Yesterday marked our first family trip to a tree farm to pick out and cut down our own tree. Based on the size and type of tree we were able to get for the money, I think this is not going to be a family tradition. The Stupid American in me would rather get a prettier, larger tree at Lowe's than a tiny cedar that injures us when we try to decorate it. But this was really fun to do once. Maybe someday, we'll live somewhere with nicer native species, like Fraser Firs, and we'll know someone who'll let us just come cut down a tree for free? I just can't bring myself to go artificial.

We got a cute set of straw ornaments (hearts, stars, and rams) at IKEA this year so that we wouldn't need to worry about what was breakable, knowing that Kent would want to touch everything. I want to set up safe ways for him to explore when I can, and this was easy enough. I don't get too upset about not being able to put all my favorite ornaments on the tree every year, even though there are some that mean a lot to me. I was thinking a few days ago that when the boys are old enough to (1) help, and (2) care, it would be fun to have a year where we decorated with things like popcorn, cranberries, and pine cones, and maybe do a year just with origami ornaments. For now, the straw ornaments are doing alright by us, and since it's IKEA, we got a box of ornaments big enough to cover the tree and spent about $4. I believe someone commented recently that she loves Swedish Christmas. I'm there.



Here's Kent, trimming the tree. He decided he preferred hanging the ornaments on the light strand instead of on the branches, and since they're light and we're not using metal hooks, we indulged him this year. He'll get a safety lesson in the future.



Jack took some photos without flash to show the effect of how the tree looks, though I realize it's kind of dark and blurry. If you look closely, you may also notice a pregnant belly.

Labels: belly, holidays, IKEA, Kent, photography

• posted by erica 12/14/2009 11:13:00 AM
•  1 comments

The extra dowel came yesterday to complete our Expedit bookcase. I guess they wanted to be safe, because they sent us six instead of just the one we needed. We started putting it together right after dinner, and it took about 2 hours, as is the case with a lot of IKEA furniture; that's how they keep their prices low. Anyway, Jack did a great job and remained quite patient as Kent endeavored to help, and then I started filling it up right away while Jack was putting Kent to bed.

When Jack finally got a chance to walk out to the living room and see how the organizational part was coming, I asked him whether it made his heart go pitter-patter like it did for mine. I should have taken some "before" pictures of the little metal shelving unit we used to have a lot of this stuff on, because it was pretty terrible. Our cookbooks and DVDs were overflowing on the little metal thing, and now they have such neat little cubbies. I like the fact that, even though it's the same stuff, it has the appearance of organization simply by being in a grid. The baskets at the bottom are for some of Kent's toys, and we have a shelf of his books at the bottom as well, right where he can reach them, instead of the weird round basket we used to put them in, or the piles on the floor where they usually ended up. The red boxes are meant to hold some of Kent's stuff, like his art and his keepsakes like ticket stubs and other stuff we want to save for him. I also have a cubby for a couple of cat figurines and a framed cat picture with a cat playing Scrabble, a cubby for my little glass paperweights and a blue and white vase I randomly bought in college, and a cubby for art that holds a couple of art books and a canvas that Kent painted last year. There are even two empty cubbies right now, but I'm sure I'll find a purpose for them soon.

This bookcase has a ridiculous number of possibilities. I am so in love with this piece of furniture. I want everyone I know to have one. When I win the lottery, that's the first thing on the list. Okay, I should probably start buying lottery tickets or something. Nevermind.

I had a purpose in mind for the little metal shelving unit, too, as soon as we got all that other stuff off of it. It's the perfect size to hold Kent's art supplies so that he'll be able to get them out when he wants and will also know right where to put them away when he's done. I'm starting gradually with that, only putting out his crayons, paper, stickers, and his box of stringing beads for now. We'll work up to having the markers, glue, pompoms, paint, etc. within his reach, but I think he'd just be too overwhelmed if I put everything out at once.

One of the tenets I love about the Montessori program, which is also just good organizational advice in general, is that it's important to have a consistent place for everything so that we know where to find things and get used to putting them back every time we use them. Kent and other small people like him need to have predictability in the space around them, so our lack of organization wasn't doing him any favors. I can already feel within me that this system is going to spill over into other areas of the house and our lives in general.

Now you see why we needed a whole road trip to Houston just to get this. The Expedit is so much more than a piece of furniture. I think I've just decided that I need to make an IKEA tag for my blog.

Labels: house, IKEA, photography

• posted by erica 5/05/2009 09:46:00 AM
•  2 comments

We took a short road trip this weekend to Houston, the main purpose of which was to get to IKEA to pick up our new Expedit bookcase. The gift-giver offered to have it shipped to us, but when we realized that shipping would cost more than the actual bookcase, we decided to make a little trip out of it. We also weren't 100% sure that the boxes would fit in our car, but Jack had measured, and I had enough optimism for both of us, and we had some straps to tie down the trunk in case my optimism didn't carry us through. Luckily, it did. IKEA was our last stop, though, just in case it didn't quite fit, because we didn’t want to be driving around town for a day and parking at our hotel with an open trunk.

In the spring of 2007, before Kent was born, we took our last vacation as a childless couple in Houston. We saw an Astros game, looked for a vegetarian restaurant I had found online, and spent the rest of the trip exploring. The vegetarian restaurant (which is all Asian food) and another place we randomly found for brunch were both so good that when we started planning this trip, I knew we needed to go back to both of them.

I also started trying to figure out what we'd do on Saturday afternoon when we got into town, and I found a nice-looking public park online that I thought we should check out. Hermann Park ended up being the best part of a very lovely trip; they happened to have a Japanese festival going on this weekend, so in addition to seeing the cool reflecting pool, playing on not one but *three* playgrounds, and running through the kiddie fountains, we also got to watch an amazing show of Taiko drumming by Kaminari Taiko (a local drumming group). Our trip was full of reminders about why I'd like to live in a big city, and this was a big one. The cultural exchange is so important. Also, I really *really* want to take up Taiko drumming. It's percussive, choreographed like dancing, kind of macho but musical at the same time, and looks like a fantastic workout. It's everything I need in my life right now. Maybe they'd give me lessons over Skype. Heh.





