“Daddy? They taste like crunchy hammocks.”
Archive for May, 2009
Overheard while someone was eating cashews
Posted by jonesey on Thursday, 21 May 2009, 19:32Happy Birthday, Elena! 9 months
Posted by julie on Wednesday, 20 May 2009, 22:22
Dear Elena,
You’re wonderful and sweet and smiley, and, regrettably, I think I’m going to have to limit this to a list and some photos.
Elena works on her Elvis impersonation. Too much tongue?
Ooh, sprinkler
- You started crawling 10 days before you turned 9 months old.
- You started moving from crawling to sitting a few days after that. Before that point, you’d often hang out in a reclining Botticelli position, working your oblique abdominal muscles, trying to push yourself to sitting. Now you sit up effortlessly. You still like that lounging position, though.
- You’re sometimes shy around strangers, asking to return to Daddy or me if you’re a little unsure of who we’re handing you off to. You warm up quickly, though, and you still flirt with everyone we meet at the grocery store.
- I read that baby fat reaches its peak around 9 months. It’s true. You’re a chunk.
- I’m writing this five days after you turned 9 months. Since then, you’ve started pulling yourself to standing. That baby fat is going to start melting away now; I mean, you’ll be running tomorrow. Or maybe it will just feel that way.
Love,
Mommy
No Babies Were Harmed
Posted by julie on Thursday, 14 May 2009, 21:57…in the making of this photo, despite its similarity to this scary image.
photo courtesy of Dennis McCarthy
Overheard on an airplane leaving Eugene
Posted by jonesey on Wednesday, 13 May 2009, 17:18“Daddy, I saw a shape in the reservwater,* and it looked like a sock!”
* Fern Ridge Reservoir, just west of the airport.
To tide over those who await birthday letters
Posted by julie on Tuesday, 12 May 2009, 16:43
Indigo Girls, 10 May 2009
Posted by julie on Monday, 11 May 2009, 0:44We don’t have their last four albums. And we wore earplugs because we know that leaving a concert with our ears ringing bodes poorly for our hearing – and because we’re old. But Amy Ray and Emily Saliers are older than we are by about a decade, and that hasn’t slowed them down (much. Emily sang at least one song down an octave, either to protect her voice or because she couldn’t get there). We were four people back from the stage, after showing up 45 minutes late and missing the whole opening act because we were eating salad rolls (they were tasty and we were hungry, but, apparently, Matt Morris was great). The women in front of us made sure I could see for the whole concert. I love Eugene.
Amy referenced their opening for the Grateful Dead in Eugene and seeing Jerry standing in the wings when the Girls were on, so this, Eugene, is “sacred ground” for them. Because many bands think of Eugene this way, they keep coming back, and I appreciate that I don’t have to live in a big city to see Ani Difranco and the Indigo Girls every year or two.
Anyway, when you haven’t bought a new Indigo Girls album in nearly a decade, most of the set list is new stuff. But nearly all of it was either beautifully harmonized or rockin’, and all of it was well-performed. And they ended their set with Closer to Fine and their encore with Galileo. I bought my first concert T-shirt since Billy Joel’s Storm Front, and it’s a much classier shirt, made of bamboo and organic cotton, for either exactly the same price or five bucks less, nineteen years later. A fan couldn’t really ask for more. Thanks, y’all.
Indigo Girls at the McDonald Theater in Eugene, Oregon, May 10, 2009. Shot with Chris's overrated iPhone camera.
5/12 note from JP: Oh, that’s funny. I didn’t realize my husband was one of those concert-goers, since he was behind me the whole time (me being barely over five feet and all). I mean, look at this guy with the shaved head in the plaid shirt. He looked like that pretty much the entire time we stood behind him. You’re at a concert, dude; put the camera/cellphone in your pocket and enjoy the show!
Natural History Notes: 30 April 2009
Posted by julie on Friday, 1 May 2009, 0:44Each night, just before I slip into bed, I listen through the closed window in our bedroom to a western screech owl’s call, sometimes likened to a ball bouncing and coming to a stop, since the hoots at the end of the call are in closer succession than those at the beginning. A western screech owl got me my job at the Museum of Natural History when I was a graduate student.
We’ve also had a visiting red-breasted sapsucker. Well, he might be a resident, but, if he is, he’s only recently taken to hammering on stop signs. We’ve caught him tapping on nearby signs two or three days this week. I haven’t yet managed to get his picture, since I often have a rather loud three-foot-tall human with me.
Today, as Sylvan, Elena, and I ate lunch at Mt. Pisgah, a hummingbird thought Sylvan might be a nice, bright yellow flower. It motored over and hovered two feet in front of Sylvan before realizing its mistake.
Following are some photos Sylvan took at Mt. Pisgah. I hadn’t noticed the lacy shadow pattern, but Sylvan caught it with the camera.
Meadowrue
We had a great time at Pisgah, staying for longer than we intended. Sylvan threw rocks into the river for a while (fun for anyone, but physically impossible to resist for those with both an X and a Y chromosome). He also handed some to me, requesting that I throw them in.
“Here, Mom, throw in this one that looks like a piece of pizza.” Splash.
S: “Here’s one for you. It’s an aklak.”
J: “A what?”
S: “An aklak. All of them can be shaped like aklaks.” (This word evolved over the course of our rock-tossing time.)
Ker-plunk.
S: “Here, Mom, throw in this one that looks like poop.”
Laughter, first from me, then from Sylvan. Cylindrical, tapered at the ends. Yup.
Sylvan with an aklak