Ronin was given this crown from Whole Foods. It has tomatoes on it and for four days she wore it constantly and was the tomato queen.

Then, it was sadly left in the trunk of the car for the duration of the four hottest days of the year nestled up with a pair of soiled undies and pants (accidents happen..). Basically, when I opened the car after a week, I seriously thought an animal had crawled up our tailpipe and somehow wedged itself up in our trunk to die, decompose, and rot foully. I’m telling you the stench was unbearable. When I finally figured out the source of the godawful smell, I was incredulous (after all, isn’t urine supposed to be sterile or something?). I soaked all articles of clothing + the tote bag they were in for HOURS in enzyme stain remover solution and then took them to the laundrymat for a serious washing. They still aren’t quite right after all that but they are mostly back to normal.

I tossed the Tomato Crown.

And I made her a new one.

Ronin is a big fan of the skirt-over-pants look.

Ronin models this year’s Tour de Fat t-shirt.

I thought I’d include one more shot that cracks me up.

Ronin likes to make salad in the salad spinner. Here she’s tossed together a bright end-of-summer mix of puzzle pieces, stuffed skunk, and underwear. She will eventually add a lime squeezer, the cover to a Curious George sticker album, plastic zoo animals, four pirate figurines, wheels from a toy car, two dirty socks, and Nigel.

Nigel makes everything taste just right.

[Our child would be the one who is naked.]

We have potty trained babies around these parts! It’s been almost three weeks and it’s a wonderful thing, I tell ya. One day she deigned to pee on a board in the backyard and after a day or two, we were able to coax her inside to try it in the toilet. Now she often uses indoor plumbing.

It’s not all fun and games though, there’s that little thing about how they may be able to pee in the right place at the right time but they don’t quite get the wiping part. In fact, it’s downright foolish to leave her in there with a roll of toilet paper anywhere in reach (or sight, since she’ll shriek if she can’t get at it). Usually she’ll unroll it all over the floor and rip it to shreds, poking little bits in one at a time. Once she dropped the entire roll into the bowl. Now, if she refuses to let me stand guard, I take it with me. There are often loud vocal protests but I am unmoved by such demonstrations.

About a week ago I noticed that her hairbrush (which often lives on the back of the tank) looked weird. It had bits of paper molded into the bristles in a strange way. Almost as if someone had, say, stuck it in the toilet bowl with a bunch of toilet paper (and whatever else…). No, I thought, she wouldn’t do that. But then I asked her what was up with the hairbrush and sure enough, she happily told me she cleaned the toilet with it. The brush is still sitting on the back of the tank; I’m just not sure what to do with it. She never let me use it on her hair anyway.

She’s a little weird about preschool peeing though; she’ll probably be one of those kids who can’t poop unless seated upon her own toilet. I hear it’s not uncommon. Last time I picked her up, she had evidently held it all day long and by the time I got there, she was visibly uncomfortable. We took her in and she went at last, a lot; she even wanted me to hold her hand as she sat there (this is unusual: at home, she usually boots me out—probably hoping I’ll forget to take the toilet paper with me when I go). I guess now we know that she can hold it. Next time she says she has to go when we are on the road, we’ll be all, nope, sorry kid, you will just have to hold it until we get to California.

[We got her this US map puzzle at a garage sale and it’s her favorite thing these days; we put it together at least once a day. She has most of the states memorized and usually can put about 3/4 of the thing together on her own—when she’s paying attention, that is.]

Here in Portland, we have had cold rainy Spring weather up until July 3rd. I kid not. It went from the upper 50s to the 90s in 48 hours and I’m still kind of working out the kinks in my brain. Our lawn is still totally lush and green and requiring frequent mowing. Last year this time? It was a matted-down dead prickly sea of brown (except for the dandelions, those bastards are unstoppable); we spent last year’s 4th of July sitting in the shade with our feet in a kiddie pool. Our garden this year is going strong, except for the tomatoes, which we planted a bit early and who got utterly pommeled by some nasty hailstorms and then finished off with an extra six weeks of winter. I seriously doubt any of them will bear fruit by next freeze. It’s pretty much tragic since the only thing I really care about, vegetable garden-wise, is a really good tomato.

We went for a couple of hikes up in the gorge in the past couple of weeks. It was wet and rainy and Ronin was crabby since she didn’t nap but we had fun. Everything was very green and drippy.

The snails were out in force and we had educational moments every 30 feet or so along the way. Ronin was pretty interested in watching them sit there poking their antennae in and out; it was slow going for a while.

Well, she did nap after all, for a short while. Everyone was happier afterward.

We had mentioned to her that maybe we could go see the big fish and we’ve learned that once she gets something fixed in the brain, if that thing does not come to pass, there will be a massive shrieking meltdown. So we went to the hatchery and watched some enormous sturgeon swim around for a while.

