Xander's inner artist shines through

April 22, 2010:
There is a local buziness here which has a simple premise and a loyal following- create one big play room for kids 7 and under with bouncy houses, basketball, jungle gyms, music and art areas, and make sure to serve yummy gormet coffee and tea for the grown-ups.  Little Monkey Buziness!

(Apparently there is another branch geared for even older kids, Monkey Buziness, which some of you might want to check out but we won't be ready for for many years yet.)

Anyway, back in April Xander and I met Sarah and Leah there and had a blast, here are a few pictures that I couldn't resist sharing, even if they are 3 months old! (Yes, we will eventually get to the more recent stuff, I promisse!)

Think we can get these kids rock climbing next year?  I do!

Xander had never looked better!

Xander is growing up

So you already know that Xander is walking, but we never did get to show you all how fast the transition went from assisted standing unassisted standing, to assisted walking, to walking (and now, occasionally, running!).

Here are photos from April 16, when I caught Xander standing on his own- as long as he thought he was holding on to something- in this case, the big 5 gallon water jug for the dogs.

By early May he was getting really good at walking around holding on to things, or "cruising"

By June 5 he was walking!

But of course, sometimes his feet were just a little too big for him and the whole walking thing didn't always go as planned; there were a few bumps and bruises.... this was his best battle wound:

But he didn't seem to phase him much.  Mom was more upset than baby!

And now, in July, he would rather walk exclusively- crawling is for babies!  Little Leah, 6 months older, was enjoying "pretending" to be Xander by crawling, and is a little surprised to see him walking so well  now!

Time to catch up?

Goodness gracious it has been a long time since we have properly updated and maintained our blog.  We have been traveling as a family quite a lot, and Jake has had additional travel for work.  We should all be home, and hopefully healthy, for the next few weeks.  Jake and I have promised each other, and you, our faithful readers, that we will catch you up on all the wonderful adventures we've had.  So, the next several blogs are going to be a bit of a time warp- they'll be postmarked as they are written, but we'll include the event dates at the top... ready?  Here we go!

A Perfect Day

(subtitled: Look out world!)

What a perfect, amazing, incredible day!  We enjoyed a leisurely breakfast at one of our favorite Crested Butte restaurants, met some puppies on the street (Xander insisted, with his ever increasing vocabulary), chatted up some of the locals (with Xander charming everyone) and got some advice on local trail conditions from the Alpineer.  When we got back to the house, Jake and I talked landscaping and painting with neighbors and put together a new gas grill (works great and was a bargain!) while Xander got himself thouroughly dirty playing in the yard.  After a good nap for Xander, we headed out to hike the Elk Creek trail, where we saw an absolute wealth of wildflowers.  We saw glacier lillys and candytuft, lupine and dwarf lupine, corn lilly (known locally as skunk cabbage), bluebells, and a small 5-petaled white flower with 3 pink stripes per petal growing in clumps which we don't yet have a name for.  The water was running high, and there was still snow, so we got a little wet, but we didn't mind at all.  It was lovely!

In the late afternoon, Jake took a run and I got dinner ready.  Then, after dinner, the day just topped itself!

We've been saying for months now, that Xanader is on the brink of walking.... but today he proved that he just needed to do so  in his own time.  He started our his walking career with 10 whole steps on his first try!  There have been hints, but we weren't sure what to expect.  Jake and I were able to watch him together, in utter amazement, jaws down and holding our breaths, trying desperately not to destract him from his triumpant moment and monumental achievement.  When Xander sat down again, we erupted in a loud and spontanteous cheer for our son, our incredible child, who has once again made us the proudest parents on the face of the earth. 

With Xander asking for MORE MORE! we spent the next twenty minutes shuttling him back and forth between the two of us.  Mostly, he walked, but occaisionally he lunged or crawled into our laps, giving us a huge hug each time, and delighting us with his infectious grin.  There is simply no better feeling in the world.

Insinkerator Terminated

An unexpectedly active evening in the Lewis home....

I hate bad engineering.

Uh-oh

When Jake was a tike, he liked to drop things for his Mom to pick up.  Gran told us all about it, and how Jake would say "uh-oh" just as he was doing it... as if it was an accident!  She was tickled by the memory.

Well, the circle of life is a funny thing, and now Jake gets to spend evenings with Xander who has learned the "uh-oh!" game, just like Dad.  It is SO hard not to laugh.

Xander's vocabulary is really improving, and the "uh-oh" is actually a major step, since it is two new vowel sounds that he's starting to incorporate into other words too.  His sign language is also coming along, and he has signs now for Blitz and Otto and Cheese and Orange and Please.  His favorite is definately "cheese."

Getting the Piano tuned.. finally!

It has been ages and ages since I'd had the piano tuned because I was afraid of the amount of work it would need... and it did need more than the usual tune-up.  Luckily, it all went back together beautifully!