All three of us were mesmerized, Kent especially, as you can see. He was barely interested in seeing the train drive by or the other attractions at the festival once we got to a place where we could watch the drumming. Kent wants to take lessons too; he keeps remembering the experience and yelling "Guy... play... big... drum... out... SIIIIIIIIIIIDE!" at random moments. When he gets super excited, he starts flapping his arms like he's going to take off. That's how we know he's not just being fickle.

After all the fun at the park, we headed to dinner at Pepper Tree, a vegetarian Asian buffet restaurant. I remember the food from two years ago, and back then, I was more excited on Jack's behalf than I was about eating the food myself. Now that I'm more comfortable with a lot more of the things on their buffet, like sushi, tofu dishes, gyoza dumplings, and sesame desserts, I was happily satisfied, basically to the point of feeling stuffed. Kent ate a lot of lo mein noodles and a little bit of edamame, and not much else that I put on his plate until dessert rolled around, when he happily crammed a sesame ball and some coconut cake into his little mouth.

I told the proprietors several times how good everything was, and at the end, I asked one of them if I could take pictures of the buffet. The husband who owns the restaurant was talking to me afterward, and he asked whether we were from Houston. I told him no, we had come from Louisiana. He said, "Oh, I figured once you pulled out the camera that you were a tourist!" I grinned and said, "Well actually, I just like to take pictures of my food. It doesn't have anything to do with being a tourist. I take pictures of the food I cook, too." He responded, "Ah. Interesting hobby." Yep. He should see my folder on the computer of food pictures, or read my food journal.

Dinner ran a bit past Kent's bedtime, so we were glad to get him in bed when we got back to our hotel room. He slept horribly all night, probably because he's getting too long for his pack and play but we didn't have another sleeping option for him. I guess we'll need to start looking for hotels that can bring a crib into our room, since he rolls and scoots all over the room and ends up under the furniture if we just let him sleep on the floor.

On Sunday morning, we were up pretty early. Kent and I watched part of a Bollywood movie while Jack was taking a shower, and he really enjoyed the weird, melodramatic singing and dancing. Once we were all ready to check out of the hotel, we decided that we should go back to Hermann Park and ride the train that runs around the park, since we didn't have a chance to do it on Saturday. We got to be among the first people to ride the train, and Kent excitedly exclaimed "K... sit... down... TRAAAAAIIIIIN!" several times throughout the ride. After we left the park, we popped over to the Hard Rock Cafe for me to buy another couple of guitar pins for my collection, and then we headed to brunch. I was starving by then.

We were eating at Dry Creek Cafe, a restaurant we found by accident when we were driving around, lost, on our trip in 2007. It's in a sort of bohemian section of town and is a very kid-friendly and vegetarian-friendly restaurant, lots of dark wood and vintage furniture, young waitstaff in jeans and black t-shirts with interesting piercings and dyed hair, open doors with a couple of patios, and good coffee that multiple people attempt to refill for you throughout your meal. It would be a great place to go sip a beer with friends on a warm spring evening, too. Baton Rouge has some restaurants in this category, and they're some of our favorite places to eat, so we had a good time and an excellent meal.

It was finally time for the pièce de résistance, our IKEA run. Kent fell asleep about two minutes before we pulled in, so I gingerly removed him from his carseat and told him he could go back to sleep in his stroller, which he did. He *never* sleeps in his stroller, so I knew he must be pretty wiped from his sleepless night. He napped while Jack and I walked around and stuffed a few things into our yellow bag, but I think this goes on record as our shortest trip inside IKEA, ever. We were there for maybe half an hour of shopping, not counting the time it took us to take Kent to the potty afterward and then get the huge boxes into our car and pack everything else in around them. It was a magical moment when we realized everything was going to fit. Jack doesn't call me a Spatial Engineer for nothing.

The trip home seemed to take forever, even though it was the same four and a half hours of driving it had been to get there. We got home safely, got Kent to bed, pulled out our bookcase boxes to begin to assemble our cool new piece of furniture, and realized that instead of the 54 small dowels we were supposed to have, we had 53 and 1/2. For some reason, one of them was half the length of all the others. I went on their website and was able to order another one pretty easily, but it could still take a week or two to get here. Sigh. If we lived near a store, we could just go pick one up, but as it is, we have to wait for them to mail it. All of the pieces are sitting on our guest room floor right now, but we'll have it up soon enough and can start geeking out about aesthetically-pleasing home organization. I've been so inspired by all the photos people post online of what they do with their Expedits. Just searching for Expedit on Flickr yields some amazing results.

Houston is great. Really. I highly recommend it. Actually, I also highly recommend exploring a city within driving distance of you, just to get out there for a quick road trip. Even with a baby or a toddler, it can be a lot of fun.

Labels: eating out, Freude, IKEA, Kent, music, photography, travel

• posted by erica 4/27/2009 09:44:00 AM
•  5 comments

composed on the road from Louisiana to Georgia, North Carolina and West Virginia, then back again, this past week

There's a rhythm to the road. I feel it in my bones when I drive familiar routes. The placement of landmarks, state lines, familiar restaurants, towns I know the names of but which I've never visited... all have a pace to them, a predictability and a lulling quality.

From Baton Rouge, it's 40 miles on I-12 to Hammond, where I used to teach. 83 miles total on I-12, then back onto I-10 just before leaving Louisiana. I sometimes turn around as we’re leaving Louisiana to see the "Bienvenue en Louisiane" sign, where we once drove with Jeannette and Chris (up from New Orleans) just so they could take our picture in front of it. Then there's the long bridge to Mississippi and the John Stennis Space Center with the model of the lunar module that we've stood under. About 80 miles of Mississippi, with Gulfport and Biloxi and their massive advertising campaigns along the interstate. The Tchoutacabouffa River bridge, where Jack and I always exclaim, "Tchoutacabouffa!" just to say it out loud. (When I was driving last Tuesday on my own, I texted Jack simply with "Tchoutacabouffa" so he’d know where I was and feel like he was part of the trip. He texted back "w00t.")

