The State Fair

Dale had some work to do from home today, so Adelaida and I met my friend Diane at the New Mexico State Fair for an afternoon of State Fair Fun. (Neither Adelaida nor I tried the deep fried twinkies. I settled on a roasted ear of corn and Adelaida munched on a carrot for lunch. But I couldn't resist the picture.)

We wandered around a bit at first before finding the animals. In addition to the ordinary fair highlights (pigs, cattle, horses, chickens), Adelaida found a new favorite animal: the alpaca. She glanced at the horses and cattle, stood at the pig enclosure for a couple of minutes, and talked to the chickens a bit, but none of those animals really kept her attention longer than a few minutes. We ended up spending close to an hour in the alpaca section because Adelaida couldn't stop laughing at them. I admit they are pretty funny-looking creatures, but the alpacas kept Adelaida entertained for much longer than I expected.

For my readers unfamiliar with the alpaca, the alpaca is a domesticated species of South American camelid, native to the Andes. It looks a little like a lamb with a really long neck, or a fuzzy miniature camel without a hump, or a fuzzy miniature llama. They are bred for their fur (which is extremely soft) and are apparently pretty docile herd animals.

Adelaida stood at this alpaca's cage for quite a while, laughing at the alpaca and sticking her tongue out at it.


In response, the alpaca bent down to look at her and stuck his tongue out as well.


Adelaida got to pet and even sit on a very gentle alpaca who was out roaming the aisles.


After watching a competition in which youth (kids 11 and under) led their alpacas through an obstacle course, we ventured back out to the fairgrounds. Our next stop was the tiger show, where a Bengal tiger preserve in the Florida panhandle was showing several tigers in a show. The tigers "performed" while playing with their handlers.

We spent the last half-hour or so at the Kids Corner of the fair. They had all kinds of cool demonstrations that Diane and I enjoyed playing with (and one day Adelaida will appreciate them too!). At one point we came to a table filled with foam puzzle pieces. I picked one up and realized that it looked like Texas, and soon we had put the entire United States foam puzzle together. We collected people as we worked the puzzle, and by the time we finished we had about ten people working on the puzzle around the table.

Our final stop in the Kids Corner was at the children's arts and crafts area. I sat down with Adelaida and was immediately handed a coloring page, a piece of paper with several paints on it, and a cup of paint brushes. Diane convinced me that Adelaida should do some finger painting, so we set the paint brushes aside and let Adelaida prepare her masterpiece using her fingers. I did let her try to use the paint brush, but it (like all other long skinny items that she gets in her hand) was headed right for her open mouth, so she went back to using her fingers, which was really more fun anyway. Of course, with her hands covered in paint, both Adelaida's clothes and my clothes soon became covered with paint as well. Fortunately, the paint was washable (another example of better living through chemistry!), so it should come out pretty easily.

Adelaida sports a painted hand and drops of lilac paint on her eyebrow.


We had to walk across the fairgrounds to get back to the car, and Adelaida finally decided it was nap time (she had considered sleeping earlier, but decided against it). She slept in Diane's arms for the walk back, and didn't even wake up when Diane and I decided to have an ice cream before we left -- she was completely insensible of the fact that she was sleeping on Diane's lap, with people talking and children screaming right next to her.

On her daddy's shoulders

I walked into the bonus room a few days ago and saw this beautiful sight. Dale was on the sofa reading a book, with Adelaida on his shoulders! She was playing with his ear, completely content just hanging out on her daddy's shoulders.

This wasn't a new place for Adelaida, as Dale has been putting her on his shoulders for several months. She seems to like it, especially when his hair is long enough for her to pull on. (When Dale has had a recent haircut, she generally goes for his ears instead.) Here are some other photos of Adelaida riding on Dale's shoulders.

On a walk around our neighborhood:


On that same walk, wearing Dale's hat:


On vacation in Colorado:

Three-Quarters of a Year Old

Adelaida reached an important milestone today: she is three-quarters of a year old! She has been slowly reaching another milestone over the past few days: forward motion. When we put her down on her tummy, she has long been a pro at rotating: she can rotate in a full circle in just seconds. And she has also been pretty good at "crawling" backwards: she gets up on her hands and knees and pushes off with her hands, resulting in her moving backwards. This frustrates her, since her goal is generally in front of her, but forward motion has so far eluded her. Last week she really started being mobile, by rolling across the floor. And just in the past few days, she has started moving forward, intentionally, while on her tummy. She sometimes takes one crawl forward, and sometimes does a modified army crawl, but she can get to a goal in front of her. I have the feeling that this is the beginning of a whole new aspect of being a parent.

