Vermont (and a 9:84)

Well, one way to achieve a concise(ish) post is to wait so long after the event that you don't have nearly as much to say about it as you would have when it was fresh in your memory!  At this rate, whenever I get around to Clement's birth story it's going to sound like "There was a contraction, and then another one, and it HURT, and he was born!"  Even though it wasn't that simple at all.  I mean it was simple-- it wasn't complicated or anything-- but it wasn't simple in an easy kind of way, let's be clear about that!

I digress.

We went to Vermont at the end of September!  

It was an airbnb road trip and we stayed at a lovely, large, adorably decorated house within walking distance of downtown Montpelier.  For as long as it works, here's the link to the home, if you want to see more pictures.  And since one day it probably won't work, here's a photo from the website:

 

That particular weekend ended up being rainy and cold, so Josephine didn't get to make as much out of the backyard as we were hoping, but it was still great to get away, see some leaves starting to change, and breathe in the fresh air.  Plus-- a MAJOR plus-- (in addition to the washer/dryer)-- the food is GREAT in Montpelier.  The first place we had dinner was excellent, and we were quite prepared to just eat there for every meal, but then it was closed the next night so we had to branch out... and we loved the new place... then tried another place with crepes for breakfast... and loved that place... it was just a big food lovefest.  I think there was only one mediocre meal the entire time!

Oh yes, and the cheese was great, too.  Poor Clement and his dairy-triggered eczema.  I was not a very good mommy that weekend.  :-(   But the cheddar had been aged for 10 years!  Come on!

A photo and video of one end of the downtown area...

...taken on our way to do a little "hike" in a park.  It was technically not a hike because it was a walk along a paved road.  But it was technically not a walk because we could have been eaten by a bear.

Actually, as I go through the photos from that trip, it appears that the majority were taken during the lengthy periods of time that we spent meandering our way there and back again.  For instance, on our way we stopped at an orchard and picked apples and pumpkins.

ooo, artsy with the saturation there, Jenny.

So there was a lot of driving.  

Sean's not one to skip out on a potentially charming small town that is within squeeze-it-in distance.  

I would suggest his personal motto when it comes to traveling is not "let's relax and enjoy it" but rather "COME HELL, HIGH WATERS, STARVATION OR WHATEVER YOUR NIGHTMARES CONSIST OF-- NOT A GEM SHALL REMAIN HIDDEN."  I do frequently benefit from this insane (but thorough) approach, so every time I complain, I really ought to throw in a compliment on his adventuresome spirit.  Or something like that.

It was nice to see some of the leaves changing...

... at least for some of us.  Every time Sean and I would point out to Josephine a particularly bright patch (of which I obviously have no pictures), she'd take it in quietly, and then eventually she took it upon herself to point out every brown tree she could find.  Heaven forbid we overlook the brown ones with all these red and yellow ones in sight!

And then there was a lot more driving.

Before long, Josephine wisened up to the fact that she could claim carsickness on these smaller, winding highways, and we'd be too gun-shy to call her bluff (if they were bluffs).  So what was already kind of a long drive became even longer with various pit stops that we had to make because her "tummy wanted to stop."  

Her tummy really wanted to stop whenever we were passing a playground.

Back to Montpelier.

So, good food.  Lovely walking (despite the rain).  Had to bail out once and let Sean come fetch us with the car.  I got a haircut.  We had a totally failed attempt at some sleep training with Clement, which I'd been holding out hope for, as I felt terrible letting his loud lungs loose on all the open windows in Astoria at night time.  There was a farmer's market.  And more good food.

At one point, since I was still under the illusion that I'd send out Christmas newsletters (who knows? might still happen!), I put my camera on the timer mode and coerced everyone into trying to take some portraits.

There were a couple successes.

... but Jason, in the 9th of the 84 ways in which he has instructed Josephine on how to ruin my life, clearly coached her on how to pout her way through photo shoots, making a process that should be effortless something rather painful.

So at the very end, when I wanted a photo of me with the two kiddos, it took an attack...

... an opportunistic "cheese" from me while she recovered...

...and then we ended up with something mostly pleasant.  (Yes, a la-la-land exhausted expression on a 3 year old is QUITE pleasant.)

(Good job, Clement!)

Some daddy-kiddo shots:

And a small (I promise) selection of the photos from the journey home:

 These are from Sean's phone, as he played with Josephine while I was feeding Clement.

 Lake George, outside of Ticonderoga 

a veeery dusty car!

