half a year old, half a month late

Catherine, Ellis, Maddox and I drove back to Indiana last week, which was a 20 hour day stretched over 2 days plus a day in the middle visiting Aunt Carol. So, I'm just getting around to Maddox's 6 month update.

This month he's starting to get mobile, though crawling remains elusive despite some attempts at getting into full plank positions and lots of time spent on hands and knees. H

e rolls and scoots like crazy and is just beginning to be able to actually choose his direction of travel. For the first time, he also managed to scoot over the shelves on which toys are stored. He grabbed a basket filled with Ellis's hotwheels and brought them crashing down the floor. He wasn't terribly upset by the noise and spray of toys, but Ellis panicked immediately at the unauthorized toy access. Too bad this is just a taste of things to come. Poor boy.

He's also finally cut his first tooth. Well, teeth- two little ones appeared on the bottom last week. I've been trying to offer him some solid food, but with limited success. He still doesn't seem to have a very easy time swallowing, even smooth stuff like yogurt and applesauce. He does like playing and sucking on slices of carrot or apple and LOVED the bits of popsicle

and ice cream he stole from Trey.

His personality is still super mellow. He's really happy to hang out on the floor checking things out. Being at Grandma's with lots of other kids playing has offered him quite a bit of entertainment. While he's fairly snuggly, it's amazing to me how much less carrying and holding he seems to need compared to Ellis. Maddox is pretty big into staring at his finger and has a very strong grip. He's also finally experimenting with transferring items from one hand to another, realizing "Yes, I can control both these guys". Exciting times :)

endings are sad, beginnings are scary

Today was my last day at work and I'm sad to say good bye to my friends from work, but not terribly sorry about the job ending. Like most academic jobs, things will linger for a while...finishing up and then revising papers, completing a patent application, etc. But at least pumping is finally over! One last run through the sterilizer pouches and the breast pump is getting packed up and put away.

I've been pretty anxious and weird feeling the past couple days as we packed up the lab and I've seen at least two of my co-workers cry in the past month. Ah, academics is not for the faint of heart.

I'll take the smaller share of the split hair

When I got home today, the news of the day was that the back had broken off of the desk chair. Apparently, Ellis jumped into his mother's arms while she was in the chair and the back broke due to the impact. So I said that we would have to get a new one and that Ellis should see from this that it isn't a good idea to jump on the furniture. To which he replied, "Actually Daddy, I jumped on mom."

Camel Humps!

Since this was Ellis's last summer weekend in VT, we over did it a bit with outdoor activities. We started on Friday night with a couple hours of fishing. Then yesterday we tried to camp at North Hero State Park. Despite the staff's assurances that reservations were not needed and the camp never filled up because it is "primitive", we got there to find it full. So last night we camped in the back yard with a big fire and a dinner of hotdogs, camp potatoes ala Grandpa Hank and peach dump cake ala Grandma Lise. Recipes available upon request.

And today, we hiked to the top of Camel's Hump. Ellis still calls it Camel Humps which is fair since their are indeed two peaks close together. There are several routes to the summit and we decided on the shortest, approaching from the west. It was 2.4 miles with 2400 feet of vertical. That's an average grade of nearly 20%. Adults in decent shape usually do it in 1:45, it took us closer to 2:30, which I gotta think is pretty good since for Ellis it was probably 15,000-20,000 strides.

You might remember that last summer we hiked up Pinnacle. Ellis was much more independent and outgoing on this hike. If I stopped to take a picture, he was up around the next bend before I knew it. The trail we used was the Burrows for the first two miles and the Long Trail for the last 0.3 miles to the summit. The trail was quite rugged, being entirely rock over about 2/3 of the total distance.

Much of the trail was accompanied by small streams, and very thick green moss. Generally, the vegetation was so thick even a few feet off of the trail that passage would have been impossible.

The last bit of the trip, by far Ellis's favorite part, saw him scampering mostly with one or both hands down on the rocks to balance. (This is my favorite picture from the trip because his pose is so self-assured) To be fair, I did my fair bit of scampering too, as this section was probably 30% grade or better.

Despite what you see in the pics, there were quite a few people up there on the mountain today. The hiking crowd tends to be very friendly and they were all very impressed with Ellis's determination often asking how I kept him going for so long. I told them that the trick was to feed him every 15 minutes. Ellis was the only 4 year old at the summit that wasn't a canine of some sort. I was the only person under 40 who didn't have an exposed tattoo, facial piercing or at least one dog. I can say VT hikers put some money into their tattoos. I wish I had taken a picture of a couple, just to show the extent of the ink.

This is a long view of Lake Champlain from near the summit. At this stage it was still possible to walk around without restriction. The haze made photography very difficult, especially with just an iPhone, but some of these convey just how high up we were.

That little patch of water you see out there above the highway tucked into the mountains, is the Waterbury Reservoir where we fished last year. The reservoir is a bit of a mountain lake at least 20 miles distant from Camel's hump and surrounded by peaks that pass 1000 feet, so it gives you some idea just how high Camel's Hump is relative to the surroundings.

This is another view to the west of another section of the lake. These are the last trees before we entered the Alpine Zone which is protected, with hikers restricted to only exposed rock. This is only one of two mountains in VT that have significant area above the treeline and true alpine vegetation. Watching the vegetation change is on of my favorite parts of these vertical hikes. We started in a hardwood forest that transitioned to conifer. The conifer forest became less and less varied, with only a few firs at the upper reaches before the trees became stunted and then disappeared altogether at the Alpine Zone.

And here we are at the summit. It was about 50 degrees with a 25 mph wind. We managed to stick around for 20 minutes in our long sleeved shirts and got a nice guy to take a picture of us in exchange for us photographing him with his dog. Maybe he just wanted a picture of himself and the dog couldn't oblige, but a lot of effort was put into getting the dog to look at the camera.

Ellis fell asleep in the car on the way home so we didn't stop for the promised cheeseburgers and then he slept for several more hours after we got home. I finally pried him out of bed for some supper (and he did ask about his cheeseburger). I am sure he will fall asleep almost instantly tonight. It is amazing to me that it takes such exertion to wear him out.

splish splash

Tomorrow is Ellis's last day of swim lessons, so it figures that I'm just now getting to posting a couple of pictures. He's in a two week class at the pool in a nearby town and is the "Waverunner" level which is pre-Level 1 and termed "acclimation to swimming lessons". So, it's pretty laid back, but they do a nice job and are very patient along the lines "put your nose in the water" "put your chin in the water" "blow on the water" "now slowly bring your lips down to the water and keep blowing". MUCH more patient than I would be. Plus, they get to go down the water slide, which is usually off limits to the under 48" set. Fancy!