Salome's Thanksgiving and Subsequent Trip To Cincinnati

Well there aren't any snow pictures in this batch, but there sure will in the next one.

Earlier in November we started painting the walls in our garage addition out back, and Salome was an eager helper. She painted portraits of our family with a brush while we rolled the paint on, and she really started to look the part of the dedicated artist, sans shirt and splattered with paint.

She also made the most of our sad fall leaves situation (the extreme cold snap in Oct. froze the leaves right onto the trees, where most of them are still clinging to the branches, and none of them changed colors) and went sledding in them, raked them, and jumped in the piles.

She is still drawing every day and getting more detailed in her marks and in her descriptions.

We had a marvelous Thanksgiving Day out in Arlee at Grandpa and Grandma's house, where Salome annihilated a turkey leg and did her best to get in the mix during our traditional game of Cranium. Some of us took a little break to walk off some of the day's feast and trundled up to the Pow Wow grounds. Although the little kids did more running than walking - the feasting didn't seem to make them sluggish...

The next day, Salome and I flew to Cincinnati for a week to visit Auntie Hilly and Uncle Jacob. We got to spend the weekend with them both before Hilly had to get back to school for more study of the law (yikes, may I say.) Jacob prepared a whole second Thanksgiving dinner, not to mention plenty of baked goods, and a feast every night of the week. Salome enjoyed wrestling, reading, and clinging like a monkey to her auntie and uncle and we really had fun being in their neck of the woods. Jacob was also kind enough to chauffer us to Indiana one afternoon to meet our friends Natalia and Spiro and their baby Sofia from Chicago. Salome was nearly dwarfed by 6-month-old Sofia, but that didn't stop her from wanting to hold her.

Suresh was on business in Germany while we were in Cincinnati, but we were lucky enough to get to meet up with him in Minneapolis on the way home, and fly to Missoula as a threesome. It was a great end to the trip.

Last weekend there were plenty of Christmas activities going on in Missoula, so we took Salome to decorate cookies, make crafts at the library, and ended the evening downtown, where we got to see Santa Claus (two actually - one in a meter maid car, one on a sleigh with Mrs. Claus) in a parade. I considered it a good parade because it was cold enough that they threw chocolate...

Anyway, as Salome's Big Sister-dom approaches, she is fully enjoying squeezing, poking, patting and talking to my belly and has big plans for when her baby gets here. She wants to hide the baby's eyes during scary parts in movies, read books with her, and possible even nurse her. (I refer to the baby as "her" because Salome only calls it a sister and now I'm getting really used to it.)

Salome On Halloween

We've had some gorgeous warm weather here, in the beginning of October, and even some snow (which melted the same day, just about). The warm weather coincided with the last Farmer's Market which made it extra special. And the snowy day was greeted with excitement and the possibility of sledding. But as you can see from the picture of Salome and her cousins Isa and Brennan, the snow was almost gone by that point.

Salome has been doing lots of drawing and painting lately and loves drawing family portraits of the three of us and her "baby sister." (She's still dead-set on a sister named Peter.)

She also loves taking part in the prenatal appointments with our midwife Michele. She likes to hear the heartbeat, especially, and also likes measuring my belly and fetching items from the bag for Michele. I'm 21 weeks along now, so we're halfway there.

We've surprised Papa with a couple visits to his lab while he is at work and both he and Salome love it. She likes the marker board and the spinny chairs. (Yesterday she was singing "I love biology," so Suresh was very excited about that, and all the possibilities for her future. :)

We have all stayed healthy for the most part this flu season, but I think Salome did have a short bout with it - who knows if it was of the pig sort. It only lasted a couple days which was nice for us all, and now we're all healthy again. I took full advantage of Salome's sleepiness and cuddliness and even got a sweet picture when she was feeling pretty feverish. Sick kids are sad but so sweet.

We had a good time carving pumpkins at the PEAS Farm and enjoyed hot cider and checking out the chickens. It was Salome's first Halloween pumpkin and she drew on the face and was very proud of the outcome.

