Goodbye Farmers.

Leslie and Adam moved to Utah for Leslie's new teaching job. Nate and I helped them load up their moving truck the day before the big move. We miss them already, and it's only been a day!

Hazel and Her Big Belly

Too bad my phone is often the camera most handy these days. The quality of pictures it takes is decent for the most part (to view online), but they aren't great to print off. So sad! I love most of the pictures I take with my phone!

Anyway, here is a batch from a couple weeks ago: Hazel and Nate playing on our bed. I love her belly. She shoves it way out in front of her when she looks down toward her toes.




Oh, and this is my freezer jam - raspberry!

My "Sweet Cheeks" strikes again.

Hazel is busy with her various therapies this week. Yesterday we saw neurotherapist Crystal again - it'll be three weeks until our next appointment with her. Crystal has been thrilled by Hazel's progress, by all the rolling over, sitting up, and her new interest in standing.

Crystal worked Hazel on a big fancy swing for awhile, helping her strengthen her coordination and trunk muscles (and balance, I should say - the swing was a giant board with carpeting on it; Crystal sat on the back of the board and kept it in motion while Hazel dominated the rest of it by rolling everywhere and kicking her feet in ecstasy).

When we were done with the swing, we moved to our usual room, which is largely taken up by a raised platform with heavy padding on it. Usually Crystal has laid down a sheet (which is generally a huge distraction for Hazel - she works hard to pick the dolls, bears, flowers, and poka dots off the various sheets), but this time there was an 85cm yoga ball. Hazel spent most of the hour perched on top of it. I can't even begin to explain all the exercises we had her doing up there. Eventually, the exercises Crystal wanted her to focus on involved gently strengthening her back shoulder muscles (think wall push-ups). That's how I ended up taking this marvelous photograph. I've never laughed so hard.



Ah, my little Sweet Cheeks.

update

The last few weeks have been interesting around our household. Hazel has been putting her foot down in several areas.

Nursing has become such a task. She's super resistant so I've had to make some changes in the way I nurse. We now nurse in a pitch black room with only a fan making noise. I lie down on the guest bed with her and she nurses that way. She does better nursing now than a week ago - she had been pulling off and pushing away and thrashing and arching her back. I'm not sure what's going on; could be she's growing or finally teething. We'll see.

Also, we moved her naps from our bed to her crib. Yes, that's been interesting. She had been napping two to three times a day for two to three hours at a time, and it was wonderful! Well, she didn't like the transition to her crib. She began napping once maybe twice a day for an average of 30-45 minutes at a time. Yuck. Today is the first time she slept for two hours during one of her naps in the crib. I think, I think, she may be coming around to seeing things our way!

Nate and I have continued to set up house, and boy does it feel good! We went several months letting things just sit right where they were at, mid-progress toward being settled. This last weekend we worked on organizing the basement, and then we hung shades and curtains in our room. It's like it's done or something...there's nothing left for me to do to our bedroom. Huh. Weird.

I'll post some pictures of our house next and give you a virtual tour.

lost in her cheeks

A couple seven month self-portraits. This girl is getting so big.

Oh the zoo, the zoo...

Love the zoo, just love it. It's never a bad day to go to the zoo.

Except, of course, when there's an ungodly number of school children screaming and running in circles like wild beasts.

We went for mom's birthday last week and I snapped a couple pictures with my phone. Of course they're of Hazel. I always think she's cute and a good subject for picture taking.

Biking at the Beach

I dropped in on Rae Ann and Mom when they were camping at Nehalem Bay a couple weeks ago. Rae Ann and the girls decided to nap so Mom and I went for a bike ride with Hazel. Man, it was a hoot. The helmet was too big for Hazel's head, no matter how many times Rae Ann sized down the helmet for her. Mom took these pictures during the ride...



Hazel kept leaning forward and stroking my behind as we rode along. She's a very textile girl, but I think she was trying to keep her hands on me to know where I was. It's pretty obvious that she couldn't see much. Even though the helmet kept slipping down to cover her eyes, I never heard a peep from her! She never complained once. She had been crying like crazy before the ride, and I thought biking might calm her down - which it did, even though she couldn't see much.

