast, Baby get me some lovin', and Baby do my banking.  I would also appreciate a Baby clean my house tutorial for Perrin, so if anyone sees that one..., as there is a funny smell emanating from somewhere in our kitchen. 

Speaking of funny smelling, I captured a great Perrin "I just smelled a fart" face...because we are classy ladies like that. 

 

Sheep sheering day!

We went to the sheep sheering event at the Littleton Historical Museum today!  For you Indiana folks, it is called a museum, but it is a lot like Conner Prairie, with staff dressed in period clothing.  They have a working 1860's-1890's farm, with a log cabin, school house, blacksmith, etc.  It is also always free, which is great because it is just about 7 minutes away from our house.  The big event today was the once a year sheep sheering!  In the picture above, you can see the man sheering the sheep behind Perrin.  Then one of the fellas would wrestle the sheep back to the enclosure, and bring out the next one to sheer.

 Here you can see them getting out the next sheep.  It was a cool thing to see up close.  The sheep were surprisingly cooperative once the guy had them positioned and was cutting.  

We got to see the whole process, from sheering to spinning the wool, and finally yarn dying.  Now all I want to do is raise sheep, spin their wool, dye and knit to the end of my days.  I am only sort of kidding.  Someone will be googling "starting a sheep farm" tonight!  There was also a CO couple there who raise alpaca.  They had one alpaca and one llama there.  Their business is raising alpaca for their fibers; they only keep llamas around to protect the

alpaca from mountain lions and coyotes.  What a funny picture this conjures in my mind--this funny looking creature protecting that funny looking creature--boxing gloves would be involved...

Finally, there was a woman who brought 3 trained border collies and her own sheep to demonstrate how the dogs herd.  It was really fascinating to watch the dogs work the sheep.  They were just so into what they were doing, that even when we bent down so Perrin and I could pet the two dogs that weren't working, they didn't even look at us.  They were just super intensely staring at the sheep.  We didn't even exist.  I was jealous of their sense of purpose.

 It was such a perfect day for our outing...in the high 60's with sun.  Aaaaahh.  Tara and Jeff met us in the park next door before hand for a short picnic (is it a picnic if you eat Taco Bell?--Perrin did not eat Taco Bell for those of you gasping in gastric horror).  

I wanted to buy every skein of beautiful yarn I saw today--the way it hung there drying on the line in shades of indigo, yarrow, berry, and soft soft greens...I wanted to possess it, roll in it, knit it, eat it, anything...oh, beautiful yarn.  Seeing its source and how it came to be what it was, only made it more beautiful.  It is so easy to see items in stores and forget all the craft and/or work that went into it.  

Perrin moment of zen...

 

 A little Perrin relaxation time after a tough baby day.

To decompartmentalization!

Found a new great place yesterday evening in downtown Littleton.  I am hoping it can become our place.  I have always wanted to have a place.  It is called Jake's Brew Bar and is in an old downtown building with high ceilings with a nice throw back feel; a cool place that isn't trying hard to be cool.  This was one on the nicest evenings we have had in a while and we just stumbled into it.  Perrin and I were walking downtown just to get out of the house and stretch our legs.  Joseph called and said he had left work a bit early and could be at the train station to meet us downtown in 30min.  So we met him and thought we would try out this new place on Main Street.  We walked there and since it was a bar I started to think maybe we shouldn't take Perrin in and bother other patrons with possible baby issues.

So we got to the doorway and peeked in.  We saw another small baby and a toddler, so we had our ticket in.  We sat down and ordered a couple of beers and started talking to the woman with the toddler who was beside us.  The little boy was on the floor playing with toys and the woman invited Perrin to sit down with him to play. 

So there we are, drinking happy hour beers at 5:30 on a friday evening, with our daughter playing happily at our feet, talking to really friendly servers and other patrons.  One server held Perrin, took her to look in the mirror, then to go visit with the baby at another table.  How great was this!?  They brought us beer and took care of our child!  A random fact was that our server also turned out to have been on the show Survivor for two seasons (we were informed by another patron)...ah, random brush with celebrity.  Aaaany way... 

What I enjoyed so much about this experience was that I didn't just feel like we were having parent time, or just baby time.  We all three got to hang out together where we all got to have a good time and no one was sacrificing anything...P got to play and be social and so did we.  Usually our lives as parents tend to feel like oil and water with parent time and grown up time.  It was incredibly refreshing to feel whole.  Gotta figure out more ways to do that.

Perrin moment of zen..."Are YOU looking at ME?"

saw a yoga competition

Today Patricia, who I work with, and I went to the regional Indiana Birkham yoga competition to see another friend from work compete. It was held at a monastery in Floyd Knobs. The top two men and women get to go to L.A. for the national competition...and our friend Steve, who is in his 40's won second place! Really there weren't very many men competing, just 3, but we were proud of him.

I was so impressed with these people. Not everyone was great, and there were all body types. Which is really what impresses me the most. That some of these people have the gumption to get up in front of all of these people and do the best poses that their body can do, knowing that they are not really competing to win.

The woman who won is actually my friend Steve's teacher. She can back bend until her head is between her feet and hold all of her body weight, parallel to the ground on her fingers. I am thinking back to my one college yoga class that Tara and I took together...fun but it didn't last long enough to make any kind of progress. Maybe I will try to get into it at home on my own since classes are so expensive. It would be good for my back- it still gives me trouble; it aches most days, and I never even did anything to it that I know of. I have just been touched by the bad back fairy.

suit shopping with Angelo

Yesterday Joseph and I had the day off together and we went out to this wacky restaurant called Lynn's Paradise Cafe in Louisville. I had Bourbon Ball French Toast and Joseph had eggs with fried green tomatoes. And I now know that I love fried green tomatoes. Ahhh...Kentucky thank you for showing me the way.

So after our delicious brunch, we went suit shopping for Joseph. We went to this great store that we were referred to and had a really good time with it. The tailor there was called Angelo. He was this short trim older Italian man with perfectly wavy hair and unwavering confidence. We would ask him a question like are there other white shirts that could go with this suit? And almost before we have finished asking he says, no no, this is the shirt.
We did not question Angelo. We told him how much we wanted to spend and he made Joseph look great for that amount. Isn't it nice when people are really good at their jobs? It was so funny to watch him chalk Joseph up in the suit. He is tugging and pinning and folding all around his bottom--and Joseph trying to stand so still and look straight ahead as instructed--Angelo whipping the measuring tape all around, rolling it up and then zinging it out of his hand again. I enjoyed watching that.

New music

I found two new singer/songwriters. Not that they are really obscure, but...anyway one is A Fine Frenzy. I heard her on public radio singing this song called Almost Lover. It makes you want to cry; it is so beautiful and sad. Her whole album One Cell In The Sea is worth checking out- she is sort of dreamy but still strong voiced. The other person I found is Brandi Carlile. She sounds sort of folk/rock with a earthy and bold voice. The Indigo Girls sing with her on one song on her album The Story-automatic credit for her!! Come to think of it she has a similar voice to Amy Ray. Finding new music by people I have never heard feels like finding precious stones in a drab wall of rock. Thank goodness people make music. I, myself am a listener, not a maker. (Thank you mom for having hope and giving me piano lessons anyway.)

Today I was trying to get old pictures on my computer that I had on disk and I found a disk of photos from Japan. It was strange to see them. That all seemed like it was lived by some other girl- even though I still can feel it all like it was yesterday if I stop and remember. How funny that we will put ourselves in these compromised situations, like we can step back out of splatter range and just see what happens. splat.

Still, there are good things.