Seven (28.5) Months!

It's that time again - another month, another photo session! I miss the days of the cooperative kids, we have progressed into full on uncooperative this month. So I figured I would give you all a taste of the hilariousness of trying to get a toddler to tolerate a photo shoot.

I'll start with the best one of the two of them that was captured. Perfect, right?? 

Not so much, but it certainly captures the two of them pretty well. Henry is sucking on those fingers about 80% of the time and Thomas is in 'fine' form when the camera is aimed at him 90% of the time...

Thomas is done with the sticker, thank you very much! In my head, Henry is saying "Bro! Leave the sticker on! She's going to be all upset if we don't just sit here for a few pictures. We can do this!"

Except they can't...

Well to be fair, one of them can. Look at that happy baby - sticker and all!

He even got all GQ with his poses! This boy is in a stage where he loooooooves the camera! Or maybe he just loves his mommy who is hiding behind the camera - either way, I'll take it!

Then we went down to the floor so he could show off how well he is doing holding his head up. Look at that neck control!

Thomas wanted to join in the fun on the floor. As a side note - look at all those teeth! He is finally catching up to every other kid his age on tooth count.

I tried to persuade him to get back in the chair for "just a few more photos". He instead decided to stand on me. 

Finally got him in the chair, but only because he wants to read his alphabet safari book.

No, he will not put it down. Yes, he will hide behind it.

Then he decided to hide under the chair cushion when he decided he was done reading and I tried again to get him to sit in the chair. 

I even tried to compromise on standing in the chair. While he was fine with standing there, no smiles were forth coming...

"Maybe if I fold in half, she'll leave me alone..."

Finally - a smile! I can't even remember what combination of cajoling or silly faces worked in the end, but I somehow got him to smile. Totally worth it. There isn't much I wouldn't do to see my little guys smiling at me. :)

(You probably noticed that I still lost the battle on the sticker. Oh well, maybe I can figure out a way to photoshop it in!)

Zebra Cake

Sometimes I will find a recipe and think how much I want to try it. How it's quite possibly the coolest recipe I've ever seen in a particular genre. And then I forget all about it!

In my defense, I was this easily distracted before kids... 

Which brings us to this Zebra Bundt Cake. I actually found & fell in love with this cake recipe less than a month before Thomas was born. So I can guess why I never got around to it...

The other day I was scrolling through old notes on my phone - the majority of which are entitled "Pies:", "Donuts:", "Cupcakes:" or "Bundt Cakes:"! I figured a Bundt Cake would be a pretty easy, but fun cake to make while I was in the baking mood. But unlike the other notes which had links to multiple options, the Zebra was the lone Bundt Cake.

Well, why not?? It was a little more complicated than a normal bundt cake. And my batter was a little thicker than it was supposed to be - nothing some beating on the counter wouldn't fix. I can neither confirm nor deny how much chocolate glaze I ended up eating.

In the end it was a fun and tasty cake that my coworkers helped me devour - there's no way I could / should eat an entire Bundt cake. Just don't refer to it as marbled - as if it was that easy!

; )

Plane Power

I have no idea when exactly Matt discovered the Kickstarter campaign for a paper airplane motor controlled by an iPhone, but it’s been quite a while. Of course, he contributed to it - as did a ton of other people. The guy ended up with a ton more investment than he requested. Due to this and some manufacturing hiccups, Matt just got his in the mail today! There were already people selling theirs on ebay while we were still waiting. 

But waiting time aside, Matt loves it! He got a deluxe package with two steerable motors, one non-steerable motor and a boat that propels itself around in the bath tub. Unfortunately for Matt, he had to charge them all up before he could play with them - poor guy!

In the mean time, Matt’s dad and Thomas got to work on putting the boat and pull motor together. It was a bit of origami to get it to work, but they eventually figured it out. And the boat is honoring the paper airplane motif by being technically paper, but it’s Tyvek paper so it won’t disintegrate in the water.

Once they were charged up, Matt tested out his new toys. He has learned many lessons from flying things in the house (*cough* 10 different helicopters *cough*), so he was smart enough to cover the TV with a blanket before letting loose. The dogs also have learned their lessons and quickly hid upstairs in the bedroom.