The first 26 miles of Alabama lead us Mobile, where we get on I-65 and then look for Panera at the Airport Road exit. 179 miles on I-65 up to Montgomery, passing small towns with names like Flomaton, Perdido, Owassa, Pintlala, and my favorite sign for Grace & Garland at exit 107. Nothing much else appears on this stretch of Alabama highway: a few overpriced gas stations and country restaurants, but we try to fill up on fuel and food before we hit I-65 because we know that the exits are few and far between and that those restaurants aren't going to have anything Jack can eat. Montgomery brings I-85 and another opportunity for Panera, in case we missed the first one or feel like eating there twice in one day.

After Montgomery, we drive through Opelika, which is another word we both love to say out loud, hence another text to Jack. Near Opelika is a sign for Jim Bob's Chicken Fingers. Jim Bob has thoughtfully placed an ichthus fish right in the middle of his sign after his name, so I always read it jokingly as "Jim Bob's Christian Chicken Fingers." After Opelika, it's on to Auburn country, and then the Georgia state line. I change the clock in the car to EST, and I know we're on the last leg of the trip.

***

Day 2 begins in Georgia, as we drive through Winder (which I used to think was pronounced like someone saying "window" with a country accent, instead of like something/someone who winds) and then Augusta. South Carolina emerges, and I get a rush of adrenaline at seeing the word "Carolina," knowing I'm nearly home. 109 miles of I-85 in South Carolina take us through Clemson (memories of my mom going to AP readings each June, even though I never went with her), Greenville (memories of visiting Lauren at Furman), Gaffney (stopping for peaches and seeing the giant peach by the interstate), Cowpens (memories of a trip to the battlefield in college, when I had a crush on the professor who was driving us there), Earl (thinking of Lauren again), and the Flying J travel plazas with their ridiculously cheap gas. On this particular trip, Georgia and South Carolina have a fascinating feature: snow on the ground, residual from the snowstorm of a few days before. In March. Kent and I stop at a rest area near Clemson to play in the snow for a few minutes, where I give him his first lesson on throwing a snowball.

As we inch closer to North Carolina, I know it's near because I start seeing more Bojangle's restaurants than McDonald's. I have to stop for iced tea.

North Carolina greets me. I sigh happily. We near Charlotte, where I spent four wonderful years at Queens. Then, the decision: I-77, or I-85? When we're going to Winston-Salem, it doesn't much matter which route we choose, because they're about the same length. This time, though, I'm going to Raleigh, which I hardly ever get to do, so it's I-85 for a few more hours. Leaving Charlotte and approaching Concord Mills, I see IKEA, a new addition since my last trip on this road. IKEA in North Carolina. What will they think of next? IKEA in Louisiana, perhaps?

***

The drive from Winston-Salem to West Virginia is an old friend. My mom and I made that drive dozens of times when I was younger. We pass Pilot Mountain and Mt. Airy, and then once on I-77, we enter Virginia. On this stretch of road, I note that Virginia has a new welcome sign, and I remember the time I was 15 and driving here with my learner's permit. My mom was beside me and Tucker was in the backseat, and Virginia came upon me so suddenly that I hadn't realized I was out of North Carolina and was — shock — driving illegally. I veered across two lanes of traffic and almost ran into a VW bus to get to the Virginia Welcome Center so that I wouldn't be driving without a license in the wrong state. I did some of my worst driving while endeavoring to be a good driver.

Virginia, ironically, always felt like it was just in the way when I was a kid. It stretches on for all of an hour, but I'm always just itching to get to West Virginia. Now, I know Virginia more intimately thanks to Jack, but it was simply a thoroughfare to me when I was younger. Ft. Chiswell is a necessary stop for cheap gas, and I know that I have to memorize the price we paid, because my grandmother will always ask and then roll her eyes at how much cheaper it is than whatever they're paying in Charleston.

Two tunnels mark our time in Virginia, the ones through Big Walker Mountain and East River Mountain. In the years before iPods and car CD players, we always lost our radio signal in the tunnels, listening to a minute or so of static and contemplating the peaceful, dark silence before we popped out the other end and the sun and auditory civilization found us again. I've often held my breath for fun all the way through the tunnels, including at least twice while I was driving. There used to be a third tunnel in West Virginia, but they rerouted the interstate around it sometime ago, changing the pace of the trip to me. It was always three tunnels, three toll booths. Now, they're lopsided, like Tchaikovsky's 5/4 "waltz" in his Sixth Symphony. The second tunnel, through East River Mountain, starts in Virginia and ends in West Virginia, so I'm greeted by a welcome sign and I get one of those adrenaline rushes again. West Virginia is a known quantity, a comfortable place to breathe and just be.

Once we're in West Virginia, it's exactly 100 miles to Charleston. I see the familiar sign for Bland, Bluefield, and Beckley that always amused Mom and me when I was a kid. Alliteration was my kind of fun. So was playing the alphabet game, and singing new songs and old favorites. As we wind through the mountains and look down on all the towns we pass, I remember the songs my mom taught me on those trips. "Fifty Nifty United States" and "West Virginia Hills" are the two I remember best. We were total dweebs. I'm pretty sure we still are.

Back then, in the days before I lived thousands of miles away from family, three and a half hours actually seemed like a long time in the car. I usually lay down in the backseat and attempted to sleep for part of the trip, until my mom started to get drowsy and either turned the radio back on or woke me up and told me that I needed to talk to her to keep her awake. The only time I ever saw her drink coffee was on those trips. I've gradually built up my driving stamina over the past few years, culminating in Mobile > Blacksburg in one very long day last fall with Kent, so I chuckle a bit when I think about how the trip to Charleston always seemed like such a long drive that I just couldn't possibly stay awake.

The travel plazas now have Starbucks. Seeing Starbucks in West Virginia still shocks me, but not enough to prevent me from stopping and getting my grande mocha.

Tamarack tries to seduce me with its siren song of Fine Crafts, but I feel like I'm in too much of a hurry to linger over baskets, pottery, handmade toys, and glassworks. This, I think, is what's wrong with long road trips where everything is planned to the hour. No time for Tamarack. Must remember this for the next trip.

