august

apologies for my delinquent blogging. it's been a busy month! colin and nicole got married, noah started walking, aaron started sailing, lots of friends and family visited, many berries were picked, many trains were admired...

here's a little photo medley for illustration. enjoy!

sailing:




driving:



biking:



admiring trains:



eating:



reading:



playing:



grooming:



being cozy:



hanging out with friends:



now we wait to see what the autumn will bring! (more pictures here.)

at the train station (a movie)

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the thistles arrive from vancouver on the train.  noah is thrilled and overwhelmed.  such a little walker now!

more walking (a movie)

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first walk (a movie)

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noah takes his first real steps in old navy, of all places.  aunt irene encourages him.

fun with lucy (a movie)

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noah gets a kick out of feeding his couscous to lucy the dog

truck driver (a movie)

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grandpa starts preparing noah to take over the family business.

real life wooden trains

in searching for a "burlington-northern-santa-fe" train for noah's tracks, i came across this wonderful website. not only do they have BNSF trains, but they also have the amtrak superliner, the pennsylvania railroad steam engine, and tons of diesel engines: canadian national, canadian pacific, chicago and northern western, louisville and nashville, missouri pacific, denver and rio grande, and more!

i'm super excited about all these realistic trains, especially the ones that noah has already seen around town, like the BNSF freight trains and the amtrak superliner. i love the idea that he can play creatively with small versions of working machines that he can see in real life. i know the thomas trains are based on fun stories that most kids seem to love, but to me these real life trains are way cooler. hopefully we can slowly build up noah's collection. (or my collection, anyway!)

barber shop

today noah had his first official haircut, at the barber shop downtown where aaron goes. we were under orders from colin that noah not sport his shaggy old-man hair at the wedding this weekend, so we put him under the knife. he did really great, sitting pretty still and seeming interested in what the barber was up to. the whole thing took probably five minutes, and afterward we had a clean-cut little boy! he looks older now, and suddenly i miss the shaggy-haired baby i had this morning. i guess every milestone will also bring a loss.

but there is no turning back--noah is growing up. yesterday he took nine steps! when he isn't thinking about it, i will catch him standing unassisted; though i think once he realizes what's happening he gets scared and sits down. but i have a feeling that he'll soon be off and running, which actually sounds nice to me right now, since he lately opts to hang onto my pants and follow me around the house.

i remember when i was pregnant i would imagine life with my little friend--a tiny comrade to share with me the tasks of daily life. well, he certainly is a presence! sharing the tasks of daily life, though... i don't know about that anymore. mostly now the tasks just don't get done. or maybe it's just that the tasks have changed. laundry, not so much; but we do get to lounge in the grass and pick blueberries.

big wave! (a movie)

this weekend aaron, his dad and kevan worked on installing the main mast into the boat. one more mast, a few sails, a broken champagne bottle... and it'll be a full-blown sailboat! (more pictures here.)

we've chosen a lovely name for her too, which aaron will paint on as soon as i choose a color for the lettering. and then hopefully we'll begin planning a festive launch party, maybe for early september. stay tuned...

after the work was done, aaron showed us this lovely wooden motorboat he'd just finished working on. noah took it for a little pretend drive.

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birthday weekend

we recently had the good fortune of hosting maryka, her friend tyler, jess and andrew thistle on the weekend of both maryka and andrew's birthdays. it was a wonderful surprise visit full of great food, laughs, dance parties and boating adventures.

the downside was the unplanned impetus for the visit: maryka and tyler's car accident on I-5 that left them shaky but unharmed and left maryka's car totaled. a sad and scary event. but hopefully birthday weekend was at least partially redeemed. i will say that for me, lonely after the departure of the wassells, a communal weekend was just what i needed. noah also seemed to enjoy the company. (more pictures here.)

birthday weekend also happened to be harry potter weekend. although i had planned to wait my turn for a library copy, my status as number 175 on the waiting list was too depressing. i caved under pressure from jess, maryka and tyler, whose copies were lying around the house like forbidden fruit, and bought my own. i tried to savor it... but you know how it goes. a few late nights and now the saga is over. but it was a wonderful book, a wonderful seven books. what a gift j.k. rowling has given us in sharing this story. i look forward to sharing it with noah.

besides the wonder of the book itself, i found it really exciting to be part of an international community of harry potter readers for the few days after the book was released. all over town i saw people reading the book--in the children's museum, at the farmer's market, at the burrito place--and i love to think of the millions of others around the world reading it on couches, in bed, on buses, on the front porch, by flashlight, sipping tea... i imagine it is not very often that a book brings people together in the way that this book has. i feel honored to have been able to be a part of pottermania.