Thomas didn’t hide in the bedroom, but he did sit on the chair out of the way and tried to avoid getting too close to the action. Smart boy! He also is surrounded by the pieces needed to complete his boat. He was more interested in playing with them than letting his pawpaw install them.

But the best part of the night… I didn’t have to cook! Matt had been mentioning to his mom about how she cooked pork chops for them growing up and that he hadn’t been able to figure out the trick. So she surprised him (and me) with a pork chop dinner. It is so nice to be able to play with the kids in the evening and not stress about cooking - best present!

And for the record, the trick is to use water and flour to coat the pork chops. So simple I would have probably never figured it out. And they were quite tasty - I might give it a try some day for Matt, but I make no guarantees they will be as good. :)

That *Is* The Moon

I’ve been reading up on moon photography since we have so many long nights coming up this winter. I thought it might be fun to try and get some moon and star photos. I haven’t gotten to practice any of the tips yet since it’s been summer, but it’s finally starting to get really dark at night.

Especially if your youngest wakes you up at 3 in the morning! I just happened to go downstairs after getting him back to sleep and saw this awesomely big and bright moon! I couldn’t remember most of the photo tips, but I did remember I needed my tripod.  

I gave it the old college try, but it didn’t turn out quite as nice as I had hoped. It’s just a tad out of focus, which I am blaming on the fact I was half asleep at 3 am. But you can see the craters and shadows on the moon surface, so I think with a little practice I can do better than this. Stay tuned!

Left Behind...

The downside with “watching” a well is that it is very similar to babysitting. At some points in the drilling, you have to be “on-call” to decided when the well should stop drilling for a casing point. Unfortunately the joke amongst geologists that casing point always needs to be called in the middle of the night, weekends and holidays is not an exaggeration. 

The first one probably didn’t need as close of an eye as I put on it, but since it was my first well, I didn’t want to mess it up. So our weekend plans turned into Matt and his parents being on their own without their fabulous tour guide - ha!

Matt decided to take them North to Talkeetna via Hatcher Pass. We sent them to Denali earlier in the week on the train and they had a quick stop in Talkeetna. It wasn’t a long enough stop to get off the train, but they both thought the town looked cute. So back north it was!

The weekend was a bit overcast, but a little blue sky managed to peek through the clouds. You can see that fall is in full swing up here, the leaves have gone yellow on most of the trees. One good windstorm and most of these leaves will be gone - boo!

The obligatory Talkeetna sign photo! It’s so hard to get photos of my mother-in-law because she always hides behind her cute grandkids. But I had a specific request to get a photo of the parents from Matt’s sister, so he managed to convince them to both pose. Of course, a grandkid still ended up in a few of the photos… :)

Thomas also wanted to pose with his own sign. Unfortunately for him, he’s still a little small for the particular one he chose!

He did manage to find this old snowmobile though! Like I said - this boy loves machinery! Matt actually sent me a photo while they were there and I couldn’t figure out what it was… 

Matt is going to have to be in charge of machinery names. I’m trying to learn all the construction ones so I can point them out while driving, but I only really know dump truck, front end loader and bulldozers. I obviously need to study more!

And of course, my two boys were distracted by the float plane on the way out of town. Most of the flight seeing tours of Denali take off from Talkeetna, so there are a ton of planes. But this bright red one sitting on the lake obviously caught their eye. I have to say, the hubby is becoming quite the photographer! :)

Spud Party

I’ve been a geologist for about 10 years now and I’ve never been the person in charge of watching a well. I’ve planned wells and worked fields where wells are being drilled, but never been in charge of saying “stop here and run casing!”. Luckily, my boss is all about expanding his employee’s skills sets, so he asked me to watch the next well in our field. I happily accepted with the understanding that I was scheduled for training in Houston at the end of the month and didn’t really want to miss it. No big deal and suddenly I was the geologist on the well. Woo!

Back when I worked production, the old guys had a tradition when they had a well about to start. Starting a well is known as “spudding”, so they would go get spuds on spud day. I felt like this was an honorable tradition, so we had our own spud party for dinner that night. I doubt anyone else was as excited about the potatoes as I was, but they were good sports anyhow.