***

Coming home, marking the time in reverse order, is always a little strange. Since we're mostly heading south and west on the way home, the exits are counting down instead of up and seem to be propelling us toward home. I reflect on our journey and am happy for the trip, but I feel antsy about the fact that it takes so long to get home now that the trip is over. "Bienvenue en Louisiane" is our first welcome home, but then the 83 miles of I-12, which is so pleasant and sunny on the beginning of a trip, feels like an eternity. It's all that stands between us and our cats, our home, our bed.

If you count the fact that we came from Baton Rouge, we've stayed in four state capitals on this trip. We've driven the entire length of I-12 (it's just that stretch in Louisiana, oddly enough) and driven to one end of I-74, I-65, and I-85. Other roads, like I-40, feel entirely full of promise, like if we just stayed on them, we could let them carry us all the way across this enormous country. It makes me think about Bilbo's line in Fellowship of the Ring: "It's a dangerous business, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to." I never thought I had much wanderlust when I was younger, but now I realize that the adventures I may never have are rather intoxicating to consider.

Labels: Freude, IKEA, observations, travel

• posted by erica 3/14/2009 09:33:00 PM
•  3 comments

After assembling Kent's new IKEA chairs (from Grandpa and Grandma, for Christmas morning) during his morning nap, Jack and I test their stability by eating our cereal while sitting in them. Safety. That's what it's about, people. Also, fun blue chairs are hard to resist.

There's a red table as well, but I think we're going to wait until Christmas Eve to put that together, since we'd have more trouble hiding it than the chairs. It was hard enough to find a place to hide the giant box containing his as-yet-unassembled play kitchen.

Labels: husband things, IKEA, photography

• posted by erica 12/21/2008 10:41:00 PM
•  3 comments

Wow, what a trip. I had thought that staying in a hotel with Kent all day might be hard, because it wouldn't be easy to figure out things to do in an area I wasn't familiar with. Ha. We managed to stay quite busy and had an excellent week in and around Atlanta while Jack was in his seminar. Jack also had an excellent week and is now prepared to demolish the exam in May. Yay, Batten.

Monday

This day was spent getting our bearings, visiting a nearby mall, and then welcoming Jack's parents to town. They decided to drive down for a few days, since we're closer to them here than when we're at home. We had Indian food for dinner and a few laughs with Kent, the stuffed monkey they brought him, and the video camera before they left for the evening to go to their hotel. We put Kent to bed, and then Jack did some more math before falling asleep (a trend that continued throughout the week).

Tuesday

The new Georgia Aquarium rocks! Kent's favorites included the African penguins and the angelfish. I'm sure he would have loved the gigantic ocean they've put together, part of which we actually walked under in a tunnel, but he slept through that portion of the tour in my arms. I personally loved the belugas; they have three in an enormous tank and a guide nearby talking about them on a microphone and answering people's questions all day, and later they actually had two staffers in scuba gear inside the tank cleaning the glass. One beluga kept trying to eat one of the diver's flippers, and though the guide assured us that they weren't in danger, I couldn't help imagining what would happen if the beluga decided to body-slam the guy into the glass. For some reason, I was hoping for mayhem.

Ron, Ann, and I were totally impressed by the cafeteria, which included the basic burgers, fries, chicken fingers, etc., but also had a bunch of healthy sandwiches and vegetarian items. Too bad none of our vegetarian relatives were actually with us to enjoy it. I wish I had gotten pictures at the aquarium, but my arms were busy most of the time, and Ron is a better photographer, anyway, so I'll be hitting him up for the shots he took.

We came back to the hotel and grilled veggie burgers outside, since the hotel has two gas grills by the pool and some tables nearby. We also had corn on the cob, cantaloupe, and carrot cake (oy with the C foods already), plus free beer and wine from our hotel's evening reception. This place was so much nicer than any hotel we've ever stayed in!

Wednesday

Kent and I went with Jack's parents to IKEA this morning, finding some great presents for Kent (including these finger puppets and this truck), among other nifty items. IKEA is such fun, and I'm so glad that they understand the kind of toys we like. Ron and Ann left around lunchtime, and since it was such a gorgeous day outside (in the midst of several rainy, grey days), Kent and I splashed around in the pool for a little while in the afternoon. He thought it was hilarious when I splashed him, and I thought it was hilarious that he was laughing so hard, so there were many giggles all around. I was holding him on my hip in the pool, and he was so engaged that he seemed like a little boy... then later, he insisted on nursing while we sat in a chair by the pool, and he turned back into my baby again, all nursy and sunny and sleepy. I drank in the color of his hair in the sun and the way he looked, so content, bundled up in the big white towel.

Tonight's dinner was tortellini in our hotel room, thanks to our great little kitchen. It was so nice to be on vacation and still be able to cook.

Thursday

Thursday's theme was this: we would love to live here.

The highlight of Thursday was finding a terrific new/used bookstore a few miles north of here called Humpus Bumpus (which I blogged about earlier). Their kids' room is huge, with a big play area in the middle, and after I had found some neat books in the new section, I went over to the used section and found two of them in great shape, plus another neat book, all for less than $10. We're currently enjoying Ten Little Ladybugs and will be enjoying Tumble Bumble and Eating the Alphabet after his birthday in July.

Jack and I splurged by having dinner out at 5 Seasons, an organic restaurant and microbrewery that rocked our world. I had a stout and Jack had a pale ale, and both were wonderfully rich and delicious. In addition to a lot of unique menu items and several vegetarian things, they had beer-battered onion rings, and it's hard for me to say no to anything that's beer-battered. If we lived near here, this is the kind of place we'd want to visit all the time. We added to the culinary excitement of the evening by going to Trader Joe's afterward and picking up some packaged things, interesting sauces, and good chocolate to take home with us. If only we had a Trader Joe's... sigh.

Today's other development, something Jack is still getting choked up about, is that I gave Kent his first haircut. I didn't cut much — just the long ringlets on either side of his face, because, frankly, I was getting tired of people mistaking him for a girl (our waiter at 5 Seasons was the last straw). The ringlets were kind of Shirley-Temple-esque. He still has all his luscious curls on top, but all the hair on the sides and back of his head is short now, more boyish. I loved it immediately, though it does make him look different than he did. Jack has proven to be more sentimental, deciding that we ought to keep the locks I chopped off. He almost cried, too. What a sweet dad.

