03.20.2008 -- Climbing up the ABC

Yesterday, Lucy climbed up the ABC at the park without any help. I was standing 10 yards away. Before today, I have always been right beside her at the park.

I admit, I made some advance decisions that may have precipitated this event. I brought Zoe to the park an a leash. This, of course, meant that I had to keep track of Zoey--that I couldn't be on the big toy with Lucy. I also let Lucy bring a doll in a stroller. Who, you may ask will tend the baby? I explained to Lucy that I had to take care of her baby and Zoe and that I would be watching her the whole time. She accepted this pretty quickly and went into the fray alone.

A thought about parks: A friend and I arranged a lunch date recently at a park where our kids could play. I suggested one park and my friend explained that because it was such a busy park, we could go to a different one. I'm not sure why, but I much prefer busy parks over parks where there may be just a few kids around. I like the energy, I guess.

It took Lucy a while yesterday to move from watching people to actually playing herself. ...Made me think about how I sometimes hang back to observe. And then, of course, there's her daddy. I remember the first time I saw him at a house party in college. He was doing his best to either pass as a hat rack or blend into the wall.

So there I was, watching my two-and-a-half-year-old climbing up the ABC slide, and I was a little sad that she is growing up so fast. I was also very proud of her.

Once she started moving and not just watching, Lucy was running and sliding, shouting silly sounds and making friends. (Shouting silly sounds and making friends closely linked.) She would come back every once in a while to check on the baby that she brought with her in her little pink princess stroller (thanks, Aunt Rebecca!).

I forget how drawn kids are to dogs, even though Zoe and I are approached by dozens of kids any time I take her with us to the park. Yesterday was no exception. Zoe is such a good sport, very calm, wagging her tail, only putting her nose to a few faces. She was restless after a couple of hours on leash, though, so I let her off to do a few tricks for the kids. They think she is amazing when she jumps for sticks. They love to see her "steamroller". The steamroller is a trick where Zoe rolls over 3-4 times in succession. We had a little crowd gathered.

I was just trying to keep Zoe busy and engaged so she didn't get into trouble.

Lucy was sitting with the rest of the kids, having a good time. She and another little girl were holding hands and she was holding a cute little stuffed animal, a white puppy. Another little girl, somewhat older, caught my attention and asked me if she could give Lucy her stuffed puppy. She explained that Lucy "really liked it and wanted it and that she got rid of most of her stuffed animals and got the puppy at her friend's house just barely and that since she was getting rid of all of her stuffed animals anyway, she might as well let her have it."

I told her that that was very nice of her and that she didn't have to...but that if she wanted Lucy to have it, she could give it to her.

The little girl then got a slightly pained look on her face and explained that she wanted to give it to Lucy. I'm betting that that little girl has been very attached to stuffed animals and is trying to let them go.

This is how Lucy gained another stuffed animal. It's cute. Very soft and fuzzy.

I have mixed feelings about this.

On one hand, I want to encourage any child to share, especially if they want to. On the other hand, I worry that Lucy will feel entitled to other people's things.

How much longer will she listen to me? How much more time do I have to teach her? Thinking about it, I guess that's the wrong idea. She might listen to me a lot or a little, but she will pay much more attention to the way I act. Sometimes I have to remind myself.

Last night at the table, Lucy and Brian were having cookies and milk. I may or may not be a little over-concerned about her junkfood intake. Anyhow, I expressed this to Brian briefly. He asked me if it was a problem that Lucy was having cookies. I asked him if HE thought it was a problem.

Lucy then asked me )with her head tilted to the side the way she does when she is inquiring), very seriously and with a high degree of expression, "Is that a problem, Mom? Is it?"

I didn't laugh, but I wanted to.
Brian couldn't help himself.

She's fantastic, if I do say so myself.

03.18.2008 -- Go Fish

I brought home some goldfish last night... See Lucy's reaction below.





I figured that if I got just plain goldfish, we could enjoy them for a while then add them to Grandma Judy's pond later. We owe her fish anyway, although she would never in a million years say that or feel that way, probably. You may wonder why I would say we owe her fish.

Zoe eats them.

She is fish hunter extraordinaire. This ends up being convenient because it occupies her 90% of the time when we go to visit (it it's warm enough). The downside is that she really does catch the goldfish once in a while. (Sorry, Grandma!)

03.16.2008 -- Home, home! Safe at Last!

The deck of the rental house looking down on Playa Negra. Some people call it the best surf break in Costa Rica.

We got home last night from a week away. It was unbelievably good to see Lucy and Zoe. Brian has been doing most of the putting away so far (Lucy wants to play with shells, wants to read books, etc.). We'll got things back to normal soon.

In the meantime, if I don't put something down now about the trip, it may never get done.

***

So... We were in Costa Rica last week. Our last day there, I spent time on the beach alone because I wanted to buy some jewelry for some people and needed to get some altered. I also wanted to avoid going into Tamarindo. (Tamarindo, to me, was a small town under construction--on it's way to high rises. You get traffic with muddy roads and sweltering heat.)

Anyway, while I was there, at Playa Avellanas, I met a local...and well, let's just say that we got a picture taken together on the beach.

