[Hallowell, Maine]

I guess there’s some disagreement over the name. Our hosts call it Jimmy Pond, but I’m going with what’s printed on the sign. We like it so much yesterday, we went back for some more swimming today.

[Ronin and Alden discuss solutions to Rubik’s Cube.]

[Kerstin, Alden, and Ilana]

[Baby Fight! The latest blood sport to sweep the nation.]

[Kerstin working the grill.]

Takhlakh Lake, WA

We had our first camping trip in about 75 germillion years and it turned out great! We met up with some friends of ours (who also have a baby) at Takhlakh Lake near Mt. Adams in Washington, and even though we didn’t have a reservation, we decided we’d go for it anyway just leave early on Friday so as to have a chance at a site before the generator-wielding Good-Samers* took up all the good spots. Tragically, we hit traffic about six miles out of Portland and four and a half–yes that’s right, FOUR AND A FREAKING HALF–hours later we were still only 14 miles from home with a destination 160 miles away. And one would think only a crazy person would keep going at this point since there was almost no chance we would arrive before dark and because we planned to meet up with our friends, there was the additional worry that we wouldn’t be able to contact them since there was no cell phone service where we were going. If our target campground was full (we did have three other campground back-ups) it might be hard to find each other in the dark; with no reservation there was no guarantee. Blah blah yada yada. We kept going of course because we are crazy people. And also because we were now four and a half hours from home and I feared my head might blow up. Oh and also, this was one of the hottest days of the year, over 100 degrees probably. Ronin miraculously slept through the majority of the traffic jam (which turned out to be a bleeding brush fire for chrissake; LET IT BURN!) and was so good when she was awake, playing with her granola bar wrapper and humming to herself. I on the other hand, whined, cried, kicked at the dash, chewed my fingernails to the quick, bitched about the people in the cars in front of us, and behaved essentially like a total baby.

[It’s starting to freak me out how much she looks like a little girl at times. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves that she’s just a little baby; I mean, she can’t even crawl yet.]

Once we managed to get back on the freeway on the other side of the mess, the going was great. There was a lot of traffic but everyone was essentially in agreement that they had somewhere to be like FOUR hours ago and so things moved along perkily. We arrived at the campground at 8:25pm, just as the light was fading, we found a note from our friends saying which campsite they were in, and when we pulled up, they had a steaming vat of curry vegetables with quinoa ready to go. The downside is we arrived right at peak mosquito hour and I sustained massive damage in the pitiful seconds it took me to don protective clothing and get inside a tent with the baby.

[The second night, we were on dinner detail: camp paella! Made all the more exciting by having the first stove run out of fuel, then the second backup stove actually break mid-cook. Joshua is a genius and was able to resurrect the stove so we got to eat a fully cooked paella that night. It even held out for coffee the next morning (the stove, not the paella).]

Ronin had been (as she is often) a total sleep monkey lately, depriving herself of solid naps only to top it off with sporadic and fitful night sleep. I was sort of dreading the camping scene after the previous nights of sleep drama but she actually went down fine and slept GREAT that night between us on the camp mattress. Where everything was weird and rustly and there were trees over our heads and bugs whining outside the mesh and smoky smells and loud thumping drunk teenaged site neighbors. Basically, Ronin thrives in the atypical. Who would have guessed? The next night went just as well. She slept solid and only woke at 5am to be fed (this from waking ten million times per night and needing to be fed at least two of those times). We are heading to Maine in a few days and so I’m hoping the exhausting train/plane/car travel, the layover in New Jersey, the three-hour time change, the unfamiliar surroundings, strange people, new sleeping situation, additional camping, and back-to-back visiting will do wonders for her nap and night sleep.

[The lake was sort of cold and Ronin was apprehensive at first. We discovered that just sitting her in the sand was the thing. She took to splashing in a big way and played happily until I noticed that her temples and the area under her mouth were turning sort of blue and so I pulled the plug on Fun. PS - It is really difficult to remove a sodden shirt from an excited splashing baby; remove shirt FIRST next time.]

[Meg with Rosalind looking adorable all cuddled up in a towel.]

Another interesting discovery is that Ronin appears to be mosquito proof. All the rest of us got zillions of bites; Meg and Nathan’s poor baby had probably thirty angry red welts on her face by the end of the trip and although I saw a couple of mosquitoes actually bite Ronin, she never even got a red spot, no less an itchy welt. I don’t know how that works but I’ll take it.

Meg and Nathan’s daughter, Rosalind, is eleven months old and already walking, eating curry, and using the internet. It’s crazy to think that this child is only four months older than ours. Ronin really seemed like just a little cuddle blob next to such fantastic mobility. I can’t wait for her to learn to walk but also it’s really nice to have a baby who you can just leave in the camp chair to play happily with her feet while you get dinner ready. I remember thinking something along these lines last time I saw Meg and Nathan. At that time Rosalind was three months old and during our coffee-shop visit, she pitched a fit that was not to be consoled by sitting, walking, singing, etc. I was eight month’s pregnant at the time and I sat there thinking, wow, I think mine’s kicking a little… My, but the belly is a convenient babysitter.

[The more mature baby can actually bite and ingest watermelon.]

[Our baby, on the other hand, dropped her watermelon in the sand several times before it occurred to her to taste it.]