Also new this week was the doorway bouncer! Well new to Henry - it was a hand-me-down from a co-worker to Thomas. Thomas used it a few times, but he wasn’t in love with it. Thomas loved to stand up when he was about 2 months old, so he just used it to help him stand without our help.

Henry just started trying to stand up recently, so it’s still a bit of a novelty for him. But the real excitement was when he realized he could bounce. Apparently this kid looooooooves bouncing! Thomas thought the bouncing was exciting as well and started running circles around his brother. Ha - who knew a bouncer could inspire such excitement?

Happy Birthday Mom!

One of the downsides of being so far away is that it is hard to celebrate everything like you would really want to - like a parent’s birthday. I decided to try and surprise mom with a Skype session for her birthday. But it had to feel like a party on our end, so I went on a cupcake quest during my lunch break. 

For the record, I don’t especially like buying cupcakes. I think they are super easy to make, less delicious when I buy them and waaaaay overpriced. But when you make these decisions the same morning you want to skype, sometimes you just have to sacrifice your morals and go buy $3 cupcakes. 

At least this time they tasted as good as they looked! 

Skype time! Nonni answered the video call and started laughing. She seemed to think we were a little silly, but also seemed pretty excited about the fuss. She was less excited she didn’t get a cupcake, but I promised to make it up to her during my trip to Texas later this month. 

Of course we couldn’t get Thomas to wear a party hat. Though he seemed to think his choo-choo needed one. Henry, easy going as ever, didn’t seem to mind his at all. 

Family time in the digital age! Nonni loves Skype sessions with her grand-babies . We don’t get to do them as much as I would like, but Thomas is at an age where attention span is an issue. When he sees the Skype icon on my iPad, he always asks “Call Nonni??”. 

As soon as she is on the line, he runs away. Toddlers…

Once he’s older, he’ll be able to call her whenever he feels like it on his own. I bet my mom can’t wait for that day. Until then, I try to provide entertainment or contain Thomas to make his attention last as long as possible. (Just be patient Nonni, it will get better!)

Even worse than buying cupcakes she couldn’t eat, we opened a package *she* sent to *us* on *her* birthday. Worst daughters ever, huh? She really crammed the flat rate box full on this one, so the Tastyakes may have taken a bit of a beating. Ha - look at that poor smashed Butterscotch Krimpet! It was, of course, still delicious. :)

Happy Birthday Mom, we miss you bunches!

Seward SeaLife Center

Matt wasn’t with us on our last visit to the center, so he didn’t get to experience Thomas’ obsession with the boat. As soon as we got our tickets, Thomas raced toward the stairs and ran straight to the boat - Matt has no clue where he was going, but dutifully followed along. 

This boy loves his boat! We did manage to drag him away from it without spending an hour there, which I consider to be progress.

He usually runs by the entire front part of the center (once he is done with the boat). This time he seemed to notice the wall of numbers that correspond to an audio segment on the handset. He, of course, thought it was a remote and was trying to turn things on with it. I did manage to get a audio clip playing and he held it up to his ear to listen. To Thomas? Booooooring! 

That was the end of that…

We bought Thomas seal “art” when we visited Brittney & Duncan in Alaska two years ago. It was too big to safely pack in our luggage, so it stayed in Alaska until Brittney travelled down to Texas. And a few months later it was back! We decided that Henry needed seal art for his room as well, so we grabbed another painting while we were there this time. Both of the paintings were done by Tongass. I can’t really tell the seals apart, so I am assuming this is Tongass thanking us for supporting his creativity. :)

The sea lions are much easier to tell apart, because there are a few. This is Woody, he looks especially proud here because his little baby is doing well and actually starting to swim around in the big tank. Any parent knows what a sense of pride you have in your offspring when they manage such big development milestones!

Thomas checking out the octopus sculpture made from trash pulled out of the harbor and bay. I think it’s a really neat sculpture, but the little guy usually runs right by it. This time he stopped to (briefly) check it out. A connoisseur of the arts or just entranced by bright colors? Hard to say!

Henry, as usual, was missing most of the fun being stuck in his car seat. He didn’t really seem to mind though, he was as happy as his always is!

