5 months!

Our little girl is so big!

This month is making us realize she soon won't be a baby anymore! She can now sit on your hip supporting herself.  Her favorite handles unfortunately are Crystal's hair and Mac's lower lip. Painful.

Elliot has taken a hiatus from rolling.  She had a few rolls back in August but none since.   She goes to her sides all the time and now likes doing push ups to see the world.  We aren't worried, rolling will happen in time. It seems like she starts to roll and then get distracted by her toes and forgets to finish the roll.

She is getting more and more vocal.  Some days she is silent and other days she is babbling up a storm! With a little optimistic interpretation by loving parents - we swear that she is talking to us.

Her favorite toy by far is her toes!  She is constantly leaning over from sitting or standing to find her toes!  I now understand more the "happy baby" yoga pose.  Elli can kinda sit....she can lean forward on her hands and not fall over.  Most of the time this is motivated by.... You guessed it, her toes!  The first time she did this was in the back of our campervan on our road trip.

We had one miraculous night of eleven hours of sleep straight!  Unfortunately that was only one night.  It has been very variable this month.

This month it feels like she became a real person with opinions and all.  She is definitely recognizing mom and dad.  She even puts her arms out to be picked up!  I tried to put a nuk in her mouth the other day and she literally turned her head and spit it out, then slammed her mouth shut tight... Ok then!

Elli  definitely has an interest in food!  She grabs for everything on the table.  At dinner in the airport I warned Mac that she had her eye on his glass of water....5 minutes later, said glass of water got pulled onto his lap 😳.  There is nothing like flying with a wet butt!


Elli likes....
- her toes!
-hiking!
-looking at and touching leaves
- her music together CD
-petting the dogs


Elli dislikes
-when someone leaves the room
-going to sleep

New developments
-sitting up in a tripod position
-passing objects back and forth
- reaching for food

I know, I know, too many pictures...but I just couldn't pick!

Take this dang bow off my head!  I don't care that I am bald!

Toes are the best thing ever!

Fingers are pretty good too.

Campervan road trip 2015!

We are back home safe and sound.  What an amazing whirl wind of a vacation!  I will let Mac tell the details of this one!

Day 1: We had done most of our packing the night before. We left to pick up the van from the Portland White House at 9am. The van we got was a silver VW bus, named John Day. Each of the vans had a special Oregon name associated with them. It was really quite big and initially a challenge to drive. We headed back home with the van and loaded up our stuff. The van came packed with all the camping gear that you could want for a road trip. They had camp chairs, a rolling table, pots and pans, a Coleman stove, a cooler as well as a five gallon jug for carrying water. The back seat folded down into a queen sized bed and they provided a down comforter, sheets and pillows. The top of the van popped up into a second mattress,  it we generally just used this area as an attic for storing gear while at camp. 

After we loaded the car and left Langdon with the dogs, we were off! The objective of the first day was Jedidiah Smith state park, part of Redwoods State and National parks (they manage their forests as one unit).  It was a long dive, but we got into camp in plenty of time. Dinner was stir fry and Elliot had her first night camping!!  There was only a short bit of screaming that was mitigated by her "music together" CD. Like Raffi for the millenials - "hello everybody, so glad to see you, hello everybody....... Etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc etc".

Mac and Elliot in camp

Day 2: Woke up to a breakfast of eggs and sausage. Broke camp and drove through redwoods national park. Stopped for a 3 mile hike through the redwoods and saw an elk!  Apparently Return of the Jedi was filmed in Redwoods and you could easily imagine Ewoks in those trees. Camped at Burlington campground of Humbolt state park, next to a HUGE redwoods stump from logging in the early part of the century.

Elli loved playing while mom and dad set up or took down camp.

Day 3: A nice stroll through a grove of old growth redwoods capped a relaxing morning. We drove the Avenue of the Giants, a section of scenic highway surrounded by old growth trees. Highlight was driving the van through a tree!! Mac thought this was super fun - Elliot was not impressed. They charged a hefty toll of $6 for the privilege!  We then hauled butt to San Francisco to have dinner with Phillipe and Carolyn. They were kind enough to host us on their boat and the quiche was delicious. We then drove through the night, arriving at a forest service campground on the outskirts of Yosemite at midnight.  We were wide awake and decided it was easiest to make this not so scenic drive with a sleeping baby.

Biggest tree stump ever!

Day 4: Oatmeal for breakfast and then into Yosemite. That place is amazing!!! The granite walls, El Capitan and Half Dome are not done justice in photos, even Ansel Adams. It's just amazing. Yosemite falls, however, was dry. We took a little day hike around the valley and got some great views. Camped in the valley and the stars were beautiful. Dinner was farro wheat salad with fire roasted (not burned) steak, craisins, goat cheese and walnuts. 

