Archive for April, 2019

I found myself with a travel-free, meeting-light week a couple of weeks ago, so Juliette and I packed our bags on a Thursday, kissed Shane good-bye (he was hanging back for work and house stuff), and headed south for a few days with the beloved cousins.

I don’t usually undertake a three-hour car ride on my own with Juliette, so I packed extra activities and snacks and planned a couple of stops along the way.  Turns out this girl is an easy-peasy co-pilot – we collaborated on some travel Bingo, me scanning the road for a blue truck and a motorcycle while Juliette ticked off boxes from the back seat, then she watched a show on the iPad, colored for awhile, and asked if we could blow right past our first planned stop and keep on trucking!  I coaxed her out of the car at the Nisqually Wildlife Refuge, though, as we’ve driven past this place dozens of times and I was curious about the animal scene there.  We strolled the boardwalks for a few minutes, spotted a couple of herons, and checked “barn” off our Bingo card.

Girly still loves these ridiculous party-favor lens-less glasses…

We burned rubber the rest of the way to Portland, stopping for a quick coffee and a cookie at the edge of town.  We earned it. 

Juliette and the cousins picked up right where they left off at Christmas, dashing from one end of the yard to the other over and over and over again, tagging and racing and laughing like crazy all the while.

Juliette was so deliriously happy – after weeks of counting down the days, we had arrived.

The girls had school on Friday, which meant Juliette and I were left to paint the town red on our own.  She dressed the part.

We started with donuts at Blue Star, because, well, that passionfruit glaze.

Then we headed over to Tilikum Crossing for a post-donut walk/scooter.  This bridge is one of Portland’s finest.

I love boppin’ around with this kid…

We drove over to Powells afterward to pick out a birthday present for Elise rest our feet at the kids’ reading table.

And then, we went back to the house and TOOK A NAP!  Best day ever.

Post-dinner park action:

Mitch and Kathryn set up a mini gymnastics studio for Elise in the basement, and Juliette dashed downstairs to hang from the ceiling every chance she got.

Jules came down with a fever late Friday night (that nap should have tipped me off!), and while I thought about high-tailing it back to Seattle, Juliette was insistent on Saturday morning that she felt way better and wanted to head to the zoo.  I ended up renting a stroller, though, as soon as I saw her energy begin to wane.

Still, these girls had fun!

And we got killer views of the sweetest cheetahs ever.

Juliette and I settled in for another nap on Saturday afternoon and she woke up feeling right as rain.  She spent most of the afternoon running around the backyard with Morgan, Bina and Mitch.

We toasted to Elise’s upcoming 11th birthday that night.  She opened her presents and then darted to her room to put in her new earrings and read by the task lamp that Grandma and Grandpa had sent to her.  She has never looked more pre-teen.

Morgan, ever the fashionista, accessorized with the packing materials.


We squeezed in one last playground romp on Sunday morning with Mitch and Morgan…

And grabbed one last PDX coffee on Mississippi Ave.  The sight of this big girl perched at a cafe table with a hot chocolate and book breaks my heart a little, but also makes me incredibly giddy.

(For the record, she can’t really read yet, but Morgan let her borrow the latest Dork Diaries and Juliette wants to intensely to be just like her cousin that she’ll fake-read for several minutes at a time!)

This getaway was so good for both our souls.  Even in the midst of that restless, fever-filled night, there was joy in holding Juliette close, rubbing her back and being the fully-present mama that it’s been hard for me to be these past few hectic months.  We should skip town more often.  But probably bring Dad along, too – we missed him! 

Now, cue Dixie Chicks and let’s hit the road, little buddy.

Miss Jules turned 5.5 last month!  It feels like we’re racing toward Kindergarten and SIX and new horizons at lightning speed.  We were recently looking at old pictures and I told Juliette about all the hours I spent rocking her to sleep in our cushy gray glider…those days feel like a lifetime ago.  Now our most precious Mama-Jules moments are spent reading together at coffee shops or wandering the home decor aisles of Target as we sip our Americano and steamer from the in-store Starbucks.  Good Lord, I miss those baby-days, but this whole buddy thing is pretty great, too.

Juliette is the oldest kid in her class and seems more and more ready for new challenges, so we’ve been looking for ways to engage that mile-a-minute attitude of hers.  Shane ordered a legit keyboard and signed her up for piano lessons at the neighborhood community center, so we could put those busy hands to work.  She was a bit shy heading into her first lesson, but immediately became rapt with the way her teacher translated circles on a page to sounds from the piano.  Jules followed each direction with the utmost concentration, carefully plodding her way through The Caterpillar Crawl.  She’s a quick learner and has impressed her teacher with her quiet, determined focus – I’ll admit I didn’t know this girl had it in her.

We’re also in the thick of swim lessons – we head to the pool on Friday afternoons for a dip with her best buddy.  We’ve come a long way since that first class a few months ago when both kids bawled at the thought of getting in the water without their mamas; things clicked a few weeks ago and now Juliette’s doing blast-offs, kicking her way from one edge of the pool to the other.  She says her teacher asks very hard questions like, “can you kick your legs and paddle with your arms?”, and she still flashes me the occasional look of frustrated despair when she can’t get something right the first time around, but she always presses on and it looks like she’ll be doing laps before summer hits!  Little fishes!

Juliette had a dentist appointment back in January (during which she cried zero tears!  progress!) where we discovered a loose bottom tooth.  She wiggled that chomper for weeks until it seemed it was hanging on by a thread.  Shane gave it a little tug one evening and next thing I knew, Juliette walked into the kitchen with a tiny little tooth in her palm and pool of blood near her lip.  She said it didn’t hurt a bit and left in on the counter before dashing to the bathroom mirror to admire her new gap.  I then proceeded to knock said tooth on the floor, where it disappeared into the abyss of the joint between our tile floor and cabinets.  Thus, Juliette left a note for the tooth fairy under her pillow that night explaining “I lost lost my tooth” (lost it, then lost it!), which the tooth fairy took in return for two whole dollars.

Much as I love bopping around with Jules, she still knows how to push my buttons, like when I want to chill out in peace after a day of running from playdate to birthday party, but Juliette asks me if the neighbor kids can “please, please, please come over to play?”  To which I replied, “CHILD!  You spent all day with friends!  Settle down and read a book!”  Her little chin quivered while she looked up at me with watery eyes and choked out, “I know I played a lot, Mama, but it’s just so fun that I can’t stooooooop…”  In that moment I understood that Juliette craves the presence of people in the way I crave quiet and a cup of tea.  Our little extrovert…who would have ever thought?

Finally, a few pics from a visit to UW a couple of Fridays ago, when we were up north and figured we’d pop into the Quad to see how the blossoms were coming along.  We were early, bloom-wise, but had fun playing hide and seek behind the trees and dreaming about the day Juliette will walk these paths as a student (start ’em young!).

She looks good on campus.

Ok, finally finally a few pictures of the five and half year old in her tutu, because…

Girl’s got style.

I love you, kiddo, so much it hurts.