Full of hot air

In what could be the longest build-up to a surprise, S invited us to join her and J last night for what was originally to be J's 2008 birthday/anniversary present: a hot air balloon ride! Due to repeated inclement weather last summer, the ride was postponed to this year -- and this time the weather did not disappoint, with a beautifully warm evening, clear skies, and apparently favorable air currents.

Having never been on a balloon, I was surprised by how quickly they're able to get these things deployed and up in the air; we drove out to an open field (right next to a small airport runway, where we kept seeing the same plane taking off, dropping parachuters, circling around, landing, and repeating). They dumped the basket sideways off the trailer behind the van, unfolded the chute, ran a diesel fan to fill it with air, and then blasted some seriously warm propane flames into it to warm the air. Within 10-15 minutes, the balloon was full and ready for passengers. A second balloon was deployed at the same time, and they took off just ahead of us.

Once we were aloft, the most noticeable thing was just how quiet it was. (Well, when the propane flames weren't flipped on for an altitude gain - that was loud, and pretty warm!) The next thing was of course the incredible view -- we could see Mount Rainier, Mount Hood, the Snohomish River, and as we rose, the Seattle skyline, the San Juans, the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and even out to Vancouver Island! Though we were just standing in a small canopy without harnesses or seatbelts, it felt totally safe. Our path (as the pilot explained, pretty much dictated by the wind currents) took us over the Snohomish River, past some lovely forests and homes, and a total of six miles downstream in about 45 minutes. We flew over a prop plane, past another (which tipped its wings in greeting), over a few beach barbecuers, and actually even gently grazed the top of a tree before coming in for a smooth and soft landing in a farm's grassy field. Pictures are worth a thousand words, so I'll stop talking/linking now and just show a few. :)


Far more pictures than I could ever get away with directly including in the blog can be found here.

What an amazing experience! Even the slugs that were in the landing field (which we didn't notice until Meh found one on her foot; I was still climbing out of the canopy while S bravely plucked it off of Meh) couldn't dampen the fun. On the drive back, the pilot explained the history of ballooning and some of the early French escapades and modern accomplishments involving balloons. When we got back to the ballooning headquarters, they had champagne waiting for us, and with a great flourish, used the sword-slicing-bottle technique to open and pour the wine. It was a perfect end to a wonderful and special evening - thanks so so much to J & S for inviting and including us!

Pet sounds

For some time, Zachary has been imitating animal sounds -- it started with the dog ("ah-ah!"), snake ("ss"), and chicken ("koh"). A few weeks ago, he picked up monkeys (random combinations of "oo" and "ah") and ducks ("quah quah").

This week we've got two more to add to the mix. One of his favorite toys is a cow puppet that actually moo's on pitch when you close its mouth. Earlier this week he brought his cow puppet toy to Meh, and when asked what it said, he responded "mmm". Hey, it's a start.

This morning, he and I were reading his newest book (which he incidentally selected all by himself from his growing library). When I turned to the page with an animated cat and asked him what a cat said (expecting only his expectant smile), he responded with a high-pitched "eeeah". It was repeated a little later for mommy, one of the cutest sounds yet!

Round numbers

I've started getting funny looks (and/or people trying to do advanced math in their heads) when I say Zachary is "almost 22 months old", so I think it may be about time to move up to years when describing his age. Certainly the weeks and days that the blog has been tracking were interesting at one point, but are now just pretty unmanageable. So with that in mind, version 2.0 of the Zachary Age Counter (or ZAC) is now featured in the stats bar at the right of this blog. We'll see if it totally blows up on the first of the month, or on his birthday, or for Y2K10 or something.

Summer has finally arrived for real! In addition to yard and park playtime, Zachary still loves rocking in the hammock, though at times he tries to sit up in it. Here's a typical relaxing evening for the little man, even down to the unbuttoned pants:

Back in time

It was a wonderful weekend celebrating my cousin M's college graduation! Well, more of an end-of-week than weekend, since I arrived late Wednesday night and headed back Saturday morning. Anyhow, it was great to be able to stay with family, enjoy the mostly mild Maryland spring days, visit the interesting and entertaining (and only moderately kitchsy) International Spy Museum, sample foods from many yummy restaurants, and spend time with bubbie (Zachary's great-grandmother), aunt I, uncle S, my mom, brother (who I hadn't seen since his wedding!), cousins M and M, and their dog M. And I even got to see high school friend J, who's doing well and is actually living in the same building complex where my grandparents once lived.

Alas, the fortuitous bump to the direct flight I enjoyed on the way there wasn't meant to be on my return trip -- and besides, I thought to myself, the direct flight departed 4 hours later anyway. So of course in the city where I stopped over, the connecting plane was late arriving, thunderstorms kept it grounded for an hour, and in the end, I landed in Seattle 30 minutes after the aforementioned direct flight. There was even another flight from Denver to Seattle leaving 50 minutes earlier at the gate directly across from mine (which as it turns out, beat the thunderstorm entirely), but since the two airlines aren't partners, nothing could be done to make a switch happen.

