Happy Sunday

Hearts and flowers and clouds and mountains and sunshine for everybody!

"...Because It's Thursday?"

Hey y'all -

One thing about Missoula: It loves a good party. I was talking to some of the teachers from your school on Wednesday, and they said, "You HAVE to come to the park downtown tomorrow for 'Downtown Tonight.'" There's a band and food trucks and a beer cart and activities and everyone hangs out in the sun." Sounds great," I agreed. "What's the occasion? I mean, why are they throwing this big event? Is it some kind of festival?" They looked at me like I had a hole in my head and said, "Um...because it's Thursday?"

So last night we all went downtown to the park to dance and play with your friends from school - Miss Katie brought her kids Jude and Finley, and Miss Julia brought daughter Calia. We all danced in the grass to the band and the kids took turns jumping off the wall into Thor's arms. Hagen stared at the drummer for an eternity, then asked a girl he'd never seen before to dance. When he took her hands in his, she looked around like, "Who does this baby belong to?"

Laney got an ice cream cone and shared it with her good buddy Jude*. Well, she meant to share it, but when all was said and done, Jude confessed, "Laney, I ate all your ice cream." Laney: "You sure did."

...and all this just because it's Thursday.

On our way out of the party, I was thinking about how awesome Missoula is, and how I wish everyone could live here. But then I realized that would probably ruin it. And then I saw this bumper sticker in the parking lot and laughed out loud:

Lucky us. 

Love,

Mom

P.S. No, really, Jude is a great little friend. Last week, I went on one of Laney's school field trips but had to leave early, which made Laney sad. As I was getting in the car to drive away, I looked back and saw this:

Day In The Life

The rain stops, then: Egg sandwiches, playing outside, gardening, blowing bubbles, crying because it's Laney's turn to blow, swimming in the hot tub, trip to the library, out to lunch for burgers at the bistro, stop by the grocery store, fight over who gets to push the basket, home for a nap, quick dinner, softball game, baths, read new library books, bedtime. Mom fiddles with camera throughout. 

Our Favorite Outing

Dear Laney,

You and I have a new favorite outing, and I am not making this up:  We love, love, love to go to the neighborhood food co-op (aka grocery store).

We live just five blocks away from the store, so you're able to make the whole journey on your Dora bike. I follow behind you, dragging the red wagon that will carry our groceries. When we get there, you demand your own parking space for your bike, and you hang your flower helmet on your handlebars, just like you've seen Dad do.*

The store has normal-sized buggies, but they also have these awesome little push baskets just the right size for your average three year-old. You love pushing the basket so much that I never get a buggy, and thus have to limit myself to buying what will fit in the small basket. This goes well with the lecture your dad keeps giving me about how - now that we live in town - my style of food shopping can be "more European, less Doomsday Prepper."

It's also your rule that you're the only one who can touch the groceries, so you pick everything off the shelf and put it in the basket (I move the bread out from under the gallon of milk when you're not looking). If we need something out of the bulk section, you're the one to use the scoop and put it in the bag and even write the item number on the bag.

See that blue stool? You dragged that out from the stockroom and put it under the produce table so you could pick your own apples. 

On each trip, you're allowed to pick one new thing to try, which has been hit and miss. You picked goat cheese once, which you decided you didn't like. Apricots were a winner, as were the giant rigatoni noodles. On average, having you as a shopping companion adds an extra 30 minutes and an extra 30 dollars to each trip. Totally worth it.

When it's time to check out, you put the groceries on the counter and then climb up on the bag stand so you can be tall enough to put your purchases in the bag. The only purposes I serve are to hand you things from the top shelves and fork over a debit card at the end. We probably couldn't do this anywhere else - our co-op is about the size of a 7-11, and we're typically the only people in there. 

A few days ago, as we returned from the store, you looked at me and said, "You know, I think I could go to the store all by myself and buy groceries without any help."

I don't doubt it for a minute.

Love,

Mom

* Last night, Dad let you come along on your bike when he walked to the brewery. When you guys got there, he reports that you parked your 2 ft tall Dora bike in between two huge, serious-looking mountain bikes, then took off your flower helmet and hung it on the handlebars before going in to buy your pale ale. Two women were leaving the brewery, and one whispered to the other, "Oh my God - that's the cutest thing I have ever seen."

Memories and Megapixels

Hey y'all - 

When I started this blog, my posting process went like this: 

1) Take quick, crappy picture of child with whatever camera is closest.

2) Write two or three paragraphs describing picture.

3) Hit "Publish"

Time elapsed: 15 minutes.

Output: 1 post.

Here's the current process:

1) Make dozens of attempts to take good picture using great camera. 

2) Upload hundreds of photos into Photoshop.

3) Obsess over each photo, then edit the good ones. 

4) Decide I'm too tired to write anything. Go to bed.

Time Elapsed: 5 hours.

Output: 0 posts. 

