We're back from cruising "up" to Alaska

A big adventure has come and gone -- last week we spent seven days aboard a "dam ship" (the Rotterdam, of the Holland America Line) cruising from Seattle to Hubbard Glacier in Alaska and back.

In the days before the trip, I prepped Soren with the line that we were going "up to Alaska" on a "huge ship," with the result that when he wanted to talk about our voyage, he pointed "up" in the air and then held his arms very wide apart.
This is our mighty cruise liner -- with a capacity of around 2000 persons; on this run, with about 1300 passengers and 400 crew! -- at anchor in the bay off Sitka, Ala. We see a parade of these ships passing Port Townsend every night through the summer weekends, and we were thrilled to finally be a passenger aboard one. [More photos of our ship.]
The trip was the brainstorm of Jeff's mother Gloria. She had the wish to see Alaska, Jeff handled the trip planning, and Gloria and Jim invited us three to go along as their guests. Here we are on their private veranda deck before departing Seattle.
The ship was a near-perfect vacation venue for a super-active toddler and his not-so-mobile grandparents. We were always on the move, there was always room to run, run, run, and yet the distance between their stateroom and the dining room was not too far. I'll let Soren tell you about the other big perk: the pool!

We had two separate rooms on different decks, and Soren slept better in ours than he did at home -- I think because the ship was one big, vibrating, white-noise machine. We also didn't fret about keeping to a sleep schedule, which was kind of freeing.

The above map shows our route. We stopped at three Alaska ports for visits of half a day each: Juneau, where Soren admired the Native art (below) in the Alaska State Museum; Sitka (our favorite -- felt kind of like Port Townsend, and Soren and I garnered the compliment of being mistaken for locals by an art gallery owner); and Ketchikan (had a nice playground within walking distance of the waterfront).
Here's Jeff and his mother on the dock in Juneau. Believe it or not, there were three more cruise ships the same size or larger docked behind ours! We followed or were followed by these three other ships all week long, but the captains did an admirable job of keeping our distance at sea, and taking turns at the glacier viewpoint.
So, northward to the glacier! We lucked out with the weather -- clear skies and very warm temperatures for this time of year. So we could see all the mountains surrounding us -- often on both sides, as we wove our way up the Inside Passage. Jeff got up early one morning to watch the sunrise.
Finally we reached the apex of our journey -- Hubbard Glacier, one of the largest and fastest-moving glaciers on the continent: 5 miles wide and 40 stories tall. We whispered through a slushy ice field in Disenchantment Bay...
...quite close to the glacier's face, and then the engines were cut and we could hear the thunder and booming of calving chunks of ice. A truly awesome sight!
May I just note that the lack of crowds of people in these deck pictures is both accurate and telling. There was a bigger rush of sightseers on the bow as we approached the glacier, but most soon retired to the dining room (with its constant buffet) or the bars or the library or their rooms... Let's just say it was not the hardiest crowd. But it was also an older crowd. We estimated there were maybe only 50 children aboard under the age of 18.

But our family gamely joined in the tradition of dressing up for two "formal" nights on board the ship. The first night, we dressed up Soren to get his picture taken with us, then Jeff and I went to dinner by ourselves. The second night, we roped Soren and Gloria into accompanying us to the formal dining room.
I'm afraid to say Soren didn't last the meal. Jeff had to take him away because he was just too fussy, and Gloria and I had to eat our baked Alaska without the boys.
However, before Soren defaulted, we were treated to the sight of at least three humpback whales crossing our wake in the sunset light. By some good fortune, we were seated at one of the best tables in the ship, right next to the stern windows. That was our big wildlife sighting.
Our most memorable shore excursion was a horse-and-carriage ride around the inner harbor of Victoria, BC -- our one foreign port of call, on the last night before returning to Seattle.
We really enjoyed this mode of transport, and the sights of this lovely British-inspired provincial capital (which of course Jeff and I are fairly familiar with, as it's just across the strait from Port Townsend). Here's our view of the Parliament Buildings.
And a happy family on the final day of the cruise. So glad we did it. Thanks, Jim & Gloria -- this trip will hold a special place in our memories.

Action videos: Naked noodles

It's time to see the little guy in action again. We haven't posted a video in a long while. Check out these two from earlier this month.

