Parrent-Ripp Wedding; Dance the Night Away

One of the first things you learn in creative writing is not to use idioms (a phrase where the words together have a meaning that is different from the dictionary definitions of the individual words) or to be cliche.  If you need a quick refresher, here are a few examples: Idioms - music to someone's ears, face the music, stop the music.  Cliche - small children who aren't yet well coordinated being dressed formally and dancing at a wedding.  Well Mrs. Kazaros (freshman english teacher) I can't stop Grace from being cute and dancing, but I'll give it the old college try to not use any hum drum idioms that might make this blog post as boring as elevator music.

Grace attended her second wedding reception last weekend.  You may remember she channeled Bruce Springsteen in Nebraska, but here in Tacoma, she preferred Journey.  Dancing to music has become a great activity of enjoyment for Grace.  Sarah and I enjoy watching her gyrate in mildly rhythmic motions.

The beauty of children dancing is they don't care if they look cool or not.  This is a rare, fleeting, and beautiful thing, and something we as adults, no matter how much we might pretend otherwise, crave constantly.  Maybe it's the fear of looking un-cool and embarrassing ourselves in front of large audiences that prevents us from going big and just having a great time.  No matter the reason, it seems as though the dance floors of reception halls across america are filled mostly with children... at least until after the third or fourth round of drinks has been tossed down the hatch. At that point, it becomes a free for all of bridal dresses, suited groomsmen, teary eyed mothers, pretending not be teary eyed dads, and somewhere in the middle a happy couple.  UNTIL THEN - it's simply Grace.

This one on the left is probably my favorite.  Grace danced around the 

table where we sat, for the most part, oblivious to the party or her parents.

 Of course, no family day together would be complete without Sam.  He was fighting the remainder of his cold/tooth arrival.  The bib caught not only drool, but also snot running down his face.  No worries, we took the bib off for the second photo.

 Grace says, "I'm cool."  The Fonz would approve. 

What can I say; it's a wedding, they had bubbles, Grace loves blowing bubbles. 

Afterwards, out in the parking lot, Grace got to play "Run from Daddy Monster."  She enjoyed this game so much, she wants to play again almost every time we step out the door.  She has taken to playing the game at the most inopportune times, like when I've got Samuel in one hand, the diaper bag in the other, and I'm trying to load everyone/thing into the car to run an errand, and Grace decides to go bolting down the sidewalk hoping I'll chase.  Maybe I should use my scary teeth when I'm serious...

First tooth spotting

Sam has been running a fever the past couple days, been more sleepy, and had a super nasty nose full of snot. We've been treating it as the usual cold and I kept him home from daycare today. I was using yet another tissue on his nose this afternoon when I figured I'd stick my finger in his mouth to check for signs of teething. What do ya know...he's cut one of his bottom front teeth. He's almost 8 months old and got his first tooth almost 8 months before Grace got hers. I'm betting he'll crawl and walk much sooner as well.

Feel better soon Samuel!

Angel Baby

As I write this Scott and I are sitting down in the basement wondering if we are going to hear the pitter patter sound of little footsteps across the floor upstairs as Grace scurries to her bedroom door, opens it, then slides open the pocket door to the living room with another excuse why she can't go to bed yet. "I have a poopy diaper," "I need water," "I have an owie."

She has done really well sleeping in the toddler bed over the past few months, with the occasional rough night here or there, usually consisting of her crying in bed when she cant sleep. But a light went on somewhere a couple nights ago when she realized she could just get out of bed on her own and walk right out of her room. After multiple failed attempts at putting her back in bed and her not staying put, Scott resorted to holding the door closed last night. She protested, but after a short time crawled in bed and went to sleep. Round two occurred tonight but after the second attempted escape, the door was held closed and after a few seconds Grace crawled back into bed...silence. We are hoping it ends here.

Meanwhile, Sam is fast asleep in the crib downstairs. I bathed him, fed him, laid him down and walked out of the room. He turned on his side and fell fast asleep in less than a minute. He didn't even need a pacifier. We are going on night number five in a row of him sleeping through the night, 11 hours. It's magical for me! He's now even waking up happy as a clam just blabbering softly in his crib. So glad we had him second!

Steam Train: Windows

When you are in a train, you spend a significant amount of time looking out - in most cases though the window.  Although the conductor specifically said, "No hanging of children out the windows." I think we cam as close to violating that rule as possible, without breaking it...

Grace knows how to toe the line with rules that involve a gray area.  

Sam simply knows how to get the ladies... let his looks do all the talking. 