I wanted to enjoy the view off the back deck of the center for a little while, but Thomas kept running back inside. So I decided it was the perfect place for a snack break. We all got to enjoy some sun and Thomas was happy to sit there and finish his fruit pouch. Win-win!

Another new activity - Thomas noticed the chalk board at the end. I think you are supposed to write how you will help maintain the sea and marine life health, but most people just doodle or write their names. I managed to find a piece of chalk big enough for tiny hands and Thomas happily contributed a doodle to the board.

We’ve never done the penny thing before, even though I loved making them as a kid. I figured he had behaved so well, why not let him make one??

Mistake!!!

He was super into it, but he didn’t want any help - standard toddler phase we are going through right now. But it gets a little hard to turn once you get to the penny smashing part. I kept trying to help and he kept yelling at me to go away. We somehow managed to get through the penny by me turning it when he let go of the wheel to shoo me away. 

Somehow we ended up decided to do it again for a second penny… Do we not learn??

I think Matt ended up carting him off once it got to the hard part and I spun through it fast enough that we didn’t hit full toddler meltdown. Crisis *mostly* averted.

(And as I was uploading this photo I realized it looks a lot like the boat wheel - maybe he thought he was steering a boat and we were all trying to send him off course??)

Seward Sailing Trip

Another weekend full of excitement - I planned a (hopefully) fun filled trip down to Seward! Matt thought the whale trip we did earlier this year would be fun with his parents. Of course, the whales aren’t migrating this time of year, but I figured there would be enough sea life to be entertaining. 

Thomas seemed pretty excited about being back in his favorite sea side town. It seems like we always find something new and exciting when we visit. We found this otter bench by the tour check-in (after I went to the wrong place the first time - whoops!). Thomas was pretty excited that Iet him crawl up on the otter - though I don’t think he even noticed it was an otter. 

But he was more excited about the boats! This guy loves transportation - if it’s a train, plane, car or boat, he has to make sure and tell us. In fact his current favorite phrase is “Boat on the water!” - it’s mostly used in his tub with his toy boat, but here were a ton of real boats on the water. Cue toddler excitement!

We finally got boarded and headed off on the tour. Luckily it was a nice day for cruising around the harbor. Well for most of us… Seems like no matter how calm I think it is, I still manage to feel sea sick. (Matt’s dream vacation of sailing around to small islands may not include me. There’s some joke in there about his dream vacation being alone…)

In any case, I felt better when I was up on deck, so luckily it was nice enough to hang out there as much as I wanted.

Thomas is looking for the whales he’s heard so much about, but didn’t see much of last time. Unlike the previous boat, this one had railings that were made so that small kiddos could wander around the top deck without the fear of slipping through the railing. Wander might be a bit generous, we still were right behind his every step…

The first part of the cruise felt super boring compared to the last one when we saw whales right in the Seward harbor. They served lunch pretty quickly, but then we were just cruising and cruising with no stops to see things. Turns out it was intentional - one of the cruises had spotted Killer Whales out near the bay and the captain was trying to get us there before the pod took off.

And he succeeded - the whales hung out long enough for us to get close and see them. One guy even decided to wave hello to our boat!

I took *so* many photos of the whales playing. They kept getting closer and more exciting, so I kept taking more. They ended up getting really close to the boat for us. One of them even jumped up in the air and splashed back down, but of course I didn’t get a photo of that. It was still pretty exciting to see though. 

Henry wanted to know what all the fuss was - poor guy misses all the excitement being stuck in his car seat. 

After the orcas finally got tired of showing off for us, we cruised back across the open part of the bay (where I decided maybe some ginger ale might be in order…) to start our journey back. Although the big Humpback whale migration was over for the year, apparently this little guy didn’t get the memo and was still hanging out. Lucky for us! 

I know this isn't a great photo - which I usually don’t include, but I wanted to show how close the little guy got. He was diving off in the distance, then kept getting closer and closer to our boat. He apparently saw our boat, dove under and surfaced right on the other side - look how close he is! So a photo of a whale’s back may not be thrilling, but seeing him pop up and spray water everywhere was the highlight of the trip for me!

