On the road again, or Rocky Mountain High, or Easy Riders

Big week. Silas took his second plane trip, flying with Molly to Denver for the wedding of an old friend/family member of Molly. The wedding was rained out of it’s mountain-top setting and chased down to a church (horrors) where Silas melted down due to hunger. Their hotel was in downtown Boulder, so Molly, Kerry and Silas enjoyed the shops and parks until they flew home on Sunday. Their flight to Philly was re-routed to Akron, and they made it to Philly a few hours later but it was no big deal. Silas was a rock star, I am told.

Larry and I took a middle-aged guy motorcycle trip down to Harrisonburg, Virginia to see my Granddad Cleo Weaver. We rented massive Harleys and after a sketchy first few miles we got control of them and had a good time. We dodged the thunderstorms on the way down and back, and counted ourselves really lucky. The helmets we rented had cb radios built in, so we could chatter back and forth (mostly asking “where are you?” when we got split up by tractor trailers and such. The backroads were a good bit more fun than I-81, but we stayed on 81 most of the way as getting home before the thunderstorms got us was our priority. We’ll have to take another trip some time, but for the time being I think renting bikes is a smart way for us to play it.

The Quad RAs and GAs have all moved in now, and they’ve been going through constant training this week, in advance of the student body showing up next week. Our socializing has begun, and our schedule will soon be out of control. Pictured down below, on the turtle in Clark Park, are a few of the folks will be living with, good people all (I think.) Tonight we have a huge dinner with the college-wide staff: names will be forgotten and Silas will be overstimulated, but we’ll have fun surely.

Silas and I have bought a pile of groceries the last few days, in advance of Irene. Most people seem excited to experience it, including me, which is kind of sick considering it is going to mess some people and places up. I am thankful already that we don’t own a home to worry about, and can just hunker down.

Once Molly and Silas arrived back from Colorado we decided to launch our anti-pacifier campaign, which terrified us, as Silas does love his binky. Our pediatrician recommended we just limit his binky-use to one location (like bed,) which I guess is like giving an addict a safe place to shoot up, which is maybe my worst analogy ever. Our worst fears were not realized, and Silas was over his binky fixation in about 8 hours. He actually understood our approach, that binkies are only for bed, and occasionally he would run off and lay down in bed just so he could suck the binky, but he stopped that too after the first 2 days. So here we are… we’ll pack one on really long car rides and drives I’m sure (though we shouldn’t) but that is another toddler-hurdle cleared. We’re done now, right? the hard part?  Silas is up from his nap and playing in the other room, so I should go. Good luck with the storm everyone.

Our new neighbors in the Quad

Asked to make a funny face...

Read Full Post »

Last Fling

Summer’s winding now. We’re home from the beach, Molly and Silas are in a plane headed to Denver for a wedding, I’m packing some things for a 2-day motorcycle ride with pop, likely in the rain. I’m writing on a Thursday, and don’t have a weekly photo, so my quandary of how long I keep up the obsessive Friday pictures and blogging has accidentally resolved itself. I’ll still try to post weekly though, but won’t lose sleep if I miss it.

We arrived home from the beach on Saturday night, and on arriving home I got an email from a beach-neighbor of ours, who had taken a few pictures of Silas and I fishing. Priceless.

Molly’s schedule has spiraled well out of control and I’m hoping she actually gets some relative rest while flying cross-country alone with her toddler for a weekend-long wedding.

I certainly won’t de-stress while piloting a car-sized motorcycle toward Virginia in the rain, but it should still be a certain type of fun. I’m driving up to the parents house in a bit, leaving our four pet mice to fend for themselves for a few days. We actually caught four more mice within 2 days of arriving home last week. I released them all behind some dumpsters down by the river. We sure did not have mice like this last year.

Below is a photo of Silas while waiting for his 2 year doctor checkup. He’s in great shape, 32 pounds, 36.25 inches, 50 cm head.  He’s basically potty trained and talking all the time, so our current developmental challenge is getting that binky out of his mouth. It will be a 12 round battle.