Here is one of the first pictures of Adelaida, when she was four days old. She was able to hold her head up and move her arms and legs, but that was it.


At one month old, Adelaida really couldn't move much more than she could at birth.


By three months old, Adelaida was able to flail her arms and legs about and straighten and twist her torso.


By the time she was five months old, Adelaida could sit up and roll over from her tummy to her back. She was gaining more and more control over her muscles and wanted to practice all she could -- she almost always preferred sitting to laying down.


At seven months, Adelaida wanted to move. She would reach for things that were held close to her and would stretch her body out to try to get something in front of her.


Now she is nine months old and the entire world has opened up to her! Adelaida is no longer content just sitting down playing with an old toy; instead, she wants to get to the trash can, check out the dog's water bowl, pick up a piece of dirt on the floor, and find out what is on the other side of any room she is in. And, she is finally, unquestionably, longer than Pink Panther!


Here is a bonus picture of Adelaida with Pink Panther, both standing up in front of her crib (which has wonderful slats that seem like they are designed to help little ones learn to stand).

Orange Honeydew?

I think I've told most of my loyal followers about the garden that I've been growing this summer, but I love to talk about it, so wanted to post about the garden here. This is not the first time I've tilled a garden, but it is the first time I planted one (I decided to have a garden back in about 2004 and tilled space for one, but never got around to planting it that year or the next).

We got a bit of a late start this year and didn't plant until the first week in May. We planted almost everything from seed (with the exception of the eggplants and tomatoes). Here are the vegetables we planted, and how they've done:
1. sugar snap peas: the first vegetable to produce, and within a week we had way more peas than we knew what to do with. Eventually, the plants got brittle and yellow, so we pulled the peas up in early August.
2. carrots: we have multi-colored carrots (purple, red, orange, yellow, white) that are wonderful! Some of them come up oddly shaped, but they taste great roasted and the fun colors make a nice presentation. Our first batch of carrots did so well that we planted more carrots in the space vacated by the sugar snap peas.
3. zucchini: we have two zucchini plants and they are wonderful! We let the plants go for about two weeks without picking them while we were in Colorado; when we returned, we had two of the largest zucchinis I've ever seen. I think I made about ten loaves of zucchini bread this year.
4. yellow crookneck squash: three plants that produce extremely well. We've had a lot of sauteed zucchini and squash, and have prepared and frozen lots of squash for Adelaida.
5. butternut squash: we have two plants, one of which has produced a squash. These plants don't do particularly well because they don't get enough sunlight.
6. lemon cucumbers: these haven't done well. We have four plants, but none of them have produced any fruit. They are planted along the north side of the house and don't get enough sunlight.

7. broccoli: our six broccoli plants are very large and healthy looking, after a rocky start during which the broccoli plants were being eaten by rabbits almost every morning. We just found our first broccoli crowns on the plants this weekend.
8. green beans: very slow producers, possibly because they are too close to the house and don't get enough sun. They produce about enough green beans to keep Adelaida satisfied, but she only eats about three green beans a week.
9. tomatoes: wow! I never knew tomatoes could taste so wonderful! We have three tomato plants, although one of the plants has only produced one fruit that is still green. The other two plants have probably produced at least fifty fruits for us already, and we have another twenty or so fruits on the vines, ripening. They are the best tomatoes ever, and we're considering trying to grow them inside over the winter.
10. eggplant: we have four eggplant plants, all of which have stayed pretty small all growing season. We do have several fruits on one of the plants, so I'm hoping that we'll be able to enjoy eggplant later in the fall. We did get some home-grown eggplant from a friend that we cooked up a few weeks ago, and fed some to Adelaida.
11. red and green bell peppers: I'm not sure why the bell peppers aren't growing well, but they aren't. We have several plants, all of which have about four to six leaves, but no peppers yet. We're thinking of putting them in pots next year.
12. pumpkins: we planted one pumpkin plant, that has produced two large orange pumpkins and several more small green ones that are still ripening.
13. honeydew: the honeydew plant has been the real surprise of the garden this summer. I planted one honeydew plant and was encouraged to see it growing and vining out early in the summer. When I began producing several fruits I was really excited and started looking forward to eating ripe honeydew fresh out of the garden.

This is what my honeydew fruits looked like when the first started producing:


As the honeydew fruits got a little bigger, I started to be a little concerned. They were developing grooves and had the slightest hint of orange in the rind.


