Christmas day 2009

Joanna and I made the drive to Marsing, ID to spend the holiday with the family. Joanna did all the driving on the way up because I was completely wiped out by some sort of coughing sickness that robbed all my will to do anything except sleep.

Nevertheless, we arrived at Nancy and Bruce's house and while Violet and Joanna had a good time I went to sleep. The next day I felt even worse so on Thursday I finally caved in and went to a doc-in-a-box quick-care place and found out I had bronchitis that was trying to turn into pneumonia. I received a scrip for Zithromax and a bottle of codeine and today I feel muuuuuch better. Turns out I also gave it Joanna, and now she feels like she got run over by a truck. Tomorrow we'll go back to the quick-care place for Joanna. For the moment Vi seems to be symptom free.

Newsflash, today was Christmas! Christmas is a good day to be a Violet or a kitty (see pics below). While sitting here this evening composing this post, sipping on a SoCo and Coke, and feeling a little uneasy with how fortunate we have been this year, I tried in earnest to select pictures of the girl today that were fun, but I got distracted by a few other non-Christmas pics that got me all teary-eyed.

Best wishes and happy holidays! Peace be with you and your loved ones.

Violet (and Mama) 2 days before arrival

Violet on the way home from the hospital

Violet preparing for the coming year

Violet enjoying her new bear from Nancy and Bruce

Violet seems to be hardwired for horse riding. Go figure!

Violet goofing around at Grandma Joanna's house.

More goofing around.

A very good day to be a kitty.

Mini Family Vacation

On Monday I left for the AGU conference in San Francisco. I was presenting a poster at the CLARREO session and attending lots of scholarly sounding talks. Some of the talks were cool, some were confusing and most were kind of like some sort of plumage display that you might see on the nature channel. Monday through Friday were the conference days that I was scheduled to attend. A particularly negative reacation to some Pakistani food prevented me from attending the Tuesday sessions, but other than that the conference was productive as far as I was concerned.

On a typical conference trip, Joanna tries reasonably hard to stifle looks of either disappointment or contempt for the few days before I leave because I am allowed to get the hell out of Logan as she remains behind. Ah, but not this time! Thursday afternoon the girls showed up so we could spend the weekend together in the city! I met Joanna and Vi at the airport and we all rode BART from SFO to downtown. No pictures of Vi on the train but Vi really likes the subway.

Random BART station pic.

Our one day on the town has been a good time so far. We went shopping (for all three of us, in fact), we ate lots of different food, we walked around, and we saw lots of people who are black, or Asian (if you stay in Utah long enough and you begin to forget that people come in other configurations than "pasty white"), or homeless, or standing on the corner shrieking about some kind of perceived injustice. Sometimes one person can embody all of these things at the same time. We saw lots of seemingly normal people too, but those aren't as fun to write about.

The good thing about Vi is that she makes friends wherever she goes. Everyone, and I mean everyone, has smiled and waved to her - even the people in restaurants will put down their mobile phones and interact with her for tens of minutes. As we walk down the street the traffic stops, the throngs of people part, jaws drop and people simply wave and throw flower petals in our path.* Vi has magical powers, I tell you. At least we get good service from the waitresses we have had.

Here are Joanna and Violet enjoying some morning sun while we drank
our coffee and Vi played with gingko leaves.

Joanna and Vi in front of the Martin Luther King monument in Yerba Buena Park.

Two more of Joanna and Vi walking around Yerba Buena Park and picking flowers. :-)

* - Reports may be somewhat exaggerated.

Go Violet, Go!

My birthday present from the Dolny Family, and a tribute to little Violet's biggest accomplishment in the past month or so.

Violet really likes Kokanee, Mike's new dog. I think the feeling is reciprocated as well!

And finally, the picture that got cut off of the last posting. It is a couple of months old I think, but it is still amazingly cute. Violet does love bathtime...

A Tad Bit Chilly

It's been cold lately. I'm sure everyone reading this has their own, equivalently extreme experience in the past few weeks, but we woke up to 16 degrees below zero this morning. Luckily it hasn't been particularly windy.

The entire reservoir in the valley is frozen over, although there are a few spots of open water in other areas. The Logan River is still flowing as well, which allows the animals and birds a few places to fish and drink. There has been an American Bald Eagle in the area lately, and he or she seems to be keeping close to the open water.

Violet has been oblivious to the cold weather. She is quite busy perfecting her toddle, exploring a new level of the house (what she can reach above her head), and now both unloading AND loading things. She loves to help unload the dishwasher, particularly the silverware. She'll proudly hand one of us each piece of silverware one-by-one so that we can put it away. She also enjoys unloading "her" drawer in the kitchen, which is full of oven mitts, dishtowels, and a few pieces of generic tupperware. I put that drawer together at the suggestion of our friend Jen Pollard, and it has proven to be a hit with little Vi. She unloads it piece by piece, often with shrieks of joy as she finds items hidden under the towels. And once she is done unloading, she now takes great joy in loading everything back inside it, piece by piece. She seems to enjoy doing the same with her bin of wooden blocks as well. We can only hope this becomes a habit!

Violet is also working on ever more signs these days. She made up her own sign for hair (grabbing a handful of hair and pulling it away from her head), has figured out the sign for "where?" and is working on the signs for giraffe and bunny rabbit, as well as others. She is certainly dedicated to her communication skills!


She is also working on eating with utensils. She's getting pretty good at it.

Mac and cheese with a fork.

* sorry that the formatting has been crappy lately. Something is up with Blogger!

Not Much to Say, But Lots to Show!

So by now you are all aware of Violet's new mode of transportation: her feet. She has amazed us in the past few days, going from her first tentative steps to now walking everywhere. She is so excited to walk! Here's a taste of the past few days:

Violet likes just about any food we offer her. She seemed very happy with the pancake Mike made for her this morning as well. And when we gave her the homemade applesauce that went along with the pancakes, she was ecstatic!

Although I don't have complete videographic proof, Violet is picking up more and more signs these days. She now knows (and can appropriately produce) the signs for: more, milk, dog, eat, and all done, and she appears to understand the signs for water, shoes, fish, ball, book, cat, mom, and dad. We are also just starting to work on the signs for drive, cookie, and cracker. Ah, the world of language!

Yah! Oh no!

The moment has arrived. Violet is officially bipedal. Yikes!

Not Violet's first steps, but some of her subsequent steps.

We were so excited and then in the same thought we said, "Oh no... we're in trouble now."