Blueberry Pancakes.

(Some wanderings.)

We've been in Washington with my family for over a week now. Mike flew back to Houston on Sunday after a really great solid week-plus with us, and I've still got three weeks to go here with the boys. We are mostly off the grid while we're here, and I welcome that - but still feel the need to catch up and document our wanderings (just maybe in smaller, less overwhelming chunks - maybe that would be more manageable?). But seriously - I have two memory cards (16G & 8G!) full of photos and video from the last week alone (oh dear), and a computer that is already bursting with photos from the past several months. I need a personal assistant, a new system, or maybe just a few more hours in the day where my babies are still sleeping and I have overflowing energy with which I can be productive. The past few weeks (months? years?)  have been busy with all sort sof things, expected and unexpected. 

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I was telling Mike today about some of Quinn's comments from the day, and he reminded me that there's always a huge developmental leap while we're here. It's so fun to witness (because it always happens quickly). This afternoon, we were driving up to Greenbluff to purchase some fresh peaches and a pie for dinner. As we were winding up the hills through the fields, Quinn kept saying, We're going up the mountain!! We're going up the mountain!! 

(Texas is clearly quite flat.)

Earlier, Quinn had played in Grandma's backyard for hours and told me that he wants to Play in the sand all day (he ended up covered from head to toe, of course). He asked to go potty several times (a few successfully), refused to come inside for dinner (sand! play house! trampoline! grass without fire ants!) and only wanted stories and songs from Grandpa at bedtime. He asked several times to go back to the cabin and the beach (we're in town just for a day or so until we're back again), told me today that he loves cherries (this is absolutely not true) and asks for his cousins approximately every 97 seconds (Parker and Ellie are his favorites I think, but he generally loves anyone who gives him proper attention). He has been so, so happy here - and had enough fun playing several days that he actually asked to take a nap (play hard / sleep hard). 

West is sprouting more teeth, got his first haircut the other day (a Priest Lake tradition for our boys!), is chatty and happy, is growing more opinionated (and demanding - he always wants my phone) and has been mostly easy and flexible this trip. He is a sweet, happy baby and he really loves blueberries. It also turns out - thanks to my sister Elizabeth and my mama - that he loves ice cream (and isn't very happy when it is all gone). He's turning into a boy, and it's such a happy / sad thing.

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Coming home always makes me nostalgic. The other afternoon, Quinn fell asleep on my lap on the boat after an afternoon playing on the sandbar. I think about how some of my first memories were so similar - crawling into a cozy spot on our boat and falling asleep to the rhythmic sounds of the boat bouncing across the waves on the lake, feeling the warm wind on my face. I think about how vast the water and mountains felt when I was small, how every day brought a new and fantastic adventure (making bear houses with moss and sticks, endless sandcastles, excursions on small boats to islands that at the time seemed so very far away). I've spent 30 summers at Priest Lake and count myself so lucky, especially now with my own family.

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I was pregnant with Quinn during our 2010 trip. The following summer, he was the age that West is now, but we were packing up our lives in New York and moving to Texas, and things were chaotic (also, Quinn wouldn't sleep anywhere but in our arms for that entire week, thanks to some bad habits picked up in Europe after napping daily in the Ergo for a few weeks). The next summer, I was pregnant with West. This summer, we're doing so many of the same things with him at the cabin that we did with Quinn two years ago. I miss the days where I went to the cabin and read a dozen books during the week, but this is so much better. The other morning Quinn said, Mom! I heard the whistle! In my crib! I heard the whistle! Getting woken up by sunshine and squirrels every morning is never a bad thing.

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So, West loves blueberry pancakes. This video is from a few months ago now, when he was really diving in to the whole food thing. It's fairly inconsequentional, except that it really wasn't - because we were enjoying this really great, happy morning as a family out on the back porch together, just eating breakfast.

Now, he's eating ice cream and eating whatever else I put in front of him (although he no longer loves bananas) and it's almost August.

So many changes so quickly with these two boys.