What a trooper.

Hazel and her friend, Lucy.

Lucy was born two days after Hazel, right next door to us. I've been friends with Lucy's mom, Linsea, since we were 10, so this is a long relationship. I nearly died watching Hazel and Lucy together the other day. Their development is on totally different planes (blame it on the torticollis) so it was interesting watching the two move around at different paces, but they're still both six and a half months old, and that involves every equally squeally, drippy, and drooly thing that means "infant."

Hazel kept grabbing onto Lucy's shirt to bring her within reach, and then she would touch Lucy all over her head and face (Hazel is very tactile - if you've ever held her, you know what I'm talking about). Lucy would then suck on Hazel's fingers and hands. They were pretty content. Here's another poor quality video to give you a glimpse...



Up next: Beach trip to visit Mom and Rae Ann and the girls in Nehalem.

I was trying to organize all the videos I got off my phone yesterday and became distracted by old videos buried in my files. This first one is of Stella. She's fun to tease, let's just say. I call this one, "It's Mine," otherwise known as "Drop It Like It's Hot."


This next one is from a party at Hangar 52...Can't remember what it was for, though. Mom's birthday, I think. What sticks out most clearly in my memory is that this was the first time I really saw Ivy walking. Rae Ann and I had a conversation about this the other day, so this is for you, Rae Ann. I just kept thinking, "E.T., E.T." every time she walked without aid. I call this one, "Stella (& IVY'S!) Trike."


And here's Rameus on the beach at the Nehalem campground. Goodness, I miss him. He was a great dog. This one is, "Windblown Rameus."


And here's another dog video, this time of a super eager Dakota. Also on the beach at Nehalem campground. I present to you, "Dakota in the Surf." Thrilling title, eh?


So that's it for now. More to come. Promise.

this is going to be long. buckle down.

So I just spent like an hour sending myself all sorts of pictures off of my phone. Of course they're mostly of Hazel, with the token one or two of other things, like my house. I'm going to just slap them up on here with little captions - have fun browsing.


My little hoodlum.




At the zoo with Rae Ann and the girls.



My favorite zoo picture. Too cute.





At the beach! Her first time swinging alone. I could have spent all day watching her and snapping pictures - she cracked us up. She kept kicking out her little legs, dancing in her seat. She's been in a swing on my lap before, but this was a totally different experience - she was gleeful!



If you know us at all, you know that we're huge fans of coffee. And the beach. Put the two together, you often find us at Bella Espresso in Cannon Beach. Oh, but we've found even better coffee. Bella has disappointed us our last few trips so we thought we'd find a new coffee joint to try. Head south through Cannon Beach to the second turn-off to 101 (by Doogers) and you'll find this little coffee roaster and storefront called the Sleepy Monk. Yum in the extreme. So good this Starbucks girl even bought a pound of their Fiddler's Fusion (Nate, an even bigger coffee critic than me, was ecstatic). Oh, and they make really good buttermilk doughnuts. So this picture is from their little cafe. And here's a shocker: They're only open Friday-Sunday. Stop in, though - it's worth it!



If you've ever been to my parents' house, you might recognize this picture as their driveway - then again, you might not. I was shocked to drive down it the other day and find that the construction crew from across the street had ripped down about a third of the trees lining their driveway. I guess a cul-de-sac is going in.



This is the field next to our house that I've kinda been posting about. It's been totally cleared now. There are no more trees, shrubs, or blackberry bushes, and it's been raked flat. Grass is going in next...and soon.


I suddenly can't find a picture I took of my garden. I'll have to find that and post it - or just take another one. Yes, that would be easier. I'll do that. I'm sure lazy today! And I'm quickly running out of time. Hazel is in the third hour of her nap so my minutes are limited. It's been wonderful to get this done, though - I'm sitting in my nice clean kitchen at my nook table (one of my favorite pieces of furniture), staring at a vase full of peonies from the local farmer's market and drinking coffee with hazelnut creamer out of my favorite mug. And it's cool and slightly rainy outside, with occasional breaks of blue sky. Mmm. Perfection.