Now I just need to find the time to practice....

Planting an Herb Garden

It is spring in Colorado, and some days it is summer.  The garden is coming along nicely and I was finally confident enough that all snow and frost was a memory to plant the more delicate herbs like basil and the (pre-started) tomatos.  As usual, I decided on only one or two tomato plants and bought 4. I also bought a bunch of flowers to really do up the back corner of the garden under the shade tree, since I think that may be a favorite spot this year.  Of course, I took Xander with me and he showed the most interest I've seen from him yet regarding exploring, cruising and *almost* walking along the rows of plants, touching the different colors and textures.   He got filthy!  I feared for the delicate starter plants, but he was generally pretty careful and certainly he had a blast.  While the plants themselves survived nicely, I can't promise all the price sticks ended up in the right pots....

We got everything home and the whole way I was explaining to Xander about how we would spend the afternoon planting our herb garden and flowers.  I'm not sure if he connected the herbs in the pantry (which he plays with and re-arranges for me *all the time* with the "herb garden" but as soon as I turned my back he'd pulled the herbs out and had taken them outside with him and wanted to give them to me!  What a helper!

When I dip, you dip, we dip!

We thought we'd have a little fun today and teach Xander the fun of "dipping" his food into a sauce... a red sauce.  Then, of course, he and the highchair got a bath.

 

Moab!

Grandma Kathy came with us to Moab this year.  We decided that we would make life a little easier on ourselves and stay in a condo instead of camping.  We shared the condo with the Bunny Browns, Sarah, Levi, Leah, and Sarah's mom Jeanie.  Karen and Tucker Brown and Alex Hois also joined us in Moab.  We even got a short visit with the Ogburns and their friends who were there as well.  It was nice to have so many folks together.

In our past lives, a Moab trip meant riding our bikes ever day until our legs couldn't move any more.  As a result there is a lot of Moab that we haven't really explored.  This year we decided to ride a little less (can't impose on Grandma Kathy's baby sitting ALL the time...) and explore and do a few more things.  That said, when we got in friday afternoon we had to get out for a short ride.  Since we didn't have much time, we headed for known territory and Erin and I rode a nice section of the Sovereign trail.

The next day, Xander, Kathy and I headed out with the crew in the Jeeps (and Toyota, sorry Levi!) while Erin met up with Tina for a hike.

The trails were fun and the scenery was beautiful.

 

We took some time to get out and explore.  Sarah decided to try cliff diving, while Xander experimented with rock climbing!

That evening we had a wonderful dinner with everyone back at the condo.  It was fun to get all the kids together to play.

The next day Tucker and Karen and I headed out early in the Jeep for a trip up Cliffhangar.  Wow, what a trail.  I was really impressed with the capability of the Jeep.  Even without differential locks it could handle a lot.

After the morning Jeep excursion Erin and I headed off with Karen and Tucker, while Kathy and Jeanie took the kids to arches to explore.  We rode the Baby Steps trail, which was really fabulous.  Baby steps was a new trail to us and has fast and curvy single track.  I almost thought I was in Fruita!  There were cactus flowers everywhere.

 

Jeanie and Kathy had a lovely hike through arches and the kids got a chance to play and enjoy.  Kathy liked arches so much that we decided to go back the next day.

On Monday Erin and Alex and I headed out for a morning mountain bike ride.  We were still in pursuit of new trails, so we tried the MOAB Brand trails.  I was a little unsure what these would be like, as the Bar-M Loop is described as a "mellow family ride on a dirt road with rocky sections".  Not usually our style.  However the Circle-O, Rockin' A and Bar-B (get it MOAB...) were reported to be "more difficult".  These trails turned out to be really excellent.  The singletrack sections were fantastic, and there was tons of quality slick rock riding.  Not as much steep up and down as the slick rock trail, but excellent riding surfaces with plenty of whoops to be entertaining.  Very nice.

After lunch back at the condo we met back up with Kathy and Xander and headed back to Arches.  Kathy really wanted to climb up to Double Arch.  We did the short walk in to the arch and then scrambled up the rock face (with Xander in his pack on my back) to the highest point below the arch.  Absolutely beautiful.

 

Afterward we headed for delicate arch and did the long hike to it.  Neither Erin nor I had ever hiked to the arch, we had only seen it years ago from a distant overlook.  It was a much tougher hike that I had realized, and Kathy did an amazing job, having just had knee surgery a month prior.  The arch really is breathtaking.

Tuesday we had to depart so we had a nice breakfast in town, although we discovered the Jail house cafe is closed on Tuesday :(  Oh well, next year.  On the way out of town we drove up to Top of the World which has an amazing view over castle valley.  We then boogied to the Grand Junction airport where Erin dropped me off to fly to Huntsville and she, Kathy and Xander drove back home through some nasty weather in the mountains.