not The Vermont Life

A Washington Halloween

The family was wandering through Target one day (Target! which doesn't exist in Vermont! so we haven't wandered through one in five or so years!) collecting household goods.  They had Halloween costumes, and we thought, what the heck, we'll dress up our children. We got a Buzz Lightyear costume for Scott, and a Woody costume for Dean.  How coordinated! And yet, for some reason, Scott never wanted to wear his costume.

On Halloween, Scott was beginning to feel slightly sick.  We were going on a themed walk through the forest and tried to dress him up. This is as good as it got:

Scott wouldn't smile or stand upright for a picture.  So we took off the costume and went on our nature walk like this:

From a distance, people couldn't tell what was going on, so he got lots of compliments.

Look out for scary ghosts!

They helped mark the path.  Scott gave them high-fives.

Along the way we met people handing out prizes.  We got a balloon!

Don't look now, but that might be some Washington flora growing on the ground.

Scott wanted to walk for a bit, and so Mike got creative with the balloon.

It's the headless Space Ranger!

We walked past a small waterfall.

The park was called Whatcom Falls Park, so I'll hazard a guess and say that was Whatcom Falls.

After our successful spooky walk, we waited a few minutes for a little carnival to begin.

That would be Scott sitting in Dad's lap, watching some dogs. 

Then the carnival opened up and Scott started raking in the prizes.

Overjoyed to get a new toothbrush and toothpaste! (What kind of place is this?!)

It's like Plinko, but with spiders!

Some kind of golf/frog game.

Finally a smile, because he won a skeleton cup.

At that point, Dean was through being a tagalong and he and I evacuated for the minivan.  Later that night Scott got to hand out some candy to trick-or-treaters, and that was his favorite part. The End.

Except for Kid B.  Since Scott wasn't dressing up, and I was wearing Dean, I didn't put his costume on, either.  Except his cowboy hat.  People saw partial Buzz Lightyear and the hat and immediately knew that I was wearing a baby Woody.  A few days later I put Dean in his costume.

"Howdy, pardner."

"Yay, I can stand up all by myself!"  Dean is even taking steps now, too, without assistance!  He claps his hands together like that, in preparation, then starts walking, up to five steps at a time. His entire life's goal has been to walk, so he'll be achieving that goal before he's ten months old.  I guess things will go downhill from there.

Oh yeah?

Pictures of generic hospital corridors don't resemble Washington? My fans are clamoring for unique settings?  You can't taunt me into posting scenery. You'll have to imagine. Speaking of imagining, here's Scott, imagining that he's playing a violent first-person shooter game in a video arcade.

There were two people playing a game called something like "Midway Madness," shooting up crazy clowns and carnival people. Scott couldn't look away, and even better, he could stand and watch and hold a gun.

It was an extra-rainy day, and we went to the arcade for some skeeball, which Scott usually loves.  As you can see, he can't be bothered to look where he's throwing the ball, because there are guns and violence over there!

It doesn't cost anything to watch!  Well, you might get a little desensitized to clown violence, but it's free!

We've also been to this generic structure.

You know what this is? The Alaska Ferry Terminal.  That's right, twice a week there's a big boat right outside that window that will take you straight up to Alaska. How's that for (implied) scenery?

What we did yesterday

Playing catch-up on the past three or more months is intimidating, and who knows how much time I have at the moment, so I'll bring you the most recent news in all of me-land.  You might want to know two things: 1) we now live in Bellingham, WA; and 2) I have a new camera that is super-detailed and I clearly can't work it well because many pictures are blurry.

Mike started his new job last week.  Yesterday he had a break in between cases, so the boys and I drove over there to inspect the "new hospital."  I almost didn't recognize Mike in the dark-blue scrubs, at the last hospital it was all light-blue.  It took us longer to walk from the parking lot to the hospital doors than it did to drive there from our house, and that is called Location.  First we stopped in the cafeteria to see if the frozen yogurt machine was working.

Then we went up to Mike's floor, and he let Scott play a little on some cardio rehab equipment.

"Dad, want to play chase?"

"Sure I do!"

After a few minutes, they were asked to stop running in the halls.

Then Mike had to get back to work.  We stopped to visit the koi pond in the courtyard, Scott loved all the fishies swimming up to say hi to him.  After that we hit yet another new grocery store (I'm trying to find one that's sufficiently stocked; although most of the food we eat comes from Trader Joe's [yes, I'm namedropping and bragging]).

Look out for baby drivers!  Scott wasn't a fan of sharing the cart, but Dean had a great time (he's almost 9 months in this picture) (and in real life, because this is real time). This was at Fred Meyer, where they give free cookies to kids at the bakery, and so someone might have a little sugar rush going on.

Sidenote - Mike bought that Wall-E shirt at a garage sale here.  Scott loves it, and wanted to wear it for school pictures.  He doesn't yet love his new school, so I told him he could wear the shirt if it made him happy, but then he'd have to be happy all day long because he was wearing it.  He changed his mind and wore a pirate ship shirt for pictures.

