If I were to rank our Family Values obviously love, communication, relationships with extended family and friends, respect and all those other good things would be listed but pretty high on the list, probably in the top 5 values, would be Food.  Obviously food is essential to life, but beyond that we really value good, high quality, delicious food.  Eating and making good meals brought J and I together when we were dating, and it’s something that we still enjoy doing.  Now it’s taking on extra importance since it’s not just for our enjoyment but it’s also nourishing and sustaining our children. 

We cook *all* *the* *time*.  Seriously, I spent most of my waking hours planning meals, making grocery lists, shopping for groceries, prepping ingredients, cooking food and washing dishes.  Did I mention that I also work in the food industry?  Even when I’m at work I’m thinking about food!  Oh yeah, and we eat a little bit.  Yes it’s a chore, but it’s something that we think is important.  Our children know where food comes from, and they will know how to prepare it for themselves. 

But it’s also fun.  Friday night is Pizza Night at our house.  Sometimes, depending on how harried the week has been, it’s pizza that we get delivered.  On our best nights, our favorite Fridays, we make our own pizza.  J makes the dough in advance, and the kids help him roll it out and put the toppings on.  The kids (especially Clare) feel very proud eating food that they prepared.  And we all enjoy doing a “project” together with delicious results. 

This summer we introduced the kids to Enchanted Forest.  Enchanted Forest is a little local theme park that was a favorite place of mine as a child.  We brought the kids there back in July and promptly went back two more times.  Clare especially loves it, she loves the characters and the kids-oriented activities (the shoe slide! the play! rabbit hole! the crooked house!).  Sammy loves the new things to explore and he’s fearless crawling through caves and through holes.  I love re-living my favorite activities as a kid with my children.  J… doesn’t love it.  But he likes the rides (the log ride and the bob sled ride) and he likes seeing the kids happy. 

Fortunately for everyone (if I do say so myself), I’ve been doing this travel planning thing for quite a while now and enjoy the challenge.  I booked us a night at a yurt at a campground in Newport (a three-hour drive from Portland) and three nights in a beach house in Bandon (an additional two hour drive).  We’re familiar with Newport, but we’ve never stayed in a yurt before.  I thought the kids would get a kick out of it.  I also wanted to go to the Oregon Coast Aquarium.  We haven’t ever really spent any time in Bandon, so it gave J and I a chance to explore a new part of the state.  Besides, who doesn’t love the beach? 

We arrived in Newport to a torrential rain storm (not pictured).  I was extremely grateful that we were yurt camping and not tent camping.  

The aquarium was a huge hit (even bigger than the yurt).  Sammy LOVES fish tanks so I knew that he would especially enjoy fish tank after fish tanks.  He did.  He spent all of three hours going from tank to tank to tank, and back to the first tank again, pointing and saying “fishy!”  I stayed with him and let him explore at his own speed.  He spent several long minutes watching the jelly fish, the kelp forest, the sea lions, and the sharks.  Clare, on the other hand, bounded around saying “I want to see sharks!  Now I want to see sea otters!  Where’s the octopus?”  J followed her around, trying to keep up with her energy and trying to impart a little bit of marine biology.

 

After the aquarium, it was onto Bandon.  We found Bandon to be worth the drive – it was so fun!  It has a lovely little bay front boardwalk/downtown, lovely beaches and nice people.  We rented a very comfortable little beach front house, which made getting to the beach really easy. 

 

We spent most of the time running on the beach – Clare and J running in and out of the waves, Sam running from sticks and rocks to throw, me running after whoever needed their shoes and socks carried or their hands brushed off or offering to catch them as they climbed things.  We drove to new beaches, explored a light house, and went for a short hike. 

There were some lovely moments like this too.  Ahhhhhh… vacation.
 

I’ll give away the ending of the Sam at 22 Months post – he still loves dinosaurs.  He really loves dinosaurs.  He loves the dinosaur exhibit at the Children’s Museum, he loves to carry around his toy dinosaurs, he loves to wear dinosaur clothes – he’s a bit obsessed.  They are his thing and we all know it.

