Tailgating 2010

It's been a year since we were first crazy enough to bring a baby to the Husky tailgating scene. See D's First UW Tailgate for a flash back. Things are a little bit different this time around though. Deven was racing around, flirting with the ladies and showing off his football spirit. Above we are celebrating my almost win of the traditional Lasso Golf or, per Wikipedia, Ladder Toss. Alex made his famous chili, Steve grilled roast beef sandwiches and we experimented with some Pumpkin Feta Muffins. Deven tried them all and surprisingly was big fan of the chili, which was super spicy. We will see how that sits with him this evening! There is only one more Saturday home game left but if we can't make it to that one I think we have safely done our due diligence with Deven's college football activities for the season.

Ohhh S#*t

Oh S#*t was right! I can't remember if it was morning or evening but last week we were getting Deven changed. He was just chillin' on his table reading his book as usual as momma and dadda took care of his business. All of a sudden - to his book - Deven says, "Ohhh S#*t..." Nick and I look at each other in a moment of silence and then laugh and shake our heads - there is no way he said what we thought he said. A moment later Deven clarifies for us, "Ohhh S#*t." Yup, its official momma (yes its me the momma) needs to start watching her dug-out mouth. Fortunately, since then I haven't heard him say it again.

Stadium Burritos

A couple of weekends ago we were fortunate to be invited to a Sounders game by Nick's sister Anne! The seats were phenomenal! Deven of course joined us but only after an overnight delivery of baby ear protectors.

I was a good momma and packed a bunch of snacks and etc. for Deven to eat while were there but of course I left it in the car and didn't realize it until the man got hungry! So Nick saved the day and in pure hunter mode located the healthiest lunch he could find - a burrito. All food groups were represented as long as you consider craft cheese wiz a dairy.

Deven was able stay in our seats until shortly after half time and then made it, as we walked around the stadium, until right before the game ended. Nick and I considered the day a success - we walked back to the car with a happy toddler, two hot dogs purchased for $4 (I know - a steal) and we got to hear the crowd roar as the Sounders won the game. A great day!

First Kiss

As discussed in the previous blog Nick and I are trying to teach Deven more socially acceptable ways of expressing himself...rather than hitting Deven should pat people nicely...rather than biting Deven should give kisses. So I ask Deven on Sunday if he could please give Dadda a kiss. He giggled and gave Nick a kiss on the check. It was the cutest thing I have witnessed to date. Hopefully soon we will eliminate the biting...fingers crossed.

Nice!

Nice, is what we have been trying to teach Deven this month. Well it was only in the last week that we started trying this method. Deven is a biter, a hitter and I am sorry to say very emotionally exhausting when he is unhappy. I am hoping this sounds familiar to everyone so that I can know that we are not the only ones! We love Deven greatly but he has entered some sort of stage that I hope passes quickly. It has been a few weeks now so...

I have gotten really behind in blogging this month but other than dealing with new challenges it has been a good one. The weather has been up and down but regardless we had are usually at a park on the weekends. Deven digs the slide (head first) and if not distracted by little rocks or pieces of bark, loves to climb up and down all the tires and jungle gym type stuff! He can say momma, dadda, bye bye, hi, and Nick has heard thank you a few times and when he says nice it is more like sssss (so polite). "Uh oh" is very common too!

Interestingly enough he loves trees, flowers and plants - even better he loves to water them. We bought him his own watering can and once set to watering we are hard pressed stop him.

In the last month he has really grown up into a little man - no baby food and no bottles. He weighs over 24 pounds now and picks his own stories for bed time. He ate an apple...without me chopping it up...I know...I was equally as ecstatic. Seriously though, this is such an exciting time. All the milestones almost overshadow the daily incident reports from school...almost.

So future Deven, we love you but sometimes it is really great they you go to bed at 7!! ; )

Sliding through walla

Deven is having a blast at all the beautiful Parks here in walla walla, thought we would share. This afternoon kids day at the fair!!

Weekend warriors #3

We are off and driving again to places unknown or rather, Walla Walla, so I thought I would take this moment and attempt to draft my third installment of our crazy weekend trips. I'm typing this up via Droid so I may need to edit at a later date.