Steam Train: Snacks

Riding all day on a train can make a kid hungry, so it's a good thing Grace's mom packed a full lunch bag.  Grace seemed to enjoy her food more than usual, likely because of the gentle rocking and the loads of great scenery.

I remember being surprised at how Grace attacked an oversized pluot.

When the juice is running down your chin, you gotta know that's a delicious pluot.

Steam Train: Sam

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times; we just don't take as many photos of Sam as we do of Grace.  Truth is, he sleeps more than Grace(or when he doesn't we are trying to convince him he should), he walks/talks less than Grace... Ok, so he doesn't walk or talk yet, but I think you get the point.  Even so, I personally think Sam's cuteness level is off the carts.  Sam was with us on our steam train ride and although I don't know that he knows what a train is yet, he seemed to at least enjoy the company of Grandma and Papa.  

Steam Train: Cheeeeeeeese

For the past week, Sarah's parents have been visiting.  Grace loves the presence of Grandma and Papa (Sam does too, but Grace more so) and so do we.  The presence of grandparents means Sarah and I have more hands to take care of the kids.  This is especially helpful when we are actually trying to accomplish tasks, even simple ones like making dinner.  It also usually means, because of the shared workload, the kids get to go do more fun adventures than usual.  We took a lot of photos, and now that Allan & Joan have returned home, and the kids are back in daycare, I look forward to taking some time to share those adventures with you.  

Mt Rainier Steam Train: Part 1 - Saying Cheeeeeeeeeeese!!!!!

Part of being a "good" parent means you take hundreds, if not thousands, of photographs to document all the fun things you did with your children.  It's as if we want proof, should the need arise for CPS investigation or simply due to rainy dreary winters, that we once shared happy memories with our children.  Of course, the ironic thing about taking photos of happy moments is how arduous and stressing this task can be.  

In this post you see 7 photos, all similar, none quite the same, and not one of them perfect.  These photos are about 1/2 of the photos taken just in this one spot.  After another round of deletions we'll start the editing process.  We'll edit 3 or 4 with color, shading, and cropping.  Only then will we be able to perform side by side comparisons to pick that one great photo which will hang on the mantle/fridge/wall.  So much time spent on trying to perfect a fleeting moment.  Is it worth it?  Somehow, I think there's more to the story than just the photo...

In the photo above, and in the next 4, you can clearly see Grace saying, "Cheese!"  It's what we were all taught as children, and what we all teach our children.  Why?  Simply because if you say cheese, and take a photo at the end of the word (it's one syllable, it's hard to get the photo at the beginning of the word where you say "Ch"), it pretty much looks like a smile.  I'll wait a moment while you practice this in your mind...  Kind of sneaky eh?  Well, this all works really well as long as you say "cheese" normally.  Our child, of course, decides she has her own special way of saying it.  If you could imagine a barbershop quartet, and isolate the bass singer - think of how he would sing the word "cheese" with a lasting low and ringing bellow.  Finally, changing that smooth melodic bellow into more of a guttural growl AAANNNND, there is Grace's rendition of "CHEEEEEEEEEEESE."

Glasses off - both saying cheese. 

Glasses back on - I quit saying cheese five seconds ago. 

 I feel this photo does the best job of visually expressing the description I listed above.  

You can see Grace's face stressing to really grunt out that low growling "CHEEEEESE!"

At some point, Grace simply looses interest completely.  The train is way cooler than this lady who is taking photo after photo after photo.  Grace loves Mom, that's for sure, but it's not every day you get to check out a really old train!

In the end, I think the lack of perfection is really the whole point.  The day itself wasn't perfect, and more importantly, I enjoy the story of Grace and her hilarious "CHEEEEEEEESE" more than I would enjoy one completely correct photo in front of a very old train.  Thank you non-perfect photo for reminding me of what a good time I had that day.

Summer Days, Driftin' Away...

...but oh, those summer water park excursions!

A week ago today was suppose to be our second hiking trip with Grace and our friends, the Mraz family.  We'd had a rough week and decided a stay-cation would be better - the Mraz family joined us.  We did venture out to the spray park at Wright Park in down town Tacoma.  I do believe it's the largest free spray park in the Tacoma park system.  The kids had a blast, and I think the adults had almost as much fun simply watching.  

Grace has her moments.  Sometimes she can't get enough of the water - 

sometimes she protest vigorously simply to avoid it.  She is a fickle pickle. 

Splashing is ALWAYS more fun with friends. 

Grace takes every chance she get's to be musical.  Usually, it's singing 

and usually, it's at the dinner table and, is almost always quite loud.

Grace muses, "You can imprison my body, but you'll never cage my mind!"