This fish is like 800 pounds and ~12 feet long. I will think about this every time I go swimming in any large river for the rest of my life.

In addition to the underwater viewing window, we can feed little brown trout-snacks to a raging pondful of massive rainbow trout. This is a big toddler pleaser. I like them too but mostly I kind of wish I could have one to take home for dinner.

Another outing had us wandering through the cottonwoods near Smith Bybee lake. Ronin liked walking on the fallen beaver logs. Those crazy animals can chew down a tree that is over a foot in diameter. How the hell? (And why?)

At the end of the walk is a little observation building with a handful of little windows at various heights that look out over onto the marsh. The idea is, presumably, to observe nature without disturbing the nervy little ducks. They even have windows low enough for Ronin to peek through but she’s not a quiet observer. We didn’t see any ducks.

We did see some of these.

The lake is higher than normal and the metal walkway out to the observation building was flooded. Ronin thought this was great. It was all we could do to keep her from completely stripping off her jacket and shirt and diaper (it wasn’t warm and the water was super cold).

Pretty!

Unfortunately, Ronin walked right off the edge of the grate in the split second that Joshua looked away from her and she fell in the lake up to her neck. This bent her right out of shape and we immediately had to strip her of her sodden jacket/shirt/diaper. The tragedy of the moment was swept away finally when we discovered this teensy little green frog. Ronin really liked this frog and we sat and watched him quake in fear for quite some time.

I carried Ronin all the way back to the car hugged in my sweatshirt to keep her warm. Little monkey.

Ronin is getting tall! A real little girl these days. We actually started her in a local preschool two days a week. We felt like she would really enjoy the activities and different stuff, and the other kids to play with. Plus, she could definitely use some socializing. She’s not always going to hang with two protective hovering satellites that intuit her every move and desire. She seemed to really enjoy it the first couple of times and even napped (!) but the second week, we had tears when we dropped her off and cries that she didn’t want to go. Once we left though, we got calls from the teacher to tell us that as soon as we left, she cooled down and was pretty much fine and happy. Unfortunately (for the teacher, less so for Ronin), she stopped napping. She hasn’t napped now for a few weeks (except once when we essentially “forced” her to by bouncing her like we did when she was a baby). The no nap means that by the time we come to pick her up, she is completely wiped and falls asleep in the car or on the bike seat on the ride home. Thussly refreshed, she is absolute hell to get down for the night.

Actually, she’s been hell to get down for a good while now. I’ve felt so miserable about it that I have refrained from bitching here online about it, and in so doing, have not been posting anything at all. It just made me so upset, I could only come out with negative things to say about her and the sleep situation. But, things seem to be getting a little better; she went down without any fuss at all tonight.

I just cut her hair for the first time yesterday (nothing daring, just a respectable bob). She has never let us brush her hair with a hairbrush and so I follow her around waiting for any moment when she is otherwise occupied with something—eating or playing with bathtoys; on occasion, I’ve snuck into her room and done this while she slept—and I pry carefully at the dense dreadlocks that have formed at the back of her head. (Ronin, in addition to being a serial brush-hater, is a major hair-twirler when confused or tired or just lost in thought.) She of course hates this and says: “Mama! Are you getting out the rats? DON’T DO THAT!” And runs away from me. The shorter hair seems to keep the rats at bay, and I got rid of a couple of the more tenacious of the bunch in the process.

[Ronin looking cute in her hat. I haven’t gotten any pics of the new ‘do yet. Next time.]

One historic issue we’ve dealt with since forever has been the non-eating thing. Curiously, as she gets older, she is getting less picky about the consumption of food. Everything I have ever heard about toddlers and food has been to the contrary so it is with great trepidation that I watch her suddenly deign to touch green vegetables, nibble on a lettuce leaf say. I’ve heard of people who would never let their toddler eat pizza but seriously, we rejoiced when Ronin actually ate a bite and didn’t spit it out. She’s getting less picky about fruit too and will, on occasion, eat things that we did not have to pantomime picking off the bush or tree for her (though she still won’t touch raspberries once we are more than five feet from the bush they came off of).

One of the outfits Ronin picked out: David Bowie shirt over Tahitian dancer girl outfit with green tiered skirt. She’s big into layering and will emerge from her room with three t-shirts over a dress with a skirt on top, pants underneath, and two different socks on. I think she is practicing to be a bag lady when she grows up.

Potty training is in full force hereabouts. We introduced a potty right around when she turned two when I was all gung-ho on the whole deal. She seemed to be aware of the various bodily functions and very curious about the potty aparatus and potty-themed storybooks and the like. Potty #1 was a raging success for about 35 minutes and now that we own three, any hope of reliving those first moments have all but been shattered. She uses none of her potties, naturally, and on the rare occasions we have managed to coax her out of a diaper, she has shown a preference for the step-board that we use to get in and out of the garden shed. Today was uncharacteristically sucessful however, she peed twice next to trees at two different parks and once on the step-board. I’m trying not to get my hopes up too high.

