A walk in the woods

Yesterday, Karen had a "Women's Retreat" at church. It was all about how chocolate is a metaphor for Jesus. Or how chocolate is a metaphor for religion. Or how chocolate is a metaphor for "I want chocolate."

Anyways, Steven and I took a walk in the woods late that morning. It was still damp, having rained since the night before Halloween and only stopping that morning.

Steven met his first earthworm.

C'mon Dad, hurry up!

Steven looking at a dog we met. I missed the dog!

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood...

Halloween Eve!

Halloween in Michigan was chilly and damp. So we did not celebrate.

On Halloween.

Our church had a "Trunk or Treat" event on Wednesday, and so the whole family dressed up for that occasion.

A platypus?

Perry the Platypus? 

Clearly, Mommy went as Perry the Platypus. I was Dr. Heinz Doofenschmerz. I have no picture of myself. Someone else will have to supply it. Both Perry and Heinz are characters on the popular Disney show Phineas & Ferb.

Charlie Brown and Snoopy

Big hug for a little puppy

Obviously, it wouldn't be Halloween (or Halloween Eve, as the case may be) without Charlie Brown. If you go back to the pictures from Santa Rosa, there was a shirt purchased for this reason. It was too small by Halloween, so Mommy made this shirt. Turned out pretty nice.

However, given the recent significant increase in hair, and the ever-present blanket, a Linus Van Pelt costume may have been equally appropriate.

Two of Charlie Brown's oldest friends, the Construction Worker and the Monkey, came to the Trunk or Treat as well. Once again, I have no good pictures of the three of them.

It was a pretty nice event. There was a climbing wall for the older kids, a bouncy castle, several games, and at least 20 trunks for the kids. It was very well attended.

Someone even got to sit in the fire engine that came to visit!

Incidentally, with the chilly, damp Halloween weather, our numbers were down. We bought 300 pieces of candy, based on the numbers from the last two years. By the end of the evening, we were giving away 3-4 pieces to each kid just to get rid of it!

Big Trip--Day 5 and beyond (at the cabin)

I didn't take many/any good pictures from our time at the cabin. I guess I was too busy relaxing and having a good time! But my mom took some great ones and sent them on, so I'm sharing them here...

Having fun on the porch the day we arrived

Exhausted on the way home from Fort Ross State Park

Playing in the Russian River

Picking and eating blackberries on a walk with Gram and Grandpa

Showing off his new Monte Rio Fire District t-shirt with Grandpa and Daddy

Family photo

Big Trip--Day 4 (Charles Schultz Museum)

(First off, sorry for the delay in these CA trip posts. I was originally waiting for some photos from Mike and then time got away from me...)

On Friday we drove north out of the city on our way up to my family's cabin in Sonoma County. We stopped in Santa Rosa for lunch at In-N-Out Burger (Steven's first trip, as well as Ron and Linda's) and a visit to the Charles Schultz Museum. Charles Schultz was born in Minneapolis and grew up in St. Paul, MN but moved to Santa Rosa in 1969 and lived there the rest of his life. His Minnesota roots are evident from the Ice Arena he established in Santa Rosa, which is across the street from the museum. In honor of our visit my mom got Steven a Charlie Brown shirt, which got several appreciative comments from museum staff and visitors.

Every Charlie Brown needs a Snoopy...

It is/was my intention to have Steven (my little no-quite-so-baldy-anymore) be Charlie Brown for Halloween. I say "was" because I tried the shirt on him again this morning and it barely fits! I am really hoping he won't grow much in the next couple of weeks so he can squeeze into it for Halloween!

Big Trip--Day 3 (Alcatraz)

On Thursday came the excursion around which our entire trip was oriented--visiting Alcatraz. Linda's uncle Ernie Lageson was a guard on Alcatraz during the 1940s, and he and his family lived on the island for several years. Linda's cousin Ernie Jr. was even the paperboy for the island. Ernie Jr. has written several books about Alcatraz, both historical and personal, and visits the island frequently for book signings and the like. Mike and I actually ran into him by chance when we visited the island two years ago and he happened to be there the same day for a book signing.

Linda had wanted to visit Alcatraz with Ernie as our guide, so we planned ahead and bought tickets about 6 weeks before the trip. A good thing, too, as when we arrived at the dock a sign stated that the next available ferry tickets were for a week from that date! My parents joined us for the day, as neither of them had ever been to Alcatraz, despite both being California natives. Neither Ron nor Linda had been before either. Ernie met us at the Alcatraz ferry landing and we all headed over.

Once on the island we hiked up the hill to the Cell House. Alcatraz is part of the National Park Service, and Ernie knows many of the park rangers from his frequent trips to the island. He used his connections to get us "backstage" to parts of the Cell House that are usually off-limits to the general public. We got to go upstairs to the hospital wing, to see where they housed injured, sick, and mentally ill inmates. Mike got quite a few pictures which he was kind enough to allow me to include here...

I managed to get a few shots of Steven walking around one of the cells, but he's not great at holding still for pictures!

I wish he'd shifted just an inch to his left so we could see his face!

After our time on the island, we drove across the Bay Bridge to Kensington, where we had lunch and spent the afternoon with Ernie and his wife Jeanne at their home. They had a large backyard where Mike and I spent some time letting Steven run around.