Friday

After visiting the other used bookstore in the area, which was a total letdown, Kent and I visited a fabric store, since I had been itching to find some bright fabrics to make a crayon holder for him. He doesn't have crayons yet, and if he did, he'd only put them in his mouth, but he'll be using them before long. I've loved crayon holders I've seen in various places; they're like roll-up holders for knitting needles, only smaller, with separate compartments for each crayon. One of my favorite craft things is just stacking different fabrics together to see how the colors and patterns play off each other, and these three have some sort of special chemistry that I just love.


I also bought some flannels that were on sale for another project, to be disclosed at a later date.

This was a great eating day for Kent; he had three separate eatings of solid food, which I think must have contributed to the fact that he slept better Friday night than he had all week. Prunes and a sweet potato/corn blend have been the new additions this week (both store-bought, since it would have been too much trouble to transport my homemade stuff), and he's loved both. I think he likes the runny consistency as well, since it's not as much work for him to move the purees around in his mouth.

Friday's other highlight was Kent's learning to climb stairs at the hotel. I put my cell phone a few steps above him, because parental technology like phones and remote controls are the best motivators, and I showed him how to bend his legs and bring them up to the next step. He had the idea of it after a few steps, and then we practiced later in the day. When Jack got back from the seminar that evening, I had some freshly popped popcorn waiting for him to enjoy while he watched his son do a new trick. Kent's a total pro at stair climbing now, but I'm not quite sure when he'll be able to go back down, since he's not interested in sliding down on his butt or climbing down backward. These things can wait.

Saturday

Saturday was kind of like the other days: grey and rainy. Kent took some good naps and had some good food, we drove around a little to chill out, and then we all went to dinner at a nearby Italian place after Jack was done at his seminar. Nothing much to report for Saturday.

Sunday

Jack had a half-day for the last day of his seminar, so Kent and I dropped him off at 8, spent a little time getting the room packed up for our departure the next day, bought a cheap styrofoam cooler to take home all our unused groceries, and took a good morning nap (well, Kent took a nap while I caught up on email and blogs and worked on this post).

After Jack was finished at the seminar and had said all of his farewells, we grabbed some burritos and chips at Moe's and headed to Turner Field for Kent's first baseball game ever. We took MARTA, and it was a little more cumbersome than we thought it would be (we had just missed a train so had to wait 20 minutes for the next one), so we made it to the ballpark in the middle of the 5th inning. Apparently the pitching had been really good, because those first few innings before we got there went by really fast. Anyway, we were sitting at the tippy-top of the stadium, two rows down from the very top, and we decided to just sit up in the top row, since there was no one there anyway, so that we could do our thing with Kent and have plenty of space to stow the stroller, food, etc.

The game was very fun, and Kent slept through a good portion of it in our arms.

Monday

We got up around 5:30, packed up, had a quick breakfast in the lobby, and then hit the road. Despite the Atlanta Monday-morning traffic, we did actually manage to make it out of town, and we made fairly good time after that. We took a quick side trip down to the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Biloxi to feed my pin addiction, where Kent enjoyed a lemon, as you see.

We spent some too-brief moments at their neat swimming pool, then geared ourselves up for the final push and drove the last two hours home. Exhausted, we put Kent to bed, then ate our dinner, caught up on a little TV we had missed the previous week, and went to bed ourselves.

The most fun thing about coming home (she said, ironically) was that our A/C wasn't working, but after we left it off all night and turned it on again this morning, it was going as strong as ever. This has now happened three times in the last couple of years; we call a technician to come out the next day, and before he has a chance to come, it starts working again. Good enough.

And my final note is this: what a difference a week makes. First of all, I was giving him baby food on my lap all week because we didn't want to bring the highchair, and he seems to have made his peace with eating solids. He's now up to 3 tiny meals a day of fruits, veggies, yogurt, and/or puffs, and it's so much easier to feed him now, I can hardly believe it. He's pulling up on things easily and has even started cruising on some furniture, and he pulled himself up in his crib a little too easily yesterday, so Jack lowered it last night. Also, he can crawl with more skill and gusto than ever before, so he's darting around the house exploring things and trying to grab everything he can. I told Jack this morning that I think Kent is going to teach us how to finish babyproofing the house, and Jack responded that Kent was saving us hundreds of dollars since we wouldn't have to hire a consultant. Not that we would have. But people do. They should hire a 9-month-old instead.

The cats are now in more peril than ever before. He just wants to love them, and he's very fast now.

So that was our trip and the immediate aftermath. Thanks for tuning in and making it all the way to the end.

Labels: baseball, craftiness, eating out, IKEA, Kent, photography, travel, what to read

• posted by erica 4/09/2008 09:40:00 PM
•  4 comments

Vacations with my husband are wonderful. Things just work, even when we're tired or get lost or don't know exactly what we're doing, because we enjoy being around each other so much.

We got to Houston late Thursday night, and basically all that we did was to check into our hotel and fall into bed. On Friday morning, we decided to go to IKEA for breakfast and ended up completing our shopping in only about 3 hours. IKEA is a big place with much fun stuff to look at, and we weren't even looking at everything, though their kid section is SO cool that I'd love to go back for other stuff as Kent gets older. Their wooden toys and kid bed linens are so nifty (Jack fell in love with a striped elephant pillow), but those things are still a few years away.

We got a cool storage unit (pictured here) with interchangeable bins of different sizes and colors, and this is the arrangement we opted for. I'm thinking of spatter painting it with different blues and greens to make it more fun-looking, but we'll see how ambitious I get. We racked up on a bunch of other things as well (with links included, where applicable): several packs of kid hangers, a great laundry drying rack that has already been used for the inaugural washing/drying of Kent's clothes, an adorable stuffed elephant toy, a hand towel holder and matching toilet paper holder, a few kid-sized stainless steel bowls that we're planning to try out and possibly get more of if they work for feeding (since I'd like to avoid plastic as much as possible), some oversized rubber ice cube trays for freezing batches of homemade baby food, a freezer mold for popsicles (so I can make juice pops!), some cute blue picture frames, a suction-cup shower caddy suitable for baby shampoo and such, a red hanging closet organizer, some Black Currant sparkling juice stuff (they were out of the yummy Lingonberry flavor), and some cookies for Jennifer for watching the cats. We typically exchange desserts for pet-sitting services, and it seems to work quite well. =)

For lunch, we found The Pepper Tree, the vegetarian Asian restaurant I had talked about visiting, and it was great! Chinese food normally makes me feel bloated and the "bad" kind of full, but we ate really well at this place, even though they did have several different veggies and things that were dipped in panko bread crumbs and then fried. Fried things don't always have to taste heavy, and these didn't. They also had a bunch of tofu dishes (curry, spicy Thai, some with steamed veggies, etc.), salads, spring rolls, noodle dishes, string beans, and several desserts. I loved the fact that Jack got to eat anything he wanted instead of having me try stuff out for him and then picking around the buffet. Yum.