Ronin models potty#2 for us. It can be a lot of fun and used for many different things, observe:

You see how she’s combined her newfound enthusiasm for food with her interest in the potty? It’s moments like these that make a mama proud.

Probably most of you know that I’ve been selling my jewelry through Etsy and now I got picked as a ‘featured seller!’ It’s pretty damned exciting; I’m on the front page, they posted an interview, and I’ve been getting a zillion emails and messages asking about my jewelry, custom pieces, and just notes saying nice things about me and my work. It’s made my day.

One more thing - I should mention also that I got a couple of great write-ups on other blogs in the past few weeks: Emerald Green Weddings in Seattle, and earthfriendlywedding blog!

I’ve been to the zoo more last winter then in the rest of my life combined. The rule seems to be that on any given day half the exhibits are closed and half the remaining animals are just sleeping. It really takes a bunch of visits to appreciate them all. Some, like the orangutans, are always depressing but I try not to think too hard about it.

Ronin usually runs for the polar bears first thing. Sleeping, more often than not, but on lucky days we catch them swimming. It’s a wonderful thing to watch.

The lions sleep on the rocks or sometimes stand nobly looking off into the distance. However, on this day one lion was just going crazy and seemed desperate to get at the tender morsels on the other side of the glass. She was running back and forth clawing, snarling, and throwing herself at the glass. Ronin was oblivious. “Look at the big kitty.”

Last week they opened a robot dinosaur exhibit. We weren’t sure what Ronin would think but she likes dinosaurs, isn’t usually afraid of things, and the snarling lion didn’t phase her. She really didn’t like it though. Mostly I think it was the noise and the fact that they spit water at you. We explained that they were only toys and she seemed to understand. Now I’m afraid that she thinks all the animals are fake.

If that’s not funny enough, here’s what she put on Nigel (we’ve been learning all about “big girl underwear” lately…):

It’s kind of embarrassing. We don’t let him out of the house like this.

So, late in the game as usual, we set out for a bit of morel hunting. We’ve found them only a couple of times before. Once in possibly poisonous barkamulch in the brand new IKEA parking lot in Emeryville and another time in barkamulch outside the old-folks center near our old apartment in SE Portland. You never know what that barkamulch has been steeped in, or what they spray there to keep the dandelions at bay. We marveled, picked, dissected, and let be. We did not eat. It was so sad.

One other time we hit the morel jackpot is when we were hiking in the Slovenian Alps. We hiked up to a waterfall and stood on the little platform overlooking a startling drop and roaring waterfall. We looked down and there were like TEN huge monstrous beautiful gorgeous perfect amazing black morels clinging to the edge of the cliff. Maybe there were twenty. We made such a scene that I thought one of the German tourists would plunge to his death in an effort to pick them. But sadly no. Only the fairies would be eating those morels for dinner, sauteed with some butter, shallots, maybe a smidge of sherry… (SOB!)

We looked up morel season in our parts and lo! It was like last week! We freaked out and rushed out into the world to harvest them. We got amazingly lucky and the first place we stopped the car all, “This is morel territory if I ever saw it,” like we knew anything at all, we totally found one. Then two more. And that was all. We beat around the brush for a good two hours, until Ronin was totally spazzing, before heading home to saute our booty.

What we’ve been finding are golden morels, which are not as clustered and numerous as the black morel, supposedly. Also, we fear that there is a pretty stiff competition for the little buggers. The first couple of places we went we encountered other mushroomers or signs of mushroomers. That first day, a guy walking his dog came sauntering down the dirt road where we were parked illegally. He howdy-ed at us and asked nonchalantly if we were looking for mushrooms. We were all in a frizz after finding that first mushroom and hadn’t noticed him until he was right there; we must have looked very guilty or something as we stammered that um, yes, we um were… Then he told us that he had seen a lot of mushroomers recently but they were always focusing on the trees over near the river, not where we were looking. We took his advice with a huge brick of salt (mushroomers are known for being very territorial when it comes to hot patches). Then we found two more right where we were looking to begin with. Nice try, dude. We’re totally coming back next year. (Turned out he lived just down the road.)

Morel Hunt #2 found us along the banks of the Sandy River. We spent a long time looking where there surely MUST be morels, just look at the surroundings! But no. Ronin was mostly cooperative but usually only one of us could actively look while the other had to watch to be sure she didn’t dive into the river. We found two very large mushrooms this time. We also saw a few obvious mushroomers. One guy was actually whacking his way through the brush with a big stick and a large bag. We were sort of jealous but Ronin wanted to get sand on her hands, then wash it off in the river, then get sand on her hands, then wash it off in the river, then get sand on her hands… We literally carried her away kicking and screaming when we had to leave.