When my husband saw it, he said, "Nice picture. Who is this Costa Rican pig, Val?"

I explained that it was me who approached this "pig" and that I just wanted a picture to remember the afternoon.


Below is the photo.

Me and Lola the pig

We were in the Guanacaste province...on a peninsula--the driest area in all of Costa Rica. Despite this, and despite it being the dry season, it rained twice while we were there. From what we were told, this NEVER happens. We liked it. I think that all in all, the weather was the best we could have hoped for, it was relatively cool a lot of the time we were there.



The whole point of this trip was to surf. All of us like to surf and all of us love the idea of really being able to surf (ie. dropping in, carving, etc.), but most of us are from Utah. That makes learning how to surf a little more difficult. There was no lack of enthusiasm, though. We decided that it would be a good idea to take a break and go inland to the Monteverde Cloud Forest to take "The Original" zip-line tour of the canopy. The best part of that outing for me was the drive. We got to see a lot more of Costa Rica. It's beautiful.




Here we are with our zip-line gear, posing on a ficus tree. Our guide told us that another name for the tree is the "strangulating" Fig tree. He explained that when seeds from the ficus fig fruit are deposited by relieved monkeys in the boughs of a tree, the seeds sprout and send down viney-looking runners to the forest floor. Eventually, the other tree dies and the hollow ficus is left. They are very cool trees. One nice thing about this zip line company is that all of the platforms and lines are attached to the trees by ropes. The trees are protected by padding and they don't drill any holes into the supporting trees. This only makes sense, as you would certainly want to preserve the integrity of any tree that is routinely holding 10 or more people...but it was still nice to see.

Speaking of fruit: yum. Fresh pineapple and mangoes! We also got some bananas and papayas, but the consensus was that no one really loved the taste of papaya alone. This led us to pose the question, "Is there anyone in the world whose favorite fruit is papaya?" Reason would point to yes, as an answer, but our group still had trouble really believing this. If anyone reading this knows anyone whose FAVORITE fruit is papaya, please contact me (valerie.tayler@gmail.com) in the name of science and curiosity.

Another thing we learned when we took this tour was the sound that a howler monkey (monocongo) makes. It's a very odd sound that you could compare to a deranged angry dog.

Monocongo at Playa Avellanas

Speaking of dogs: There were wild dogs all over in the area where we were. These were some chilled out dogs--and extremely well socialized. It made me a little frustrated with the situation with dogs here where we live. I think that most people expect all dogs to be on leash or contained in some way. This makes it so when a dog IS loose, people with this expectation may get afraid or even angry. What I wonder is why we don't have higher expectations for dog owners in not just containing dogs, but in socializing them as well. Of course, there will always be the risk of one losing it and harming someone.

Like so many lone gunmen who have gone on shooting sprees of late.

Back to Costa Rican dogs, though. They really are all over the place. On the beach hunting crabs, hanging out by soccer fields. I never met one of these dogs that I didn't like.

We had some good meals in Costa Rica. Some of the best food, we found at a little three-table place in a nearby village which was about a ten minute walk away. The place was owned and run by a young American/South American couple, Miguel and Kimberly. Miguel had gone to culinary school and knew his stuff. Kimberly was very good at chatting with locals and tourists... She had some good stories to tell. There was a wild horse milling about by the restaurant and this reminded Kimberly how she and Miguel had been kept awake all night by three wild horses that ran around and around their house all night long. Apparently, they woke up to the leavings of these horses distributed liberally around the house.

One night (Thursday past, I think), our friends Rob, Sarah and Phil were walking back to the rental house after a really delicious meal by Miguel and Kimberly involving Tuna tartar, Marlin, Mahi Mahi and Passionfruit pie. While we were at the restaurant, under a pitched roof of corrugated metal, watching skateboarding movies from the seventies on a plasma t.v. attached to the wall, it rained. This is when we learned that it NEVER rains in March. It was raining hard, but by the time we had finished our really *choose-your-own- superlative* food, it had stopped. This is why Phil and Sarah and Rob could walk back.

Now picture this:

You are walking late at night on dirt roads in unfamiliar territory. Not only is this not your home town, it is not even your home country. You have seen all kinds of wild animals on the loose in the several days you have been here, and know that you are also walking past people's homes, although is is not light enough to see well whose homes they may be.

All of a sudden, you hear a mad dog. It is close. It is very, very angry.

You and your friends decide to arm yourselves. You pick up rocks and sticks. You have only the light of the moon to illuminate the uneven, rocky road and the crazy dog that is terrifyingly close. You can't see jack squat. .

..Well, actually you can see, a little.

A light far behind you is making it possible to see your shadow and the shadows of your friends. Crouched. Trembling. Two of you clutching rocks and one weilding a long, twiggy branch.

You evaluate the shadows and notice of a sudden that this is utterly,
overwhelmingly....

...funny.

You have just had your fear tolerance tested by a howler monkey.

If you didn't follow this monocongo link before, follow it now. It will put Phil, Sarah and Rob's story into perspective.