Okay, so much for whatever I was saying up there about concise.  I'm sure you're all terrified of what this post would have looked like immediately after the trip was taken.  And I didn't even remember to go into the fact that we spent the good part of one day taking Josephine to the emergency room because we were worried she'd fractured her wrist falling backwards off a bench in a restaurant.  (Sean and I were happily talking over brunch, and then I had this train of thought:  "Hey, where'd my daughter go?  Oop, there she is, just starting to scream on the floor, and YEP, some nice old British couple is trying to flag down my attention and notify me of my child lying at their feet.  No idea what happened there...")  Anyway, we waited a good bit, she still wasn't using her arm, so we took her in... but turned out it was the kind of fracture a teddy bear from the triage nurse could fix, well before we were even sent back to see a doctor.  Best kind of fracture, really.  

I'll stop there.  Before I remember anything else from the trip that will make this post even longer.

Anything like this.  Note anything odd sharing refrigerator space with the wine?  (You might have to click on the photo to see it bigger.)

Would definitely go back to Vermont.

The End.

8:84

Shedding tears over the trials of inanimate objects.  (There really is no need for methods 9 through 84, because this one is driving the nails into the coffin of my sanity all by itself.)

Brianna's stockings won't fit on Five Guys.  By all means, let's WEEP about it.  Shoo logic out the window.  Let's completely ruin the morning over this.

It's one thing for toys to be a source of joy and spontaneous celebration.  Bring on the weekly weddings and birthdays and anniversaries.  Hoorah imagination.
But when they start to add drama into my life, they are hovering precariously close to annihilation.  I'm reaching the end here.  A lot of things take priority over my sanity, but an imaginary world will not.  One more ridiculous toy-related demand -- one more meltdown over something THAT IS NOT REAL-- and there WILL be a lynching of all baby dolls.

the state of things

Sean's out of town on business travel, so I figured he'd like to see what his munchkins have been up to today.

Clement is on his third outfit.  Here's his latest, the one Maggie gave him; it fits him perfectly right now and is just right for a day that didn't even reach 70.  He's been having a good day.  He has some congestion, one plugged tear duct, and some fierce cradle cap, but I think the eczema stuff is finally fading away.  He managed to survive, in a state of total oblivion, an act of aggression by Josephine.  (She threw his stuffed dog at him because she was angry at me for being her parent.  It hit his foot.  Note to self: make sure Clement is in a safe place before upsetting the three year old.)  

No worse for the wear:

Hi, I'm Clement, and I have an awesome hedgehog pillow.  Andrea rocks.

Josephine, who just finished throwing a small temper tantrum after being jarred out of her nap by pins and needles in her arm (limbs falling asleep makes her very, very angry), has also had a good day, on whole.  So I gave her a chocolate granola bar in celebration of her Grand Favog's birthday at lunchtime, and that was very exciting to her.  I made sure she was down for her nap before the sugar crash hit.

We went to the park this morning.  It was pretty quiet since all the older kids were in school.  But she found a couple small girls which she took turns guiding into situations way too dangerous for them.  So that kept all of us parents plenty busy.

The kids had fun, though.  Josephine has really started enjoying swinging.  I wish I could have filmed her on it today.  Very genuine, delighted, sustained laughter.  But I was too busy pushing her "really fast!  NO, I mean really, REALLY fast!"  At one point she even said, laughing, "My stomach is very hurting!"  I asked if she wanted to take a break, but she insisted she was fine-- though I don't think either of us believed her.  

Here are a couple more pictures of Clement.  Not a lot of variation in his activities...  

Just one cute face after another.  (And the occasional EXTREMELY angry one.)

Love to the grandfolks!

We want to wish a belated Happy Grandparents' Day to some very fine folks that we love dearly!!

Here's some babyness to really make you feel all grandparenty:

These are all from today.  

And here's Clement and his mobile.  The little pin that makes the mobile spin broke a bit in storage after Josephine was done with it... and then I broke it for good when I was trying to fix it.  Not a big deal though-- Clement enjoys his self-powered mobile.  I've got it all strung up with rubber bands, now, so it does plenty of wiggling and jiggling, especially if he's tethered to it.  And you can wind it up if his arms are swaddled and just let it spin.

A couple of recent family shots...

This is a post-facetime picture from a week ago (we were all at the computer anyway, so I used the photo booth thing on my laptop to take our picture).  I need to put my camera on its timer mode and try to take a real family photo of us.

And here's the crew at a local Greek festival Sunday evening.  Clement went on his inaugural stroller ride to give my back a break after carrying him a couple miles to church, through church, and then to, through, and from lunch and pot shopping (the stainless steel kind) with Andrea.  I was tired.  So he rode to the festival.  

He was perfectly content, but I was beside myself the whole time-- total separation anxiety.  He is too little to be all the way down there in a stroller all by himself.  It'll be a while before I do it again!