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.

Touring Southern Colorado, Part 1: Pagosa Springs

This post and the pictures I'm including here are a little bit dated, but I wanted to share a trip we took this summer with all of my dedicated readers :)

Back in the middle of July, the stars aligned with Dale's work (he had a two-week lull on his program), my work (I was waiting for someone to fix my glovebox), Grant's work (he was being laid off and his company didn't really care if he went to work anyway), and Jamie's pregnancy (she was still able to fly and was seeing her doctor only every two weeks). Rather than just talking about what we might all do with our free time, we actually acted on it and took a ten-day vacation together in southern Colorado.

Our first stop was Pagosa Springs, which was a pretty neat small town -- in the mountains, with a sulfur spring in the middle of the town and several nearby hikes. The most memorable part of Pagosa Springs was "Vince Guitar," a waiter at a Cajun restaurant that we almost walked out of before we even sat down (it had a bit of a dank to it). Instead, we decided to stick it out and each ordered something different from the menu. And wow! it was amazingly good! The etouffee, the okra, the gumbo, the catfish, the sausage, it was all soooooo good. "Vince" made it even better with his antics, like proclaiming that he was the best thing on the menu and offering me himself, drenched in etouffee. A good time was had by all that night.

We took one long hike near Pagosa Springs,
up a canyon to a gorgeous waterfall. Although she was very pregnant at the time, Jamie did great, and of course Adelaida loved sleeping in her backpack on her daddy's back.

Pagosa Springs also has a very nice wild animal park that we visited, and we were lucky enough to be there at the time of their daily feeding tour. We saw a brown bear, several black bears, coyotes, wolves, an elk, mountain lions, and several other animals being fed. The keeper talked to us about the different animals and several of them performed tricks for us before they were fed.



Dale and Adelaida are ready to find the waterfall.


If you look really closely in this picture, you can see Dale (wearing a blue shirt) and Adelaida (wearing white), just to the right of the base of the waterfall, framed by a darker patch of rock.


This is another of my favorite pictures of Dale and Adelaida, taken on our Pagosa Springs hike. I have this picture set as my computer background on my home computer.

Adelaida's laugh

Note: this post has several videos, which may not come through on email or Facebook. If you can't see the videos, go to our blog at http://parkesranch.blogspot.com/

Several people have commented that Adelaida always seems to be smiling in the pictures I upload. This is not because I upload only the pictures in which she is smiling; rather, she smiles almost all the time. Sure, she has her fussy moments, but they are really few and far between. We have been blessed with an extremely happy, content baby.

Early in the morning when she is awake but still in her crib, talking to herself, I walk into her room quietly and wait for her to notice me. When she does, I get the biggest, most sincere smile, and it melts my heart. Those smiles make me forget about the fussy moments.

In addition to a beautiful smile, Adelaida has a wonderful laugh. Here are several videos you might enjoy:

Adelaida has enjoyed her jumper for several months, but never really jumped in it. She'd stand and twirl in it, but never jumped. Dale decided to demonstrate jumping for her, with two wonderful effects: she started jumping herself and we got a great video of her laughing.


This video is one of Dale bathing Adelaida. She always likes it when he pours water on her, but when Dale poured water on her belly by first turning the cup upside down in the water, Adelaida just couldn't get enough of it.


In the last video, Adelaida is sitting on the couch laughing almost hysterically at Dale, who is behind the camera. Murphy also thought Dale was pretty interesting and barked at him several times in the video.

A Visit with Mamaw

Adelaida had a very special treat this Labor Day weekend: her Mamaw came out for a visit! Adelaida was so happy to see her Mamaw, and I think Charlotte was a little bit happy to see her granddaughter, too :)

We had quite an exciting weekend. Charlotte arrived Friday evening, and after a short play session to satisfy both the visitor and the visited, we all four turned in for the night. Saturday was a luxurious day -- we didn't have anywhere to go or anything to do! Instead, we played a bit at home, Adelaida practiced standing, and we went for a short hike near our house. Adelaida got to ride on her Daddy's shoulders for a large part of the hike (she especially enjoys pulling on his hair and tugging on his ears), which was a real treat for her.

Later in the hike, Dale got a very special treat -- Adelaida fell asleep in his arms! Although she used to do this all the time, she seems to have outgrown this precious act and we don't get to carry her sleeping very often any more.

On Sunday, we took a family trip to the zoo. We saw almost all the animals in the zoo, including the adorable baby orangutan and a much (much!) larger version of Snuffles Jr. Adelaida is getting to the point now where she actually looks at and pays attention to the animals at the zoo, so taking her is really fun. She doesn’t seem to notice many of the smaller animals, but really enjoyed looking at the polar bear, tigers, giraffes, and gorillas.

Monday was another relaxing morning. We sat on the floor a lot and read to Adelaida and helped Adelaida play with her blocks. In the afternoon, we went to a Labor Day party with my chemistry group, then Charlotte had to leave us. It was a short visit, but a wonderful one!