I've actually made the process even harder on myself this week, because I got a new camera (Nikon D7100) and also bought a new lens (35mm / f1.8). But just like all expensive hobbies, I've fallen down a rabbit hole of upgrades and instruction manuals 'til I hardly know what I'm doing any more. It's exciting but frustrating and I'm taking a bajillion pictures, trying to master this new equipment. 

 Ella, being petted 

 Ella's signature move

 Hagen in the air

 The pre-slide

 Hitching a ride with Dad

 Living in the hot tub

 In a letter from Granny Jack

 Dance like everybody's watching. 

 Sassy pants

 Too much time upside down. 

 The landscaping we inherited.

 Hagen rockets off the slide, sideways. Falls in a flurry of wood chips. Repeat.

Watching her dad climb a tree.

 Laney's friend Max at the sprayground. 

 Max.

Dad's Handstand Academy

I was talking to Philip last night, and he asked, "Do you remember what you used to say about the blog?" "Yeah," I said, "That I'd rather spend fifteen minutes a day writing a blog post than have all you crazy people calling my house asking what the kids are doing." "Exactly," he said. "We don't know what the hell a megapixel is, so quit worrying about it and just slap something up. Or you can start expecting some incoming calls."

Like Laney in that picture above, I'm going to do my best to achieve balance. 

Love,

Mom

Report Card

Dear Laney,

At our final parent/teacher conference for the year, we got this paper from Ms. Lindsay:

Teachers, like nurses, are typically warm, giving human beings who entered their occupation because they enjoy helping others and being nice for a living. I am neither a teacher nor a nurse because I am generally irritated by humanity. But with teachers (and nurses), you have to be sure that they're not just giving you a sanitized version of the truth. 

When I met with Ms. Lindsay, she told me things like you're well-liked by your fellow students, and you're doing a great job with your pre-reading skills. But I kept trying to look deeper in her eyes to determine, "Is she leaving out the part where my child is a holy terror?" or "When Lindsay goes home at night, is the thought of my child what inspires her to open that second bottle of chardonnay?"

Apparently, no. You're just a good student. Nice to your friends. Helpful to your teachers. A "joy to have around."

Then she shook my hand, gave me this stack of snapshots from some of your school days, and I exhaled. 

Top right - handing out Valentines

Middle left - Recess in Montana

Bottom left - Doing yoga cards with your friend Addy. 

Good work, kiddo.

Love,
Mom

Parents' Day

Hey y'all -

I didn't get a Mother's Day this year. When May 12th rolled around, I was working in Vermont. I woke up to all my mom friends posting on facebook about their homemade breakfasts and sunny family hikes and perfect mornings and blah blah blah hush. Instead, I looked despondent enough at the local diner for the waitress to give me a free piece of key lime pie. I thought maybe I'd get a make-up Mother's Day, but that didn't really happen, either. So when Father's Day arrived last Sunday, I told Thor we could split the glory and celebrate together: Parents' Day.

The best part about this new completely fabricated holiday is it's traditional to spend it away from your children. That may seem counterintuitive - to run away from the very same small people who made you parents in the first place, but it's my holiday and I make the rules. [Semi-related: If you've never seen the episode of Seinfeld where the Costanzas explain Festivus, you should].

Grandma Sue volunteered to have a sleepover with you guys, and your dad and I decided to drive over to Spokane.

Certain people did not want to see us go.

We stopped at the new local doughnut place on the way out of town, where we bought too many doughnuts and then ate them with large coffees. We had the shakes all the way to Washington.

We spent the day shopping in Spokane. Cool groceries! Light fixtures! Decorative hooks and knobs! On our big, wild, adults-only getaway, we found ourselves in a housewares department where your dad yelled, "Look, babe! They have woks!" We are so rock n' roll.

We went out for a nice dinner and walked around downtown and spent the night at the Davenport.

The next morning, we drove to the military base so your dad and I could get updated IDs. And let me tell you what happened there, so if you ever see someone having a breakdown at the DMV and yelling, "This system couldn't be any more bureaucratic and stupid!" you'll be able to tell them they're wrong, because the DMV isn't run by the United States military. 

Modern military IDs have a microchip-type thing implanted in the card that has all kinds of information stored on it. We were the first people to arrive at the ID office at 7:30am Monday. For an hour and forty minutes, we sat in a beige cubicle while a woman tried over and over, unsuccessfully, to update this chip on your dad's card. That's when she told us, "The system is down worldwide." And for all that time that we had been in her cubicle, other people had shown up in the office to wait for their IDs. I saw a man wait almost two hours - the entire time we were there - only to make it to the cubicle next to us where the employee in that cubicle repeated the process, all the while knowing the system was shut down worldwide. At no point did someone stand up and make a general announcement to the waiting area like, "Hey y'all, just so you know, you have no hope in hell of getting an ID today, so instead of reading that nine year-old copy of Redbook for the third time, maybe you could go out and accomplish something else with your day." Instead, everyone waited, everyone tried to get a new card, everyone was eventually told it wasn't going to work - but only after they'd served their own time in cubicle hell. 

Your dad is tired of me telling this story, but really it's the kind of thing that keeps me up at night. 

Love,

Mom

Summer of Softball