Camping (fail), Camping, and more fun stuff! - July 2012 part 2

The midnight sun.

We tried to use every moment we could in July to finish our time in Alaska with a bang. We attempted to go camping . . . twice. And were chased back into our car both times by horrific, and I do mean truly horrific, numbers of mosquitos and other flying, biting things. We love a good adventure, but seriously, it was bad. Even when you have on ‘squito dope so they don’t bite you, there are so freakin’ many of them that you inhale them. We needed what the other campers we saw were wearing: full head-covering mosquito netting.

Yeah. Seriously disgusting.

We had an enormously successful weekend at a lovely little public use cabin called Gladfelter. Gladfelter cabin sits on Quartz Lake, where we stayed previously the week before Scout was born. 

Gladfelter Cabin - awesome!

 

Gladfelter Cabin, however, is not accessible by car. You have to either hike your stuff in about a mile, which would have been some serious work considering how much *crap* you need when you have kids out camping, or you can boat in. Jed and Crystal generously offered their little boat for us to use, and boy did we use it! 

 

Our trip in was a bit nerve-wracking. The lake is shallow enough in many places that it is choked with lily pads, which means you can’t use your boat motor. Then we tried to go straight to the cabin through some reeds and got lost and stuck.

 

We finally made it, though, and had the most wonderful time! Josh loved to throw rocks in the water, of course, and loved to go for boat rides.

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For some reason he wouldn't walk out, only crawl.

 

 

Yes, this is how we roll!

 

 

Scout loved exploring the cabin and the beach and played her socks right off. 

 

These pants fought a good fight, but were no match for cabin dust!

We went for hikes and boat rides, played with glow sticks even though it never really got dark, and had a little bonfire on the beach our last evening. Lovely.

Fresh from our cabin trip!

A little too much vacation for this little monkey!

At the end of July, Mario’s boss hosted the 3rd annual Birch Lake Judicial Conference, which is basically a good excuse to have a barbeque out at his cabin on the lake.

Dan Winfree, of the Alaska Supreme Court, and his wife have been wonderful during our year here. We spent one of our first weekends in Fairbanks at their cabin, so it was only fitting to spend one of our last there as well. 

Dan and Cathy have been generous, kind, and genuinely interested in helping us in life and to enjoy our Alaskan adventure. We thoroughly enjoyed spending time at their cabin. 

 

Highlights of this particular trip were riding jet-skis and wave runners (which, despite my family’s propensity for motor sports, I had never tried before visiting Dan’s place), taking Josh for multiple spins on the quad and jet-skis, Dan’s famous deep-fried turkey, Scout’s first dip in the lake, a bonfire on the beach, and great company. 

Josh doing what else but throwing rocks!

July 2012 - A day in the life of . . . Angie!

Until I have more time (and if you can tell me when in the next 20 years or so that may be, you get a prize!) and can do a separate Day in the Life posts for Thing 1 and Thing 2, these may have to be Day in the Life of Angie posts.

Rare voluntary personal interaction.

The beginning of my day depends on your definition of when a day starts. Scout still nurses 2-4 times a night, so I get to hang out with her a few times between midnight and the official start of our day, which usually begins around 6 or 6:30. Me and Thing 2 get to spend some time together before Josh joins us anytime between 7 and 10. Sometime after that we get around to breakfast, which usually consists of pancakes (with some secret vegetable puree added) with a whole lot of chocolate chips. I’ve learned to make my pancakes relatively small because Josh prefers to take one or two bites of each and then move on to the next. Thus, if I make a batch into 20 little pancakes I get about 30 bites. If I make the same batch (still with a one-chocolate-chip-per-bite ratio) into 10 pancakes, apparently it just doesn’t taste the same as the first bite out of each. Scout gets to clean up the chocolate-free leftovers, a duty she relishes.

Scout poaching chocolate chip pancakes.

Although chocolate chip pancakes is the clear breakfast favorite, toast with cinnamon sugar is a strong contender, followed by random things like going for a few days where Josh requests ramen soup or apples or whatever else pops into his head.

Ramen soup for breakfast!

Throwing stuff down the stairs

The stairs debris

Josh and I get some alone time during Scout’s first nap which we usually spend running through the house, jumping off the couch, throwing things (by “things” I mean pretty much anything and everything) over the living room banister down onto the stairwell. Sometimes we paint, sometimes we make a batch of bread or cookies or drive matchbox cars through the kitchen. Mostly we jump off the couch and throw things.

 






 

When Scout gets up, we usually get the heck out of the house. We hit up the library, make a quick grocery store trip, go to Pioneer Park and ride the train, or, more recently, Josh rides his Big Wheel to the park! We’ve been trying to get him to ride a bike, any bike, for a very long time now. He’s always been too uneasy about it to really give it a shot. 

Riding the train!

Josh's unusual tan lines from his Croc shoes. He's got spots!

 












































I have realized in the past couple months just how visually inclined Josh is. I got him to eat a hot dog for the first time in months because I showed him a drawing of a hot dog in one of his favorite books. We’ve been making great progress in his affection for Scout by reading lots of books about how wonderful it is to be a big brother. I figured the same stuff might work for riding a bike. We got an animated movie of a book called Duck on a Bike. It’s about a brave, silly duck who finds a bike and decides to ride it. First we watched the movie. Then we watched the movie sitting on his tricycle in the living room. Then he asked me to help him ride around the house (a first!). After a few days of this, he found the courage to get on and ride on the street! Since then, he rides about a mile a day. 
 
We go out at least once, sometimes twice, either to a playground half a mile away or to the nearby Chena River (a mile one way) to throw rocks. When we go to the playground, he likes to swing on the swings. All of them. He spends a minute or two on each, then moves on to the next. Scout likes to find big rocks in the gravel and clean them. With her mouth. Awesome. 

