Visiting the Salt Mines

Austin and I went to Williamsburg for a night away from the kids (thanks Helen and David!).  We didn’t actually go into any of the Colonial Williamsburg buildings, but enjoyed walking around the town, and even stumbled upon a glorious Christmas concert at the Bruton Parish Church.  Since we were late, we got the only seats left—front row! 

One of the highlights was getting to visit a salt spa the next day.  Basically, it’s a room with 15 tons of salt making up the walls and the floor, simulating a salt cave.  You sit in chairs in the cave, and it’s supposed to purify the lungs and help all these respiratory ailments.  Apparently the idea originated from the Polish salt mines in the 19th century—all the miners were so remarkably healthy that a doctor started examining why. 

I’m not sure one session has cured Austin’s asthma or my allergies but we definitely emerged feeling very relaxed and refreshed.  I highly recommend visiting a salt spa if you have the opportunity!

Where does milk come from?

Yesterday, on the second day of our drive to Vermont, we started passing a lot of dairy farms. I told Tucker that those cows give us the milk we buy.

Tucker: Where does the milk come from?
Me: People milk the cows....
Tucker [interrupting]: I think they put buckets under the cows and catch all their poop. Cows' poop is white, and that is how we get milk.

We have since cleared up the confusion. It turns out milk is NOT cow poop.

In other news, we arrived at my mom's house in Vermont yesterday afternoon after a relatively good (but long) car trip. We were concerned Molly might scream for hours on end like she did on the way to Chattanooga, but we thankfully managed to avoid endless screaming. Of course, she barely slept. What other 9 month old only naps for 40 minutes on a 8 hour car ride? That is a LONG time for her to entertain herself. I went to the thrift store last week and got a bag of items that she had never seen before so I could give her new things in rapid succession. The list included: my little pony, baby doll that talked, kaleidescope, bracelets, light up squishy ball, etc. It was well worth $6.93.

We spent the night at a Days Inn in New York on the way. We splurged on two rooms because there was no way anyone would sleep if all four of us plus the dog were in one. Plus, what in the world do you do when the baby needs to go to sleep at 6 pm but it's a wee bit early for the rest of the family to retire?

Tucker and Molly were thrilled by the hotel. Molly chased Tucker around the rooms, and Tucker wanted to go to bed right away (at 5:30 pm) because he was so excited about the bed. Tucker was also thrilled that he'd be in the same room as Molly. She went down a little after 6, and was quickly out like a light. We sent him in somewhat after 7:30 pm. For the first half hour he was totally silent and we thought he was asleep. But then the excitement got to him and he started making a bit more noise, and woke Molly up (she's a very light sleeper). Then he spent the next hour making faces and hamming it up for her while she sat up in her crib and grinned at each other. Silly kids.

Today is our first full day in Vermont and we had gorgeous weather this morning to pick a ton of blueberries and take a ferry on a 20 minute ride across Lake Champlain. I think I can get used to this vacation thing.

Warrior Princess Shouting

Today we were pondering the meaning of names on our ride back from spending the Fourth of July in Annapolis. Molly spent most of the ride home yelling at us, loudly. That girl is feisty! At 8 months old she is starting to crawl, can go from lying down to sitting up, and is generally about ready to conquer the world. She likes to yell during mealtime, regardless of whether she likes what she's eating or wants to continue to eat. Austin was speculating in the car that maybe "Molly" means "little lion ready to devour daddy" or something like that. The actual meaning is "bitter" (or, if you want to be all positive on us, "of the sea"). I don't think our Molly is bitter, I think the meaning really should be "warrior princess emitting blood-curdling screams" or something like that.

As for the rest of us...

Tucker: Derived from the Old English verb "to torment", for someone who softens freshly woven cloth by beating and trampling it under water. Hmmm... I'm not sure what else to say.

Jacqueline (female version of Jacques, which is a version of Jacob): 1) May God protect or 2) Supplanter (ie Jacob supplanted Esau's birthright). So I guess I'm a protector and poser at the same time.

Austin: Great or Magnificent. Boring (not you, sweetie!).