Day 5: We woke up early to break camp and catch an 8:30 am shuttle to glacier point. After some stunning views of the valley - we hiked up sentinel dome and returned to the valley via the panorama trail. 11.5 miles overall, about 3/4 downhill. Passed at least 3 running waterfalls, including hiking down a steep set of stairs next to Vernal falls. Many people commented on our willingness to bring a baby on such a long hike. Elliot, however, seemed to love it - she was all smiles!!!  We decided those people were chicken. Since we got back to the car as the sun was setting - we decided to take showers and made camp in the dark.  This was Elli's first shower and she is a slippery little bugger and was not a fan.  We will stick with baths for now!  Elliot sat unsupported for the first time in the back of the van while Crystal and Mac organized their bags.

Day 6: Up early for a drive out of Yosemite via Tioga pass - stopped along the way for a hike at Tolumne Meadows. This is apparently where John Muir had the idea for a national park, and it is easy to see why. High Sierra meadows, bathed in Sunlight, surrounded bu huge snow capped peaks. Mac promised Elliot a father / daughter backcountry trip when she was old enough (4? 5? - that seems safe). The drive out the east gate of Yosemite is spectacular!  We descended into a broad dry valley and eventually into Death Valley. The amount of nothing east of the Sierras is really impressive with Mt Whitney to your west. We set Death Valley as our destination and camped that night at Furnace Creek - negative 198 feet elevation and 100*F at 8pm (it was, unsurprisingly, a dry heat). 

It is hard to over emphasize the nothingness that is Death Valley. Huge tracts of land with only a single road. Very beautiful, but in a different, more menacing way.  We kept the back door of the van open and the stars were the best we had ever seen. We fell asleep to coyote songs. It's also stupid hot. Like indescribably, amazingly hot.  Luckily it cooled down to 70's and became more comfortable.  In hind site we should have made a fire anyways because of the knats.

Day 7: They say to be done hiking in Death Valley NP by 10am. That is generous. The pre dawn hours were actually almost pleasant. Then the sun rose. We visited an old borax mine and hiked <0.5 miles. That was enough for us!  It was scorching hot. A flash flood a few days before closed bad water basin and so we stopped at an overlook of the badlands before heading out. This was a long day of driving. We stopped in Las Vegas (Vegas baby!!) for tacos and ice cream - quite the power lunch. We then pushed through to Grand Canyon. We didn't have any camping reservations and both the Mather and Desert view campgrounds were full.  This actually worked out really well.  Crystal had heard of a little forest road that was technically outside of the park, but came off the main road in the national park and entered into forest service land.  So we set out on Desert view road looking for this tiny forest service road.  We luckily found it before sundown.  You enter on the road with huge no camping signs, then 1/4 mile down the road is Forest Service land and dispersed camping was allowed.  Right off the main road and only a ten minute drive from the visitors center!  This was great because we had a fire ring and no one near us. We were more private and closer that some of the folks at the official NP campsite!  Dinner was a quiet affair and the stars were, again, outstanding.

Day 8: Up early again with our little Elli bean. The best part of this campsite was that there was an 80 foot fire tower right next to us and we started the day off with a birds eye view of Inyo national forest and the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. If you go to Grand Canyon - ask us, this site is worth camping at.  We then hiked a 2.5 mile section of the rim trail followed by the Bright Angel trail to the 1.5 mile rest house.  It was beautiful and the park service does a great job explaining the layers of rock and their relative ages. Drove that night to a forest service campground north of Sedona FS road 535. We were just able to catch the sunset over Oak Creek Canyon. Despite some difficulty finding a spot, we eventually found a great one and other than some noisy neighbors this was a beautiful campsite and the site of one of the best campfires of the trip. 

Day 9: Up at 5:30 to drive into Sedona and catch the sunrise of the red rocks. This was beautiful, tranquil and not to be missed. The sun catches these beautiful red rock formations and slowly lights them up. Awesome. A short hike followed by breakfast and then a final 2 hour drive into Phoenix. 1800 miles later - we made it!  Crystal booked a cabana at a swanky hotel and we finished the trip taking Elli swimming and eating fancy tacos. We made some new friends at the pool who, despite our protests, bought us a Bloody Mary, there were a blast to talk to and Elliot loved her new friends. Then off to the airport, with a baby and 200 pounds of luggage (maybe an exaggeration but it felt like it!) - this was a lot different than we were used to. We previously were the TSA savvy travelers and now we're the ones making a fuss, taking up the whole line and getting special treatment ( turns out - fussy babies mean you can cut the entire security line, pro travel trip!).

It was a great adventure, everyone is safe and Elliot has now visited 5 national parks. She made new friends along the way and touched lots of leaves (by far her favorite thing at this point). Crystal and Mac can sing every word of our baby songs CD and, strangely, it doesn't get old. We have continued appreciation for how vast this country is and a new desire to purchase a converted VW van - they are super slick for car camping and totally worth it for kids!

Adventure is out there!

The Cooks