Baby yoga in preparation for crawling

Advanced moves!

Scout has mastered crawling, after a long time getting around quite well through a mix of baby yoga (see photo) and lunging from her down dog yoga position. She’s so different from Josh at that age. He was a very happy, very smiley and content baby, but he rarely laughed. It took quite an effort to get a giggle out of him. Mia laughs at the drop of a hat, sometimes literally. She’s not any happier than Josh was, but she is certainly more vocal about it! She also crawled months before Josh. We’ve got a bet going that she’s going to walk before Mario starts work in Texas. Just a few days after she finally put all the pieces of crawling together (she’s been inch-worming along since she was probably 4 months), she started pulling up on the furniture.

Her most favorite thing to do has always been to be with Josh. Now that she’s mobile, she’s more able to get right in his face. Their favorite thing to do together is definitely to play chase (see video). 

This is how we roll!

Josh is potty-trained!! After my mom’s visit last month, we thought we’d give it another shot (this was our fourth attempt) so that if he was ready, we’d all have a few weeks to get used to this new style of life before we started traveling. We stocked up on Duck Tales videos from the library (this is Josh’s new addiction, and can I just say they certainly don’t make cartoons like they used to - all those silly educational shows can kiss my butt! Duck Tales, woo-oooo! By the way, does anyone else find it strange that this wildly successful kids’ show’s main protagonist is  a rich old “person?” How weird is that?) and got the movie Hop on redbox. Every time Josh had a success, he got a piece of chocolate donut and Cheetos or Pringles. 

Donuts and Pringles!

About a dozen times through Hop, countless Duck Tales episodes, 18 donuts, 4 cans of Pringles and 5 days later, he really understood what we were trying to get him to do, and that was that!

Butter on every bite!

After our morning activities, we come home to have lunch, which consists of toast more often than I would like, but we’ve also been making huge strides in Josh’s food repertoire. He has recently had his first tastes in a very, very long time of pasta, peaches, broccoli, edamame, rice, and eggs. He is currently wild about corn, but only if I put a fresh bit of butter on each and every bite (he enjoys his grilled cheese sandwiches with a fresh bit of butter on each bite from time to time). He also has been known to dip anything, and I do mean anything, in cinnamon sugar. Almost all of those first bites I mentioned above were coaxed into his mouth only with the help of a little dip in the good stuff. 

Enjoying some celery dipped in spilled powdered sugar. Whatever it takes!

 
After afternoon naps, which almost never occur at the same time for both kids, we entertain ourselves until Mario gets home and then get out for a while again.

 

A few fun things about the kiddos: Josh’s speech delay is on our minds pretty much all the time, so we decided to use some time on a walk a little while ago to practice. We were trying to teach him the answers to “What’s your name?” and “How old are you?” Without fail he would answer “What’s your name?” correctly the first time, but if we asked him a second time he would think for a second and then say “Jesus Christ!” because at the end of his prayers we always say “in the name of . . . “ and he finishes with “Jesus Christ, Amen.” When he heard the operative word “name” he assumed the answer would be what it is every night!

He also LOVES to recite his favorite part of the Duck on a Bike book. When we ask him what he can see, even when we were on airplanes, he would say “A cow! . . . Hello, cow! . . . moooooooo!” and then proceed to list, greet, and say the sound of every animal in the book. He always does it in the same order, every single time. The best part of this is when he gets to “sheep.” As he can’t say “p” sounds very well, he says something very akin to “shi*.” He also likes to bless the animals in his prayers at night, so we often bless the “cows and shi*” here in the Apreotesi home. It was also a lot of fun and not embarrassing at all (that’s sarcasm, by the way) to walk around the livestock barns at the Fairbanks Fair and have Josh say multiple times to every single sheep and goat (I finally got him to compromise and call the goats “sheep-goats,” but he was convinced they were all sheep) “HELLO, SHI*!” Awesome.

Mia is totally in love with Josh. And with food. Josh doesn’t quite know what to do with her, although he ignores her much less completely than he used to. The other day I gave Josh his breakfast of toast with butter and cinnamon sugar and left the two of them about 10 feet apart playing contentedly. When I came back less than 30 seconds later, I found Josh flat on his back with Scout perched on him like a cat, eating his toast no less. He had the most bewildered look in his eye, like he didn’t know what exactly had happened, or exactly how mad he should be about it.

I used to be fairly insulted that Mario was Josh’s favorite parent. I mean, I made him. I made him from two little cells with my very own body, gave birth to him, nursed him, and spent every single blessed day with him. Mario is definitely not Mia’s favorite parent. And now I would prefer to be insulted. By the end of most days, all I want is for someone to not be touching me for ten blessed minutes. The little munchkin must not only be touching me every waking moment, I must hold her at all times. Her preferred calming habit is to pinch as small a piece of my skin as she can get between her little fingers and roll it back and forth. She does this to my neck, arms, legs, and my personal favorite: while nursing. Truly delightful.

She is the happiest baby I know, though, as long as I’m holding her. She has a huge, beautiful smile that she shares with anyone at the slightest provocation. She is a total chowhound. Mario says that if Mia had a theme song, it would be Hungry Eyes. The only thing I’ve encountered that she truly hates is pureed peas. They make her dry-heave. I think it’s a texture thing.

Enjoying a chocolate donut stolen from Josh.

Bedtime with Daddy

One of the traditions we have continued from when Josh was a baby is having Mario put the baby to bed. (And this is no easy feat - I usually have had to pump for an hour every evening for him to have a bottle to give these munchkins!)

This isn't even close to a all-inclusive description of what our days are actually like, but it's the best I can do at the moment - I've got about four months of awesomeness to catch up on!!