Telluride Vacation: what a difference a year makes!

Michael and Sami took a picture of Dale, Adelaida, and me on the gondola -- one of the few pictures we have of all three of us. I realized later that we did almost the same thing a year earlier with Richard and Laura, and they took a picture of the three of us in the gondola as well!

Here are the two pictures: Dale and I look about the same in both pictures, but Adelaida really changed a lot in one year!

June 2009


September 2010

Telluride Vacation: on the playground

Several times while we were in Telluride, I took Adelaida up to the Mountain Village playground. This playground has a very serious playset, designed for older kids. There was no way for Adelaida to reach the climbing platform, except by me putting her up there!

I would place her on the rope floor; she would move across the rope floor to the bridge; stand and walk across the bridge; sit down on the other side and walk three-quarters of the way around the giant hole in the middle of the platform to the slide, sit on the slide and slide down on the belly -- her favorite way to go down any slide. The first six or eight times she navigated this playstructure, I walked with her the whole way, ready to catch her if she fell through the rope floor, or fell through the bridge slats, or fell off the side of the bridge, or fell down the hole in the center of the slide platform -- there were a lot of ways for Adelaida to fall off this structure! But she navigated it successfully several times, and my confidence in her increased to the point that I could actually step back and take a few pictures.

Transferring from the rope floor to the bridge:


Crawling across the bridge (which was odd, since she usually walked across the bridge):


And walking across the bridge:


Here Adelaida is crawling around the platform with the giant hole in the middle of it. What were they thinking putting a giant hole in the middle of this platform?


The playground had two pieces of equipment: the playstructure and a teeter-totter. I tried once to put Adelaida on the teeter-totter, and she responded by clinging to my neck for dear life. So when Dale and Michael arrived and wanted to put Adelaida on the teeter-totter, I thought that was a bad idea. But there must be something magic about being on a teeter-totter while sitting on daddy's lap that makes the teeter-totter fun and exciting rather than scary -- she loved it!


(I think Dale enjoyed it a little bit too!)

Telluride Vacation: family time

The greatest part of our recent Telluride vacation was hanging out with the family. This was a smaller subset of family than normal, but we had a great time with Michael and Sami. We worked hard all weekend to teach Adelaida to say "Michael" and "Sami" -- she picked up Michael pretty quickly, but has never been fond of words beginning with "s" sounds, so saying "Sami" took a little longer. I'll do my best to write down Adelaida's pronunciation of both: she says "Mi-mow" for Michael and "Da-mee" for Sami.

Below are some of the pictures we took on this great trip!

Adelaida has recently decided that snuggling is fun -- here she is after a bath, snuggled up with her Daddy.


Telluride and Mountain Village are connected by a series of gondolas, completely free and open to anyone. We rode up to Mountain Village several times -- here are Michael and Sami in the gondola, with Telluride below them.


Looking down at Telluride from Station Saint Sophia.


We don't use Adelaida's stroller very often, so being able to go for a "ride" was quite a treat for her. She loves her stroller, and often wanted to sit in it while we were at the house! It took me a while to realize she was saying "stroller" since it sounds more like "do-iyo."


As always, Adelaida wanted to do what the big people were doing, in particular her Daddy. So when Dale sat down in the chair to read his book, Adelaida promptly followed!


She also got up on the couch to read with me.


We had a lot of fun just sitting around the house. We took lots of toys for Adelaida, but she preferred to take a throw pillow, put it on the floor, lay down on it, pick it up, and repeat. This kept her entertained for quite a while!


Auntie Sami fashioned one of Adelaida's scarves into a bandanna on her head. Adelaida loved it! This instigated a discussion between me and Sami, in which I enlisted Sami to be Adelaida's fashion/clothes/make-up/dress-up role model. Adelaida really enjoys clothes, hats, sunglasses, shoes, and any other accessories she can find!


Sami, Adelaida, Dale, and Michael looking over the Telluride valley. Michael was scouting the trail he would be running on, and both boys were scouting mountain biking trails (they found several and had a great time mountain biking!).

Telluride Vacation: Rock Climbing

Mountain Village, the small village just above Telluride, has a rock-climbing boulder in the middle of the village. It is free to use and we have always enjoyed climbing up the rock while we are vacationing in Telluride.

Michael and Dale spent the most time on the rock; both reached the top at least twice, on different tracks. Sami and I climbed up several foot-holds, then decided we'd rather encourage Michael and Dale from the ground :)

Here are some pictures of our climbs:

Dale nearing the top


Michael looks for a good foothold


Both boys at the top! (Now how to get down?)


Trying different routes


The designers of this plaza very thoughtfully surrounded the climbing boulder with pea gravel, and put a bench next to the climbing boulder. Adelaida spent about a half-hour picking up a handful of gravel ...


... throwing it on the bench ...


... and repeating.


When we were ready to go, she thoughtfully put (most of) the gravel back on the ground.

21 months old ... and growing!

We celebrated Adelaida's 21-month-birthday this week (also known as the "one-and-three-quarter birthday"). If it has been more than a month since you've seen Adelaida, you might not recognize her -- she is growing more and more every day! The past few months have been a wonderful time, as Adelaida's vocabulary grows so quickly. She is more observant and much more talkative and more polite (we really work on "please" and "thank you" and being patient) than she was even a few weeks ago.

As usual, I took a few pictures of Adelaida with her Pink Panther (and she can now say "panther"!) and couldn't believe how long she has gotten (or how white her feet are -- I think she gets that from her Daddy!).


For comparison, here is the picture of Adelaida with Pink Panther at 18 months:


at 15 months:


and a one year:


Adelaida's first year flew by so quickly, with even more changes. This is what Adelaida looked like one year ago, when she was nine months old:


Six-month-old Adelaida was practically still a baby -- we even put her on a blanket when she was on the floor so she wouldn't get dirty!