We went to a fun pre-Halloween party where we all dressed up: Salome was a bee, Suresh was Winnie the Pooh and I was a beehive in a tree. Then on Halloween we took Salome trick-or-treating as Dumbo. She was shy but seemed to get a big kick out of getting candy from our neighbors.

We had a great visit from Portland cousins Lizzy, Dennis, Magena and Conor who were invaluable with help with Halloween costumes and relieving me of the reading load that Salome puts on me. :) She could be read to all day, and all the cousins took turns and were very entertaining to her.

Her Appachen also visited and they had a good time jumping on the bed and doing Eskimo kisses.

Now Salome is gearing up for REAL winter with LOTS of snow. So snow pictures may abound in the next blog. Happy upcoming Thanksgiving!

Salome and Her Whole Entire Summer

Well it's been three months since my last update, so this post is going to cover just about the whole summer. The pictures are shuffled out of order for some reason, so I apologize if it's confusing.

I guess the first thing I should mention is that Salome will be getting a new baby brother or sister this March, which is kind of why the blog fell by the wayside. I was sick sick sick for a little while, but now I'm back in the land of the living. Salome is over the moon about being a big sister - I've had her request to me anything from "Can I get in your tummy with the baby?" to "Will you push her out right now because I want to hold her." That's right, "her". We have no clue of the sex, and won't till it is born, but Salome is set on a sister and she wants to name her Peter.

Anyway, more on that to come.

Besides a few miserable weeks for me, the summer was about as perfect as we could ask for. The weather was phenomenal and it extended itself beyond the official last day of summer, which was great for us.

We started off with a trip to Billings, to visit Salome's great-grandma Alice and family. Auntie Hilly and Uncle Jacob were along and it was one of our last summer trips with them since they left for Cincinnati in August (where Hilly is attending law school.) So it was fun to cram in some quality time with them and Salome enjoyed pretty much the whole trip - from the time spent playing in Grandma Melody's yard, to the point where we ran out of gas in the middle of nowhere. She was happy to play in the gravel by the side of the road and then we found a serendipitously situated playground. Once Grandpa Jerry and Uncle Jacob secured us a gallon or two of gas, we were back on the road without a hitch.

Here at home we have had plenty of friends visiting, and as an added bonus, Salome has really bonded with our next door neighbor Candice and her boys, so whenever I'm wondering where she has gone, I can find her at Candice's, having a snack and being read to, or doing an art project. We're so lucky to have neighbors like that.

We got a chance to go on two camping trips - one at the beginning of the summer, and one on the very last, gorgeous day of summer. The first was a raft trip with Uncle Jacob and Auntie Hilly and Uncle Jacob's friend, Uncle Asher. The river was beautiful and the best part of camping...unfortunately we weren't able to have a campfire and the mosquitos were feeding on us in clouds. But it was lovely weather and great to get Salome out in the wild.

The second camping expedition consisted of Salome and me and three other mamas with 4 other kids and two dogs. The campsite was on a lake and everyone enjoyed a campfire and wading in the water and encountering lots of crawdads/crayfish: some dead, some alive, and all fascinating to the kids. It was a great way to usher out the last day of summer, though we could hardly tell fall was coming in the 85 degree weather.

Our other outings were to Echo Lake to the beautiful wedding of our friends Teryn and Matt, where Auntie Hilly was a bridesmaid, and also up to Flathead Lake to visit our midwife and have a prenatal appointment. What an amazing place for a prenatal - we had a wonderful time; it felt like a little vacation.

And our last big trip was to Boise to see Taj Mahal and Bonnie Raitt in concert and visit cousins Kerri, Fiona and Hunter. Salome and Fiona really hit it off and had a blast dancing to the music at the concert. Salome was especially crazy about Taj. Another great part of the trip was the drive along the Clearwater River and our stop at one point where we stopped to picnic and Salome went for a dip. A beautiful river to travel along.