After this weekend we buckle down hard for the fall, all sorts of activities flare up immediately, with the Quad’s RAs and GAs moving in as we speak. Of course that also means the dining hall will open up before too long. Hooray!

Silas' birthday cake- Shaun the Sheep

Bad news dad, it's terminal

Read Full Post »

“Terrible” two? I don’t think so…

And he’s two… Saturday we celebrated his birthday down here at the shore of North Carolina with the whole Weaver family and Babbee tuned in via Skype. Silas has a pile of new toys, including some Shaun the Sheep dolls and a band in a box. He loves his plush bowling kit, and uses the pins as both drum sticks and for “play ball!” Molly and Jeremy went all-out with a Shaun the Sheep birthday cake, and happily it turned out well, as they put a lot of time in that thing. Silas almost choked on Shaun’s eye… it was a tense moment. The icing was a fondant, which is made with pounds of sugar and marshmallow. It is dense, stretchy, and sweet and perhaps not really for eating, but you can roll it and knead it and make pretty cakes.

Despite threats of bad weather and rain all week it has been sunny every day, with not a drop of rain. There is a huge grass fire on the mainland, which covered the island in smoke yesterday morning, but the wind changed direction and cleared everything up. There were toxic micro-death-particle warnings and such. We were worried it would end our surf week. We rented 4 surf boards and have spent a few hours every day flailing in the water. I made relatively little progress. Apparently a few things have changed since I was surfing at 16. We haven’t been down the beach this afternoon, so maybe we’ll get some decent waves. We’re not good enough to do anything with bad waves.

Our final crabbing trip left us empty-handed this morning. It was really quiet out there. We have four steamed crabs in our fridge from an earlier outing this week. That’s 1/2 a crab for each of us.  Jerm, Ayanna and I have all satisfied our urge to crab this week, so we can go another decade probably without stringing up a chicken neck.  I did some surf fishing this week and mostly caught little croakers and spot, and threw them all back. I got tired of catching those little suckers a few days ago, so it’s time to pack up the rod.

Time to tack on some photos… although I’m having trouble with either my lenses or camera body, a source of massive frustration to me this week. By next week I may have sold all my stuff and started re-purchasing from scratch. Don’t tell Molly… doh!

The cake was prettier than this picture suggests...

He was cool with this... really.

Read Full Post »

Vacation?

Predictably my time with my parents last weekend, while Molly was in England at a conference, was much easier than the remainder of this week. Silas weathered Molly’s absence with unnerving independence, which made it pleasant for me, but slightly disappointing for Molly. During a  video call Silas mainly requested Shaun the Sheep instead of filling in Molly on the happenings. One needs to feel needed. Of course Silas was jumping happy when Molly came home. Molly reports a great time in Lancaster, England, with some great conversations, and as far as I can tell some tolerable jet lag.

This week has been catch-up for Molly and preparation for me; we’re packing and heading down to North Carolina this evening for a week of a tropical depression, most likely. I’m talking real big about surfing, surf fishing, and photography. In the meantime, preparing for our first beach-trip with Silas and Ella is daunting. I bought a roof rack basket, as our car is going to be stuffed. There will be bungee cords.

We caught another mouse during our absence last weekend, unfortunately he was probably in there too long, and he expired the day after we found him. So that leaves us with four mice in the tank still. No recent escapes and they let me pet them, but picking them up would be a mistake. They jump like crazy. The biggest one can jump straight up and cling to the metal screen lid.

We just had a carpenter in to mount a shelf, and it took two hours. There went my whole morning’s hoped-for productivity, and I need to catch up. Uninstalling the baby gates is next, as we’ll surely need them at the beach house full of staircases. May this vacation be more relaxing than the preparation.

Sticky and Tacky the glue-trap mice

Read Full Post »