A week later, I was alternating between wonder that my honeydew fruit was orange, disappointment that somehow I had planted a second pumpkin rather than a honeydew plant, and amazement that my honeydew plant had produced a pumpkin.


For reference, this is what a honeydew fruit is supposed to look like:


I have finally come to accept the fact that we have two pumpkin plants and no honeydew plants. Other than that one disappointment, the garden has been a source of both vegetables and joy this summer, as I really love taking care of it and cooking fresh vegetables!

Fun Standing

In the past month or so, Adelaida has discovered the joy of standing up. She can't stand on her own yet (at least not for more than about three seconds), but she loves to stand while holding on to something (or someone).

This is one of my favorite pictures of her standing, using her wooden block set walker to stay upright.


Adelaida has not just the one walker shown above, but three (yes, three!) walkers, all slightly different but all still essentially made for the same purpose. Dale has expressly forbidden me from acquiring any more walkers (or other large plastic toys) for Adelaida, so she'll just have to make do with the three walkers she already has. Here she is with the second walker, which has an activity center on the other side that she can sit in front of to play.


Here she is standing up on the counter, using Jamie for support, back in July.


I do a lot of bending over these days, since Adelaida enjoys walking just as much as she likes to stand, but requires my two hands to walk (I'm trying to wean her down to using just one hand).


Here is the back of Adelaida (on the left, in pink), standing next to her friend Shreya on a train ride at the zoo. Both girls had excellent balance and didn't fall at all, even as the train started and stopped.


In this picture, Adelaida is at the park standing next to another friend, Luca. She was so interested in looking at Luca that I couldn't get her to look at me for the picture.

Touring Southern Colorado, Part 3: Durango

For the last few days of our vacation, we stayed in Durango, a cute little town in southwestern Colorado. We did a lot of walking around town in Durango and relaxing in our condo, so it really felt like a vacation.

We did take one hike near Durango, but didn't make it all the way to our destination. We tried to climb Engineer Mountain (Grant and Dale were really excited about this particular peak because of its name), a 12,927-foot peak northeast of Durango. Engineer Mountain doesn't have any maintained trails leading to it's summit, and you might understand why that is by looking at this picture of the peak.

The last few hundred feet are extremely steep, climbing up scree slopes and scrambling through boulders to the top. All four of us (Dale, Grant, Adelaida, and I) got pretty close to the top, but we didn't feel comfortable taking Adelaida up the scree (it really required both hands and both feet to climb), so Grant stayed at the base of the scree slope while Dale and I continued up a little farther. By the time we got close to the top, the sky was looking pretty black, so we started back down and almost beat the rain back to the car.

We also saw some beautiful columbines on the trail.


Adelaida enjoyed hanging out with Grant during one of our Durango meals.


Grant, Dale, and Adelaida on the trail, with Engineer Mountain in the background.

Touring Southern Colorado, Part 2: Mount Crested Butte

After leaving Pagosa Springs, we headed up to Mount Crested Butte, which was my favorite of the three towns we stayed in on this trip. (On our way to Crested Butte, we saw an actual wild moose, grazing by the side of the road! This was my first ever moose-sighting, so I was pretty excited about it.)

We again stayed in a condo, which is a great way to travel with a group -- we had plenty of space to play euchre, a full kitchen so we could cook our own meals and store food, and still had separate bedrooms and bathrooms. This was a two-bedroom condo, so Adelaida slept in the closet of our bedroom. We were lucky to be taking this trip while she was still not mobile!

Jamie decided not to join us on our one big hike in Crested Butte, so Dale, Grant, Adelaida, and I set out one morning in search of a mountain lake. We found it, after six miles, five stream crossings (including one in which we had to wade across a snow-melt stream that was about ten feet across and two feet deep -- and so cold!), and dozens of muscles that I had forgotten I had! The lake sure was beautiful, though.

Adelaida had a favorite chair at the condo that she just loved to sit in. It was a pretty big chair, and she's a pretty little girl.


The same chair served as a napping place for Jamie, Adelaida, and Grant, who were all exhausted after a walk around town.


Still another picture of Adelaida on her favorite chair, this time sharing the blanket with her daddy. I don't remember exactly why she didn't have any clothes on at this time -- maybe this was taken just before or after her bath?


Grant, Dale, and Adelaida wading across a stream on our hike.


We all sat around at the lake once we reached it, snacking and resting our legs and feet.