nursing celebrity

okay, it's time to confess: i check babyrazzi on a daily basis. it's a celebrity baby blog and i admit i'm hooked. i love to see all the hollywood moms and dads with their fashionable little ones. (we all have secret obsessions, right?)

anyway, the newest post on babyrazzi is of new mom eva herzigova nursing her son george. there are some lovely pictures and i'm always psyched to see pictures of moms and babies nursing. the captions are in german, but you get the idea!

here they came a-wasselling

after months and months of excitement and preparation for the wassells to come visit, it finally happened! all six of them were here for almost two weeks in early july, and we had a wonderful time together. noah really loved following the big boys around and being followed by little asher. it was great to see how all the boys work and play together, and it was fairly easy for noah to join into the fray. i know he misses benny, eli, jude and asher a lot now, and always smiles and laughs at their pictures.

aaron took a whole week off during the wassell visit, so we had a great family vacation time, jam-packed with adventure. we began with a festive fourth of july party in a neighborhood park, where the wassells got to meet many of our and noah's friends. here are noah and asher sharing some watermelon:

of course we made a trip down to the harbor to see the boat, and though the rigging isn't up yet aaron gave the boys a small motor-ride around the harbor. here we are motoring up to the dock:
we also bought some live crabs from grumpy dan's crab boat, which the boys played with at home in the bathtub for a while. they were given names (flunky and mr. wimple, i believe) and we said sad goodbyes as aaron dropped them into boiling water and he, chris and scott devoured them dipped in butter. (i agreed with the boys: yuck!)

we also did some crafting, and everyone made their own animal shirt with freezer paper stencils. noah had a turkey (due to jude calling him turkey instead of turtle), we made an elephant for little henry back in beverly, benny made a crab, eli made a wolf, jude made a bear, and scott made a butterfly.

we biked around town and around lopez island. jude fell in love with noah's bike seat, which he called the "green seat," and noah didn't mind jude having a turn.

we took lots of walks and wagon rides around the neighborhood, most of which stopped at nelson's market for penny candy.

we went for an awesome three-day biking and camping trip on lopez island, the nearest of the san juan islands, where we saw wild bunnies, eagles, great blue herons and a jellyfish. we spent a day lounging and creating on spencer spit beach--chris, eli and jude made a faerie house; aaron, scott, benny and eli made a driftwood raft; aaron made a driftwood chair and the wassells made a rock rainbow. noah and asher munched on driftwood and rocks. we even made it to storytime at the lopez island library.

after we returned from the island we headed north to b.c., where we swam and lounged at grandma and grandpa bandstra's house in ladner for a day, and then headed into vancouver for a busy day of city activities. i'm sure the boys would say the highlight was seeing the beautiful beluga whales at the vancouver aquarium...

but for me the highlight was definitely the melt-in-your-mouth scones made by the french pastry chef for high tea at the hotel vancouver. christina and i had tea with jessica thistle and aaron's sister irene, and we all agreed it was one of the loveliest things ever. we also had a great lunch picnic in stanley park with the thistles, the boys took a train ride in the park, and we had yummy indian food and arcade fun at granville island. here we are in grandma and grandpa's backyard:

what a lovely two weeks! we all had such a fun time with chris, scott, benny, eli, jude and asher, and hope that it won't be too long until we see them again. i felt lucky to get to know the boys a bit better and for them to know noah. (i think they all understood him better than aaron and i do!)

though the house is empty of wassells now, i keep finding little wassell treasures hidden in dark corners (like eli's red underwear hanging from my bookshelf). wassells, we miss you!


lots more wasselling pictures here. also a video of the driftwood raft adventure here.

shake it (a movie)

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wherein noah has a dance party with his godmother, jessica.

pirate disaster (a movie)

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benny and eli are taken captive by rogue pirate dads on a shaky raft off lopez island.

boat launch

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this weekend aaron launched the boat he's been working on for nearly two years now... and it floated! (not that i thought it wouldn't...) it was a very exciting day. the boat is beautiful and looks so at home in the water, and aaron looks so at home on the boat. soon he will have the rigging up and the motor in, and we'll figure out how to sail as a family.

and there will be an official launch party later in the summer, with a boat blessing, a champagne bottle smashed on the bow, and the revealing of her name. details to come! (more pictures here.)