After shopping and lunch, we were wiped out and had happy, full bellies, so we drove back to the hotel (and got a little lost on the way) for a nap. We napped for about an hour and then got ready for the Astros game, since we wanted to get there early and scope out parking and food options. The Astros lost, so the people around us were sad (except for the few boisterous Cardinals fans in their jerseys), but a few of Jack's fantasy baseball players had good nights, so he was excited to see them in action. Plus, baseball games are really fun in general. It was pretty late by the time we got out of there, but it was fine. Fun times.

On Saturday, we awoke to 40-degree temperatures and a nasty, grey sky that was threatening rain. Yuckola. We hadn't brought anything long-sleeved with us at all, so our fluid plans for "walking around downtown Houston" suddenly seemed really dumb. When we were lost on the way back from lunch on Friday, I had seen what looked like a cool coffee shop, so we found our way back to it in hopes that they'd have something yummy for breakfast, or at least some good coffee. It turned out to be this really delicious indie restaurant (called The Dry Creek Cafe) with lots of vegetarian and other eclectic food options, good coffee, and a witty, outgoing waitress, so we had a fabulous breakfast experience despite the weather.

We went back to the hotel to check out, and by that point we had pretty much decided that leaving town earlier than we had planned was fine with both of us; it was raining by this point, and we didn't have any concrete plans, anyway. We swung by the HRC to feed my pin addiction (and paid 50 cents for 6 FREAKING MINUTES' worth of parking on the street), and then we decided it was time to head home. The weather was pretty yucky the whole way back, but I had a little nap for part of the time, we stopped at a random Mexican restaurant for lunch that turned out to be quite yummy and fresh, and we listened to a baseball game on Jack's new XM radio that his parents got him for his birthday. We had just activated the radio on Thursday, so this trip was spent getting to know XM and finding several cool stations, such as 102, "Sur la Route," the French pop music station, which is so fun! XM never seemed like a necessity to me, but because of their baseball offerings, it was a great present for Jack, and it's neat to explore all of the options that aren't available on the airwaves in a city like Baton Rouge.

This was our last non-baby vacation, and it was nice. Vacations with kid(s) will be nice, but in a different way, so I'm glad we had this one to share.

Labels: baseball, eating out, IKEA, Kent, nesting, travel

• posted by erica 4/08/2007 05:29:00 PM
•  1 comments

Well, I apologize for not chroncling our voyage sooner, but I had started to write a long post and then grew tired of the narrative technique I had chosen. I thought it was clever at first--sort of Lord of the Ringsy--but then I decided it was just dumb. So here's the story, simplified and without specialized narration, because I wanted to post the pictures and tell the story, but I couldn't make myself finish it the way I had started it at first. Sorry if it's more boring this way. =) And my apologies go out to those of you with dialup who probably had trouble loading this page. I just had too many good pictures not to include them!

Jack and I had been to the public library to look for a book on CD before we left, and we got Chocolat by Joanne Harris (like the Juliette Binoche/Johnny Depp film) and a Dave Barry book that we never really got into. Chocolat was fantastic, though, and now we want to see the movie to see whether they messed it up or not. Listening to the book made the time in the car pass much quicker, and we didn't finish it until we were driving from Raleigh to Charlotte on the return part of the trip.

Another thing that helped us pass the time was taking note of the license plates we passed on the road. Here's our completed map: 44 states and 2 Canadian territories, but no Washington (state or D.C.), Wyoming, Alaska, Hawaii, Vermont, or Rhode Island. I could have sworn that I spotted a Rhode Island license plate just before we got to Winston-Salem, but we had found our exit and Jack didn't want to risk our lives by flooring it to catch up with the car. So maybe we saw it, but I can't confirm it.

Our first stop, besides the Panera in Birmingham (for lunch) and various gas stations and travel plazas, was Jack's parents' house in the Virginia mountains (near Blacksburg). We got there late Friday evening, and on Saturday, they took us to a street festival in Blacksburg, where a bunch of local artisans were displaying their crafts. For lunch, Jack and I made our very first trip to a hookah bar; one of Ron's co-workers had taken him there, and he loved it and now goes there fairly frequently for yummy Mediterranean food and a nice atmosphere. We didn't smoke any hookah, but they had a list of about 30 different varieties on the wall. Apparently, it's a pretty hopping place at night, but it was just like a regular local restaurant when we were there. I had the best panini of my life there (it had mozzarella, fresh spinach, tomatoes, cucumber, yellow peppers, and onions). Before we went back to their house, they took me to my first LYS (Local Yarn Store, for all you non-knitters), and I found some fabulous celery-colored cotton yarn (suitable for the mild climate here), which I plan to knit into my first sweater as soon as I'm done with Ellis's quilt.

The next day, we got together with some of Jack's high-school friends for bowling and a cookout. Bowling was an embarrassment for me; basically, I hit my peak as a bowler at the age of 10, and it's been downhill ever since. I get especially nervous around others, because they have all these expectations that I'm going to blow them out of the water since I have my own ball, and it's all a mind game for me, anyway. The cookout was way fun, and Jack got to catch up with his buds and hear some stories about people he hasn't heard much from since he graduated.

Being around the other cats made us feel a little better about leaving ours at home. You wouldn't know it to look at this picture, but Cog, Jack's former cat, actually played with me for about fifteen minutes, marking the first time she's said more than two words to me (figuratively, of course). In fact, all three of their cats were extremely friendly to me, which means one of two things: (1) They've finally accepted me, or (2) They're up to something. I tend to believe the former, though I'm cautious in my optimism. =) Cats are tricksy.

