Well the kids have been champs will all that’s going on in our lives. Planning for the move, house all in chaos with boxes and Sean traveling a lot for work, my volunteer activities at a fever pitch, they have been really sweet to put up with all of it with a smile. That is not to say that they don’t have their moments that have me pulling my own hair out. But, I have been enjoying those moments as they approach their 1st and 3rd birthdays.
We said it would be a while before we owned a home again. And well, we lied. We’ve gone and bought a house in Seattle. Something about putting down roots, I think. Targeting a move-in date sometime next month, we’re busy beavers getting things ready to move. Here’s a taste of what we’re getting into:
Ha ha, just kidding, we’re not moving to a house on a lake. Give us a few years though, it sure is an attractive idea after living so close to water, this town makes you really want to.
Here are some pictures for real.
We have to get some things fixed in the house before we move in, so we’ll share more photos later, but the house is officially ours as of July 22, and the job of ownership has already begun with yard work and spending money. The house is near Seward Park with a big playground, swimming area and tons of hiking and outdoor activities.
I feel like a post dedicated to Cora was long overdue. So much is happening in her little world that I know I’ll look back in a few years and regret not capturing the details. This post will be long for all but the grandparents, but hopefully entertaining enough to make it enjoyable.
As of today, Cora is two years and 4.5 months old. Only reason I can tell you how many months is because I can only measure her brother’s age in months. She knows she’s a big sister and that he is her brother, which she can say in both English and Spanish. She is quite empathetic, if another child or adult is crying near her she stops and looks very concerned, usually asking me if they are sad or hurt,depending on the situation. If suggested, she would never hesistate to give that person a hug, even complete strangers, which in hindsight might not be the safest habit but is still very sweet.
Wonderfully suggestable, nearly all tantrums can be avoided or cut short with redirection to something else. Generally anything will do, even on very little sleep or with an empty tummy, but those situations sometimes require a bit more creative redirection. She really challenges us sometimes too, her ability to remember cause and effect catches me offguard frequently because I just don’t expect her to put those concepts together. Example, tonight she wanted to go outside to help a raindrop who had fallen. From a book she has about raindrops, read several weeks ago.
A favorite activity for her most days is to play songs of the alphabet and count things, albeit out of order most the time. She also is getting into music more now that we’re focusing more when we play together. She’s always ready to do a jig when the keyboard plays a tune. We sure do love this little girl. When it gets hard and it seems like all we do is discipline or take things away, I hope she knows that.
Not to say that Cora is acting like an old lady or anything (because 30 is nearly dead, right?), but we have had the pleasure of watching this firecracker grow and change in ways that seem well beyond her years. I don’t even know that I can count the things, but since I really like lists, here are a few of note:
Overall, after 2 countries, 5.5 weeks, 16 states, 5000 miles the District of Columbia we wanted more. As I mentioned in the last post, we couldn’t believe that we were only a few days away from the end of the trip. After our last night in Yellowstone we returned to our regular itinerary of a playground a day and plenty of playtime for Cora and things settled down a bit with her. Harlan slept a little better our last two nights in Coeur d’Alene and RV living seemed to be the best way to go. But all good things must come to an end, isn’t that the saying?
When we arrived back home, we were shocked at the space we had in our living room alone. Harlan, however reveled in it. He decided he was ready to crawl and stand up using any and everything available, which he wasn’t doing just the day before in the RV. As for us mobile folks, Cora jumped right into played with her favorite neighbors next door and we didn’t even venture into the rest of the house until the entire RV was unpacked.
The trip had been long enough for the house to feel unfamiliar, and we’d gotten so many new habits for day to day living in small quarters that we weren’t quite sure what to do with all the room. It reminded us of Hurricane Ike in Houston. Without power for 3 weeks, you develop new habits that are slower, more neighborly and allow you take it all in. We hoped (much like then) to keep some habits going after our return. At least for longer than we did post-Ike!
Everyone has asked what our favorite parts of the trip were. Here they are:
For Sean – the complete baseball pilgrimage – Cooperstown, NY and Kansas City, MO
For Me – visiting all the friends and family along the way
For Cora – Jumping Pillows, “those are my favorite”
Better out than in, in the words of a green ogre of Pixar fame.
Harlan has achieved a 50% duty cycle for you engineers out there. The trip was a great experience, so much so that I think Harlan was saving a lot of growing and change for our return so he didn’t miss anything. Why might I say this? We’ve only been back a week and he has accomplished the following (most of these by last Friday):
Some might say it was just time, having reached 9 months old on May 31st, but we think it definitely was the wide open expanse of our living room (as compared to the RV dinette floor) that spurred the rapid motor skill development.
Yup, after spending so much time with my little girl, the mirror has shown I have a flair for the dramatic. The world as we’ve known if for the last month is in fact coming to a close. This life on the road has been quite eye opening in a great many pleasurable ways (and some intensely trying as life with a toddler can be in any environs). As we sit in our rental RV looking at the Winnebago website at floor plans, we are amazed that we’ll be back in Seattle in a few short days. We skipped our last national park stop in Glacier N.P. due to poor weather and fishing conditions we’ve found along the way. We decided to add a day back in Coeur d’Alene, ID to be beach bums.