On the plus side, the timing did allow me to accept an airport pickup from visiting friend M, and I got to spend a bit more time M & K before they headed back home this morning. Zachary had a blast with M & K as well, and apparently has a new favorite Japanese children's song:

We'll miss M & K, and wish them a safe journey home and the very best with their pregnancy and beyond!

A free lunch

I'll never understand airlines' insistence on overbooking. Are they so pessimistic about their own on-time performance that they assume a bunch of passengers will just miss their connections? Even when it's the sole flight of the day for the airline from this airport, and likely most passengers are originating there?

On the flip side, I am *so* not complaining. I'm on my way to Maryland for my cousin's graduation tomorrow and Friday, and when I heard the gate agents start sweetening the pot for volunteers to be bumped, and mentioning they'd rebook on other airlines, I stepped forward. You see, another airline happens to have a direct flight where I was going, so even leaving 3 hours later, I'm getting:

• A direct flight arriving 8 minutes later than the connection would have landed.
• A flight on an airline I actually fly, so tasty miles accrual.
• A flight voucher (though lamely, you've got to actually go buy your ticket at the airport in order to use it - what is this, the 1950s? They can handle electronic ticketing but haven't figured out online voucher codes?)
• Free meal vouchers -- three of them in seemingly random $9, $7, and $5 denominations. I grabbed lunch, and the restaurant employee was trying to find me an extra buck in snack foods to maximize voucher use, since you can't get change from them. Sadly, nothing was that cheap.

Plus it's more uninterrupted time to knock out e-mails. I've finally gone from 260+ down into the 30s, though as soon as I connected to the internet, I was back up to 60. Ack!

Your call is important to us

Sometimes he even opens up the flip phone before putting it to his ear. Silly little man.

What do May showers bring?

Apparently they still bring pilgrims -- in this case, from Texas.

It's hard to believe that already nearly a year has passed since friends M & K moved to Fort Worth. We've kept in touch through phone calls, e-mails, and duelling blogs, and I had that visit soon after they arrived, but it was still wonderful to find out that they were coming to town this weekend for an M-delivered lecture tomorrow. And it was even more exciting when we learned that they are expecting, and that Meh and I were allowed to host a baby shower for them!

Meh of course had been planning for months, but everything really came together in the last few days, with amazing efforts both artistic and culinary. Art-wise, Meh's crafting generated a vast array of cute baby-themed decorations adorning everything from windows to the dining room chandelier; a trivia game matching character names to children's books; and tiny vials of mints and chocolates for the attendees. Which brings us to the food, which was simply beyond -- tea sandwiches, scones with fresh whipped cream, a lemon tart (thanks to friend S for his recipe!), brownies, cookies, cupcakes... Wait, why am I enumerating them when one of Meh's artistic deliveries was a lovely menu?

Zachary had taken a long morning nap (a side result of his continuing 5 am wakeups?), so he was rearing to go for the afternoon, running around between (and occasionally into) people's legs before moving outside and circling the porch and yard with or without his pushcart. I think he went in his swing about four times as well. Entertaining him was a pretty fulltime job, so I didn't get to spend a ton of time with the other shower attendees, but it seemed like everyone had a wonderful time and enjoyed getting to catch up with M & K, celebrating their pregnancy, enjoying the incredible spread, and soaking up some of the beautiful summer weather.

Never tell me the odds

Yesterday we headed back to ye Swedish flat-pack furniture store to pick up the little man's new table and chairs, an early birthday gift from mima and papa! They're super cute, tiny, and he of course has little interest in sitting on/at them at the moment. But still, the chairs got approval when he tried to push them around the room. Time to pick up some felt pads for the feet.

On the drive down, we were listening to a little man CD that we hadn't heard in quite some time. When "Old MacDonald" (heh, gotta dig the Wikipedia link) came on, Meh mused that we had at least five versions of it, including pseudo-James Brown and Italian-translated covers.

So it was of course statistically bound to happen: this morning, Zachary's randomly shuffled music mix on the Xbox happend to pick three separate versions in a row - out of 200+ tracks no less. When the third rendition came on, I had to skip to the next track. There's only so much barnyard music one can handle at 5:45 in the morning.

As you might have noticed from the super-clear (and actually new) images in this post, our new camera arrived on Thursday! It's tiny (I know, we'll try to avoid a repeat of our last small camera's fate) but otherwise very similar to the last camera. The main new feature I found was that you can actually zoom while shooting videos. But it's digital zoom only, and no refocusing, so our mileage may vary. All of the pictures so far have of course featured Zachary. Yesterday, Zachary and I played at the park, and all three of us were hard at work preparing the grounds, house, and tasty foods for our friends M & K's visit and their baby shower later today!