You've got to have the sound turned up these days, because Soren's talking!

First, we have Soren slurping spaghetti ribbon noodles. Note that I have removed his shirt -- indeed, all his clothes -- to avoid the tomato sauce stains that would be sure to accrue. He calls "noodles" "NOO-eees," and his other utterance is to repeat that his "Nannie" made the noodles (and sent them home with us after a visit the day before). Oh, he does repeat "Num!" at the end. It's 42 heartwarming seconds long.



Second, we have Soren in another stage of undress making a stack of old VHS tapes that is taller than he is. In the process of re-arranging our basement into the beginnings of a playroom/music room, we had to unpack and repack the lower drawer of this wardrobe where Jeff stubbornly keeps a hundred or more tapes of his all-time favorite movies ("When Harry Met Sally") and TV series ("Red Dwarf"). Ann and Bill were helping, so you hear their voices. Can you make out Soren's one-word reply to his grandma's question? All in 17 precious seconds.

Soren's passport debut

Since we live so close to an international border, we ordered a passport for Soren earlier this year and two weekends ago we found an occasion to use it.

We crossed the Canadian border at the Peace Arch to visit friends in Vancouver, B.C. Although it's only 3.5 hours door to door from our house to theirs if all the transportation links run smoothly, we hadn't seen them since before Soren was born. And in that interim, they'd had a second child of their own!
Here's a group portrait of Vince (Jeff's grad school roommate), his sons Ming (in stroller, 18 mos. old) and Matisse (a wise 5), and Jeff and Soren (now 20 months). This fun orca sculpture was outside the Vancouver Aquarium, where Soren spent a dizzying afternoon with his nose pressed to the glass of innumerable tanks. Ooh, look, here comes a sea turtle! "Wow" was Soren's refrain for the day. But perhaps just as much fun was the extensive wooden train set that Matisse kindly shared with Soren. He knew how to manipulate it for all sorts of thrilling action, like the ski-jump off the couch...
Hmm, says Soren. This doesn't look so hard to make. Dad has woodworking tools in his shop. I'll memorize the design and try some trademark infringement.
Well, Soren, you don't have to break out the router just yet. Last weekend I found a bag of assorted Take Along Thomas tracks at a thrift store (similar to these, only plastic) and then ordered some more used track pieces that should arrive soon and make a big track set. Friends and relatives take note: Take Along Thomas engines and cars will make great gifts for the foreseeable future!
One rainy morning we rode Vancouver's SkyTrain -- you can read Soren's take on his blog. And then we had lots of fun in the indoor pool at our friends' condo. Soren has discovered the joy of goggles within the last month. Jeff has rediscovered the joy.
But best of all, Soren made new friends. "Ming Ming" and "'Tisse" will be a part of his vocabulary for a while to come.
And now you can guess that Vince was not a fellow law-school classmate, but an architecture student. He designed his parents' house with this incredible facade. More photos on his website -- click on the first building on the Projects page to see a slideshow.

Sleep! While the grass is growing...

How could I have forgotten Good Reason #7 in my previous post?

7. Sleep. Still not getting enough of it.

When Soren hit the 19-month mark one month ago, he started sleeping all night long (with no wake-ups that require parental assistance between his bedtime and a reasonable morning hour, such as 6 a.m.) -- now, before you start cheering, read on -- about every third night. We're not there yet! Two nights ago he was inexplicably wide awake for 2-1/2 hours in the dead middle of the night, 1:30-4 a.m. Jeff and I took shifts.

Anyway, I've vowed to get to bed earlier whenever possible, and that means starting my bedtime routine shortly after I've led Soren through his. And that's been getting later and later (with the Daylight Savings Time shift and now the daylight lingering longer), until now he doesn't fall asleep until between 8 and 9 p.m. Farewell to evenings to myself and taking time for blogging. But then, like tonight, I'll give myself permission to "stay up." The house is silent, just me and my humming computer and a cup of chamomile tea. Aaaah. (Yawn.)

I'll sign off with an update on the new crop of backyard grass. To the photo of bare dirt in the last post that was taken March 21, I add these shot today, April 29. The grass seed was sown just about a month ago.
Jeff and Soren used our push-mower to give the tallest blades a quick mow this evening. It's looking great!

