Haiku

Surprise work visit!
Ali and kids made my day
Weekend's almost here

My new lawn service

Chincoteague

This weekend we took a quick overnight vacation to Chincoteague and Assateague Islands on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. We had an exhausting, great, great, time. This was the weekend before the annual running of the ponies, so it was kind of the calm before the storm and a good time for us to explore.

We started out visiting the Blueberry Festival, which had some blueberry-related food, but was mostly an artsy-craftsy fair. An old co-worker of mine has a little business selling cleaning cloths, and he had told me he would be working this Festival so we stopped by to see him. He sent us away with some samples and they really do work as advertised, so I'll put a plug in here for his company.

It was still too early to check in to our motel, so we went on a little geocache adventure that took us to a playground right on the water. We didn't find the geocache, but Jake had fun on the slides and monkey bars and Sadie got in a little rolling practice on a blanket.

We had been telling Jake about the ponies that live on the islands and we still hadn't seen any so he started with the "where pony? where pony?" questioning. Boy was he really excited to see that our motel had two ponies that lived in a pen right in the front yard. We said "hi" to the ponies for a while, but when the bigger pony finally said a big "NEIGH!" back to us, Jake nearly climbed up my leg. We ate a picnic lunch next to the ponies and then Jake found a hose and watered the motel's plants (Just like Poppy's!)

Jake normally has a nap in the afternoon, so we checked in to our room and closed the shades and had some quiet time to see if Jake would take a little snooze. He was, of course, way too excited for a nap. So, we headed out to the beach and enjoyed the beautiful weather. The sound of the ocean knocked Sadie out and she slept the whole time we were there. Jake loved playing in the sand, chasing the surf back into the ocean, and getting chased by the waves back out of the ocean.

Right after crossing the bridge onto Chincoteague, there's a neat old Art Deco style movie house and we decided to take Jake to his first movie - Ratatouille. We lasted about an hour before he decided he'd rather flip all the empy seats up, each of which made a satisfyingly loud "clank" noise.

For dinner, we found a crab house and ordered a steamer pot with a giant pile of crabs, mussels, oysters and clams. It was the kind of place where each table was covered in brown paper and had a big trash can next to it. But by the time our food arrived it was an hour past Jake's bedtime and he hadn't had a nap and he was pretty wiped out. He really wanted to check out the gift shop that was full of toddler-level porcelain ponies (they must do a pretty good business from parents of toddlers who end up buying little piles of porcelain pony pieces). So to keep him interested in dinner, we decided to hand over one of the hammers they'd given us to help break open the crab shells. Well, that plan worked. It worked so well that he smashed all the crabs beyond recognition. He smashed his hot dog and french fries too. If we ever go back, I'm sure we'll see a picture of Jake with the instructions: "Do not give hammer to this boy" printed below it.

The next morning, when Jake woke up in his big boy bed (a first), he looked over at us in our bed, and Sadie in her crib, and had the biggest smile on his face. He really seemed to have a great time and that made us so happy. We got one more beach trip in before heading home. Both kids slept almost the whole way home, which I think was their way of saying "thanks!"

Click the link to the right or here to see more pictures.

Surprises

Sometimes, after the kids and Ali have gone to bed, and I hook up the camera to the computer to see if there are any pictures that need to be transfered over, I find some little surprises. Tonight I found this picture Ali took yesterday of Jake and Sadie on the red chair. As busy as her days are, she probably forgot she took this picture, but it sure is fun for me to find. I'm not sure if Jake is tickling Sadie, or if he's just pointing out her piggies. I can just picture Jake talking to Sadie in his high-pitched Sadie voice, "Jake tickle Sadie peegies". It's so funny to hear him, just 21 months her senior, talking to her in that little baby voice.

Sadie's Four Month Checkup

Sadie did great at her checkup appointment today. She was pretty happy about the whole thing-- until the barrage of vaccinations came. Meanwhile, Jake was busy using the reflex hammer on all parts of my body to see what else besides a leg would move when hammered.

Here are Sadie's stats:

Weight: 14 pounds, 4 ounces (65th percentile)
Height: 26 1/4 inches (97th percentile)
Head: 15 3/4 inches (25th percentile)

Normally I skip the head measurement, but I thought being in the 25th percentile was noteworthy. Her head seems perfectly normal-sized for her body, so it seems odd that 75 percent of other babies have larger heads than she does. Maybe that's why she's doing so well holding her head up - not having a giant melon-head to balance. Anyway, we love your cute little head, Sadie.

Besides her head-holding-up abilities and good eye contact, the Doc was impressed with her long eyelashes. I'm not sure what benefit that has, but maybe she can save a few bucks on mascara when she gets older.

We're so proud of our little four-month-old Sadie. She started rolling over about a week ago, and she's been having fun in her bouncy chair and activity mat. She's still a big cuddle-bug, and hardly fusses at all as long as someone is making eye contact with her. She does miss our company at night, and makes sure we know she does, but overall she's the happiest, sweetest baby and more than a few people have commented that she is a mini-Ali.

Skeered

Last night, about 9pm, just after putting Jake down, we got some thunder storms.

"Daddy! Jake skeered!"

"It's ok, you don't have to be scared of thunder. Thunder means rain, so everybody loves thunder. The grass loves thunder, the birds love thunder, Mommy loves thunder and Daddy loves thunder"

"No - JAKE loves thunder!"

"Oh, you love thunder too?"

"Jake love thunder TOO!.................Thunder all gone?"

Port Discovery

Today we drove up to Baltimore with the Jacksons to check out the Port Discovery children's museum. Here we are walking up the street to the museum. Everyone looks a little tired from the drive up, except for Jake who took a nap. That face is a pretty accurate measure of how excited he was to hang out with Jamie, Heidi, Cole, Miles and Dexter. He doesn't always get the boys' names right, but it is tricky since they all got matching haircuts a few weeks ago. We had so much fun at the museum, and then went over to Lexington Market, the oldest continually operated market in the U.S. -- it just celebrated it's 225th anniversary. It also happens to be the home of Faidely's, which is frequently voted as having the best crabcakes in Baltimore. And they were pretty amazing. Fun trip!