Here is Adelaida at three months (her hair is so dark!):


And when she was just a few days old Adelaida was so tiny I could hold her in one hand.


I miss those precious days when Adelaida was so tiny and would sleep in my arms, but she is growing up to be such a fun, happy, smart little girl that I am excited to watch her explore her world and learn new things!

Telluride Vacation: fun with ducks

Telluride is a very family-friendly town. One great section of the town (that I had never noticed before this trip) was the playground/park area on the far east side of Telluride. This is a very large park with baseball fields, a skateboard area, a playground built especially for 1-1/2-year-olds, and a children's fishing pond. The pond is stocked with fish and only children (12 and under) are allowed to fish from it. As an added bonus, about two dozen ducks live on the pond and are very willing to investigate any visitor in the hopes of getting free food.



While we were playing at the playground one morning, a family with a young son walked up to the pond, and the ducks descended on this family from all over the pond! Soon there were ducks everywhere, waddling around, quacking, begging for food, and even fighting over the choicest handouts. The family came very well prepared with some stale bread, and the ducks were eager to relieve them of it. Adelaida was interested in this, so left the playground to watch the boy feed the ducks.

Adelaida was predictably cautious at first, content to watch the ducks waddling around her without actually touching them. But the ducks were not so content to just watch her! They knew that she was a human child, and human children mean food for these essentially domesticated ducks -- about half of the ducks left the family with the boy to try their luck with Adelaida.

Fortunately (for the ducks, at least), the family offered to let Adelaida give the ducks some of their stale bread. She took one piece of bread, examined it, and carefully put it in her mouth. Of course I explained to her that this particular bread was for the ducks and encouraged her to remove the bread from her mouth. She just got the bread out of her mouth before several ducks darted at her hand, eager to take the bread she wasn't going to eat. The ducks were so fast that I was startled by them (and was nipped myself when a duck removed the second piece of bread from my hand). Even as she was being attacked by hungry ducks, Adelaida just stood there, occasionally pointing at the ducks and saying "duck." She was completely unfazed by them!

Telluride Vacation: a long race

Several months ago, a neighbor and friend of ours told Dale about an annual race in Colorado called the Imogene Pass Run. It is a 17.1 mile point-to-point mountain race in the San Juan mountains of Colorado, run from Ouray (7810 ft) to Telluride (8750 ft) over the 12,114-ft Imogene Pass. This is a serious race, over a seriously tall pass! Here is a profile of the run -- note how steep it is from Lower Camp Bird up to the Imogene Pass.



Dale heard about this race, decided he wanted to do it, and immediately thought of Michael as a possible accomplice.

Dale's enthusiasm for the race was infectious, Michael thought it would be a lot of fun, so we began planning a vacation to Telluride with Michael and Sami!

Dale and Michael started training for the race -- Michael with the benefit of age and Dale with the benefit of elevation -- and the boys started running longer and longer runs as they worked up to a 17-mile trail run. All was going well until mid-August, when Dale sprained a ligament in his knee that ended his hopes of winning -- or even finishing -- the Imogene Pass Run. (Dale's knee was pretty badly injured. It swelled up immediately and is still swollen today, and he couldn't straighten or bend it for about a month.)



Dale wasn't able to run the race, but Michael decided to go ahead with it. We rented a house in Telluride, which was swarming with people of all ages planning to run the race. Michael left the house at 5:30 the morning of the race, rode two hours to the start line (on the other side of a mountain range), and started the race at 7:30, headed toward a finish line 17.1 miles away.

The rest of our household slept in, had a leisurely breakfast, and then ambled over to the finish line -- about three blocks away from our house.

Sami had the great fortune to be at the finish line when the overall race winner, John Tribbia, crossed the finish line, 2 hours 19 minutes after starting! That an average speed of 7.4 miles per hour, at high elevation on a very steep trail. We were all quite impressed with John.

Also impressive was Michael's finish. He jogged up to the finish line with a smile on his face, looking great!


He saw us and gave us the thumbs-up sign, then came over to chat for a few minutes before crossing the actual finish line.


Michael crossed the finish line 4 hours, 52 minutes, and 10 seconds after starting the race, a fantastic time for a flat-lander ;)


Doesn't Michael look great after a 17-mile trail run!


Sami and Adelaida were Michael's biggest fans at the finish line.


We were all very proud of Michael for running this race. Dale was disappointed he wasn't able to run it, but has already started training for next year's Imogene Pass Run!

Eating her fruits and veggies

Adelaida had a playdate a few weeks ago at a friend's house. They had a wonderful backyard, complete with water play pools, a little-kid playset, a big-kid playset, and a garden. Adelaida enjoyed the little-kid playset, completely ignored the big-kid playset, and loved the pools as long as the water spray wasn't aimed at her head, but her real favorite was their garden! They had fresh tomatoes, peaches, and apples, all of which we sampled just moments after picking. Delicious!

Here are some pictures of Adelaida eating her peach. I didn't get any pictures of her eating the tomatoes, but you can see tomato seeds on her bathing suit in some of the pictures. Tomatoes are one of Adelaida's favorite foods -- we had to tell her that the tomatoes were all gone to get her to try the peach.







Adelaida is generally very good at eating and trying new foods. She definitely has favorite foods, though. She LOVES yogurt (it is the only food she tells us she wants by name, "yoyuu"), as well as tomatoes, pita with hummus, just about any kind of meat, strawberries, pasta, blueberries, scrambled eggs, and avocado. If she had to choose ten foods to eat forever, I'm pretty sure those would be on her list! (Her least favorite foods right now are milk and zucchini. She does eat zucchini sometimes, but consistently shuns milk.)