P.S. Blogger tells me this is post #101 since I started this blog less than two years ago. Incredibly, that averages out to about one post a week, so I guess I'm meeting my weekly blogging goal after all!

6 good reasons why I haven't been blogging

Mom is all tied up with something she calls "real life."

I keep meaning to blog, really -- and write myself a well-intentioned reminder in my DayPlanner at least twice a week -- but real life has been taking up all my spare time. Starting with...

1. The flu. I got it Monday and thankfully breezed through it in 12 hours, thanks to my super-mom immune system and Jeff taking the day off to spend with Soren so I could sleep for five hours straight in the middle of the day (minus the time spent puking). This is the first time I've been really sick -- nonfunctional sick -- since Soren was born, so I almost enjoyed the bedrest. (The last time I threw up, I was in labor.)

Soren is currently under the weather -- thankfully,
Nannie & Papaw are here to nurse him (and me!).

But just as I recovered, Soren started throwing up -- this was Monday night and he still is unable to keep down even liquids. Poor little guy -- he's exhausted and limp. Please send good thoughts his way for his speedy recovery!

2. Taxes. We do our own accounting and paperwork (Jeff takes some masochistic pleasure in this), and that includes my small business books and reckoning. My inputs and outputs are fairly minimal, so I tot up my expenses just once a year. I try to do this in advance of April 15, but this year the filing date snuck up on us.

I'd rather share a picture of Soren dressing up than me doing Quickbooks.

We had a babysitter watch Soren for two hours last Sunday so we could get all the forms in order, and just as we thought we were done and Jeff was planning to check the math tomorrow morning (April 14!), we realized we likely qualify for the "making work pay" credit and should fill out Schedule M and recalculate. Hmmm, is it worth $800? We think probably so.

3. A successful consulting gig. Successful in that my client raised $550,000 in three months and met a March 31 fundraising deadline that unlocked $1.1 million in challenge grants. Whew!

This has been a big time commitment for me, but I was pleased to play a part in closing out the Northwest Maritime Center's $12.8 M capital campaign. I was hired in January to strategize and coordinate a local publicity campaign for the final 10 weeks of fundraising. We did an ad campaign and half a dozen press releases. It was a nail-biter, right down to the final weeks, but the community came through.

Board members celebrate!

This was an especially meaningful win for me because I devoted four years of my working life (2002-05) as an employee of the Maritime Center, handling grantwriting and communications back when the brownfield property was being cleaned up and the existing dock rebuilt. When asked to help in these final weeks of the campaign, I had to say "yes" -- because if I said "no" and the challenge grants slipped away (think of how long it could take to raise $1.1 M from other sources in today's economy!), those four years of my life would have felt slightly less productive.

As it is, our town is now home to a truly amazing maritime center with great potential to grow and showcase our maritime heritage. And it's one of Soren's favorite destinations, since he can throw rocks on the beach, watch shipwrights at work in the boatshop, and run a loop that includes stairs, a long second-story deck, an elevator, then out to the end of the dock!

Here are two articles reporting the good news on April 1:
Peninsula Daily News
Three Sheets NW

4. Visits by the grandparents. Including the Eastern Washington pair, whom we hadn't seen since Thanksgiving. Jim and Gloria made the trek over the mountains in mid-March and we were very glad to see them. They were the first official guests in The Nest, and pronounced it a cozy retreat, although Gloria's keen ears still heard Soren crying one night. Soren has been saying Jim's name for a while, but he learned to say "Glor-a" while they were here.

Sharing a book with Grandpa Jim.

Grandma Gloria helping with a haircut.

Soren has also renamed "Grannie Annie" plain "Nannie" -- apparently that is a lot easier to say. His other grandparents, Papaw and Nannie, stopped by on their way home from their road trip to California at the end of March and now they are back on emergency call, helping to nurse Soren. Auntie Jill also came for a four-day visit in late March and the three of us made a day trip to Vashon to visit Grandpa Gerry. Gotta keep in touch with the relatives!

An appropriate bridge picture:
Soren helping Auntie Jill prep our pea patch.

