You're not fooling anyone

Our childless moments are few and far between.  We harbor no resentment over this - most of the activities we enjoyed together before Calvin are things we can enjoy just as well, if not more, with his little boy presence - but the occasional date night is still a coveted thing.  Last night was the first time since Calvin's birth that we went out on a date together after dark.  Sure we've been on other dates as a couple, but those were lunch dates, or dinner dates shared with the 5:00 diners who are out using their AARP meal discounts.  Tonight we went out after both Calvin and the sun were safely tucked in for the night.  Our destination was opening night of the Nightmare Before Christmas 3-D movie, and we found ourselves surrounded by young couples out on early relationship date nights, complete with nervous giggling and awkward hand-holding.  In an attempt to fit in we tried this ourselves, sliding down into the uncomfortable seats and contorting our bodies in an effort to hold hands across the personal space defining arm rest, before finally giving up and admitting that we weren't fooling anybody.  "We look old," Cortney says to Jon, to which he replied "you look like a mom."  Well, there are worse things.  And our attempt at disguise still beat the two young men who walked out of the first showing of the movie and slid behind the potted palm in the hallway to wait for an opportunity to slide back into the theater for a free second showing.  A potted palm?  That's not a disguise - it's comedy.  But it worked for them - they sat directly in front of us in the late movie - a situation that we chalk up to weak theater security because believe us, they weren't fooling anyone either.

These must be the halcyon days of fall

Fall is here: the leaves started changing, the nights started cooling, the days turned rainy and grey... and then came a return to the sun and warmth of the previous season.  Some would call it an Indian Summer, but we think a more appropriate term might be "paradise."  Sure it's hot, but we try to remind ourselves that instead of complaining about the heat we could be breaking out the hats and mittens like this time last year, and who wants that already?  So we took advantage of the hand mother nature dealt and made today a hiking day.  There's something a little odd about sweating through your shorts and t-shirt while shuffling through richly colored fallen leaves, but we didn't complain back in July or August so why should we now?  Not to mention that when we went on hikes back in July Calvin was a very different kind of hiking partner.  Back in July he enjoyed looking at the things we pointed out but was basically just along for the ride in his backpack carrier.  Today Calvin seemed to be doing most of the pointing, followed by that babbling noise that sounds suspiciously like a well posed question that we just can't understand.  He spent half of the hike in the backpack and the other half pushing his own little feet through the downed leaves.  He found a squirrel, a cat (inappropriately out of doors), a spider, and even a wee little frog, and he made sure to point them out for our own viewing pleasure.  He amazes us.  We love watching him discover the natural world we love so much, and we are thankful for these halcyon days of fall.

Driving edamommy up the wall

Animals of all kinds are able to identify their offspring by the unique sound of their call.  For whales this sound is a haunting bellow, for birds a beautiful song, and for dolphins a cheerful chirp.  Other animals are not so lucky - next time you are compiling your sympathy list you might consider including that poor hyena mother, or the mom to a baby howler monkey.  And somewhere along that scale, of course, fall human mothers.  We hear it all:  tears, screaming, laughing, babbling, and, we can't forget, whining.  Who can forget the whining?  At this point in time we are convinced that the whine is the single most identifiable sound in Calvin's vocal range - we can pick it out of a busy room anywhere, and it often sends us heading in the opposite direction if possible.  Unfortunately the whine is also the most frequently heard sound, and it has a long list of uses to which Calvin is forever adding.  Over the past few weeks Calvin has begun to take an interest in "driving" things around the house, such as toy cars, elephants on wheels, and even blocks without wheels - he will drive anything that will push easily, and of course he accompanies this new driving skill with motor noises that sound suspiciously similar to his ear-piercing whine.  We try to remind ourselves that this is creativity at its earliest and best, but that's hard to keep in mind as we sit through lunch watching and listening to Calvin driving his edamame across his highchair tray, wondering if we wouldn't prefer that baby howler monkey after all.

