365 Days & Counting!

Well, he isn't starting Kindergarten... but he has made it to day 365! I know it sounds very cliche, but I can hardly believe that it was only a year ago that we were in the hospital staring in amazement at our little guy!
We had such a fun, successful 1st birthday bash at our house with all of our local friends and family. Lots of eating, drinking, sidewalk chalk drawing, pumpkin painting, sandbox devastation, visiting and just all around fun! I baked the yummiest pumpkin cupcakes from scratch... but I think the most impressive edible treats were the cheeses that I cut into shapes using small cookie cutters. White ghosts and moons, and yellow pumpkins and owls:) Forest could have cared less about them, but everyone else liked them. He didn't plant his face into his little personal cake for the ideal photo-op; instead he daintily batted at the frosting with his finger, and tried small bits of it.
We just love this little guy so much! Happy Birthday Forest!!!

Summer!

Excuses and Re-cap

Well OK, here's the situation, I took the summer off for a 10 week vacation... (It sounds way better when I am singing like the Fresh Prince in my head)
Anyway, excuses are lame, but here is mine: I was super all over the blog thing during the school year last Spring because I used my lunch time at school to do all of my internet things. At school the internet is very fast, and I didn't have a little person grabbing at all of the cords connecting me to the world. So I pretty much took the summer off from any computer work that required that I sit here at the desk for more that a few minutes at a time.
I have a totally new teaching assignment this year, and do not always have a free lunch.. but I am going to try to carve out a little time at home here and there to actually keep up with this thing:)
We had a super fun summer! My mom, Woody, Forest and I flew to Washington for a few days in mid-July and had a great time with our family! We had lots of days at Pinecrest and a few at Sugar Pine lake playing on the beach, splashing and floating in the water and kayaking too:) We camped as usual, and had loads of fun all around.
Forest started army-crawling/scooting when we were in Washington, and is now jamming everywhere using a bonafied crawl. He has 7 teeth... 3 on the bottum and 4 on top. Pretty cute:)
We have been holding on to his infancy and have continued feeding him only mushy home-made baby food until about 2 weeks ago, when I started giving him cut up fruits, veggies and breads. He likes it!
Summer is making a quick escape and we are ready for Fall:) Hopefully next time I update this thing I won't be posting Kindergarten photos;)

We 3 Reeds

The River.....

Tent-trailer baby!

4th of July at the Clavey

School has been out for 3 weeks for me now, and we have been having lots of fun. This past weekend we spent our 10th 4th of July at the Clavey with lots of our great friends! We had a blast. Forest was an awesome camper, and he had lots of friends to play with:) We couldn't swim in our usual swimming holes because the water was too high due to the great late snows that we got this spring, but the guys found an awesome swimming hole, and lounge-lizard rock for us all to spend the days in and on! Some of us went in to Pincrest for the day on Sunday so the the little kids could swim in the lake. I love this tradition of camping at the Clavey, and all of the friends with whom we share it:) We would not rather be anywhere else on this weekend every year!

Snowy morning at Camp Shot-ski

Beautiful day at Birch Lake

Strawberry and a 1st tooth

This Memorial Day weekend we attended our 5th Spring Strawberry Music Festival. It was Forest's first camping trip, and we had a blast! Our normal crew did not go with us,and we missed them, but we had a blast with other friends and new camps! We set up camp Shot-Ski on the edge of beautiful Coyote Meadow, and couldn't have asked for a better place to spent the 5 days and 4 nights. We got the expected snow on Thursday night, and woke up to a gorgeous dusting of the white stuff all around us, and crystal clear, bright sunny skies. Last year Jorian bought a heater for the tent-trailer, so we were toasty throughout the entire night. I was of course nervous about Forest, so I spend a majority of the night listening to the snow hit the roof and checking to make sure he was warm enough. He slept perfectly all 4 nights, and the weather was beautiful for the rest of the weekend!
Sunday night we were hunkered in at Music Meadow with our crew of friends listening to the music when Forest started screaming like we've never heard before. We immediately stripped him down to check for bug bites or hair tangled around a toe but found nothing. Jorian grabbed him and headed for camp and I grabbed what I could in the stroller and followed. He spent the next hour or so screaming, then falling asleep only to wake up screaming again over and over:( He finally fell asleep for the night and we were left wondering what was wrong. The next day we arrived home and he had a wailing session again. I checked his mouth for teeth.... and sure enough, there was a bitty little tooth popping through. Mystery solved.
I am so glad to have our first camping trip under our belt... and it was in the most brutal conditions we will ever camp in, so now we know that we can do it all:)

A happy Mother's Day!