Some lessons learned, while a bit of a rehash from the traveling with kids post, I’ve learned even more after spending 6 nights in one spot for the first time.
The great outdoors aren’t a replacement for a good slide and a swing to a 2 year old when they can’t follow their own schedule. Telling your toddler to hurry up more than once in a day is a recipe for tantrums and willful resistance even in the awe-inspiring beauty of the US’s first national park.
As it has taken me over an hour to put this post together, the other thing I’ve learned is to live a little more in the moment and not worry so much about what is left to be done. Because there will always be more to be done, or see, and it will still be there. And a blog is fun at times, and when you’re on sketchy RV park wifi, a chore at others 🙂
I know it may seem like we have disappeared off the face of the earth. And some days we have the feeling that we have been transported to another world. Spotty cell phone service, funky wifi and hours on the road have made it difficult to get to the blog and share the details. A totally different challenge is that travelling with two little ones means there really is no down time. Prepping the RV for the day’s travel or to get dinner ready and the kids to bed is full time work between naps, feeding a busy toddler and infant, and seeing the sights. So thankfully, digital technology is letting us capture it all in pictures and we’ll hopefully get the time in the next couple of weeks add words to the details for sharing before we get back.
These next two weeks will actually be spent in only three places, the Black Hills of South Dakota, Yellowstone National Park and Glacier National Park. There are a couple days to get us between the long hauls, but primarily, we will be spending 3-5 days in each spot.
South Dakota has been a real treat thus far, we are already planning on coming back! We have traversed almost the entire state along I-90 and have seen the pride of folks living in a somewhat hard and isolated state.
Many have questioned our sanity in trekking across the country for 6 weeks with two children under 3 years of age. And there have been a few days in our last 9 days in which I, too, have questioned our sanity. However, I would like to share some tricks we think we’ve figured out how to work it.
The kids play better together outside than in.
A hungry kid is an angry kid. Food keeps them and you happy. Playing in the car with a lightweight ball is actually more time consuming than you would think and not nearly as dangerous as trying to ignore screaming toddlers. Reading books seems to really work for Cora. The audio books from the Seattle Public Library were a nice addition to the collection for the trip, and when she would leave the headphones in, she would stay engaged for about 20 minutes. Having to stop for gas more frequently than you need to stop to exercise the kids is BAD. Tactical location of parks for meals is a great way to make sure you don’t live at McDonald’s or the mall to get some laps in for your kiddo during much needed breaks.
Snuggle time before we hit the road.
It’s wishful thinking that this list of ideas would always work, but I figured some of things were unique and might help others considering a long road trip with little ones. We have resigned ourselves that we can’t be on the road for more than 5 hours of driving. That is not total time on the road, that is the amount it takes to get to the destination It will take at least 1.5 – 2 hours to do the playtime, feeding and potty breaks necessary to keep the sanity you were aiming for to begin with.
Making a picture frame to decorate the RV.
Harlan plays peek-a-boo in the Jeep.
Today we made our way from the bustling metropolis that is New York City to the sleepy village, yes I said village, of Cooperstown, NY, home of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Coming to Cooperstown was the seed that germinated for the cross-country odyssey that we are undertaking now. As far as getting to Cooperstown, all I can say is that you have to want it. It is in the back rural country in the middle of New York state. There are no interstates that come by town, and when you get there, there is only two hour parking everywhere, so we had to move the car in order to take everything in without getting a ticket.
There was a lot of baseball history, it was a way of recreating some of the most memorable moments in baseball history and in a weird way, gives you a connection to the baseball legends whose stories still circle around baseball today. Honus Wagner, Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Cy Young Connie Mack, Casey Stengel are all still alive and well within the hallowed halls of the Hall of Fame. It was also good to see that Negro league players such as Josh Gibson, James “Cool Papa” Bell, and Buck O’Neil were enshrined in the hall, having played their entire careers in the negro leagues. FYI, Josh Gibson was quite possibly the greatest hitter to ever play the game of baseball. All in all, the Hall of Fame was a real treat to see. I took quite a few pictures of bronze plagues for players that I have enjoyed watching play or listening to stories about. I also hope to be coming back next year to celebrate the induction of Craig Biggio, and witness the first Houston Astro to go in to the National Baseball Hall of Fame..
For those interested: The reason the Baseball Hall of Fame is in Cooperstown, New York is because of the work A.G. Spalding (of Spalding sporting goods) did to try and prove that baseball was a pure American game. In his “research”, he found someone named Abner Graves who claimed to have been taught to play baseball by Abner Doubleday in 1846 in Cooperstown, NY. Abner Doubleday went on to gain some notoriety in the Civil War for the Union forces and has a monument at Gettysburg, which we found on our trip. Having a Civil War hero create the game before the civil war was a great motivator for Spalding to claim that baseball had been invented by Doubleday. The story of Abner Doubleday creating baseball is accepted as being a myth and not fact. The fact is that baseball evolved with the country. It is derived from a game called rounders and the first known mention of “base ball” was in 1792. The game evolved in to a game called town ball or country ball or any number of variations. In 1845 the New York Knickerbockers baseball club was formed and they set down a set of rules for the game that, most, are still in use today in major league baseball. Alexander Joy Cartwright, is really the Father of the modern game.