Monkey See Monkey Do

Zachary finally broke out of his three animal noise rut yesterday, and was monkeying around (oh, the pun!) for mommy. Here's a video she grabbed; apologies for the quality, we're still back to our old camera until the new one arrives (hopefully later today!)


Meh also tried some trivia out on the little man to surprising results; she asked him where his hair, ears, eyes, and nose were, and he was able to point at all of them successfully on the first try. (For his nose, he 'pointed' by jamming his thumb up into a nostril - so cute, though hopefully not the start of a habit!) In general we've been working on getting him to identify and count items in his books, though he prefers to hold our finger and make us do the actual pointing.

Despite the blackout paper on his curtains, Zachary has been getting up earlier and earlier, often seemingly even preceding the crack of dawn. Meh was wonderful about getting up with him yesterday so I could get a bit more sleep - at this rate, the little man is going to drive us to a 9 pm bedtime of our own! At this point we still can't really get him to stay up much later than he does; he's always ready for sleep by 6:30 at the latest, and attempts to stay up later generally lead to lethargic semi-play with toys and books. Some child care folks say the key to sleeping in later is going to bed earlier, which I think would really get crazy for the little man - when would we put him down, 5:45? Other friends suggest a little top up of milk before bedtime, which we may attempt if this trend continues. *yawn*

Change he can't believe in

Zachary is certainly a creature of habit, and at times he will become very displeased if things aren't just so. We've seen this in his choice of books (bedtime has specific favorites; if you offer him a book he doesn't want, the hand sweeps across and pushes it away), the way he wants to play legos (we assemble them, he disassembles -- though lately he's started snapping them together himself), and of course the specific foods that he most enjoys (though again, he does occasionally try something new, even if it's just bringing it to his lips before an outright rejection).

His drinking cups similarly must conform to exacting dimension and delivery requirements; milk in a sippy cup (or if we're feeling adventurous, occasionally in an open air cup), juice in one of these nearly airtight straw/lid cups. (The air-tight seal is a double-edged sword; lately he's been pushing on the springy plastic lid, which forces up juice through the straw and makes a mess. It also doesn't work so well in pressure changes on planes; on the flight home from Florida, the juice cup soaked his shoes and socks, which were sitting alongside it in the seat pocket.) On the occasions where we've forgotten to bring the right cup and try to serve milk in a juice cup or vice versa, he looks at it suspiciously, will occasionally take a sip, shudder, and then hand it back to us while shaking his head.

Incidentally, we've been noticing lately that Zachary will always carefully put his cup on a table or counter top if he's done drinking from it. The other day I found one on the front window sill that he likes to look out of. The converse is also true though; if I'm filling his cup on the counter, he's been starting to make attempts to grab it before I can get the lid on.

Anyway, the straw juice cups are certainly rugged, but they were bound to eventually start to fail after nearly a year of constant use and dishwashing. The straws started to crack, and rather than let the little man get his first taste for plastics, we started to pitch them. When we got down to one last week, I took the little man to the store that allegedly carried them. No dice, though he did have a fun time looking around at everything and checking out things I put into the shopping cart. The next day, we ran to the next-closest store, and again no dice - and then struck out for a third time stopping at a store on the way back from lunch with friends S & J. Of course, this was the moment I noticed the third straw was starting to split.

I finally found some stocked at an online store, and purchased three, feeling mildly silly that I was paying as much for shipping as for the cups themselves. Still, it seems worth it -- today, Meh tried to give him juice in a 'flip straw' cup (exact same brand! exact same cup shape!) we had in the house, and he frustratedly rejected it. He also shook off three other cups, and Meh eventually had to revert to the old on, from which he happily drank his grape juice/water mixture.

It's my potty, I can cry if I want to

I keep forgetting to mention the milestones - Zachary's cuspids (canines) are coming in on both the top and the bottom, which of course means more hands in the mouth and occasional unhappiness. On the verbal front, he's still very talkative, and has started to say 'uck!' at times, which we think might mean 'truck'. On the food front, he's actually been seen using a fork to pick up food (often just to pull it off the fork with the other hand, but we'll take it one step at a time), and will very occasionally surprise us by eating something we offer him that isn't on his top ten list.

In the playtime department, he continues to be more and more interactive -- books, singing, dancing, playing the piano, and going to the park are among his favorite activities (the way he runs to the stroller when I ask if he wants to go to the park or for a walk is priceless). He and I have also developed a fun little bathtime game where we take turns saying various sounds and words that end in 'ah'. He of course starts with the classic 'Dah!', but then moves on to 'blah', 'crah', 'quah', 'xa', 'hnah' (a very impressive one), and other sounds. The game almost always gets him laughing, particularly when it takes me a second or two to come up with one I haven't already said (my extra rule to keep things challenging for daddy).