Mor Far feeding Forest his picnic lunch.

Mom & Dad's Days

For the past many years we have been spending Mothers Day at Pinecrest Lake. In years past we have rented a party boat, or kayaked across the lake to a spot we call "Mother's Day Rock." This year with Forest, we decided it would be easier to just post up on the beach and spend the day there. We had a super fun time! Woody and my mom paddled across the lake and Woody even went for a swim! We were content hanging on the beach. Forest of course had a great time and was happy as can be all day long! It was so fun celebrating my first Mother's Day with my baby and my Mom!

My Dad's birthday is May 12th (and sometimes lands on Mother's Day) ... so we always make sure to have 2 separate celebrations. This year his birthday fell on the wednesday after, so Forest and I went down to Turlock and had a picnic at Crane park with him. It was Forest's first time playing at a park... he loved rolling around on the blanket and trying to pull grass for his mouth:) We are going to go see B.B. King and Buddy Guy in August for his birthday too!!!

We are all amazed at how much Forest smiles:) It is so fun to have such a happy little guy! He brightens the day of everyone he sees!

6 months!

Our little baby turned 6 months old this month! We have been having lots of fun!!! He still does not have any teeth... is having fun rolling over and talking up a storm:) I can't believe that half a year has gone by since he was born.

Jorian & Forest on the chilly morning of our
2nd annual Dodge Ridge Tailgate/Pond-skim/fun day:)

Kristin with her prized Golden Egg!

Nauseous Flower Fairies, Freezing Fun & the Golden Egg Hunt!

First I have to start by saying how much I LOVE this time of year!!! I love the weather, the fact that school is nearing the end, and the flowers and green goodness everywhere.... but most of all I love being able to dress in ridiculous amounts of flowers and pastels and get away with it. Sometimes I say that it looks like the Pastel Flower Fairy threw up all over me. I just love wearing the happy colors and pretty flowers too:) So if you see me and think I am a bit over-board on the whole 'Springiness factor'... don't worry, I am very aware:)

Last year we started a new tradition of going to Dodge for the Pond-Skim and setting up a day camp in the parking lot for a day of tailgating. Jorian trades the owners something for the prime V.I.P. parking spots.... last season they asked him to be a judge for the pond-skim. This year I think we just have to take our cute baby to their house for a visit and drinks this Summer. Okey-Dokey... we can handle that:) Last year we actually camped overnight in J's parents RV, but we figured with the baby this year, that we would just hang for the day. Last year was sunny and hot.... and this year was FREEZING!!!! We had a good crew, and all hung in there though. My mom came with us too, so Jorian and I were able to take a few runs together:)

Sunday we packed up again.. this time for Easter at my moms house in Turlock. Forest is the first kid in the family, but not wanting to miss out on Easter traditions, we have always had an adult Easter-egg hunt. My mom hides tons of little plastic eggs all over her backyard. They are usually easy to find... but the real hunt is to find the 2 Golden Eggs. Each Golden Egg has $ inside... and it is a serious battle! My mom hides them sooo well, and we almost always have to resort to her guiding us with 'hot & cold' clues to narrow down the parts of her yard/porch where the elusive treasures are hidden. Last year Jorian and I found the Golden Eggs... but this year the Reeds were not represented in the winners circle:( Kristin re-captured her title as a Golden-Egg winner, along with Vincent, Woodys girlfriend's son.
We had tons of fun! We know that next year there will be a toddling little blond boy trying to find eggs too... so we may have to work on modeling proper rivalry etiquette, and be a bit more careful around the pool:)

Flowers & Face-plants...