5. Yard work. The backyard is slowly evolving, and now that the earth-moving around The Nest is finally at an end and spring is upon us, we decided to sow some grass seed. We want to a good-sized patch of lawn next to the concrete patio, but the soil there needed a lot of work. Many long hours in March were devoted (mostly by Jeff, but yours truly had to then be responsible for Soren) to breaking up an impermeable layer of clay with a mattock tool, hand-picking hundreds of small, round rocks (the legacy of glacial till), and raking it all smooth again. Gloria helped a lot the weekend she and Jim were visiting. After a nice dry spell, which was good for working the soil, regular rains came the evening after we sowed the grass-clover mix. It's sprouting beautifully now! (Notice also the new yellow gate that Jeff built.)

Jeff prepping our backyard lawn -- a lot of hard work!

6. Saturday morning garage saling. OK, OK, so it's only been taking up one morning a weekend, but I've been scoring some great stuff. Let's see...for Soren: a Radio Flyer red wagon, a pull-toy wooden locomotive, oilcloth for making him a water-play smock, loads of books, more Disney animated classics for our VHS collection, a plastic rocking horse for our backyard play-area, and a luggage cart from a free box that he likes to push around like -- well, like a push-toy.

Soren's homemade oilcloth waterproof smock for sink play.
OK, he doesn't really like to wear it. But it works!

For me: a breadbox for the kitchen that hides unruly clutter, a shapely wooden chair already painted yellow for The Nest, an in-the-box desk lamp also for The Nest, an electric citrus juicer (I've long wanted one of these -- bought a bag of oranges today to try it out on!), and a barely-been-worn blue Speedo swimsuit that fits me tolerably well. And more.

Looking ahead...the calendar is not so full, so I will try not to ignore my notes-to-self to blog more frequently. I really miss being in touch this way. Know that, dear reader!

In memoriam to my Omi

She plugged in the waffle iron at the breakfast table so she didn't have to keep running into the kitchen (why don't I ever remember to do that?). She grew the biggest, most beautifully scented roses I have ever had the pleasure of burying my nose in. She never failed to have a treasure set aside for me and my sisters each time we visited, a "little something" that she had found while volunteering to sort donated goods at Vashon's famous Granny's Attic thrift shop. She always had a book in German that she was reading, and reverted to speaking in the language of her youth as Alzheimer's overtook her. When she continued to recognize me but not Jeff, she was always delighted to discover this tall, handsome, funny man was my husband.

She was my "Omi" (a German term of endearment for "Grandma"), and she passed away Thursday, March 18, at the age of 91.

Her death was not unexpected, and she died peacefully in her sleep, in the house she'd lived in for decades, lovingly caretaken by my grandpa -- who refused to consider any other living arrangement. His devotion is inspiring to me.

Although the last time we spent together was right before New Year's, at our Garrison family reunion in Port Townsend, I'm grateful she got to know Soren (pictured above at his first Christmas, in 2008). He was a lucky boy to be born with three great-grandparents...now, two.

I hadn't really cried until just now. It feels good and right. Her time with us was at an end.

I love you, Karin, my Omi, and we'll miss you.

Soren's first kayak paddle

Saturday, Feb. 20, was the day we decided the weather, Soren's attention span, and our energy levels aligned well enough to try Soren in one of our kayaks. So we loaded our two singles onto our car and drove the half-mile down to the boat launch at the new Northwest Maritime Center. (Note the cool faded-letter signage, echoing the faded painted advertisements that are common on brick buildings in the historic downtown.)
Jeff thought he would try paddling with Soren seated between his legs in the cockpit. They made a good start off the beach, and Soren was of course intrigued by the new experience, but in retrospect, his lifejacket was too tight and uncomfortable.
And he wanted to help paddle -- or at least to have his own paddle!
Jeff didn't take Soren too far offshore (and in fact, I never got into my boat, just took photos from shore). After about 15 minutes, Soren got really wiggly and attempted to stand up, at which point Jeff headed straight for the beach. Session over.
If we could zoom in on this photo, we'd see Grannie and Papaw watching our paddle attempt with binoculars from the passing ferry. They'd stopped by to see us an hour before, on their way home to Anacortes. They said they could see us!

That afternoon, Jeff set his kayak on the ground in our backyard and we dug out the next-largest lifejacket we had, and he and Soren had a practice paddle in a less watery environment. Next time we'll try borrowing a friend's double and the adult sitting with Soren won't have to paddle. But here's to more fun on the water in 2010!