I guess that covers the summer...whew!

I'll make sure not to get so behind for the next post and fill you in on all that Salome has been up to. Her imagination has taken off and she has many stories to tell me throughout the day, mostly about the adventures of her baby doll, "Baby Kade" (named after her cousin Baby Kade). She also gloms on to certain words she hears from various sources and then uses them in as many contexts as she can: "Hey mama you are a secretary man and it is secretary day," or "This is where my fantastic baby sleeps." She has also used the words "surely" "manager" and "comedian" in various ways. I don't even always know where she hears them. She's still a sponge, soaking it all up and delighting us when she squeezes out her interpretations.

Salome Soaks Up July

Salome's Appachen and Ammachi from Florida visited last month and were happy to play and read with her for a good week.  She loves when they visit and especially enjoys climbing on Appachen and bouncing on his bed.

Salome's been doing a lot of imaginative play and pretending with her toys lately.  She talks to inanimate, random objects like dirty laundry or a dead fly and asks how it's doing.

She still likes making nests and laying baby birds too.

She NEVER seems to tire of having books read to her and we visit the library several times a month to satisfy her desire for books.  She loves Curious George and Winnie the Pooh but you could read her just about anything - she'd sit for twenty books if you were willing. 

Salome also really loves her new sandbox that I scavenged from the alley behind our house and has been cooking sand food, etc.  

We've had fun in the heat, visiting parks and splashing in the pool and the sprinklers, often with her friend Hannah.  She really enjoyed meeting some new baby calves at her Uncle Duncan's and Auntie Jana's in Arlee and I have a feeling we'll be back out there to see those babies as they grow.

Salome On The Way To Summer

As of late, Salome has been doing some art (mostly on herself), enjoying the newly hot weather and playing with her many friends.

We spent a fun Mother's Day in Arlee with her grandparents, where she helped Grandma clean out the playhouse, and then on our next jaunt out to Arlee for Grandma's birthday, she got to meet some baby chicks, which she promised not to squeeze too hard.

She's been invited to a few birthday parties that have been celebrated at fun places like Bonner Park and the Carousel.  She is still a little leery of the extreme speed and height of the horses on the carousel, so we stuck to the chariot at 15 mph and that suited her fine.

Now that we have a back yard again, Salome has been taking full advantage of our new garden and eating lettuce and sorrel to her heart's content. She also likes the setup under the cherry tree for tea parties.

She's been talking even more than ever, if that's possible, and using all sorts of big words like "collection" and "similar" ("I don't want that cup, I want a similar one.") and using adult terms like "unless" and "actually": 

Me: "Look, Salome, a bug!" Salome: "Actually that's not a bug, it's an ant, Mom."  And she told her Ammachi when she said the lion had brown hair, "Actually that's not hair, it's a mane."  So she's really been telling us how it is. 

She has also been grouping and naming random objects, invisible or real.  She recently sat in a basket (her nest) and hatched some baby chicks named Isa and Brennan.  She set "Brennan" on her shoulder and "Isa" on my shoulder.  And she named two slivers in her foot "Hannah" and "Salome".

Her last molars have finally come almost all the way through so she's been much happier about that. Nothing like the absence of tooth pain and the presence of brilliant sunshine to brighten the spirits in time for summer...

Salome in the Spring

It's been since before St. Patrick's Day when I last wrote...and the weather hasn't changed much. Salome has, however.  She continues surprising every day with a new joke or some little tidbit that we didn't know she knew.  She's been using her own language of made-up words lately: "gronch" and "chooch" are among her favorites (and Uncle Jacob's), though they can be much longer and harder to pronounce.  

She is also excited about learning the sign language alphabet and practices on the potty.  She likes to sign letters to me while she nurses and is verbally incapacitated.  'a', 'x', 's','d' and 'f' are some of her specialties.  