Of course Sam also loves animals, namely cats, dogs and elephants.  He points them out in all of the books, on TV shows, and if we see cats and dogs when we’re out and about.  Interestingly though he doesn’t really like the elephants at the zoo.  In fact they scare him and we usually have to leave the exhibit quickly, or stand as far back from the elephants as we possibly can with Sammy clinging to me desperately while still staying within sight distance of Clare to keep her from jumping the fence to try to get in the exhibit. 

Sammy’s latest developments include more complex sentences.  He’s started to string together 3 and 4 word statements like “Mama all done shower” and “more cheese please.”  He speaks paragraphs and soliloquies (and, as Grandma described it, with “punctuation, capitalization, and exclamation points”) but we only understand a portion of it.  He, however, understands just about all of what is said around him.  I gave a brief quote from The Tigger Movie at the dinner table one day, and the kids had seen the movie the day before, and Sammy got very excited and started talking about “tigger! bounce! pooh! bounce! bounce!”  If I mention the apple tree or some plant in the back yard Sam perks up and starts yelling “outside! Backyard! Go outside!” 

Other words that he says over and over:
“No!”  – No means no, No means yes, No means maybe… and anything else.  It’s his default answer to every question.
“Uh-Huh” and “mmm-Hmmmm” – He doesn’t say yes, yep, or OK.
“Sammy turn!” – This usually means Let me do it/Give it here/Stop helping me and let me be independent already!

He’s started identifying the quantity of two.  I gave him two pieces of toast one day and he looked at them and said “two toasts!”  It came as a shock to me that he knew what “two” meant.  He doesn’t understand other quantities but he will recite his numbers – he’s particularly fond of “fo five six!” 

I’ve been talking about “going on our first family camping trip” for a few years now – and every summer the thought of dirty children, waking each other up all night in a tent, keeping Sammy from running into the campfire and bugs (not to mention sleeping on the ground) has made me put it off.  Clare’s school planned a camping trip for all of the families and staff this summer so we bit the bullet and signed up.  It was just an overnight about half an hour away, so it was pretty nice and easy.  We hauled out a tent that JP and Deb gave us a few years ago (a big six-man tent that I remember thinking “I can’t imagine needing that much tent” and now loved having all of the space for the kids’ gear) and loaded up on instant oatmeal and baby wipes. 

It was great!  When we showed up Clare got out of the car, looked around and said “Where is the camping?  When does it start?”  Well, this is it kid.  She quickly got into the swing of things.

We shared a campsite with our nannyshare partners and Clare ADORED spending two whole days playing with her bestie G.  The kids just played and played, running between camp sites to see their friends and teachers, digging in the dirt with sticks, finding bugs, swinging in the hammock and giggling non-stop. 

On Saturday afternoon we took a little hike down to the river and found a really lovely little beach.  It had a sandbar that went out 20 or so feet, which was perfect for the kids.  They could “swim” and splash and J and I could wade along next to them.  Clare enjoyed it but Sammy particularly loved it.  He literally got down on his belly in the water and crawled in the river for twenty minutes.  I think he was imitating the bigger kids swimming, but he may just have wanted to fully immerse himself.  Either way, I’ve never seen a toddler enjoy swimming so much.

Sammy spent most of his time on dry land grabbing rocks and running away from us.  I look forward to camping in the upcoming years when I don’t spend half of my time chasing after Sammy.  I think that next summer camping will be a more common family event for us.  Still, our first one has made for some good memories.

One of the highlights of July was the Blues Fest, complete with visits from Grandma T and Grandpa Dan, Pat, Dave and Terri. 

Of course, what makes a birthday party is the celebration of friends and family.  Because we had a huge farm at our disposal inviting tons of school and family friends just meant adding an extra deli tray or two.  All told I think we had 30 people, about 17 of them were kids.  Clare kept adding school friends to her invite list and I kept saying “OK, it’s your birthday.”  It was great to meet some of her little school buddies and their families, and also share a fun day with our usual friends/nannyshare folks/neighbors and families.