Meh brought home a little potty the other day, donated by one of her generous coworkers. It's very cute and multi-colored, though I'm not sure about Zachary showing an interest in training any time soon - he's still completely satisfied running around wearing a diaper comprising at least half his weight. And he often gets angry when it's time for said diaper to be changed, despite songs, distractions, and games. Not entirely related (though who knows?), both Meh and I have been subject to, um, 'accidents' in the past few days when we remove the diaper and wait more than a precious few seconds before grabbing a new one from the other room (Meh) or getting him into the bath (me).

Blog reader (or at least blog commenter :) demand for pictures of the flipped rooms and our portraits has been high, so I busted out with our old camera (and yup, a new one has been ordered) and snapped a few shots.

As the final part of the flip (well, for now at least!), I installed three new overhead light fixtures -- and no electrocutions to show for it. Score.

Make money in your sleep

It was bound to happen at some point - as I went to create our last post, I noticed a shiny new tab labelled "Monetize" had popped up in our blogging website. Yes, now you too can add targetted advertising to your blog readers. But if that isn't working out for professional news sources, why should it work for blogs with like two readers? Granted, there are plenty of blogs with enough hits that you'd think maybe some ad revenue would be possible, but you've got to wonder just how much money they're going to generate. For that matter, I'm wondering what kind of ads AdSense would serve up based on the contents of our blog. This may be worth the experiment just to see how confused and inappropriate the ads might be.

Portrait gallery

For the past few months, Meh has been hinting excitedly about a surprise that she's been planning for me for our anniversary. Our anniversary is in July, so I was impressed and/or worried that the project was being worked on this far in advance. Granted, I've done the same to her for years, with what she apparently considers maddening hints of 'I think you're going to like this' and knowing (but not revealing) smiles. Anyway, so I figured turnabout was completely fair play, and I looked forward to July. But then it was explained that it was actually both a father's day and anniversary present, so was it okay if she gave it to me in June? And then, I think Meh got a little impatient and excited to show me, because this morning, there they were, displayed beautifully on our fireplace mantel!

Meh commissioned an artist to create a portrait of us (for our anniverary), and a second of the little man (for Father's Day). What an incredibly wonderful, personal, and totally unexpected gift! She apparently worked with her on picking out pictures, drawing approval sketches, picking the color palette, and creating the final portraits. I was completely oblivious to what might be in the large cardboard tube that arrived a few weeks and her several trips to Michaels last week for matting and framing.

Here's the little man pic, along with one of the photos the artist used as a reference. (Portraits without even meeting the subjects in person? Impressive!)

The pictures are simply perfect on the mantel, and we've all been enjoying them. Best presents ever, and I certainly don't mind if they're a month (or two) early!

Flip that house

I've mentioned that the fireplace project was one of the few big things we'd really wanted to change when we first moved in. But Meh had many more plans around the room; the fireplace was just the catalyst or centerpiece or something. Anyhow, this week, we flipped that room (which was the dining room) and Zachary's play room (our 'music' room, though the number of toys made stepping to the piano a bit treacherous at times). Friends J and S graciously came over and helped me lug the heavy upright piano and the awkwardly wide dining room table around, and we moved Zachary's toys and their related storage as well. Yesterday morning he was mildly confused when I brought him down to breakfast to sit in the same high chair in the same spot, but with the whole room transformed around him. And after breakfast, he was confused and annoyed when he couldn't find his books and trucks; Meh had moved the books into a cabinet and the trucks into what had been his treasure chest of books. Once we showed him where everything is, he took to it well, and was zooming his push cart through his new much larger play area much of the day. His behavior around his "library" is my favorite; Zachary now casually walks over to the book cabinet, opens it, and browses his collection fairly thoroughly -- before bringing us the exact. same. book. every time.)

Today we drove down to everyone's favorite (well, perhaps not everyone's? :) blue and yellow Swedish store to pick up a few more pieces to complete the room transformation. Naturally Zachary fell asleep on the way, and we busted out the old classic ergo (I hadn't worn him in months!) for an attempted transfer. He was awake, but happy to snuggle with daddy for the walk around and through the store. We stopped for lunch at the halfway point, where I enjoyed a yummy pear cider and Zachary sang in between snacking on cookies and strawberries while sitting in a fashionable European high chair.

(With all of these sporadic links, I'm starting to feel like this post is the blog equivalent to that scene from Fight Club.)

In the end, we got a new chandelier (featuring both electric lights and candleholders) for our now-dining room, a little love seat that the little man will practically climb onto for story time, and a nice big shaggy carpet on which the little man likes stomping around, scattering his legos, and pushing his cart, which thankfully doesn't get stuck. I really do think he likes the larger space, as he spends a lot of time playing in a room that just a few days ago was very boring indeed for him!