Memorial Day

Happy Memorial Day! We are in Lookout Mountain, Georgia overlooking the grand city of Chattanooga, Tennessee where Liz and Matt live. This is our first trip down, and it has been a wonderfully relaxing weekend, at least after we arrived. Driving down was a bit dicey. A couple weeks ago Austin said he was nervous about Molly and the 8 hour-plus drive. I told him that Molly has never cried in the car and she'd do fine. Ha! Sometimes my husband is right.

Molly celebrated the trip by screaming. She is a feisty little thing and got it in her mind that she did not want to be in her car seat and did not want to sleep... and she expressed her opinion at top volume for most of the drive, just wailing. At one point Tucker was so sick of her crying that he decided to join in and hysterically screamed as well (sort of in jest, thankfully, but that only made the situation a little bit better). It was so ridiculous I ended up taking a few videos of the car ride just for posterity, which there is no need to share unless you enjoy the sound of a baby crying. A lot.

Ben came with us on the trip, and has been the highlight of the vacation for cousin Emery. She crawls around the house after him and says "da B" ("the Ben"). She is very respectful of him, almost in awe, but is totally, completely obsessed. She will need to come live with us in the summers as her parents say there is no dog in her future at home.

In other news about Ben, he is too old to jump into the back of the car, so we have to lift him up and down every time. He doesn't like this. The second morning we were here, he snookered someone into letting him outside to do his business and took off to explore the neighborhood. This was highly out of character as he hadn't even eaten his breakfast. I guess he is having as much fun here as we are.


Other highlights: a hike, a party yesterday (the girls wore matching dresses courtesy of Henny), and visiting downtown Chattanooga. Fun!!! You really need to check out the picture of Austin and the kids on the hike--wearing Molly in the front pack while having Tucker ride on his shoulders. Pretty impressive.

Florida, x2

We're hanging out in Florida with my family for a long weekend. We went in the pool today, but mostly it was an excuse to put Molly in her cute bathing suit. She was pretty serious about the whole thing, but not unhappy.

Molly has decided that babies don't need to nap during vacation, so she has been a little sleep deprived (the plane ride here was not fun...). Tucker has decided that he likes to stay up and play after bedtime. Last night he was awake for at least an hour and a half after a later-than-usual bedtime, shining a green light he found all over the room. We found him conked out half on and half off the bed, asleep in the middle of playing.










We went on a boat ride on the Banana River, which is part of the Indian River lagoon system. The whole river is only a few feet deep, and doesn't have a current so we were in a pontoon boat. We saw manatees mating right at the side of the boat. They were oblivious to us and put on an amazing show. We also got good dolphin sitings, though they weren't as much in a mood to play.

A couple videos from Spain

Here are a couple videos of Tucker getting into the birthday spirit, celebrating GoGo's birthday (he missed the party because it was too late at night but he certainly had enough birthday enthusiasm with all the party remnants).

Avila and Hondarribia

Our last couple of days in Spain were pretty neat. After a lot of pretty mediocre cafe food, my standards got higher towards the end of the trip and we were a lot pickier about where we ate with much better results. In San Sebastian, we ate at the port twice and finally found some fabulous seafood. On a day trip to Hondarribia we found a little Basque cafe with no English on the menu where Austin was finally able to order fresh anchovies (that incidentally taste nothing like the anchovies that we think of). And in Avila for our last night we got to enjoy some amazing meat at a cook-to-order gourmet tapas bar (most tapas bars just put out sandwiches and other fried food for hours on the bar for quick food... I would definitely not dare to eat any of that stuff while pregnant). We also woke up in Avila to an amazing breakfast buffet with two kinds of Spanish omelettes, lots of chorizo and local cheeses and yogurts and surprisingly, even gluten free baked products (yay!).

But aside from the food, our last two days we visited a few really neat towns. The first was in the Basque country, Hondarribia, which is a little coastal town on the Spanish side of the coastal border between France and Spain. It felt truly Basque, and was just a delight to walk around in. The other big highlight was spending the night at a hotel in a renovated 16th century palace in Avila, the oldest and most complete walled city in Spain (the wall dates to 1100 or before). It was a real treat.