We heard this story from Phil after he came back to the house. (Rob and Sarah stayed in the room that the eight of us got at the Playa Negra Hotel. The house sleeps only six and we had a group of eight. The hotel is on the way to the house we rented. This left poor Phil to navigate the dark, monocongo infested night alone.)

We heard Phil before we saw him. When he got to the bottom of the long flight of stairs that leads into the house, he called out, "Home, home! Safe at last."

I just want to point out that "Home, home! Safe at last!" as a title comes from Phil and that, unlike Sarah, Phil or Rob, who got yelled at by the monocongo, I never felt like I was in any danger in Costa Rica.



It's interesting how drastically your perspective can change in only a week. When we first arrived at the Liberia airport, the terminals seemed (in a friend's words) almost "pathetic", they lacked proper walls, let in the dust and hot, muggy air and were so insubstantial as to lack proper gates to get passengers to the planes. By the time we left, they seemed logical, if not ingenious, to me--being open-air and cooled by gigantic fans...

The picture below was taken as we were waiting to board the flight home to L.A.

Brian loves to make silly faces when I point the camera at him. I took this picture and it instantly reminded me of Zoolander.

Blue Steel

03.01.2008 -- Thanks a Block!

A few days ago, this shelving unit arrived with a whole bunch of blocks. A present from Grandma and Grandpa Putnam! Lucy climbed right inside. And eventually sat still for a picture, although I needed the flash so it wasn't blurry (like the other photo I have posted).




We think they're great! Thanks, Mom and Dad!

03.01.2008 -- Alright, Mr. De Mille. I'm ready...

3.1.a.2008 New Wave for Numerically Challenged

Notice anything new about this post? I broke up my chain of titles. Previous to this, I thought it would look very nice to have each post in the same format. The problem with this is that I frequently come up with good titles for my posts that have no glory when they're just in the body of the post.

I also realized that I actually will go back and re-read some posts on other blogs, but only when I can identify them by their title. My mind just does not associate naturally with numbers, and it's hard to force friendship, you know--I have never remembered a post just by the date. Wait. Retraction! Dates like 2.14.2008 or 12.24.2007 would retain some significance in my numerically challenged, digitally deficient thought process.

Note: I thought I was being kind of original when I came up with "numerically challenged." To satisfy my curiosity, I did a Google search for that phrase. There were only about 329,000 hits.

3.1.2008

Insanely hard, but not insane.

I feel like I'm way behind in blogging.
I AM way behind in blogging.

I missed the post I intended to do about the blocks that Lucy's grandparents sent (thanks, Mom and Dad-they're great!)...

I missed a lot of other posts that I had half planned-out in my head, but after trying to enumerate them, I decided to let them become water under the bridge.

"Onward and upward." I think I got that one from my dad.
***

So, yes. In case you were wondering, there is now a great collection of blocks at our house--complete with a lovely shelf. Lucy really likes them. Her daddy made her a staircase and it is now a frequent request on her build list. I have decided, however, that I would let the stairs be daddy thing, not a mommy thing.

This morning started out great. I woke up with no alarm clock assistance to a fantastic view of pink clouds and sunshine. For some reason, waking up to pink clouds and sunshine makes me happy and predisposes me to feel energetic. I threw caution to the wind last night and didn't set the alarm at all, so there was the possibility that I could have slept through Corena's yoga class. I was happy to see that I had plenty of time to get to the class, and even happier to find that Brian was planning to go paddling instead of skiing. This was significant to me for only one reason -- departure time. Brian was home with Lucy while I went to yoga with Rachel. He even made it to the park with her!

Any fathers who may happen across this page, take note. Mommies love it when you take the kid(s) out. Ummn. That sounded like I was talking about taking the dog for a walk. Maybe it can be said better like this: It "warms my heart" when my husband takes the initiative to go do something special with Lucy. It's that whole good daddy thing...it's evolutionarily sound to have a strong response to that kind of good behavior. ;)

So, after a good yoga class in which I literally poured out 2+ pounds of sweat, I came home to an empty house, knowing that Brian and Lucy were out swinging in the day's daily allotment of sun. As I type this now, I look out the window and we are in the midst of a full blown snowstorm.

I love storms.


On the way home from yoga, Rachel and I had a conversation that went something like this:

Rachel: I want to get some new yoga clothes.

Me: Have you tried TJ Maxx or Ross?

Rachel: Yeah, that's where I got these. *Rachel gestures to her pants.* You can see how well they've held up.

Me: Hmm. *thoughtful pause* I would like to get pants that don't show my sweat so much.

Rachel: Why? I'm sure no one notices that you look like you wet your pants.

When I got home, I did a little looking online for new pants. I found these at Prana that are supposed to have "great moisture management." I have never bought any yoga pants that were this expensive before, so I'm a little hesitant to predict that it will ever happen... We'll see. I really like my long black cotton pants because they DO absorb sweat well. They're just faded. When I'm doing uttanasana (standing up and bending over), I find it convenient to wipe my face off on my pants. That doesn't work as well with some fabrics.

While I looked for a link for uttanasana, I just found a new link that may prove to be very fruitful: Lucy is having a sale on activewear!

The description of these pants say that they "wick moisture and dry quickly."

So many yoga pants, so little time.