On Tuesday, before we drove down to Winston-Salem, we ate a huge and filling breakfast with Ron and Ann at Gillie's, a vegetarian restaurant that Jack has always liked. Once we got to Winston-Salem, we visited with Granny for a little while, and then we headed to my aunt Irene's house so that I could raid her fabric scrap collection. I now have an enormous box of fabrics for future quilts and other projects, and there are a few I'm particularly excited to use! I loved being able to get my hands on fabrics that I've seen in other projects my grandmother has done, like other quilts she made for family members, and a particularly loud and ridiculous print that she used to make me some shorts back in the 80s. I'm saying it's ridiculous that I wore them, not that she made them. She was trying to make me happy. The 80s were strange. Granny also taught me how to make a pillow cover with a zipper, so I've made one of our four throw pillows and will get to the others after Ellis's quilt is finished. Do you sense a recurring theme yet?

On Thursday, we had a nice afternoon and evening with my friends from home. Tucker wore a t-shirt that cracked me up, though you can't really see it in the picture; it says "This is my party shirt."
We swam and grilled out at Nicole's parents' house-- you can see Jack enjoying his chance to relax in the sun after a whole summer of being cooped up in his office (except when he mows the lawn, which I gather isn't nearly as fun as swimming).

The party then moved to Nicole's apartment, where we played games and listened to music and generally became unruly and uncouth. Pictured here are Alice and Nicole, doing their best to look unruly. Anyway, we had much fun playing Trivial Pursuit (90s Edition), which the Nicole-Erica-Jack team won with little competition from the other side. Hehehe. We also played a new game of Nicole's called Loaded Questions, which is really good for a group of people who know each other well. In each round, one person asks a question from one of the game cards, everyone writes down a response, and then the person who asked the question has to figure out which person said which thing, and s/he gets to move forward one space for every correct match. Then there are some times when everyone has to guess what answer the question-asker would write down instead, and everyone who gets it right gets to move forward on the board. The one that was easiest for everyone was when Jack asked the question, "Which part of the newspaper do I read first?" and everyone except Katie, Tucker's friend (who was getting to know Jack for the first time), knew that it was the sports section. I think I came in last place overall, but the funness of the game made it okay. It didn't really feel like a competition-- just an excuse to ask each other questions and get silly.

On Friday, we left Winston-Salem and drove to Raleigh to spend the night with Joanna (my sister) and her family. We had met Nicholas in May, but we got to see him in his element, and he's a little older now, so he's doing stuff! He was laughing and smiling and wiggling a lot more, and we brought him some cute clothes (onesies from The Gap and a hat I knitted for him).
Of course, in this picture, he's sleeping, but he's a baby. He's allowed to get in some good sleeping time. He's growing fairly rapidly, so I hope the stuff fits him for a little while, at least! We also got to visit with more cats, since they have three, but only one of them (Grayson) was really sociable and insistent about being petted.

While we were there, we also watched the Lemony Snicket movie (A Series of Unfortunate Events). I've read all the books, and the movie covered the first three books. I had been sort of worried that the narration, which is my favorite part of the books because of the author's dry wit and great descriptions, wouldn't carry over into the film, but Jude Law played the narrator and did it really well. As the books progress, the narrator himself becomes more involved in the story (and the children age, meet new people involved in the plot, etc.), so I'll be interested to see what they do with the next movie(s). There are two books still to be written as well, making a total of 13, and they've been coming out at roughly the pace of one per year, so those, like the Harry Potter franchise, will soon be over as well. Anyway, the movie gets a thumbs-up from me. I was not disappointed.

The penultimate stop on our voyage was a lunch and quick visit with Annie Beth, a good friend from college who went to Nice with me, and her family. Their first-born, Ben, was catching up on his rest when we arrived, and so he missed the first portion of the photo chronicling. Annie Beth and Brad just adopted a little girl, Anna, who's pictured here with her parents.

We brought presents for both of the kids, which Ben was more than happy to open after he woke up from his nap. Annie Beth had told us beforehand that Ben loves opening presents, and he doesn't much care whether he gets to keep what's inside, as long as he gets to do the opening. Here's Ben tasting the plastic packaging that came with the stacking blocks we gave him. He liked the toys themselves, but he was also fairly fascinated with the packaging until we decided it was probably a bad idea for him to chew on sharp edges. =)

The last stop on our way home was Atlanta, where we stayed with Emily. When we got to Atlanta on Saturday evening, she whisked us away to Starbucks (her favorite hangout), and we played this really fun card game called Set that my mom learned from her AP friends and subsequently infected me with, so I turned around a few years later and got all my friends addicted to it. Jack and I don't actually have a set of Set cards, but we've decided that we must get some before Thanksgiving, because I can see us having a lot of fun playing with his family. It's a good game for people to wander in and out of if there's something else going on, because once you learn how to spot the sets, you can grab a couple and then walk away if you get bored or have to suddenly go cook something for the Thanksgiving meal, for instance. Anyway, it could be a fun addition to the traditional Mah Jong/wine tasting we do with Lisa and Joel's friends. =) We grabbed breakfast with Lisa and her mom on Sunday morning before we headed home, and we made tentative plans to visit Atlanta's new IKEA store at Thanksgiving. Apparently, the first time she went, she didn't think she'd need a cart, but she ended up filling one up before she left. We spent a rather tiny amount of time at the IKEA in Baltimore about a year ago, so it'd be fun to visit another one, since the closest one to here is in Houston.

Anyway, on Sunday evening, we finally got home! Driving had been really fun until we got most of the way through Mississippi, and then we started to go a little bit crazy. For the last hour and a half, we played the game where one person names someone famous, and then the other person has to name another famous person whose first initial is the same as the previous famous person's last initial (e.g., Grace Kelly --> Kiefer Sutherland --> Sal Mineo --> Marlee Matlin, etc.). I played a few times with my sorority sisters on various trips, but never for an hour and a half. After 30 minutes or so, we got to the point where I was naming fairly obscure movie stars Jack had never heard of and he was naming fairly obscure baseball players I'd never heard of. Fun times. When we jumped out of the car and flung open the door, we were very pleased to find that our cats had behaved well for Matt and Steph the whole time we were gone (or so they've led us to believe, anyway), and we ate some dinner and then crashed into bed. The next day, Jack went to work, and I set about packing for my trip to Lancaster, which I'll blog about later. This post has been way too long for me to continue it with the next chapter of my August visits!

