Nana & Papa do their part

We put the Southwestern nana and papa to work just like we did Sarah's parents during their visit last month. They don't seem to mind, either. They just keep coming.



Nana did her part watching so that no grandchild ruptured a vertebrate or cracked open a skull while scaling two flights of beach house stairs.

Later, she and papa watched Claire while Sarah and I escaped for a rare dinner out, alone! We hit a cafe we hadn't visited in years and sat outside. I ordered a Manhattan, Sarah a glass of gamay. Back home, Claire tended her papa's beard.



Papa volunteered to apply his green thumb to our raised bed. At the farmer's market, we bought several types of heirloom tomato starts -- Red and Yellow Brandywines, Valencia, a black variety, and, of course, Green Zebra. Sarah picked out several varieties of peppers and both white and purple eggplants.



Papa set to work planting, feeding, erecting walls of water and laying out the drip irrigation system. It's starting to look like an actual garden.



Claire also demanded Papa's artistic services at her new easel, donated by good friend Xia-Li. Papa proved quite adept at finger painting.



It's almost as if he'd done it before.



Despite all this, the grandparents left talking of when they might see us again. In their part of the world, that is. Maybe our forced labor strategy is working.

Reached the beach

The wind eventually subsided. Crabs ducked for cover. Sands shifted, erasing our footprints. But memories remain.



Claire and her cousins spent four nights on the coast, parents and grandparents in tow. We shacked up in a neat beach house, ate loads of good food, gazed at seabirds, trapsed over tidepools, toured a lighthouse, watched DVDs and played lots of air hockey.

Sure, we sometimes tested each other's nerves. Just look at the expression on Eric's face:



But those moments were as rare as spotting a giant squid. The skies were big. Our enthusiasm childlike.



Gracie and Claire ran and jumped on our third-floor deck while the adults marveled at the balcony's expansive view.



The weather greeted us with bluster and rain, driving us to play indoors, where Raquel beat everyone at everything, much to her husband's chagrin.




The beach comes with certain predictable doings. We made the obligatory stop at Tillamook Creamery for marionberry pie ice cream and pepper jack cheese. We dressed in layers and wore hats. We compared clam chowders. The great weather arrived just as we left.


Hailey got her first taste of the `saltwater breeze within the caring arms of her parents.


On our last full day, we treked to a light house. Gracie and her mom stood watch in front of the giant lens ...



... beckoning Eric to join them. He declined. The view from where he stood was good enough.



Later we hit a restaurant for fish & chips. Gracie took a rare nap tableside. Most of the time, she kept the beach house filled with excitement. She even taught her younger cousin how to yell from one floor to the next.



This vacation will go down as one to cherish for its relaxation, simplicity, good movies, stunning scenery, Grateful Bread and steamed clams.



All good things must wash out to sea. The air on the air hockey table is off; the starfish right where we spotted them. We left the beach with sun shining and a pocketful of whole sand dollars.

A taste of mother's day

Mom's Day #2 dawned with promises of sweet Belgian waffles, fresh pineapple, cut flowers and a kitchen-wide jig for mom.

First, the chefs...



No, you can't keep mom out of the kitchen, even on the morn the greeting card companies decalre her day off. We knew Sarah wouldn't stand down. What we didn't know, but soon learned, is that we also can't keep Claire's fingers out of the mixing bowl. She loves helping, but she loves tasting just as much.



The waffles fluffed like pillows at the Hyatt, and Claire declared the griddled version as good as the raw.



What a ham. Again, who taught her this? Not us.



She continues to do things of her own making. Like this prolonged dance with herself in a circle to self-made sound effects. Even CeeCee, 13 years her senior and allegedly "neglected," failed to keep up. The kitchen cabinets emerged unscathed.



Claire did not learn this from her dad. I may talk in circles but I don't dance them.

Year 1.5

A year-and-a-half ago, Claire came into our lives, persistently working her way out of her mom's womb with an elongated skull and a little drama.