Another of her new talents is singing of narrative, improvised songs: "I'm sitting here on the rug...eating a strawberry....and my mama is standing next to me...and I want to go outside...but it's raining..."

She loved the St. Patrick's Day Parade, especially the candy aspect.  Easter was also a big hit for the same reason but she also loved the eggs and Easter Bunny.

After Easter came a fun albeit snowy trip to Chico Hot Springs. Salome loved the huge warm swimming pool and especially liked gazing at the moon and stars through the mist that rose from the pool.

We've been seizing every sunny warm moment that we get and Salome has had lots of fun chances to play outside with her cousins and friends. She is a lucky duck to have so many playmates of all ages.  She loves cooking pretend meals in her outside kitchen, going for rides in the stroller (especially when Auntie Hilly runs with her), practicing riding the tricycle and hammering things.  She has also been helping me weed the garden.

She's been working on cutting two of her last molars this past week and it's been tough on all of us. It seems like such a painful undertaking and we'll all be glad when they finally emerge. Despite her crankiness and sensitivities from these "two-year molars" it sure is fun to hear this two-year-old tell her mama "I love you" during a sunny walk home.   A sweet thing to remind us to look on the bright side.

Salome Turns Two

We have a two-year-old on our hands now.  She is something else these days.  Salome continues to amaze us with all the things she soaks up and surprises us with later.  She's very perceptive and has a good memory too...and she's quite independent. ("No, I'll do it.")

She had a great, albeit pretty overwhelming, birthday week, complete with lots of festivities and many batches of friends and family coming over to celebrate. We got to go to Michigan to see her Aunt Sherry, Uncle Mo and cousins Daniel and Delani a couple weeks before her birthday so we had a little pre-party with them, which she loved.  She had a great time with her cousins and new friends Kiren and Vivek (she referred to Kiren as "the other one Delani" when she first met her.)  It was fun to see Salome and Delani together after almost a whole year apart.  They both have lots of personality and large vocabularies.

Salome got to have her Ammachi and Appachen from Florida come out for her real birthday and she regaled them with her rendition of "You Are My Sunshine".  ("...you make me happy when skies are great...you'll never know dear how much I'm loving you...")

She also got a new cousin, or first-cousin-once-removed, and she is crazy about him. He looks quite a bit like she did when she was born - lots of dark hair and pretty tan skin.  She loves to hold him and doesn't seem too perturbed that she isn't the baby of the family anymore.  :)

She likes pretending a lot these days, i.e cooking me fake food or giving me invisible gummy bears, fake sleeping so I'll wake her up, or pretending to be different characters. ("Hey Mama, I'm Papa," or "I'm a koala bear/fireman/monkey/etc.") She's also been making up her own language and uses her new gibberish at random points during the day.  (Me:  "Hey Salome did you put your boots on?" Salome (looking down at her boots): "No, these are zhoodoos.")

Every day brings something new and funny...sometimes awkward, like when she points to someone who is walking mere inches or feet from us and saying loudly, "What's that guy/lady eating/doing?"  It's refreshing to see how little kids don't have all the boundaries put up like adults do.   Reminds us to take it easy...

Salome In the Snow (Finally)

We've gone straight from Halloween to Christmas and New Year...

It was a long time coming, but we finally got snow in December and Salome has been loving it. She especially likes eating it and being pulled in the sled down the sidewalk.

She had her pictures taken at Sears, where I expected her to be shy and maybe clingy...but no. As you can see, she was happy to ham it up for the lady behind the camera.  She was even volunteering her own unsolicited poses and tricks - she was like a pageant kid.  I think she might be used to having her picture taken or something...

She had a fun Christmas morning at home with her parents and then spent the rest of the day with her cousins.  

We are frog-sitting for a friend and Salome loves to let them out to hop around the kitchen.  It's pretty fun till they go under the stove...we've learned our lesson.  

We can't believe she's going to be 2 next month...but she is gambling and studying geography already, so I guess it's not too surprising. 

She's fun.