Labels: eating out, family, felines, friends, IKEA, travel, Virginia, what to read, what to watch

• posted by erica 8/15/2005 08:34:00 PM
•  1 comments

I'm back into the blogosphere, which I'm sure has missed me greatly since my last post of almost a fortnight ago. The trip to Lancaster was fantastic (more on that in a minute), and now I've begun a new semester and my second (!) year as a graduate student. Each of my classes has met once, so I feel that I have an idea of how my semester will be, and I'm prepared for it to be grueling in a very academically satisfying way. Despite the pleasant butterflies at the start of each term, I also get a sinking feeling every once in a while when I consider all the work that lies ahead of me, but then I remember all the papers I've written before and hours I've spent in the library (not to mention the hundreds of dollars I've spent on photocopies), and it's all okay again. I plug on through. I keep reading. I try my best to expand my mind and my sense of intellectual curiosity, which is alive and well in my head but not always made manifest in the work I hand in or the research I pursue on my own. That is the deficiency I intend to work the hardest on this year. I have to define my masters thesis by the start of next semester, when I'll be taking only one class and devoting the rest of my time to the thesis. At this point, I have a very vague idea about 19th-century Russian music (Glinka? Rimsky-Korsakov? Balakirev?). Vague indeed.

The Lancaster trip was a whirlwind visit with a very high percentage of the people I love, and I can't imagine having spent the week much better than I did. My gorgeous, kind, and brilliantly talented friend Katherine, who drove way too much this past week, picked me up at BWI on Saturday morning, and we went to her boyfriend's family's house for HayFest, an annual gathering of his friends from high school. I adore her boyfriend, and his family is a ton of fun (his younger sister is aptly named Erica as well), but I have to say that I wasn't too pleased with some of his friends. Several of them seem a bit dysfunctional (there were a few exceptions, of course). For this reason, Erica, Katherine, and I stayed inside for a good bit of the day watching the Olympics, including one of my new favorite events, synchronized diving. We picked up Nicole, Tucker, and Becca from BWI that night, then we went back to HayFest for a little while, and then after suitable fun had been had, Katherine drove me home to Lancaster. I got home at 2 a.m., so I had to wait until the next morning to visit with my family. My mom's parents, who live in Charleston, WV, came Saturday through Tuesday, and my first cousin once-removed (my great-grandmother's step-grandson, or my grandmother's step-nephew), his wife, and their sister-in-law (confused yet??) came to stay in Lancaster during the same time period to visit with my grandparents and us. I hadn't seen them in ten years, so it was really nice. We had a yummy dinner on Sunday (including a visit from my step-sister Morgan and her fab boyfriend Brian). We putzed around Lancaster County a bit on Monday, and then my aforementioned friends from home, plus Lauren who lives in State College and her fun boyfriend Steve, came to Lancaster for a cook-out (the cooking took place on the grill outside, but the back "yard" is in a state of flux right now so an outdoor party was unfeasible). The next day was devoted to Hershey, though Mom and I failed to meet up with the out-of-town relatives. They had wanted to tour Chocolate World, and since I had never been to the park, Mom and I decided it would be the perfect thing for the two of us to do that day, and so we tried to meet them for the tour before hitting the roller coasters. It didn't work. We got a late start partly because of our trek across Pennsylvania to find a AAA with discount tickets, and the park was so packed with crazy tourists that we never found them. They managed to find many other fun things to occupy themselves, though, and we had a blast at the park. One ride in particular made me happy: Storm Runner. Instead of getting the power to go through the twists, hills, and turns from an initial hill and drop, like most roller coasters do, this one starts from zero and accelerates to something like 72 mph in a matter of a couple of seconds. It's interesting to watch from the ground, and it took my breath away both times I rode it. What fun. Mom and I are big fans of cheap thrills like roller coasters, the weather was nice, and the day turned out to be quite pleasant indeed. Despite having missed Kathy, Dave, and Vera in Hershey, we saw them again on Wednesday morning before they left town. Soon after they left, our other guests arrived. I said later that it was like trading one part of the family for another. Katherine the Fair drove me to BWI to pick up Jack on Wednesday afternoon, and we went back to her place for a bit so Jack could meet Katherine's kitten, who's only a few weeks younger than Celia. We came back to Lancaster that afternoon, just in time to receive Jack's mom and my other grandmother (my dad's mom), who had driven up that day. My grandmother has felt tied to home for various reasons lately, so I was thrilled that (1) she was able to come to Lancaster to see me and my parents since I didn't think I'd get to see her until Christmas, and (2) that Jack's dad, sweetheart that he is, actually drove down from Virginia to Winston-Salem to pick her up and then took her to Charlottesville to meet up with Jack's mom. While Jack's mom and my grandmother were there, we went to Intercourse, PA (finally!!), the Quilt Museum in Lancaster, and various other Amish and not-so-Amish sites. I enjoyed the fellowship most of all, though. Jack and I left from Baltimore on Saturday evening, following lunch with Jack's sister and her husband, a visit to Morgan's apartment (she moved there in July), and a quick sprint with Morgan through the Ikea store to look at sofas. We had perused their website and looked at their tiny pictures, but it's hard to sit on sofas online, and the nearest store to here is in Houston, some four hours away. We found one that could work, depending on what upholstery is available, but we won't be deciding until we have money to buy a sofa. [You guessed it. Months away.]

I am grateful to have spent time with as many people as I saw last week. Thanks to all those who made it possible. You know who you are.

We got home late Saturday night, much to the pleasure of our cats (one of whom kept us up all night with her incessant mews and needy behavior), and we were so tired from traveling and Celia's night-time antics that we were church slackers. I slept in, and then I got my notebooks together and prepared myself for the start of the semester. Woohoo! I think that's enough for one post.

Labels: family, friends, IKEA, school, travel

• posted by erica 8/24/2004 05:00:00 PM
•  2 comments