After naptime, we went and explored the railway museum, which is a few tables with model trains running around and a lot of things to not touch.

A volunteer showed Scott and another visitor how to make the trains stop and go.

Scott had a lot of fun making the train stop at the train station.

Then we came home, the end!

Coming eventually... what did we do all summer? Will Janell figure out how to edit the high-definition videos from the new camera? And will she ever update the name of the blog?

Thank You Card

My Dad's sister Nancy made Dean a wonderful sweater!  Here he is, modeling it.

 

I turned it into a Thank You card and tried to be cool and print it out to send to her, but my printer has decided to go all out of whack and won't print anything straight.  So I'm sending her a regular card with no picture and directing her to this website so she can see her work in action.  The rest of you can just enjoy a cute baby in a cute sweater.

Moving right along...

You would think that with the length of time between posts, I would have scores of pictures to post.  Scores!  Turns out, not so much, so perhaps I will fill in the blanks with words (and special bonus: even more words!).

Father's Day!  This actually isn't the tie that Scott made at school, that tie is sitting in a pile of Dean's clothes upstairs, waiting for Mike to wear it and pose for a picture.  Meanwhile, there's this artwork.  What is it?  According to Scott, it's orange lines.

Scott and Dean have almost matching dinosaur pajamas!  Well, not anymore, as they have both outgrown what's in the picture.  But for two nights, it was pretty exciting.

We went to the anesthesia department graduation dinner.  We've gone every year; in the beginning we knew no one and had boring conversations.  Last year, when Mike graduated, I knew all of the graduates and it was fun, but then I left early to put Scott to bed (when your child starts throwing forks at people, well, he's done).  This year, Mike was an attending and again I knew almost no one.  But it was at the swanky country club, and I took this picture.

The commemorative photo of his last Vermont graduation dinner (as ever, ties not required).  He had the salmon.

I bought Dean a secondhand Bumbo chair.  Mike and Scott begged me to put it in the bathtub.  Turns out, it floats!  Dean is trying really hard to learn how to sit up on his own so that someday he and Scott can share the tub better.

I had a birthday!  I have ordered birthday cake from different bakeries every year, including  Stone Soup,  Klinger's, and  Ben & Jerry's (shockingly not pictured: Mirabelle's).  Nothing was quite up to my expectations.  This year, after what I felt was a baking triumph when I made Scott's birthday cake, I decided to make my own.  It's a Devil's Food cake from the King Arthur Flour whole grain cookbook.  I wanted it to be minty, so I have a white chocolate/peppermint filling and a chocolate ganache glaze.  I needed to throw buttercream all over it, too, for full frosting flavor.  The decorating was done hastily while Dean napped, although I would be lying if I said I could do it any better with more time.  When the goal is to coat the cake in frosting, precision really doesn't matter.  (Note to future self: heavy cream makes the frosting stiffer, just use milk next time!) 

I told Scott it was my birthday, and he said we needed candles.  We didn't have any, so I gave him a flashlight instead.  As always, he wanted to poke the cake.  Not the precious cake!  So he poked Dean instead.  Then I gave him a piece of cake to poke.

Dean would like you to enjoy his tongue.  When Scott was this age, he had hair sticking straight up in front. Dean is working the Caeser cut, instead.

Hey, what crazy thing have I been up to lately?

Cloth diapering.  I was persuaded by this and  this, and Scott's chafing and rashing and the promise of no  exploding poop (of which Scott produced a lot as a baby).  Dean has been through one round of antibiotics for an ear infection, and there was some stuff that a disposable diaper would not have contained, and I was very grateful not to have to change his clothes all the time.  Once I really mastered getting them nice and snug, I haven't had any leak problems at all.

Except for the time I put him in the fancy bamboo diaper that said it was all-in-one but neglected to tell me that I needed a waterproof cover.  Oops.  I figure this gives me all sorts of parenting points, so I've got lots in the bank for all the future trauma I will cause him.

So, yes, we're still moving.  We might have even sold our house yesterday!  Now I can stop cleaning it.  Destination: Bellingham, Washington, which is north of Seattle and darn close to Vancouver.  We should officially be there mid-October, about a month after we leave Vermont and meander.  Maybe this will be the last post I write from Vermont!  If so, I've gotten really lazy.  Anyway...

I hear it rains in Washington.  It also rains in Vermont!

What do you do when it rains?

First, you take off all your clothes.  (Yes, that's a disposable diaper.  Scott still isn't potty trained, no matter how hard we try, which isn't hard at all, it's a wonder he even knows what a toilet is.  And he thinks that the cloth diapers are all for Dean and too small for him, even though I've put one on him from time to time when he's not paying attention.)  Second,

you dance!

As always, here's the extended remix video full of wacky hijinx.