Ultimately the party was a success because Clare LOVED it.  She kept talking about the “bouncy house!” and “playing with C on the big slide!” and “the huge dogs!” and “eating the chocolate cake!” 



Does one of the “kids” in the bouncy house look a little big?  Yep, J couldn’t help himself.

Sammy’s already planning his next birthday!

Clare has made it her mission this summer to master the monkey bars.  She’s started small – with a bar here and there and has slowly, slowly worked her way across most of the monkey bars in town.  Sometimes she’ll get across once and then struggle and fall every time after that.  The video above was on her very first time making across the monkey bars several times in succession.  She was so very, very proud of herself.  I was too. 

Yesterday the kids and I met Debbie and Maddy at a park that we don’t usually go to.  We were at the tail end of a really big and exciting weekend and the kids were tired and punchy.  Clare went over to the monkey bars and started her usual swing across.  Well, these monkey bars were tricky.  Not only were they 6 feet high and very long, they had a raised section so that about 3/4 of the way through the monkey bars went up about 3 inches.  Those 3 inches are huge when you’re a small child swinging along and every single time Clare got to that part of the bars she would fall down.  Every single time she would push and grunt and get 3/4 of the way across and then not be able to reach the bars, yelp a little bit, sometimes cry out for my help, but usually just fall down onto either her feet or her bottom.  Six feet down, mind you.  She would complain, whine, exclaim in frustration, and then get up, brush off her pants, and start the process over again.  She probably did this exercise a dozen times, until her hands were to sore and tired to hang onto the bars.  She put her head on my shoulder and cried with frustration and defeat.  My girl, such perseverance.  As much as I complain about her single-mindedness, her stubborn refusal to let things go, and her obstinance and rigidity, I know (hope and pray) that it will serve her well in life.  She’ll set her goal and work until she can’t hold on a minute longer to achieve it. 

I told her that I had never been so proud of her.  That she was the toughest, strongest girl in the whole world.  That I was so very, very lucky to be her mama.  That next time she would do it, or the time after that.  That getting across wasn’t nearly as important as trying as hard as she could.  I told her that her effort was beautiful and that she will do whatever she wants to but it may take a little longer than she would want.  I told her all of this with tears in my eyes, holding her tight.  My girl.  The toughest, strongest girl in the world.

 Our sweet little Samuel John is in his 20th month now and just as hearty and active as ever.  He’s such a fun, active guy who is always-always busy, always-always doing something and almost-always smiling.  A few bullet points about our little dude:

• He’s speaking more and more and combining two words together into short sentences.  “Dada sleeping” “Dada shower” “Bye-bye Mama” “Clare drink” etc.  Grandma describes Sammy’s words as “declarations,” which is accurate since he usually speaks with loud statements.  He nods and shakes his head a lot instead of talking (already a man of few words) and lately has started saying “uh-huh” and “hmm-mmm” instead of “no” and “yes.”
• Today he put on a pair of dress-up glasses and then looked up at me and say “Mama glasses.”  He was telling me that he looked like me!
• He throws anything that he can put his hands on – especially balls, but it includes toys, rocks, food and anything else.  He throws things across a room, down the stairs and off the deck.  We try to redirect him but he can be pretty stubborn.
• We visited the dinosaur exhibit at the Children’s Museum a few weeks ago, which started a serious dinosaur obsession.  He has three little dinos and a big dino now that he totes around with him everywhere, roaring frequently. 
• He’s an independent little explorer.  If we’re on a hike or at a park I have to keep a close eye on Sammy.  He’ll just take off with his eyes on the horizon and not look back.  I’ve followed him to see how far he’ll go without turning around and finally, a quarter mile down the trail, I stopped him since I realized he didn’t plan on turning around.  Someday I won’t be surprised if we get an email from him saying “Greetings from Vietnam” when we thought he was on a trip to New York. 
• He continues to be incredibly sweet and loving, and shows a very soft spot for babies.  If he’s not toting a ferocious dinosaur, he’s gently carrying a baby doll.