July 2010

Visitors
In July we continued to have visitors. Andrea, my childhood friend, came to visit. She fell victim to being unfamiliar with how big and how un-metropolis it is. She rerouted herself to Kalispell and then had to wait an entire day for the one bus to bring to Missoula! But when she arrived we were all thrilled! Big thanks to Andrea for spending her vacation with us!!

After Andrea left we had a couple days to prepared for our friend Sarah to arrive. In the spring, a RFP crossed my desk that asked for scholars who could visit the University of Montana and lead conversations about women in science and technology. I saw it as an opportunity to bring some friends to town and have their way paid! Sarah was the first person I thought of and she accepted my invitation to come. How fun to show her the life we have built here...she saw our home, met the baby, and even taught us some things about women in science!!

The weekend after Sarah visited, Danielle and Lyle arrived. Danielle was here for the same program that funded Sarah's trip. We were thrilled that she brought Lyle with her! We were able to have them over for dinner and show them some of our favorite places, like Big Dipper Ice Cream.

Things Mikey Did

Sand

Mikey likes to play in the sand. One day I took him to Rose Park and let him sit in the sand and he began to dig. He flailed his little hands at his sides moving the sand away. Then he leaned forward and started moving the sand from in front of him to behind him. It was too fun to watch. Over the course of the month, I let him dig in various substances including sand, dirt, woodchips, and fabricated woodchip-like stuff. Of course, he discovers treasures (rocks) and, of course, he tries to taste them but I tell him, "No. Rocks are not for eating." and take it away if he tries to taste it more than once. This applies to all treasures he finds when he digs.

Backyard Camping

For something new to do I pitched the tent in the back yard. I figured that it would give us a new place to go, one that is outside, and naturally open up new things to do. Mikey seemed to enjoy it as much as anything else. One afternoon thunderstorm was certainly a "test" for us. We were sitting in the tent playing with toys and the thunder started to rumble in the sky. Then rain drops began to fall. Mikey was a little unsure of things but since I was there he probably felt safe. To further encourage his comfort I made up a story about Mikey defeating the thundering sky and warding off rain with his magic sword, which is a rattle from TDK. Along with a little nursing, we got through the thunderstorm just fine. I think I had more fun than Mikey did but whatever.

Teeth

Mikey's teeth started to come in but the funny thing is that I wasn't really the first one to notice! I was at Bonner Park one morning (before 9AM) playing with Mikey in the fountains. He likes to splash his hands around in the water that bubbles up at about his height. He also likes to turn the water park on by banging his hands on the "button" nearby and early morning is when there are no other kids to steal the glory. As we were getting bored with the water I looked up and saw an older Chinese woman sitting with a baby girl on one of the benches. I went over and introduced myself only to discover that she claimed that she didn't speak any English but motioned to me to sit beside her. We sat and enjoyed the quiet morning while the babies stared at one another. Then when Mikey gave her one of his typical open-mouth smiles she exclaimed, "teeth!" "Huh," I thought, "really?" And sure enough two little bottom teeth were poking out ever so slightly.

Out on the Town

Caffe Dolce became our regular destination in July. We would wheel up there and I would have a coffee or pastry and then we would sit in the grass and watch cars go by. This little neighborhood restaurant is now a favorite and we took many of our guests there. For Mikey, he had his first potatoes there. They were the homefries that came with my brunch that I was having with Andrea. I took off the skin and handing a potato to Mikey. He put it in his mouth, chewed it up and swallowed. I was elated and thought we had hit a turning point with solid food until the next week when we were there with Mike and I did the same thing and Mikey barfed up the potato and everything else he had just consumed (breastmilk).

Our daily morning walks continue and one fine day we had the Missoula Marathon in mind. Lisa was running to support Youth Homes and we wanted to go to cheer her on. So I loaded Mikey into the backpack and Mike and I walked up to Bonner Park where we hoped to catch a glimpse of Lisa running. We ran into our dentist, Dr. Andy, who also lives in our neighborhood, and stood with him as people raced by. Sure enough, Lisa rounded the bend but she saw us before we saw her and she gave us a nice smile and wave. On our way home I wondered how she spotted us until I realized that with Mikey in his palanquin it is hard to miss us!

We also spent an afternoon with Clifford and went to the pool with Lucy.

The Rattlesnake Wilderness

We took at least three trips to the Rattlesnake for hikes: one as a family, one with Jen and Teresa, and one with Jenny and Thomas.

Books and Blocks

Mikey still does his trick of flipping pages. This month he did something new and remarkable by comparing two different books. He tried flipping the pages of his new board book, Belly Buttons. Of course, board book pages are more difficult to flip than paper pages but he kept trying. Then he looked next to him and saw a big book and flipped those pages. We could see him thinking, "ok, that still works" before turning back to the board book and trying to flip its pages. This type of research and testing and re-testing happened for days until he finally decided that board books are different. The other things I noticed was that he gives extra attention to the photographed leaves in his DOG book.

We got a set of Plan Toy blocks from Grandma and Grandpa Schneider and I still can't decide if mama and papa like them more than Mikey. We spend hours stacking and restacking blocks only to entice Mikey to knock them over. He seems to love to reduce things to their lowest energy state. So even if the stack has been disassembled he still needs to make sure that none of the blocks are standing on their ends; each block has to be as low to the ground as possible. For this we have nick-named him the "Entropy Monster" because we are nerds.

Crawling

Mikey continued to work on crawling doing little downward dog positions and then tilting to a side to sit. He would move all over the room: downdog, sit, downdog, sit, downdog, sit. He would also get on hands and knees and pick up a hand and reach into the air. The first coordinated hand-hand-knee-knee action was just two or three "steps" from a spot in the middle of the living room toward his Papa's old puppet, Rowlf. Finally, on the morning of July 31st, I slept in. Mike was up playing with the baby in the living room for about an hour before I decided to join them. When I walked out of the bedroom and a couple steps into the hallway to see them playing across the room, Mikey looked up and saw me and then just took off and crawled all the way across the room! It was amazingly wonderful!