That tenacity is a halmark of her personality today. And what a robust personality it is.

Last month marked her first unsolicited thank-you, her voyage from monosylabic banter to a two-syllabal vocabulary and a clear entry into creative play. She's coming up with her own ideas, drawing her own conclusions, inventing her own version of reality out of whatever means lie at her disposal.

This photo illustrates just what I mean.



Last week, Claire requested her waterproof Elmo doll accompany her during her bath. Nothing unusual about that. Elmo has a loop at the top of his (or is Elmo a her?) head that you can use to hang Elmo up to dry. During her bath, Claire took the loop and draped it around the shower knob on the faucet at the foot of our tub so Elmo hung down in front of her. Then she started pushing Elmo back and forth in slow, deliberate strokes. "Hhwiiiing," she said. "Hhwiiing."

At first, I didn't realize what she was doing. Then it dawned on me.

Claire's favorite thing in the world right now is to swing. She could rock back and forth in the air for 15 minutes at a time, a long period for a short-attention-spanned toddler. Suddenly I realized that Claire was giving Elmo a ride on a swing. At one point, she even asked Elmo: "Hhwiiing?"

"Uh-hum," she replied.

She did this without prompting from either of us. We'd never hung Elmo on the shower knob. We'd never suggested he or any other doll swing with her. She examined at the loop, looked at the knob, calculated that she could use both to swing Elmo back and forth and then orchestrated the maneuver with her unusually dexterous fingers.

No, this isn't any different than any other child's development. But it's a stunning realization nonetheless for any newbie parent watching human evolution unfold in front of them. It makes the past 547.5 nights of interrupted sleep (I write this at 3:57 a.m.), stinky cloth diapers, far-flung foodstuff, missed movies, forgone Friday nights and sorely neglected yard and pets all worth it, her father says. I dare not speak for her mother.

Raised beds

Nothing like putting your father-in-law to work on his vacation. Brad gladly volunteered to help build something we've wanted for years -- some raised gardening beds. He's much more competent with the measuring tape than this photo suggests:



We used with 2X12 cedar boards and built a 12X10 foot U-shaped box. Those boards weren't cheap, so we were extra careful. Sarah sketched out a plan, we laid the boards out and then Sarah resketched the plan again, just to make sure we didn't make a mistake and waste too much good wood.

Claire watched intently from a distance in granny's clutches as her papa cut the boards with a circular saw.



We screwed 2-foot-long 4X4s into the boards ahead of time. Then we used the forms to guide our post hole digging. We dug the holes deep enough to leave at least 18 inches of post in the ground and used a level and square to keep edges flat and straight.



Claire helped at times and also picked out the nightcrawlers at the bottom of the holes.



By the end of Day One, this was the scene from the side of our front porch. The project turned out to be more involved than either of us expected. But thanks to Brad's sharp eye, the beds ended up nearly perfectly square all the way around.



Now it was time to haul dirt. Thankfully, the last time he was here, Brad helped me pick out this $700 truck.



We got Clackamas Landscape Supply's four-way garden mix, which includes some valuable dairy manure, sand, clay and compost. This stuff tumbles gracefully out of your hand when you pick it up.



It's some well-drained black gold, as Claire will tell you.






I wish I could say we'd planted something in it by now, but we spent this weekend running the truck around again, this time for some compost for the front garden beds. Stay tuned. There's plenty of spring left. Increasingly, there's plenty of spring in Claire's step, too, which may complicate things.

High on the Flyer

Granny and granddad visited, watched Claire, helped us build raised beds and clean up around the back yard, then sent us this beautiful red wagon after they got back home.



Here's Claire helping dad put it together...














This is one durable set of wheels. The SUV of wagons. We go offroad (through the garden, down the alley) with no problem. Pretty soon, we'll have the wood sides up to keep Claire from toppling out when we hit the streambed.