A wet welcome

Before leaving on vacation we made sure to change the beds, vacuum, clean the kitchen, do the laundry... all the chores that we didn't want to have staring us in the face the day we returned from up north.  The plan, then, was to ease back into real life somewhat slowly, but that plan did not include stepping into a huge puddle of water at the foot of our basement stairs first thing in the morning the day after our return.  It didn't take long to realize that the water was not just at the bottom of the stairs but had puddled in several areas throughout the basement.  We moved things to dry spots and a few phone calls later we decided that sump pump failure was to blame and within the half hour the plumber was on his way.  Not long after, as we were breathing an unfortunately premature sigh of relief, we spoke on the phone with the water restoration specialists and watched a rather threatening bank of clouds coming in from the west.  As soon as the storm hit we knew we were in trouble.  The previously inert puddles in our basement were now advancing with determined and visible speed across the floor, aiming directly for all our possessions.  While Calvin took his morning nap we started hauling everything upstairs - boxing movies and books from bookshelves and putting them in the garage, then lugging each shelf up, all of the Christmas items, all of the outgrown baby clothes, the wrapping supplies, the stored toys and winter clothes, the childhood memories we'd never been able to part with, the computers, the office equipment, more shelves.  The plumber came and replaced the pump, Jon's mom came and occupied Calvin (both jobs being vital to the saving of our stuff) and we just kept running down the stairs and trudging back up, arms loaded with our personal items.  By mid afternoon the carpet in the office was soaked through, the floor throughout the basement under an inch of water, but all of our stuff was safely piled in the garage, around our bed, in the kitchen, and in the hallway.  Our basement may have been upstairs, but it was safe.

Things could definitely have been a lot worse.  The plumber said our pump was old and likely hadn't been working correctly for several weeks, but it had been such a dry summer that we hadn't noticed.  If the torrential rains that came down the night we returned home had hit just a day earlier we would have been out of luck.  If Jon hadn't gone to the basement to feed the cats first thing in the morning we might not have noticed the puddles before they advanced and took over the basement and we might not have rescued our beloved things.  Yes, our basement might be in our upstairs, the noise of industrial fans enveloping our whole house, and our muscles and minds aching with fatigue, but we can't help but be thankful for the way things turned out.

Happy Four years to us!

We are a bit behind in getting to this, but that's just how much fun we've been having this summer.  Thursday of last week, July 26th, we celebrated our fourth wedding anniversary.  It seems strange that it has only been four years when we stop to think about all the fun things we have done in that time.  So many jobs, so many vacations, so many new things to try.  Oh, and Calvin, too, of course.  We celebrated the milestone a couple of times:  We were treated to a really grand lunch at Zingerman's Roadhouse by Jon's parents (good American pulled pork and potatoes, followed by Root Beer floats!), and then to a fancy Australian dinner on the Huron River Front by Cortney's parents.  Where else besides Ann Arbor could you enjoy a multi course meal complete with linen, china, glass, and "silver"ware atop the standard wooden park picnic tables?  No where, we tell you.  This was a picnic dinner, The Aussie/New Zealand Cook-off put on by the Ann Arbor Tasters Guild that focused on tasting several different Australian dishes, such as green lipped mussels and Kobe beef sausages, not to mention the lamb, and several different Australian wines, of course.  All under the picnic overhang alongside the Huron River in Island Park.  The style of the meal, several small tasting courses each with a different wine, was just like that of the special meal we shared on our honeymoon at Emeril's in New Orleans, which brought back great memories.  How appropriate.  And what a gorgeous dinner on a gorgeous night.  It's hard to say who was more amazed by Calvin's stellar behavior, us or the other partakers, as he sat in his stroller and tried each new food throughout the whole 2 hour meal!  That was our anniversary gift from our son, and a good one at that.  What a wonderful day, with two fantastic meals!

And, as always, an overload of pictures can be found in the July 20-27 photo album.