* As luck would have it, a Good Sam parked in the spot right next to us and they ran a generator for HOURS so that they could watch TV (!!!!). It didn’t even look like the Olympics, which was our initial assumption.

Mt. Adams from Takhlakh Lake, Gifford Pinochet National Forest, WA

Next thing we know, she had extracted the contents and was smearing the chocolate-covered bar all over her face. Pretty much every single allergy-risk ingredient was present and accounted for: wheat, soy, corn, dairy, peanuts and other tree nuts, and chocolate. Go us.

It would seem that six months marks a trying time for helpless babies and their bleary-eyed counterparts. I’m talking about everyone’s favorite topic: sleep. Sleep and Ronin are at odds lately. Sleep and Ronin have a on-again, off-again relationship and this relationship is on the rocks. Sleep and Ronin = LAME for EVERYONE.

(Me = cranky.)

There is a lot of advice out there regarding how to get your baby to sleep. Everyone is a baby-whisperer. I think the sleep advisers are more prolific than the how-to-be-pregnant people. At any rate, one bit of advice was to introduce a “lovey,” or some sort of item to be loved up/devoured by mucous alone (stuffed critter, blanket, paper bag, wire whisk, etc.). I decided a stuffed critter was the element missing from my child’s sleep psyche.

NO MORE! BEHOLD: “Ay-dah!” (Ronin named her.)

God isn’t that the cutest thing? I totally stole the idea from some crafty type and made my own version out of some of some of those fabric scraps I’ve got on hand, one of my pregnant sweaters that is now too wanged out to wear, and an old Irish flannel shirt I’ve been carrying around since high school.

Warning: video somewhat grandparenty.

Mt. Tabor, Portland, Oregon

An all new video wherein Ronin has a second encounter with a yam. As you can see she still hasn’t quite figured out how to deal with “solids.”

Ronin had her six-month checkup and shots the other day. She was really good and showed off all her milestones for the doctor. The shots were horrible as usual and Dora the nurse again traumatized the three of us with her breezy sense of incompetence. Ronin crashed out the moment we got home, slept for an amazing hour and a half, and woke up crying. She didn’t stop until we put her to bed early. She hasn’t stopped yet. Oh, I’m kidding, sort of. She has been seriously cranky the past four days and yesterday evening/last night/this morning was horrible. I can’t figure out if it has to do with the shots still or something else. Everyone says (everyone = strangers off the street), “OH, she’s teething! Aren’t you? Yes you ARE!” because she likes to chew and slobber on stuff. Of course, I’m all, “She didn’t just agree with you, she doesn’t even speak English.” But I do check on a near-hourly basis to see if emerging dental action is the cause of her beastly temper, but no, nothing there but a bunch of squishy gums. And slobber.

(Stats: 17 pounds, 26.25 inches long, 17-inch head circ. Big girl! All around 60th-ish percentile.)

Three days ago we were thinking we maybe should get a stroller and now we have two of them. Stroller number one is a BOB we got used off Craigslist (we are officially yuppies starting NOW) and the other we found in the trash (dumpster-diving yuppies!). I like to think the free dumpster stroller sort of takes the edge off the super-fancy BOB but unless I put a bumper sticker on the BOB that says “My other stroller I got out of the trash,” I don’t suppose anyone will actually realize that I’m not just another suburban mom walking around with her bright red $300* jogging stroller but in fact, like some kind of dangerously hip crime-fighting super-anime ninja** in disguise.

Of course we didn’t set out to get the BOB stroller, not that I didn’t know they existed, but I considered them to be the ultimate in dorky jock extravagance. I mean, you can get a NEW jogging stroller for less than $100 and why buy new when you can get one even cheaper from Craigslist. Here’s where we went astray. 1) Accidentally touched a BOB stroller in a bike shop we were browsing while waiting for our Lebanese takeout. 2) Put Ronin in it and pushed her around in circles, “DANG this is nice.” 3) Started searching Craigslist for a used stroller; boggled minds at the confounding range in prices and the god-awful photos people take of the zillions of brands and models. 4) Went to Babies R Us to actually look at all the brands in person. Except Babies R Us is a horrid store so evil that despite 13 square acres of baby merchandise, you still can’t find anything you actually want. Also, can I just say now that if you EVER hear me suggesting, “Why don’t we just go to Babies R Us to look at all the models so we have something to compare when we’re browsing Craigslist,” smack me a good one. 5) We hated every single stroller in Babies R Us. 6) We started browsing BOBs used on Craigslist (it’s all downhill from here). 7) Justified ourselves thinking that if we could just get a really great deal on a used (but in essentially brand-new condition and not last-year’s model either) BOB, we could sell it again when we’re through for what we paid for it. 8) It’s red.

* That’s what they cost NEW. Not used off Craigslist haha, whew! But ours looks brand new so everyone must think I bought it new and spent $300 on a stroller for god’s sake. Can you tell I am nursing something of a complex about this? Give me a couple of weeks for my eyes to adjust to the red and my sensitive nerves to settle.

** Oh I’m kidding! I’m not really very hip.

ps – Stroller number two is a lightweight umbrella stroller which folds up into a tidy, um, umbrella-like shape.

pps - We don’t have a photo of the Contraption yet.. I’ll try to get one today.