On Sunday my dad came up and spent the day and night with us. The weather was beautiful and we had a yummy bar-b-q chicken and asparagus dinner! The next morning was just as great, so we headed over to Ironstone Winery in Murphys; a beautiful sprawling vineyard that has thousands of daffodils that are all in bloom:)

We got some cute pictures of Forest! My vision was to sit him in the middle of some flowers, but because he can't sit up yet I had to put him in his Bumbo seat with a blanket over it. It worked fine... until I got a little over-ambitious, and saw the PERFECT patch of flowers... the only problem was that it was on a bit of a slope. I set him in his seat and he was perfectly stable, until he reached forward to grab at one of the bright yellow flowers (just out of his reach) just as I had stepped back to get the PERFECT shot.... and he took a 'header' right into the dirt! His seat just tipped right on over. Of course it happened in slow motion, and I saw the whole thing unfold millisecond by terrifying millisecond!!! As I was taking my 3 giant steps towards him I had time to look at the ground where his face was about to land, so I knew there would not be any major injuries... but still:(

He cried of course, and had dirt and twigs on his shirt and face and in his fuzzy hair, AND... he got his first non self-inflicted scratches on his face:( Poor little guy. He stopped crying a second after I picked him up and was fine, but I still felt super guilty.

Like most new experiences with Forest, I am glad when each new one happens and is 'under our belts' because now I know that he will be fine when it surely happens again.

An un-thought of first

Every once in a while I drive down to work with Jorian early in the morning and spend the day in the 'big city' of Modesto/Turlock going to Target, Trader Joes, Kohles (pretty much all the stores we don't have in Sonora), and visiting with my parents and brother.

Yesterday was one of those days, and I got a lot accomplished. I had been dying to get down there to see all the orchards in full-bloom.... and it was spectacular, as usual for this time of year:) It was also the first time I had ever done it all with Forest in tow... usually I have gone down when my mom is off so she can watch him while I shop.

It went OK. Because my car has studs on the tires during the winter I don't drive it out of the county when I don't need to, so I was in the Tacoma. It is higher and harder to get him in and out of than the 4-runner, so that was kind of a drag. He made up for that by being an AWESOME little shopper, but he experienced a first that I had never thought of... the WIND!!! Oh my gosh, it was soooo windy in the Valley! He has never been out in the wind like that before, and he really didn't know what to think of it. One time when my mom was holding him outside of her class (we stopped by her school so she could show him off to everyone!) he actually startled big time... his arms were flailing and he took weird breaths. He would shut his eyes when a gust hit him, and then open them to look very confused.

Every morning we look out his window together when I open his curtains, and this morning everything was blanketed in a layer of white snow, and was very, very still. He didn't even bat one of his amazingly long eyelashes at that wonder of weather.... instead he seemed to feel very at home and at peace. We'll have to work into the wind slowly. Boy, what's he going to do when the heat hits?????

Hmmmmmm.....?

From the moment we saw Forest, we, like all parents before and after us, began analyzing all of his amazing little features. We decided pretty early on that he has Jorian's eyes and lips and my nose and chin. His ears are nothing like either of ours... he got lobes from my dad. The forehead and hair are still a toss up. He definitely does not have near the amount of chub that I had (at least not yet), nor is his hair as light or fuzzy as mine was, but it's getting there. He's got Swedish genes from both of us, and we have seen hints of red in his hair since day 1. Both Jorian and Woody have red in their beards, so it is a definite possibility. (Fingers are crossed for some red!!!)

Having said that, it is so amazing to me how different the same kid can look from photo to photo! The 2 pictures here were taken one day apart from each other, and he hardly looks like the same little guy!

Anyway, I think that in the picture where he is in his duck outfit he looks so much like Jorian, and in the one where he is in his bouncer he looks like me:)
*In case you can't tell, I am in the blue and white dress, and Jorian is in the pastell outfit on the brown and white couch:)

Oh yea... he has given us 2-syllable laughs, has rolled over 2 times and has mastered the 'zerbert'.... which is making the 'motor' sound with his tongue, lips and lots of spit!

He is my current favorite pronoun...

My 7th graders are just finishing up a chapter in their grammar book that was all about pronouns. I had no idea that there were so many different kinds: reflexive, intensive, possessive(I knew that one), objective(that one too) interrogative, demonstrative... then there are all of the different pronoun agreements; antecedent, indefinite.. the list goes on. YIKES! The way I look at it... by learning to speak correctly from a young age, we all use these pronouns the correct way without realizing that they even have a name. I think my students are more confused now:( Oh well, we are on to comparative and superlative modifiers next week... that won't confuse them at all;[
The whole pronoun thing got me thinking though, about how much we have been using certain pronouns around our house for the past four months. Mostly variations of HIM & HE: He's hungry. Is he OK? He's so cute. Look at him. Will you get him? Will you change him? You should have seen him! He's so funny! Will you get his rattle? He's asleep:) I guess pronouns come in handy sometimes.