I didn’t notice this block of buildings last time, but the captain pointed them out for us. These are a military outpost, circa WWII, which has quite literally gone to the birds. These buildings were built as a look-out and are on the top of a cliff on an island at the edge of the bay. That would not be my first choice of outpost - you know those things were super cold and damp. No fun!

I don’t think the sea lions ever move. They were all crammed up on this rock sunning themselves last time we were on a boat tour… :)

Matt’s mom had a list of things she wanted to see on this trip and an Eagle was pretty high on the list. The two of us were out on deck and I was telling her that we saw one in about the same location last time. She was sure they were all somewhere else for the day, but I managed to spot one hanging out in a tree - those white heads are pretty easy to see once you know what to look for. Check one off the list! (Whales may have been on the list too - so at least two checks!)

Thomas did a great job on the boat. He fell asleep on his Grannie for a little while, but it was nowhere near his usual nap length. So I was pretty impressed that we were only about 15 minutes away from the harbor before we had to pull out the iPad (also known as the last line of defense in toddler meltdowns!)

On the walk back to the car we passed by a guy who was the epitome of a hipster playing a violin for tips. Thomas paused to watch him, not surprising since Lindsey Stirling is a favorite of ours to watch on youtube. Anyhow, Matt gave him a dollar to put in the guy’s violin case, but Thomas had no clue what we wanted him to do. I think most of the people there were as entertained by Thomas and his slow-as-molasses delivery as they were with the guy making music!

All in all, a great day in Alaska - you just can’t beat the sunny summer days! And the fun wildlife certainly doesn’t hurt!

Under Attack!

There are a few toys that I honestly think Matt likes more than Thomas does. Case in point - the giant bag of balls he bought for "Thomas" at Target last year. I think it was right after Christmas and these bags of balls made for those tiny ball pits they sell that time of year. We don't have a ball pit, but 100 balls for $4 seemed like a steal. 

Today, the two of them were having such fun putting the balls in a tube and launching them up in the air. The giggling was so cute! And since the balls are so bright, I thought it might make for some cute photos. 

As an aside - if you noticed his outfit looks a little weird, it's not out fault. We sent him to school in a normal outfit and he smeared spaghetti sauce all over his shirt. And since he had done the same thing with chicken & dumplings earlier this week, he didn't have a spare shirt. He did, however, have his swim suit top... 

Anyhow, back to the cuteness... As soon as I got over there to take photos, I became a target. And while Thomas wasn't entirely sure Dada should be launching things at his momma, he still kept supplying the tube with new ones. 

See what I have to put up with? And it's only the two of them! Just wait until Henry gets old enough to be in the mix as well...

I'm doomed.

I couldn't really get mad though - they were both having a great time launching the balls across the room. And they are soft enough it didn't hurt too much...

Although their relative "softness" made them an easy target for a big, black lab that happens to be obsessed with balls. She's probably taken out about half of them - they can't even stand up to a gentle grab (not that she is all that gentle!). Thomas gets so upset when she grabs one and I hear him yelling "my ball! my ball!" from across the house... Poor guy!

On an unrelated note, the days are getting shorter again. The past few days have been cloudy, so it's even been dark on my drive in to work... Boo! The only upside is the sunsets are back and we can see our volcano again! 

Hello Mt. Redoubt - we missed you!

Of course later I was telling Matt the volcano was out and noticed something that I hadn't seen before. What was that thing?? So I went and grabbed the binoculars and saw it was the sun* setting! How cool!

I ran and got the camera to see if I could get a photo of it since it was getting pretty dark - and I managed to get a pretty clear one! There was a little bit of monkeying around to get the photo true to what I saw since I was shooting pretty late in the day with a long lens (gotta love Lightroom!).

*Ok, I have to be honest. I really, really thought it was the moon! Then I was trying a iPhone photo through the binoculars (because I read online that was a thing) and by the time I had figured how to line the phone up, the "moon" was half gone. I couldn't figure out why the moon was disappearing so soon?

And that's when it occurred to me that the sun was the more likely astronomical body to be disappearing at 'sun'set. I have no problem blaming this on a lack of sleep - it's been a long week. But the photo was still awesome - moon or sun! :)

Haha - and it just occurred to me that I should have told Matt "That's no moon..." when I realized my mistake. Why can I never think of these clever things at the right moment?? Argh!