I was just telling a friend about this third trip (WW #3), could this be synonymous with "world war"? I am most definitely exaggerating, but honestly, for a week after our trip to Victoria BC I sure felt like I'd experienced something similar. Just ask Nick, I was not pleasant to be around. So why in heck did we go? "Why ever not," would have been my answer a few weeks ago. We all have our passports and Nick and I wanted to celebrate our five year anniversary in the city we got engaged. For me it was sort of fun to get back up there and do some comparisons between who we were then to who we are now, or rather, who we were three weeks ago because surely we have learned a thing or two since then making us all together different at this exact moment. My digression back to philosophy class aside; I can safely say we have learned the following about traveling as our current selves:

1. Travel at night

We thought we would experiment with early morning travel. We woke Deven up about an hour earlier than he would have preferred and high tailed it to the anacortes ferry crossing. We made record time, met a cool young family with a little lady five days older than Deven and had a great family breakfast on the ferry. So what's the issue? Travel in the morning got us to Victoria just in time for Deven's mid day nap but we could not check into the hotel until 3...we knew this but didn't really conceptualize what this meant. Given our early wake up and all the fun and excitement of the ferry we ALL needed a nap but instead had to find something we could all get on board with until a dark room sufficient for napping could be had.

We were smart enough to check with the front desk though and give them our contact information; we only had to wait until 1pm.

2. Don't eat ferry food.

All I'm saying is that this lesson was learned the entire weekend.

3. Dine with air conditioning

The weather was fabulous. We didn't miss out on the 80 degree weather in Seattle because it followed us up to BC. It was great but got pretty hot. When dinner time rolled around we decided to be efficient and go where we knew bringing Deven wouldn't be weird. They have the spaghetti factory in Victoria and Deven loves pasta so off we went. We walked in and it seemed like all other families had this exact idea - jam packed. We were going to sit inside to avoid sun exposure but I made the poor executive decision to ask for out door seating because there was no AC in the restaurant and I figured it felt the same outside so why not get to see the sun on its rare visit into our lives. We really just should have gone somewhere different all together. The dinner was so so and it was so hot outside that I think it just added to our tired and grumpy dispositions. Nothing like sweating over some hot pasta!

3. Get a double room when traveling with a baby.

We totally did this but we gave Deven the nice pretty bed room and we got the pull-out couch. Bad decision! This is simply a case of not thinking. This location for nap time was great because Nick and I could drink wine and watch the canoe races that were going on in the bay that day. But really, for night time we should have switched it up. We ended up sleeping in the bedroom of course, which defeated the whole reason for separate rooms Deven woke up when we went to bed which set off a series of wake ups throughout the night adding to our already zombie state.

4. If you feel like going home early, do it.

We had a couple things working against us on this one. First, being "good" travelers we made ferry reservations to avoided any unwanted delays in our weekend away. To come full circle here, because we had chosen to come early Saturday morning rather than late Friday night we had initially thought we wouldn't want to leave as early as the first of only two ferry's would leave, which was 11:30. The next ferry was 5:55...dumb dumb dumb!!!

The hotels check-out was 11am and we did not consider where Deven would take a nap...I tried to have him take an early one...he laughed at me.

By the time we realized our mistake it was too late and we were stuck on the island. I didn't even check if we could have changed our reservations because I just didn't even want to know how easy it may have been...I still don't.

5. Don't park your car in neutral on the big radiation detectors at boarder crossings.

Don't worry, I'm not ending my story with a full car search at 10pm. However, after our 3 hour (1hour delayed) and 1 hour idle in a boarder crossing cage we were waved forward by one of the guards...or were we?? Nope we weren't, but it was too late to move back because our fellow Americans and or Canadian visitors were anxiously riding our bumper to get out asap! We didn't want to pull forward because they weren't ready for us so we just stayed put. The fine member of homeland security informed us however that a few moments longer and we would have likely been flagged for a bomb search due to radiation detected in the truck. I guess all things have radiation but when you sit on a big machine with the job picking up high or abnormal levels bad things can happen. Thankfully, we avoided this, Deven stayed asleep and we were home shortly.

So there you have it...our travel lessons. Not to worry though, its not like we are about to stop. See above, we on our way to Walla Walla as I wright. We did have some great times in 'Canadia': used Deven's passport for the first time, visit to the museum where d played for ever, visit the bench where Nick asked me to marry him, watched awesome rowing races, played with Deven on the Parliament lawn and tons more.

Stay tuned for all our other lessons!!