Ann vs. Jason

By Jason

Two weeks ago Ann, Athena and I drove up to Medford, Oregon to meet Athena’s new baby cousin, Alia. Ann may write a bit more about the trip later but I wanted to post some pictures while I had some time. The past few weeks have been very busy for both of us at work so blog posts have fallen behind a bit.

We left after work on Friday and drove up through the night so that Athena would be able to sleep through the drive. For the most part she did – she only woke up when I stopped for gas, talked to us for a bit, and then fell back asleep. Shortly after that we passed Redding and started driving into the mountains and some rainy, foggy weather. It’s the first time I’ve driven in California and really worried about the weather conditions… but still not as bad as snow storms in Cleveland.

Ann was pretty happy to get there:

From Visit with Ahan, Julie, and Alia

Ahan with Alia – Ahan is actually changing diapers. Apparently doctors don’t learn how to change diapers in med school, not even pediatricians, but he was able to get up to speed.

From Visit with Ahan, Julie, and Alia

It was interesting for me to hold such a tiny baby again. Alia is growing fast, but she feels so light after carrying Athena.

From Visit with Ahan, Julie, and Alia

Medford is an interesting place, it’s actually a lot more like California than how you usually think about Oregon. We went to nearby Ashland to eat and check out Lithia Park. That was just fine with Athena. She ran to see the ducks, played on the slide and swing set, interrupted a game of frisbee, and took a short hike with her dad.

From Visit with Ahan, Julie, and Alia

From Visit with Ahan, Julie, and Alia

I’ll let Ann add more about the trip and post more photos – you can see the whole set in Picasa.

Ahan and Julie live on the edge of the suburban part of Medford, with farms and open land on three sides. In addition to all the fun baby pictures, I took a short walk and took some photos of the landscape. We’re going to have to come back when the weather is nicer and do some hiking.

From Visit with Ahan, Julie, and Alia

They have cows and horses for neighbors:

From Visit with Ahan, Julie, and Alia

From Visit with Ahan, Julie, and Alia

I saw a lot of these small-scale wind turbines around. Turbines this small aren’t really cost effective for grid power, I wonder if they’re used for irrigation or pumping?

From Visit with Ahan, Julie, and Alia

Athena was very sweet with Alia – we were a little worried since Athena can be a bit rambunctious.

From Visit with Ahan, Julie, and Alia

We weren’t in a hurry to leave, but both of us had to work on Tuesday. The drive back was amazing – the Siskiyou Mountains are very scenic and you can see Mount Shasta for much of the drive until we hit the Central Valley at dusk.

By Jason

I’m getting some fun video clips of Athena with my phone, so here’s another video-heavy post.

The weather never gets really bad in our part of California so despite the extra rain we’ve had lately we’ve been able to head to the park on weekends. Here’s more swinging, and a few escape attempts:

From Jan and Feb 2010

This is a video I’ve been meaning to get for a while – Athena is an extremely good climber (a bit more on that later, too). At the playground she regularly finds her way up on things that older kids don’t dare to attempt. Here you can watch her make it all the way to the top of the slides with Ann just spotting:

With one of us at top to keep her from jumping off and one at the bottom to prevent tumbles, Athena can even go down the slide by herself:

Here’s Athena playing with her toy laptop. She used to just mash the keys, but now she’s much more particular about what she presses. The lcd screen has a really poor viewing angle so she’s picking it up so she can see. I tried to show her how to change the angle but according to her it must be opened all the way.

Her favorites are the letter D, which elicits an excited “Duck!”, and the letter M, which shows a mouse for Athena to “squeak” at.

The weekend before last we went to Cupertino Square Mall and I let Ann do some shopping while I chased Athena around. Her first obsession was the escalators, so we rode them up and down about 10 times before I was able to carry her far enough away that she forgot how to get back to them. It was at that point she found the coin-op rides, obsession number 2. Her favorite was the bulldozer, clearly superior in her eyes to the pony, corvette, and spaceship. Personally I thought the spaceship was pretty cool. I plunked down the $0.50 for the ride but She really seemed to enjoy it more when it wasn’t running:

Later we ran up and down a big ramp to JC Penny until the little decathlete was exhausted. She was pretty well-behaved in the store when we went to meet back up with Ann, even handing me some fallen clothes hangers to hang back up.

The other new thing in our little girl’s life is class at The Little Gym. She and the other “birdies”, the youngest group, meet every Saturday morning for activities to build their coordination, listening, physical confidence, and independence. She has no problem with the latter two – she can always be found pushing on the door to get into the gym before class starts and spends most of the class running around the space and climbing on things. Ann and I were a little worried about it in the first class, but the teacher made a point of saying that any kids wandering around exploring on their own should be encouraged and that she would start participating more as she saw us doing the activities. She does love two of the activities, the big parachute and the bubble machine.

I don’t have any video from the gym uploaded yet, I’ll have to get some. Athena absolutely loves it. Last week she scaled a climbing wall, again with Ann just spotting. It was inclined, and only maybe five feet of climbing, but still – she’s only 14 months.

One more story I have to share, apologies if you’ve already heard this one in person but it really is remarkable. Periodically in her feats of daring-do Athena will fall off of something and get hurt before Ann or I can get to her. At that point (after making sure she’s alright and whatnot) we generally take the attractive nuisance away so she won’t be tempted to make another attempt.

Athena has figured this out. So now, when she falls off of something, the first thing she does is check to see if Ann and I are watching. If we are, she wills herself not to cry, pacing around the room with this “I’m okay, nothings wrong!!” look on her face. She’s not suppressing crocodile tears – I saw her take a face plant off one of the small stools and it must have really hurt. Since I had run over to try to catch her she gritted her teeth and just refused to cry about it.

What kind of 14-month-old kid does this? Athena is extremely strong-willed, in everything, whether it’s scaling furniture or refusing to eat. It’s fantastic but also terrifying, especially when she decides she doesn’t want milk for days on end. We’ve been very consistent in ignoring tempter tantrums so she hasn’t started throwing a lot of them, thank goodness, but I’m a little afraid my kid is already tougher than me.

One thing I know for sure, is this kid has quite a life ahead of her. No one’s going to stop her.

One last fun picture:

From Jan and Feb 2010