Now I'm going to post several videos. I'm really not sure what kind of quality they'll be - they're from my phone also. They've all been taken in the last few months, so they're not incredibly recent. Although the one with my dad holding Hazel at the picnic table is from this past weekend. Enjoy!

my baby is six months old

17 lbs. 2 oz.
23 3/4 inches long

Memorial Day

I snapped a couple pictures with my phone when we stopped by Nathaniel's grave yesterday. We stopped by New Seasons and put together such a beautiful bouquet! Okay, so we picked out the flowers but someone else arranged it - I'm just not that talented.


When Hazel started pulling the grass around the headstone up by the roots, we knew it was time to go :)


Hope you all enjoyed your long weekend!

grrr.

So we moved into our house this past February. One of the major draws of it was the privacy all the surrounding trees offered. We could only see our two neighbors across the street, and no one to the north or south of us. Well, the landlord decided to pull up some of the overgrown brush and old nursery trees run wild in order to clean up the property. We were okay with that because he promised to leave a buffer of trees between us and the row of houses to the south of our property.

The brush clearing guy showed up about two weeks early and got down to business. I'll have to post a before picture, but for now, here are two pictures of the present damage he's done. You can see our house from the road now (it used to be that you'd have to be right in front of our place before you noticed it). Oh, and the guy ripped up all the trees. He didn't leave a buffer. The neighbors are ticked. The city has actually sent out a couple representatives to take pictures of what's being done, so who knows where this is going to go.

All I know is that the changes being made are ugly. Now the neighbors can see everything we do. We have absolutely zero privacy. Our entire house is exposed.



There's nothing we can do about any of this, of course. We're only renters. Today I actually had to leave the house with Hazel, though - the brush clearing guy decided to burn the piles he'd made (without forewarning us) and my house started to smell strongly of smoke. I had a throbbing headache by the time we cleared out.

All that to say I'm very sad by the changes being made. I really hate it. It's hard to still like where we live when I compare the lack of privacy we have now to the incredible privacy we had before. Sheesh.

Hazel and The Beach

After months and months of waiting we finally made a trip out to the beach! And it was just as fantastic as we'd hoped it would be - the weather was just right. It rained during the night but remained dry during the days, and even warm! There was a bit of a wind, but nothing truly outrageous.

For March, it was lovely.



We stayed in Twin Rocks again and took Hazel to God's Finger, Oswald West, and Cannon Beach. I think we'll hit Nehalem, Seaside, and North Beach on our next trip...which is in only a few weeks! Tis the season for beach trips...

We really enjoyed packing Hazel around. It was tiring but we took it in turns and had a blast. We discovered a new place to buy excellent fish and chips in Cannon Beach, so Nate is really looking forward to our next trip out there.

God's Finger:





Oswald West:





Cannon Beach:





Rockaway:




Even thought it looks like we hit all these beaches in one day, well, okay so we did. It was a busy trip. We were late in getting out there so we really only had Sunday to trek around to all the stops we wanted to make. Hazel was a trooper!

Hazel and the Tulip

These pictures are from probably a month an a half ago - I fully intended to post them promptly, but of course I didn't. Don't worry, I think I'll begin to get much better at this now that I'm no longer working at Starbucks. Did I mention that? Oh yes, handed in the green apron...I'm glad to be home with Hazel now. Not that my hours really took away from her, they were so limited. I was working three or four mornings a week 4:30am to 8:30am. When I returned from work, Hazel and I would lay down and nap together for a couple hours and then our day would really begin in the afternoon. I rarely spent any quality time with Nate - I'd fight to get into bed by 8:30 or 9pm most nights. But now I sleep as long into the morning as Hazel will let me, and right now she's napping while I'm updating this blog! Nate and I have been able to catch up and hang out together the last three evenings and it's been wonderful. So the world looks a little brighter with this simple change of a job.

Back to the pictures. Hazel sat with Nate one morning while we had breakfast together and it was *cute, fun, adorable, wonderful* (all sorts of girly terms can be used here).