All is good... he's well, and it was a great Monday!

Today Forest had his 4 month well child exam... and he's in tip-top shape. He's actually pretty close to the top of the growth curve too. He weighs 16.7 lbs, which puts him in the 81st percentile for weight, and he is in the 83rd percentile for length, at 26 inches long. We couldn't love our doctor more.... he is a general practitioner, so we all see him. Because his office gets visits from people of all ages they are thrilled when babies come in.... everyone in the office makes it out from wherever they are working to get their Forest fix:) It is very sweet. He (Forest) was super charming, as usual today and was all smiles throughout almost his entire visit... which takes quite a while because I am always '20 question girl'! He also got his shots at the end of the visit:( He only screamed for a few seconds, and as soon a Jorian picked him up and held him close he was our smiley boy again:)

I have been super lucky, and through all of our doctor & hospital visits and one specialist visit, I have never had to go alone. Jorian or one of his parents has always been able to go with Forest and me, and today was no exception; Jorian was able to clear his work calendar to be with us this morning. On our way downtown to the appointment we got a view of the thick fog bank in the Valley and Jorain commented on how yucky it looked; he is always so bumbed to leave our sunny hills and drive into the flat-land fog 5 days a week for work, but he's gotten pretty use to it.

After Forest's appointment we were walking downtown to go get our property map from the County Clerks office to see what kind of future digging we can do on our property. We couldn't help but comment about what a beautiful morning it was, and how nice it felt to be out-and-about together on a mid-week morning. Then he shocked me by saying he thought he could probably take the day off!!! A few blocks later he had made all of the calls he needed and it was a done deal.... I couldn't believe it:) We ran a few errands, then went home and packed a picnic lunch and headed out to Tuolumne to the old RR grade trail and had an awesome walk and lunch over-looking the Tuolumne River. Forest was super happy to have his dad with him ALL day... on a Monday of all days!

Lucky to be alive...

Here's the new bumper.... how did he ever survive to be 4 months old with that old 'suffocation hazard?' ;)

To bumper or not to bumper...?

When we were registering for baby stuff we were pretty much clueless..? I was 20 question girl to all of my veteran mom friends, but still...
We were lucky, and most things we got are proving to be great and practical... except for the crib bumper. It's cute and soft.. (I think they call it 'plush') but we freaked out the other morning when we found his face up against it. Obviously he was breathing (not only because he was full of color, but also because his breathing monitor told us so) but we freaked none-the-less. So the next day I ordered a breathable bumper. It came the other day and it's great. I put it on today after he woke up from his nap. I only tell this story because this is how I found him when I went in to get him today. It makes me laugh and I had to post it and didn't want to hear about the danger of suffocation we are putting him in when our old bumper is exposed. And I think it is hilarious how hyper-worried we are about things! Never thought that would be either:)

I never.....

So I never got into the scrap-booking thing, (I taught kindergarten for a year and did enough cutting and pasting to last a lifetime!) but I do love to organize my photos and thoughts... aaannnd have been told by a few friends that it is a must do.... so I figured I'd start this fancy little blog:) Super surprising I know, since I am pretty un-techy, but now that we've become members of the 'got a cute kid' club I think it may be fun!

I also never thought I'd be an active participant in this whole narcissistic and voyeristic on-line society.... but here I am. I don't expect many readers, but I do hope to chronicle some of the nice, fun things in the life of we three Reeds. And for any of my near or far-away friends and family... I welcome your visits and input.

I have, however, always had a writing 'bug' and as many of my e-mail friends know I can be very long-winded (maybe it's long-handed) when I write..... so here you can read by choice. The birth of our son, Forest, last October is really what prompted me to get this going. Not that Jorian and I didn't have a fun, cute, blog-worthy life before Forest, but ya know, he makes it all that much more fun, cute and blog-worthy! I wish I would have started this when we first found out we were pregnant.... even though those 39 weeks were ridiculously easy and great; they were exciting none-the-less and I would have loved to have had that time documented. The big obvious 'slackerness' comes from the fact that Forest is already almost 4 months old. I don't really have the 'I've been too sleep-deprived and busy dealing with my newborn' excuse either, because he is such a rad, happy baby, and he has been sleeping through the night since he was 2 months old. Oh well, I'm starting it now. He has hand-written letters from me that he can read someday to learn about how I was feeling in his first 4 months of life. So.... we'll see how this goes.