Hunt #3 was the most successful, not only in the volume of morels we found but in keeping Ronin happy and not melting down. It helped that there was neither a rushing river for her to fling herself into, nor was there a dangerous road for her to give me a heart attack on. We had nice meandering paths through the tall grass. And, if we were really lucky, maybe we would see a BUNNY in the grass!! We are bad, bad parents.

But it worked. Ronin was not only buzzed with excitement about the possibility of seeing a bunny, she actually kept up with us and helped look (maybe bunnies like to hide in the brush alongside the trail! And uh let us know if you see a mushroom while you are at it). She was pretty happy the entire time. We found two past-prime snatches of morels and one nice one, which was gratifying but we wondered if it’s maybe getting too late in the season. Every time Ronin stopped for too long, Joshua would shout from up ahead, “Ronin, let’s look up HERE for some bunnies!” and she’s take off running.

We found a nice park with a playground and Ronin played on the slide for a while before we started back. She was less enthusiastic about the return trip and the promise of bunnies was sort of wearing thin. However, I spotted a big morel, and then a few more. Joshua and I were instantly shot through with mushroom fever and started up again with the bunny talk. Ronin wandered off into a little grassy clearing while I scouted around the edge. She started nattering on about the bunnies and I wasn’t really listening to well, saying, “Keep looking, maybe we’ll see one,” and things like that.

After a few minutes Joshua came slowly over to me and said, “Look: she really found a bunny. I can’t believe it!” Ronin was there standing in the clearing, and not six feet away from her was a little bunny munching on grass and giving us all the eye. Ronin was just standing there staring at it and telling us over and over again, “I see a bunny! There’s a bunny right there!” And not only that, but Joshua had only come back because he found a bunny himself down the path a little ways. When Ronin got tired of this bunny, we could just head over and check out the other bunny. Which is what we did.

In all, it was a good day. We’ll remember that spot.

[Organic hemp mushroom bag abandoned (empty) in the woods by hippies and scored by Joshua, who will never learn when it comes to picking up strange bags in unexpected places.]

We took a bunch of photos of the decommissioned hydroelectric plant at White River Falls. It was built in the early 1900s and supplied power until the late 50s when The Dalles Dam was completed. [Clicking the image shows a full-res huge version.]

Grandpa Jeff came to Portland to visit. We had an action-packed week with many trips to REI, some adventuring in the wilds of (practically) central Oregon, and much excellent food (and wine).

These are some massive fish at the Bonneville Dam fish hatchery in the Colombia gorge. These are sturgeon and they are MASSIVE (Herman the Sturgeon is 11 feet long, 500 pounds, and 70 years old). Unbelievably, horrifyingly, incredibly huge. I was flabbergasted. Also, I will never again swim in the river.

The fish hatchery grounds are actually really nice. Lots and lots of sturgeon to look at from baby minnow size up to full-on leviathan. There are also the largest rainbow trout you ever did see and you can feed them from a fish-pellet vending machine. Ronin was content to feed them pine needles she picked off a branch saying, “Hey fish! Here are some snacks.”

We drove way out to White River falls and after two+ hours in the car with a kid who dislikes such modes of transportation, we were so very relieved to discover that it is really freaking cool. And there is an abandoned power station to poke around in. Bonus! (I’ll get pics up in another post; we took about a million.) Ronin was placated because there was a river and sand and she got to take her pants off.

Jeff amongst the rocks and sagebrush. The sage smelled really nice and had these puffy-squishy little berries; I had never seen sageberries before.

We took one of the skinny blue lines home from the falls. It led us through some small town rural Oregonness and around the backside of Mt. Hood. I was a little worried that our scenic route would turn into a 4-hour epic drive and Ronin would drive me batty.

Then I started to worry that Bambi would get stuck in the snow (we don’t have chains) and Ronin would run out of diapers when we were forced to bivouac in a snow cave. My worries were all for not, however, and we stopped did a bit of frolicking in the snow. Ronin loved it and launched a furious vocal protest when we attempted to re-car her.

Behold! A gentle forest sprite!

When we were a mere three miles from the turnoff back onto the Real highway and civilization, we were confronted by a forest ranger. He asked us what the hell we thought we were doing out here on a seasonally closed road over the mountain with no chains on our pansy-ass little stationwagon. We looked harmless enough and he quickly relented, acknowledging that the sign had in fact been stolen from the direction we came. He said that if we had managed thus far, we’d probably make it the rest of the way. We did. I was happy.

This sign. Oops. Kind of awkwardly put really; we likely would have ignored it had we seen it.

Ronin didn’t nap the whole day and actually went down promptly that night. Aahhh.