Ahh spring

Spring is here and is it ever wonderful! This weekend we had a lot of fun enjoying the last bits of warm (instead of blistering hot) weather we will see for ohh about 5 months. The weekend started at Papa's garage, which was the first stop on a tour of garages across Tucson by over 40 British cars. It was quite the scene.


Later on Saturday we went over to Himmel Park for Solar Rock, a 100% solar concert/afternoon in the park. Annie and Ben and their crew, who are in town from Ethiopia, joined us. Evie just loves playing with Maxine, it is a lot of fun to watch! The girls favorite part of the event was the kids musician who sang such classics as "Pack it in, Pack it out" (ahhh the hippie side of Tucson) they both stood right at the edge of the stage amongst the throng of kids and rocked out (No pictures of it though, from where we were sitting you could barely see them :)

Then this morning we all met up again at the Sonoran Desert Museum to see the wildflowers and hawks. Initially the girls were more interested in the dirt than the birds flying over their heads (very close, so close a hawk nicked my hat) but once the hawk landed right near them they got pretty into it and would jump and giggle together every time she flew by. After the museum we went to lunch at my folk's place and then home... it was such a wonderful day and weekend that Evie and Patrick are still asleep and it is almost 5 pm!

Last few pictures

Here is one more collage from our trip... ahh sweet beach.

Mayan Princess

More pictures (and adventures) from Mexico...


Another highlight of the vacation were the two trips we took out to see Mayan ruins. We went first to Coba and then later in the week to Tulum. Evie really enjoyed looking at the ruins and pretending that she was a Mayan princess. She and Patrick created all sorts of elaborate stories about their lives in their castles as we explored the ruins. (In fact they still are creating these stories, as I type I hear them behind me building Mayan castles out of legos...)


At Coba people can still climb to the top of the highest pyramid and Evie was all about trying to do it. She made it maybe a quarter of the way before Patrick wisely decided that it was a trek for another visit. I climbed all the way to the top and I must admit there wouldn't have been any way for me to take care of a three year old on a descent down those steps; it was quite intimidating.

Evie was so into the whole Mayan princess charade that we broke down and picked up a "princess" dress for her. Here she is donning it and posing with her favorite little kid mannequins at a shop near our condo (she requested this photo op by the way)

Evie the Adventurer

Well we just got back last night from a wonderful week in the Yucatan, Mexico. We stayed at my grandfather's swanky condo just south of Playa del Carmen, it was quite the treat. During the trip Evie proved herself to be quite the adventurer....

One our main "goals" of the vacation was to get Evie into the ocean. The past couple of times we have been to the ocean the waves were a bit too intimidating for her and we could not get her to go in without us carrying her. Well, by the end of the first day she was flopping and playing in the ocean and on the beach with the best of them. Something about her success with the ocean must have opened up a whole new world of bravery because tootsies in the sea were the mildest of her adventures during the week!

On Monday (or was it Tuesday...ahh vacation!) we took a trip down the road to a place called Hidden Worlds Cenote Adventure Park. Mom and I had in our heads that we just had to go on a zip line and we convinced Patrick, Evie and Dad to come along for the day too. The first activity at the park was to take sky cycles about 1 km (round trip) through the jungle to a cenote (cave) where we would snorkle into it. The water in the cenotes was really cold so we all borrowed wetsuits for the day. I think just putting on a wetsuit emboldened Evie. I wasn't quite sure how we were going to do all the activities with Evie in tow but figured we could all just take turns if she got too scared.... I shouldn't have been worried.


Evie thought the sky bikes were really cool and just hung onto me for the ride, pointing out flowers and other sights along the way. Then we got to the cave and she wanted to give the trip a try so she put on her life vest and got into the water with the rest of us. For this one we swam along, which suited Evie just fine. We were lucky enough to be the first group through of the day and went with just one other family, who very nicely took a few photos for us!

After the cenote swim we hopped back on the bikes and peddled back through the jungle to the zip line. When asked Evie was all for it so, once again, I strapped her onto me and we went. She was so amazingly brave! There was a second zip line which ended inside a cave and in the water... I decided that one was a bit too much for my adventurer so she had to be content to watch from below as we each zipped down.



In the same area we suited up for a real snorkel into the cenote. Evie seemed ready to go again but I think the mask was a bit too intimidating for her so she stayed behind with my Mom (who was happy to oblige, given that she is a bit claustrophobic anyway). Apparently while we were snorkeling Evie was spending time watching the people rappel down into the cave from above and had decided that she really wanted to do that too. By the time we came back she was convinced that it was the thing to do and we decided we would let her go try, fully figuring she would change her mind when push came to shove. Well much to my surprise (and I won't lie, delight) she went for it and was lowered down into the cave by rope all by herself! There were a few moments when she didn't look too sure about it but when she got down man was she proud of herself! Maybe she will be an expert caver :)

Sneaky (aka the great Lacroix flood of '10)

I don't know if this is true for all families and all children, all I have is a n of 1; but before I had a child I had no idea just how much of an issue sleep would be. Of course I had been warned of the early sleep deprivation and getting the babe to sleep issues... I may not have been ready for that but I was certainly warned. What I had no advance notice of was the sleep issues that plague an almost three year old, aka the sneaky sleep scarcity.

Sneaky sleep scarcity is the condition where a toddler deprives herself of much needed sleep because she insists on sneaking out of her bed and causing varying degrees of destruction. This condition settled into our house about a month ago. Like many other afflictions it started out mild. We would put Evie to bed and hear her rustling around in her room for about 15 minutes before she would fall asleep in her bed. Then it escalated to us opening the door to her side of the house and finding her asleep on the floor in the hallway. A few days later she had made it out of her room, beyond the hallway and into our bed. Each time we chuckled a bit and then just put her back into her room, not wanting to interfere in what seemed like a pretty innocuous little expression of independence. Of course all along the amount of time between me saying good night and her actually going night night got longer and longer. (and concurrently those afternoon naps went from a predictable 2 hours to more like 3 or 4 hours)

Any sense of innocence ended this week. It was Tuesday night, Evie was put to bed around 8 pm and proceeded to putter around as was her new habit. About a 1/2 hour later Patrick and I were on the other side of the house watching TV when mentioned that it sounded like the water was running, Patrick dismissed it saying "Oh it is probably just the sound of gas from the heater" Just to be sure I thought I'd go check on Evie. I opened the door to that side of the house and was greeted by a big puddle of water and the sound of the water in the sink running full blast. The sink is a little clogged right now, so it must have quickly overflowed and then proceeded to start to flood the bathroom and into the hallway and our bedroom. I found Evie in her bedroom on the edge of her bed, crying. She explained that she turned it on and couldn't turn it off and tried to tell us but we didn't hear her. We all cleaned up the mess and she went off to bed (at this point it was like 10:30 pm). After this first incident we thought maybe we should rethink this nighttime routine...

The next night we put Evie into bed and left the door open so I could more easily monitor her. I saw her sneak into our room and decided to let it slide... that really wasn't the problem (or so I thought). An hour or so later we came in to go to bed and found her asleep in our bed with what was left of our deodorant in her hand. The rest of in was in chunks on the bed and smeared all over the lamp on Patrick's side of the bed. Apparently even sneaking into our room was a recipe for undesirable bedtime behavior.

That night was the proverbial straw on the camel's back, which forced us into action. (This seems to be a reoccurring theme for us, our parenting style seems to be one of never learn our lesson on the first go around... sigh) For the past three nights Evie has been confined to her room at night and all is well again. The funny thing about all of this is all we have had to do is to ask her to promise to stay in her room, and she has. Guess we could have taken care of that problem earlier, eh?