Big Trip--Day 2 (SF Zoo)

So Mike started blogging about our recent CA trip in the last post. I think in order to keep my sanity I'm going to blog about the trip in several posts. This will allow me to post a little at a time and won't give you all picture overload.

As Mike alluded to in the previous post, while Steven adjusted to his PDT bedtime within a day, it took him about 5 or 6 days to adjust to a PDT wake-up time. On Wednesday, the day after our arrival, he woke up at 4:15 and babbled on and off, waking and sleeping, until we finally let him get up at 5:00. Thank goodness I had been exhausted and gone to bed myself at 8:00 pm the night before, so I got a decent night's sleep despite of the early wake up call.

On Wednesday, our first full day in SF, we went to the San Francisco Zoo. Amazingly I did not take any pictures. I guess we were having too much fun! It is a great zoo and one of the best parts is that it's close to the ocean and therefore rather cool and, at least in the morning, cloudy. This means that the animals are actually out and active and not hiding under a rock or tree somewhere escaping the heat. Steven got to see his favorites, the giraffes. He also liked the gorillas, the rhinos, and the penguins.

That evening we met up with my good friend Kristin for dinner at the Presidio Social Club. Steven pulled out all the stops for Kristin and was quite the charmer all through dinner. He even gave her some good high-five goodbyes afterwards...

He was also very interested in her bracelet...

Big trip (Part I)

In days of yore (about two weeks ago), it came to pass that the Michigan branch of the Unruh family crossed the continent of North America to join Grandma and Grandpa Unruh, as well as Gram and Grandpa B in the Golden State where the sun sets. Thus, Karen and Mike packed light, and loaded up the jalopy with all of Steven's earthly possessions. They crossed the mighty stream of Traffic, and ended up at the airport. And then the fun began...

Actually, it was a pretty smooth trip, all things considered. But we did look like the Beverly Hillbillies until the bags were checked. Sorry, but nobody took a picture. So you'll have to imagine the car seat strapped to the large suitcase. Quite a sight, I assure you.

We had a layover in MSP that lasted roughly 4 hours (our flight to MSP was bumped 30 minutes earlier, and we arrived earlier than that). Thankfully, MSP is about the most kid-friendly airport in existence.

Steven got to meet Snoopy (this becomes important for reasons you will see in a couple of posts):

Happiness is a warm puppy [that is three times as tall as you]

Then, Steven got to play in the play area at Concourse C:

Roger, Roger. What's your vector, Victor?

That's a 10-4, little buddy. What's your 20?

This was followed by a long flight to the Paris of the West. Steven slept while we taxied, which gave him about an hour's sleep, but was awake the entire flight. Needless to say, his father did not get any sleep or the chance to read his book during the flight. We tried to put him to bed that night on PDT, but he still woke up at EDT. D'oh!

More to come...

Anyone for stickball?

Found items at the park: a golf ball and a large stick

Catching up

I knew I hadn't posted in a while, but I didn't realize it had been over two months! Steven has grown a lot in that time, both physically and developmentally. He had his most recent pediatric appointment last Friday and he was 33" and 26#4oz, which is the 96%ile for length and the 89%ile for weight. This means he's about as big as the average (50%ile) 20 month old. But he still has the same amount of hair as most newborns. We're not complaining because it's easy to clean and he's a cute baldy. He's SLOWLY but surely getting more hair all the time, and it looks as if it will be blond or maybe a bit strawberry blond.

Mike's parents came to visit the second week of July, and they got to witness the onset of Steven's new language abilities. Before he would occasionally repeat words we said (only once, though!) and had a few words (Daddy, stairs, dog) that he would say regularly. But now he is repeating and retaining new words almost every day and has a much larger number in regular rotation. The most common (and useful) word he uses is "up", but his favorite word is "car", which applies to pretty much everything with wheels, including trucks, vans, and the toy turtle at the library. I can tell that once he gets the hang of this he's just going to take off, because he already understands so much.

If you couldn't guess from his weight, he's a very good eater. He'll eat just about anything we put in front of him. Tonight I made Indian food and he ate every bit of the chicken curry and the saag paneer. We're hoping he keeps this up, since we want him to be an adventurous eater. Now that he's got more teeth we're willing to let him try more things. He had corn on the cob for the first time on the 4th of July. He didn't quite get the idea the first time, trying to stick the end in his mouth, but he figured it out when we had it again a few days later. It was a big hit.

As with most of the Midwest, we had a bit of a belated summer, so outdoor activities were few and far between until late May. But Steven loves being outside and we try to spend at least an hour or two everyday playing outside, either at the house or at the park.

Checking out the landscaping in the front yard

He loves playing with the rocks under the deck out back.

The Hobby Farm at the zoo. The goats are EXTREMELY patient.

A budding naturalist? Examining trees at the park.

More rocks from the backyard

In early June my good friend and college roommate Katie came to visit for a few days, and we took the opportunity to go out to Lake Michigan for the first time this year. It was a bit chilly for June, but we had a good time. Steven loved playing with the sand and our soda bottles. We took him down near the water, but as soon as his feet hit the cold wet sand he refused to go any further and didn't even dip a toe in the lake.

You think you can keep me away from the soda bottles? Foolish parents.